The Sound of Trumpets

by John Mortimer

  Nabbs had great faith in banning things. ‘I drove past them water-skiing on Riddlesham reservoir,’ he said when he first arrived in the office. ‘Totally uncontrolled. All those bloody kids in wetsuits, scaring the wildlife and splashing up the water we’ve got to put in our mugs of tea, right? I’ll get them banned when we’re in government. It’s a bloody menace to the public.’

  Nabbs had a long list of things he’d have banned when Labour won the general election. This was an event he saw as so far off that he would have plenty of time to add more undesirable activities to his list of Private Members’ Bills. Selling alcoholic lemonade, catapults, war-like toys and bows and arrows of a certain size would be dealt with by imprisonment, as would holding raves, hang-gliding and disseminating books containing racially biased stories to persons of a tender age. When Terry told him he wanted a morning to himself, Nabbs looked up from the mug of tea he was using to warm his large, shiny hands and said, ‘What do you want to do that for?’

  ‘To see the countryside. I just want to wander and collect my thoughts. I’d like to think of a fresh way to put the issues.’

  ‘If you want to know how to put the issues, you consult Des Nabbs. That’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘I thought you might be glad of the time to draft the answers I’m going to give when I’m interviewed by the Hartscombe Sentinel. Will you do that?’

  ‘I’ll draft them, all right. We don’t want you putting your foot in it.’

  ‘Of course, we don’t know the questions yet.’

  ‘We don’t have to bother about the questions. Whatever they ask you, you just give the answers I’ve written down. Right?’

  So, on the morning when Agnes closed her shop, they left Hartscombe, Terry driving and Agnes beside him navigating, smelling of a perfume drier and more pungent than Kate’s and ostentatiously not smoking. They turned off the main road and twisted down narrow lanes, where branches scraped the side of the car and they had to huddle into the hedgerows when confronted by a postman, an occasional builder’s lorry or a string of children on ponies who raised their whips in unsmiling, lordly acknowledgement of their right to pass. They called at cottages which had belonged to woodmen or farm workers when Agnes was a child and found them equipped with outdoor saunas, granny flats and Range Rovers parked ready for the wives while the husbands left the B.M.W. at Worsfield station to await their return from the city.

  So they found wives, left in rustic simplicity, bored as Marie Antoinette might have been in her toy-like farmhouse when all the men were away at the war. And such women were glad of any interruption, particularly one by a handsome couple, a man with a meaningful look and an older woman, still beautiful, whether they were alone or drinking coffee with other stranded wives and hearing gossip which they already knew by heart. At first, when Terry told them he was there on behalf of the Labour Party, they flinched and even giggled nervously, as though he were selling pornography door to door or offering to install overhead bedroom mirrors. But when Agnes had softened them up with some new scandal she had heard in the bookshop, and when Terry had told them that his long service with S.C.R.A.P. proved his passionate devotion to the countryside, of which the Labour Party was now the natural custodian, coffee was handed round with little nips of brandy to correct it and chocolate-covered digestives, and some of the wives even hinted that they might take advantage of the secret ballots. Those who had sat next to Tim Willock at dinner parties agreed that he had either ignored them completely or bored them with a lot of talk about prisons.

  So it was with a sense of achievement that Terry sat down to lunch in the Badger at Skurfield. Agnes narrowed her eyes to stare at the blackboard which, in the old days, had offered ploughman’s or sausages and mash and now flirted with deep-fried goat’s cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and grilled monkfish with rocket.

  ‘Look at that,’ she said. ‘It’s the sun-dried-tomato voter you’ve got to win over.’

  ‘We’ll win them.’ Terry had ordered pints of bitter, which the young waitress, filling in time before starting at R.A.D.A., found amusing in an establishment which now did its best lunch-time trade in New Zealand Sauvignon. Later Terry said, ‘Talking to some of those women this morning, I got the feeling they thought it was time for a change.’

  ‘A change of husband, not necessarily of government.’ Agnes looked at him over the pint mug, which seemed heavy for her. ‘Simcox bitter. It’s still bloody good.’

  ‘The local beer?’

  ‘Mainly owned by that rich old Socialist vicar I was telling you about. The Reverend Simeon Simcox.’

  ‘You knew him well?’

  ‘I should say so. I married one of his sons and loved the other.’

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘Oh, he’s been dead for a long time. Quietly decomposing in Rapstone churchyard, which has now almost been taken over by the Fallowfield Tesco’s. I mean, it’s next door to their car park.’

  ‘No. What happened to the one you married?’ Terry asked the question without, for some reason, wanting to know the answer.

  ‘Oh, it didn’t work out. He started off as an angry young Socialist and ended up a grumpy old blimp. You won’t do that, will you?’

  ‘No.’ Terry laughed at the idea. ‘Of course I won’t.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Of course I promise.’

  ‘That’s all right, then.’

  ‘And what happened to the other one?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one you loved.’

  ‘Oh, he became a doctor. Took over my father’s practice. Took over his house, too. And then left it to me.’

  ‘He died?’

  ‘Divorced. Died. Men are very unreliable.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘Oh, he’s dead too, of course. He found out he had cancer, so he decided to take an impossible fence out hunting.’

  ‘You’re against hunting?’ For God’s sake, they had said to Terry at Walworth Road when they briefed him, try to keep off hunting. They’re not all that interested in education, Europe and the National Health, but in these rural spots they get ridiculously excited about killing foxes. Keep quiet about it. Whatever you say’s bound to be wrong. But Agnes, he thought, would want it banned, and as they sat together over the monkfish he was anxious to please her.

  ‘Hunting? No. I’ve nothing against hunting. My father found it very useful.’ She dug into her jacket pocket, produced a battered packet and then had second thoughts. ‘Oh, I forgot,’ she said. ‘You don’t like it.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ Terry was anxious to reassure her. ‘I really don’t mind at all.’

  A sharp wind sent the golden leaves swirling, and their feet rustled and crushed the brittle beech mast as they walked. Most of the remaining woodland in the Hartscombe constituency had been felled and replanted with fir trees and pine. Here the tall, elephantgrey trunks of the beeches still stood.

  ‘Hanging Wood,’ Agnes told him. ‘It belonged to a poacher called Tom Nowt. His father was a mean old farmer who left it to him. But Tom kept it well. Actually he did nothing except shoot in it.’

  ‘Is that what he lived on?’

  ‘So far as anyone knew. He had a calling pheasant.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A lady pheasant in a cage. She’d cry out in the night, and all the lecherous cock pheasants from other people’s woods would rush over here to date her. Tom put out fish hooks baited with raisins soaked in brandy and caught most of them. Apart from pheasant he seemed to live mainly on deers’ brains.’

  ‘Deers’ brains?’ Not normally squeamish, Terry was beginning to feel that woodland life was even tougher than politics.

  ‘He shot deer with a rifle and hung them up in an old barn he had. Then he’d slit them up and butcher them. He said the brains were a great start to the day and kept him alive.’

  So the brain-eating Nowt wouldn’t arise, bearded and dirty, from the undergrowth, with twigs and m
oss sticking to his clothing, to raise his rifle – an uncomfortable vision Terry had feared as they walked under the long shadows of the trees. ‘Who owns the wood now?’

  ‘Tom’s son, who went to work in South Africa. This wood’s been lucky. It’s been going for a long time without a change. That’s why I wanted to show it to you.’

  ‘So you’re really a Conservative?’ he laughed at her.

  ‘Of course! That’s why I vote Labour. Who said that? Look, there they are!’

  Three deer, one very young, trotted, light and soundless on the dry leaves, into a beam of sunlight and then vanished into the shadows, their brains still in their heads. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ Agnes said.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘His name’s Paul Fogarty.’

  ‘Votes Labour?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure. He’s a good man. Truly good.’

  ‘Not another vicar?’

  ‘No.’ She kicked up leaves, smiling. ‘As a matter of fact he’s a prison governor. A boys’ prison.’

  ‘Skurfield Y.O.I.?’

  ‘That’s the one. He’s trying hard to treat those boys as human beings. To give them some sort of hope, self-esteem. That’s what he talks about. He’s worried about the Tories and boot camps. I’m sure he’d like to meet you.’

  ‘I’d like to meet him.’

  ‘We’ll have a dinner party. I’ll cook for you. Proper food. Not rocket and singed fish, I promise you.’

  They were going downhill now, into the darkness of the wood, and the leaves were slippery, so Terry was afraid of falling. It was very quiet and they seemed to have run out of conversation. She was looking at some sort of shack, a building green with age, lopsided as a boat that has run aground, surrounded by brambles and grown over with ivy, its cobwebbed windows blind with dirt, worn patches and holes in the felt roof. ‘Tom Nowt’s old hut,’ she told him. ‘He called it his hunting lodge.’

  ‘You used to go there?’

  ‘Oh, a lot. He was good at lending it to us. We went there when we were young. Me and the vicar’s sons.’

  ‘The one you married or the one you loved?’

  ‘Well, quite honestly, both of them.’

  ‘You went there, I suppose, for picnics?’

  ‘Not really.’ She was further down the slope and looked back up at him. ‘We went there to fuck.’

  He was saved from deciding how to react by a cry from the mobile phone in his pocket. Kate’s voice, young, clear and irritated, sounded in his ear. ‘Wherever’ve you got to? Penry’s trying to get hold of you.’

  ‘I’ve been canvassing,’ he said. ‘Quite interesting. I’ll tell you all about it.’ But he wouldn’t, not all.

  Chapter Seven

  W.R.F., the letters standing for Worsfield Road Furnishings, illuminated the sky over the largest building in the town’s trading estate. Terry Flitton stopped at the gate, gave his name and said, ‘To see the Chairman.’ A list was consulted, a bar rose into the air and he found a parking space outside the factory where his father had spent his entire working life and never caught sight of the Chairman.

  Kate’s call had ordered him back to headquarters where Penry and Nabbs M.P., the controllers who had temporarily lost control of him, were speaking in the low, excited tones of those who have extraordinary news. The Chairman of W.R.F., not hitherto known for his left-wing opinions, was considering offering them telephone-canvassing facilities on a part of his organization’s switchboard. A condition of this munificence was, however, an immediate meeting with the candidate, in private.

  ‘One on one,’ Penry said. ‘His P.A. Lorraine, very pleasant-sounding girl, made that perfectly clear.’

  ‘He wanted to see the cut of your jib.’ Nabbs M.P. spoke dolefully, as though fearing that Terry’s jib would not be found satisfactory.

  ‘An old-fashioned expression,’ Penry explained to the far younger candidate. ‘I imagine they were the words of the Chairman. Not the sort of thing Lorraine would come up with.’

  ‘We’re letting you off the lead, young man’ – Nabbs sounded a note of warning – ‘so don’t go committing yourself to policies.’

  ‘Just express gratitude and say you’re handing over negotiations to us,’ Penry advised.

  ‘Have you spoken to this Chairman?’ Terry was bold enough to ask.

  ‘We have dealt with the matter,’ Nabbs had to admit, ‘only at P.A. level at the present time.’

  ‘But Lorraine’s given you a seven o’clock appointment. Tell them on the gate that you’re for the Chairman.’

  The entrance hall was echoing marble. Soon he was going up in a lift with Lorraine and walking down silent corridors to an outer office which was meticulously tidy. She was a pale, sharp-featured girl with the fixed smile of an air hostess and the decisive movements of a dental nurse. ‘A little bit of paperwork for you, Mr Flitton. I’m going to ask you to sign this formality. Then if you’d be good enough to take a seat.’

  The single sheet of paper invited Terry to treat the forthcoming meeting as entirely confidential. If he reported anything that was said, all offers of support for his campaign would be withdrawn. Lorraine departed, scrutinizing his signature as she walked. Terry was left alone with a back number of Highwayman. The Journal of Road-Mending and Motorway Improvement. He found himself thinking only of the dilapidated hut Agnes had shown him in the woods and had an uninvited picture of her palely naked, lying on an old blanket on the damp and rotting floor. The vision faded when Lorraine reappeared at the door and said, ‘Will you come this way now, Mr Flitton?’

  He found himself in a boardroom, dimly lit. There was a long table on which pads and pencils had been set for a meeting. At the head of the table, as though the host at some spectral dinner party, was a man he had seen hundreds of times on television screens and caricatured in newspapers and whom he had been brought up, since his earliest student days, to hate like poison.

  Lord Titmuss said, ‘Sit down, young man. Where’ve you been hiding yourself?’

  ‘You’re not the Chairman?’ This was all Terry could think of to say.

  ‘I am not. I do, however, have a certain amount of influence in this company. The offer of a part of their telephone switchboard is perfectly genuine. I just hope your people are up to making good use of it.’ Lord Titmuss’s pale eyes stared at the Labour candidate without a blink. His knotted hands were joined in front of his face in what might have been an attitude of prayer. He looked like an ascetic monk who had risen to become a Prince of the Church. Terry felt that his world had suddenly swung upside-down.

  ‘You know I’m the Labour candidate?’ The question sounded silly as soon as he had asked it.

  ‘I don’t care if you’re the Maoist Revisionist Anti-Rat-Hunting candidate for Free Love and Acupuncture. I take it you want to defeat the Tories?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you’re one hundred and one per cent determined to do so?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘You see no possible alternative to winning?’

  ‘None!’

  ‘Then you’ll suit my purpose admirably.’

  ‘Is your purpose to defeat your own Party?’

  ‘My Party? Are you suggesting that little traitor Willock, that damp, fawning, Europe-loving git whose true occupation is selling strings of onions off a French bicycle, that three-legged coward who stood with his dagger out during the assassination of the greatest Leader we ever had, his hand shaking and afraid to strike, that vacillating voice of the Prime Minister’s movement for mediocrity, belongs to my Party? I tell you this honestly, young man’ – and here Lord Titmuss disconnected his hands and laid them, pale palms up, on the table, in the manner of someone showing his cards – ‘to call Timothy Willock a member of my Party is to throw mud in the face of Margaret Thatcher. Is that what you want to do?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ Terry admitted, ‘in her day.’

  Leslie Titmuss greeted this confession with a lon
g, penetrating stare, and it crossed Terry’s mind, as the legendary politician rose to his feet, that he was about to be seized by the throat and shaken like a rat. Titmuss, however, moved into the shadows and said, in a voice which came with an added rasp, ‘You’ve got guts, at least. You’ll do.’

  ‘I’ll do for what?’

  ‘Driving Wee Willie Willock out of Hartscombe and Worsfield South. Sending him back to his villa in Spain with his tail between his wet little legs.’

  ‘Has Willock got a villa in Spain?’

  ‘It would be entirely typical.’

  ‘And I don’t really know what his policy on Europe is, do you?’

  ‘No.’ And Leslie Titmuss added darkly, ‘But I can guess!’

  ‘Hartscombe’s a safe Tory seat.’ Terry was honest about his problems.

  ‘I thought I’d explained.’ Titmuss’s patience was becoming exhausted. ‘We haven’t got a Tory candidate. You’ll beat him all right. I can make you win!’

  ‘Make me?’ Terry felt relaxed, the old man was dotty and probably harmless.

  ‘Correction.’ Standing, Titmuss smiled, which made him look, a political journalist once wrote, like an alligator about to bite off a particularly toothsome leg. ‘I’m going to help you beat him.’

  ‘We’re tremendously grateful for the telephone service. That’s extremely generous.’

  ‘The telephone service is only the start of it.’ Titmuss found another chair and sat, this time so close to Terry that their knees were touching. ‘I’m going to teach you how to do it.’

  Shifting his legs slightly to avoid contact with a bony knee, Terry had to admit, ‘I’m sure you know a lot more about politics than I do.’

  ‘Politics’ – Leslie Titmuss started his first lesson – ‘is simply about winning.’

  ‘My politics’ – Terry’s tone was now slightly superior, even condescending – ‘are about beliefs.’

  ‘Beliefs come into it, of course. I take it you believe in “Socialism”, equality, full employment, the minimum wage and free seats at the bloody opera house for the workers?’