The Sound of Trumpets

by John Mortimer

  ‘I know you young people think a lot of sex.’ To June’s surprise Titmuss had readily agreed to be interviewed, and Mrs Ragg had brought them tea and substantial sandwiches in the newly tidied library. ‘I’ll have the snap taken in here,’ he had said. ‘Books in the background. So your readers’ll think I’m half-way educated.’

  ‘We don’t think about sex all the time.’ June tried a seductive little grin, calculated to lure his Lordship into some sort of indiscretion, but he stared at her blankly.

  ‘Some people,’ he told her, ‘find sex rather a painful duty.’

  ‘Are you speaking of yourself, Lord Titmuss?’

  ‘No, young lady. I am not speaking of myself in any shape or form. But I well remember when old Ted Applegarth was at the Welsh Office he thought he ought to have sex to keep up with the young ravers in the government. So he visited some woman in Putney on Wednesday afternoons for the purpose. Poor old Ted! I remember him telling me how much he dreaded Wednesday coming round, when he’d have to trail off to Putney. No doubt about it. Sex is a painful duty for some.’

  ‘Applegarth? How are we spelling that?’

  ‘We’re not spelling it at all. What I’ve told you is strictly off the record.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ June stored the information for a future diary item when the name wouldn’t have to be spelt, as in ‘Who was the former government minister who found Wednesday afternoons such hard graft?’, and she moved on to less intimate questions.

  ‘I suppose you were very upset by your Party’s defeat in the last election?’

  ‘There, young lady, you suppose wrong.’ Titmuss bit into one of Mrs Ragg’s sandwiches, of the sort which, in her childhood, June would have described as ‘doorstep’.

  ‘But you can’t enjoy the Tories being in the wilderness?’

  June looked up from her notebook and her tape recorder (the belt and braces of her nervous trade) as Titmuss started to intone in his new-found ecclesiastical voice. ‘ “Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.” I don’t suppose you read your Bible?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ June’s dad had regarded God as one of the powerful and pompous characters he mocked in Tittle-Tattle, and her upbringing had been entirely secular.

  ‘You should do,’ Titmuss told her. ‘Full of good stuff, the Old Testament. And God’s completely ruthless. I rather like that about Him.’

  ‘So the wilderness … ?’

  ‘The Party had become dumb and lame. Here I’m quoting the Prophet Isaiah, who could speak sound sense on occasion. A period in the wilderness may do wonders for them.’

  ‘You mean, waters shall break out?’ June from the Sentinel wasn’t slow to catch on.

  ‘Perhaps there’s already a bit of a trickle.’

  ‘You mean, your Party might be ready to take power again?’

  ‘It might. Sooner than you think.’

  ‘But there’s a huge Labour majority.’

  ‘ “And the Lord God of Hosts is He that toucheth the land, and it shall melt.” I don’t suppose you’re overfamiliar with the Prophet Amos?’

  ‘Who’s the Lord God of Hosts? Is that you, Lord Titmuss?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ Titmuss answered modestly. ‘I wouldn’t presume. But let’s say that His work might be done by the new young recruits to our Party. When they come out of the wilderness they’ll obliterate the enemy. “And though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them.” I like that bit very much,’ Lord Titmuss added with relish.

  ‘But doesn’t the Labour victory reflect a general view in the country?’

  ‘I don’t think the country can be bothered with a general view. It waits to be told. Then it acts on the right mixture of bribery and fear.’

  ‘Did it come as a surprise to you when Hartscombe went over to Labour?’

  There was a silence. Titmuss chewed his sandwich. From some distant recess in the house Mrs Ragg was playing sweet and forgettable music on Radio Two. June thought that he had forgotten her, so she asked again.

  ‘Weren’t you surprised when Terry Flitton won the seat at the by-election?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, not surprised at all.’

  ‘Of course, you endorsed him in your speech outside the town hall.’

  ‘There was, to some extent at least, a laying-on of hands.’ Titmuss used these ecclesiastical phrases with his own particular brand of glee.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I thought he was the best man for the job.’

  ‘And do you still think so?’

  ‘Until a better man comes along.’

  ‘Out of the wilderness?’

  ‘That’s probably where he is at the moment.’

  ‘And what will happen when he emerges?’

  ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’

  June consulted her notes. Then she asked, ‘Didn’t you think there was something rather strange about that by-election?’

  ‘It was well organized. The Labour Party are learning their trade.’

  ‘That’s high praise from you. But when Willock accused Terry Flitton of lying about his father and then withdrew it …’

  ‘I seem to recall something about that.’ Titmuss was clearly searching his memory.

  ‘I mean, why did he change his mind?’

  ‘A hopeless candidate,’ Titmuss had no doubt on the subject. ‘All he had in his head was a little white flag of surrender which fluttered when the wind changed.’

  ‘Can I quote you on that?’

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure.’

  ‘I suppose Willock’s one of those chaps you’d send down to the bottom of the sea to be bitten by the serpent?’

  ‘I’m very glad,’ Titmuss looked down at her from his throne-like library chair with approval, ‘that you’re getting to know your Bible.’

  ‘I mean, you would have thought’ – June wasn’t a reporter’s daughter for nothing – ‘that the records at W.R.F. would have proved what job old Flitton did, without a doubt.’

  ‘Yes. You’d’ve thought that, wouldn’t you?’ The idea seemed to have occurred to Titmuss for the first time.

  ‘I thought,’ June from the Sentinel confessed, ‘that I’d interview Terry Flitton after I’d done you.’

  ‘That’s an excellent idea!’ Titmuss smiled with approval.

  ‘A study in contrasts?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘But can I go back to the beginning?’ June became brisk and businesslike. ‘We know you were born in Skurfield.’

  ‘The First Baron Skurfield. Born the son of a clerk in Simcox Brewery. Read all about it.’ Titmuss unfolded his legs and walked, a little stiffly, to a table on which unsold copies of his memoirs were piled. He opened one, inscribed it to ‘Joan, an eager young reporter’, and signed it with a flourish. He took the book to her, and she read the title, printed in bold letters over a photograph of the gaunt and brooding politician: BY MY OWN BOOTSTRAPS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LESLIE TITMUSS.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘What are bootstraps, by the way?’

  ‘Straps, I suppose, at the sides of your boots. It’s a phrase they use for people who have to fight their way up the ladder. I hope you’ll do that too.’

  ‘I don’t really have bootstraps.’ June was smiling.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You can still fight. By the way, Joan, a word of advice.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you’re interviewing Flitton, it might pay you to do some pretty th0rough research beforehand. You might dig up rather interesting information. About his home life, for instance.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ She was genuinely grateful and, wondering whether to tell him that her name wasn’t Joan, decided against it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Two brothers sat drinking Godfathers, a near-fatal m
ixture of whisky and Amaretto, at the chromium bar of Rambo’s, the Hartscombe disco, unheard in the heavy beat of the drum ’n’ bass music, unnoticed by the dancers whose set faces and far-away looks showed a fierce concentration of small, hardly significant movements. The older of the two was Garth Inwood, who had once congratulated Lord Titmuss on his speech outside the town hall and who had since attracted his Lordship’s notice and apparent approval; the other was Alaric, still young enough to be a Youth Offender, who had swapped drugs for money in a Great Public School, acted Rosalind and done time in Skurfield.

  ‘So he wants you to have it?’ Alaric had moments when he took a strong interest in his elder brother’s career and times when his mind wandered to other, more personal concerns. That night, although they had met by chance in Rambo’s, he was being attentive and respectful of Garth’s achievements.

  ‘He said something about me coming out of the wilderness.’

  ‘What wilderness have you been in, exactly?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘I mean, I thought you’d just been living in Clapham and working in Zorkins Bank?’

  ‘Well, so I have.’

  ‘Clapham isn’t exactly a wilderness, is it?’

  ‘All the same, he says I’m going to come out of it and make the tongues of the dumb sing.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Alaric was impressed. ‘That’s a pretty tall order.’

  ‘And he’s going to make damn sure, he says, that I get the Hartscombe seat.’

  ‘I thought that fellow Willock was the Tory candidate.’

  ‘He’s given up after two defeats. He was a hopeless wimp anyway.’

  ‘Oh, hopeless.’ Alaric’s attention had now wandered to three girls, three friends, who were laughing together and drinking Absolut vodkas at the end of the bar. One in particular held his attention – she had blonde hair cropped at the back of her neck and falling forward in a quiff, and she reminded him of a boy called Harry Barnstaple he’d fallen in love with in the Economics Fifth at school.

  ‘So it seems,’ Garth said, ‘I’m bound to be selected.’

  ‘Doesn’t that depend on Uncle Gregory?’ Alaric still kept his eye on the Barnstaple look-alike.

  ‘I reckon Uncle Greg’ll do anything Titmuss tells him.’

  ‘So you’ll be fighting Red Tel Flitton.’ Alaric gave Terry this grandiose title although Agnes, once his most enthusiastic supporter, had long ago denied it to him. ‘Didn’t he scrape up a bloody great majority last time?’

  ‘Titmuss says he knows things that will make Terry Flitton’s majority melt away. Like snow in the sunshine.’

  ‘Oh, really? What sort of things?’

  Alaric seemed interested, but Garth chose that moment to abandon him. ‘Sorry, little brother, there’s my date.’ A girl with a long fringe and a pointed nose was standing in a sudden flash of light, and Garth went towards her. Soon he was dancing in a way that was a little too young for their ages with June from the Sentinel. Alaric, left alone, gulped his whisky and Amaretto and, feeling uplifted but slightly blurred, approached the girls at the end of the bar. He spoke directly to the one with the close-shaven neck, saying, ‘Hi, there, Harry.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ She laughed at him, showing strong white teeth. ‘My name’s Diane.’

  ‘Of course it is.’ Alaric favoured the direct approach. ‘Why don’t we dance a bit and then we might consider a fuck in the toilet?’

  June had spent the afternoon in the offices of Worsfield Road Furnishings. She had flattered the Chief Executive with an interview she didn’t intend to write – there was a limit, June realized, to the sexiness of traffic cones as a journalistic subject – and he was delighted to put her in the hands of the Company Secretary in charge of works records. Old files were opened, old ledgers consulted. Without much trouble staff lists were produced which showed conclusively that Flitton, R. had filled the managerial post of Manager in Charge of Human Resources over a period of fifteen years. The grey-haired secretary was puzzled. She remembered someone coming about two years ago on precisely the same quest, and the records couldn’t then be found. They must have been misplaced, because here they were back again, all in order and absolutely conclusive.

  ‘So Terry did lie about his father,’ June told Garth Inwood.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘He told a lie about his father’s job.’

  ‘That’s something. Are you going to go on, researching him?’

  ‘Lord Titmuss advised me to.’

  ‘Then you should certainly take his advice.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I intend to.’

  As the music changed, June from the Sentinel made for the ladies’ loo. She found it engaged, and neither Garth’s younger brother, nor the girl who reminded him of Harry Barnstaple, were anywhere to be seen.

  The Castlereagh Health Club is popular with members of both Houses. Membership costs are high but considered essential to politicians with weight problems, burning ambitions or, in most cases, both. Terry remained enviably trim, slender-waisted, broad-shouldered and was rarely ill. However, his boss the Home Secretary told him that he should ‘work out’, do his ‘lengths’ and undergo various forms of steam heat and massage if he didn’t want to turn into a pale, podgy wreck of a Junior Minister like those who had pizza delivered to their offices and drank pints of lager in Annie’s Bar. He and Hannah sat now, in white towelling dressing-gowns, drinking orange juice and eating vegetarian sushi, in the health-food bar with a view, through glass, of elderly Tories pounding the green water in the pool like porpoises, and a Labour peeress at Environment bounding neatly off the diving board.

  ‘Boot camps?’ Hannah Mortlock said when Terry raised the subject. ‘Haven’t we got a pilot scheme going in your constituency?’

  ‘I thought we hadn’t decided yet.’

  ‘Then let’s decide. The punters love the idea.’

  ‘I’ve looked at the programme. There’s no time in it for education.’

  ‘The punters don’t mind that.’ Hannah referred to the electorate as though they were gamblers in a lottery. ‘Their children don’t get very much of it, so they don’t see why young thugs should have it.’ The Home Secretary, daughter of a fashionable surgeon, who had read history at Cambridge, liked to tease her Prisons Minister with her low view of punter intelligence.

  ‘There’s not much possibility of reform.’

  ‘The punters aren’t interested in reform. They prefer punishment.’

  ‘It’s a Tory idea. I mean, they started it …’

  ‘And we took it over with the government. Don’t you understand, Terry? The more of their ideas we take over the less they’ll have to talk about. As it is they’re practically speechless.’ The Home Secretary crossed her legs, raised a bare foot and looked with some complacency at her high instep and unexpectedly long toes.

  ‘Well, all right then. If you think we can afford it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Hannah returned her foot to the ground and covered her knees with her dressing-gown. ‘Afford it?’

  ‘I mean, of course, we’re known as a high-spending Party, and money isn’t any particular object.’

  ‘Be careful, Terry!’ Even poolside and eating a vegetarian sushi, Hannah Mortlock could assume the icy stare of an outraged abbess in some strict, medieval order of nuns. ‘The punters didn’t elect us to spend their money.’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure how much it costs to keep a boy for a week in a boot camp. Are you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t know. That’s for you to find out.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s as much as the Dorchester. But one of those more modest Kensington hotels …’

  ‘Find out!’ Hannah, still unsmiling, rapped out the words of command.

  ‘Of course. That’s my job. I’ll go into the figures. It may take a little while.’

  ‘Go into them fully. There’s no particular hurry.’ Hannah slid back the towelling to consult her watch. ‘Time for my massage.’
>
  Terry watched her go. When he entered the pool he felt he had, at last, done something that Agnes might be proud of.

  ‘You’re so powerful!’

  Kate said it, and it wasn’t a joke. She gave no hint of irony and in no way intended to deflate her husband’s quiet belief that his purposes, and the greater good, could be achieved. He had told her that he meant to prevent his government declaring martial law on young offenders.

  ‘I think Hannah’ll take my advice in the end.’

  It was Friday, and they were having an early night. Terry was in bed, and Kate stood naked, her image repeated in a long mirror. She pulled on a long white T-shirt, on the front of which was written ‘Leave the Earth Cleaner than You Found It’ over a picture of a green tree. Then she got into bed beside him. ‘Didn’t we have plans,’ she said, ‘to move to Hartscombe?’

  He remembered his election promise to live in the constituency, and remembered also that Hartscombe was Agnes’s territory. When he went down to his surgery he would be free to see her on evenings when Kate was safely in Tufnell Park.

  ‘It’s easier to stay here now I’m in the government. Late-night sittings and all that. We can always stay with Penry again if we have to.’

  ‘It’s just that you promised them.’

  ‘And I will. When the time’s right. I’ll keep all my promises.’

  Then the phone rang, and he turned away. Later he said, ‘It’s that journalist. June from the Hartscombe Sentinel. She wants to do a profile of me in depth. She sounds rather bright.’

  ‘Is the Sentinel terribly important?’

  ‘She thinks she can sell it to a national daily. She says there’s a lot of interest, in the new government, and I’m typical of a generation of bright young ministers.’ He yawned.