‘A tired bright young minister.’
‘A bit. It’s been exhausting. Dealing with Hannah.’ He turned on his side, away from her. Planning his return to Agnes, he thought it would be unsuitable for him and his wife to make love.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘In a way the story begins with your husband’s unfortunate death.’
‘Unfortunate? Is that what you call it?’
‘A tragedy. I don’t suppose you’ve quite got over it.’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised how I can get over things. Take a short run, gather up my skirts and jump right over them. I’ve got quite a talent for it.’
Two women were having lunch in the Swan’s Nest Hotel; Linda Millichip, spread vastly over one side of the table, wearing an orange satin trouser suit with a ruffled blouse in the same colour, so that she looked like a sizeable frilled sofa, and June Wilbraham, in jeans and a tweed jacket. ‘Would you ladies care for any liqueurs?’ the waiter asked, as though it were a mere formality, expecting the answer ‘No’, which was what June gave.
‘Of course we’d like some liqueurs.’ Linda Millichip had no doubts on the subject. ‘Cointreau, please. And leave the bottle on the table, where I can see it. And a decent-sized glass. Not a thimble.’
‘I mean, if it hadn’t been for that terrible accident we shouldn’t have had the by-election when Terry Flitton made his name.’
‘Made his name, did he? I thought he had it already. Flitton. Rather a silly one.’ Linda’s huge shoulders heaved; she had succeeded in amusing herself.
‘I mean,’ June did her best to keep the conversation serious, ‘Peter Millichip had kept this seat Conservative for so long. Were you surprised when Hartscombe went over to Labour?’
‘My dear. When you’ve been married to a politician for any length of time, nothing surprises you.’
‘Do you think it was all the fault of Tim Willock? Do you think he wasn’t a worthy successor?’
‘He was a wanker.’ Linda had taken the Cointreau bottle from the waiter and was glugging it into what was apparently a tumbler. ‘And worthy successor to my husband. Let us say, the Wankers’ Party lost the election.’
‘So’ – June had never seen the word ‘wanker’ used in the Sentinel, nor did she believe it would get past the editor of a national broadsheet – ‘I can quote you as saying that it was the weakness of the candidate who succeeded your husband that lost the Tories the election?’
‘After all we did to help him.’
‘After all you did to help Willock?’
‘Help the wankers.’
‘You put in a great deal of work, didn’t you, Mrs Millichip, in the constituency?’
‘We got everything put straight for him. We went to an immense amount of trouble.’ Here Linda Millichip spoke slowly and carefully, but however carefully she spoke the words emerged somewhat slurred. ‘To see that everything was … tidied up.’
‘Tidied up?’ June felt a little tremor of excitement such as her father Pud Wilbraham had felt when he got a sniff of a story. ‘What do you mean exactly?’
‘I mean things in the constituency were looking extremely good. No nasty messes around, let me put it that way. Absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, thanks to our work.’
‘You mean, you and your husband’s?’
‘Well, no.’ Linda was smiling thoughtfully as she poured out more of the golden liquid. ‘I don’t think Peter was in much of a position to help us. Not at that time. But the Chairman was invaluable.’
‘Sir Gregory Inwood?’
‘Yes, of course. Such an enormously able man. And the young lad.’
‘Who exactly?’ June wasn’t taking notes, unwilling to alarm her source, but she was unlikely to forget the answer.
‘A boy really. From that sort of juvenile prison. He was on youth experience. We gave him, I think …’ – Linda refreshed herself once more – ‘plenty of experience to remember.’
‘Did he have a name?’
‘Skippy, was it? Or Slippy? Something of that nature.’
‘And what did you say this Slippy, or Skippy, did?’
‘I didn’t say.’ Linda Millichip raised her index finger, on which a huge ring glistened, and trembled it in front of her mouth. ‘I said my lips are sealed. No more questions about politics. Tell me about you. Do you have a boyfriend? And does he prefer you to death? I’m sure he does! So have a little drinkie and tell me all about it.’ She poured a slug of the sweet and sticky liquid into June’s glass and no more information could be got out of her that day.
‘It’s a heron!’
It was very early morning, and the river round Hartscombe lock was shadowed in mist. The weir announced its presence only by a muted roar. Above the mist, as in a Chinese painting and looking as though they were floating on a grey tide and not rooted to the earth, the lock-keeper’s house, the trees on the other side of the river, the top of the old boat-house which had become Rambo’s and, far away, the tower of Hartscombe church, were all clearly visible. The heron was also bright, standing on a mooring post, very upright, its neck pulled in and its head sunk between hunched shoulders, peering down into the water, looking in vain for a fish or a frog, or at least a beetle to swoop at and stab with its pickaxe of a yellow bill.
Terry looked at it and said, ‘It’s all going well, as far as the boot camp’s concerned.’
‘My father used to show me herons dancing. He called it the foreplay of the birds. They go lolloping along the bank, beating their great wings, imagining it’s sexy.’
‘I think I’ve got Hannah where I want her.’
‘Hannah?’
‘The Home Secretary.’
‘Oh, of course. And where do you want her?’
‘Where we both want her. Forgetting boot camps.’
‘Oh, that. Look! He’s flying.’
The distant clock on the church tower had started to strike a laborious seven o’clock. The disturbed heron’s head shot up, its neck distended, its wings unfolded, but it launched itself slowly, trundling into the air like an overloaded aeroplane, and then climbed strongly.
Terry said, ‘I frightened her with the Treasury. I think she’ll fall for it.’
‘You mean, you’ve solved the problem on strict monetarist principles? Very clever of you.’
‘I thought so.’
‘But we’ve got more important things to think about.’
‘Have we?’
‘Well, for instance, we saw a heron flying. And the river at sunrise. That’ll be here, whatever the government.’
‘You don’t like it much, do you?’
‘The river?’
‘No. The government.’ He was beginning to get the message.
‘It’s not all that bad, I suppose. Just like all the other governments we’ve ever had.’
‘Give us time.’
‘You mean, in about three years you might utter the word “Socialism”?’ She looked at him. ‘You won’t, will you?’
‘Talking about Socialism isn’t exactly the way to get things done.’
‘How do you know? You never tried. Anyway, it’s much too nice a morning to be talking about politics.’ She was standing in front of him, her hands were cool, stroking the back of his neck. He looked round nervously, afraid of dawn joggers and early fishermen.
Kate was away on a management course, calculated to improve her prospects and raise her salary at S.C.R.A.P. He had driven down after midnight, and Agnes was up with a cigarette and a glass of wine, waiting for him, he thought, anxiously. She took his hand and led him straight upstairs. Having dismissed his character and conduct, she seemed anxious to forgive, indeed cherish, every other part of him. She made love tirelessly, inventively, and he thought he had never had such long, unwearied pleasure or felt so thoroughly grown up.
When it was over they couldn’t sleep; they got up at dawn and went for a walk by the river, to where the heron was patiently waiting for a catch. But now she was kissing him dan
gerously, and the mist cleared so he could see the long narrow walkway across the weir and the foaming water under it. He began to feel, as he recovered his senses, that once again, he wasn’t being taken seriously.
‘Slippy? There only ever was one Slippy. Inmate of the name of Johnson.’
‘A boy?’
‘An inmate, yes. A young offender. And unhygienic.’
‘Was he?’
‘It was a job to get him under a shower. An inmate with a rooted objection to water. You understand that everything you write has to be cleared with the prison service?’
‘Every word, I promise you.’ June didn’t intend to write anything, but, having learnt that being interviewed struck everyone as only slightly less exciting than appearing on television, she had found that the key to Governor Clifford’s office at Skurfield Y.O.I. was to offer to include him among the neighbourhood’s famous names and promise, with her fingers crossed, to write about him in depth. So she sat, with her tape recorder at the ready, in the room which had once, in Paul Fogarty’s time, been decorated by the boys’ strange and dreamlike paintings featuring girls, cars and wild animals, their curious statues and dashing collages. Now the walls were covered with lists, schedules, charts of admissions and prison service directives. Governor, promoted from Senior Prison Officer, Clifford sat at a tidy desk with no photographs of wife or children and only a parched mother-in-law’s-tongue plant for company.
‘This is strictly not for the record.’ Clifford leant forward, about to indulge himself with something he’d been waiting to say for a long time. ‘But the young offender Johnson was one of my predecessor’s major disasters, if one may speak quite frankly and off the record, of course.’
‘But off the record,’ June did her best to reassure him, ‘what sort of disaster exactly?’
‘My predecessor allowed a performance’ – Clifford used the word with distaste, as though it meant something uneasily poised between a strip show and an orgy – ‘in which some of the inmates dressed up as females. He couldn’t see the obvious danger in it, although I did my best to strike a warning note. In the end it happened, as I had no doubt it would. Slippy slipped out, you might say, in female attire.’
‘Did he go for good?’
‘His father’s known to the police as a safe-cracker. Other family members have been inside.’ Clifford gave a tremendously contemptuous sniff. ‘No doubt they helped him go underground somewhere. He’ll be caught up with in the end.’
‘While he was here did he ever go out, on work experience?’
‘My predecessor was very keen on that.’ Clifford gave another sniff of disapproval.
‘Do you know if he ever went to work for Mrs Millichip, the former M.P.’s wife?’
‘I can’t say exactly. I know Lord Titmuss gave him some work to do, and Sir Gregory Inwood. They had him out for gardening jobs, as far as my memory serves me. He was easy enough to get on with, if you didn’t notice the hygienic side of things.’
‘Did he only do gardening? Outside the prison, I mean. He did nothing else?’
‘I think he dusted Lord Titmuss’s books. Why do you ask?’
‘I just wanted to get an idea of life here.’
‘Life as it was here. We haven’t had a single escape since I took over the tiller.’
‘There’s a rumour it’s going to be run by the army.’
‘Hopeless!’ Clifford was emphatic. ‘That’d be absolutely hopeless. The army’d know absolutely nothing about the regulations.’
‘While they march to turn my right, they present me their flank.’ This was Napoleon’s inspiring proclamation on the eve of Austerlitz, and Sir Gregory Inwood was doing his best to re-create the battle with the limited number of soldiers he had available on the table in his study. ‘This girlfriend of yours. She’s a journalist?’
‘An investigative journalist.’
‘That’s the worst sort of journalist. And she’s told you about a conversation with Linda Millichip?’
‘She told me all about a conversation with Linda Millichip,’ Garth assured him.
‘Linda Millichip is a menace to humanity. I can well understand Peter finding death a preferable alternative.’
‘She told June about you and Slippy Johnson.’
‘Was she drunk?’
‘Partly, I believe. She said something about you and Slippy “tidying up” after Peter Millichip died. June didn’t entirely understand what she was talking about.’
‘The French burned their straw bivouacs as a salute to Napoleon. The Germans and the Russians thought it was a sign of retreat. There’s nothing more helpful than the misunderstandings of the enemy. Is June any the wiser now?’
‘I don’t think so. But she saw the Governor of the Skurfield Y.O.I. I think she found out Slippy’s name, and so on.’
‘Soult turned to relieve the pressure on Davout after the allied attack before dawn.’ Sir Gregory moved the lead soldier chosen to act the part of Marshal Soult. ‘But is she going to go on stirring up trouble?’
‘I don’t know. She’s very ambitious.’
‘But cares for you, for some reason?’
‘I don’t think she’d like to ruin my chances.’
‘Then you must make sure her affection for you is stronger than her ambition.’
‘I can try.’
‘Please. Succeed. I could ask her editor to give her some less risky assignment. The advance of the 4th allied column was delayed by Liechtenstein’s cavalry marching in the opposite direction.’ A number of soldiers moved obediently. ‘So we’ve got to worry about Linda and the boy Slippy. Does your investigative journalist have any idea where he is, by the way?’
‘No. The chap at Skurfield had no idea either.’
‘That’s a pity.’
‘I’ll tell you who might help.’ Garth looked inspired, as though he’d just discovered D.N.A. or written a sonnet. ‘My delinquent young brother.’
‘Alaric?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why Alaric?’
‘He acted Slippy’s best friend.’
‘Who?’
‘They were Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It.’
Sir Gregory thought this over but made no immediate comment. Instead he said, ‘In the allied retreat the French artillery broke the ice on Satschan pond. A good many horses and riders fell into the water.’ The memory of this seemed to cause him considerable amusement.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Time had gained Kate friends among the younger wives she had been talking to at Linda Millichip’s cocktail party when, unknown to her, her husband and Agnes had met again and taken up almost where they had left off, with only a few illusions shattered. She and her friends telephoned each other fairly often and, when one of them was about to be remarried, after four extremely irritating years with a local solicitor who came, she never tired of telling her friends, ‘while taking off his socks’, she had rung Kate to invite her to her hen party in the Magic Magnolia, ‘and the wedding the next day, of course, if you could bear it’. Terry had a late-night sitting, so she was glad enough to drive down to Hartscombe and wondered, as she pushed open the glass doors and was met with loud greetings from the girls’ table and the strong smell of monosodium glutamate, if she should tell them all, in complete confidence of course, about her adventures on the personnel management course in Surrey.
They all wore their names on badges during the course, which took place in a plastic hotel situated between a huge rural Tesco’s and a vast green-field branch of Marks & Spencer, so he didn’t have to tell her that his name was Craig Begsby. When he made a beeline for her in the lunch-break and set his vegetarian platter down beside hers as though it were a towel reserving the best seat round the swimming pool, he told her that he worked for a firm of charity consultants and was particularly interested in the study of interacting personal relations and the psychological effects of success values in the market-place. He was tall, with red hair, surprisingly delicate fe
atures and an unexpected grin after the most serious pronouncements.
They soon discovered they had much in common. They enjoyed the same books (having both been brought up on the Hobbits), films and music, although Kate quite liked Oasis and Craig was deeply into John Tavener and Górecki. They were both concerned with the condition of the North Pole (melting) and disapproving of those who kept pets (animal slavery), although Craig was the one who felt most strongly on this subject. He told her he had no faith in marriage, and she told him that her husband had needed a formal tie ‘to reassure him because of childhood insecurity’. She also told him that her husband Terry was not only a Labour M.P. but a Junior Minister in the new government, at which Craig gave a long, low whistle and said, in an awed tone, ‘Fantastic!’
‘He’s worked hard for it,’ Kate said. ‘It’s what he’s always wanted.’
‘It’s just the greatest event of my lifetime.’ Craig was breathless with enthusiasm. ‘And he’s one of the leaders!’
‘Well, he’s a Junior Minister.’
‘When we got rid of them. Election night! My God, what an event! At last something’ll be done about the ice-cap. That’s the first thing I thought of. The water level rising. We’ve got a chance now. The world’s got a chance of survival.’
‘Actually Terry’s in Prisons.’
‘Well, of course. That’s important too. Your husband!’ Craig still sounded incredulous and overawed. ‘In the government!’
‘Of course, it means I don’t see so much of him.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘The Home Secretary’s pretty demanding.’
‘So it’s difficult for him. To make a full commitment?’
‘To his work?’
‘No. I mean to you.’
‘He gets home when he can,’ was all that Kate would say.
There was no further talk about Terry at that time. Craig and Kate decided that the week’s speakers were, on the whole, poor communicators, and they were amazed that there was no course on women’s needs in the workplace, or the special dress requirements of ethnic minorities. In the evenings they took part in discussion groups and both attended classes of Yoga as a Corporate Relaxant. Before retiring for the night they would sit on a bench in the hotel garden, the sky lit up by the orange glow of urban sprawl, and share a pungent cigarette, because their hatred of smoking stopped short of a modest indulgence in cannabis resin. They discovered that they were not only the same age but were born in the same month, under the sign of Sagittarius, the Archer. During the week she spent in Craig’s company, when he rang to wake her up in time for the next seminar, or made sure she had the full information pack, or worked out with her in the gym, she felt at ease with him and a relief from the respect she felt she owed the older and more successful Terry. But then, she told herself, she loved Terry, and the question of her loving Craig had never arisen.
The Sound of Trumpets Page 21