by James Craig
Edgar took a large mouthful of his cognac and let it linger on his tongue. A wave of ennui passed over him, since the prospect of spending the next three weeks scrambling across the country, meeting ‘ordinary people’ and begging for votes in marginal constituencies, was singularly unappealing. It was such a damn bloody chore. He knew, however, that there was no way round it. At least he didn’t have to worry about losing at the end of it all.
Finally letting the brandy trickle down his throat, he gazed at the television screen and scrutinised his opponent. Looking back at him was a tired, beaten, middle-aged man who had achieved nothing other than to feed his ego for a few squalid years. Even with the sound turned down, Edgar could interpret the man’s soundbite: ‘This election is a big choice. The British people are the boss, and they are the ones that will make that choice.’
‘I think that they already have, my friend.’ Edgar smiled. As if on cue, a graphic appeared on screen, displaying four opinion polls that had been published earlier in the day. They confirmed that Edgar’s lead had strengthened to between ten and sixteen points. Short of being caught in flagrante with a couple of altar boys, there is no way I can lose, he thought. Simply no way.
Raising his glass to Kitty, he turned his back on the television and savoured the peace of the empty room. With a shiver, he realised that he wouldn’t be seeing much of this club from now on. Pakenham’s was almost two hundred years old, and for a while it had been the headquarters of the political party that he now led. Previous club members had included various princes of Wales, the writer Evelyn Waugh, and Joseph White the media magnate who rose to number 238 on the Sunday Times Rich List, before fraud and obstruction-of-justice convictions landed him in a Florida prison. If it was good enough for people like that, Edgar thought, it was good enough for him. Pakenham’s was one of the few things in life that gave him any sense of identity. Certainly, it was one of the few places where he could get any peace.
Catching sight of himself in a nearby mirror, Edgar smiled. Black don’t crack, as the saying went, and so it was with him. He had his Kenyan model-turned-mother to thank for that. The Audrey Hepburn of Africa, they’d called her, and she’d given him the good genes, the good looks and the non-receding hairline. He had his father, Sir Sidney Carton, to thank for everything else. Truly he deserved his ‘Sun God’ moniker. He let his gaze linger on the image in the mirror, and gave a small nod of approval. The flowing locks had gone, replaced by a number-one crop on back and sides and a number four on top, inspired by the new American President. On the edge of extreme, it was just on the right side of suggesting a football hooligan or a squaddie: utilitarian, athletic, a no-nonsense haircut that talked about control and focus. It worked well, too, with today’s ensemble: sober two-button grey suit, white shirt and gentle pink tie, rounded off by a pair of sharp, well-polished Chelsea boots. Suited and booted indeed! Not for nothing had he been placed in the top five in Modern Men’s Monthly magazine’s list of the world’s best-dressed men for the last two years, beating the likes of David Beckham, Daniel Day-Lewis, James McAvoy, Jude Law – and, best of all, his twin brother, political colleague and sometime rival, Xavier.
A polite cough drew Edgar from his reverie. He half turned to find William Murray standing behind him. One of the more important minions, Murray was one of twelve ‘Special Advisers’ in Edgar Carlton’s team. Now that he was on the brink of power, it was a team that had swelled to more than fifty people, and seemed to be getting bigger by the day. Murray was in his mid-to-late twenties, only four or five years out of Cambridge, and appeared charming, cynical and energetic. With an indeterminate brief, he was a general fixer who could turn his hand to PR, lobbying, and one or two other things that Edgar didn’t need to know about. Of somewhat brittle temperament, the young man had no pedigree to speak of, and was a ‘bit of rough’ who could take the fight to the other side whenever the going got heavy.
Of course, Murray was not a club member, but sometimes you had to let the hired help into the inner sanctum, in the course of performing their jobs. The young aide crossed the room, nodded a greeting to his boss and stood to attention by the far end of the fireplace. Pulling a sheaf of papers out of an expensive-looking briefcase, he waited expectantly.
It suddenly struck Edgar that the face looking back at him could be his clone from twenty or so years ago: when younger, fresher, smarter. Before he had time to get too annoyed by this thought, he felt his mobile vibrating inside his jacket pocket. Pulling it out, he quickly read the text that had just arrived. Smiling, he flashed the screen at his aide, not giving the boy time to read it. ‘It’s a good-luck message from my old headmaster. That’s very nice of him.’
‘Yes,’ Murray agreed, a little bemused. His own headmaster – at the Terence Venables Comprehensive in Hammersmith – had been sacked for getting one of the sixth-formers pregnant. Why anyone would want to keep in touch with their old schoolteachers was beyond him.
‘I will be the nineteenth boy from my school to become prime minister,’ Edgar explained. ‘ If I am elected, of course. It’s quite a list: Walpole, Eden, Gladstone, Macmillan…’
‘Indeed,’ Murray nodded.
‘Assuming I do win,’ Edgar continued, ‘all the boys then get a day off in celebration. So there’s a lot riding on this.’ He smiled his most patronising smile. ‘So… no pressure.’
‘Did you see the latest polls?’ Murray asked, trying to move the conversation along. ‘Spectacular.’
‘Another month and we’ll be there, Mr Murray,’ Edgar beamed. ‘I’m heading for Downing Street, and I’m taking you with me.’
‘Absolutely!’ The young man bowed his head slightly, as if in prayer. When he looked up again, it almost seemed as if he might start crying out of gratitude.
‘So,’ Carlton lowered his voice even though there was no one else in the room, ‘let’s just make sure that there are no mistakes during the next few weeks, shall we?’
Murray lent forward to whisper back, ‘Yes.’
‘Now is the time for the utmost focus and complete professionalism,’ Edgar added. ‘We most definitely do not need any slip-ups at this stage.’
‘No.’ Murray smiled. ‘I fully understand.’
‘I know you do, William.’ Carlton stood up and gently grasped the young man’s shoulder. ‘You are a very smart young man. Your parents must be very proud.’
Once again, the boy bowed his head slightly and, for a second, Edgar thought that he could indeed see tears welling in his eyes.
‘Yes, sir,’ he whispered, ‘they are.’
‘Good,’ Edgar murmured. ‘That’s very good.’ Unsettled by such emotion, he took a step backwards. ‘Make sure you tell them just what an important job you are doing here. I know that I can rely on you.’
Xavier Carlton sat listlessly at his kitchen table, watching the second hand tick round on the wall clock. He was resplendent in his cycling outfit, an eye-wateringly tight pair of black and grey Lycra shorts, and a lime-green and pink cycling jersey bearing the logo of an Eastern European biscuit manufacturer. His advisers had been on at him to stop wearing the jersey ever since the cycling team in question had been thrown off the Tour of Italy for a spectacular range of alleged doping offences. But it had been the only clean jersey he could find in the house that morning. And, anyway, he quite liked it. It was just so vulgar…
PR-wise, Xavier couldn’t see how the jersey was much of a problem. The great British voting public knew nothing about bike racing and cared less. As Eddie Paris, his portly communications guru who actually cycled for fun, liked to say, the plebs wouldn’t know the difference between Lance Armstrong and Louis Armstrong. Or Neil Armstrong. Or… well, any other famous Armstrong you could mention.
Xavier was no expert on cycling, but he had worn one of Lance’s yellow ‘Live Strong’ bracelets a while back, when they were briefly fashionable. Signifying that he was cool, compassionate, committed, it was a handy prop for his image at the time.
Th
e jersey was just another prop. In fact, Xavier’s whole life was littered with them. Next to his crash helmet, at the centre of the table, was a pile of thirty-three hardback books. Xaxier knew that there were thirty-three because he had counted them. Twice.
This was Edgar’s summer reading list, which had recently been handed out to all of his MPs in an attempt to raise their standing with the voters, make them seem better read and altogether more… well, thoughtful. Xavier sighed. This morning, one of the books had to go into his right-hand cycle pannier. This would demonstrate willing to Edgar who, Xavier felt, was beginning to question his commitment to their great project. It would also provide a picture for the Mail photographer who would be waiting to snap him on his bike this morning, as he cycled to the House of Commons. The plan, agreed with the paper’s political editor the night before over a couple of mojitos at the Pearl Bar in the Chancery Court Hotel, was to have something suitably erudite peeking out of his bag as he swept into Parliament Square. This nice image, athletic and cerebral at the same time, would be garnished with a headline like ‘ Who’s a clever boy, then? ’ The media beast would be fed for another few hours, and another microscopic gain in the final push for power would be duly recorded.
So which book to choose? For the umpteenth time, he scanned slowly down the heap, searching for one that vaguely attracted his interest:
Terror and Consent: The War for the Twenty-First Century, Philip Bobbitt
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini
Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq, Patrick Cockburn
Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean 1521-1580, Roger Crowley
How Christian Holyrod Won London, Edward Giles and Isabelle Joiner-Jones
Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade, Bill Emmott
Xavier’s eyes glazed over. His mind evaporated. God, it was impossible! If it had been his own list, it would have been much more user-friendly. With a lot more pictures. He thought of The Big Penis Book, a recent (joke) present from his wife. Now if that had made the list, it would have got people’s attention! Some of their colleagues might even have already read it.
Munich: The 1938 Appeasement Crisis, David Faber
A Million Bullets: The Real Diary of the British Army in Afghanistan, James Fergusson
A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East, Laurence Freedman
Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World , Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart
The Rise of Christian Holyrod, Graham Quentin
The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George’s Life, Ffion Hague
Inside the Private Office: Memoirs of the Secretary to British Foreign Ministers, Nicholas Henderson
Good Business: Your World Needs You, Steve Hilton and Giles Gibbons
Dinner with Mugabe: The Untold Story, Heidi Holland
Politicians and Public Services: Implementing Change in a Clash of Cultures, Kate Jenkins
Carlton on Carlton, Joan Dillinger
The BPB aside, Xaxier couldn’t remember the last time he’d read a book of any description. He seriously doubted whether he’d read thirty-three books in total during his whole bloody life. His advisers had provided two-page summaries for him (two lines on each book), so that he had something to say on each, just in case he got quizzed by a journalist, but he couldn’t even rouse himself to look at that briefing.
Vote for Caesar: How the Ancient Greeks and Romans Solved the Problems of Today, Peter Jones
The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert Kagan
Five Days in London, John Lukas
Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Life in Occupied Europe, Mark Mazower
Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance, Giles Milton
1948: The First Arab Israeli War, Benny Morris
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers, E Neudstadt and Ernest R May
Britain in Africa, Tom Porteous
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power
Descent into Chaos: How the War against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid
None of this stuff mattered a jot, Xavier thought. No one actually expected the books to actually be read. Putting together the list, the thought that went into it, was the thing. It had taken a panel of three of Edgar’s most senior advisers – i.e. the ones aged over twenty-five – three months to trawl the book-review pages of The Times and come up with a satisfactory selection. It was just more quality Carlton content, another small PR morsel, like the list of Edgar’s favourite music downloads or his favourite Premiership footballers; a way to appear in touch without ever listening to an iPod or watching a football match, even on TV. Or, for that matter, reading a book.
Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond, David Runciman
Good Manners and Bad Behaviour: The Unofficial Rules of Diplomacy , Candida Slater
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein
Decline to Fall: The Making of British Macro-Economic Policy and the 1976 IMF Crisis, Douglas Wass
Mr Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War, Tom Wheeler
The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria
Xavier reached over and picked the book from the very top of the pile. He would ask his wife to drop the rest of them off at the local Oxfam shop. Lilli wouldn’t be too happy about it, having to mix with the hoi polloi, but they had more than enough clutter here in the house already and it was better than just dumping them in the rubbish bin. Safer too. Their rubbish was regularly sifted by journalists and other cranks, looking for things to embarrass them with. The binning of Edgar’s selected books would be a serious gaffe.
The book he’d picked up was substantial, about half the size of a shoebox. It felt surprisingly good in his hand. He felt more thoughtful already, if not more energetic. Still lacking the energy to rouse himself from the table, he sat back and closed his eyes. The house was empty and the peace was luxurious.
Lilli had left for ‘work’ about an hour ago. For several years now, his wife had enjoyed a sinecure as ‘senior creative director’ for a luxury goods retailer, the kind of place that charged?200 for a cufflink box,?250 for an iPod case, and?1,000 for a handbag. Xavier had no idea what a ‘creative director’, senior or otherwise, actually did. The job had been secured for her by her father in Milan, in return for various, unspecified, favours done for the retailer’s chief executive. Privately, after a few drinks late one night, Walter Sarfatti had told his son-in-law that these ‘favours’ had helped keep the CEO out of prison. Xavier didn’t really believe that, though. As far as he could see, no one went to jail in Italy for white-collar crime. And if the slammer had beckoned, Walter would surely have got much more for his services than just a job for his daughter.
Whatever the ‘job’, however she got it, Xavier didn’t see the point of his wife going out to work. They certainly didn’t need the money. The net gain to the family finances, once you factored in the childcare costs and the amount Lilli spent on clothes and networking and so forth, was negligible. For all Xavier knew, it could easily be costing him money to send her out to work. He personally would rather let the kids have their mother around more often. But the job kept Lilli happy and that was the most important thing. An unhappy Lilli was not good. Not good indeed.
One problem created by their domestic arrangements was the constant turnover in the hired help. Full of enthusiasm and brio, they came from around the world, from China, from Turkey, from South Africa, from various places that Xavier had never even heard of, only to slink off months if not weeks later, crushed by the reality of trying to deal with the Sarfatti-Carlton brood. If anything, the rate of churn was accelerating. They had gone
through three au pairs in the last nine months alone.
The current nanny was from Venezuela. She was called Yulexis, so Xavier had nicknamed her ‘Christmas’. She was almost two months into her stint and he hoped that she would last longer than the others, not least because she was only twenty-two, extremely hot (she had been a semi-finalist in the Miss Venezuela pageant, the year before coming to London) and took a very broad view of her job description. This meant that he was fucking her at every opportunity. Banging the nanny was, he knew, embarrassing, a total cliche, but he wasn’t about to give up his droit de seigneur just because of that consideration. If ‘Christmas’ lasted for six months to a year, that would be perfect. Any less than that and he would feel terribly frustrated (in various ways). Any longer, and she would go from being a bonus to becoming a liability.
He finally worked up the energy to rise from the table and head towards the front door. Standing in the hall was his Cannondale Super 6 Dura Ace Compact Road Bike. Costing more than four grand, it depressed the hell out of Xavier. His brother had talked him into cycling to the Commons as another grand statement, demonstrating the party’s vitality, as well as its ‘green’ credentials. When had everyone gone green? The whole eco-thing was so ubiquitous now that you forgot that only a very few years ago, no one had mentioned it at all, or had cared in the slightest about the melting ice caps or the fate of bloody polar bears. It was such a bore, and such a fraud. Xavier was sure that it was only a fad that couldn’t last. He certainly hoped so.