Fifty-First State

by Hilary Bailey

  Rory’s head was turned sharply to look at this much-looked-forward-to part of his daily trip to and from school. Often a fighter plane would scream down the runway and lift off steeply into the air, leaving a trail behind as it disappeared like an arrow into the sky. There might be soldiers drilling on the parade ground. Or sometimes a soldier would have stopped a van, and be searching the back, with two other soldiers, rifles at the ready, standing by. Today, however, from Rory’s point of view, there was nothing very exciting to watch. The inside of the airbase might have been deserted. There was no one near the runways, on which fighter planes stood; no one came from or went into the administration building. The houses were quiet. Then a small boy came to the door of one of the houses, carrying a ball. A woman followed him. Her eyes seemed to flick, involuntarily, past the fences and over the narrow road, to where, as ever, there was a group of twenty people, men and women of varying ages, in anoraks. A long banner, supported on poles planted in the ground and sagging slightly, read, ‘Close the Hamscott Common Nuclear Base.’

  The Hamscott Common permanent vigil consisting of Quakers, left-wingers, CND members and others, had been in place for seven years. Though the personnel changed the number remained much the same. Some were people from the local area, attending on a rota system, others were more permanent and living in roughly constructed huts or tents among the trees of the Common. Occasionally, on a random basis, the police came at night in force, with bright lights and dogs, and knocked down these habitations.

  The permanent demonstration had a deal with the almshouses down the road. They kept their Portaloo in the garden in front of the ancient almshouses and were offered bathing facilities by the residents. This had been done on a vote, 13-2, by the elderly residents of the almshouses. The trustees of the institution, established in the seventeenth century by a wealthy wool manufacturer, could probably have overturned this decision by their pensioners. However, the old man who had earned the DFC in 1943 and been shot down soon after, and another resident with a granddaughter on the local paper, had been vociferous. The trustees therefore thought it better to leave well enough alone. Thus, the retirement home supplied water in buckets to the demonstrators, and sneaked them in for showers, while the demonstrators replaced electric light bulbs, shifted furniture and, occasionally, smuggled in bottles of port, Guinness and whisky.

  Young Rory, though, had little interest in the shabby group of people on the margin of the road opposite the base. To his mind, they just stood there, doing nothing while, on the base, there were uniformed men moving about with guns, the scream of the planes lifting off, people going in and out of the administration block and other children playing in the small gardens.

  A year or so earlier he had asked his mother about the demonstrators and Kim had explained they were people who wanted the base closed down. Rory had expressed incredulity and asked why. ‘They’re against war,’ she had told her son, knowing quite well this was hardly an explanation which would make sense to a seven-year-old. A more complicated answer could be worse. The protesters’ basic objection to the base was that nuclear weapons were held there, ready to be deployed. And that might frighten her son. It was an aspect of the base that no one in Hamscott Common wanted to dwell on, rather like people living on the slopes of a not-quite-extinct volcano.

  When Kim told her son that the demonstrators were against war he only said, ‘You have to have a war if the bad guys attack you.’ He was not interested in the philosophy of the protesters, only the daily incidents on the base. He could have spent the day there – sometimes, when a picnic was in the offing, he’d suggested having it there, on the verge of the road outside the airfield. Kim always resisted. The idea made her feel uncomfortable even though the base had been there since her parents, both local, had been born. Her neighbours had jobs there, a fellow teacher at her school had gone to teach the air force children there, and houses in the road where she lived were rented out to US personnel. The base had always been part of Hamscott Common. Three generations of children had grown up with an expertise in weaponry and modern warfare beyond their years. Playground war games featured realistic alarm sounds, jet screams and American drill sergeants.

  They were past the airfield now and Rory settled back to the dull part of the journey.

  Sugden’s, Fox Square, London SW1. June 1st, 2015. 8.15 p.m.

  Sugden’s was crowded that evening. Downstairs there were no empty tables and upstairs both the private rooms were occupied. The Shadow Foreign Secretary was there with Sir Lionel Frame who ran the Foreign Office Middle East department and Joe Middleton, officially a Trade Secretary at the US Embassy in London but generally understood to be CIA. The head of the Muslim Council of Great Britain was dining with the London editor of Al Jazeera and the deputy editor of The Times.

  ‘It’s bad,’ said Joshua Crane, to himself as much as to his two companions, Lord Gott and Julia Baskerville. That morning the newly elected leader of the majority party in the Iraq Parliament, Sheikh Mohammed Al Bactari, had addressed 20,000 shouting supporters outside the parliament building in Baghdad. He had declared that his first move would be to take over the oil companies now in Western hands, nationalize them and run them on behalf of the Iraqi people.

  ‘We’ve no one to blame but ourselves,’ Gott said. ‘We pulled out leaving warring national and religious groups, an imposed constitution that was never going to work because no one wanted it to and post-war reconstruction still half-completed. Look at what Al Bactari gets, promising the country its oil revenues – it could stop the Sunnis trying to wreck the government, at least for a while, keep the Kurds in line, more or less, and offer all the Iraqis some hope of an improved life, a bit of prosperity. You could argue that’s about the only thing to save the country.’

  ‘If the US doesn’t invade to get the pipelines back,’ Joshua said. ‘There’s Joe Middleton over there trying to get the Labour Party to back the US in a new war in Iraq. And get the FO on side. Al Bactari’s is a high-risk strategy, to put it mildly.’

  ‘Britain won’t go,’ said Julia. ‘The President owes the oil companies for funding her election to the tune of fifty million. No politician here is in hock to the oil companies…’ Gott raised his eyebrows. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But our little fiddles are just that – little fiddles. An American would laugh. I can’t see any British government putting troops into Iraq again. I can’t see any other nation doing it, either. Thank God.’

  ‘Your views are coloured by your constituency,’ Joshua told her bluntly. ‘You spend half your constituency time trying to keep your Islamic constituents calm. OK,’ he said, seeing the anger rising in Julia, her mouth opening to protest, ‘OK, I know they’ve got a lot to protest about. But the rest of the country has got problems, too. And fears. They’re worried about bombs – they’re more anxious about getting to work safely on public transport than civil rights. A lot of them would be only too happy to cordon off your constituency and make every man, woman and child in it have to go through a checkpoint in and out. They’re frightened. When you see a woman from Sulhet half-mad because they’ve kicked her door in a second time, and this time they took away her husband and son, my constituents see the police taking terrorists off the street. Perhaps Muldoon couldn’t get away with sending the troops back to Iraq. Or maybe, just maybe, half the country’s so pissed off with living in fear they’ll go for anything to give an Islamic country a kicking. I don’t know – and nor do you. Whatever we do or don’t do here, will the Yanks sit back and take it? As you say, the President owes her job to the oil companies. Then there’s the humiliation.’

  ‘They never invaded Cuba,’ Julia pointed out. ‘Now they’re doing business with Juanito Castro.’ Burly Juanito Castro had taken over in Cuba five years earlier. Whether he was indeed Fidel’s son – and CIA operatives had so far failed to get hold of samples of Juanito’s hair, saliva or anything else to prove or disprove the story – Juanito was now allowing US businesses to set up in Cuba.
He was rumoured to be in negotiations to join the North Atlantic Trade Agreement, along with Mexico, Canada, Guatemala and Honduras. Which might have explained the delay in securing DNA samples.

  ‘Interesting analysis but what do you think?’ Lord Gott said sourly to Joshua. ‘Will the US reinvade Iraq? You’re a TV pundit – what do you think?’

  Joshua tried to conceal his shock at Gott’s unexpectedly hostile tone. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again, realizing that whatever he said would cause an argument. Joshua knew the reason for Gott’s malice – Joshua was now the sitting member for Gott’s old constituency, Frognal and South Hampstead. Gott – no longer Edward Gott, MP, but Lord Gott of Trequair – desperately missed the House of Commons. Like a normally patient invalid who occasionally finds spite against the able-bodied welling up inside him, sometimes Gott couldn’t restrain his feelings.

  Gott’s elevation to the House of Lords had been two years ago, after he had refused to vote with his party against a bill to step up government funding for the alternative energy business section. The Conservative Party had opposed additional state support on the grounds that the businesses should be self-supporting. Gott voted with the other side and the bill was passed.

  The day after the vote, a slow news day as it happened, the nation’s (Conservative-supporting) best-selling tabloid came up with a banner headline, HE’S GOTT YOUR MONEY, over a photograph of Edward Gott MP framed against his factory logo Citycars and quoting from the firm’s promotional brochure advertising the electric vehicles. Frederick Muldoon took the high moral ground, told Gott his disloyalty had brought the party into disrepute and kicked him upstairs. The House of Lords was now 45 per cent elected and 45 per cent nominated. The remaining 10 per cent consisted of hereditary peers elected by other hereditary peers. The composition of the Upper Chamber had been worked out in the traditional British way. It was a compromise no one liked. But it gave Gott’s Party Leader the power to put him there. Gott was the treasurer of the Conservative Party and a man of considerable influence, but he missed the Commons. And he knew that now he would never be Prime Minister.

  Julia Baskerville stepped in. ‘I’m tabling a motion asking the government to give an assurance that Britain won’t send troops to Iraq.’ She looked tired. A well-cut linen jacket and her hair, not in its usual neat twist but on her shoulders, did not offset her pallor and the circles under her eyes.

  ‘Bit premature,’ commented Joshua.

  ‘Not when your constituency’s one third Muslim. Any way, Edward,’ she said, raising her glass to him, ‘are you “The masters now”? Or “Have you lost control”?’

  The first words she quoted were those of Frederick Muldoon as, fist upraised, he had entered 10 Downing Street after the 2012 election. They had been that morning’s Independent headline, along with the triumphalist photograph, followed by the headlined query, HAS HE LOST CONTROL? The inside pages detailed, with graphs and statistics, the record of steadily mounting unemployment and government borrowing and the jobs leaking from the country – a Welsh call centre relocated to India, a Midlands car factory closed down, a Yorkshire knitwear factory put out of business by Chinese competition, an Italian shoe firm taking its work from Nottingham to the Czech Republic. The crime statistics were up. Only 50 per cent of the bills the government had presented over the previous two years had been passed, because it had no working majority. The Independent leader had said emphatically that an all-party government was the only solution,

  ‘So,’ Julia said mischievously, ‘In control or not, Gott?’

  Gott poured a little more of the excellent wine he had ordered into Julia’s glass and said, ‘Of course not. Ask any of these nicely dressed diners around us – politicians, senior civil servants, respected journalists and broadcasters or whoever they may be. I doubt if half of them would know who the masters are, or ever have been. Deep in their hearts they all know – and it is a danger to forget it – that no one is in control, ever.’

  Julia knew a smooth, question-dodging generalization when she heard one. She pressed. ‘Yes, Edward. But it’s serious when the world knows you’re not—’

  ‘Carl Chatterton had a meeting with Muldoon this morning to discuss setting up a National Government,’ Gott offered.

  ‘Any result?’

  Gott’s silence suggested the meeting between the new Prime Minister and Carl Chatterton, Leader of the Opposition, had not been fruitful.

  He took a menu from the waiter. ‘Pudding – no, I thought not. Julia – no. Well, I can’t resist the crème brûlée here. You’ll share, won’t you?’ He ordered and leaned back in his chair. Gott was square-faced, dark-eyed and dark-haired. He was stocky and broad-shouldered, giving the impression of energy although he denied ever denying himself anything and claimed never to take any exercise. He said coolly, ‘We all know we need a National Government. The Queen gave Muldoon quite a grilling at the last audience, I hear. Naturally, Muldoon won’t do it. He’s worked, schemed, planned and back-stabbed towards the premiership since he was in his teens. A coalition government wouldn’t just be a humiliation, it might end up with the Lib Dems and Labour putting in their own PM. He’s already blocked one Private Members’ Bill asking for a vote and he’ll block the next.’

  Julia said, ‘Can’t you do something?’

  ‘Why would you want me to?’ he responded. ‘The present situation’s not such a bad thing from your point of view, surely? Muldoon won’t be able to pass any bills you don’t like. And what persuades you that I can do anything?’

  Julia smiled, sceptically, at Gott. She liked him, although theoretically he was everything she despised – an investment banker and a Tory behind-the-scenes fixer. She believed that he thought people not fit to govern themselves. She believed that he thought that even if they were fit, it would be better if they did not. Yet Gott had got her the job on Westminster Unplugged. He had approached her one day outside the House and implied that she could appear on the programme if she wanted to. Julia, conscious of the value of being a regular face on TV, agreed and next day the call came. She still didn’t really know why Gott had done this, except that, as she knew, such acts were a way of life for him. By supplying her and Joshua to Hugh Patterson, the programme’s presenter, he’d put them both under an obligation to him. They had become two more strings in his hands, to tug when he needed them, although his hands were already as full of strings as a man selling balloons in the street.

  She said, ‘You’re not so helpless.’

  Gott shook his head, saying, but not expecting to be believed, ‘I’m out of the House. You’ve got more power than I have, with that programme of yours. There’ll be a National Government soon enough. After a certain point, events have their own momentum – an issue arises that the status quo just can’t handle. It could be Iraq. If not that, something else. Suddenly it’ll be imperative to have a functioning government. Then there’ll be a scuffle and it’ll happen – too late, probably, as usual.’

  Julia had to go. Her mother was babysitting and had made it plain that she expected to be back in her own home and watching TV by nine thirty. The men tried to persuade her to stay but she insisted, kissed them and left.

  When she had gone, Gott turned to Joshua, ‘Nice girl. Tell me… is anything?’

  ‘No, Edward. There’s not,’ Joshua told him. ‘Not now and never will be,’ he added firmly.

  Gott’s expression was neutral. ‘Never’s a long time,’ he observed, then suggested they end the evening at his club, which was within walking distance.

  Two

  10 Downing Street, London SW1. June 2nd, 2015. 7.30 p.m.

  Frederick Muldoon and his Home Secretary, Alan Petherbridge, sat in Muldoon’s office, by a fireplace filled with a large arrangement of flowers and foliage, creamy roses, bright red gladioli, pink and cream orchids. They had no eyes for the flowers.

  ‘Six people under arrest at Fairford and Hamscott Common occupied by demonstrators – how can that have happene
d? A few hundred men and women in anoraks take over the RAF bases, block the runways and set up camps. Why?’ This was not the first time Muldoon had asked this question, or Petherbridge answered it.

  ‘The base was taken by surprise. The Americans are responsible for base security, Prime Minister. Deplorable as it is, the invaders are the usual suspects – peace activists, CND, nuns, SWP. And of course, our old friend, the Reverend Alec Hutchinson. No demo complete without him.’ Petherbridge spoke smoothly, giving no sign he had said all this three times already that morning, the first time an hour ago at the COBRA meeting.

  The conference call had scanned into the Cabinet Room the director of COBRA, the head of the Ministry of Defence, Chairman of the Armed Services, and senior intelligence and police officers from Britain and the USA. The fifteen-strong committee met, apparently at Downing Street, but in reality from their office desks, their homes or hotel rooms. Such virtual meetings were indispensable in a world where key men and women were seldom available in the same place at the same time. In theory, a virtual meeting was supposed to work exactly like its real-life counterpart. In practice it did not. Most of the participants were unused to the technology. They were accustomed to sitting in a real room with a real temperature and real outside sounds. In addition, at a virtual meeting it was harder to read faces for the sudden tightening of a pair of lips, a faint twitch of the eyes, a sense of who was working with whom against whom. There was no ‘feeling of the meeting’ to be read by subtle practitioners. And, these days, the participants were wary. A year earlier, at a virtual meeting in Haifa between the newly elected President of Saudi Arabia, the President of Israel and the US Special Representative, a wrongly placed word had caused an international crisis with riots in Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. So now when COBRA met, the participants could not be absolutely confident they were off the record.