'As it happens I've been thinking of rearranging the table, playing a bit of musical chairs. But you make a good point about the backstage staff. What do you think?' 'You want me to be indiscreet.' 'Of course. Drabble, for instance?' 'A disaster.' 'Agreed. And Barry Crumb?' 'So aptly named.'
'No Crumbs in the kitchen Cabinet, you think?' he laughed, enjoying the game.
Barry Crumb was the Prime Minister's Parliamentary Private Secretary. The PPS is a Member of Parliament but in the view of many the lowest form of parliamentary life. The job is that of unofficial slave to a Minister, performing any function the Minister may request from serving drinks to spying on colleagues. As such it is unpaid, but the cost to the individual is high since the PPS is deprived of any form of independence, being required to follow the Government line on all matters of policy. Thus it is an excellent means of shutting up a backbencher who is becoming troublesome.
Yet the job is more, and much sought after, for it provides privileged insights into Ministerial life and is regarded as the first step on the ladder, the training ground from which new Ministers are plucked. Those involved in the process liken themselves to a 'Tail End Charlie', a rear gunner who with luck may survive and move forward through the ship to become a navigator, perhaps one day even the captain. Those of more cynical disposition suggest that it is merely the start of the process whereby a backbencher is deprived of the capacity for independent thought and action, thereby making him suitable to be selected for higher office.
A PPS dwells in the shadow of the Minister and has no independent existence. But that shadow may be long, and the PPS has rights of access, both in the Palace of Westminster and at the Department of State, even at times in the Minister's private life. And to have access in abundance to a great Minister, let alone a Prime Minister, to hover at the right hand and to sit in the rear seat, is one of the most fascinating opportunities available to any young parliamentarian, which is why so blithely they trade their independence for insight and opportunity, and the rudimentary beginnings of influence.
It was a pity about Barry Crumb. He jumped when he should have tarried, hovered when he should be gone, an enthusiast but a man so afraid of getting it wrong that self-consciousness deprived him of initiative and any ability to read Urquhart's mind or moods. The man had no subtlety, no shade. No future. 'He's not up to it, is he?' Urquhart stated. 'No. But I am.'
He took his coat and chuckled at her impudence. In the whole of Christendom there had never been a female PPS, not to a Prime Minister. The boys wouldn't like it, lots of bad jokes about plumbing and underwear. But, Urquhart reflected, it was his intention to shake them up, so what if it upset a few, all the better. Remind them who's in charge. He needed a fresh pair of legs, and at the very least these would be a young and extremely attractive pair of legs, far easier to live with than Crumb's. And he had the feeling she might prove far more than merely a mannequin.
'Would you get rid of the Mercedes and start buying your suits at Marks amp; Spencer?'
'No. Nor will I as your PPS shave my head, grow hair on my legs or allow myself headaches for three days every month.'
He waved goodbye to the rest of the guests, the business of departure replacing the need to reply. 'Time to depart.' He summoned Elizabeth who was bidding Nures farewell, but Claire was still close by his shoulder, demanding his attention. 'I am up to it, Francis.'
He turned at the door. 'You know, I do believe you are.' There was no longer pleasure for her, nothing but dark childhood memories dragged from within by the rhythmic protest of a loose bed spring. She couldn't hide it, he must have noticed, even as his frantic climax filled the bedroom with noise.
That is much how she remembered them, the childhood nights in a small north London semi with Victorian heating and walls of wafer, filled with the sounds of bodies and bed springs in torment. When the eight-year-old had enquired about the noises, her mother had muttered sheepishly about childish dreams and music. Perhaps that's what had inspired Harrison Birtwistle, although by preference she'd rather listen to the torturing of bed springs.
Did anybody still sleep in those classic cast-iron bedsteads full of angry steel wire and complaints, she wondered? It had been so many years since she had, and no regrets at that. Nor did she miss the sitting-room carpet, a porridge of cigarette bums and oil blots and other stains for which there had never been any explanation. 'I'll go down to Hardwick's and get you another,' her father had always promised her mother. But he never did.
Claire Carlsen had left so much behind, yet still the distant echoes tugged at her; she remembered the fear more than the physical pain and abuse, the disgust where later she learnt there might have been love, the tears made scarcely easier to bear by the fact they were shared amongst all three children. She had escaped, as had her sister, but not her younger brother, who still ran a small fish wholesalers around the street markets of south London in between extended bouts of hop-induced stupefaction and wife beating. Like his father. He'd probably go the same way, too, unless his drunken driving intervened. Their father had come home late for Sunday dinner as usual, had cursed them all and thrown his over-cooked food away, slumped on the floor in front of The Big Match, belched and closed his eyes.
The doctor later declared it had been a massive coronary. 'No pain, Mrs Davies,' he had assured. Better than the bastard deserved. They had burnt the sitting-room carpet on the same day they'd burnt him.
The memories sprouted like weeds and she knew that no matter how much she hacked and raked, the roots would always remain buried deep inside.
'Where were you?' Tom Makepeace, still breathless, raised his flushed head from the pillow.
'Oh, a million miles away and about thirty years ago. Sorry,' she apologized, gently levering his weight off her.
'In all the years I've known you I don't think I've ever heard you talk about your childhood. Locked doors.' With a finger he began rearranging the blonde hair scattered across her forehead. 'I don't like you having secrets from me. When I'm with you like this, I want to have you all. You know you're the most important thing to happen in my life for a very long time.'
She looked at him, those kind, deep, affectionate eyes, still retaining a hint of the small stubborn boy that made both his politics and personality emotional and so easy to embrace. And she knew now was the moment, must be the moment, before too much damage was done. 'We've got to stop, Tom.' 'You've got to get back to the House?' 'No. Stop for good. You and me. All this.'
She could see the surprise and then injury overwhelm his face. 'But why…?'
'Because I told you from the start that falling into bed with you did not mean I was going to fall in love with you. I can't fill the gaps in your life, we've got to stop before I hurt you.' She could see she already had.
He rolled onto his back and studied the ceiling, anxious that she should not see the confusion in his eyes,- it was the first time in many years he wished he still smoked. 'You know I need you more than ever.'
'I cannot be your anchor.' Which was what he so desperately needed. As the currents of politics had swirled ever more unsteadily around him, some pushing him on, others enviously trying to snatch him back, the lack of solid footing in his private life had left him ever more exposed. His youngest son was now twenty and at university, his academic wife indulging in her new freedom by accepting a visiting fellowship at Harvard which left her little more than a transient caller in his life with increasingly less to share. He was alone. Fifty had proved a brutal age for Makepeace.
'Not now, Claire. Let's give it another month or so, talk about it then.' He was trying hard not to plead.
'No, Tom. It must be now. You have no marriage to risk, but I do. Anyway, there are other complications.' 'Someone else?' Pain had made him petulant. 'In a way. I spent an hour with the PM this morning. He wants me to be his PPS.' 'And you accepted?' 'Don't make it sound like an accusation, Tom. For God's sake, you're his Foreign Secretary.' 'But his PPS, it's so… personal.' 'You're je
alous.'
'You seem to have a weakness for older men,' he snapped, goaded by her observation.
'Damn you, leave Joh out of this!' Her rebuke hit him like a slap in the face and hurt more.
'Forgive me, I didn't mean… It's just that I'm concerned for you. Don't get too close to Francis, Claire. Don't lash yourself to a sinking ship.' 'Dispassionate concern for my welfare?' 'I've never advised you badly before.'
Which was undeniable. Makepeace had guided Claire in her first political steps, sustaining her when successive selection committees had determined that her looks were too distracting or that her place was with the children. When she had persevered and her persistence paid off, he'd helped her find her feet around the House and prepared her for its sexual bombast, had even tried to gain her entry to one of the exclusive dining clubs which generate so much useful contact and mutual support around the House of Commons – 'like smuggling an Indian into Fort Apache,' he had warned. He'd been a constant source of encouragement – although, she reflected, he had never suggested that she become his PPS.
'PPS to Francis Urquhart,' he continued, 'is such a compromising position. Politically.'
'We all have to compromise a little, Tom. No point in being the virgin at the feast.'
'Moral ends justifying compromising means?' He was accusing again.
'Do you mind if I get out from between the damp sheets of your bed before we discuss morality? Anyway, you know as well as I do that politics is a team game, you have to compromise to have any chance of winning. No point in pretending you can score all the goals by yourself. I want my chance on the team, Tom.'
'Some of the games Urquhart wants to play I have no desire to join, let alone help him win.'
'Which is another reason why we have to stop seeing each other like this. There's so much talk about the two of you being set on collision course, you must have heard the whispers.'
'Drumbeats accompanied by a native war dance, more like. Tony Franks on the Guardian bet me that either I or Urquhart would be out of Government within a year. He's probably right.' His face hovered above hers, creased in pain. It would hurt, losing his place in politics. He came from a long line of public servants; his great-grandfather had been a general who had insisted on leading from the front, and in the mud of Flanders had died for the privilege. But politics was so much more dangerous than war; in battle they could kill you only once. 'Is that the real reason you want us to stop? Divided loyalties? Are you backing Urquhart against me?'
She took his head in her hands, thumbs trying to smooth away the lines of distress. 'I am becoming his PPS, Tom, not his possession. I haven't sold my principles, I haven't suddenly stopped supporting all the things you and I have both fought for. And I haven't stopped caring about you.' 'You mean that?' 'Very much. In another life things might have been much closer between us, in this life, I want to go on being friends.'
She kissed him, and he began to respond passionately.
'One last time?' he whispered, running his hand from neck to navel. 'Is that what we've been about? Just sex?' 'No!' he retorted. 'Pity,' she replied, and kissed him again. Passolides put down his cup with a nervous jolt, caught unawares by the high double beep of the electronic pager which summoned them. Maria leaned across the table to mop up the spilt coffee with her napkin. 'That's us, Baba. It's time.'
They had been waiting a little more than half an hour in the small coffee shop of the Public Record Office in Kew, Evanghelos refusing to take his eye for one instant off the red-eyed pager issued to all searchers after truth – at least, what passed as truth in the official British archives. Anything that smacked of British officialdom made him nervous and aggressive, a habit he'd not lost since the old days in the mountains. Even in Islington they had always wanted to snoop, to control him, sending him buff-coloured envelopes which demanded money with menaces. Why should he, of all people, pay the British when they owed him so much? A health inspector had once spent an entire week spying on his front door, convinced Passolides was running a business, refusing to give up his vigil until he was dragged away by influenza and other more pressing hazards to the health of the citizens of Islington. He hadn't known about the back door. While he'd been suffering on the cold dank street, behind the tightly drawn curtain the friends of Evanghelos Passolides had spent their evenings toasting his victory over the old enemy. 'To Vangeli!'
The ageing Cypriot had little faith that the enemy would help him now. It had been Maria's idea, something to pursue his interest in the old days, to refresh his memories, an excuse to get him out from behind the drawn curtains by suggesting they might see what information, explanation or excuse the British documents of the time might offer. So they had travelled across London to the PRO in Kew, a concrete mausoleum of the records of an empire gained, grown and ultimately lost once more.
The amiable clerk in the reference room had not been optimistic. 'The EOKA period in Cyprus? That'll have a military or security classification. Used to be a standard fifty-year embargo on those. You know, anything marked SECRET and vital to the continued security of the country. Like old weather forecasts or if the Greek President picked his nose.' He shrugged. 'But they review the records every ten years now, and since the cutbacks at the Ministry of Defence I think they're running out of bomb shelters to store all the boxes. So when they can they throw them away or throw them at us. You might be lucky.'
And they were. In Index WO-106. Directory of Military Operations and Intelligence. '7438. Report on security situation and EOKA interceptions in Troodos Mountains, April-October 1956.'
Passolides stabbed his finger at the entry. 'They chased us across the mountains for two days, with me on a stretcher and rags stuffed in my mouth to stop me screaming,' he whispered. 'That's me.' They had entered their order for the file on the reference computer terminal. And waited. And been disappointed.
The PRO at K ew is not all that it seems. Away from the reference room, behind the scenes in the repository, computerization hands over to dusty fingers and cardboard boxes. Nearly a hundred miles of them. In a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment and to the strains of Roy Orbison and Lulu blaring over the loudspeakers (the whole point of the PRO is that it is not up to date) a young man had sorted through the vast banks of shelving in search of one file amongst the millions. Once found, it had been transported slowly on a system of electric trolleys and conveyor belts to the general reading room, when Maria and her father had been summoned.
But it was not there. Beneath the air-conditioned hush and white lighting they had searched WO-106/ 7438 for any reference to the pursuit of Evanghelos and his EOKA comrades during those days of high summer. How they had hidden in an underground hide with British soldiers less than six feet away and where one grenade would have killed them all. How he had begged his comrades to shoot him rather than abandon him to the clutches of the enemy. How they would have done it anyway, to avoid any risk of his betraying what he knew.
There was nothing. The tired manila folder was stuffed with individual sheets of paper secured with a string tag, mostly fuzzy carbon copies which appeared to have been retained at random rather than with any sense of logic or in an attempt to preserve a comprehensive record of events. Particularly difficult period, the clerk had explained. The Suez War had erupted in October and everything had been chaos as the British Army turned its attention from the defence of Cyprus to the attack on Egypt. Entire regiments had been transferred and the island had become a churning transit point for the armies of invasion. Paperwork, never the greatest strength of soldiers at war, in many cases had simply been abandoned. For the British, it seemed, Passolides didn't exist, had never existed.
But there was something else. A memory. His finger was once again pointing at the single sheet index at the front of the file. Item 16. May 5. Above the village of Spilia.
The date. The location. He had difficulty scrambling through the file to locate the reference,- when he had done so, he trembled all the more. A sing
le photocopied sheet of paper, an intelligence report of an action in the mountains near to where it was believed an extensive EOKA hideout was located. Two unidentified terrorists intercepted while transporting weapons and other supplies. An exchange of fire, the loss of a British private. The killing of the two Cypriots. Burning and burial of their bodies to reduce the risks of reprisals. No further indication as to the location of the hideout. A recommendation that further sweeps be conducted in the area. Signed by the officer in charge of the operation. The officer's name had been blanked out.
'That's why it's photocopied. To protect the identities of British personnel,' the clerk had explained. 'Not a cover-up, just standard procedure. No way the name will be released, not while he's still alive. After all, imagine if it had been you.' But it had been me, and my brothers!
Passolides had tried to explain, to insist, to find out more, but his voice and clarity were cracked by emotion and the clerk was bemused by the old man's talk of murder on a mountainside. In any event, there was nothing more to be found. No other archive, no other records. Whatever the British system had to offer was all here; there was nothing more to be found, except the name. And that he couldn't have.
'They were only boys, buried in those graves,' Passolides groaned.
'You don't need Records,' the clerk had offered, convinced the old man with tears in his eyes was a little simple, 'you need a War Crimes Commission.' 'But first I need a name.'
THREE
'Damn it! D'you think they've got a new editor or something, Elizabeth?' She looked up from her crispbread and letters.
'The Times crossword has become so…' – he searched for the word – 'elusive. Impenetrable. They must've changed the editor.'
No, she thought, it's not the crossword that has changed, Francis. It's you. There was a time when you would have slain the allusions and anagrams before porridge.
Irritably he threw the newspaper to one side. The front page was miserable enough, now the back page, too. He searched around the crowded breakfast table and retrieved another sheet of paper. 'Fewer problems with this one,' he muttered with considerably more enthusiasm, and began marking off items like so many completed clues. He paused in search of inspiration. 'Four or five down, d'you think?'
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