by Douglas Hurd
As portrayed in that setting the implication of that smile could not be mistaken. Macdowell was amazed. ‘Then he did see Roger again?’
Seebright laughed, delighted that even a seasoned journalist should jump to that conclusion. ‘Not exactly.’ Again he hesitated, but his pleasure at his own cleverness overcame his caution. He showed Macdowell the original of the second photograph. Cut out from the version displayed on the cardboard was a buxom blonde woman holding a small boy and girl. The happy laughing family group was complete.
‘His wife and children?’
‘I suppose so. The photograph hung with dozens of others in his lavatory.’
Macdowell gathered round him the tatters of his professional reputation. ‘That is utterly wrong and unacceptable. You are creating an insinuation which we know is false.’
‘We know no such thing.’ Seebright was still reckless. ‘Anyway consider what we might have done. You see that in the right-hand picture the German haunches are thicker and the German hair thinner. It was taken several years after the first one. We could easily touch out these differences as if the two pictures had been taken on the same day. We could even strip off these absurd bumbags and show Fritz as God made him. That would remove any doubt. But I, too, have my scruples. It’s better if the facts are left to speak for themselves.’
‘The facts,’ said Macdowell bitterly, and nothing more. He had to think of his family and his bank balance, the two being closely connected. He resigned that night, but without fuss. The severance terms were not bad, and he did not have to take his children away from their private schools.
Chapter 3
Roger told Hélène, his staff at the Home Office, his constituents, journalists and himself that he enjoyed the work. Certainly this had been true in the first year or two at the Home Office. Was it still true? Yes, of course, there could be no doubt about it. He still approached a locked red box full of government work with the zeal of an archaeologist about to force open a sealed tomb. He still relished the canter through each day of meetings. He enjoyed the fierce battles across the floor of the House of Commons or the Cabinet table, each of which revealed something new about the character of those with whom he dealt, and possibly also about himself. Lately, perhaps, had there been some slight cooling of enthusiasm? Yet that surely could not be true, given that so far from dropping off the ladder he was now trying to reach its topmost rung.
In these days Roger found it useful to stick as closely as possible to his usual daily routine. He did not want those around him to regard the leadership contest as extraordinary. He felt that if he changed the structure of his day he would be increasing his own stake on the board. He did not want to do this. When Upchurch had offered to hold back or send junior ministers to attend to less urgent matters of Home Office business until the contest was over he had demurred. ‘No, fill the boxes in the usual way. I’ll get through them somehow.’
Upchurch had not entirely obeyed. Even so Roger had had to invoke his one o’clock rule two or three times, by which he closed the red boxes of work one hour after midnight, shutting any unread papers out of sight and mind.
On Tuesday, 23 March, Roger left his bed in South Eaton Place at six thirty as usual, and performed ten minutes of bends and stretches on the rug in his dressing room. He put on his clothes to the accompaniment of the seven o’clock news, softly tuned so as not to disturb Hélène next door. The routine was exact; even the exercises admitted no variety, having been prescribed ten years earlier at a time of backache now happily vanished. By seven twenty he was eating half a grapefruit in the dining room. During this process, none of which required thought, his energy gathered for the day. That energy met its first and one of its fiercest challenges in the spread of newspapers across the breakfast table. Here a change had been forced upon him. For the last fortnight all the national papers had been brought early from the Home Office, not just his usual diet of the Mail and the Telegraph. Though it often made for a fraught breakfast this addition saved time later when his campaign committee met to review tactics.
So there, half hidden beneath the Telegraph, was Thunder, and the blow that Roger Courtauld had more than half expected ever since the letter from Joe Seebright. Sarah Tunstall and Simon Cresswick, the two optimists on his group, had been sure that Seebright was bluffing and that nothing more would happen. The others had been silent. John Parrott, the PR man who knew the press best, had suggested that they try to get in touch with Friedrich Vogl to warn him of what was afoot. Roger had vetoed this on the grounds that any such approach, if it became known, would smell of an attempted cover-up. More deeply, he did not want to disinter that afternoon in Mothecombe. His own memory contained nothing more than he had revealed to the group; his meeting with young Vogl had happened exactly as he had told them. Those hours had receded from his mind like most past events, until jerked to the front by Seebright. A small silly fraction of his life had fallen into the hands of his enemies. The less it was thought and spoken of the better.
But this would hardly do. Here they were again, a few distant agreeable hours made slimy by the malice of a newspaper. Seebright had followed exactly the plan for his front page revealed to Macdowell: side by side the Mothecombe photograph, the signed Christmas card, and Friedrich alone beckoning his vanished family. He had devised one extra flourish. The thick black headline across the top, MY FRIEND FRITZ, was connected by a pink noose, which dangled down the page until it lassoed the signature at the foot of the Christmas card ROGER COURTAULD.
The leader overleaf addressed any readers for whom the subtleties of the front page might have been excessive.
Thunder promised to bring you the truth behind the premiership contest. Go to other papers for the political promises. At Thunder that kind of stuff goes down the drain before you even pull the plug. No, we at Thunder want to show you the two characters. We are tolerant, we respect the rights of private life. But we respect even more the right of the British people to see their leaders straight and clear. You are entitled to know how they’ve behaved in the past. Isn’t that the only way of judging how they’ll behave in the future?
Last week we showed you Joan Freetown at Cambridge. Roger Courtauld studied at Exeter University. Nothing wrong with that. He got a good degree. But his life wasn’t all study. Not by any means. Our front page tells another story – young Roger holding hands on a Devon beach. Nothing wrong with that either – even though it’s a young man he’s fondling. Our front page gives proof that this relationship continued. It wasn’t a one-day canoodle. At Thunder we know who the other man is. We shan’t give you his name today. We can tell you that he’s German. But there are facts we can’t yet know, questions Roger Courtauld has refused to answer. What exactly was the relationship? How far did it go? How long did it last? Have there been other gay chapters in the Home Secretary’s life? In short, what the hell went on?
These are fair questions. They are necessary. We don’t enjoy digging around in people’s lives. There should be no need. One e-mail from the Home Office could settle the whole matter. We promise to print whatever we get.
Over to you, Roger.
For half a minute Roger felt sick. He sat back in his chair. He had been hit on the head. The working of his mind was blocked. Then, groping for the coffee pot, he took a decision. He would quit the leadership contest. The price of entry was too high. He filled the cup and reopened the decision. A modern politician in Britain did not act by instinct. He was tied to friends, and in this case to family. He had to listen before acting if his actions were to be any good. Roger put the question into neutral. He had half a day before he need decide. He would deliberately work at other subjects until he was supplied with the necessary advice. He would add his own views, allow to stew for an hour or so, and serve up a decision.
But from one important quarter advice would only come if requested. There were no staff in South Eaton Place at breakfast time. Roger brought back to the boil the portable kettle from which he had bre
wed coffee. He created a cup of China tea, added a slice of lemon, then a croissant on a plate, folded Thunder carefully, and carried the combination upstairs on a tray. As usual Hélène feigned sleep. Roger drew the curtain, let in the grey-white characterless London light and left her. The only novelty was the paper on the tray. Hélène would need a little time to digest this.
Roger sometimes wondered why Hélène had married him thirty years ago. There was no mystery as to why he had fallen for her – beautiful, intelligent, educated, the daughter of a Frenchman who combined the roles of count, farmer and merchant. The family owned a large fortified farmhouse on a hill above smiling fields, and one of the most profitable Armagnac businesses in Gascony. He had spent a fortnight on holiday nearby with friends, who had taken him over to lunch with the de Landelisse family. The lunch, while delicious, was light and there was no Armagnac from the estate, because tennis was to follow. The count was paired with his estate manager against Roger and Hélène, the countess and other guests watching in the heavy shade of pollarded plane trees. As was proper the count won. In the days that followed there was more tennis, then dinner in a restaurant, then tennis again. Roger, though then only thirty, was plump. He sweated and a small bald patch became more obvious as each game progressed. But he was good-looking in a genial English way, and he let her father win. On the last day of his holiday he picked small ripe figs for her from the tree by the swimming-pool. Side by side on deck-chairs they watched the sun set. Below them a pair of buzzards mewed over a valley yellow and brown with ripening sunflowers. Roger took her hand. ‘It is absurd,’ he said. They always spoke in English. ‘But I am certain, and I cannot know what you think unless I ask. Will you marry me, Hélène?’
There was a silence. Gently she withdrew her hand. ‘Of course it is absurd. Two weeks is far too short. But I will come to London to see you. Then we can decide.’
A few weeks later she came, in theory for a course on Cézanne at the Tate. They made love efficiently in his tiny bachelor flat, conveniently close to the Palace of Westminster. He told her about his constituency and the difficulty of opposing the new Labour Government. She listened in silence and he thought he had made a tactical error. But when he proposed again, three days later, she accepted.
‘Why did you accept me?’ he had asked later.
‘First reason, you are a nice man, Second reason, I needed to escape.’
From what? From another suitor? From those smiling French fields? He never found out. He had to be content with that explanation, and it sufficed. Their marriage set quickly into a pattern that hardly altered. Hélène took the minimum necessary interest in politics. She insisted on small matters of respect, appearances and protocol because she knew he neglected them. She went with him to the rented cottage in Northamptonshire. She wore good but not too good clothes at the Mayor’s ball and the High Sheriff’s cocktail party. She developed a genuine interest in the Daventry art gallery. More important, after a long reluctance she provided Roger with a daughter, then two sons. Beyond that, she led her own life, enjoying London to the full, mostly in a world of artists and writers, French and English, into which she did not expect him to follow. Ignorant, mocking people, seeing them usually apart, supposed that each of the Courtaulds ran their own love affairs. In fact, both were faithful, since for neither was physical love particularly important. Hélène looked after the girl’s education at the Lyceé in London; Roger organised the boys at a prep school in Berkshire. They remained fond of each other and shared a bedroom, but in practice there were not many subjects on which they needed to talk. Money might have been one, but Hélène was an only child, the count enjoyed a smattering of political conversation, which Roger provided, and the Armagnac continued to thrive.
Roger’s decision to contest the leadership lay on the borderline of their two lives. They had discussed it, but briefly, there being no disagreement. She wanted him to advance himself and would be willing as wife of the Prime Minister to undertake more public work alongside him than came her way as wife to the Home Secretary. He had no idea whatever how she would react to Thunder.
‘He does not look very intelligent,’ she said, sipping tea.
‘It amounted to nothing. No more than you see. An afternoon long ago, an hour or so on the beach. Even that makes it sound more than it was.’
She looked at him. ‘I understand that. Even if it were more, to me it would be nothing. It is long ago, and anyway,’ she shrugged, ‘Roger Courtauld and grand passion do not go well together. Mrs Courtauld knows this and does not criticise. But politically for you, I wonder …’
She was about to cross their unseen frontier into the heart of his concerns.
‘You wonder …?’
But she retreated. ‘It is not something for me, Roger. You have good friends who know about these things. You must ask them. I will support you whatever you do.’
He considered pressing her, but the sense of frontier was too well established between them. He shuddered to think of those colleagues whose pillow-talk was politics. Better to have, like himself, a quick kiss, silence, sleep, and in the morning some necessary discussion of the diary or the children.
He moved to the window and opened it. The rough noise of a street market filled the room, but there could be no street market in South Eaton Place. One of the crowd of journalists outside the house looked up and spotted him. ‘Are you pulling out, Home Secretary?’
The questions shot in through the window.
‘Are you suing?’
‘Have you talked to your wife?’
‘Have you talked to Fritz?’
He shut the window. For him the immediate escape would be quite easy. In ten minutes his driver would arrive and park immediately outside the front door. The two protection officers would see him through the jostling press, microphones and cameras into the car and away within a few seconds. For Hélène it would be much more difficult.
‘You are going out this morning?’
‘Of course. I have to chair the parents’ meeting at the Lyceé. But do not worry. I must smile when I am photographed, keep moving, and say nothing. I learned this long ago. My smile must be my message, whatever you decide. They will not expect more from me.’
At the same time a similar, though smaller, crowd of journalists was gathered outside Joan Freetown’s house off Brook Green. David Alcester, her campaign chief of staff, watched them with satisfaction. ‘Brewing nicely,’ he said half aloud.
‘Come here, David.’ Joan Freetown looked up from the sheet of paper on her desk. She preferred to communicate with her friends through David, whom she liked because he was articulate, loyal and good-looking. But she knew there was truth in Guy’s description of him as a young man too obviously on the make. She felt uneasy when her husband and her chief of staff were in the room together, and relieved when, as today, Guy was out of London.
‘This is not logical, David. You say I have no comment to make, then I make one.’ She tapped a silver pencil on the desk. David Alcester sighed inwardly. A fair lock fell across his forehead as he bent over her. He read aloud the text she was studying, knowing that his voice itself could lend arguments to his suggestion: ‘“Joan Freetown has no comment to make on the main story in Thunder today. She herself has answered fully all questions put to her by Thunder about the past, recognising the public interest in such openness. She hopes that Roger Courtauld will find a satisfactory way of clearing up the questions in doubt.” It reads well, Joan.’
But she remained unhappy. ‘Sit down, David.’ This was an old device of hers but he had no option. He sat down, she stood up and began to walk about. ‘David, you had no hand in gathering this material for Seebright?’
He wondered whether to simulate anger, but decided it would not work. ‘None at all, Joan. I told you yesterday. The first photograph came to them direct from an old man in Devon. The rest they dug out for themselves in Germany.’
‘You knew about it? You urged them on?’
‘They told me what they planned. I neither discouraged nor encouraged. They are professionals.’ He changed tune. This was going too far. ‘Look, Joan, what is this all about? This story will swing things your way when they were looking bleak. You just have to sit back, smile, poke the story a bit, keep it alive. That’s all I’m suggesting.’
‘I don’t like it, David. I just don’t like it. It could work either way. I don’t want to be involved.’
Inwardly David Alcester seethed. God, she was a difficult woman to work for. His answer to her first question had been truthful, his second false. Of course he had encouraged Seebright. ‘Joan will be delighted.’ He had gone as far as that in one conversation. Not for publication, of course, but Seebright would expect a reward – and deserved it.
Joan Freetown returned to the desk, took her silver pencil and crossed out the last sentence of the draft comment. She reread the rest, and crossed out the second, looked at it again. ‘I’m sorry, David, we must simply say, “No comment, no comment, no comment.”’
‘Sorry,’ he said to Seebright later, ‘she won’t play. No comment. I couldn’t move her.’
‘Damn.’ Seebright paused. ‘Is that a matter of principle or her judgement of tactics?’
‘You never can tell with her.’ And in that reply David Alcester was entirely accurate.
‘We must hunt down the second photograph. That’s our unanimous conclusion.’ They had appointed John Parrott to speak for them. Because Roger was half an hour late they had had time to review the situation after the thunderbolt. Parrott had spoken rather formally: it was an important moment.
‘The reasoning?’ Roger kept his voice flat.
‘There was someone else in that picture. The German is communicating with someone we can’t see. We know it’s not you. If we can find who it is, we can destroy Seebright’s story, and show him up as a lying trickster.’