The Image in the Water

by Douglas Hurd

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You will have to give us the German’s name and the address to which you sent that Christmas card. Then we can find him and get his help.’

  Once again Roger felt that deep reluctance to dig up the past, even though it was innocent. ‘He will have moved. Anyway, the missing character in the second photograph may be a young man.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You think your German may have been gay?’

  ‘I have no reason at all to believe that.’ Another pause. Roger decided to put them to the real test. ‘Look. I have to decide whether to continue or quit. The price for continuing may be too high. You accept that nothing wrong happened at Mothecombe. I’m grateful for that. But if I continue it will be on the understanding that we do not touch the Thunder story. We say nothing whatever. We let it live or die according to its own strength or weakness. I want to know two things. On that basis would you continue to help me? On that basis do you think I could win?’

  Going round the table they all said yes to both questions. But Roger saw that they were not real questions for this particular group. By calculation or by loyalty they were too far in with him to pull back. The most calculating of them, the one he least trusted, made the only interesting remark. ‘Virginia Saltoun rang me this morning,’ said Clive Wilson. ‘She’s been on my doubtful list for a fortnight. She said the one thing the Tory Party should not accept was a leader imposed by Thunder. So she’s jumped. She hates what you stand for, but she’ll vote for you. There may be others.’

  Later events showed that this might have been a turning point for Roger. Political life is full of anecdotes, thousands a day. Most of them are sterile, disconnected from each other, insignificant. Part of the necessary equipment for successful politicians or political journalists is the power to distinguish between anecdotes. They need to shrug off and forget most of them, while remaining alert to spot the acorn that shoots up to become an oak. This part of Roger’s political apparatus was not switched on when Clive Wilson spoke. Even if it had been, the outcome might not have been great, for the telephone rang, and his world changed again. The others could make little of his side of the conversation.

  ‘… I see … I see … Absolutely no trace … You were right to ring, I’m grateful … I think I’d better come right away, do you agree? … I’ll be with you in an hour, perhaps an hour and a half.’

  He thought for ten seconds after replacing the receiver. There was strain in his voice when he spoke. ‘Something personal has come up. Nothing to do with politics. I’ll have to leave London for a few hours. It means cancelling today’s engagements.’

  His colleagues took this bad news on the chin. Roger was not a man to invent little excuses for decisions which inconvenienced others.

  ‘What about the dinner tonight at the Carlton?’ Sarah Tunstall was particularly keen on this. She had booked a private room at the club and invited two of his allies and five influential floating voters from the right wing.

  Roger paused. ‘I’ll be back for that, Sarah.’ He stood and made for the door. Then the ice broke. He paused again in the doorway. ‘You’ve become my friends,’ he said awkwardly. ‘You’re backing me with all you’ve got. You’re entitled to know my past, my present. But this is something I have to handle before I can talk. Can you all come to the Carlton at seven before the dinner? There’ll be no secrets then.’ From others it would have sounded artificial. They took it from him, but he went out feeling that there might be a strain even on their loyalty.

  His driver had waited in the Home Office courtyard, accustomed in these days to sudden changes of plan.

  ‘We’ve got to get down to Hillcrest. As quickly as we can make it.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  Mark the driver and Sam the protection officer knew the road to Hillcrest well. It was the preparatory school in Berkshire attended by the Home Secretary’s two sons, young Roger and his brother Tom.

  There was little point in hugging his privacy too tightly to himself. Mark and Sam would soon learn the story once they reached the school. Indeed, it might fall before long within Sam’s responsibility as a police officer, though strictly speaking his job was to protect the Home Secretary, not the Home Secretary’s family.

  ‘Young Roger has disappeared. Not been seen since breakfast. Missed his first class. Probably some simple explanation.’

  ‘Quite so, sir.’ But if the Home Secretary really thought that, they would not now be moving fast down the Cromwell Road.

  ‘Excuse my asking, sir, have the school authorities notified the local police?’

  ‘Not yet, Sam. They’re hoping the lad will turn up. He’s only been missing four hours.’

  ‘Quite so, sir.’

  A pause. The traffic thickened through Hammersmith.

  ‘Excuse me again, sir. Would you like us to use the siren?’

  Protection officers loved the siren because of the speed and the audible authority it conferred. Drivers liked it because it showed their skill and appeared to raise them above the law. Roger hated it. They slowed down behind a long truck loaded with bright new cars. He was tempted. The siren would cut the journey by fifteen minutes, perhaps thirty. Waiting for bad news could be worse than the bad news itself. But he resisted. At moments of crisis it was better to stick to one’s standards in small things. He tried to put himself into young Roger’s mind. But soon he was looking into his own mind instead. He cursed the selfishness that he and Hélène had shown a few hours back over the morning tea. They had worried about each other’s feelings and forgotten about the children. At the Lyceé Felicity would be all right: she had her mother’s tough, rather narrow French realism. Their second son Tom was tough, too, a small English schoolboy devoted to Arsenal. But Roger … A politician had no right to have young children.

  Rain glistened on the rhododendron leaves as they sped up the school drive. There were tears, too, on the cheeks of the headmaster’s wife, who stood to greet them at the top of the steps. Roger’s heart stopped as he saw that the woman, virtually a stranger to him, was upset. He could hardly bear to shake hands. He felt a final irrational burst of anger. What right had this pale, scraggy person to shed tears for young Roger? It was the school’s job to keep him safe, not to weep over him.

  But, thank God, he had misread the signs. Her tears meant nothing mournful. In the Gothic entrance hall, dimly lit by tiny squares of pink and green stained glass, she explained that her husband was teaching the third year, as if that was important. As for young Roger …

  ‘He’s just come back,’ she said. ‘That awful newspaper … I haven’t even had time to clean him up.’

  Then Roger was alone with his son. Young Roger was exhausted beyond the point of tears. His bare legs were splashed with mud, where he must have run and fallen. Blood from a small cut was oozing through the dirt on one knee. He ran to his father then, after a brief embrace, turned away.

  ‘Sit down, Roger.’

  They were alone together in a bleak sitting room with chairs back against each wall as if prepared for a seminar. Reproductions of Constable and Turner combined as decoration with photographs of rugby and cricket teams. They conveyed no cheer.

  ‘What’s it about, then? You tried to run away?’

  Young Roger nodded. ‘But it was too far,’ he said. And then, worst of all, ‘And, anyway, I didn’t really want to go home.’

  Home, home. The bleak over-protected government home in South Eaton Place was no home for a child. Mothecombe, of course, that was a real home in the holidays, but Devon was unimaginably far for a ten-year-old.

  ‘Why, Roger?’ Silence. ‘Was it about school? Something you’ve done? Or we’ve done?’ Silence. ‘Was it the story in the newspaper?’

  ‘They laughed at me. Gromson got hold of the maths beak’s copy. I didn’t understand what it meant.’

  Then at last proper tears began to flow.

  They had more or less guessed after they had heard
of Roger’s conversation that morning with the headmaster. Clive Wilson had fewer inhibitions than the rest about other people’s privacy. Anyway, hadn’t Roger given them, his friends and allies, the right to know? Acting on a hunch Clive had telephoned the headmaster of Hillcrest at lunchtime, describing himself as a close friend of Roger worried about his state of mind and wondering if something was amiss with one of Roger’s boys. The headmaster had portentously but understandably declined to give any information to a stranger. ‘We at Hillcrest take seriously our responsibility for the privacy of the boys in our care.’

  Wilson had seen his opening. ‘Then both boys are safe and sound in your care?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. There’s no problem with Tom, and Roger came back to school late this morning.’

  So the crisis, if there had been a crisis, was over. Clive shared the news with the rest of the campaign committee as they gathered again at seven, as agreed, in the small private room at the Carlton Club. A round table in the centre was laid for the dinner with Roger to which Sarah Tunstall had invited the five influential backbenchers. Clive gazed at the massed ranks of cutlery and glasses. ‘I see you like to put plenty of sticky on your fly-paper, Sarah.’

  But she was not the sort to enjoy that kind of banter. She would eat some of each dish and sip each wine, knowing that these things were important for the male politicians whom she despised.

  ‘I just hope he’s on good form.’

  ‘He bloody well ought to be. He’s catching up fast. That poll in the Standard …’

  They had all seen the mid-afternoon edition. It was unreliable, in that few MPs would feel compelled to tell the truth to journalists at this or any stage of the contest. Also, of course, it had been taken before the thunderbolt. It showed a marked swing towards Roger, compared to the week before:

  Courtauld

  146

  Freetown

  181

  Undecided

  40

  A separate poll alongside it, of party members in the constituencies, showed a bigger lead for Joan Freetown, but also a majority saying that they would be influenced in their vote by how the MPs had voted the week before.

  ‘One more heave …’ There was something about political infighting that stimulated platitudes even in intelligent people.

  ‘He should be smiling …’

  Indeed, coming through the door at that moment, Roger was smiling. For that moment, misunderstanding each other, they were all happy. Then he broke it up. Going to the drinks table at the side of the room he began clumsily to splash cold white wine into glasses from an opened bottle in a refrigerated container.

  ‘Here’s yours, Sarah … Let’s all sit down now. I’ve something to tell you.’

  They sat, untidily, at different angles round the table laid for others.

  ‘I’ve decided to pull out. You’ll understand when I tell you. You’ve got children, Sarah, so have you …’

  He told them about Hillcrest and young Roger. They tried to look sympathetic but in their hearts none of them sympathised. The boy was safe, back at school. Some of them had met him, a thin, insignificant lad. There was no reason for Roger to jump out of his groove. They were silent while each considered from which angle to counter-attack.

  ‘Roger, we all understand how you feel. Some of us have children at school, we know how they can worry, and that makes parents worry too.’ Clive Wilson came first, the quickest though not the most skilful. His hand tightened on his glass as he got under way. He would write it all up, with advantages as Shakespeare said, in his diary that night. The publishers were nibbling already. He went on, ‘There are other factors, Roger, which you simply have to take into account. You won’t have seen the poll in the Standard. It shows a strong swing in your direction.’

  ‘Yes, I saw it. Sam got it for me. It was taken before the story in Thunder.’

  ‘Of course. But the swing has gone on through today. That’s the point Sarah was making this morning. I’ve had several pieces of evidence since then. Seebright and Spitz have miscalculated, as the tabloids sometimes do. The parliamentary Party will not stand being dictated to by the press.’

  ‘It’ll be in all the papers tomorrow. They’ll wallow in it. The pious broadsheets worst of all. Wiping the smut away with their silk hankies.’

  ‘Then the swing to you will continue. The wiser lobby correspondents know how to sniff the breeze. Before long they’ll be writing it in your favour. Particularly Thunder’s rivals. In my judgement you’ve as good as won.’

  Roger became irritated. ‘That’s not the point. They’ll all print the story and the picture. They’ll make sure their readers get a good wallow in the mud before they tell them how disgracefully muddy it is.’

  ‘That’s their way. But on balance—’

  Roger tried to cut short the discussion, fortifying himself behind his bulky shoulders and long arms stretched out on the table. ‘There’s no balance, Clive. Look, I know how hard this is on all of you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I owe you apologies and more. That’s at one level, and I don’t underestimate it. But it’s my life, not anyone else’s, which is on the board. I’ve made a decision to take it off the board. That means the game’s over.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes you hesitate before a decision. I did that all the way back from the bloody school. I decided at the Chiswick flyover. After that the traffic lights went green all the way up to the Cromwell Road. The lights approved all right. I know it was the right choice.’ He tried to push them on to a practical plane. ‘So that’s it. Thank you all very much. We need to draft something very simple – personal reasons, nothing complicated. We’ll put it out at once. I’ll dine pleasantly with your guests, Sarah. Then home to bed. Tomorrow, as they say, will be another day.’

  But, of course, they could not let him off like that. Sarah had meant to tackle him on the same grounds as Clive Wilson, namely the swing in his favour through the day. That had not worked. She cast back to her days as a mother of two young children, one now a merchant banker, the other, a girl, making forlorn music in Orange County, California. ‘What does Hélène think?’ she asked, to gain time while she thought.

  ‘I haven’t asked Hélène. She leaves that decision to me.’ It might seem odd to others, but that was the way it was. He had looked in on South Eaton Place to change his shirt between Hillcrest and the Carlton Club. If Hélène had been in, he supposed he would have told her. She had been out shopping. It had not occurred to him to try to reach her on her mobile. He supposed that he ought to do so fairly soon so that she would not be surprised by reporters. But Hélène was not part of the action. Perhaps that was one of the things that was wrong.

  Sarah had thought out her line. She moved across the room and stood over him. In daytime her hair and clothes escaped all discipline. The disorder in her dress was saved from being ridiculous by her statuesque figure and the powerful way in which she moved. She swept through the House of Commons tea room like a queen who shopped at Oxfam. About six o’clock most evenings a change occurred. Her unruly grey-blonde hair was captured by a gold band and imprisoned in a thick tress flowing from the nape of her neck. For the evening she favoured flowing dresses, green, blue or red, the colour always stronger than was fashionable, the material giving off a metallic sheen and a general effect of concentrated power. She was one of Roger’s sternest critics at the Home Office, favouring mandatory terms of imprisonment for all serious offences and a national police force. When asked by the press why, despite this, she favoured him for prime minister, she replied, ‘He’s the best man we’ve got.’

  ‘You don’t favour a woman prime minister then, Mrs Tunstall?’

  ‘Clearly not.’ And that was all they could get. She had worked harder than any of them for Roger among the MPs. Heaven knew what arguments she used. This dinner was to be, or was to have been, the climax of her effort.

  Without genuine sympathy for Roger but for tactical reasons, trying to remember what it was to have young children, she
spoke in a softer voice than usual. With difficulty she had remembered the boy’s name. ‘Have you really thought this through, Roger?’

  He lifted his head out of the fortress of shoulders and arms, and looked up at her. This might be more difficult to deal with. ‘What do you mean, Sarah?’

  ‘Young Roger’s had an upset.’ She had a subdued West Country accent. ‘He’ll have another tomorrow when the rest of the papers drool over the same story. Your quitting tonight won’t change that. Indeed, it’ll add to the sensation.’

  ‘For a day or two, Sarah, then it will be over.’

  ‘You know better than that, Roger. The story will be with you and the lad for the rest of your days. Whether it throws a big shadow or a little shadow on his life will depend on how you handle it now. If you quit tonight, it’ll be a big shadow, now and for ever. It’ll be what people remember you by. They won’t believe you threw away the premiership simply because one afternoon all those years ago you drank too much scrumpy in a seaside pub and held hands with a Kraut on a Devon beach.’

  ‘That’s all there was. What I told you was true.’

  Sarah had him on the defensive. She touched him gently on the shoulder. A week ago they had hardly known each other. ‘We know it’s true. You told us, and you’re not a liar. But who’ll believe it? There’s plenty of truth in life that no one will believe. Usually because it’s too small. Particularly in politics. Politicians have to pretend that whenever there’s smoke there’s fire – otherwise what would we live on? The press even more so. After all, there have to be headlines every day. Your story is just a tiny wisp of smoke. It was all over by teatime. If you quit, everyone will believe it was a raging forest fire.’

  For a moment it was as if they were the only people in the room. From the walls Lord North and Benjamin Disraeli, both connoisseurs of political drama, looked down with interest.

  ‘You miss the point, Sarah. Only big people cast big shadows. I’m going to cut myself down to size. Not a big chap any more. So if … when I’m out of all this no one will be interested. Page one tomorrow, page eight in a week’s time, then silence. Blessed silence. And the children and I can get back to normal life.’