The Image in the Water

by Douglas Hurd

  Lord Downbrook always relished mention of ‘responsibilities’. He nodded sagely.

  ‘Now, as to implementation. As I see it, there are three separate stages after we announce this evening our endorsement of the new policy. First, we need to explain and proclaim it by every means on all possible occasions. It should take priority over all other issues. I shall lead this campaign. Its climax will be a motion and debate at the Party Conference in October. Incidentally, the Scottish Conservatives will still be invited to Bournemouth, but on the same basis as other like-minded sister parties, such as the German CDU and the French RPR. Second, shortly after that when the House gets back, we will table an amendment to the Queen’s Speech regretting the absence from the government’s programme of a Scotland Independence Bill. Arguably one of us should table such a Bill ourselves, but we need to examine the most promising parliamentary procedure. Third, in parallel with these orthodox political initiatives, we should launch an imaginative public campaign designed to stir up opinion on our side. The polls are already in our favour. But that’s not enough. Public opinion has to be made furious. Its anger has not yet been brought to bear on the media and on Parliament, for example the Liberal Democrat MPs. To put it bluntly, we want to scare all such into supporting us. That campaign will be the responsibility of New England under my direction. They will remain within the law, but otherwise will use all their drive and energy in bringing the question to the boil during the holiday months. I want it to be a long hot summer, plenty of noisy fun. I give you some examples. New England will launch a boycott of Scottish-owned banks in England, in particular NatWest. They will deal with offensive monuments, for example the plaque to William Wallace in Smithfield Market. They will name and shame all government bodies operating in England which have more than one-fifth of their members who live or were born in Scotland, encouraging surplus Scots to resign, beginning, of course, with the Cabinet. They’ll discourage English clubs from taking on Scottish footballers. They will keep up the campaign against the flying in England and Wales of St Andrew’s cross or the red lion except on Scottish official buildings. Sympathetic local authorities will set up voluntary registers in each borough and county so that residents bearing Scottish names can make it clear that they regard themselves as English. This will prepare the ground for the nationality legislation, which we will need to introduce once Scotland is independent. These are just some of the ideas coming forward, but there are certainly others … Yes, Sarah.’

  Sarah Tunstall spoke in the truculent voice of someone half ashamed of herself. ‘In the Mail today they speak of a possible boycott of Scottish produce – oatcakes, even whisky. I doubt…’

  ‘Of course you are right, Sarah.’ David spoke with affection, delighted that the silly woman had come in on a secondary point. ‘It wouldn’t work – and, anyway, it’s not in line with our philosophy. We want Scotland to prosper, to sell us oatcakes and whisky. Those of you who like them will be able to go north and toss the caber and play the bagpipes. We’ll propose them for membership of the EU. NATO too, though they may not want it. The UN certainly. What we don’t want is Scots domineering here in England, owning our banks, running the unions. Our natural allies now are the Scottish Nationalists – not the puny Scotnats lot now sitting in the executive in Leith, co-operating with Labour at every turn, but the true Nationalists out in the streets campaigning for independence now.’

  ‘But not the kidnappers, presumably,’ said Sarah.

  It was an awkward remark, made too late. David hesitated, but only for a second. ‘Not, of course, the kidnappers. As I said, everything must be within the law.’

  Sitting in his deck-chair watching the polo Roger Courtauld reviewed his life. It was a habit growing on him, perhaps because he found the balance between regret and satisfaction hard to strike. He had inherited a little money, put by a little more during his years at the Bar, married more again, learned as a politician to live within his means and was now coasting quite comfortably into old age. By contrast his son, young Roger, liked to contemplate a wide range of pleasures without having to think how they might be paid for. Of these pleasures polo was the latest and most expensive. Up to now Roger had borrowed ponies from friends and a godfather. If he was to continue with the sport he would soon have to buy one, perhaps two.

  From his chair Roger could just see Manston in the valley below him. It was not a big house, in fact three small cottages knocked together, but distinguishable by its thatched roof in a land of stone, and by its position on the bank of the Axwell. Odd that a slim thread of water could have cut such a wide valley through the heart of England. The polo field had been created on a ridge separating the sweep of the Cotswolds to the south from the softer more flexible Midlands to the north and east. Because the flat ground on the summit was a little narrower than the necessary measurement of the field, riders and ponies as viewed by the spectators would, from time to time, suddenly lose their legs, and continue the game with heads and legless bodies outlined against the woods and pastures of Northamptonshire verging towards the distant smudge of Birmingham. Then legs would be miraculously restored as the two teams returned up the incline and manoeuvred towards a goal mouth.

  Today the silhouettes were solid and hard against a particularly hazy background. For a fortnight the sun had ruled England, providing the hottest and driest summer since 2005. The fields were parched and yellow. There had even been a question, quickly dismissed by eager competitors, as to whether the ground was too hard that day for the game to be safe. But the sun’s reign was crumbling. Blunt, massive clouds, interleaved in a different shade of grey with touches of yellow, were accumulating and gradually thrashing forward from the west. Roger had already heard one distant rumble of dry thunder.

  On the whole sitting in his chair, feeling a little younger than his sixty-seven years, Roger struck the balance in favour of contentment. It was six years since his disastrous leadership campaign, two years since separation from his wife Hélène. These events had built confining banks through which his life flowed more narrowly than before. More narrowly, and yet also more sluggishly, for the volume of his energy had lessened. His two non-executive directorships in London and a third in Bristol took up four or five days a month and kept him mildly in touch with the world of business. He chaired the governing body of a local school for those with learning difficulties, the fund-raising committee for the fabric of the cathedral, and the local branch of a national cancer charity. And he was still, of course, the Member of Parliament for South Northamptonshire. It was fashionable, indeed had been fashionable throughout his political career, to write about the formidable pressures of an MP’s life. Roger, on the backbenches, had been surprised to find how easy it was, provided you knew your towns and villages, employed a good secretary and research assistant, and had said goodbye to political ambition. Faced with a Labour majority of over eighty in the Commons, the whips did not bother him much about voting. Every now and then the BBC or someone else invited him as a former Home Secretary to give an interview on some asylum case or prison escape; he almost always refused. Politics had lost its savour for Roger; he had never developed an appetite for finance or commerce; Hélène’s decision to leave him had removed the attractions, never great, of social coming and going. A staid part-time housekeeper made his bed and cooked his supper. John, the pensioner down the road, mowed the lawn. What was left were books, a few friends, his interest in his children, the prospect of a week’s fishing with old Peter Makewell in Scotland, the choice of wine for today’s picnic, the decision whether his lavender hedge at Manston, now in full bloom, had grown too scraggy and needed replanting.

  In a pause between young Roger’s chukkas his father began to snooze. The sun shone hotter than ever, through a thickening haze.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, Sir Roger, but …’

  He recognised the voice of the man who had been broadcasting an often inaccurate commentary on each chukka from the committee hut in the centre of the ridge,
just his side of the ice-cream van. A somewhat patronising voice – what was the name? Martin Venables – but a good man. Venables ran the whole event almost single-handed, using the respect that he had earned locally fifteen years back by leading the Pytchley hunt down Whitehall at the height of the campaign to save fox-hunting.

  Roger opened his eyes properly and found that Venables, having left the commentary in charge of a deputy, stood at his side. ‘Weather’s going to break.’

  ‘We need the rain.’

  ‘That’s certain. I’ll have to cancel the cross-country next week unless the ground softens.’

  ‘Looks like thunder.’

  ‘Might be rough on the partridges if it comes too hard. Chicks at their weakest just now.’

  Roger’s wife, being French, had often complained that in rural England this kind of conversation could go on for ever. Nothing so far explained why Martin Venables had deserted the commentary box to interrupt Roger’s snooze. Roger decided on silence, and this unlocked the mystery.

  ‘What do you make of young Alcester?’ asked Venables.

  Still baffled, Roger prepared to creak into his usual ambiguities about the leader of the Conservative Party. ‘Plenty of good material there. Of course I don’t know him well, just—’

  ‘Have you seen the paper today?’

  By ‘paper’ Martin would have meant the Daily Telegraph, or less probably the Mail.

  ‘Not yet.’ Roger felt no guilt. The Telegraph lay, still folded and unread, at the bottom of the canvas bag that had held their picnic baps and the bottle of Gewürztraminer. It had seemed more important to listen to young Roger talk about his ponies and their rivals than to read what had happened in the world yesterday.

  ‘Alcester made a big speech. In Carlisle, I think. Somewhere in the north, anyway. Waving his arms at the Scots. Threatening to throw them out. And against Europe, too, of course. Thousands turned up. Arrests, mounted police, people knocked down. It was even worse on TV than in the paper.’

  ‘Nothing new in any of that.’

  Venables stood awkwardly in front of Roger’s chair leaning on a stick. He was ill at ease except when handling horses and the affairs of horses.

  ‘Have a glass of wine. Alsace. Plastic, I’m afraid, but it’s still cold,’ offered Roger.

  ‘No, I must go back to the box. I just wanted to say—’

  ‘There’s nothing new about this. Alcester has been banging away against the Scots for many months now.’

  ‘I know. Look.’ Martin jabbed at the turf with his stick. ‘Up to a point I’m with him. It’s wrong that the Scots should march all over us. I’m English to the bone. But he’s stirring things too far. The pot’s beginning to boil. Too much noise, no respect for the law. Pulling down that plaque in Smithfield for example, the one to Whatsisname, Wallace – torn off the hospital wall by a mob. It’s not a proper way of doing things. Not in this country, anyway. It’s different abroad.’

  Wearily Roger Courtauld turned his full mind back to politics. ‘I agree, the young man goes too far. Always has, always will. But he’s got a case. Years ago, when William Hague ran the Party, he had a sound plan for making sure that English MPs could not be overruled on English matters. I looked it up the other day. If only that had been carried through. Hague proposed …’

  But Roger had made the mistake of supposing that laymen who protested about politics were interested in policies. Martin Venables cut in. ‘I don’t know about the details. Several of us talked over dinner last night. At the Lord Lieutenant’s actually, though of course he’s non-political and he kept quiet. We all thought that as our MP you ought to put a stop to the Tory Party running amok like this. Many of us have voted Conservative all our lives. We’ve put up with a lot of nonsense from the leaders we voted for. But there’s a limit and Alcester has passed it.’

  This, from Venables, was quite tough talk.

  ‘You forget that I’m way back on the backbenches. No one’s going to take any interest in my meanderings.’

  ‘I beg to differ. That’s not so. Everyone knows you, respects you. You’ve been quiet for a year or two. All the more reason why people should listen if you found your voice.’ Venables paused, then ended abruptly. ‘Sorry to break into your afternoon. Wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t thought it important. Think about it, will you?’ Another pause. ‘You owe it to us.’

  That was nonsense, of course. He had worked hard, deserved a rest, owed none of them anything. Roger settled back into his chair, and tried to drive politics back into its cage. But after a minute he delved into the blue canvas bag for the Telegraph. David Alcester appeared in colour on the front page, his fair hair somewhat dishevelled. He was behind a cannon, a heap of cannon balls beside him. His youthful face shone with excitement as he shouted against the Scots. He was not in Carlisle, Venables had got that wrong, but Alnwick in Northumberland, the ancient castle of the Percys, often through the years besieged by successful Scots. Having served as prison house and execution place for unsuccessful Scots, it was civilised into Victorian Gothic, and yesterday had been the scene of a huge Conservative rally.

  ‘We have been patient, we English. I should say too patient. We accepted a Scots Parliament. We accepted Scots equality. We cannot accept Scots superiority. Five million cannot rule over forty-six million. We suggested a fair solution at Westminster; that was rejected. Then we suggested an English Parliament; that was refused. We have waited – and watched our money and our power over ourselves, our life blood flow north to Scotland, east to Brussels. But, my friends, enough is enough. We have lost enough blood. On these historic English battlements …’

  And so on. The beer had flowed as copiously as the eloquence, the police had tried to prevent the burning of St Andrew’s cross, there had been scuffles, a dozen arrests, a leg broken in a fall. It could all be looked at as a lighthearted frolic. No need to take it as seriously as Martin Venables had done.

  Anyway, it was not as if he, Roger Courtauld, could do much about it. True, in Northamptonshire they nodded at him in the street, asked him to plant trees and lay foundation stones. Walking down village streets at the last election he had begun to feel like a moving monument rather than an active politician. People had been glad to see him in their neighbourhood. Children had run giggling out of doors to touch his sleeve, their parents had talked to him briefly about their lives, the local golf tournament, about the weather, about everything, indeed, except politics. But no one recognised him nowadays in the streets of London or in other places where it mattered. People stared for a few seconds, then questioned one another as to whether sometime somewhere they might have seen him on television. There was no fuel to launch him as saviour of the nation or the Party. To suppose otherwise would be a futile pretence. Nor would he wish it otherwise. At sixty-seven he might live for another fifteen or twenty years. He knew how he wanted to handle these years, through the gradual and contented narrowing of horizons. If Hélène and he had remained together, this narrowing would have been more difficult since she had enjoyed Covent Garden, Ascot, political dinner parties, and even (though she pretended not) the Party Conference each October. He had been deeply sad when she left him. But the sadness was now lifting, and he was skilled in matching his energy each day to the small items of contentment which it might bring.

  Young Roger’s polo, for example. His team was now in the field, wearing the claret and blue of their pony club. Young Roger, large with a pink outdoor face, looked better on a pony than on two legs. At sixteen he possessed independent limbs rather than a single co-ordinated body. He showed no outward affection or gratitude to his father, but took the latter’s kindness calmly for granted. Perhaps that was a genuine proof of intimacy.

  Roger had taken the boy to Antony and Cleopatra at Stratford-on-Avon a week ago, just twenty minutes drive from Manston. Young Roger had been won over by the first half of the play, but his father had forgotten how long it took Antony and then Cleopatra to die. The unmatchable lines and ha
lf-lines floated over young Roger’s head as he dozed; that afternoon’s polo practice had been particularly strenuous.

  Young Roger’s team, the Pytchley, were now pressing hard. Just before lunch they had drawn one goal each against the Cottesmore; the deadlock now had to be broken. Anxious to make quick progress Venables, despite some mutterings from traditional colleagues, had decreed an Argentine run-down, a device that did not appear in the rules of the game. The first team to score a goal would win the match and, for this occasion only, the whole of each backline constituted the goal mouth. Both teams half disappeared down the slope at the far edge of the field. Young Roger reappeared in control of the ball, raising dust as he galloped. He wheeled to face the enemy’s back line, hesitated, missed the ball.

  Roger, though ignorant of the finer points of the game, enjoyed its sudden reversals of fortune, quicker even than politics. Long moments of static turning and thrusting in a confused mêlée without pattern or advantage to either side would suddenly resolve into a breakthrough. This match ended in smiles for the right side. The umpire gave a penalty against the Cottesmore, which young Roger took, and scored. The hunting horn sounded the end of the chukka. Young Roger disengaged and rode up to his father.

  ‘Well done, boy. That was dramatic.’

  ‘Not too bad, I suppose. She’s still pulling to the right.’

  Their conversation rarely went deeper than this. Young Roger disappeared to unsaddle and sluice down his pony. Next year, no doubt, when he was heavier, he would need a second mount. Roger hired a groom to advise, to supervise the tack and drive the trailer, but insisted that young Roger do the main work of preparing and cleaning up after each mount. Roger did not wait for this, but drove his own Rover out towards the exit gate. The first heavy raindrops flopped against the windscreen, mixing with the dust of two weeks to create a few seconds of blurred vision. As the wipers washed the glass clear Roger saw Martin Venables wave him down. He had no wish to renew their discussion, but he could hardly ignore the outstretched hand. He braked, lowered the side window, took the initiative. ‘Well done. A good day.’