To play the king fu-2

by Michael Dobbs

  'No more words, David. I am commanded to silence, or must accept the consequences.' His eyes were still closed. 'No more interviews?' 'Not unless I want open warfare.'

  The thought hung between them for several moments which dragged into silent minutes. His eyes were still closed. Mycroft thought it might be his opportunity to speak.

  'Perhaps it's not the right time… it's never really the right time. But it would be helpful for me to take a few days away. If you're not doing much in public. For a while. There are a few personal things I need to sort out.'

  The King's head was still back, eyes shut, words coming in a monotone and squeezed of emotion. 'I must apologize, David. I've rather taken you for granted, I'm afraid. Lost in my own problems.' He sighed. 'With all this confusion I should still have found time to enquire. Christmas without Fiona must have been hell. Of course. Of course you must have a little time off. But there's one small thing I want your help with beforehand, if you can bear it. I want to arrange a small trip.' 'To where?'

  'Three days, David. Just three days, and not far. I was thinking of Brixton, Handsworth, perhaps Moss Side and the Gorbals. Work my way up the country. Dine at a soup kitchen in Cardboard City one day, have breakfast at the Salvation Army the next. Take tea with a family living off benefit and share their one-bar fire. Meet the youngsters sleeping rough. You get the idea.' 'You can't!'

  The head remained back, sightless, the tone still cold. 'I can. And I want cameras to accompany me everywhere. Maybe I shall live off a pensioner's diet for three days and challenge the press travelling with me to do the same.' That's bigger headlines than any speech!'

  'I shall say not a word.' He started laughing, as if cold humour were the only way to suppress the feelings that battered him within, so forcefully they had left him a little in fear of himself.

  'You don't have to. Those pictures will be top of the news every night.'

  'If only every Royal engagement could get such coverage.' The tone was almost whimsical.

  'Don't you know what you're doing? It's a declaration of war on the Government. Urquhart will retaliate…'

  Mention of the Prime Minister's name had a galvanizing effect on the King. His head came up, red eyes open and burning bright, the jaw tightened as if a burst of electricity had passed through him. There was fire in his belly. 'We retaliate first! Urquhart cannot stop me. He may object to my speeches, he may bully and threaten me, but this is my kingdom, and I have every right to go wherever and whenever I bloody well please!' 'When did you have in mind for starting this civil war?'

  The grim humour settled on him once more. 'Oh, I was thinking… next week.'

  'Now I know you're not serious. It would take months to organize.'

  'Wherever and whenever I please, David. It needs no organization. I'm not going to meet anyone in particular. No advance notice need be given. Anyway, if I give them time to prepare all I will see is some anaesthetized version of Britain which has been swept and whitewashed just for my visit. No, David. No preparation, no warning. I'm bored with playing the King; time to play the man! Let's see if I can take for three days what so many others have to take for a lifetime. Let's see if I can lose the silk-covered shackles and look my subjects in the eye.' 'Security! What of security?' Mycroft urged desperately.

  'The best form of security is surprise, when no one expects me. If I have to get in my car and drive myself, by God I'm doing it.'

  'You must be absolutely clear. Such a tour would be war, right out in front of the cameras, with no hiding place and no diplomatic compromise later on to smooth everything over. It would be a direct public challenge to the Prime Minister.'

  'No, David, that's not the way I see it. Urquhart is a public menace, to be sure, but this is more about me. I need to find myself, respond to those things I feel deep inside, see whether I am up to the task not just of being a King, but of being a man. I can't go on running away from what I am, David, what I believe. This is not just a challenge to Urquhart. It's more of a challenge to myself. Can you understand?'

  As the words hit him, Mycroft's shoulders sagged, the weight of several worlds seeming to bear down upon his shoulders. He felt exhausted from his own lifetime of running, he had no resources left. The man sitting beside him was not just a King, he was more, a man who insisted on being his own man. Mycroft knew exactly how he felt, and marvelled at his courage. He nodded. 'Of course I do,' he responded softly.

  'Elizabeth. The toast is burnt again!'

  Urquhart contemplated the ruins of his breakfast which had crumbled at the first touch of his knife and showered into his lap. His wife was still in her dressing gown; she had been out late again – 'working hard, telling the world how wonderful you are, darling' – and was only half awake.

  'I cannot think in that ridiculous little kitchen, Francis, let alone cook your toast. Sort out the refurbishment and then you can have a proper breakfast.'

  That again. He'd forgotten about it, pushed it to one side. There were other things on his mind.

  'Francis, what's wrong?' She had known him too long not to catch the signs. He gestured to the newspapers, announcing plans for the King's visit. 'He's called my bluff, Elizabeth.' 'Will it be bad?'

  'Could it be worse? Just when everything was beginning to come right. The opinion polls turning in our favour, an election about to be called. It will change everything.' He dusted the crumbs off his lap. 'I can't go to the country with everyone talking about nothing but poverty and freezing pensioners. We'd be out of Downing Street before you had time to choose new wallpaper let alone get your paste bucket out.'

  'Out of Downing Street?' She sounded alarmed. 'It may sound churlish, but haven't we only just got here?'

  He looked at her pointedly. 'You'd miss it? You surprise me, Elizabeth. You seem to spend so much time away.' But she usually came back before daybreak, and as she sat there he understood why. She wasn't at her best first thing in the morning. 'Can't you fight him?'

  'With time, yes. And beat him. But I don't have time, Elizabeth, only two weeks. The pathetic thing is that the King doesn't even realize what he's done.'

  'You mustn't give in, Francis. You owe it to me as well as yourself.' She was struggling with her own toast as if to emphasize what weak, useless creatures men were. She was no more successful than he, and it irritated her. 'I've shared in all the sacrifices and the hard work, remember. And I have a life, too. I enjoy being the Prime Minister's wife. And one day I'm going to be a former Prime Minister's widow. I'll need some support, a little social respectability for when I'm on my own.' It sounded selfish, uncaring. And as she did when she couldn't help herself, she used her most potent weapon, his guilt. 'If we had children to support me, it would be different.'

  He stared at the ruins of his breakfast. That's what it had come to. Dickering over his coffin. 'Fight him, Francis.'

  'I intend to, but don't underestimate him. I chop off a leg, yet he keeps bouncing back up again.' 'Then fight him harder.' 'You mean like George Washington?' 'I mean like bloody Cromwell. It's us or him, Francis.'

  'I've struggled so hard to avoid that, Elizabeth, truly I have. It would not simply be destroying one man but several hundred years of history. There are limits.' 'Think about it, Francis. Is it possible?'

  'It would certainly be a distraction from bellyaching about the underprivileged.'

  'Governments don't solve people's concerns, they simply try to rearrange them in their favour. Can't you rearrange them in your favour?'

  'Inside two weeks?' He examined the determined look in her eyes. She was in earnest. Deadly earnest. 'That's what I've spent all night thinking about.' He nodded gently. 'It might just be. With a little luck. And witchcraft. Make him the issue, the people versus the King. But this would not simply be an election, it would be a revolution. If we won, the Royal Family would never recover.' 'Spare me the pity. I'm a Colquhoun.' 'But am I a Cromwell?' 'You'll do.'

  He suddenly remembered they had dug up Cromwell and stuck his rotti
ng skull on a gibbet. He looked at the remnants of charred toast, and was very much afraid she might be right.

  PART THREE

  February: The First Week

  The ringing of the telephone startled him, intruding into the quiet of the apartment. It was late, well after ten, and Kenny had already retired to leave Mycroft working on some last-minute arrangements for the King's tour. Kenny was on stand-by; Mycroft wondered whether the telephone was summoning him to fill a last-minute vacancy on some flight crew, but surely not at this time of night?

  Kenny appeared at the bedroom door, rubbing wearily at his eyes. 'It's for you.' 'For me? But who…?' 'Dunno.' Kenny was still half asleep.

  With considerable trepidation Mycroft lifted the extension. 'Hello.' 'David Mycroft?' the voice enquired. 'Who's speaking?'

  'David, this is Ken Rochester from the Mirror. I'm sorry to bother you so late. It's not too inconvenient, is it, David?'

  Mycroft had never heard of the man before. His nasal tones were unpleasant, his informality insolent and unwelcome, his concern patently insincere. Mycroft made no reply.

  'It's something of an emergency; my editor's asked if I can come on the tour tomorrow, along with our Royal correspondent. I'm a special features writer myself. You moved, have you, David? Not your old number, this.'

  'How did you get this number?' Mycroft asked, forcing out every word through suddenly leaden lips.

  'It is David Mycroft, isn't it? From the Palace? I'd feel a total fool talking about this to anyone else. David?' 'How did you get this number?' he asked again, the constriction in his throat drying his words. He had supplied it to the Palace switchboard for use only in an emergency.

  'Oh, we usually get whatever we want, David. So I'll turn up tomorrow to join the rest of the reptiles, if you'll make the necessary arrangements. My editor would be furious if I couldn't find some way of persuading you. Was that your son I spoke to on the phone? Sorry, silly question. Your son's at university, isn't he, David?' Mycroft's throat was now desiccated, unable to pass any words.

  'Or a colleague, perhaps? One of your high-flyers? Sounded as if I'd woken him from bed. Sorry to have disturbed you both so very late at night, but you know how editors are. My apologies to your wife…'

  The journalist prattled on with his confection of innuendo and enquiry. Slowly Mycroft withdrew the telephone from his ear and dropped it back into its cradle. So they knew where he was. And they would know who he was with, and why. After the visit of the Vice Squad he had known it would happen sooner or later. He'd prayed it would be much later. And he knew the press. They wouldn't be satisfied with just himself. They'd go for Kenny, too, his job, his family, his private life, his friends, everybody and anybody he'd ever known, even through his dustbins in search of all the mistakes he had ever made. And who hadn't made mistakes? They would be remorseless, unstinting, uncompromising, unspeakable. Mycroft wasn't sure he could take that sort of pressure; he was even less sure he had the right to ask Kenny to take it. He wandered over to the window and glanced up and down the darkened street, searching the shadows for any hint of prying eyes. There was nothing, nothing that he could sec at least, but it wouldn't be long, maybe as soon as tomorrow.

  Kenny had fallen asleep again, innocent and unaware, his body twisted in the sheets as only young people can manage. All they had wanted was to be left alone, yet it was only a matter of time before others came to tear them apart. As he lay beside Kenny, trying to share his warmth, he shivered, already feeling the exposure. The real world no longer lay beyond Kenny's doorstep, it was forcing itself right inside the room. Urquhart had arrived back late from the diplomatic reception to find Sally waiting for him, chatting over a plastic cup of coffee with a couple of Protection Squad officers in what passed as their office: a cramped closet-sized room just off the entrance hall. She was perched on the corner of their desk, supported by her long and elegant legs, which the seated detectives were admiring with little sign of reticence.

  'My apologies for disturbing you at your work, gentlemen,' he muttered tetchily. He realized he was jealous, but felt better as the detectives sprang to their feet in evident confusion, one of them spilling the coffee in his haste.

  'Good evening, Prime Minister.' Her smile was broad, warm, showing no after-effects of their previous meeting's misunderstanding.

  'Ah, Miss Quine. I was forgetting. More opinion polls?' He attempted an air of distraction.

  'Who do you think you're kidding?' Sally muttered from the corner of her mouth as they made their way from the room. He arched an eyebrow.

  'If they thought you'd really forgotten about a late-night meeting with a woman who had a figure like mine, they'd send for the men in white coats.'

  'They are not paid to think but to do as I tell them,' he responded waspishly. He sounded as if he meant every word, and Sally felt alarmed. She decided to change the subject.

  'Talking of opinion polls, you're six points ahead. But before you start congratulating yourself, I have to tell you that the King's tour will blow that lead right out of the water. It's going to be one heck of a circus – lots of hand-wringing and talk of compassion. Frankly, not a game where your side fields a strong team.'

  'I'm afraid His Majesty is going to have distractions of his own before the week is out.' 'Meaning?' 'His press officer and close friend, Mycroft, is a homosexual. Shacked up with an air steward.' 'So what? It's no crime.' 'But sadly the story is just dribbling out to the press, and in their usual disreputable fashion they will be bound to make him wish he were a simple criminal. There's not only the deceit of his family – apparently his poor wife has been forced to leave the marital home after more than twenty years of marriage in disgust at what he's been up to. There's also the security angle. A man who has access to all sorts of sensitive information, state secrets, at the heart of our Royal Family, has lied his way right through the regular vetting procedures. Laid himself wide open to blackmail and pressure.' Urquhart was leaning on the wall button which would summon the private lift to the top-floor apartment. 'And then, most serious of all, is deceit of the King. A lifelong friend, whom he has betrayed. Unless, of course, you wish to be uncharitable and conclude that the King knew all along and has been covering up to help an old friend. Messy.' 'You're not implying that the King, too-'

  'I imply nothing. That's the job of the press,' he responded, 'who, I confidently predict, by the end of the week will be wading in it.'

  The lift doors were open, beckoning. 'Then why wait, Francis? Why not strike now, before the King sets off and does all that damage?'

  'Because Mycroft is no more than a dunghill. The King needs to be pushed not from a dunghill but from a mountain top, and by the end of his tour he will have climbed about as high as he's going to get. I can wait.'

  They stepped into the lift, a small, insalubrious affair which had been squeezed into a recess of the old house during refurbishment earlier in the century. The narrowness of its bare metal walls forced them together and, as the doors closed, she could see the way his eyes lit up, sense the confidence, arrogance even, like a lion in his lair. She could be either his prey, or his lioness; she had to keep pace with him or find herself devoured.

  'Some things you shouldn't wait for, Francis.' Match him step for step, hold on to him, even as he slithered towards his own mountain top. She leaned across him to the control panel, and as her groping fingers found the key the lift stopped quietly between floors. Already her blouse was unbuttoned and he was kneading the firm flesh of her breasts. She winced, he was getting rougher, more bruising, his thrust for domination more insistent. He still had on his overcoat. She had to allow it, to encourage and indulge him. He was changing, no longer bothering with self-restraint, perhaps no longer able. But as she wedged herself uncomfortably in the corner of the lift, bracing her legs against the walls, feeling cold metal on her buttocks, she knew she had to go with him as far as she could and as far as he wanted to go; it was the type of opportunity that would not present itsel
f again. It was once in a lifetime and she had to grab it, whether or not he any longer said please.

  It was four a.m. and pitch dark when Mycroft crept slowly from the bedroom and began to dress quietly outside. Kenny still slept, his body innocently engaged in a tumbling match with the bed linen, an arm wrapped around a toy bear. Mycroft felt more father than lover, driven by a deep and innate sense of protectiveness towards the younger man. He had to believe that what he was doing was right.

  When he had finished dressing he sat down at the table and switched on a small lamp. He needed light to write the note. He made several hopeless attempts, all of which he tore into small pieces and placed atop a mounting pile beside him. How could he explain that he was fractured between his feelings of love and duty towards two men, the King and Kenny, both of whom were now threatened through him? That he was running away because that is what he had done all his life and he knew no other answer? That he would continue running as soon as the King's tour was over-for surely he had three days left before disaster struck?

  The pile of torn paper mounted, and in the end he was left with nothing more than: 'I love you, believe me. I'm sorry.' It sounded so pathetic, so insufficient.

  He placed the scraps of paper back inside his briefcase, snapping the locks as quietly as he was able, and put on his overcoat. He glanced out of the window to check the street, which he found silent and cold, as he felt inside. As carefully as he could he crept back to place the note on the table where Kenny would find it. As he placed it against the vase of flowers, he saw Kenny sitting up in bed, staring at the case, the overcoat, the note, understanding flooding into his sleep-filled eyes.

  'Why, David? Why?' he whispered. He raised no shout, shed no tears, he had seen too many departures in his life and with his job, but accusation filled every syllable.