Peregrine McClaren was accompanied by Patsy Oxborrow whom he’d removed from Julia Priest, to that lady’s irritation. She now hovered behind them. ‘You remember Patsy Oxborrow, Prime Minister. She answers for my department in the Lords.’
The Prime Minister waved a gracious hand. ‘Delighted to see you here. What a charming gown. Have you just arrived?’
Patrick and Anna came off the dance floor to which he’d led her as soon as they had entered the salon. He had danced, holding her very close and talking little. He performed well and Anna had enjoyed it, and for half an hour they had not left the floor. Now he brought her a glass of champagne and they were looking for somewhere to sit when Sylvia pounced. ‘You two,’ she said. ‘It’s your turn for duty.’
She led them through the crowd into the ante-room. There was a chair empty next to the Prime Minister, just vacated by Peregrine McClaren. Patsy Oxborrow attempted to secure it but Sylvia directed Anna to sit. ‘Prime Minister, this is—’ Sylvia began and stopped, looking at Anna.
‘Anna James,’ Anna said, ‘from the States.’
‘James.’ The Prime Minister smiled with pleasure. ‘From the States. You couldn’t be his granddaughter as Henry was not that kind of man. A great niece? A cousin?’
‘No relation,’ Anna said, laughing. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’
‘It would be impossible to be disappointed by you, my dear. But your namesake was a strange creature, was he not? He wrote about Trollope, you know, that Anthony Trollope was at times vulgar. I suppose he was, perhaps in the early books. Do you read Trollope?’
‘I do. My favourite is The Warden.’
‘A failure when it was first published. Not until Barchester Towers had set the scene was The Warden acknowledged as the masterpiece that you, my dear, so rightly recognise.’ He looked up at Patrick Foxley who was standing behind Anna’s chair. ‘Your dancing partner? ’ The Prime Minister took Anna’s hand, patted it and held it. ‘You make a fine couple,’ he said.
‘This is Patrick Foxley, Prime Minister,’ said Sylvia. ‘He’s the QC representing your former colleague, Richard Tancred in his libel case against News Universal.’
The Prime Minister dropped Anna’s hand sharply and his eyes became even more hooded than normal. He was not pleased to be reminded once again of the Tancred libel case. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘A most unhappy business. Business usually gets unhappy when it gets into the hands of you legal gentlemen.’
It was Anna who replied, surprising herself by her fierceness, ‘It’s the legal gentlemen who often save people’s skins. That awful newspaper is wicked in what it publishes about people.’
‘Quite so, quite so,’ the Prime Minister replied. He turned to Sylvia. ‘My dear, I fear the time approaches when I must depart. But before I do, perhaps you’d permit me to walk through the salon among the remainder of your guests? And if I may, I should like to see the small green salon where I suspect Augusta first surrendered.’ He got to his feet and took Sylvia’s arm. Without a glance back at where Anna was still seated in the chair next to that which he had just vacated and equally pointedly ignoring Patrick Foxley, the Prime Minister and Sylvia left the ante-room.
Anna rose.
‘Let’s dance again,’ Patrick said.
On the floor Dolly was dancing excitedly with Emerald’s painter, Sandro Marini. She waved at Anna and laughed; and Anna remembered the ball at Oldhaven when Dolly had made a spectacle of herself dancing with Clarissa Stoneley’s gigolo and caused Clarissa to get so cross. That was before the old man had been taken ill. If he had not, she thought, I would never have been here. She looked up at Patrick and smiled.
After five minutes he led her back again into the salon and then, with glasses of champagne in their hands, they wandered down the stairs and on to the terrace at the south façade. It was a velvet late-May night, a freak, early-summer night. They leant on the stone balustrade overlooking the rose garden. ‘England at it’s rare best,’ he said. ‘It’s very romantic.’
‘It’s because everything is so old,’ she replied, turning and looking back at the rose brick of the house behind them lit by the floodlights. ‘Where I was brought up, or at least where I used to visit, the houses, some as large as this, were all so much younger.’
He took her glass and put it and his own on a white iron table. ‘Let’s walk in the rose garden,’ he suggested.
They descended the stone steps, her arm through his. When they had turned a corner he stooped, broke off a white flower and handed it to her. She put it to her face, inhaling the scent. He took her wrist and gently moved it aside from her face. With his other hand he tipped up her chin, bent and kissed her. She had known he would; and she had wanted him to. He put his arms round her and held her against him. For some time they stood there; then she broke away and they walked once more, stopping every now and then to embrace. ‘Let’s dance again,’ she said. And she danced with the flower in her hand. When they finally left the floor there was no sign of their party. They had left for The Waves long ago.
It was three in the morning before they went to his car, now standing almost alone in the empty paddock. ‘Shall I lower the roof?’ he asked. ‘Or will you be cold?’
She shook her head.
He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other clasping hers. Soon she lowered her head on to his shoulder. They got into the house as they had been directed, through the side door. On tiptoe they crossed the hall and walked up the stairs to her room. Outside her door he paused, looking at her, but she took his hand and led him inside.
She was surprised by the gentleness of his lovemaking, the time he took before he was above her and then the look of wonder and triumph at the moment of culmination. When eventually he lay on his back beside her, she turned on her side towards him, her chin in one hand, looking down at him. ‘You are a strange man,’ she said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You’re not quite what you look.’
‘None of us is.’
‘Why did you say that New York disturbed you?’ she asked.
‘It alarmed me,’ he replied.
‘You don’t look like a man who’s easily alarmed.’
‘Don’t I? But I am, by quite a lot.’
‘Such as?’
‘Things that wouldn’t frighten other people.’
‘What things?’
‘I get nerves, especially over my work. Each time I go into court I feel ill. If you saw me you wouldn’t think it. At least, I hope you wouldn’t.’
‘In every case? Or just the important cases?’
‘Usually the big cases.’
‘The case against the newspaper will be a big case?’
‘It will. I thought it was going to be my big chance. But it’s not turning out as I expected.’
‘Do you think you’ll win?’
He sat up. ‘I’m up against Mordecai Ledbury and he’s very formidable. And my client, Richard Tancred, is—’ He broke off, then went on, ‘If you think I’m strange, you should meet Richard Tancred!’
‘What’s so strange about him?’
He lay back again. ‘I’m not sure what to make of him. He’s very hard to fathom. And he’s not making it easy for me. He’s taken complete control of how the case is to be run.’
‘Should you let him?’
‘I can’t stop him. Either I let him, or I hand back my brief. But I don’t want to do that. It’s still an important case, a good case to be in. I have the feeling there’s much more to the whole story than he’s telling me.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘It makes it very difficult for his advocate. As a result I’m very uncertain about my role.’
‘When I first met you,’ she said. ‘I imagined you were very sure of yourself. That’s the impression you give.’
‘It’s an act.’
‘You were sure enough of yourself to make love to me. Was that an act?’
He pulled her towards him. ‘No, no,
no,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’
Next day the party from Wainscott descended upon The Waves for lunch. When it came to seating people around the lunch table, Emerald said to Anna, ‘I’m removing you from that young man.’ She looked knowingly at her, almost jealously, Anna thought. ‘You spent quite enough time with him last night, glued together on the dance floor.’
So at lunch Patrick was between the Egyptian Ambassadress and Sylvia. Before lunch he had been cross-examined by Dolly Partiger. ‘Are you married, young man?’ Dolly had begun.
He smiled and shook his head.
‘That’s something,’ she went on. ‘I have to report to Anna’s aunt on how she’s behaving.’
‘You must report that she’s behaving beautifully.’
‘A lawyer’s answer. You are a lawyer, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’
‘Successful?’
‘Fairly’
‘The only lawyers I’ve known are very grasping and very lecherous. Are you like that?’
‘Of course.’ He caught Anna’s eye across the room. Dolly saw it. So that’s it, she thought.
Sylvia asked him about the progress of the Tancred case.
‘It’s due to come on later in July,’ he replied.
‘And will you win?’ What Anna had asked a few hours earlier.
‘We hope to. But it will not be easy. Do you know Richard Tancred?’
‘I’ve met him. I don’t know him. You have that false friend of ours, Mordecai Ledbury, against you,’ Sybil said. ‘But you told me he’s not what he was.’
‘If I did, that was rather brash of me. It’s not wise to underestimate Mordecai.’
‘But you have right on your side,’ Sybil concluded.
‘In the law courts you often need more than that. And one never knows what Digby Price and his people will come up with.’
‘Will Oscar Sleaven play any part?’
He looked at her. ‘I really shouldn’t say anything about the case.’
Later in the afternoon Patrick drove Anna back to London.
They made love again in her bedroom in the flat in Clapham.
Chapter Twelve
It was early June and Goodbody was in his office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields when a large package, in a jiffy bag postmarked London E1, was brought to him by his chief clerk. Pasted on the package was a label in typescript: ‘Personal and Confidential. To be opened only by Mr Oliver Goodbody.’ Mystified, Goodbody laid it on his desk and for a time hesitated before opening it, thinking of stories about unsolicited packets and letter bombs. But when he did bring himself to do it he found that, although it did not contain actual explosives, the contents in their own way were explosive enough. Waite’s ‘smoking pistol’, he thought excitedly to himself. Ten minutes later he was in a cab.
Spenser was on the telephone when Goodbody arrived. He waved a hand and pointed to the mustard-coloured leather sofa at the end of the office. It was a pleasant room, except for the hideous colour of the leather sofa and chairs. As Goodbody lowered himself on to the sofa and laid his briefcase on the low glass table in front of him, he glanced up at the prints on the walls, a series of architectural drawings, rather fine, he thought, tasteful decoration for an office. He wondered who was responsible for hanging them. Not Spenser, of that he was certain.
Spenser replaced the receiver and came to sit in an armchair of matching yellow leather opposite Goodbody.
‘I have received a package through the post,’ Goodbody began, opening his briefcase, ‘addressed to me, only to be opened by me. It contained’ – he looked hard at Spenser — ‘the evidence we need.’ He remembered his first meeting with the man. He’d only been hired as bait to catch Ledbury. Now it was he who was producing the evidence that could be decisive and he was determined to make the most of it.
Spenser leant forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on Goodbody’s hands as the latter took a bundle of documents from his briefcase.
‘With these,’ Goodbody went on, ‘we can now go into court and prove Tancred was corrupt.’ He tapped the bundle with the flat of his hand.
Spenser brushed aside Goodbody’s hand in his eagerness and, pushing his horn-rimmed spectacles up to his brow, held the documents close to his eyes.
‘No covering letter, no indication of who sent them,’ Goodbody added.
There was silence as Spenser turned page after page. Then he sat back and gave a great sigh of satisfaction. ‘Only someone with access to Tancred’s most private and personal affairs could have got hold of these,’ he said. They exchanged glances but neither man said more.
Together they went to see Mordecai Ledbury in Albany and Goodbody laid out the documents triumphantly on the dining table.
After a few minutes Mordecai grunted and closed the file. ‘At last, at last.’
‘This will make the Chairman’s day,’ Spenser said.
‘And so it should,’ Goodbody agreed.
As it happened, on that same evening Digby Price flew into London from Paris. He had been invited to see the Prime Minister at Downing Street but on the way he called in at the newspaper offices and spent two hours with Spenser who was busy copying the documents Goodbody had received. For once he did not visit the editorial floors to bully the staff and when Spenser saw him off in the car he was smiling grimly.
As instructed, he entered the Cabinet offices through the door in Whitehall at 5.55 p.m. A private secretary led him through the connecting door into No. 10. He was not kept waiting but was ushered up the staircase lined with the photographs of the PM’s predecessors and into the small study.
‘Mr Price,’ the PM greeted him warmly. ‘A whisky and soda?’ He poured the drinks from a side table and waved Price to a chair. ‘The last time we met,’ he went on, ‘you were concerned lest two of my ministers took legal action against your company. In my thirty years of public life I have always told colleagues that they must ignore what is said or written about them in the public prints. Insult is one of the penalties of public service, but it has to be put in the balance against the prizes and privileges.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘Unless, of course, what is written or said is sheer make-believe about their private life.’ He paused again. ‘You indicated that you’d welcome any influence I might have to dissuade them from going to law.’
Price nodded.
‘I was glad to be able to do what you asked,’ the Prime Minister continued.
‘I thank you for it. On that occasion I also thought it right to warn you, Prime Minister, of parts of the diary that were not published,’ Price reminded him.
‘So you did.’ The Prime Minister examined his long, graceful fingers in his lap before he went on, speaking quietly, almost to himself, ‘Give me a grain of truth, said John Wilkes, and I will mix it up with a great mass of falsehood so that no chemist will ever be able to separate them.’ Price remained silent. ‘An untrue personal canard is a terrible thing,’ said the Prime Minister. He lounged back in his chair. ‘You reside in France, I believe?’
‘I do.’
‘The French think, and behave, rather differently from us. I am reminded, Mr Price, of Madame Caillaux who shot an editor who had disparaged her husband, the French Finance Minister.’ The Prime Minister smiled sadly. ‘Only an editor, mind you, Mr Price, not a proprietor, but as one of my predecessors, Stanley Baldwin, said, “Not the sort of support you want from a wife.” ’
Digby Price grunted and the Prime Minister watched him closely, as he had at Chequers, hiding once again his distaste with a white hand delicately raised to his brow. ‘Richard Tancred, of course, decided to take things into his own hands. You expected that, I understand?’
‘And welcomed it. Now I shall destroy him.’
‘I told him how ill-advised he was to go to law. One should make it a rule to avoid lawyers – while always, as Lord Melbourne had it, remaining on good terms with them.’ The Prime Minister waved his hand. ‘However, let us move on to the reason why I asked you to visit me this afte
rnoon. I have in mind, Mr Price, submitting your name to the Sovereign for appointment to a life barony in the New Year Honours list. I must confess that a peerage nowadays is not what it was, for the company in the Lords is not what it was, but in your case a barony would acknowledge your service to the country and—’
Price interrupted him. ‘No. I don’t hold with any of that twaddle and I don’t live in this country. I live in Paris.’
‘Ah, yes,’ the PM said. ‘Paris, the scene of the Terror. The Parisians are an excitable people.’ He paused, then added, ‘A knighthood, perhaps?’
Price smiled grimly. ‘No. Nothing. It’s all nonsense.’
The Prime Minister smiled in return, disguising his disappointment. But at least he’d made the offer. ‘You may be right. To quote one of my predecessors once again, Lord Melbourne said of the Garter that there’s no damned merit to it. But some people enjoy it. At any rate I trust you will appreciate that the offer was intended to demonstrate my genuine esteem for your public work and your place in—’
Again Price interrupted. ‘News Universal will continue to support your administration, all the more enthusiastically now that Richard Tancred has left it.’ He rose. ‘You and I, Prime Minister, we understand each other, and that’s good. I like that. We won’t make trouble for each other, will we? Although we both know we could – if we wanted, don’t we?’ He grinned at the Prime Minister, slouched in his chair. ‘A nice touch, the lordship offer, but it’s not for me.’ He made as if to go but then turned back and smiled another of his grim, humourless smiles. ‘But see your lady don’t shoot me, won’t you?’
Alan Prentice showed Digby Price downstairs and out through the Cabinet offices to where his car was waiting in Whitehall.
The Richmond Diary Page 15