She shook her head so vigorously that several hairpins were dislodged from her bun. ‘You disappoint me. I can see that I’m going to have to spell everything out. Right. Let’s start with cruelty.’
‘Yes, I know. Foxes are vermin that have to be kept down and gassing, trapping, and even shooting are far more cruel than hunting.’
‘Right. Now conservation.’
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that hunts are interested in preserving the traditional countryside.’
‘Yep, including planting woods to make coverts for foxes and keeping a varied landscape to increase the enjoyment of the huntsmen. You don’t get farmers who hunt clearing hedgerows and turning their farms into prairies. With me so far?’
‘More or less. Pass the coffee.’
‘Now, economics. What with hunt-staff and farriers, feed merchants and vets, saddlers and bootmakers and all the rest of them, you’re talking of more than thirty thousand jobs. Then there are the horses and hounds. I can tell you there would be a pretty sharp drop in the horse population if you abolished hunting, and most of them would be slaughtered to be fed to dogs. Although there would be a lot fewer dogs since the hounds would have to be put down too, so they’d have to flog the horse carcasses to the Frogs.’
‘Oh, I suppose it’s aesthetics.’ Amiss felt driven into a corner. ‘It seems faintly distasteful to have all this going on for the benefit of a few thousand nobs and City types prancing around in scarlet coats.’
‘Where’d you get that figure? What with those who follow by car and on foot, it’s closer to a quarter of a million, few of them nobs and the majority of them women. Mind you’—she paused to pull her pipe out of her pocket and ram into it a vast quantity of tobacco—‘you can see what we’re up against if, even you, the confidante of a baroness, are demonstrating class prejudice.’
‘I wouldn’t call it that.’
‘Well, I would. You know bloody well that that is one of the two motivating forces for the antihunt lobby. Why do you think the Great British Public regularly declares itself in favour of abolishing hunting while being perfectly happy with fishing? I’ll tell you why. It’s because there are four million anglers in this country, and most of them are plebs.’
‘You’re not saying that the huge majority against hunting consists of people actively participating in the class war?’
‘Not necessarily. But I am saying that they don’t know what they’re talking about. If you know sod-all about an issue like this, it’s very easy to get all sentimental about a fox. It’s good old sloppy thinking. That’s what happened over deer-hunting. The populace had a vision of brutal toffs pursuing Bambi and his mother over hill and dale with blood-curdling whoops. And bingo, in the blink of an eye and without giving the matter any serious thought, a collection of ignorant parliamentarians—opposed only by some ineffectual wimps—put an end to the Exmoor and all the other historic hunts of the West Country. That mustn’t happen this time.’ She took a mighty pull and enveloped the table in smoke, which she sniffed appreciatively. ‘Now, let’s turn from the ignorant to the nutters.’
‘Usually a pretty wide classification in your book, old girl.’
‘Well, on this occasion it’s pretty specific. I’m talking about fruitcakes like half those who were carrying on last night outside the House. Their object is to change human nature by legislation. When they’ve got rid of fox-hunting, they’ll move on to shooting and when they’ve had that abolished it’ll be angling. Then, before we know where we are, we’ll all be vegans, forbidden from eating or wearing any animal products. Result?’
‘Gradual extinction of farmyard animals, I suppose.’
‘Got it. Now, are you satisfied? Ready to fight the good fight?’
‘I just can’t warm to it, Jack. Look at Poulteney, for God’s sake.’
‘There’s more to hunting than Poulteney. Why not take me rather than him as a hunting role model?’
‘Do you hunt?’
‘Well, I haven’t had time for some years, but, if I may say so, I cut a pretty dashing figure with the Cottesmore until I was in my forties.’
‘Did you wear pink?’
‘Sometimes I wore pink, sometimes black.’
‘And jodhpurs and high boots?’
‘But with a skirt and side-saddle, of course. Only way to ride.’
‘For reasons of decorum, no doubt.’
‘No, though I admit to an element of vanity. Don’t look my best in trousers. But it was more that riding side-saddle allows you to control a horse much more powerful than your size or weight would normally allow.’
‘Where would one find a horse bigger than your size and weight would allow?’
The baroness chuckled; she always took insults as an obscure form of flattery. She looked at her watch—‘Zounds!’—and energetically signalled a waiter for the bill. ‘I’ve got to be off. Train to catch. College council meeting at ten. If I don’t see you later I’ll ring you tonight. In the meantime, get to work.’
‘What sort of work?’
‘Immerse yourself in the literature. Read up on the facts. Drop by the Lords and get to know your fellow conspirators. See how you can help. Start thinking propaganda. Surely I don’t need to tell you. You’re a bloody ex-civil servant.’ She threw some money on the bill.
‘I can’t just march into the House of Lords and start flinging my weight about.’
She jumped up. ‘Of course you can. You’re working for me. I’ve arranged for you to have a research assistant’s pass. Get off to the Lords and sort out the details with Black Rod’s office. Now, come on, I’m late.’ She pulled on her coat and headed for the door. Amiss chased after her.
‘Who’s my best point of contact?’
She hailed a taxi. ‘King’s Cross!’ she shouted to the driver. ‘And go like the clappers.’ She jumped in. ‘Bertie’s the smartest, but Sid’s got more time. Tally-ho!’ she cried, as she slammed the door behind her.
Amiss stood irresolute on the pavement. After a couple of minutes he set off towards the London Library.
Chapter Five
‘Morning, Violet,’ said Deptford. ‘And how are we today? OK on the taxi front last night, I hope?’
‘Indeed yes, my lord. Debate kept going until ten-thirty-two, I’m pleased to say. What can I get you, my lord?’
‘My guest would like a gin and tonic, please.’ Deptford saw Amiss’ baffled expression. ‘Staff get taxis paid for after ten-thirty. If it’s a matter of a few minutes we try to spin the debate out long enough.’
‘Commendably humane.’
‘Yeah. But don’t tell the Public Accounts Committee. Some of them buggers would probably denounce it as a wicked waste of taxpayers’ money. Inflexible bastards.’ He took a substantial sip of his whisky and soda. ‘Oh, that’s better. I tell you, I didn’t ’alf feel in a right old state this morning. A fellow of my age shouldn’t be led astray like we were last night. Dangerous woman, Jack. Always was.’ He sniggered in a reminiscent sort of way.
‘You’ve known each other a long time?’
Lord Deptford grinned. ‘Twenty years or so. No more than that. But there was a time when we knew each other very, very well.’
Amiss preferred to ignore the implication. ‘I see. But as I was saying, I’m a bit baffled by some of what happened yesterday.’
‘Like what?’
‘For a start, I’m a great admirer of Jack’s, but how did she get such a turnout of peers yesterday. Someone told me the audience for her introduction was about three times the usual.’
‘Bertie Stormerod, of course. He’s always had a soft spot for our Jack. So he leaned on his mates to put on the best show possible. Throw in us prohunting lot and you’ve got a lot of people wanting to make a fuss of her. You see, if she’s going to play a major part in defeating this bill, even while she’s still wet behind the ears in Lords terms, she needs to be given all the backing she can. Adds to ’er stature, you might say. She’s going to be makin
g her maiden speech about eleven months earlier than usual, so she ’as to be seen to be special so as to square the fuddy-duddies. Next?’
‘OK. I could understand the connection between, say, Lord Poulteney and Stormerod and hunting. But you?’
Deptford emitted a throaty chuckle. ‘Can’t see what a jumped-up member of the working classes is doing defending a gentleman’s pursuit, eh? That what you’re getting at?’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘It’s quite simple. Wanted to be a jockey as a kid. Did three years as a stable boy after I left school at fourteen and fell in love with the local ’unt. You can’t imagine what that was like for a city boy. Glamour, excitement, danger. For a time I was like that description of Mr Jorrocks.’
Amiss raised an eyebrow. Deptford sighed. ‘I suppose no one reads them now—R.S. Surtees’ stories about a Victorian cockney tea merchant who became a Master of Foxhounds. I love ’em: try this.’ He declaimed emotionally: ‘“I am a sportsman all over, and to the backbone—’unting is all that’s worth living for—all time is lost what is not spent in ’unting—it is like the air we breathe—if we have it not we die—it’s the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, and only five and twenty per cent of its danger.” Ah, it’s wonderful stuff. Would you like to borrow some?’
‘I have one already. I spent an hour this morning collecting hunting books from the library—including Handley Cross.’
‘Well done, mate. You’ll enjoy it.’
The drinks were delivered. ‘Thanks, luv. So I lived for hunting for a while. Then the war came, and when I came out I couldn’t go back to it.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I got a job in a trade union and hunting became a guilty secret of my past. You don’t get to be a General Secretary by careering around the countryside on the back of an ’orse. You get there by being more lefties than the lefties—at least in those days you did.’
He took a thoughtful sip. ‘Mind you, I wouldn’t want you to think I was a cynic. I believed a lot of that claptrap till I realized in the late seventies we was doing more ’arm to our members than the bosses were. That’s why I moved to the right almost as fast as I’d moved to the left post-war. Cigarette?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Mind if I do?’
‘Absolutely not.’
Deptford produced tobacco and cigarette papers from his pocket and expertly constructed a roll-up. As he put it in his mouth, he caught Amiss’ eye and smiled. ‘Old habits die hard. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Moving right. What they called a turncoat. Especially when I took the peerage. Not that I bloody cared. The way I see it is that after nearly a lifetime of judging everything according to how it would go down with our members, I’ve ’ad fifteen blissful years to think for meself, which is why I moved from the Labour benches to the cross benches and why I now say that life should be about more people ’aving a good time rather than less people enjoying themselves.’
He sat up and an angry tone came into his voice. ‘I’m sick and tired of all these bloody lefty intellectuals trying to impose austerity on the working classes, disapproving of their drinking and their gambling and their chip butties and all the rest of the things that put a bit of sparkle into hard lives. Me’—he raised his glass—‘I’m in favour of cakes and ale and bugger the bigots. What was it Rosa Luxemburg said? “If I can’t dance, I don’t want the revolution.” Do you want to know ’oo really pisses me off? That cow Beatrice Parsons.’
‘You mean the author of Principled Socialism?’
‘And other sexy romps,’ said Deptford sourly. ‘She’s just the kind I hate most. Born into the fuckin’ upper middle classes, public school and Oxford, top job as a barrister, but spends her time slagging off everything the working class in this country like best, from the monarchy to the cops. Lives in a Georgian house in Islington high on the hog, takes a peerage when they’re looking for a few women to buy off the left and spends her time lecturing us ’ere about this class-ridden haunt of privilege from which all but the likes of ’er should be expelled when the bleedin’ revolution comes. Christ, she’d be first out, I can tell you, with my toe up her arse.’
‘Do I gather, Sid, that your leap right includes defending hereditary peers?’
‘Bloody certain it does. I mean, leaving out the ones I don’t know, who never turn up ’ere and who mind their own business down at the farm, most of them are OK. Me best mates from here are Bertie, the Marquess of Stowe, Reggie Poulteney…’ He saw Amiss’ expression. ‘Oh, fair enough. I know ’e’s a bore. But not if you’re interested in hunting. I go down to his place from time to time, just to watch. Oh, and of course, I’m great pals with Benny Porter, who used to be a boiler maker and sees eye to eye with me.
‘You don’t find most of the hereditary earls looking down at the likes of us. They’re only interested in people being good blokes. And what’s more, just because they’re selected at random, they’re a lot more bleedin’ representative of the general population than your MPs. Most of the life peers we get here don’t know how ordinary people think, particularly the bloody intellectuals and those retired ’ouse of Commons types who rant away like what they used to do down there and don’t understand how to behave like a gentleman. It’s pretty refreshing, I can tell you, to come here and meet some people who know they’re not that bright, ’ave a bit of modesty and courtesy.’ He stubbed out his cigarette viciously. ‘I mean, can you imagine how pleasant it is to speak in a place where you don’t get interrupted? In the other place they have to shout all the time to drown out heckling yobs.’
‘I know, Sid, but you’re not going to convince the reformers that the hereditary system is anything other than unfair.’
‘Oh bollocks. I’m sick of the word “fair”. Life ain’t fair. The bleedin’ human condition ain’t fair. All you can do is muddle on as best you can and try and make life as good for most people as is possible in this world. I don’t think we do too badly at that in Britain. What you don’t do is reduce it all to the lowest bloody common denominator, as prescribed by pain-in-the-arse blue stockings like Beatrice fuckin’ Parsons.’
‘Has she got a line on fox-hunting?’
‘What do you think?’ Deptford made a valiant, if unsuccessful, attempt to mimic an educated upper-class female: ‘It’s twisted, degenerate, sadistic, anachronistic, aristocratic—need I go on?’
‘Your kind of gal, clearly.’
‘Oh, yeah. Real fun-lover. Bloody woman probably has ’alf a glass of dry white wine every eighteenth Tuesday. Mind you, it’s a big disadvantage for the antis that she’s the government spokesman. That could win us over a lot of waverers.’
‘What’s the tally?’
‘Well, we’ve got to drag a lot of the backwoodsmen up here to vote, I guess. It’s all those townie life peers that are the problem. They don’t turn up much at the ’ouse but they will come in for what they consider a moral issue. Won’t listen to half the arguments, just vote blindly. It’s no skin off their nose.’
‘Have you an organized campaign?’
‘Well we ’ave and we ’aven’t. Tell you what. Bertie can tell you a bit about it. He’ll be joining us shortly for a drink and then we can all have lunch.’
***
‘Frankly, old boy, I’ve been a bit worried from time to time. Won’t deny the old nightmare that hunting will just be abolished by default. You see, the truth is that many of those who feel most passionately about it are perhaps rather less than articulate. I mean, look what happened with deer-hunting?’
‘What did happen? It was last year, wasn’t it? I didn’t really follow it.’
‘First place in the lottery for private members’ bills went to Gavin Chandler. Know who I mean?’
Amiss knitted his brows. ‘High-minded Liberal Democrat who goes on a lot about morality in international relations, isn’t he?’
‘Correct. Without knowing what he’s talking about, naturally. That always makes it easier to pronou
nce on morality…’
‘He’s a perpendicular-looking Puseyite pig-jobber,’ interjected Deptford. ‘Ooh, sorry, Robert. When I gets really excited I tends to quote Jorrocks.’
‘Who, as no doubt you will find out, Robert, was a dab hand at insults. Now, to continue. Chandler’s constituency is in the West Country, and he absolutely hates and despises all the Tories. So he took a particular delight in abolishing what he considered an important symbol of their depravity—deer-hunting. And since most MPs don’t know one end of a deer from another, it passed through the Commons virtually unchallenged. And no one in Lords put up any kind of decent defence. Just lay down under it. I can tell you, we’re lucky parts of the West Country haven’t seceded.’
‘And now the same thing’s ’appening with fox-huntin’. And barring a bleedin’ miracle…’
‘Or a spirited campaign…’
‘We’ll be right in the shit this time. Letting deer-huntin’ go is bad enough. But fox-huntin’…’
‘I tend to agree,’ said Stormerod. ‘Although I don’t hunt myself, I take a dim view of abolishing what Trollope called “our national sport”, even if it has a smaller following than it used to have. But we’ve been pretty well ambushed again. Still reeling from the deer-hunting debacle—can you believe it?—we’ve once more been caught napping.’ He sighed. ‘It’s all been a pretty sorry business. First thing that happened was an obscure backbencher called Coulter drew first place in the lottery for private members’ bills. He hadn’t any sort of form on hunting so it wasn’t until very late in the day we discovered he’d been nobbled by the antis and had agreed to sponsor their bill. It’s called the Wild Mammals (Protection) Bill and it’s not just about fox-hunting—it also has sensible provisions making it illegal to torture hedgehogs or squirrels.’
‘Stopping oiks usin’ hedgehogs as footballs, for instance.’
‘Precisely. Sid and I and most of us are happy about that, and about outlawing snares. But we’re deadly opposed to banning hunting hares, foxes, and mink.’
Ten Lords A-Leaping Page 3