by Prue Leith
Toby shook his head. Kate noticed that he still looked anxious. The unfortunate official had really upset him.
Oliver, sitting next to her, must have read her thoughts, because he said quietly, ‘We watched you from over there, and you didn’t look happy. I thought you were really going to take that fellow on. That’s why we came over.’
‘Well, it was funny until he decided to finger poor little Toby. Said he’d seen him nicking flowers.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Poor kid, it’s his birthday, for God’s sake.’
‘And had he?’
Kate, confused, said, ‘Had who what?’
‘Had the Kew man seen Toby nicking flowers? And had Toby been nicking flowers?’
‘Not you too!’ Kate regretted the words as soon as she’d said them, but, really, what business was it of his? But he did not seem to have heard her and was talking to the children on the other side of him. Talking, thought Kate, with all the charm of a politician soliciting votes. Is it real, she wondered, or is he on automatic?
By the time Toby blew out his candles, he had forgotten the Kew man. He was excited and happy, and Kate had forgiven Oliver for daring to question her son’s flower-picking behaviour. She watched with pride and pleasure as Toby, with Hank’s help, cut the cake and solemnly offered a piece first to Ruth, then to his gran, then to Oliver.
* * *
That night, after Kate had read him his story, and tucked him in, Toby said, ‘Mum, why did that man say it’s wrong to pick flowers? We picked those yellow ones for Granny Pat’s bedroom. Didn’t we?’
Oh dear, thought Kate, hugging her son’s pyjama-clad shoulders, I’m glad Oliver Stapler isn’t here. Or the Kew man.
‘We did, darling. Daffodils. And we picked snowdrops, do you remember, in the dark one night? I needed them to put on a table for a lunch I was cooking.’
‘So it’s not wrong then?’
‘Well, it can be, if they are not your flowers. If, say, we just went next door and picked all their flowers, that would be wrong, wouldn’t it?’
‘They don’t have any flowers.’
Too true, thought Kate. Only old mattresses and dead fridges and plenty of nettles.
‘OK, but imagine they had a beautiful rose garden, full of roses they were hoping to use to decorate the church on their daughter’s wedding day, and we came along and helped ourselves to the whole lot to make rose petal jam out of, do you think that would be wrong?’
‘Can you make jam out of rose petals?’
‘Yes, as it happens, but you need apples or something else too. The rose petals are just for the flavour and the smell. But you, clever young wretch, you are changing the subject!’
‘What’s the subject?’
‘Whether it’s wrong to pick flowers.’
Toby was silent, turning the pages of the book they’d been reading. Then he said, ‘I guess it’s wrong out of someone’s garden. But why is it wrong out of a park?’
Good lad, thought Kate, he is getting there, slowly, with reason, not just confessing. ‘There are usually rules saying no to picking flowers because they want everyone to see them, and if someone has taken them then someone else, who comes next day, can’t see them.’
Kate thought, is this when I let him know I know, or do I give him a chance to tell me? She said, ‘Did the man tell you that, or just get cross?’
To her relief, he took it in his stride. ‘He asked me why I was doing it.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘Mummy, I … I wanted to tell him it was my birthday and that I wanted to give you a present too, but I thought Sanjay and everyone would think I was wet giving you flowers, so I pretended I needed more for my hat.’ His words came out in a rapid stream, with no punctuation and no inflection.
He looked up at her, face full of anxiety, eyes full of tears. ‘Mum, maybe that’s why he thought we’d picked all the flowers. Because of what I said about my hat.’
Kate restrained the impulse to hug him to death. ‘Oh, darling, thank you for wanting to give me flowers. I love flowers more than almost anything.’
‘But did saying I wanted the flowers for my hat make him think we’d stolen the flowers for everyone’s hat?’
‘Yes, I expect so,’ said Kate, releasing his shoulder. Her tone was light and matter-of-fact. ‘He just jumped to the conclusion that all the flowers for all our hats were from his garden.’ She watched the anxiety smooth out of his face, his childish confidence replacing it. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘let’s not pick any more flowers in public gardens, what do you think?’
‘OK,’ said Toby.
Kate put her lips lightly on his head, and breathed in that familiar and beloved Toby perfume, a mix of shampoo and boy, that never failed to move her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Oliver looked at the message, perplexed. It was on his private email, not the one the office filtered before deciding what he should be bothered with. This one was only used by Ruth (rarely), his daughters (almost never), the PM and Cabinet colleagues (all the time). This was from the chairman of the House of Commons Ethics Committee:
Dear Oliver,
Could you give me a ring on the number below or on my private mobile, also below. We need a word.
Jack
Oliver was struck by the tone. Jack Simons had been at Cambridge with him, and they’d entered the House the same year. They were not close – he was too right wing for Ruth – but they were friendly. ‘We need a word,’ was a bit peremptory wasn’t it? And where had Jack got his private email address from?
He frowned with a fractional shake of his head. It made no sense, but he’d soon find out. He reached for the land line, changed his mind and dug his mobile out of his pocket. He stood up and walked to the window. He dialled Jack’s mobile number.
‘Jack, it’s Oliver. What’s up?’
‘Ah, glad you rang, Oliver. Good of you. But I wonder if you could pop in to see us? We have a little problem we hope you can help us with.’
Oliver turned and walked back to the desk the long way round, skirting the sofa. ‘Well, of course, but what is it? And is it urgent? You know how under the cosh we all are, budgets being slashed right and left while the work increases.’ He slid back into his chair.
‘Yes, and I do sympathise, but this is urgent too, and I think it would be in your interest to come in to talk to us sooner rather than later.’
Somehow the conversation had turned sinister. Oliver looked at the picture of Mattie and Andrea on his desk and his mind registered the fact that the state of their teeth had reversed since the photograph had been taken. Mattie, who was grinning gappily over the edge of a swimming pool in the picture, now had all her second teeth, while Andrea, with a full set of milk teeth in the photo, was now the one with a gappy smile and emerging new teeth.
Oliver pushed his fingers into his hair and rubbed his scalp. ‘That sounds ominous. How extraordinary. Is something wrong, Jack?’
Jack’s voice was noticeably brisker as he said, ‘Oliver, I don’t think we should discuss this on the telephone. If you could make room in your diary for a meeting tomorrow I would be grateful. Eleven a.m. would be ideal.’
Oliver’s instinct was to tell him to go to hell, but within seconds he’d realised that he would not get a wink of sleep until he knew what was going on. He told Jack he’d do his best and then got Helen to cancel his eleven o’clock.
Oliver resolved to have a look at the Ethics Committee’s remit before he went to bed to see if he had inadvertently broken a rule. If he remembered right, it was all about not taking brown envelopes, or giving jobs to friends or family, or asking questions in the house that would be helpful to some company on whose board you sat. Well, he was innocent of all those, and guilt free about everything else he could think of, but he would run down the code of conduct and see what crime he could possibly have committed.
In the event he never did. It was one o’clock in the morning when he finally closed his last red box, and he was ex
hausted. Bloody hell, he thought, it will be a storm in a teacup. I refuse to worry about it.
He hadn’t mentioned it to Ruth when he’d made his usual evening call at the girls’ bedtime. He’d told himself this was to spare Ruth anxiety, but he knew that it was more to do with him wanting to have answers before she fired questions at him. It was bad enough Jack suggesting he’d behaved unethically – and it had to be something like that, it was the Ethics Committee after all – without his wife piling in.
When he presented himself at the office in Great Peter Street the following morning, he was told that Sir Jack Simons was not in the office, but that Mr Struther was ready for him now. He had no option but to follow the woman down a corridor and into a meeting room.
There were two people in the room who rose as he entered. They had a thin file between them, which the taller of them, a man with thinning hair and spectacles, closed as he stood up. He leant forward over the table and took Oliver’s hand.
‘Good morning, Foreign Secretary. I am Alan Struther, and I do preliminary investigations for the Ethics Committee. Many thanks for responding so promptly. It is good of you.’ He indicated the empty chair opposite him and they all sat down.
Oliver was tempted to ask them at once what this was all about, but to his dismay his heart had suddenly started to thump alarmingly and he did not trust his voice. How odd, he thought, I have nothing to hide, but I’m nervous. So he said nothing and sat back, deliberately casual.
‘This young man is my assistant, here to take notes of our conversation. If you would prefer, we can record the conversation instead. It is your choice.’ He paused for a second but as Oliver did not immediately reply, he said kindly, ‘We just need a record, you see. It is as much for your protection as for our work, but some people are unsettled by a note-taker, and others by a machine.’
‘I have no preference, but I must say I’m surprised. This is beginning to look like a police interrogation, yet I have no idea what it’s about.’
Alan Struther fiddled with his spectacles, taking them off carefully with both hands, then sliding them back, all the time looking over them at Oliver.
‘Well, if you have no preference, I prefer a paper record. I find it easier to use than recorded evidence. So perhaps we can begin. The problem is rather delicate and concerns your wife.’
‘My wife? What has she got to do with the Ethics Committee? I don’t employ her, if that’s what you think. She …’
‘No, it is nothing like that. But you will remember your visit to the Yemen?’
‘Yes, of course I do. It was only a few months ago. Ruth came with me.’
‘Indeed, and she was given an antique necklace by the Yemeni president. Our information is that it is a museum quality artefact from the second century AD. It is priceless. As you know, under our anti-corruption code, Members of Parliament and their wives are not allowed to accept gifts worth more than one per cent of an MP’s annual salary. And if it is diplomatically impossible to refuse them, they must to be handed in to the Treasury. Such gifts rightfully belong to the public: this necklace would have found its way to the British Museum.’
During this long speech Oliver’s mind was racing wildly. First he’d felt relief. As a Foreign Office minister he was always being presented with gifts, which when the bowing and thanking was over, he always handed straight to Sean, who did whatever had to be done with them.
But then he remembered. There had been a small dinner with the president and his son, just the four of them, in a private room at the Sheraton in Sana’a. After dinner, the president had produced from his pocket what he described as a gift for the beautiful Mrs Oliver. It was an inlaid wooden box, of the kind you see in every Arab market, containing a beaded necklace. They had passed round the open box and Ruth had dutifully admired the filigree settings and orange and blue stones. Then the president had risen from the table, said, ‘Allow me,’ and fastened it round Ruth’s neck.
Which was the last he’d seen of it.
‘My God! Are you sure? Museum quality? We thought it was a bit of local craftsmanship. Strings of coloured beads and balls and dangly bits. Shiny gilt if I remember …’
‘Coral, lapis lazuli and gold, actually.’ Struther opened his file and shuffled through the few papers to find a photograph. ‘This is, I believe, a similar necklace. This one is in the Athens museum.’ He pushed the picture towards Oliver. The necklace consisted of an outer string of round gold bells hanging from a gold chain and interspersed with dangles, each consisting of half a dozen short strings of coral beads gathered at the top. The inner strings, six of them, were of lapis stones and gold beads, gathered together at the ends in ornamented triangular gold casings, studded with coral.
Oliver covered his forehead and eyes with his hand. He was frantically trying to remember what they had done with the thing. He was fairly sure he had never seen Ruth wearing it. She hardly ever wore jewellery, and when she did it would be the pearls he had given her on their tenth wedding anniversary. Oh God, he prayed, let her not have donated the necklace to a jumble sale or something.
Struther waited politely then said, ‘Can you assist us at all?’
‘Christ. I don’t know what to say.’ Oliver took a deep breath. ‘Right, first, it was in one of those inlaid boxes that you see in all the tourist shops all over the Arab world. Second, the occasion was a private dinner and my PPS wasn’t there. I usually hand all presents straight to him. And thirdly, I guess we just forgot about it. I haven’t seen it since.’
‘So you had no intention of keeping it?’
‘Absolutely not. I’d no intention of receiving it, never mind keeping it. And nor had Ruth. It was totally unexpected, but of course these things happen, especially in the Middle East. I should have been on the ball, but I had no idea of its value.’
‘It did not occur to you that a gift from the Yemeni president was unlikely to be fake?’
Oliver closed his eyes. ‘No. I agree it’s mad, but I just did not consider the matter. Of course, if someone had asked me that direct question then, I would have realised it must have some value. I suppose it didn’t interest me – this sort of complicated shiny stuff is not to my taste.’
Aware that this was sounded limp in the extreme, he added, ‘We’d seen so many of those necklaces in the shops and markets, and indeed in Morocco and all over the place, I suppose I put it on a par with being given a box of chocolates or a bunch of flowers.’
‘Did you judge it, then, to be worth less than five hundred pounds, which would have been about the limit then?’
Oliver was beginning to get angry, but he made an effort to conceal it. ‘No, I did not make any judgement at all. I don’t go around calculating the value of presents.’
‘If you had seen it, say, on your wife’s dressing table the next day, would you have handed it in?’
‘Yes … no. I’m not sure. I might not have noticed it. I might have thought it was a present Ruth had bought for someone back home. I might not have recognised it as the necklace she was given the night before. Of course we all looked at it then but I did not examine it.’ Oliver’s voice was rising. ‘No, I doubt if I would have said, “This necklace could be worth more than we are allowed to receive as personal gifts under the Ethics Committee’s parliamentary behaviour code, so we had better give it to Sean to deposit with Her Majesty’s Treasury.”’
Struther said peaceably, ‘I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions, Secretary of State. I can see it is distressing, but I am afraid I must. So, where do you think the necklace is now?’
‘I’ve no idea. Maybe sold at a jumble sale. Probably round the neck of some latter-day hippy.’
‘That would be a pity, I must say. Well, I’m sure you will ask your wife if she can throw any light?’
Oliver, repenting his irritation, said, ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Of course I will. I will ask her to hunt for it tonight and let you know in the morning.’ He put his hands on the table, about to stand up, but Stru
ther said, ‘I’m afraid that’s not all, Foreign Secretary.’
Oliver sat back in his chair in disbelief. ‘What then?’
‘There is the question of a set of Limoges china imported into the country. Ten years ago.’
‘And?’ Oliver said, baffled. ‘What about it?’ He remembered the china well. It was a full dinner service complete with serving dishes and coffee cups. It had cost a fortune. Somewhat depleted now, it was still their ‘best’ and, since they seldom entertained in the country, they kept it in the Lambeth house.
‘I understand it was imported as part of the British Ambassador’s goods and chattels, when he returned home after his tour in Paris,’ said Struther. ‘If that is so, import duty was probably not paid. Is that so?’
‘Import duty? I’ve no idea. That was ten years ago, for God’s sake. This is starting to feel like muckraking. Who’s behind this?’
‘I’m not at liberty to divulge sources, I’m afraid. You’ll understand that, I’m sure.’
‘Anyway,’ said Oliver, ‘I wasn’t even in the Foreign Office, and only just in parliament then.’
‘You were a junior minister in the Home Office, I believe.’
‘But my job is nothing to do with this! Ruth and Marianne, the Ambassador’s wife, are old school friends. We were having a private lunch at the embassy – I think it was Marianne’s birthday, and Ruth admired her china and Marianne offered to get a set for us.’
‘But you did not declare the transaction?’
‘No, of course not. Why should we? It was between my wife and her old friend. What business is that of government’s? The alarmists are right. We interfere too much in private lives.’
‘The china was shipped home from the British embassy in Paris, was it not?’
‘I can’t remember, but that would make sense. As I said, Marianne ordered it. It wasn’t a gift. We bloody paid for it!’ Oliver sat back, pleased to be able to turn the tables.
Struther did not react except to say mildly, ‘And how did you pay if I may ask?’