This Was a Man

by Jeffrey Archer

  Emma glanced up at the Distinguished Strangers’ Gallery to see members of her family seated in the front row, but they were also members of Giles’s family, and she suspected that they were equally divided. Harry, Sebastian, and Samantha unquestionably supported her, while Karin, Grace, and Freddie would back Giles, leaving Jessica to hold the casting vote. Emma felt they only mirrored the feelings of her fellow peers.

  When Lord Samuels, an eminent former president of the Royal College of Physicians, sat down having delivered the last speech from the crossbenches, a buzz of expectation went up around the chamber.

  If Giles was nervous when he got to his feet, there was no sign of it. He gripped the sides of the dispatch box firmly and waited for silence before delivering his opening line.

  “My lords, I stand before you this evening painfully aware that the fate of the National Health Service rests in our hands. I wish I was exaggerating, but I fear I am not. Because tonight, my lords, you, and you alone, will decide if this dreadful bill”—he waved the order paper high above his head—“will become law, or simply a collector’s item for those interested in the footnotes of history.

  “I do not have to remind your lordships, that it was the Labour Party, under Clem Attlee, which not only founded the NHS, but has been defending its very existence ever since. Whenever this country has had to suffer the travails of a Conservative administration, it has been Labour’s responsibility to ensure that the NHS survives attack after attack from the infidels storming its hallowed gates.”

  Loud cheers erupted from behind him, which allowed Giles to turn a page of his script and check the next sentence.

  “My lords, I am ashamed to admit,” he continued, with an exaggerated sigh, “that the latest of these infidels is my own kith and kin, the Baroness Clifton of Chew Magna.”

  Both sides of the House joined in the laughter, while Emma wished she had been bestowed with the gift to switch from grave pronouncement to light humor in a moment, and at the same time to carry the House with her.

  Giles spent the next twenty minutes dismantling the bill line by line, concentrating particularly on those clauses about which Tory waverers had expressed concerns. Emma could only admire the skill with which her brother heaped praise on the statesmanlike contributions of the few Tories who remained undecided, before adding. “We can only hope that those men and women of conscience display the same courage and independence of mind when the time comes to enter the division lobby, and do not at the last moment cast their true beliefs aside, hiding behind the false mask of party loyalty.”

  Even by Giles’s standards, it was a formidable performance. Colleagues and opponents alike were on the edge of their seats as he continued, like Merlin, to cast his spell over a mesmerized House. Emma knew she would have to break that spell and drag her colleagues back to the real world if she hoped to win the vote.

  “Let me end, my lords,” said Giles, almost in a whisper, “by reminding you of the power you hold in your hands tonight. You have been granted the one opportunity to throw out this flawed and counterfeit bill, which, were it to become law, would spell the end of the National Health Service as we know it, and stain the memory of its glorious past, and of those good old days.”

  He leaned across the dispatch box and looked slowly up and down the government front bench before saying, “This bill proves only one thing, my lords: dinosaurs are not only to be found in the Natural History Museum.” He waited for the laughter to die down before he lowered his voice and continued, “Those of you who, like myself, have studied this bill word for word, will have noticed that one word is conspicuously absent. Search as I might, my lords, nowhere could I find the word ‘compassion.’ But why should that come as a surprise, when the minister opposite, who will shortly present this bill, has herself personally denied hardworking nurses a living wage?”

  Cries of “Shame!” came from the opposition benches, as Giles stared across at his sister. “And you don’t have to read between the lines to understand that the government’s real purpose in this bill is to replace the word ‘National’ with ‘Private,’ because its first priority is to serve those who can afford to be sick, while leaving on the scrap heap those of our citizens who are unable to bear the cost. That is, and always has been, the overriding philosophy of this government.

  “My lords,” said Giles, his voice rising in a crescendo, “I invite you to vote decisively against this iniquitous bill, so those same citizens can continue to enjoy the security of a truly national health service, because I believe that when it comes to our health, all men—” he paused and stared across the dispatch box at his sister—“and women, are born equal.

  “My lords, I don’t ask you, I beg you, to let your views be clearly heard by our fellow countrymen when you cast your votes tonight, and soundly reject this bill.”

  He sat down to resounding cheers and the waving of order papers from behind him, and silence from the benches opposite. When the cheers finally died down, Emma rose slowly from her seat, placed her speech on the dispatch box, and gripped its sides firmly in the hope that no one would see just how nervous she was.

  “My lords,” she began, her voice trembling slightly, “it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge the performance of my noble kinsman, Lord Barrington, but performance it was, because I suspect that when you read his words in Hansard tomorrow, you will see that his speech was long on rhetoric, short on substance, and devoid of facts.”

  A few muted “Hear, hear”s could be heard from her colleagues seated behind her, while the members opposite remained silent.

  “I spent seven years of my life running a large NHS hospital, so I don’t have to prove that I am just as concerned about the future of the National Health Service as anyone sitting on the benches opposite. However, despite all the passion mustered by the noble lord, the truth is that, in the end, someone has to pay the bills and balance the books. The NHS has to be funded with real money, and paid for with the taxes of real people.”

  Emma was delighted to see a few heads nodding. Giles’s speech had been well received, but it was her responsibility to explain the finer details of the proposed legislation. She took their lordships through the substance of the bill clause by clause, but was unable to kindle the flame of passion that her brother had ignited so successfully.

  As she turned another page, she became aware of what her grandfather, Lord Harvey, once described as losing the attention of the House, that moment when members become listless and begin chattering among themselves. Far more damning even than jeering or cries of “Shame.”

  She glanced up to see an elderly peer nodding off, and when, moments later, he began to snore, the members seated on either side of him made no attempt to wake him, as they were all too clearly enjoying the minister’s discomfort. Emma realized the minutes were slipping away before the House would be asked to divide and the votes would be counted. She turned another page. “And now I would like to acknowledge the backbone of the NHS, our magnificent nurses, who—”

  Giles leapt to his feet to interrupt the minister, and in doing so strayed onto enemy territory. Emma immediately gave way, allowing her brother to command the dispatch box.

  “I am grateful to the noble lady for giving way, but may I ask, if she considers nurses are doing such a magnificent job, why are they only receiving a three percent pay rise?” Convinced that Emma was now on the ropes, he sat down to loud cries of “Hear, hear!”

  Emma resumed her place at the dispatch box. “The noble lord, if I recall his words correctly, demanded a fourteen percent pay rise for nurses.” Giles nodded vigorously. “So I am bound to ask him where he expects the government to find the extra money to pay for such an increase?”

  Giles was quickly back on his feet, ready to deliver the knockout blow. “It could start by putting up taxes for the highest earners, who can well afford to pay a little more to assist those less fortunate than themselves.” He sat down to even louder cheers, while Emma waited patiently a
t the dispatch box.

  “I’m glad the noble lord admitted that would be a start,” she said, picking up a red file that a Treasury official had handed her that morning, “because a start is all it would be. If he is asking this House to believe that the Labour Party could cover a fourteen percent pay rise for nurses simply by raising taxes for those earning forty thousand pounds a year or more, let me tell him this, he would require a tax hike to ninety-three percent year on year. And I confess,” she added, borrowing her brother’s brand of sarcasm, “I hadn’t realized that a tax rate of ninety-three percent was Labour Party policy, because I didn’t spot it in their manifesto, which I read word for word.”

  Emma could hear the laughter coming from behind her, even if she couldn’t see her colleagues jabbing their fingers at her brother and repeating, “Ninety-three percent, ninety-three percent.”

  Like Giles, she waited for silence before adding, “Perhaps the noble lord would tell the House what other ideas he has for covering the extra cost?”

  Giles remained seated.

  “Might I be allowed to suggest one or two ways of raising the necessary funds that would help him to reach his target of fourteen percent?”

  Emma had recaptured the attention of the House. She turned a page of the Treasury memo inside the red file. “For a start, I could cancel the three new hospitals planned for Strathclyde, Newcastle, and Coventry. That would solve the problem. Mind you, I’d need to close another three hospitals next year. But I am not willing to make that sacrifice, so perhaps I should look at some other departments’ budgets and see what my colleagues have to offer.”

  She turned another page.

  “We could cut back on our plans for new universities, or withdraw the three percent increase in the old age pension. That would solve the problem. Or we could cut back on our armed forces by mothballing the odd regiment. No, no, we couldn’t do that,” she said scornfully, “not after the noble lord spoke so passionately against any cutbacks in the armed forces budget only a month ago.”

  Giles sank further into his seat.

  “And remembering the noble lord’s distinguished record in another place, as a Foreign Office minister, perhaps we could close half a dozen of our embassies. That should do the trick. We could even leave him to decide which ones. Washington? Paris? Moscow perhaps? Beijing? Tokyo? I’m bound to ask, is this another Labour Party policy they forgot to mention in their manifesto?”

  Suddenly the government benches were alight with laughter and cheering.

  “No, my lord speaker,” continued Emma once the House had fallen silent again, “the truth is, words are cheap, but action comes more expensive, and it’s the duty of a responsible government to consider priorities and make sure it balances the books. That undertaking was in the Tory manifesto, and I make no apology for it.”

  Emma was aware that she only had a couple of minutes left, and the cheering of her delighted colleagues was eating away at her time.

  “I must therefore tell the House that I consider education, pensions, defense, and our role in world affairs every bit as important as my own department. But let me assure your lordships, when it comes to my own department, I fought the Treasury tooth and nail to keep those three new hospitals in the budget,” she paused, raised her voice, and said, “This morning the chancellor of the Exchequer agreed that the nurses will be awarded a six percent pay rise.”

  The benches behind her erupted in prolonged cheers.

  Emma abandoned the final pages of her script and, looking directly at her brother, said, “None of this, however, will be possible if you follow the noble lord into the Not Contents lobby tonight and vote against this bill. If I am, as he suggests, an infidel storming the hallowed gates of the National Health Service, then I must tell him that I intend to open those gates to allow all patients to enter. Yes, my lords, free at the point of use, to quote his hero Clement Attlee. And that is the reason, my lords, I do not hesitate to urge you to join me in the real world and support this bill, so that when I return to my department tomorrow morning, I can set about making the necessary changes that will ensure the future of the National Health Service and not allow it to languish in the past, along with my noble kinsman, Lord Barrington, who will presumably still be reminiscing fondly about the good old days. I, my lords, will be telling my grandchildren, and also my great-granddaughter, about the good new days. But that will only be possible if you support this bill, and join me in the Contents lobby tonight. My lords, I beg to move the second reading.”

  Emma sat down to the loudest cheer of the night, while Giles sat slumped back, aware that he shouldn’t have raised his head above the parapet, but should simply have feigned boredom and allowed Emma to dig her own grave. She glanced across the chamber at her brother, who raised a hand, touched his forehead, and mouthed the word “Chapeau.” Praise indeed. But both of them were well aware that the votes still had to be counted.

  When the division bell rang, members began to make their way toward the corridors of their conviction. Emma entered the Contents lobby, where she spotted one or two fence-sitters and waverers casting their vote. But would it be enough?

  Once she had given her name to the teller seated at his high desk, ticking off each member, she returned to her seat on the front bench and joined in the inconsequential chatter that always rises like hot air from both sides while members wait for the whips to return and deliver the verdict of the House.

  A hush descended on the chamber when the four gentlemen ushers lined up and marched slowly toward the table at the center of the chamber.

  The chief whip held up a card and, once he’d double-checked the figures, declared, “Contents to the left, four hundred and twenty-two.” Emma held her breath. “Not Contents to the right, four hundred and eleven. The Contents have it. The Contents have it.”

  Cheers erupted from the benches behind Emma. As she made her way out of the chamber, she found herself surrounded by supporters telling her they had never doubted she would win. She smiled and thanked them.

  She finally managed to break away and join Harry and the rest of the family in the peers’ guest room, where she was delighted to find Giles opening a bottle of champagne. He filled her glass and raised his own.

  “To Emma,” he said, “who not only won the argument but also the battle, as our mother predicted she would.”

  Once the rest of the family had departed, Harry, Giles, Emma, Karin, and Freddie—his first glass of champagne—walked slowly back to their home in Smith Square. Emma climbed into bed exhausted, but an intoxicating mix of adrenaline and success made it impossible for her to sleep.

  * * *

  The following morning, Emma woke at six, her cruel body clock ignoring her desire to go on sleeping.

  Once she had showered and dressed, she hurried downstairs, looking forward to reading the reports of the debate in the papers while enjoying a cup of tea, and perhaps even a second slice of toast and marmalade. The papers were already laid out on the dining table. She read the headline in The Times and collapsed into the nearest chair, her head in her hands. That had never been her intention.

  LORD BARRINGTON RESIGNS AFTER HUMILIATING DEFEAT IN THE LORDS

  Emma knew that “resigned” was a parliamentary euphemism for sacked.

  48

  THE END

  HARRY PUT DOWN his pen, leapt in the air, and shouted “Hallelujah!,” which was what he always did whenever he wrote those two words. He sat back down, looked up at the ceiling, and said, “Thank you.” Another ritual fulfilled.

  In the morning, he would send copies of the script to three people, so they could read Heads You Win for the first time. Then he would suffer his annual neurosis, while he waited to hear their opinions. But just like him, they all had their own routines.

  The first, Aaron Guinzburg, his American publisher, would leave his office and go home the moment the manuscript landed on his desk, having given clear instructions that he was not to be disturbed until he had turned t
he last page. He would then call Harry, sometimes forgetting what time it was in England. His view could often be discounted because he was always so enthusiastic.

  The second was Ian Chapman, his English publisher, who always waited until the weekend before he read the book, and would call Harry first thing on Monday morning to offer his opinion. As he was a Scotsman who was unable to hide his true feelings, this only made Harry more apprehensive.

  The third, and by far the most intuitive of his first readers, was his sister-in-law, Grace, who not only offered her disinterested opinion, but invariably accompanied it with a ten-page written report, and occasionally, forgetting he was not one of her pupils, corrected his grammar.

  Harry had never considered Grace to be an obvious William Warwick fan until in an unguarded moment she admitted to a penchant for racy novels. However, her idea of racy was Kingsley Amis, Graham Greene (the ones he described as entertainments), and her favorite, Ian Fleming.

  In return for her opinion, Harry would take Grace to lunch at the Garrick, before accompanying her to a matinee, preferably by her favorite racy playwright, Terence Rattigan.

  Once the three manuscripts had been dispatched by courier, the agonizing wait began. Harry’s three readers had all been warned that Heads You Win was a departure from his usual fare, which only made him more anxious.

  He had considered allowing Giles, who had a lot more time on his hands lately, and Sebastian, his most ardent fan, to also be among the first to read his latest manuscript, but decided not to break with his usual routine. He would allow them to read the final draft over Christmas, after his line editor had suggested any changes.