A Woman's Place (17 page)

His wife pulled a face. ‘They say they are British. Brummies, they call themselves. They have no wish to live in the heat and flies of Calcutta. So Rajiv returns without them.'

‘I am sad for him,' her husband answered soberly. None of his new-found friends, as they pontificated about repatriation, ever considered the results. ‘But you are telling me this for a purpose. Do you want them to come and live with us, is that it?'

‘How well you understand me, Jayanti! You are such a clever man.' Her husband grunted and waited. Pramila continued, ‘No, they will live with his sister in Leeds. But everybody is looking to you. Rajiv's wife phoned me yesterday and she is desperate. So please, if you get a chance, do tell the Prime Minister. I have written it down and you just hand him the letter.'

Jayanti frowned but took the letter and put it in his jacket pocket.

‘And there is one more thing. Rajiv's business in Slough – car hire and leasing. Very sound, his wife tells me. It has brought them a good income. For their sakes she wants you to take it over and run it for them. You can pay her a regular amount and take the rest. Please will you do it – Jayanti, darling – for me?'

As the vehicle pulled away from the kerb the taxi-driver glanced in his mirror at his dark-suited passenger.

‘We can't get into Downing Street now they've put them big iron gates up, but I'll drop you nearby in Whitehall. That do?'

Bhadeshia tweaked his tie nervously. The slight drizzle meant he might get wet. The driver tried an old ploy.

‘Going to a meeting there, are you? Don't I know you from somewhere?'

Bhadeshia smiled broadly. ‘Oh, I don't know,' he demurred. ‘Perhaps you read the financial pages of the newspapers. My picture has been in them recently. But I am only a humble Gujarati shopkeeper.'

The cabbie examined him with faint curiosity. One Paki looked much like another. ‘Why – what have you done?'

Jayanti had toyed with the idea of keeping his East African project quiet for fear of competitors, but Pramila had pointed out that if he intended to raise serious money on the Stock Exchange or by a private share placement the whole operation would have to be talked up vigorously to foster demand. In addition his name had been put forward, not for the first time, for the coveted ‘Asian Businessman of the Year' award. The result was a sudden flurry of publicity. The timing was perfect.

‘I have merely worked hard to make a living. That is all.'

The cabbie stopped, reached out behind and opened the door with a practised flourish. ‘Well, I hope you have a good lunch, mate. I hear the food's terrible.' He took the proffered five-pound note for a £3.60 fare and was not the least surprised when his passenger told him to keep the change.

Jayanti turned at a familiar voice.

‘Ah, Jay old man. Good to see you.'

It was wonderful, Jayanti had to admit, to be hailed by name in the political heartland of the nation, and more so by a rising star instantly recognisable to passers-by. Derek Harrison's smooth looks and slick way with words underpinned a growing reputation. In a smart overcoat against the winter chill he was crossing Whitehall from the cream and red brick building of the Department of Health, Welfare and the Family. He came up to Bhadeshia and shook his hand warmly.

At the heavy gate separating Downing Street from the public, burly police officers inspected Derek's ID and Jayanti's invitation card and then waved them through.

‘You going to the reception? Me too.'

‘I,' Jayanti announced proudly, ‘am invited to stay for lunch with the Prime Minister.'

Derek grinned. “The reception's for donors of over a thousand pounds and the lunch for over ten thousand, or so I hear. Your connections must be doing well. Any tips?'

It was only a short walk up the drive but both were early. A crowd of fidgety pressmen largely ignored them; their quarry, as they stood damply waiting, was the Prime Minister, who would comment after the emergency Cabinet session. A casual observer might have noted the two men chatting earnestly by the black door until another couple of guests caught them up.

‘I think that's marvellous.' Harrison patted Jayanti on the back as they stepped inside.

‘I don't have a lot to spare, but I'll tell everybody to buy. You're a good chap, Jay.'

Cabinet was running late. The pillared room with its red leather chairs and folders marked ‘First Lord of the Treasury' was stuffy. The arguments were heated, but no clear consensus on action had emerged.

‘If we give in and join,' the Secretary of State for Defence was saying, ‘we abandon all idea of sovereignty. You can't have a single currency between a dozen nations alongside an independent economic policy. They're mutually incompatible.'

‘That's right,' whined the Secretary of State for Social Security. ‘We lose flexibility. We lose the right to decide our own future. I am totally against.'

The Prime Minister wanted no one left out. He indicated Ted Bampton.

‘The problem,' growled Bampton, ‘is that the only adjustment we've ever made to sterling is downwards. Our precious right to decide has only ever taken us one way. Given a choice between forcing British industry to be competitive and debasing the currency we've always chosen the latter. Where's the sovereignty in that?'

‘I agree,' came firmly from the diminutive Secretary of State for Education. She was the sole person present capable of negotiating with her European counterparts in fluent French and German, so had been put into virtually the only Cabinet job where such skills were not required.

‘We have to be realistic.' The Chancellor of the Exchequer loved a fight, but this one held ghastly dangers: the party could easily split on it. ‘Look ahead ten years. Suppose we don't join. Then there'll be three world currencies – the dollar, the yen and the Euromark or whatever it gets called. Where would sterling be then? I'll tell you: nowhere. And neither would we.'

‘Nonsense! We could be the Singapore of Europe.' That, airily, from the Secretary of State for Wales. Bampton raised an eyebrow. He couldn't quite see Aberystwyth competing with the Chinese and Malays.

‘The Queen won't like it,' came gloomily from the far end of the table, but no one was sure who had uttered this profundity.

‘Oh, she'd still have her head on the banknotes. That's not the sovereignty we'd be losing. Anyway, it's nothing to do with Her Majesty. If we can't afford the royal yacht we certainly can't afford to put nostalgia ahead of the country's future.' The new, young Secretary of State for Health was a fully signed-up member of the pro-European tendency.

Dickson glanced at the clock and tapped his glass with a pen for silence. “The debates in Parliament will guide us on how people feel. Both Houses, the week after next. If the answer's yes, we're into a referendum.'

There was a stir at that. Bampton put the question in every mind. ‘Supposing the Commons' answer is no?'

Dickson's eyes roved coolly around the table, asserting his authority. The moment had come to make his own views clear.

‘Then it'll be like Maastricht. We will have another debate, and another vote. Until we get a “yes”, reluctant or otherwise.'

The tiled hall was crowded and buzzing. A large metal coat-rack laden with garments obscured the marble fireplace where dignitaries posed for pictures with the Prime Minister. Umbrellas dripped in a plastic bin. The smell of winter was in the air.

A tubby woman assisted Bhadeshia out of his coat and nodded towards the corridor. ‘Along there and up the stairs. Cabinet will be over soon, then the PM has to spend a few minutes outside with the press, but you're to have a drink meanwhile. Lunch is at one-fifteen, prompt.'

He was surrounded by faces he recognised and others whose assured manner suggested he ought to. Mostly male, mostly white, though several non-European faces shone like his own with
ill-concealed
delight. There was a jostle on the main staircase as guests including Jayanti revealed their unfamiliarity with No. 10 by examining the portraits of Prime Ministers on the walls. At the first step Dickson's new portrait in subdued colours made him look dignified, authoritative, severe: a suitable conduit for the trust of the nation, especially in such uncertain times. John Major and Margaret Thatcher followed, then others in strict historical order, as if early incumbents had been elevated to a distant politicians' paradise.

The doors of the white drawing room were thrown open, leading into two further salons. Silk,
sofas, ornate mirrors, Old Master paintings with elaborate frames, carved mantelpieces, red and white striped drapes, brilliant chandeliers, everywhere alive with a hubbub of people: Jayanti gaped and tried to take it in.

One August at Pramila's insistence they had gone as anonymous tourists round Buckingham Palace. The royal rooms had been much larger, the ceilings high and mighty; but although the Queen's residence was impressive it showed neither taste nor elegance. He had felt oppressed by the grandeur and Victorian heaviness of its furnishings. By contrast No. 10, a century older, had been designed for gracious living.

Pramila had to see this; and then he checked himself, for if that happened a flurry of furious redecorating would ensue in Essex. As it was she had splurged £2,000 on souvenirs of the Palace including a white and gold tea service of the utmost vulgarity. She would probably phone the Prime Minister's wife and demand details of damasks and velours. On second thoughts, therefore, he would play it down a bit when he went home. That would be safer – and cheaper.

A waiter was at his elbow with a tray of drinks. Jayanti chose the orange juice. He needed his wits about him.

For twenty minutes he circulated cautiously around the noisy throng. He recognised Elaine Stalker but she was too far away to reach. He spotted near her that military chap, the chairman of Prima, who had given him breakfast at the Party Conference. The Prime Minister's father-in-law, Lord Tarrant, the distinguished banker, was talking gravely to a cluster of nodding acolytes. Everybody seemed to know everybody else.

Derek Harrison was still at his side and had made several introductions for him, usually as ‘Jay Bangeshia' or some such variation. That there was a distinction between Bangladeshis and Gujaratis was clearly beyond Harrison's comprehension. Once or twice Jayanti had attempted a correction, then he caught the flash of annoyance on Derek's face and desisted. Yet it occurred to Jayanti to stick close to Harrison, and the two formed a shifting focus of attention, the tall, charming Minister and the small, intense Asian, so unusual in such a gathering.

The main topic of conversation, inevitably, was the currency crisis. The Stock Exchange had closed. All foreign exchange dealings were suspended, but these were no more than precautions. Not that anyone present thought it odd that the reception for party donors should go ahead willy-nilly. Cancellation would have been unthinkable.

Jayanti found himself quizzed politely about his activities and background. Rumours of his deal with President Mangaluso had reached the City: intelligent queries were murmured in his ear. Soon he had run out of business cards and had a pocket full of other people's. Such contacts would be invaluable. But most usefully he was rapidly garnering the style, vocabulary and body language of men whose support of the party was generous, loyal and automatic, though not uncritical and never unconditional. He was exhilarated.

These gentlemen, with their directorships, their clubs and lodges and networks, had their hands on the real reins of power. Many were or had been officers in local Conservative Associations; some were the party's national officers, chairman of this, treasurer of that. Several were ex-MPs or MEPs. They expected their reward, and got it. The place was peppered with knighthoods and CBEs. Many held posts in the public service, health trusts and the like, with honoraria at around £20,000 a year for a two-day week. The Nolan Committee mightn't like it, but who else would do the job?

Jayanti watched and listened. His chest swelled with pride. He was one of them. Or shortly would be.

There remained the problem of the letter about cousin Rajiv's deportation which was burning a hole in his pocket. Sympathetic and responsible as he felt, to present publicly such a missive in a gathering like this, with or without an explanation, was clearly out of the question. Yet he dare not go home without having done his duty.

The waiter nearby had successfully offloaded all the drinks on his tray except one fruit juice. Harrison's back was turned. Jayanti took the remaining glass and placed the letter on the tray, avoiding the damp patches. He spoke quickly.

‘It is for the Prime Minister's office. Will you ensure it gets into the right hands?'

The man nodded, face inscrutable. As he turned away Jayanti wondered whether he should have offered a tip. He sighed: it was so difficult to know what to do.

‘Here – he's coming.' Harrison touched his sleeve. All eyes turned to the main door and the way parted. With a broad smile as he entered and shaking hands, Roger Dickson led members of the Cabinet into the room, their erstwhile glum expressions rearranged for public consumption.

George Horrocks sipped a large gin and tonic and watched Elaine's face surreptitiously as the Prime Minister moved in their direction. She had herself well under control, but her eyes were on Dickson's face and two spots of colour suffused her cheeks. George was beginning to understand. That she still wore her heart on her sleeve for Dickson was evident only to those in the know, of whom George suspected there were very few – Betty and himself, probably nobody else. Could she have imagined, years ago, when the affair started (and George was hazy as to details, for Elaine refused point-blank to discuss the matter), that the day would dawn when her lover would be the nation's leader? And that such knowledge would be so dramatic, so dangerous? She could wreck the government with one bitter word. Yet here she was, a significant member of it, and cool as a cucumber, or nearly.