Cometh the Hour: A Novel (27 page)

Karin wished Giles would come and rescue her, but she knew there was no chance of that.

“I’m relieved you’re not foolish enough to deny it, because there is a way out of this mess, as long as you’re willing to cooperate.”

Karin said nothing.

“I’m going to give you the chance to work for this country. I will personally make sure that you are regularly supplied with information that will keep the Stasi convinced you’re still working for them. But in return we will expect to know everything Pengelly is up to, and I mean everything.”

Karin picked up her cup but her hand was trembling so much she put it straight back down.

“I will be your handler,” the baroness continued, “and what better cover could you have than the occasional tea with a silly old bat from the House of Lords? That’s the story you’ll tell Giles, unless you want him to find out the truth.”

“No, that’s the last thing I want,” stammered Karin.

“Then let’s keep it that way. My husband, dear man, went to his grave thinking I was an undersecretary at the FCO, which indeed I was, to all intents and purposes. He would have burst out laughing if you’d suggested I was a spy. I should warn you, Miss Brandt, that if you feel unable to go along with our plan, you will be on the next flight back to East Berlin, and I will be the one who has to tell Lord Barrington the truth.” She paused. “I see you have some feeling for Giles.”

“I adore him,” said Karin without guile.

“So, Sir John got that right. You really did want to escape from East Germany to be with him. Well, you’ll just have to go on fooling most of the people most of the time. Ah, I see Giles heading toward us. If I receive a thank-you note from you tomorrow, I’ll know which side you’re on. If I don’t, you and Pengelly had better be on a flight to East Germany before dusk.”

“Cynthia, you don’t look a day over forty,” said Giles.

“And you’re still an incorrigible flirt and flatterer, Giles Barrington.”

“Guilty. It was kind of you to invite Karin to tea.”

“We’ve had a most interesting conversation.”

“And now I must drag her away as we’re taking my sister out to dinner tonight.”

“To celebrate her birthday, Karin tells me. I won’t detain you any longer.”

Karin got up unsteadily, picked up her shopping bag and said, “Thank you for tea.”

“I do hope you’ll come again, Karin.”

“I’d like that.”

“A remarkable old biddy,” said Giles as they walked down the corridor, “although no one seems to be quite sure what she did at the Foreign Office. More important, did you remember to buy me some socks?”

“Yes, I did, darling. Cynthia told me that she was an undersecretary at the FCO.”

“I’m sure she was … And did you manage to find a present for Emma?”

28

E
MMA WAS RUNNING
late for her meeting. Attempting to juggle three balls at once was a skill she’d had to learn very quickly, and for the first time in her life there had been moments when she wondered if she had taken on more than she could handle.

Chairing the family company remained her first priority, and what she described to Harry as the day job. However, her responsibilities as a governor of the hospital were taking up far more of her time than she had originally anticipated. Officially, she was expected to attend four board meetings a year and to devote two days a month to hospital business. But it hadn’t been long before she found herself doing two days a week. There was no one but herself to blame, because she enjoyed every minute of her responsibilities as the governor overseeing the nursing staff.

The hospital employed over two thousand nurses and hundreds of doctors, and the senior matron, Mima Puddicombe, was not old school, but ancient school. Florence Nightingale would happily have taken her to the Crimea. Emma enjoyed learning about the day-to-day problems Mima faced; at one end of the scale were grandiose consultants who imagined they were omnipotent, while at the other were patients who knew their rights. Somewhere in between were the nurses, who were expected to take care of both, while making sure a smile never left their faces. It was no wonder Mima had never married. She had two thousand anxious daughters, and a thousand unruly sons.

Emma had soon become engrossed in the daily routines of the hospital and was touched that Mima not only sought her advice, but treated her as an equal, sharing her anxieties and ambitions for the hospital to which she had devoted her life. But the meeting Emma was running late for had nothing to do with her duties at the hospital.

Earlier that morning, the prime minister had visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace and sought her permission to dissolve Parliament, so that a general election could be called. Emma had kept her promise to Margaret Thatcher and joined the election committee that oversaw the seventy-one constituencies in the West Country. She represented Bristol, with its seven seats, two of which were marginal, one of them her brother’s old stomping ground. For the next three weeks she and Giles would be standing on opposite sides of the road, imploring the electorate to support their cause.

Emma was thankful the campaign would be over in a month because she had to accept that Barrington’s and the hospital were not going to see a lot of her until after polling day. Harry never got used to her creeping into bed after midnight and then disappearing before he woke the following morning. Most men would have suspected their wife had a lover. Emma had three.

*   *   *

It was a bitterly cold afternoon and the two of them put on heavy coats, scarves and gloves before they went out for their usual walk. They only spoke of inconsequential matters until they reached the abandoned tin mine, where there would be no colonels, tourists or noisy children to disturb them.

“Do you have anything worthwhile to report, Comrade Brandt, or is this another wasted journey?”

“The Home Fleet will be carrying out exercises off Gibraltar on February twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth, when the Royal Navy’s new nuclear submarine will be in service for the first time.”

“How did you get hold of that piece of information?” said Pengelly.

“Barrington and I were invited to dine with the First Sea Lord at Admiralty House. I’ve found that if you remain silent long enough you blend into the background, like wallpaper.”

“Well done, comrade. I knew you’d come good in the end.”

“Can I seek your advice on another matter, comrade director?” After double-checking that there was no one who could overhear them, Pengelly nodded. “Barrington has asked me to be his wife. How would the party want me to respond?”

“You should accept, of course. Once you’re married, they’d never be able to expose you because it could bring down the government.”

“If that’s what you want, comrade director.”

*   *   *

Emma returned home at ten o’clock on the evening of the election, and she and Harry sat up through the night following the results from all over the country. It quickly became clear after the first count was declared in Billericay that the outcome was going to be too close to call, and when the last seat was announced in County Down in Northern Ireland just after 4:30 the following afternoon, the Labour Party had captured the most seats, 301 to 297, although the Tories had won the popular vote, by over 200,000.

Ted Heath refused to resign as prime minister, and spent the next few days trying to cobble together a coalition with the Liberals, which would have given the Tories an overall majority. But it fell apart when Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader, demanded as part of their acquiescence that proportional representation had to be enacted in law before the next election. Heath knew his backbenchers wouldn’t deliver, so he returned to Buckingham Palace and informed the Queen that he was unable to form a government.

The following morning, Her Majesty called for the Labour leader and invited him to form a minority government. Harold Wilson took up residence at No.10 Downing Street and spent the rest of the day appointing his Cabinet.

Emma was delighted when the television cameras followed Giles walking up Downing Street to keep an appointment with the prime minister. He came out of No.10 twenty minutes later, as Leader of the House of Lords. She called her brother to congratulate him on the appointment.

“Double congratulations are in order,” said Giles. “Karin has finally agreed to marry me.”

Emma could not have been more pleased, but when she told Harry the news that evening, he didn’t seem to share her enthusiasm. She would have probed as to why he was always so negative about Karin if the phone hadn’t rung and interrupted her. The local paper was on the line asking if she wanted to make a statement, not about the minority government or her brother’s appointment, but the tragic death of Eddie Lister.

*   *   *

Emma attended an emergency meeting of the hospital’s governors the following evening. The meeting opened with a minute’s silence in memory of the late chairman, who had suffered a heart attack while climbing in the Alps with his two sons. Emma’s thoughts were with Eddie’s wife, Wendy, who had flown out to Switzerland to be with her children and bring her husband’s body home.

The second item on the agenda was to elect a new chairman. Nick Caldercroft, Eddie’s long-serving deputy, was proposed, seconded and elected
nem. con
. to take Eddie’s place. He spoke warmly of the man he had had the honor of serving under and pledged to carry on with his legacy.

“But,” he emphasized, “that task will be made a lot easier if we select the right person to be my deputy. None of you will be surprised to learn that my first choice is Emma Clifton.”

Emma wasn’t surprised, she was shocked, as the idea had never crossed her mind. However, as she looked around the boardroom table, it appeared that everyone agreed with the new chairman. Emma began mentally composing a few words about how she was flattered by their confidence in her but sadly it wasn’t possible at the present time because … But then she looked up and saw the photograph of her grandfather staring down at her. Sir Walter Barrington was giving her that gimlet-eyed look she remembered so well from her schooldays, when she’d been caught doing something naughty.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s a great honor and I shall try to prove worthy of your confidence.”

Returning home later that evening she had to explain to Harry why she was clutching a thick bundle of files. He didn’t look surprised. “After all,” he said, “you were the obvious choice.”

When the phone rang, Emma said firmly, “If it’s the Queen, say thank you but I just haven’t the time to be prime minister.”

“It isn’t the Queen,” said Harry, “but she might just be the next prime minister,” he added as he handed Emma the phone.

“I wanted to call and thank you, Emma,” said Margaret Thatcher, “for all the hard work you did for the party in the West Country during the campaign, and to warn you that I’m pretty sure there will be another election within a few months, when we will need to call on your help again.”

*   *   *

Mrs. Thatcher’s prediction turned out to be correct, because the Labour Party were unable to win every vote in the division lobby, night after night, often having to rely on the support of some of the smaller parties, and on one occasion even bringing a member in on a stretcher. It came as no surprise when in September Harold Wilson asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament for the second time within a year. Three weeks later, fighting under the banner NOW YOU KNOW LABOUR GOVERNMENT WORKS
,
Wilson was returned to No.10 Downing Street with a Commons majority of three.

Emma’s first call was not to Giles to congratulate him on retaining his seat in the Cabinet, but to Margaret Thatcher at her home in Flood Street, Chelsea.

“You have to stand for the leadership of the party, Margaret.”

“There isn’t a vacancy,” Mrs. Thatcher reminded her, “and there’s no suggestion that Ted is considering giving up the post.”

“Then kick him into touch,” said Emma firmly. “Perhaps it’s time to remind him he’s lost us three elections out of four.”

“True,” said Thatcher, “but the Tories are not known for ditching their leaders, as you’ll discover when you talk to the party faithful at your next area committee meeting. By the way, Ted has spent the last week calling every constituency chairman one by one.”

“It’s not the constituency chairmen who will choose the next leader of the party,” said Emma, “but your colleagues in the House. They’re the only ones who have a vote. So perhaps you should be calling them one by one.”

*   *   *

Emma watched from a distance as speculation over the party leadership became more and more rife. She’d never read so many newspapers, listened to so many radio discussions or watched so many television debates, often late into the night.

Apparently oblivious to what was going on around him, Ted Heath, like Nero, went on playing his fiddle. But then, in an attempt to stamp his authority on the party, he called a leadership election for February 4, 1975.

Over the next few days Emma tried repeatedly to call Margaret Thatcher, but her line was constantly engaged.

When she finally got through, Emma didn’t bother with pleasantries. “You’ll never have a better chance of leading the party than now,” she said. “Not least because Heath’s old cabinet chums aren’t willing to stand against him.”

“You may be right,” said Margaret, “which is why some of my colleagues in the Commons are trying to gauge my chances, should I decide to throw my hat into the ring.”

“You have to make your move now, while the men still think they’re part of an old boys’ club that would never allow a woman to become a member.”

“I know you’re right, Emma, but I only have a few cards to play and must be careful about which ones I select and when to show them. One mistake, and I could be on the back benches for the rest of my political career. But please keep in touch. You know how much I value your opinion as someone who’s not holed up in the Westminster village, only thinking about what’s in it for them.”

Emma turned out to be right about the “old boys’ club,” because all the big beasts in the party remained loyal to Heath, along with the
Telegraph
and
Mail
. Only the
Spectator
kept pressing Mrs. Thatcher to stand. And when, to Emma’s delight, she finally did allow her name to go forward, the announcement was met by Heath’s inner circle with ridicule and contempt, while the press refused to take her challenge seriously. In fact, Heath told anyone who would listen that she was no more than a stalking horse.