Fifty-First State (11 page)

‘What about other women?' Joshua asked.

‘Joshua,' Gott told him, ‘we're not all like you.'

Joshua looked at his plate, then raised his head. ‘You bastard,' was all he found to say.

Edward Gott raised his glass. ‘Well – to victory.'

Joshua, numbly, echoed him.

After lunch Gott had another meeting and Joshua went to a film. When he phoned Saskia again, there was still no reply. He then rang Julia Baskerville, suggesting that if she was free that evening they might sit down and make some plans for the new series of their TV show,
Westminster Unplugged,
which was due to start up again in October. By that time the Tories would have a new leader and they would be nearing the end of the election campaign. ‘If we don't tell them what we want, the director and Patterson will make all the decisions,' Joshua told Julia, who agreed and said that as she liked to spend as much time with her small daughter as she could, she hoped Joshua would come to her house for supper.

Julia lived in a small terraced house in the East End. Her front door opening directly on to the pavement. When Joshua came in Julia's daughter Millie was lying on the couch in her nightdress watching a video, while in the connecting kitchen, Julia was cooking. The rooms were not large but the room where Millie lay was redeemed by a small conservatory at the end. Open doors let in a small, evening breeze.

Joshua greeted Millie, who acknowledged him without interest, and then joined Julia, who was at the stove, in a flowery shirt and shorts. ‘It's boiling in here,' she said to him. ‘Do you want to take a glass of wine out into the yard? There's a little table out there.'

‘I'll sweat it out in here with you,' he said. ‘Can I have a glass of water? I had lunch, and wine, with Edward Gott earlier and then I went to a movie. Now I feel terrible. It must be old age.'

Julia handed him a glass of water and he leaned against the wall, drinking it. ‘Good hols?' he asked.

‘Wonderful,' she told him. Julia had spent a month in Cape Cod with her husband and Millie. She was so plainly happy that Joshua found himself, in the hot little kitchen, envying her – or, as he took in the long, tanned legs and tendrils of hair falling over her face, perhaps her husband. He shook himself, mentally.

‘Yours?' enquired Julia.

‘Italy,' he responded briefly.

‘What did Gott want? Or shouldn't I ask?'

‘The leadership – the election; underneath, it was probably Gott's desire to get away from Lady Gott and his large family in Scotland.'

‘Any new candidates for the leadership?' asked Julia.

‘I can't tell you,' Joshua said. ‘But no, actually.'

‘Pity,' said Julia. ‘It would have made a programme.' She whipped a pan of fish out from under the grill. ‘Just a couple of trout – potato salad, etc'

‘Great,' said Joshua, who had eaten trout for lunch. She handed him
a bowl and some plates. ‘Can you carry those into the garden?' she asked. ‘It'll be cooler out there and anyway, Millie's going to fall asleep in a minute. I let her stay up, but she ought to be in bed, really. We're going to stay with my aunt in Brighton tomorrow.'

‘Nice,' he said, walking past the rapt Millie.

Julia, carrying a tray behind him said, ‘Up to a point. My aunt doesn't like me, but she loves Millie. We can't stay long. I've got to get back to see my Party Chairman, as soon as he gets back from Bangladesh.' As Joshua put down the dishes she said, ‘You know, Alan Petherbridge has always scared me.' She passed him and put down another dish and some knives and forks. ‘Damn – I forgot the wine.'

‘What do you mean, scared you?' Joshua enquired.

She said over her shoulder as she went back to the kitchen, ‘I don't know why. I know what he is superficially …' She ducked into the kitchen and returned with the bottle and glasses. ‘How he presents himself. There's just something under the surface I always feel, with Petherbridge. I don't know what makes him tick.'

‘It's a clock in his tummy,' murmured sleepy Millie.

‘Yes, darling,' said Julia to Millie, and wrestled with the cork of the bottle until Joshua took it from her.

He said, ‘Gott said something like that. All I see is that Petherbridge is cleverer than most and probably more ruthless. Pragmatic, but that's safer than a man with his head stuffed with ideology.'

‘Pragmatic doesn't mean anything. Well, I know you don't like ideals,' Julia said with a smile.

‘Your party, of course, being led by that great idealist, Carl Chatterton. Who has the job because your party's more terrified of ideology than mine is.'

‘Not for long,' Julia could not resist saying. Joshua opened his mouth to ask a question but she added quickly, ‘The National Government's getting closer. We should concentrate on that. Anything else for the programme? I know Hugh wants us to flirt more but when the show starts up again we'll be in the last weeks of an election. No time for fun and games.'

‘It's been ninety years since the last National Government if you don't count the Second World War. What say we get a researcher on it straight away?'

Julia agreed. ‘At least we can be sure that with a National Government the US can't drag us into a reinvasion of Iraq. No all-party Cabinet would let that happen.'

‘Point worth making,' Joshua said. And, in the darkening garden they went on discussing the programme. Julia found Millie asleep, a red bucket and spade having materialized at her feet while they'd been speaking. She
carried her and the bucket and spade upstairs to bed. While she was gone, Joshua's phone rang. It was Saskia, back now and wanting to see him. He leaned back. To one side was the wall of Julia's house and on the other, separated only by walls and short yards, were the backs of the houses in the next street. Overhead, in one of the houses, a man, woman and child sat in the window eating. Down the street someone started up the radio.

He wondered why Julia didn't try to do a little better for herself. A Member of Parliament earned approximately double the average national wage and, if you added on the allowances and expenses, it was more like eight times as much. He almost asked her when she came downstairs but decided not to. She poured each of them more wine, sat down and suppressed a yawn.

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I came back to a pile of messages and letters from the constituents.' Joshua knew that in a constituency as poor at Julia's – the tenth poorest in the country, wasn't it? – the elected representative would have plenty to deal with.

‘I'll be off,' he said. Julia raised her eyebrows, wryly. Because of some last-minute complications about the filming of
Westminster Unplugged
Joshua had been forced, several months ago, to tell Julia where he was to be found – at Saskia's. Now he felt annoyed. This was the second time today his affair with Saskia had been treated satirically. He didn't like it.

106 St George's Square, London SW1. August 25th, 2015. 11.30 p.m.

After lunch with Joshua – which, as Joshua had guessed, had nothing to do with the election or the party leadership – Edward Gott went to his office at Clough Whitney Credit and Commerce in Leadenhall Street and spent the afternoon on business. He then walked to a planning committee meeting at Freedom House, the Conservative Party's headquarters in a street behind the National Gallery. The party was housed on one vast floor of a circular, green-windowed prize-winning building, largely owned by Lord Haver, and popularly known as the ‘Granny Smith'.

In a large boardroom seventeen key party men and women were assembled, including Damian Jefferson, the Deputy PM, though not likely to be so for much longer, Jenny Bennett, Head of the party's PR and Advertising, Graham Barnsbury, the Party Leader, Lady Jenner, who led the party in the House of Lords, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and Jordan Landsman who was responsible for liaison with the local parties. Also present was Gerry Gordon-Garnett, who, it was known, would become Petherbridge's Principal Private Secretary when he became PM. Petherbridge himself was not present.

At this meeting Edward Gott had all the importance of the man who collects, preserves and advises on the organization's money. He sat solidly beside the Chairman, staring at his agenda paper and knowing there was only one item on his personal agenda, and that was not what he was reading. He had to minimize the expenses in what he saw as a pointless election. As he had expected, the collective mind of the meeting was on more interesting subjects than how the bills would be paid – on a fleet of battle buses to tour the country, public meetings in every city, a leaflet to go through every door in the country. When it was Gott's turn to report he was brief. ‘You will see from the document I've prepared that the party has an overdraft of a million a half. Interest is currently running at £150,000 a year. Our revenues do not cover this sum and will not in the foreseeable future. As you all know, we have recently moved our headquarters into this building, at preferential rates. I must therefore advise that the national election campaign should be planned on the basis of ten thousand pounds a week. This is lower than any of us would like, but it is all I can advise. Indeed, it is all we can produce.'

This sobered the meeting, though not for long, and Gott made no
further comments as it continued, except to ask, neutrally, for costings on each suggestion. These were seldom available. He preserved an expression barely short of gloom. Meanwhile, the temperature in the room rose, was readjusted and rose again. It was as the Chairman of the Policy Group was making her report that a secretary entered the room and leant over his shoulder. She handed him a message from his own secretary at the bank, asking him to call her. Gott apologized and left the room, fearing that Mrs Jasmine Dottrell had bad news of his family. Little else would have caused her to call him in the middle of the meeting.

He was nervous until he saw her face on the monitor. ‘Ed-ward,' she said on her usual, Caribbean rising note, ‘Don't worry. It's only some payments received.' Gott frowned. Surely that was no reason to interrupt him in the middle of a meeting? ‘A Mrs Caris Brookes has sent half a million pounds to the Conservative Party. Lord Haver has set two million. And Mr Julian Finch-O'Brien has asked for account details as he wants to contribute a substantial sum. That was what he called it. And he wished to speak to you personally about the donation.'

Gott had expected Haver to contribute, although less than the two million he had, apparently, given. The other two names were unknown to him. He asked Mrs Dottrell, who had been with him for fifteen years, if she had any information about these donors. She had already checked, and said she had not.

He went back into the meeting, curious about the sudden good fortune for the Conservative Party and resolving to say nothing about it until the details were clearer. He did not want the spendthrifts of the committee on him like a plague of locusts before he was ready.

The meeting broke up at seven thirty and would reconvene at six the next day, and every day after that until the voters went to the polls in October. Graham Barnsbury caught Gott as he left and invited him for a quick drink.

They sat at the back of a shining steel-floored bar by the river, selected more because it was convenient than because it was congenial. They faced a whole-wall screen opposite, where a man and a woman, ten times life size, were having an argument. It wasn't clear what the actors were saying – the sound on wall-screens was almost always bad. They ordered.

Barnsbury leaned forward over the shiny steel table and said, ‘I just wanted a quick word, Gott. I appreciate that as the treasurer you have a duty to ensure the party doesn't overspend – but I couldn't help feeling you were being too discouraging. In future, as a favour to me, would you mind saying what can be done, rather than what can't?'

‘Point taken, Graham,' Gott said easily. ‘It was tactics – better to throw a bucket of cold water over the big spenders at the outset – and I don't need to tell you, the party's financial position is very bad. If we were a
company we'd be bankrupt.' He decided it was fair to Barnsbury to tell him about the offers that had just come in. ‘There might be some light at the end of the tunnel,' he said and told the Party Chairman what he had heard from Jasmine Dottrell. He watched Barnsbury closely as he spoke, but got no impression the other man knew anything about the donations. Barnsbury seemed as surprised as he had been. On the wall the two giants went into a naked clinch.

‘This Mrs Brookes – Caris Brookes – have you ever heard of her?' Barnsbury shook his head. ‘Or Finch-O'Brien?' Gott asked. Barnsbury denied knowledge of him either, adding, ‘Do you think Petherbridge has been doing some intelligent fund-raising?'

‘Could be,' answered Gott. ‘Do you know where he is, by the way? I rang this morning to talk about the meeting and his secretary didn't seem to know where he was.'

‘I suppose he's entitled to a week or two out of contact,' Barnsbury said vaguely. He was thinking about the money. ‘We're out of debt,' he announced. ‘We ought to take over the floor above for the election. It's empty.'

‘Possibly,' said Gott. After the two men parted he got into a taxi and drove to a north-west London suburb. He wondered where Petherbridge was. He was on the verge of becoming Party Leader, possibly the next Prime Minister, if the party won a General Election only two months off. It was a funny time for an ambitious man to disappear.

He banged on the door of an Edwardian semi in a tree-lined street. There, he ate the leftovers from supper – macaroni cheese and beans, warmed up in the microwave, sat in the kitchen chatting with the couple who lived in the house, called another cab and went back to St George's Square, where he had a first-floor flat. Feet up, he called his assistant, Jeremy Saunders. Jeremy, always thin, his face now looking drawn and weary, was on his way back from Heathrow.