Fifty-First State (17 page)

‘What do you mean – transport?' he asked Julia.

‘You know perfectly well. Cars, coaches and taxis. All over the country. They even had ambulances in Dorking, I've heard. What the hell was going on?'

‘People are entitled to apply for free travel in certain circumstances. There was a social security ruling—'

‘Leave out the ambulances. What about the fleets of taxis?'

‘We looked after a disadvantaged group of voters – people unable to get to the polling stations. Effectively disenfranchised by their health.'

‘It's illegal to pay for transport. It has to be done by volunteers.'

‘Who says the transport was paid for?' asked Joshua.

‘Carl Chatterton's already hinting. And you'll have heard the rumours flying about. You got your votes out by collecting the voters and providing free transport. It's a scam.'

‘Chatterton'll have to prove all this, won't he? Tricky – it's all a grey area. Were the drivers volunteers? Were the passengers incapacitated and to what extent? He'd either be in court for years, with appeal after appeal. Or they'll set up a committee—'

‘And Petherbridge will pack it with his own men.'

Joshua shrugged. ‘To the victors the spoils.'

‘It's that American fund-raiser he got in, isn't it?' Julia said. ‘That's who planned all this – the election campaign, the transport scam – and what else, I wonder?'

‘You're in a bit of a sour mood,' he said. ‘I can understand that, in the circumstances. Don't get bitter, Julia.'

Julia stood up and said, in no friendly tone, ‘We'd better get back to where we're supposed to be.'

He stood up briskly, she wearily. Victory – and losing – affects the body as well as the mind.

May 2017

Jenny Henderson writes:

That was the start of it really, that autumn 2015 election. It's hard to believe that was only eighteen months ago.

Edward Gott came round last night. He brought food, some lamb chops and a whole Camembert. My husband looked down on to the bloody greaseproof paper where the chops lay and said, ‘My God. How did you come by these?'

‘I've got friends at the French Embassy,' said Edward.

Sam said, ‘Will they help you get out, if you have to?'

‘It's been mentioned,' Edward said.

For me this exchange was yet another shock. I was quicker to take in information and its implications, however horrible, when I was younger and in a job which demanded I do so. Plainly it was not just Edward Gott, who lived in the corridors – the lobbies, the drawing rooms, the throne rooms – of power, who saw big trouble looming for himself, to the point where he'd have to disappear fast. It was my husband Sam, an ordinary London GP.

‘It's come to that?' I said, staring at Edward. I noticed that suddenly his face had changed. He'd always had a big, square face, not handsome, but energetic and usually cheerful. And now I saw before me a man with lines drawn down from his mouth and a tightness about the eyes. His whole expression was controlled. He might have been the subject of a sixteenth-century portrait of a man of affairs, dressed in a black robe, with one ringed hand, perhaps, on a great book on the table in front of him, a candle burning beside it to signify, perhaps, the fact that his days were numbered – as they would have been in those days, for a man of fifty-six, even without arbitrary arrest, the executioner's blade or assassin's dagger-thrust.

‘It's a possibility,' he said. ‘Are those spooks in the house behind yours still there?'

‘I think so,' I said. ‘It's still not occupied in a normal way and the lights still go on and off at odd times. It's been a year
now. And there's been nothing to see.' An idea struck me. These revelations are like suddenly realizing you're ill. ‘I suppose they're looking at you,' I said to Edward.

‘Could be,' he said.

‘Jesus Christ,' said Sam, disgusted. He spent his days handing out vitamins the National Health wouldn't pay for, dealing with illness often exacerbated by cold and near-malnutrition and once a week he sat on a committee attempting to block the local Health Authority from closing down all the GP practices in the area. They would, he said, reopen them under a different set of rules. He suspected that Rule One would be that treatment must be paid for.

I cooked the chops. We all sat round the kitchen table, with the door of the lit oven door open for warmth, because the central heating was off.

We'd usually eaten there, anyway, when Edward came in for a pot-luck supper. I got used to his short-notice phone calls, often from his car when he was already on the Harrow Road past Paddington and following the signs to Kilburn or Willesden. I often wondered if Sam objected to these sudden descents but he never had. When I asked him he'd say, ‘He's an interesting man. A good talker. He makes a change from bunions and mysterious rashes.' They were like-minded in some ways, both more conservative with a small c than I was. Am? Does the distinction matter any more? They'd make little jokes about my supposed bleeding-heart attitudes. I thought it was because they were worried that I might be cleverer than they were. Not true, but they still worried.

In those days Edward didn't bring food, of course.

I felt, after the grim conversation about the spies overlooking my house from the back, that I ought to try and strike a happier note. But I realized the shadows hanging over us were too heavy. What could I do? Suggest a sing-song? So all I said was, ‘Do you remember when you came here after Petherbridge's election? You were starting to look at the accounts.'

‘You came with a crate of wine and a bottle of brandy, I seem to recall,' Sam said.

‘I needed it,' Edward said. ‘That was the day of the Opening of Parliament. Queen's Speech. And after I'd had my little chat with the new PM.'

‘Which you didn't actually tell us about,' I said. I still felt annoyed about that. It had been stupid of Edward – but then,
although intelligent in many ways, there were some areas where he was no brighter than the average man in the street. In fact, to say that is to insult the man in the street, who might have shown more wisdom than Edward Gott.

‘I was shocked.' he told me. ‘I needed to think.' He added, ‘Even now I wonder if I could have done more to prevent all this.' As if to emphasize what he said, the lights went out. I went to get the emergency lights and lit a couple of candles for the table.

‘I'll open the brandy,' said Sam.

‘I don't think you could have done anything, Edward,' I said. ‘It was planned. We were all deceived.'

Edward took his glass from Sam. ‘We were fools,' he said.

10 Downing Street, London SW1. November 12th, 2015. 6.30 p.m.

My Government will extend the provisions of the Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act to include British subjects under its provisions.

My Government will introduce the Sale of Ministry of Defence Lands Sale Bill to enable the Government of the United States to assume full ownership of and responsibility for specified air force bases in Great Britain.

There were other provisions in the speech, of course, including, among others, the setting up of a committee to review the performance and financing of the National Health Service and another to look at the progress (or lack of it) of the Thames Gateway project. These anodyne proposals were ignored in the furore over the proposed extension of the government's powers to arrest and detain its own citizens. The old Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act of 2001 provided powers to seize and imprison, without trial and for as long as it saw fit, any foreign national suspected of terrorist activities. This had been censured in the European courts and questioned by civil liberties organizations in Britain. The proposed extension would apply to anyone, British or not, whom the government suspected of being involved in terrorist activities. There would be an outcry from MPs and civil liberties groups about this new provision, which amounted to a licence to seize and imprison anyone at all.

More controversial still was the proposal to hand over airbases to the USA. These had, effectively, become USAF bases after the Second World War, during the Cold War. Now the plan was that Lakenheath, Mildenhall, Hamscott Common, Feltwell, Fairford, Alcolnbury, Thwaite and Molesworth, in all more than fifteen miles of bombers, weaponry and detection and communication systems, would be directly in the hands of the Pentagon.

There had, of course, been no disturbance as the Queen, seated on her throne and wearing her glittering crown and spectacles, read out from the parchment the speech written for her by Petherbridge's government.

But as the Queen was escorted from the Chamber a group including
Edward Gott surrounded the Lord Chancellor, cutting off his stately progress. As the Queen walked out, apparently unaware, or unwilling to acknowledge the hubbub behind her, a Conservative peer held the Chancellor by the shoulder of his robe and asked, ‘Was that the Queen of England inviting foreign troops on to British soil?'

‘Was she giving the bases to them? Are they Embassies?' shouted someone else.

The group round the Chancellor was getting bigger, pushing and shoving. Alarmed security men and police pushed their way through the mob to reach the beleaguered Chancellor, whose wig had fallen sideways, and hustle him out of the Chamber.

‘Bastard!' yelled one of the noble Lords as he was hurried out.

‘Fuck me,' said Lord James of Norwich, turning to Lord Gott, ‘I've never seen anything like that before.'

Gott refused invitations to join others to discuss the matter. He had to return to his office at Clough Whitney Credit and Commerce. Large oil deposits had been found in the Pacific, north-east of the Barrier Reef. Gott had word that Vladimir Kutuzov, the feared Russian energy baron, was buying in ahead of exact predictions about how big the field was. The world was starving for fuels. Gott had to decide immediately whether to follow Kutuzov on behalf of his clients, or hang back, wait for certainty and then, if the reports were favourable, get trampled in the rush to buy. He was standing looking out of his window on to Leadenhall Street, waiting for his trusted secretary, Jasmine Dottrell, to bring him in some pages of figures when his private phone rang. He was surprised to see on the display screen the Prime Minister's Principal Private Secretary, Gerry Gordon-Garnett, blond and smiling, and even more surprised to be invited to a meeting at Downing Street at six. Gott accepted – he could hardly refuse – but he could not understand why Alan Petherbridge, who had just, via his sovereign, issued his dictats, some likely to upset his own party just as much as the opposition, whose phone must be ringing off the hook, and who had a nest of political hornets buzzing round his head, wanted to see him now. At least having to get to Downing Street prompted a decision on the oil finds. When Jasmine brought in the pages, he handed them to back to her and said. ‘Put all this Pacific oil information away, Jasmine. I won't be needing it. Just make sure I can find it if I want it later.'

Sitting opposite Alan Petherbridge in the Prime Minister's office, Gott still wondered why he was there. What had possessed Petherbridge to invite him here on the day of the opening of Parliament when he must have much more important business to deal with, not least the uproar inside his own party about the proposal to hand over the bases? Why him? Why now? On the way to Downing Street he had felt a little surge of hope, of ambition left over from the old days. Was Petherbridge going to
offer him a job, he wondered, a place in the Cabinet? He pushed the thought away. Those days had gone. The subject had to be money – party money. But what about it?

He sipped his whisky while Petherbridge drank a glass of water. He waited.

‘Well, Gott,' Petherbridge said with some satisfaction. ‘Here we are. That's really it, isn't it? Queen's Speech over – time to get on with the business of government. I was sorry to see you in that fracas round the Lord Chancellor.'

‘Things got out of hand,' said Gott.

‘That was a pity,' Petherbridge said, no mercy in his tone.

Gott was impassive. No one had ever referred to Alan Petherbridge as a charmer, he thought. No one he knew had reminisced about pleasant hours spent in his company. He was never going to be top of anyone's party list. But Gott knew now what Jeremy had discovered about the PM's background. That sort of upbringing was not likely to make a man easy in his skin. In fact, Gott reflected, you had to feel a certain amount of pity for the poor bastard, however unpleasant he was. Gott had a spasm of self-congratulation. ‘
Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner,
' he said to himself. This charitable mood was destined to last about a minute longer.

‘What did you think of the Queen's Speech?' Petherbridge asked.

‘Controversial,' Gott told him. ‘There'll be trouble with the backbenchers. I don't need to tell you that. They aren't going to find it easy to support ordinary British men and women being picked up and banged up so easily—'

‘You know the system,' Petherbridge said easily. ‘Ask for twice what you want and settle for half.'

So – if Petherbridge had not asked him here for his views on the Queen's Speech, and tactics to get his measures through, why, Gott asked himself again, was he here?

He tried again. ‘The same rules apply, I suppose, to the bill about handing over the airbases to the US?'

Petherbridge sat back in his chair. His face was very still and his tone icy when he replied. ‘Oh, no, Edward. There'll be no compromises there.' He continued, in the same cold way, saying, ‘I haven't had the opportunity to thank you for your letter of congratulation. It was one of the better expressed. It's astonishing how the most capable and intelligent men seem to fall to pieces when the moment comes to write a simple letter.'