Fifty-First State (9 page)

Muldoon's invitations dried up completely. His club, White's, asked for his resignation. An eerie silence hung over Downing Street as the
parliamentary session came to a close. Muldoon put in a call to Alan Petherbridge, inviting him to a meeting at Downing Street. Petherbridge had no choice but to go, though he did not know why Muldoon wanted him and did not look forward to the visit.

Muldoon and his wife were at that time supervising the removal of their property. It was six in the evening. In the drawing room, where several tea chests stood open, Muldoon grabbed Petherbridge by the arm. ‘I've got to tell you, Alan, exactly what you're facing if we win – and if you win.'

Petherbridge, his suspicion that Muldoon was half-drunk confirmed, looked down at the hand and said, ‘Enlighten me.'

‘Even if you end up with everybody calling you Prime Minister and going to tea with the Queen once a week, you've had it. They'll tell you what to do. You can't resist them.'

‘Who do you mean?' asked Petherbridge.

‘The Americans – the Yanks – of course. Who the hell do you think I mean?'

Muldoon's wife came to the open door and looked in. Her face showed icy fury and her expression said, ‘What is the fool doing now?' Muldoon, under that gaze, took his hand from Petherbridge's arm. Mrs Muldoon beckoned in two men, who carried out one of the tea chests.

Muldoon threw himself into a chair covered by a dust sheet and looked up at Petherbridge. ‘Do you think I wanted those Marines landing at Hamscott Common, when that poor girl got killed? Do you think I had any say in that? That's what I'm trying to tell you. They want to raid Hamscott Common – they do. They want to bomb Syria from our bases – they do. And they're going to reinvade Iraq – they'll do that, too. And you'll go along with it. That's the reality – you'll go along with it. You'd better believe it. Don't kid yourself, Alan. Look at me. I've ended up hated and booted out – and I never had any choice.'

‘Is this why you invited me here?' Petherbridge said. ‘Because I have a meeting.'

The two removal men came back, hesitated and, at Petherbridge's signal, collected another tea chest.

Muldoon had closed his eyes. He opened them again and said to Petherbridge, ‘You may think you're very clever. Wait till you find out you're a puppet on a string.' Then he closed his eyes again and Petherbridge left. In Whitehall he called a cab. ‘The US Embassy,' he ordered.

7 Adam Street, Shepherd's Bush, London W12. August 20th, 2015. 6 p.m.

William and Lucy Frith came back into their flat and put their bags down. ‘Nice to be back?' suggested William to his wife. She was tanned, her long dark hair pony-tailed. She smiled and said, ‘Not specially.'They had enjoyed their economical fortnight in Cos, visiting the ruins, taking boat trips, sitting outside small restaurants in the evening and now here they were, back in their upstairs flat in the small Edwardian house in their small back street in West London, faced with a resumption of the daily grind.

‘Next year,' William told her. In a year's time they might have saved enough to get the two-bedroomed flat, with a garden. Then they would hope for a baby.

Lucy smiled again. ‘Next year,' she agreed.

‘OK – you load the washing machine and I'll open the wine and put out the cheese and olives—' he began, then the phone rang. The news, William understood as he listened to Lucy's voice, was not good. ‘We only just got back, Dad. We didn't take the mobile because it's too expensive abroad. What's the matter? Is it Mum – is she all right?'

William's face was rueful as he unzipped a case and began to take out their clothes. He carried an armful into the kitchen. How long had they been back? Five minutes? Not even that. And already the Sutcliffes were ruining the good effects of Lucy's holiday for her. She'd spent the last fifty weeks of the year as a sister in the orthopaedic ward at Hammersmith Hospital looking after smashed-up motorbike riders, old people with their chalky bones in multiple fractures, skate boarders and women whose husbands had beaten them with tyre levers and baseball bats. She'd had a fortnight in the sun and they were hardly back when bloody Joe Sutcliffe rang up, spoiling everything for her. ‘Is it Mum?' Of course it was her mum. It always was. ‘Is she all right?' No, of course she wasn't – never was and never, William thought, ever would be, as far as he could see.

Marie Sutcliffe, Lucy's mother, had always suffered with her nerves, as her husband described it. There had never been a more sophisticated diagnosis because Marie resisted any treatment other than that given to her by her sympathetic GP – too sympathetic, William thought. A local doctor, a practitioner trained in the Sutcliffes' ways and only called in when things got particularly bad. Sensible Grace Frith, William's mother, told him she thought that even in this day and age situations like this were
more common than anyone would believe. The family accommodates itself to the sufferer – their form of behaviour becomes, for them, the norm – no treatment is sought, or, if it is, without much enthusiasm. This can go on for decades, sometimes for ever, unless something comes along to force change. His mother's opinions brought William little comfort.

Lucy had grown up knowing she must be quiet, obedient and careful and never, in any circumstances bring upsetting news into the house. Her small woes – toothache, nasty school dinners, bullying, homework problems – she confided to her father, who dealt with them as best he could. As a family the Sutcliffes never watched anything difficult on TV. If, for example, Joe misjudged the time and caught the last part of the news before the football results, Marie, entering the room and faced with a street scene following a bomb blast, the debris of an air crash strewn across a field, even an announcer reporting a political crisis, would open her mouth in a silent ‘Oh' and have to be led off to bed, given a tranquillizer, and calmed down. The effects of this might last for days as pale, silent and tottery, she went about her household tasks. As a child Lucy had been careful not to get lost, or overstay at a friend's house – for Marie was largely agoraphobic and could not leave the house to come and find her. And believed, moreover, that danger lay outside the house – for herself, her child, even for her husband. Marie could go to the village on errands and to church to take part in church activities, but had not, for example, been able to visit her parents in hospital before they died. Her husband, a policeman, had to avoid overtime and, when offered plain-clothes duties, refused. He became a highly competent bureaucrat, but a man who stayed put in his office, coming and going on time.

At one time Lucy had thought of becoming a doctor. When she mentioned it her mother began to cry, wordlessly and inconsolably and was forced to stay in bed for almost a week, taking heavy sedatives. The training, of course, would have meant Lucy's leaving home for many years to study, perhaps never to return. Lucy, young and still not questioning the family rule that her mother should not be upset at any time, did nursing training at the nearest hospital, some ten miles from where they lived. She was usually driven to and collected from the hospital by Joe and, when this was not possible, she took the bus and neither of them told Marie. But youth is strong and its impulses often irresistible. One day she had been obliged to tell a young doctor who had taken her out that she must, absolutely must, be home by ten, or her mother would be very worried. She had also been obliged to keep the family secret about exactly how worried Marie would be, and what form the worry would take. She knew if she told the whole truth the young doctor might ask searching medical questions and offer solutions. The questions would be hard to answer and all the solutions hopeless.

The following day, after her father dropped nineteen-year-old Lucy at the hospital in her probationer nurse uniform, she simply walked to the railway station and took a train to London. Next day, she had signed on at a London teaching hospital, where she went slightly mad, had an affair with a married, alcoholic heart specialist and, a year after the crash, met a young man who had snapped a tendon playing Sunday football. She and William were married a year later.

During the Friths' married life the Sutcliffes had never visited them in London. Marie believed the city to be noisy, dirty, dangerous and full of untrustworthy foreigners. The Friths always visited the Sutcliffes in Basset, the pretty Yorkshire village where the couple – Joe now retired – lived. William endured the depressing visits, watched his words and expressions and counted the hours until they could get away. He could never understand why some form of treatment for Marie had not been insisted on, years before. He suspected her of having no great desire to change things and was indignant about the constraints that had been put on his wife during her youth.

The phone call, because Marie would have spent the last fortnight worrying about food poisoning and air crashes, was par for the course. All William did was groan inwardly until he came back into the living room with a plate of olives in his hands and heard Lucy saying, ‘Dad! You can't come here. There's no room. And how's Mum going to manage…?' As she spoke she was staring wide-eyed at William, like a woman in a horror film. William was shaking his head and mouthing, ‘No!' at her. He could not believe it. The Sutcliffes never came to London. If they were coming – why? It was out of the question, anyway. The flat was too small. Both he and Lucy worked shifts. Marie feared the city and Joe, whose devotion to, and care of his daughter, William couldn't fault, didn't much like him. William felt much the same about Joe. When the two families – William's and Lucy's – had met at the wedding they only got along by making a considerable effort. William's parents, formerly both teachers, were old school, old Labour,
Guardian
-reading lefties. It was lucky that they had retired to Spain, so the two families rarely met.

Lucy was saying, ‘Dad! You know Mum hates London. It'll make her worse.'William watched his wife. Joe was doing all the talking. It couldn't happen, William decided – not Joe and Marie here. He remembered an early visit to Basset, when he and Lucy had broken out of the house to go to the local pub for a drink together. Irritable after thirty-six hours confined to the house, William, half-finishing his pint at one go, had said to his wife, ‘You're a nurse, Lucy. Why don't you get your mother some treatment?'

‘She doesn't want any,' Lucy replied weakly. ‘She gets very upset if it's suggested.'

‘So the only treatment she gets is when it all gets out of hand and Dr Feel-good comes round with his tablets, or a nice little injection?'

Lucy nodded. Defensively she said, ‘There's nothing wrong with Mum as long as she isn't upset. She manages the house and plays her part in the church activities – cake stalls and the like. Even the doctor had to admit that forcing her into some kind of therapy and, probably, permanent heavy medication might make things worse. This isn't straightforward medicine, William. There are no guarantees. The cure can sometimes be worse than the disease.'

‘How would you know? No one's tried,' said William. He added that in his, unqualified, opinion, Marie might be better off now if her father had taken a firm line with his wife earlier on and forced her to face the world.

‘You can't just say all she needed was a kick up the behind.'

‘I didn't say—' William denied.

‘No – but it was what you meant,' said Lucy, silencing him, because it was true. ‘Anyway – yes, she was a sensitive child – when Dad met her she was working in the local wool shop. And apparently, my birth triggered an awful episode, post-natal depression I suppose, and after that Dad was afraid it might happen again. So,' Lucy said, rather loudly, ‘yes – it's a mess but it's our mess and we deal with it and what about another drink.' Then Joe had came in and stayed for an uneasy drink until it became plain that he had come, at Marie's behest, to fetch them home.

And now he could hear his wife making arrangements for the Sutcliffes'arrival, in a day's time. Shaking his head at Lucy, he got a corkscrew from the kitchen, opened the bottle of wine they'd brought home and as soon as she'd put the phone down, handed her a glass. She sat down heavily on the sofa. Lucy had not shed the habit, ingrained in childhood, of not talking about Marie's condition. She sat staring at him unhappily and William waited.

‘So what's all this about?' demanded William, not liking his own tone of voice when he heard it. Lucy looked towards the window. There was a primary school on the other side of the road they lived in and William saw she was already weighing the effect of the pupils' noise on Marie.

‘It's the school holidays,' he said.

‘I know.' She couldn't mean she thought the Sutcliffes would be staying until the children came back to school in two or three weeks' time. He still couldn't really believe they were coming at all.

Lucy's eye went to the umbrella plant on the floor by the window. It had been a foot high when they bought it, just after they were married and was now a big glossy plant, over five feet high. But Marie disliked plants of any kind in the house. They made her heart sink, she said.

‘I'm not getting rid of Charlie,' William said instantly. Lucy sighed. William pressed his point. ‘They'll have to go to a B and B.'

‘Mum can't go to a B and B,' Lucy responded tonelessly.

‘She hasn't left Basset for nearly thirty years but she's going to. So what's going to stop her from staying at a B and B – or a hotel, if you like? We can't do it, Lucy – you're on nights next week. I get in at one or two in the morning. How will we get enough sleep? It won't work, you know it won't.'

All Lucy, normally articulate, said was, ‘Mum wants us all to be together.'

‘What for? What's wrong?' William asked. He half-expected Lucy to tell him either Joe or Marie was seriously ill and in London for specialist treatment. Instead she said, ‘It's RAF Thwaite – you know, about ten miles from the village? Apparently the attacks on Syria used planes from there. So last week a suicide bomber drove a van full of explosives up to the perimeter and charged it. He didn't get in. He was shot and the van exploded. A couple of American airmen were injured by the flying debris. Anyway, yesterday, before Mum had even heard about this she saw two tank loads of soldiers coming past the house. They'd come through the village for some reason. Dad had been shopping and when he came in he found her unconscious on the front room floor. Not unconscious, really, more like catatonic, her eyes were open. You know, these fugue states she goes into. Dad called the doctor. He came and while he was preparing the injection he said something about the disturbing news from Thwaite. Dad had heard about it in the village but he obviously wasn't going to tell Mum – but the doctor, stupidly, did. And she seemed to hear, even in the state she was in, and she began to cry and wail – they had trouble calming her down enough to deliver the injection—' Lucy looked at William and what she saw made her break off. ‘Anyway, she's very depressed now.'