Goodfellowe MP (15 page)

His eyes wandered to the huge oil canvas which hung on the half-panelled wall on the opposite side of the room. It depicted a scene from the Napoleonic Wars, a great naval engagement of flame and ferocity in which Nelson was locked in combat with a French battleship. The Frenchie always reminded Goodfellowe of Beryl. She was dismasted, her rigging torn like cobwebs and her gunwales reduced to matchwood, but still there was defiance, still her cannon blazed, even as she was going down she refused to give up. And one of the pieces always seemed to be pointing directly at him. He had noticed that wherever he sat in that room, one of the Frenchie guns
was always aimed in his direction. The muzzle followed him around like eyes on a Picasso. As Beryl would, every day throughout the next election.

He was concluding that he would need not only a blind eye but also a deaf ear if he were to survive a campaign with Beryl when his attention was distracted by a member of the Opposition who was standing to pursue a Point of Order. Betty Ewing was complaining in persistent manner and broad Birmingham tones that her amendment had not been called in spite of the fact that it raised matters of fundamental importance to the Bill.

‘I appreciate you won’t give reasons for not selecting my amendment,’ she protested to the Chairman, ‘but can I encourage you to reconsider? We’re told by Europe that we’ve got to change the ownership rules for British newspapers, but it’s like playing games with mirrors. Who owns the newspapers anyway? In fact, how do we know this isn’t simply a great European prank to ensure that British newspapers end up in the hands of foreign owners?’

‘They already are,’ one of her colleagues interjected drily, while the Committee Chairman, Frank Breedon, a curmudgeon and particularly so after lunch, drummed his fingers impatiently.

‘The point I’m trying to make, Mr Breedon, is simply this. There is no logic in changing the rules of ownership if there is no way of knowing who the owners are. Shareholder lists are practically incomprehensible. They tell you that the Tom Dick & Harry Investment Trust owns shares, but who in turn owns Tom and Dick and Harry? This Bill will be meaningless
without an amendment requiring a far more rigorous identification of anyone with a beneficial interest in the ownership of a newspaper. So that we know precisely who they are. Spelled out, on a central register. We can’t allow foreign owners to hide behind all sorts of incomprehensible corporate structures.’

Several Members were on their feet trying to intervene and the Minister, too, was rising.

‘Order! Order!’ the Chairman barked. His voice was habitually loud, an attempt to compensate for his deafness and what was more than a measure of ineptitude. ‘I’ve had a Point of Order from Mrs Ewing. Let’s deal with that first.’ He nodded in the direction of the Minister.

‘Further to that point of order, Mr Breedon, can I assure the Committee that such fears are unwarranted? There are rules of disclosure required by the Stock Exchange which guard against covert ownership …’ – he ignored the snorts of derision and experience from across the floor – ‘and anyone who wilfully evaded them would be liable to prosecution.’

‘How can they be prosecuted if we don’t know who they are?’ Betty Ewing threw at him. ‘They could run rings around the regulations. We need a central register.’

‘What the Honourable Lady proposes is simply not practical,’ the Minister continued. He paused to moisten lips desiccated by a lifetime of reading out civil service briefs. ‘If those shares are owned by a pension fund, for example, are we supposed to make
changes to a register every time someone leaves his job or dies? We might be registering literally thousands of such changes every day. No, it wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work.’

Amidst chatter on all sides another Opposition Member had risen to pursue the matter. ‘I don’t often play the Puritan, Mr Chairman, but if we don’t know who the owners are this whole Bill is rendered utterly and completely and stupidly pointless. Like so much else of what comes out of Brussels.’ He smiled as even Government members responded loudly to his last point.

‘It would greatly assist the Committee if members would come to order. And if Puritanism wasn’t intermingled quite so freely with points of political principle,’ Breedon interjected, offering a little joke under pressure. It didn’t succeed. As the Chairman turned to consult on a point of procedure with his officials, crossfire erupted beyond the reach of his deaf ear.

‘We need a central register,’ Betty Ewing persisted.

‘It’s another Brussels bungle,’ added her colleague.

‘We can’t bury the Bill in bureaucracy,’ the Minister complained, gesticulating across the floor to the Opposition. ‘Why should we impose heavier burdens on newspapers than on other industries?’

‘Because newspapers are different.’

The collective attention of the Committee Room was suddenly drawn to a new player in the game. The Minister turned to look in surprise and not altogether with warmth at Goodfellowe who, from his seat in the back row, shifted uncomfortably. He hadn’t intended to intervene, his attentions had been
elsewhere, on the gun barrel, on the constituency correspondence. Anyway, Government backbenchers weren’t supposed to rush forward to prop up Opposition Members engaged in duels with Ministers. But there it was. It had slipped out, almost unintentionally, rather in the manner that a dish might fall out from behind a partially closed cupboard door. Lillicrap, the master of closed cupboards, looked on in concern.

‘They are different,’ Goodfellowe repeated, feeling forced to justify himself. ‘We have always set newspapers apart from other industries. That’s why they don’t pay VAT, for instance.’

‘And why they get handed so many knighthoods and peerages,’ someone from the Opposition quipped.

‘Government grovel,’ another added. ‘You’d think there was an election coming.’

‘Did anyone mention Maxwell?’ a third enquired.

The Minister turned to mouth a silent but unmistakable oath at Goodfellowe. Like a gun muzzle exploding.

‘Order! Order!’ Chairman Breedon demanded gruffly, his attention now back with them and aware he had lost control. He was in tetchy mood, needing to reassert his authority, and his irritation focused on Goodfellowe. ‘Frankly it’s surprising and exceedingly annoying that someone of the Honourable Gentleman’s experience should try to turn this Committee into a school playground.’

Goodfellowe began to protest – he’d stated no more than a point of fact – but Breedon was having none
of it. ‘Making disruptive comments from the back row may have been excusable in the Honourable Gentleman’s classroom but no one is going to get away with it in mine.’

Goodfellowe began to rise to his feet. ‘Further to the Honourable Lady’s Point of Order …’

‘No, sir!’ Breedon’s hand slapped down on his table, sending his steel grey forelock and various items of paper fluttering. ‘I have made my ruling. The amendment is unacceptable. The Honourable Gentleman’s intervention is unacceptable. That is the end of the matter.’

Goodfellowe was left astonished by the outburst. What on earth had he done to merit such treatment? His intervention was admittedly ill-considered, unorthodox perhaps, but scarcely objectionable. The passions being roused by this Bill seemed to require more explanation than that provided simply by the Chairman’s post-prandial discomforts. He looked to Lillicrap seated at the end of the front row, beseeching him for support. Lillicrap shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

They were seated at the best table in The Kremlin, next to the Tsar’s piano, which still bore the scars of its liberation from the Winter Palace in the form of angry bullet holes. Goodfellowe’s mood was similarly apocalyptic. What had been intended as an occasion to mark Mickey’s twenty-fifth birthday – ‘Take me out to dinner, somewhere very public. I’ll wear a disgraceful dress. The men will all drool and the women will be wondering what it is you’ve got. That
way we’ll both enjoy it.’ – had instead turned into something of a post-mortem on the afternoon’s proceedings in Standing Committee. Goodfellowe seemed to have a mind for little else in spite of Mickey’s very evident attractions.

‘He just went for me. Out of the blue. Bizarre. Does he dislike me so much?’

‘It was probably nothing personal, Tom, you simply happened to be handy, a convenient target. Breedon is a parliamentary eunuch, one of those Members who never had the chance to make it big. He’s resented never being a Minister and probably thinks you’re an ungrateful bloody fool for having given it all up. Now he’s become chairman of some committee and he wants to show he’s the biggest swinger in town. He’s going through one of those phases.’

‘What do you mean “one of those phases"?’

‘You know, those phases you men go through. Always having to prove their masculinity. Doing push-ups and going to the gym so you’re fit enough to chase bimboes. As if the bimboes you lot chase are ever likely to run away.’

‘I do not chase bimboes,’ he corrected her, a trifle stiffly.

‘Why not, Tom?’

‘What?’

‘Why not?’ The question was in earnest. ‘You can’t cut yourself off from half of humanity simply because you’ve had some terrible luck.’

Anyone else he might have told to mind their own bloody business, but not Mickey. ‘It’s not a thing I care to think much about,’ he responded defensively.

‘Look, I’m the agony aunt, remember? And of course you think about it. That’s why you take so much interest in my sex life, because it helps compensate for your own. It’s also why you’ve been staring into your custard all evening, rather than at me. It’s not that you don’t like this rather fetching little dress which just about manages to cling to me, it’s that you like it all too much. Every other man in the restaurant is staring at me, but you won’t allow yourself to.’

‘Mickey,’ he protested. ‘You’re my secretary. And, if it comes to that, my friend.’

‘I know, Tom. But in truth I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about someone else, another friend, a partner. You deserve it. And I think you need it.’

‘Not possible.’ He shook his head, then shook it again more slowly. ‘There’s a part of me I have to lock away.’

‘You lock it away and all it does is kick at the door trying to get out. It does you no good, Tom. You’ve taken enough kicks as it is.’

‘I am married, Mickey. That means a great deal to me.’

‘Good for you, Tom. I mean that. I know the sacrifices you make for your wife. I get the bills, remember? But you sacrifice too much of yourself, and one day you’ll find there’s nothing left to give. And don’t forget I’ve been brought up by a Jewish mother. I’ve got an hereditary doctorate in guilt.’

She was pushing it, really pushing it and maybe too far. But someone had to, for his own good, and who else was there? He was studying his plate with
the fiercest intensity. Slowly his head rose, his eyes filled with anguish, and more than a little fear.

‘This is a hell of a long way from Frank Bloody Breedon.’

‘Oh, he’s no problem,’ she responded gaily, aware that a change of mood was called for. ‘He hates you all on a Tuesday and Thursday afternoon because the Standing Committee forces him to rush his lunch.’

‘Acid indigestion.’

‘Good grief, no. Her name’s Victoria.’

‘You mean …?’

‘That’s right. He’s going through “one of those phases". Taken to the gym and everything. Sends his secretary out for little presents – toiletries, scarves, jewellery. Nothing too expensive. And not the sort of thing you do for the wife.’

‘But how do you know?’

‘Because you men are bone idle when it comes to lechery and lust. Victoria is a researcher, one of the American students we get over here for a year’s work experience. So on Tuesday Brother Breedon gives his secretary twenty quid and sends her out for “some little token” as he describes it, a birthday present for a niece. He seems to have acquired a lot of nieces recently. Anyway, she comes back with a set of earrings which by Wednesday afternoon are dangling from Victoria’s little lobes. Even you should be able to figure that one out.’

Goodfellowe leaned back in his chair as though trying to distance himself from something deeply unpalatable. He looked at Mickey in astonishment,
as if seeing something for the first time. Then, his expression still incredulous, he started to shake with laughter. It struck him with such force that he had to stifle it behind a starched napkin. ‘You are good for the soul, you know that?’ he gasped, wiping bleary eyes.

‘I reach the parts other bimboes cannot reach, you mean.’

‘I suppose so.’ His face shone with gratitude. ‘So, Breedon thinks – and I quote you accurately, I hope, Miss Ross – that I’m an ungrateful bloody fool. He’ll be a complete misanthrope after every lunch. And this is the man I’ve got to spend every Tuesday and Thursday with for the next three months. Great. You’ve cheered me up no end.’

‘What are birthday parties for?’

Suddenly someone else had appeared at their side. It was Elizabeth. ‘I want you to know that when Mickey booked the table for you, Tom, she also asked for an enormous cake out of which would leap a scantily clad super-jock, but I told her The Kremlin wasn’t that sort of place. Although maybe it should be.’ A hand fell gently on Goodfellowe’s shoulder as she inspected the table to ensure that all was as she had prescribed. ‘Perhaps your Mr Breedon would eat here even more frequently if it were.’

‘Save me, I’m not going to keep bumping into him here as well, am I?’ Goodfellowe muttered.