Political Suicide (18 page)

But after a few minutes, Sue strayed on to wider issues.

“I don't want to talk about these people as cases. They're not cases, they're not problems, they're people. And I sometimes think it would be a better country to live in if we listened now and then to what they said, what they were thinking. Jerry here's been talking about democracy. Fine. But none of the parties believes in
putting the issues directly to the people—by referenda, for example. And yet, in this electronic day and age it would be a perfectly simple thing to do. Why shouldn't ordinary people have their say about local government reorganization, about schools—yes, about hanging, about nuclear disarmament too?”

Jerry's mask of a face had become a good deal more tense. The brothers certainly did not believe in referenda. That wasn't their idea of democracy, Good heavens no! My God!—
think
what people would probably vote for! You'd never get any truly radical ideas through their thick skulls! Sutcliffe saw Jerry's hand on his right leg begin a rhythmic, involuntary tapping on his knee. She had strayed outside that space from
here
to
here
that constituted her freedom of opinion.

“Yes—why shouldn't ordinary people have their say, directly, about nuclear disarmament, the most important subject of all? My opinion on that, by the way, is a bit different from Jerry's.” (The drumming of the fingers became heavier, more insistent. Nuclear disarmament was a matter of holy writ.) “Personally I think the only thing that matters is general disarmament. I think it's daft for Britain to think disarming unilaterally would make a scrap of difference—as daft as those people in Sheffield who've declared the town a nuclear free zone.” (“Christ,” said Jerry's henchman, beside Sutcliffe. “The cow!”) “It's just silliness to think you can contract out like that. And I strongly suspect that most ordinary people would agree with me. But the point I want to make is that it's possible to
ask
ordinary people what they think about things like that. And the more you ask them, the more they will stop thinking
of themselves as helpless, as the cast-offs of society, just voting-fodder at election-time, despised in non-election years. They might even feel themselves to be real parts of a living democracy . . .”

And Sue went on in this vein for some time. And as Sutcliffe slipped out of the hall, his last view of the party on the dais was of those taut, tense, muscular fingers of Jerry's, tap-tap-tapping on his knees as he hid his irritation at Sue's perfidy beneath a mask of polite interest in her opinions.

The night air was good, after so much hot air. Whatever the streets of Bootham were normally like at nine-thirty on a weekday evening—and Sutcliffe imagined they must be pretty dead apart from the strains of music from some degraded disco or other—tonight there was a fair concourse of people, and a faint hum of talk. Some had come out behind him from the Town Hall, and had dashed for the nearest phone: getting the story of Sue's declaration of dissent to London for the late editions, Sutcliffe guessed, for the Labour meeting had held a fairly high proportion of media people to a fairly low proportion of real ones. There were other people around too, though, quite a few streaming from the direction of the Corn Exchange: jolly, middle-class people, mostly coming from the Social Democratic jamboree. Did that augur badly for the Conservative vote in Antony Craybourne-Fisk's natural class-catchment area?

Curiosity impelled Sutcliffe to stroll towards the Corn Exchange, and he was just in time to see the two guest
speakers saying their farewells to a little knot of supporters, and tearing themselves away and into their taxis as if it was the dearest wish of both of them to return to Bootham at the earliest possible opportunity. Sutcliffe strolled on, but on an impulse he looked back, and saw that the little knot of Social Democrats had evaporated, leaving the tall, lean, rather lost figure of Oliver Worthing looking around him uncertainly on the grey pavement. Sutcliffe turned back.

“Mr Worthing?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Sutcliffe. You won't know me, but you may have heard of me: I'm in Bootham looking into the death of James Partridge.”

“Oh—ah—yes.” Oliver Worthing looked at him with frank interest. “Actually, I had heard. No doubt we all have. You can't expect something like that not to get talked about, especially during a by-election.”

“I was wondering—I know this is a lot to ask—if we could have a talk somewhere, some time. I'm willing to fit it in any time that suits your schedule.”

“I'm afraid that means breakfast-time or late at night. But what about now? I'm just wondering where I left my car. We could go back to my flat and have some coffee.”

“That would be splendid, if you're not too exhausted.”

“I'm like a worn-out dishcloth, but I'll be this way until polling day. I wonder, did I leave my car down by the swimming pool?”

In the event, he had. On the way to his flat in a middle-class suburb of Bootham they talked about the meeting, the prospects for the Social Democrats, the
feeling on the doorsteps. They didn't get on to the topic in hand until they were in Oliver Worthing's kitchen and he was making coffee.

“Instant, I'm afraid. The penalty of accepting coffee with a ‘new bachelor.' ”

“Is that the expression? I take it you're divorced.”

“That's right. I'm a single-parent family who's lost his family—the most deprived and unsympathized-with group there is. Perhaps if I get in I'll put together a private member's bill to give them some rights. Yes, my wife left me not long after the last election. Things had been falling apart before then, but the political involvement didn't help. It tends to be a full-time thing, or nothing. We're still friends. That's what they all say these days, isn't it? What does it amount to? She sends me a card on my birthday, and I send her one a day or two after hers. We're polite when I go round for the kids. I gather the Partridges broke up too.”

“That's right.”

“They kept it pretty quiet. I never heard rumours—and these things get about, as a rule, even across party lines. Was it just a trial separation?”

“In name. She was doing a minimum of wifely things until Christmas, in case he had second thoughts. But I haven't come across anything to suggest that he was having them. Did you know him well? Did you know him at all?”

“Good question. Usually you don't do much more than glimpse your opponents at the final count. Here you are with your names coupled day after day on TV or radio, and you never meet. I did have a
little
more to do with Partridge than that.”

“Why was that?”

“There were one or two small things connected with the Council—I'm on the Health Committee, and he was at the Ministry for a time. Mostly small things that were settled by phone. The only time I actually went to see him was about a student at College—a very bright girl, desperate to go to university. Her father—filthy rich garage owner—refused to chip in his contribution: didn't believe in girls going to university, wasted when they got married, you know the kind of garbage. Jim Partridge got it settled very quietly and tactfully. He could have made more fuss about it, elevated it to a matter of principle, but then the girl would probably never have gone to Cambridge.”

“What about the General Election campaign? Was it a friendly fight? A good, clean campaign?”

“Ah,” said Oliver Worthing, handing Sutcliffe a cup and leading the way into the living-room. “So you've heard the rumours?”

“I've heard whispers of rumours.”

“Erroneous whispers, no doubt.” The two sat down, and Worthing gulped thirstily at his coffee. “The answer to your question is: yes, it was a good, clean campaign. And it was so thanks mainly to Jim Partridge.”

“Ah—so you've reason to be grateful to him.”

“I have. Though since the rumours are idiotic distortions of the truth I sometimes think I might as well issue a public statement giving the facts. I would have done so this time, but my agent said it would be political suicide.”

“What actually happened last time?”

“Oh, somebody brought the rumours over from Rotherham, where I was born and brought up. Naturally he shared his information with one or two others among the Tory bigwigs, and they buzzed around with it to a few more, and wanted to make it a campaign issue. There are one or two very unpleasant sods among the high-ups in the local party. Walter Abbot, for example—ah, you know him. Well, of course they took the rumour to Harold Fawcett, and I think he would have gone along with it—he's an average, quarter-way decent individual, is Harold, and no great shakes morally. But of course he took it to Jim Partridge first, and Jim killed it stone dead, squashed it flat—but
flat.
Said he was not going to get elected with help of a dirty tricks department, that he'd publicly dissociate himself from any attempt to use the rumour, and so on. He was a gentleman, I realize that: an old-fashioned kind of gentleman. Perhaps that's why he never really seemed at home in the modern Conservative Party.”

“I think you're right. But these rumours have surfaced again. Does that mean that Mr Craybourne-Fisk is all too at home in the modern Conservative Party?”

“No, I don't think so. I suspect that Harold Fawcett, for mere shame, felt he couldn't use them this time, after Jim's veto. All our information suggests they're being spread this time by the Labour people. Mind you, I don't think they've got very far with them, and from now on they'll be very much on the defensive about that kind of thing.”

“Oh? Why's that?”

“Haven't you seen the evening papers? No, I suppose you wouldn't see the
Bootham Evening Post.”
He
grabbed a copy of the paper from a side table. “They've got an interview with that thug the Labour Party employed to terrorize the media. Obliging chap now, apparently: always ready to talk to the media. His ‘I'm White' tattoo, he told the
Post
, is some sort of code slogan for a little Fascist offshoot grouping, dedicated to duffing up any member of the immigrant community it doesn't like the look of. He says his aim is to “Keep the blackies out of the pits”—odd that, I felt, in view of the nature of the work. Anyway, he's got a record: two cases of aggravated assault, a string of minor offences, all against coloureds. Says he's been a keen supporter of the Labour Party all his life. Pathetic, isn't it? Without wishing to be calculating, that interview will be worth five hundred to a thousand votes to us.
And
Mr Jerry Snaithe won't be spreading rumours about Borstal and criminal records in the near future.”

“Have you any evidence it has been Snaithe?”

Oliver Worthing shrugged.

“Him or his henchmen. There's a thin dividing line between what he tells them to do, and what they do knowing he'd be in favour. The London far left mob has a very bad reputation for spreading unsubstantiated or misleading rumours.”

“And is this one without foundation?”

“It's
untrue.
But it's not without foundation.” He leaned forward in his chair, his face troubled. “Here's the whole story. I don't like talking about it, but I realize you've got ways of finding out—and once in a while, talking about it is therapeutic. What connection it could have with James Partridge's death is beyond me. I was brought up in Rotherham, as I told you, and
my father was a schools inspector there—a pleasant, inoffensive man with a conscience. My mother made his life hell. She was a woman—I try to look back on her objectively now, though it's difficult—with a vile, simmering temper. The whole house was tense with it, twenty-four hours a day, waiting to see whether it would break out, or confine itself to jibes and pin-pricks and expressions of grievance. You can imagine the atmosphere in the house. My father, my sister, myself—all waiting, watching for some explosion, for one of those red-hot blazes of temper. She nursed grudges for months, and then suddenly out they would come in some searing stream of hatred. I don't know how my father could stand it. And the long and the short of it is—I couldn't.”

“What happened?”

“I exploded. In the only way I could. I couldn't fight her verbally—it had to be physical.”

“How old were you?”

“Just turned fourteen. One of the blazing tempers was just reaching a climax, and I simply threw myself on her with whatever weapon happened to be to hand. It was a poker, actually—but a heavy, iron one, and I just kept hitting her. The front door was open—it was summer—and she ran screaming into the street, face running blood, and the neighbours naturally rang the police. There wasn't much chance of keeping it within the family after that; probably wouldn't have been anyway, because she was seriously hurt. The police weren't bad about it. I don't think they really knew what to do. They took me into custody, questioned me, then lodged me in a children's home while they waited for medical reports and went into the family background. The children's home is the origin of the ‘Borstal' sneer,
of course. It was a pretty tough place, actually, but a haven of peace after my home. Eventually my father's sister said she'd take me in. She was a big, cheerful woman with several kids of her own. My father paid her, of course, and I think she was glad of the money, but I was always grateful to her. I lived there until I went to university, and I always regarded it as my home.”

“Did you ever see your mother again?”

“Once. When my father was dying. She didn't speak to me. She was a woman utterly without self-knowledge. I believe she urged the police to press charges. Later on she devoted herself to ruining my sister's life. I feel guilty about that: I snapped and got away, and my life turned out—well—middling to all right. She stood it, year after year, and her life was ruined. She never married, because Mother scared anyone off. She worked at a dreary job, and she's still at it, twisted and sick. Yes, I feel guilty about that . . . As a matter of fact, people who know me well say that I can feel guilty about almost anything under the sun.”