This Honourable House (2 page)

Mrs Maddie Ashworth adjusted her son’s grey silk tie, lifting it out from his neck in an exaggerated arc. The shoulders of his black tail coat had acquired bits of fluff, which she swept off with gloved fingers and an expression of distaste. She stood back. ‘That’s better,’ she announced, and allowed herself a satisfied nod.

Benedict flattened the tie to its original position. His nose wrinkled discreetly against his mother’s perfume: too much, and too girlish a scent, for a mature woman. Avoiding her fluttering hands, he pinned the carnation to his lapel without mishap, then brushed his thinning hair and turned his slim frame to and fro in front of the mirror.

‘So, will I do, Mother?’

‘Oh, yes, m’dear. You’ll do,’ said his mother. As usual she made no attempt to hide the north Devon accent. For years her son had squirmed at his speech and tried to eradicate it, but more recently its lilt had marked him out as distinctive without being outlandish, and he had allowed it to emerge once again.

Her bosom swelled beneath the orange tulle, and the cartwheel hat dipped in pride. She had also, Benedict noticed, applied far too much lipstick; soon it would be transferred to glasses, cups and whatever cheeks she could reach. He resolved to avoid it on his own, though that would require as much tact as he could muster. Smudges of facial apricot in the press photos would never do.

A knock on the door heralded his cousin Lawrence who had volunteered to be best man. Lawrence avoided the lipstick with an adroit air kiss, and grinned over his aunt’s head.

‘Got everything?’ Benedict whispered. ‘The ring? Your speech?’

Lawrence patted his morning suit breast pocket. ‘Everything’s in order.’ He turned to Mrs Ashworth. ‘You must be immensely proud of your son today. What a summer it’s been for him! First the election, then becoming leader of the party, and now –’

‘Trust you to think of politics first,’ Mrs Ashworth chided. ‘Today of all days. With that adorable girl waiting for him too. Shame on you.’

‘It hasn’t been quite so brilliant. True success would have meant we ended up holding the balance of power. Then I might have had a seat in the Cabinet.’ Benedict was distractedly collecting wallet and keys as he spoke, but his tone was mild.

‘You doubled the number of seats. You made the party a force to be reckoned with.’ Lawrence was firm. Maddie Ashworth snorted her impatience but was ignored. ‘The government has to take you seriously now, and the media. That’s more than can be said for your predecessor.’

‘But
I
didn’t win those seats. I can’t take the credit. We did best where the turnout was low, where the voters hated the old government but didn’t trust the new lot. So we New Democrats benefited from a “plague on both your houses” mentality. If we’re to get to the stage where Cabinet office is automatically mine, we have a mountain to climb. Not least since the official Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition is after it too.’

‘I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes,’ Lawrence remarked, a tad smugly. ‘You’re leading success, he’s leading failure. Sleaze, incompetence, indecision – they lost the plot, didn’t they? And they’re still fighting like cats over who to blame. The old Prime Minister’s been air-brushed from history, while his predecessor thinks she’s still in the driving seat. Poor Johnson has a helluva job on, if he’s to knock that rabble into shape by next time.’

‘No chance. Not unless the Prime Minister comes a complete cropper. And I don’t think he will – only a few weeks into the job, but he’s been very sure-footed so far – The Grand Project! He plans to be there till his dotage.’ Lawrence looked rueful. Then, realising that perhaps this was not the most encouraging comment to make to the leader of one of Westminster’s minority parties, he added
hastily, ‘By which date he’ll be relying heavily on you, and us, to hang on. We’ll be calling the shots.’

‘I do hope so,’ said Benedict graciously, but his eyes were amused.

‘You’ll be Prime Minister some day, I’ve often said so,’ said his mother stoutly. ‘You could’ve joined either party. You could’ve been Prime Minister yourself already.’ Benedict exchanged wry glances with his cousin. ‘I’d rather you didn’t go round suggesting that my commitment to the New Democrats is less than sincere, Mother,’ he said smoothly. ‘I joined them at college because I believed in what they stood for.’

‘But you’ve met the Queen. Kissed hands! What was it? Some council?’ His mother’s nervous energy, which Benedict had inherited and regularly obliged himself to quell, surfaced in her hectoring tone.

‘The Privy Council. All that means, Mother, is that I’m a Right Honourable. And that the Prime Minister can tell me state secrets, if he should so choose. Not that he will, naturally. It’s an honour, no more. Power does not reside in anything so simple.’

At a warning glance from Lawrence, who tapped his watch, Mrs Ashworth’s mouth snapped shut. Benedict found her bag and gave it to her. ‘Meanwhile, Mother, we have other matters to attend to today.’

He opened the door and ushered her through. She began to march down the hall. As soon as she was out of earshot, Lawrence put an urgent hand on his cousin’s arm. ‘You absolutely sure you’re doing the wise thing, Benedict?’

Benedict glanced away, his face sombre. ‘Of course I am. Christine is a wonderful person. She understands. We have talked about it. I’m not a complete idiot, nor would I mislead her. What do you take me for?’

Lawrence stepped back, squared his shoulders, hesitated, then smiled. ‘A happily married man, in a few minutes,’ he offered. ‘Let’s go.’

The wedding of a second-rank politician would not normally have caused a stir. But, as Jim Betts of the
Globe
had to admit, there was something so fresh and charming about Benedict Ashworth that his doings attracted more than their fair share of interest. He was the type of public figure who restored the faith of a jaded electorate. Every man’s neighbour, every mother’s son, the journalist reflected, as the cable television cameras caught Benedict emerging from his flat near Trafalgar Square into the sunshine.

With Lawrence on one side and his outlandishly dressed mother coquettish on his arm, Benedict started to walk along Whitehall towards St Margaret’s. The New Democracy Party leader was quite tall, though on television that often did not register. He had risen to prominence not by brilliance in the Commons chamber (though his quips were earning a place in anthologies), but because he pursued the bywaters of popular communication: daytime television, live radio, the satellite channels, whose audiences adored him. Like many others in the trade he was handy with a sound bite, but his remarks were distinguished by their pointed humour and intelligence. Benedict did not
claim
to talk common sense, like ‘poor Johnson’, the struggling opposition chief. Benedict simply went ahead and did it. In the studio he had rapidly mastered the techniques of the small gesture, the slight shrug of self-deprecation that made him the darling of matrons like his mother and the target of the affections both of younger women and of some men.

Jim Betts paced restlessly about the
Globe
’s newsroom. The monitor on the wall showed Benedict’s progress past the statues of Montgomery and Allenbrooke outside the Ministry of Defence, past Whitehall Palace and Richmond House. Police officers kept well-wishers and the curious at bay. At the Department of Health a gaggle of protestors on abortion waved banners at him but he acknowledged them without breaking his stride. Already the Democrats’ new leader was widely recognised, with hands held out to him to be shaken. A teenage girl detached herself from a family
cluster, darted forward and gave him a hug, leaving the recipient obviously startled; but the cameras caught his half-smile even as he sidestepped out of harm’s way.

Betts stroked his upper lip pensively, then remembered that the moustache had gone. He had taken a razor to it the day he had achieved his own ambition, promotion to political editor. It wouldn’t do: hair round the mouth looked louche and a senior post-holder needed gravitas. The lips had to be seen to move cleanly, as if this guaranteed the probity of the words spoken. Ken Livingstone and Peter Mandelson had gone the same route; indeed, in the months leading up to the election, many of the new Prime Minister’s acolytes had done exactly the same thing. Beards and facial hair, once the badge of left-wing defiance, had vanished. Out, too, went denim jackets and T-shirts. If the future Prime Minister chose to be photographed in a white shirt and neatly anonymous tie, as if he’d trained at McKinsey’s, then that was the official style. His troops, apart from a few Neanderthals, had adopted it with alacrity.

That left a problem for the women. But after some confusion and a spate of unflattering grey and beige, Betts had been intrigued to observe their increased adherence to the sartorial styles of a previous incumbent of Number Ten, whom the new Prime Minister was known to admire. The lady Members turned to power dressing in bold colours with big shoulders. It was no accident that many of them began to resemble the first woman Prime Minister.

The performance was all. Betts had to guess what was genuine and what wasn’t. On his
off-days
, of which this was one, his task was reduced to reporting what the politicians wanted him to report. For once his editor Pansy Illingworth, the chain-smoking, scatty-haired, husky-voiced survivor of feminist writing and life, who was usually a straightforward cynic, wouldn’t have it any other way. A warm human story about the Ashworths was what she had demanded at the morning conference, and she had instructed him to tell it straight. ‘We congratulate the happy couple, wish them every happiness, their perfect day’ – sentiments of that sort. The notion made Betts feel quite ill.

A commotion behind him and the reek of a Gauloise announced Pansy’s arrival in the newsroom. Only she dared defy the no-smoking notices throughout the building. Mostly she kept moving fast enough to outwit the smoke detectors, but security staff were aware that, should a fire alarm sound, they should check her location first. It was believed that Pansy had had a smoking clause written into her contract; the newspaper’s proprietors, keen to stem falling circulation and frantic to secure her services, had not quibbled.

‘Hi, Jim!’ Pansy pinched his arm. ‘How’s it going? How are the lovebirds?’

Betts controlled a grimace. He preferred to be called James, or even the more manly Betts, and he did not like being patronised by his superiors. For answer he pointed at the screen. The camera outside Christine’s Chelsea home showed her resplendent in white, being helped into a Rolls-Royce by her father. The future Mrs Ashworth was thirty, curvaceous, brainy and ambitious. Quite a catch.

It was generally assumed that this was a political marriage with shared ideals and objectives. They had been seen out together for a year or two, and had reportedly met at party conferences where she had been head of communications while Benedict was in charge of research. It was rumoured, however, that pressure from his formidable mother plus hints from the constituency had led to his proposal. A man of thirty-five should be married, especially if he wished to preserve his wholesome image. Of course, in the new century such considerations shouldn’t matter, but they did, especially outside the metropolis. Christine, it was said, had needed no persuading.

‘She needs watching, Jim. It doesn’t feel real to me.’ Pansy sniffed. ‘Why should a smart young woman like that be willing to throw up her own career to follow her husband? If economic policy and the constitution fascinate her so much, why doesn’t she stand for Parliament herself?’

‘She’s not throwing up a career,’ Betts pointed out. ‘She’s simply taking on a new one, that of the official Mrs Ashworth. She’s set up her own PR company. She intends to give her clients excellent service.’

‘So naturally, Jim, you’ll keep an eye on which clients. Conflicts of interest, for sure.’

Betts nodded. This assumption of the amorality of anyone who might merit a headline suited him fine.

‘It’s more independent than slaving in her husband’s office, I guess,’ Pansy conceded. She flicked cigarette ash on the floor. ‘But there’s something rotten in that woodwork, I can feel it. She’s got class. She could be a leading light of the piddling little New Democrats herself. Why the hell would she want to ride around on her husband’s coat-tails?’

‘Love, maybe?’ Betts said, but the suggestion made them both guffaw. He became bolder. ‘Look, Pansy, it may be hard for you rabid feminists to accept that some women prefer to float around in somebody else’s jet-stream, but it makes for an easy life. Used to be standard practice for all Tory wives, for instance. Till their husbands’ infidelity exposed it for the sham it was.’

Pansy snickered. ‘And you were in the forefront of the exposers, Jim.’

Betts preened himself. The Press Gallery Award for Journalist of the Year was framed above his workspace. ‘Mrs Christine Ashworth, as she’s about to become, is no fool. She’s figured out what’s in it for her. She’s not in competition with her hubby. But if she, or those like her, get to play hostess at Chequers or Number Ten, then it’ll be as a spouse, not as an office-holder in her own name. They play dumb but they ain’t. They can avoid responsibility for what’s dodgy but bask in reflected light when things go well. That’ll keep her very happy.’

‘Mmm. I bow to your judgement. Our readers might agree, the older ones, but remember our target audience is much younger, Jim. So, Ashworth himself, what do you make of him? What makes our Benedict everybody’s darling?’

‘He comes across as nice. Genuine, if you like. A polite boy, sweet to that ghastly ma who’d try the patience of a saint. Basically decent.’ Betts shrugged.

‘God save us from decent politicians. They’d put us out of business in no time – we’d have nothing to write about. Only the mad, the bad and the stupid want to go into Parliament. Isn’t that the view you peddle at every morning conference?’

‘Correct. I can’t figure out why anybody normal would sincerely
want
to be an MP.’ Betts waved away the offer of a Gauloise. ‘The money’s terrible, the hours anti-social, the rewards dismal. They’re blamed for everything that goes wrong and get no credit for any success – certainly not from us. The daily thrust of the job’s a chore, answering all those whingeing letters from constituents and pressure groups. Waiting to catch the Speaker’s eye for five seconds of prime time. When light dawns on the brighter ones, it’s too late. Outside politics, most are unemployable.’