Head of State, page 21
She grunted, leaned over, resting one hand on the car door, and violently kicked off both jeans and boots, leaving herself bare from the waist down. Ned, shaking, took the opportunity to unbuckle his belt and hoick at his trousers. Jen could feel the damp leaves and clay under her feet. She reached up again, ground herself into Ned’s chest and dug her sharp fingers through his wiry hair. She put both arms around his shoulders and lifted herself up, impaling herself most successfully. Ned, pleased as he was by this development, was simultaneously wondering if his legs would give way. Both of them had been thinking about this ever since they had got into the car in London. And the sex worked; they bucked like deer and squirmed like eels. And after that, vice-versa.
‘What on earth do I see in him?’ Jen had asked herself an hour earlier, looking at the strong, pale fingers resting on the gearstick and the guarded face staring through the splashes of rain and muck on the windscreen. The answer, she eventually decided, was a musky, reliable, old-fashioned manhood, romantic but stable. Here was somebody who would never not turn up, a man you could lean upon. Hardly beautiful. In fact a clumsy, nervous male animal. But it was the thought that making love with him was so incongruous, the thought of him looking down at himself in bemusement, that made the prospect of it so exciting. She had no idea what was going on in his mind. She liked that too. Most men were grimy windows: a quick rub and you could see everything inside. Not Ned Parminter.
Ned’s thoughts at that moment were not, as it happened, particularly elevated. He was thinking hard about her nose, the way she wrinkled it when she was thinking, and about her legs, the way she had stayed pressed to him after that ambrosial coffee that morning. Ripeness is all. Ever since she had dumped Lucien McBryde, an event which had briefly been the talk of Westminster, Jen had been at least theoretically available. Ned had never been put off by her famous chilliness. To him she seemed interestingly tensed, or primed, rather than cold. Nor was he distracted by her fiercely-held political views, above all her loathing of the European empire. He himself was also politically conservative, nostalgic for an emptier, kinder, less frantic England. And people who are interested in politics tend to be interested in people who are interested in politics. Flinty, he needed a spark; and Jennifer Lewis, though cautious, was whetstone-hard.
Jen was, however, by now melting and finished, and had held Ned inside her for as long as he could manage. The two of them were kissing lightly on a patch of damp, clean grass. Lust gone, Ned was becoming aware of a twig pressing into his left buttock, while Jen’s shivers were now from the cold only. Soon they were doing the ungainly hopping dance the English – and only the English – perform when getting hurriedly dressed out of doors. The old car hid them from the occasional passing traffic.
So the mood was broken. Guiltily, Jen turned her mind to what lay ahead of them. If she could convince Olivia that the prime minister was dead, Olivia would then be able to shock the country into a last-minute reconsideration of just how this old, cynical, corrupt political game was being played. It was unthinkable that the voters would not turn on those who had deceived them. The entire future of the British Isles hung in the balance, a balance which could be tipped by a few words from her, Jennifer Lewis. Yet here she was, thinking about none of that, delayed and distracted by a man she hardly knew, like a pilgrim seduced. He had been after her for weeks. Well, now it had happened. That was that.
She suddenly felt intensely weary. She really didn’t fathom Ned. How could she ever have thought of trusting him? He was some sort of academic … He must have his own interests. He wasn’t a friend, perhaps not even an ally. She had simply run to him, in a mixture of blind panic and blind faith, to take her away from London and the threat of Alois Haydn – whom she had no doubt would have her killed if he thought it necessary, just as she had no doubt that he had somehow had Lucien McBryde killed. Yet here she was nevertheless, only a few miles from Olivia’s house, on the verge of changing England’s long history.
But now, weak and confused, Jen’s intense need for order kicked in. She could not afford all this. Without thinking more than instinctively she refastened her bra, leaned into the back seat of the car and felt her fingers rest on a heavy object – Myfanwy’s wrench. She swung round and brought it down hard on Ned’s tousled head. He said, ‘Hmm. Ahh?’, slumped to his knees, and toppled over. He didn’t move. There wasn’t much blood.
Jen finished dressing, then wrapped her arms around his chest for the final time and dragged him away from the car towards a line of larches. In their shadows was a green plastic bin attached to a concrete pillar, which she had not noticed before. A sign on it read ‘East Ness Borough Council. No general rubbish – dog mess only’. She gently propped Ned Parminter, BA Oxon, against it, and climbed back into his car.
As she sped away she looked in the wing mirror, and glimpsed a leather-jacketed man in a motorcycle helmet watching her closely from the opposite side of the road. Still distracted by the thought of what she had just done, she didn’t see him slowly pulling a gun from the pannier of his motorbike.
Over to Olivia
Olivia Kite was also feeling distracted as she paced the library of Danskin House, her heels making tiny indentations on floorboards that had been laid when William Shakespeare was newly dead. She peered through the half-open door: her advisers were clustered around a television screen, clucking away in despair. The prime minister’s final broadcast ahead of the vote had just finished, and they were all agreed that it had been a masterpiece – a masterpiece of malice and innuendo, but of political genius too. He had barely referred to his German triumph, as if it were simply taken for granted. Olivia supposed that he had scheduled some Olympian pressing of the flesh for the next day, floating confidently above the battle.
The broadcast had started with the prime minister staring out of a window of Number 10 into the Downing Street garden, the sun playing on his face and hands. Then the picture dissolved into grainy black and white, as viewers were invited to imagine the United Kingdom’s dystopian future outside Europe, a land of pinched, Soviet-style poverty, with London an echoing relic of its current glory. The PM’s voice-over had been lugubrious and reflective, the man at his very most persuasive as he sketched out a vision of life in the Backwater Islands, a land too bewitched by its own history to dare to play any meaningful role in the modern world. Olivia herself featured as a kind of Wicked Witch of this Winter Kingdom, the Cruella of contemporary conservatism. With grinding Shostakovich music punctuating the prime minister’s words, it was a shocking, brutally effective little film.
It ended with the prime minister standing at the end of the cabinet table, around which, thanks to computer wizardry, were seated not just a few of the more eminent faces of the current cabinet but some famous figures from history – a slight, long-haired Horatio Nelson; an imperturbable Winston Churchill; Margaret Thatcher poking through her handbag – ‘Margaret in this?’ spluttered Olivia’s press officer. ‘Quite disgraceful! Is there nothing the man won’t stoop to?’ Finally the prime minister gestured around the table, stared at the camera – albeit from a long way away – and concluded: ‘Please, ignore some of the ridiculous rumours you may have heard in recent days. Believe in me, as you always have done. And vote to stay part of a Great Britain.’
The reference to the rumours about his health proved conclusively that the prime minister was still active.
Back in Number 10, Dame Cecily Morgan turned to the three men with whom she had been watching the broadcast: Nelson Fraser, who had written most of the words; Rory Bremner, who had spoken them; and the awkward-looking goth, who had created the images. ‘Gentlemen, for all your preposterous conceit, that was a masterwork.’
‘Thank you, Baroness,’ replied Bremner. ‘But I can’t help wondering whether the old PM was really such a genius after all. That was the best, most eloquent speech he ever made, and he didn’t write a word of it.’
Nelson Fraser, whose Hunting Tadger kilt now hung like creased curtains from his waist, shook his gingery head. ‘Now, we can’t say that. The words were mine, but the inspiration was all his. I pride myself on being able to turn a phrase, but all that was nothing more than the higher plagiarism.’
Looking in particular at the goth, Dame Cecily put an end to the conversation. ‘Well, remember, none of you can ever discuss this. The PM doesn’t die until after the voting finishes on Thursday. So my “well done” is the most you will ever hear. Now piss off, the lot of you.’
As they left they passed Amanda Andrews standing in the corridor. She applauded them, her eyes full of tears.
That business concluded satisfactorily, Dame Cecily phoned Haydn again. She didn’t need to explain what she was calling about. She’d resolved her moral dilemma by telling him about the leak – he’d seemed blandly unsurprised by the news – but had made him swear that no violence would be used against Briskett, who was after all a decent enough man.
‘Any sign?’
‘None. He turned up at the National Courier office but didn’t get to see anyone, and now he’s vanished again. We haven’t been able to trace him with CCTV cameras, although I’m pretty sure he hasn’t been onto the tube or to any of the main train stations. And he hasn’t been back to his flat. I have limited resources, of course. It’s time for you people to pull your fingers out and help. We absolutely have to shut His Lordship up.’
‘But not for good, Alois. That’s absolutely not necessary.’
‘Analyse the word “necessary”, Cecily. Don’t hide behind euphemisms.’
‘I’ve been hiding behind euphemisms all my professional life, you silly little man,’ said Dame Cecily, and ended the call. She regretted her closing words immediately. Whatever one thought of Alois Haydn, he was not a man to offend, still less to disregard.
But it was too late for regrets. Haydn had been speaking to her from Essex. He had a contract with one of the smaller private companies operating out of Battersea heliport, and it had only taken a single call and a short taxi ride before he was lifting off from the tiny concrete curtain beside the Thames. Getting in and out of London by helicopter was becoming harder every year – a string of near-misses and a crash into a crane had made the route ever more convoluted – but it wasn’t long before, headphones clamped over his ears, he was staring down at the long, grey wash of East London as it straggled towards the North Sea. The ride was cold, and Alois could feel his teeth chattering, but as they headed north along the coast the sun came out. He could pick out Danskin House with its turret and flag, surrounded by trees. Then there was the crazy-paving maze of wetland and, still looking raw and unfinished, his own house, Rocks Point.
Haydn was afraid of flying, and he was still shaking slightly when he was greeted at the door by Ajit. They kissed on both cheeks, then Alois pulled himself away.
‘No time to lose, darling. I have to get over to Danskin House. Meeting I can’t get out of …’
Olivia licked her lips when she saw him. Haydn had heard the phrase, of course, but he had never actually seen anyone lick their lips in quite the way Olivia did.
‘You are the mistress here,’ he said. ‘I have some news for you which will make you the mistress of everything.’
‘I am the mistress. What does that make you?’
‘Today, your humble servant, a mere messenger.’ Alois felt himself breathing more heavily. But he made himself sit down, and continued to speak calmly enough.
‘The prime minister is dead. He has been dead for several days. Everything that’s come out of Number 10 since then has been a fiction. A confection. A lie.’
Olivia moved not a muscle. She was so still she seemed mineral. Not the blink of an eyelash. Not the faintest movement of nostril or lip.
‘We – that is, the inner group at Number 10 – felt that you were bound to win the referendum if it got out. So we panicked, Olivia. It’s a massive cover-up. Now you can reveal the truth and change everything.’
Olivia laid her thumb against her mouth. She grimaced so that her perfect teeth were visible. Then she bit herself, hard.
Shaking her hand, she asked, ‘Proof? Motive?’
‘You know how to get proof. Half a dozen telephone calls, half a dozen shaky voices. Come on Olivia, don’t insult me. As for motive, whatever you think of me I’m a patriot. All I want is to be as welcome on board as the first recruits who clambered up the rope a year ago.’
‘You want to be mine.’
‘I want to be yours.’
‘You may find that more arduous than you imagine,’ said Olivia, turning her back on him. Within moments she had called half a dozen aides to her side and was orchestrating a flurry of arrangements. Haydn found himself feeling both aghast and admiring as he watched her. He had always thought of himself as a player. He was nothing. This was a player.
Meanwhile, the first reverberations from the PM’s broadcast were beginning to be felt. Political editors and a handful of anti-Europe government ministers immediately got on the phone to Danskin House for Olivia Kite’s reaction. The general view was that the broadcast was devastating, and everyone wanted to know how she would respond to it. They couldn’t understand her cheerful and dismissive answers to their questions. But she knew exactly what her public riposte was going to be. The guy was dead. If his final appearance had been achieved merely by clever trickery, so much the better: the British people would be all the more offended by the cynicism of the ghouls in Number 10. Very soon she was going to blow this whole referendum sky high.
Very soon – but not quite yet. Her instincts told her that Haydn was holding something back. His story didn’t quite add up. If he was wrong, or if he wan’t telling the whole truth, she could still be left looking like an idiot. She continued to ponder as she paced the flagstones in front of the old grey orchard.
The political crisis and her own private crisis merged in her mind. She had not forgiven her husband’s adultery; but he was a weak man, and she was not a woman to look behind her for long. And at this moment she felt herself suddenly becoming interested in a man she had known for years, and who, despite his well-known homosexuality, had often eyed her with a look she could not misread.
Yes, to reel in Alois Haydn, the prime minister’s most notorious apparatchik, at this moment of all moments, would cause widespread amazement, as well as prurient speculation. She’d like to see him on his knees. If only she knew what was really going on in his mind. But the one thing everyone knew about Alois Haydn was that he always found himself on the winner’s side. That in itself could be useful. Yes, that was it. That was the answer.
At the moment she chose to tell the world about the deception being practised in Downing Street, Haydn should be standing alongside her. He would admit his early complicity, name his fellow villains, and pledge his loyalty to her. This would send an unmistakable message. As an added bonus, it would humiliate and infuriate Reeder. It would also, however, mean that she would be leaning very heavily on the slight figure of Alois Haydn, who even then was waiting in the pantry for her decision. He had his part to play. Meanwhile, he might be in for an uncomfortably long wait. She had to know everything about this situation. And she didn’t, not yet.
Olivia walked indoors and across a vaulted hallway to the house’s dining room, now the buzzing nerve centre of her campaign, where sugar plantations had been bought and sold, merchant ships paid for and their voyages plotted, complex petitions drafted to a succession of monarchs, and where the Kite family cats now prowled and mewed in confusion. The old oak table had been cleared for maps and handwritten charts marking out the last twenty-four hours of campaigning. Olivia lit one of her rare cigarettes, picked up a riding crop and began to prod the papers, glancing at printouts of the latest polling.
She felt broadly satisfied. Everything that could be done was being done. Jimmy Cardigan, the trade union leader and Labour frontbencher, once fanatically Europhile, had agreed to appear alongside Matthew Aron, the most ideologically pure of the Tory free marketeers, in Leicester. Both Sky and the BBC had promised to cover the event, and she had a big clutch of MPs in Birmingham – all local, but no real newsmakers. This referendum was going to be all about the undecideds. Boris had taken a while to come off the fence, and she had been trying to persuade Isabel Ashley, the stand-up comedian, and Lord Osborne, the former Tory treasurer, now a crossbencher, to come over to what she had tried to convince them would be the winning side, but neither seemed keen. She shrugged. Everything would change with tomorrow’s press conference. To that she now turned her formidable attention.
In the slackening breeze the Union Jack hung limply from the central tower of Danskin House.
Enter, a Bear
Just a few miles away, Ajit Gupta had taken one of the racing bicycles that were kept outside the kitchen for the use of visitors and was vigorously pedalling through the dusk towards the nearest village. Sandmartins darted above and sea lavender brightened the grey-green marron grass, but Ajit kept his eyes firmly on the narrow, winding track. Here England and the sea were interlaced. Salt water could uncurl at the speed of a whip cracking, and cut a man off from the shore. Away from the track nothing was certain, no foothold reliable.
Ajit was daydreaming of a new start – lemon groves and fresh papaya, with the sound of breaking waves in the distance. What did breadfruit taste like? It sounded horrible. No matter. He imagined himself tapping away at his computer, stories pouring out, uncurling in the heat. Naipaul and Graham Greene. As his legs pumped the pedals the bicycle’s back wheel threw up a fine spray of water and clay, leaving a long stripe of filth, like a heckle from the soil of Essex, running from his nape to his buttocks.
