House of Cards (14 page)

The announcement caused a flurry of activity at Renox Chemicals. A press conference for the medical and scientific press was called for the following day, the Marketing Director pressed the button on a pre-planned mail shot to every single general practitioner throughout the country, and the company's broker informed the Stock Exchange of the new licence.

The response was immediate. Shares in the Renox Chemical Company PLC jumped from 244p to 295p. The 20,000 ordinary shares purchased two days before by the Union Bank of Turkey's brokers were now worth exactly £59,000.

Shortly before noon the next day, a telephone call instructed the bank to sell the shares and credit the amount to the appropriate account. The caller also explained that regrettably the hotel venture in Antalya was not proceeding, and the account holder was returning to Kenya. Would the bank be kind enough to close the account, and expect a visit from the account holder later that afternoon?

Just before the bank closed at 3 p.m. the same bespectacled man in the hat and sports jacket walked into the branch on Seven Sisters Road and collected £58,962 which he placed in bundles of £20 notes in the bottom of his brown corduroy bag. He bridled at the £750 in charges which the bank had levied on his short-lived and simple account but, as the deputy manager had suspected, he chose not to make a fuss. He asked for a closing statement to be sent to him at his address in Paddington, and thanked the clerk for his courtesy.

The following morning and less than one week after Firdaus Jhabwala had met with Urquhart, the Chief Whip delivered £50,000 in cash to the party treasurers. Substantial payments in cash were not unique, and the treasurers expressed delight at discovering a new source of funds. Urquhart suggested that the treasurers office make the usual arrangements to ensure that the donor and his wife were invited to a charity reception or two at Downing Street, and asked to lie informed when this happened so that he could make a specific arrangement with the Prime Minister's political secretary to ensure that Mr and Mrs Jhabwala had ten minutes alone with the Prime Minister beforehand. One of the party treasurers made a careful note of the donor's address, said that he would write an immediate cryptic letter of thanks, and locked the money in a safe.

Probably uniquely amongst Cabinet Ministers, Urquhart left for holiday that night feeling utterly relaxed.

Part
Two

THE CUT

AUGUST

The newspapers during August were dreadful. With politicians and the main political correspondents all away, second string lobby correspondents struggled to fill the vacuum and develop any story they could which would get their by-line on the front page. So they clutched at whispers and rumour. What was on Tuesday only a minor piece of speculation on page five of the
Guardian
had become by Friday a hard news story on the front page of the
Daily Mail.
This was the chance for the junior correspondents to make their mark, and the mark they chose to make was all too frequently on the reputation of Henry Collingridge. Minor backbenchers who were too self-promoting even to take a break during the holiday season were honoured with significant pieces quoting 'senior party spokesmen', putting forward their views as to where the Government was going wrong and how a new sense of direction had to be imposed. Rumours about the Prime Minister's dissatisfaction with and distrust of his Cabinet colleagues abounded, and since there was no one around authoritatively to deny the rumours, the silence was taken as authoritative consent. So the speculation fed on itself and ran riot. The early August rumours about an 'official inquisition' into Cabinet leaks had, by later in the month, grown into predictions that there would after all be a reshuffle in the autumn. The word around Westminster had it that Henry Collingridge's temper was getting increasingly erratic, even though he was in fact enjoying a secluded holiday on a private estate many hundreds of miles away near Cannes.

The Prime Minister's brother also became the subject of a spate of press stories, mostly in the gossip columns, and the Downing Street press office was repeatedly called upon to comment on suggestions that the Prime Minister was bailing out 'dear old Charlie' from the increasingly close attentions of his creditors, including the Inland Revenue. But Downing Street would not comment - it was personal, not official - so the formal 'no comment' which was given to the most fanciful of accusations was recorded in the news coverage, usually in the most damaging light.

As August drew on, with only the lightest of nudges down the telephone from Urquhart, the press tied the Prime Minister ever more closely to his impecunious brother. Not that Charlie was saying anything stupid. He had the common sense to keep well out of the way, but an anonymous telephone call to one of the sensationalist Sunday newspapers enabled them to track him down to a cheap hotel in rural Bordeaux. A reporter was despatched to pour enough wine down him to encourage a few vintage 'Charlie-isms', but instead succeeded only in making Charlie violently sick over the reporter and his notebook, before passing out. The reporter promptly paid £50 to a big-busted girl with a low-cut dress to lean over the slumbering form, while a photographer captured the tender moment for posterity and the newspaper's 11 million readers.

"I'm broke and busted" says Charlie' screamed the headline, while the copy reported for the umpteenth time the fact that the Prime Minister's brother was nearly destitute and cracking under the pressure of a failed marriage and a famous brother. Downing Street's 'absolutely no comment' seemed in the circumstances even more uncaring than usual.

The next weekend the same photograph was run alongside one of the Prime Minister holidaying in considerable comfort in the South of France - to English eyes a mere stone's throw from his ailing brother - and seemingly unwilling to leave his poolside to help. The fact that the same newspaper a week earlier had been reporting how deeply Henry was involved in sorting out Charlie's financial affairs seemed to have been forgotten - until the Downing Street press office called the editor to complain.

'What
do you want?' came the reply. ‘
We give both sides of the story. We backed him warts and all throughout the election campaign. Now it's time to restore the balance a bit.'

Yes, the newspapers during August were dreadful.

SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER

September was even worse. As the new month opened, the Leader of the Opposition announced that he was resigning to make way for 'a stronger arm with which to hold our banner aloft'. He had always been a little too verbose for his own good.

Like most political leaders he was pushed by the younger men around
him
who had more energy and more ambition, who made their move quietly and secretly almost without his knowing until it was too late and he had announced his intention to resign in an emotional late night interview. For a moment he seemed to have changed his mind under pressure from his still intensely ambitious wife, until he discovered that he could no longer rely on a single vote in his Shadow Cabinet. Yet they were warm in their praise of their fallen leader. As so often happens, the faithful were far more effusively united by his death than by anything he had achieved in office.

The news electrified the media, and Mattie was summoned back from her beach in Zakynthos, much to her silent relief. Eight days of lying in the sun watching couples grow increasingly tender and uninhibited in the Ionian sun had made her feel utterly miserable. She was lonely, very lonely, and the loving couples around her only served to rub the point home. When the telephone call came instructing her to return to cover the breaking story, she packed her bags without complaint and found a seat on the next flight home.

She returned to discover an Opposition Party which had been galvanised. Their seemingly endless internal divisions were now being played down as they stepped up the attack on a lacklustre Government, most of whose members were still away on holiday. The real prospect of power at the next election, even one which was still perhaps four years away, was helping to focus Opposition minds and encourage fraternal thoughts. Better as one of twenty senior Cabinet Ministers in Government than the sole Party Leader in endless Opposition, one explained.

So by the time the new leader was elected just a week before the Party's annual conference in early October, the Opposition had dominated the news for several weeks and the conference turned into a united salute to the new leader. Under an enormous slogan of '
Victory
', the conference was unrecognisable as the assembly of a party which had lost the election only a few months before.

By contrast, just a week later the representatives gathered for the Government Party's conference in a spirit of trepidation and complaint The conference centre at Bournemouth could be uplifting if filled with 4,000 enthusiastic supporters, but now its bare brick walls and chromium-plated fitments served only to emphasise the sullenness of those who gathered.

As Publicity Director, it was Roger O'Neill's task to present and package the conference, but as the task of raising spirits became increasingly daunting, so he could be seen talking more and more feverishly to journalists -apologising, justifying, explaining, and blaming. And particularly he blamed Lord Williams. The Chairman had cut the budget, he explained, delayed making decisions, not got a grip on things. There were rumours circulating within party headquarters that he deliberately wanted the conference to be low key because he thought the Prime Minister was likely to get a
rough ride from the faithful. P
arty doubts about Collingridge leadership' was the first
Guardian
report to come out of Bournemouth.

In the conference hall, the debates proceeded according to the rigid pre-set schedule. An enormous sign hung above the platform -
'Finding The Right Way
'. The speeches struggled to obey its command beneath glaring television lights and an annoying buzz from the hall which the stewards were quite incapable of quelling. On the fringes of the hall the representatives, journalists and politicians gathered in little huddles to exchange views, a regular part of any political garnering, and a fertile breeding ground for idle gossip.

The 'buzz' around the conference was one of discontent. Everywhere they listened, the men from the media were able to hear criticism. Former MPs who had recently lost their seats were critical, but asked not to be quoted for fear of endangering their chances of being selected for safer seats at the next election. Their constituency chairmen showed no such reticence. They had not only lost their MP, but also faced several years of the Opposition Party ruling their local councils, nominating the mayor and committee chairmen, and disposing of the fruits of local office.

There was also growing concern that the parliamentary by-election, due on Thursday, would give a poor result. The Member for Dorset East, Sir Anthony Jenkins, had suffered a stroke four days before the general election. Elected while in intensive care, he had died only three weeks later.

His seat, just a few miles from Bournemouth, was a safe one with a majority of nearly 20,000, so th
e Prime Minister had decided to
hold the by-election during conference week. He had been advised strongly against it, but he argued that on balance it was worth the risk. The conference publicity would provide good campaigning material for the by-election, there would still be a strong sympathy vote for the fallen MP, conference representatives could take a few hours off to undertake some much-needed canvassing, and the Prime Minister would be able to welcome the victorious candidate during his own conference speech—a good publicity stunt.

Now the busloads of conference-goers returning from a morning's canvassing were reporting a lack of sympathy on the doorstep. The seat would be held, of course, it had been in th
e Party since the War, but the th
umping victory which Collingridge had demanded was beginning to look more distant with every day's canvass returns.

It was going to be a difficult week, not quite the victory celebration the party managers had planned.

WEDNESDAY 13
th
OCTOBER

A cold wet wind was blowing off the sea when Mattie Storin was woken by a pounding headache early on Wednesday morning. As the representative of a major national newspaper she was one of the fortunate few journalists offered accommodation in the headquarters hotel where she could mix freely with the key politicians and party officials. She had mixed a little too freely the previous evening, and she began her regular morning calisthenics with heavy limbs and a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Her whole body shouted at her that this was a rotten way to cure a hangover, so she quickly changed her mind and opted for an open window- a move which she immediately recognised as the second bad decision of the day. The small hotel was perched high on the cliff tops, ideal for catching the summer sun but exposed and unprotected on such grey and swirling autumn mornings. Her overheated hotel room turned into an icebox in seconds, and Mattie decided that she would make no more decisions until after a gentle breakfast.

She heard the scuffling of something being delivered outside in the corridor and pulled the blanket protectively around her shoulders, stumping her way across to the door. Work, in the form of the morning newspapers, was piled outside on the hallway carpet. She picked them up and threw them carelessly towards the bed. As they spread chaotically over the rumpled bedclothes, a sheet of paper fluttered from between the pages and fell to the floor. With a tired grunt she bent down to retrieve it, and through the morning mist which seemed completely to have enveloped her head read the words: