House of Cards (41 page)

She
shook
her
head
in
denial
but
he
cut
her
short.
'When you
came
to
London,
you
may
have
been
chasing
your future
-
but
you
were
also
hiding
from
everything
which hurt
you
in
the
past.
Yet
it's
not
going
to
work,
Mattie, don't
you
see?
You
can't
hide
away
in
journalism-
investigating,
exposing
pulling
people's
worlds
apart
in
search
of the
truth
-
unless
you
are
willing
to
face
those
people afterwards
and
live
with
their
pain.'

'That's
unfair
...'
she
protested.

Is
it?
I
hope
so
for
your
sake,
because
if
you
can't
accept the
fact
that
your
work
may
cause
a
lot
of
innocent
people great
hurt,
then
you'll
never
be
a
good
journalist.
Look
for the
truth,
Mattie,
by
all
means,
but
only
if
you're
willing
to recognise
and
share
the
pain
it
may
cause.
If
you
think
it's enough
just
to
float
like
a
butterfly
from
one
story
to another,
never
hanging
around
long
enough
to
see
the damage
that
your
version
of
the
truth
might
inflict
on
other people,
how
the
devil
can
you
put
any
real
value
on
your work?
It's
your
job
to
criticise
self-important
politicians, but
how
dare
you
criticise
the
commitment
of
others
if
you are
afraid
to
commit
yourself?
You
say
you
are
afraid
of commitment.
But
commitment
is
what
it
is
all
about, Mattie.
You
can't
run
away
from
it
for
ever!'

But
she
was
already
running,
sobbing
into
the
bathroom and
into
her
clothes.
In
a
minute
she
had
fled
out
of
the front
door,
and
all
he
could
hear
was
the
echo
of
her
tears.

MONDAY 8
th
NOVEMBER -FRIDAY 12
th
NOVEMBER

The
criticisms
of
the
weekend
press
kicked
the
campaign to
life
early
on
Monday
morning.
Encouraged
by
the
media view
that
the
right
contender
still
had
not
emerged,
two further
Cabinet
Ministers
announced
their
candidatures
-Peter
McKenzie,
the
Secretary
of
State
for
Health,
and Patrick
Woolton,
the
bluff
Foreign
Secretary.

Both
were
reckoned
to
have
a
reasonable
chance
of success.
McKenzie
had
been
prominent
in
selling
the
popular
hospital
scheme,
and
had
managed
to
ensure
that
blame for
its
postponement
had
been
heaped
entirely
on
the Treasury
and
the
Prime
Minister's
Office.

Woolton
had
been
runn
ing
hard
behind
the
scenes
ever since
his
conversation
with
Urquhart
at
the
party
conference,
having
lunched
almost
every
editor
in
Fleet
Street
in the
previous
month.
By
emphasising
his
Northern
origins he
was
hoping
to
establish
himself
as
the
'One
Nation' candidate
in
contrast
to
the
strong
Home
Counties
bias
of most
of
the
other
major
contenders
-
not
that
this
had impressed
the
Scots,
who
tended
to
view
the
whole
affair
as if
it
were
an
entirely
foreign
escapade.
Woolton
had
been hoping
to
delay
his
formal
entry
into
the
race,
wishing
to see
how
the
various
rival
campaigns
developed,
but
the weekend
press
had
been
like
a
call
to
arms
and
he
decided he
should
delay
no
longer.
He
called
a
press
conference
at Manchester
Airport
to
make
the
announcement
on
what he
termed
his
'home
ground',
hoping
that
no
one
would notice
he
had
flown
up
from
London
in
order
to
be
there.

The
weekend
press
also
incited
into
action
those
candidates
who
had
already
declared
themselves.
It
was
becoming
clear
to
the
likes
of
Michael
Samuel
and
Harold
Earle that
their
gentlemanly
campaigns
with
their
obscure, coded
messages
were
rapidly
running
into
the
sand.
With the
advent
of
new
candidates,
their
appeals
needed
to
be freshened
up
and
their
cutting
edges
toughened.

Under
the
pressures
of
an
extended
campaign,
the
candidates
were
becoming
increasingly
nervous
-
so
the
press
at last
got
what
they
wanted.
When
Harold
Earle
repeated
his environmentalist
criticisms,
but
this
time
choosing
to attack
the
record
of
Michael
Samuel
by
name,
the
gloves came
off.

Samuel
retorted
that
Earle's
conduct
was
reprehensible and
incompatible
with
his
status
as
a
Cabinet
colleague,
as well
as
being
a
rotten
example
for
an
Education
Secretary to
set
for
young
people.
In
the
meantime,
Woolton's
loose language
at
Manchester
concerning
the
need
to
'restore English
values
with
an
English
candidate'
was
vigorously attacked
by
McKenzie,
who
was
desperately
trying
to rediscover
his
lost
Gaelic
roots
and
claiming
it
was
an insult
to
five
million
Scots.
Trying
to
find
a
unique
line
as always,'
the
Sun
interpreted
Woolton's
words
as
a
vicious anti-Semitic
attack
on
Samuel,
which
had
Jewish
activists swamping
the
air
waves
and
letter
columns
with
complaints.
A
rabbi
in
Samuel's
home
constituency
called
on the
Race
Relations
Board
to
investigate
what
he
called
'the most
atrocious
outburst
by
a
senior
political
figure
since Mosley'.
Woolton
was
not
entirely
unhappy
with
this overreaction,-
'for
the
next
two
weeks
everyone
will
be looking
at
the
shape
of
Samuel's
ears
rather
than
listening to
what
he's
saying,'
he
told
one
close
supporter.