House of Cards (52 page)

No sooner was it through than the driver jammed on all the brakes, throwing McKenzie against the front seat, spilling papers on the floor and ruining his careful preparations. Before he had a chance to curse the driver and demand an explanation, the cause of the problem immediately confronted and swirled around him. It was a sight beyond his wildest nightmare.

The tiny car park in front of the factory's reception office was jammed with a throng of seething protesters, all dressed in nurse's uniform and hurling abuse, with every angry word and action recorded by three television cameras which had been dutifully summoned by McKenzie's press officer and placed in an ideal viewing position on top of the administration block. No sooner was the official car inside the gates than the crowd surged around, kicking the bodywork and banging placards on the roof. In a couple of seconds the aerial had gone and the windscreen wipers had also been wrenched off. Trie driver had the sense to press the panic button fitted to all Ministerial cars which automatically closed the windows and locked the doors, but
not before someone had managed to spit directly into McKenzie's face. Fists and contorted faces were pressed hard up against the glass, all threatening violence on him; the car rocked as the crowd pressed hard against it, until he could see no sky, no trees, no help, nothing but hatred at close distance.

'Get out! Get out!' he screamed, but the driver raised his hands in helplessness. The crowd had surrounded the car, blocking off any hope of retreat.

'Get out!' he continued to scream, overcome by the claustrophobia of the crowd, but to no avail. In desperation the Minister leaned forward and grabbed the automatic gear stick, throwing it into reverse. The car gave a judder and moved back barely a foot before the driver's foot hit the brake, but the closely penned crowd had felt the impact. The protesters quickly withdrew to leave an exit for the car, taking with them a young woman in nurse's uniform who appeared to be in great pain after having been struck by the retreating car. Seeing his opening, the driver smoothly reversed his vehicle out of the gates and onto the road, pulling off a spectacular hand-brake turn to bring the nose of the car round and effect a rapid escape. He sped away leaving large black rubber scars on the road surface. The cameras continued to record every panic-stricken moment.

McKenzie's political
career was also left on the road alongside the ugly burnt tyre marks. It did not matter that the woman was not badly injured, or that she was not indeed a nurse at all but a fulltime union convenor and an experienced hand at turning a picket line drama into a newsworthy crisis. No one bothered to enquire. No man who could antagonise so many nurses and act in such a cowardly fashion in seeking to evade their protest could possibly occupy 10 Downing Street. For McKenzie, the tide had turned again and he watched helplessly as his life raft drifted back over the horizon.

FRIDAY 19
th
NOVEMBER

It had been a difficult week for Mattie, and a lonely one too, and she was having to work hard to keep her spirits up. While the pace of activity in the leadership race had picked up sharply, she found herself treading water, feeling as if she were being left behind by events. Nothing had come of her few job interviews; it had become clear to her that she had been blacked by all the newspapers in the expanding Landless empire, and none of his remaining competitors seemed particularly keen to antagonise him unnecessarily. And on Friday morning the mortgage rate had gone up.

Even worse, while she had more pieces of the jigsaw, still she could find no pattern in them. And it hurt. Inside her head the few facts she had gathered collided with her own speculative thoughts, but nothing seemed to fit. The collision left a dull, throbbing ache in her temples which had been with her incessantly for days. So she had hauled her
ru
nning
gear out of the wardrobe and was soon pounding her way around the leaf-covered tracks and pathways of Holland Park, hoping that the much needed physical exercise would purge both body and mind. But the throbbing in her head only combined with the new and growing pains in her lungs and legs to make it all hurt even more. She was
running
out of ideas, stamina and time. The first ballot was just four days away.

In the fading evening light she ran along the sweeping avenue of chestnut trees which towered magnificent and leafless above her like a living tunnel inhabited by half-seen, ghostly apparitions; down Lime Tree Walk where in daylight the squirrels and sparrows were as tame as house pets; past the red bricked ruins of old Holland House, burned to the ground half a century before along with its books, beauty and secrets, leaving just its brooding memories of past glories. In the days before what was left of Elizabethan London had grown into a voracious urban sprawl, Holland House had been the country seat of Charles James Fox, the legendary 18th century radical who had spent a lifetime pursuing revolutionary causes and who had used his ancestral home to gather all his conspiratorial colleagues and plot the downfall of the Prime Minister. It had always been in vain. Yet who had succeeded now where he had failed?

She
went
over
the
ground
again,
the
f
i
eld
of
battle
on which Collingridge had fallen. It had started with the general election campaign which had gone badly wrong, with Collingridge
and Williams left to blame each other and argue whose fault it all was.

Then came the fiasco of the hospital scheme, courtesy of Stephen Kendrick. There were no leads on the leak of Territorial Army cuts to
the Independent;
the document had been discovered floating around Annie's Bar, and they could scarcely blame Annie
...
The opinion poll, too, had been leaked - just another part of Collingridge's death by a thousand cuts - but she had no idea whom to thank for that. O'Neill, she
knew, was in
volved
in
the
extraordinary episode of share purchases through the Paddington address, and Landless had taken a sudden and uncharacteristic interest in high politics, with motive unclear.

That was it. That was all she had. So where did she go from here? As she climbed up the slope towards the highest part of the wooded park, she pounded away at the alternatives.

'Collingridge isn't giving interviews. Williams will only talk through his press office. O'Neill doesn't seem capable of answering questions, and Landless wouldn't stop for me on a pedestrian crossing. Which leaves only you, Mr Kendrick!'

With one final spurt she reached the top of the hill and began stretching out on the long downhill slope which led towards her home. Now she felt better. She had got her second wind.

SATURDAY 20
th
NOVEMBER

It had not been too bad a week for Harold Earle. The media had nominated him as one of the five candidates most likely to succeed; he had watched Samuel's bandwagon fail to roll and McKenzie's become derailed. And in spite of the Chief Whip's creditable showing, Earle could not believe that Urquhart would succeed because he had no senior Cabinet experience of running any great Department of State, and at the end of the day experience really counted for the top job. Particularly experience like Earle's.

He had started his climb many years before as the Prime Minister's Parliamentary Private Secretary, a post in which he joked that he held more power than anyone below Chancellor. His promotion to the Cabinet had been rapid, and he had held several important portfolios, including, for the last two years under Collingridge, responsibility for the Government's extensive school reforms as Secretary of State for Education. Unlike some of his predecessors, he had managed to find common ground with the teaching profession, although some accused him of being unable to take really tough decisions and being a conciliator.

But didn't the Party in its present mood need a touch of conciliation? The infighting around Collingridge had left its scars, and the growing abrasiveness of the campaign was only rubbing salt in the wounds. In particular, Woolton's attempt to shed his diplomatic veneer and rekindle memories of his early rough and tumble North Country political style was antagonising some of the more traditional spirits in the Party. Perhaps the time was exactly right for Earle.

On Saturday, he planned a rally amongst the party faithful in his constituency to wave the flag. A brightly decked hall packed with supporters whom he could greet on first-name terms - in front of the cameras, of course - seemed an ideal location for a major pronouncement on schools ' policy. He and his officials had been working on it for some time, and with just a little hurrying forward they would have it ready for announcement on Saturday - a Government-sponsored plan offering school leavers who could not find a job not only a guaranteed place on a training course, but now the opportunity to complete that training in another Common Market country, providing practical skills and language training as well.

Earle was confident it would be well received. The speech would glow with rapture about the new horizons and job opportunities which would open up for young people, and the mortal blow he was delivering to the British businessman's traditionally apathetic approach to dealing with foreign customers in their own language.

And then the
coup de grace.
He had got the Common Market bureaucrats in Brussels to agree to pay for the whole thing. He could already feel the tumultuous applause washing over him, carrying him on to Downing Street.

There was a large crowd of cheering supporters outside the Essex village hall to greet him when he arrived at midday. They were waving little Union Jacks and old election posters which had been brought out to give the occasion all the atmosphere of the campaign trail. The village band struck up as he came through the doors at the rear of the hall, proceeding down the aisle shaking hands on all sides. The local mayor led him up onto the low wooden platform as the cameramen and lighting crews scurried around to find the best angle. He gazed out over the crowd, studding his eyes from the lights, waving to their applause even as the mayor tried to introduce him. He felt as if he was on the brink of the greatest personal triumph of his life.

Then he saw him. Standing in the front row, squashed between the other cheering supporters, waving and applauding with the rest of them. Simon. The one person in the world he had hoped he would never see or hear from again. He remembered how they had first met - how could he ever forget? It was in the railway carriage as Earle had been corning back from the late night rally in the North West. They had been alone, Earle had been drunk, and Simon had been very, very friendly. And handsome. As the train thundered through the night they had entered a different, dark world cut off from the bright lights and responsibilities they had just left, and Earle had discovered himself committing an act which would have made him liable to a prison sentence several years before, and which was still only legal between consenting adults in private. And a British Rail carriage twenty minutes out of Birmingham is not the most private of locations.

Earle had staggered out of the carriage at Euston, thrust two £20 notes into Simon's hand, and spent the night at his club. He couldn't face going back to the home he shared with his ailing mother.

He hadn't seen Simon for another six months, but suddenly he had turned up in the Central Lobby of the Houses of Parliament asking the police attendants if he could see him. When the Minister arrived the youth didn't make a fuss, explaining how he had recognised Earle from the recent party political broadcast, asking for the money in a very delicate and gentle fashion. Earle had paid him some 'expenses' for his trip to London, but on Simon's second visit a few weeks later he knew there would be no respite. He had instructed Simon to wait, and had sought sanctuary in the corner of the Chamber. He spent ten minutes looking over the scene which he had grown to love so dearly, knowing that the youth outside threatened everything he had.

He could find no answer himself, so he had gone straight along to the Chief Whip's Office and spilled the lot. There was a youth sitting in the Central Lobby blackmailing him for a brief and stupid fling they had had many months before, he had confessed. He was finished.

Never mind, don't worry, he had been assured. Worse things had happened on the retreat from Dunkirk. Point him out and leave it all to the Chief Whip.

Urquhart had been as good as his word. He had introduced himself to the boy, and assured him that if he were not off the premises in five minutes the police would be called and he would be arrested for blackmail. The boy was further assured that in such cases the arrest and subsequent trial were held with little publicity, no one would discover the name of the Member concerned, and few people would even hear how long he had been sent down for. Little more pressure was needed to persuade the youth he had made a terrible mistake and should depart as quickly as possible, but Urquhart had taken the precaution of taking down the details from Simon's driving licence, just in case he were to continue to cause trouble and needed to be tracked down.

And now he was back there, in the front row, ready to make unknown demands about which Earle's fevered imagination could only torment itself. The torment went on throughout the speech, which ended as a considerable disappointment to his followers. The content was there, printed in large type on his small pages of recycled paper, but the fire was gone. The faithful had come to listen to him, not his officials' tired prose, yet he seemed to be elsewhere even as he was delivering the lines.