Political Death (16 page)

"You've got a really splendid majority," said the Prime Minister; he might have been congratulating his Foreign Secretary on his fine head of hair. "At least you had a splendid majority last time. This time round I think yours is one of the really safe seats in the country. Well done. With all those trips, it can't have been easy to keep in touch. Or perhaps they prefer reading about us in the newspapers. I sometimes think that about my lot. Of course my sister is wonderful there, better than any wife' But even the Prime Minister's natural exuberance faded as he realised the implications of what he was saying.

He returned to briskness. "So we shall have a seat to play with your seat to win or lose after the election. Reward some good fellow who doesn't deserve to lose but is going to. Get him back. You will resign shortly after the election. Exact timing to be discussed. I've been on to the Home Secretary of course. Sandra will be as helpful as possible. Which cannot be, alas, very helpful. Resign for personal reasons, whatever you like. I'm afraid the full inquest will eventually make it quite clear what those are, but, as we both know, that can't be avoided. I understand the inquest will be formally opened, and immediately adjourned, on Friday morning. That's the latest we can hope for. Besides, on Friday the Press will be busy proving they were right all along about the election. The real inquest may not be for some time. And by then," H.G. gave Burgo a darting smile, 'you'll no longer be Foreign Secretary. Not even a Member of Parliament.

"To be practical," he went on, 'your seat. Your dear good girl, now what a bright future she's got. Alas, they tell me she'll be lucky to hold that seat. Let her have yours? But no, that wouldn't be quite right. Your boy was lucky, wasn't he? Very lucky." Burgo did not know whether H.G. was referring to Archie's unfortunate brush with the neo-Nazis being papered over, or to his selection for a safe seat. He noticed that H.G." whose liberal credentials were impeccable, did not predict a bright future for Archie.

"Your seat. Let's see, what shall we do with it? Whom shall we reward? Some nice, loyal chap who will just have lost his own seat. For example, I also hear that Harry Carter-Fox can't possibly hold Bedford Park."

"The Carthorse!" exclaimed Burgo. "For God's sake. That we should be so lucky as to lose him. If the electorate get rid of him, every committee he's on will take half the time." (Had Olga Carter-Fox heard this, she might have revised her opinion of Burgo Smyth, at any rate as a future protector of her husband.) Burgo's response was automatic. He had forgotten for the time being the Swain connection, as the politician in him became once more dominant. Yet he had spoken to Olga Carter-Fox only recently, as he felt in honour bound to do, following the discovery at Hippodrome Square: that sulky brooding Olga Swain whom he had never liked even when she was a child.

"Oh, I should rather miss him!" cried the Prime Minister. "No one can accuse us of being a party without a conscience with him on our back benches Conscience, yes, yes. What a nuisance consciences are, aren't they? But some people have to have them, don't they? Otherwise where should we be? No, we can't afford to ignore the conscience factor, can we? Under the circumstances."

Throughout this light-hearted tirade, the Prime Minister had continued to walk about, occasionally peering out of the deep windows at the various structures of the British Establishment which the views provided. Burgo Smyth realised that he had always been maddened by H.G."s apparent inability to keep still, never more so than now. But of course, like so much of seeming inconsequence about Horace Granville, this habit of peregrination served its purpose. In this case, his restlessness protected him from direct eye contact with Burgo Smyth, as he pronounced the exact steps by which his political execution was to be carried out.

The death was to be self-inflicted. Like a kamikaze pilot in the service of the Japanese emperor at the end of World War II, he was expected to commit a form of suicide. Burgo Smyth knew that; he accepted that; he had in a conscious or unconscious sense been expecting this moment for almost the whole of his effective political career. He still paused to wonder at the cold-blooded cunning of Horace Granville who would accept the sacrifice of his safe seat, at one and the same time as stopping the mouth of the late Imogen Swain's family by promising it to her son-in-law.

When Burgo replied, he did so with great formality. "I'll do whatever you say, Prime Minister. I began this meeting by apologising for all the distress I am giving and shall be giving to the cause we both serve. I should like to end it by apologising again. To you personally. You have shown many kindnesses in the past both to me and to my wife." Burgo Smyth stood up, towering heavily over the slight dapper figure of the Prime Minister; he prepared to extend his hand. But, like an eel, H.G. slipped away from the closeness and in an instant was to be seen at the drinks tray, pouring from a cut-glass decanter full of pale gold-coloured liquid.

"Malt whisky. Local. Made in my constituency. But of course my sister always insists we pay for it and it costs a fortune." He handed Burgo Smyth a beautiful and weighty tumbler. The Prime Minister sipped. The Foreign Secretary took something not far from a swig. On doctor's orders, he had not drunk whisky or any other spirits for a long time; as he tasted the elixir, he decided that whatever his future held, it was going to feature whisky once again. Suddenly, to Burgo Smyth's astonishment, H.G. put down his glass and, stepping towards him, put his arm around his shoulders, reaching up slightly to do so. He's going to hug me, thought Burgo Smyth, he's really going to hug me.

"My dear Burgo, I'm so terribly, terribly sorry," said Horace Granville gently. For once in his life he sounded absolutely serious. "I keep thinking how for thirty years you must have dreaded this moment. The anguish you must have felt. Following the accident, how you must have longed to put the clock back."

For the first time since that midnight encounter with his children and Jemima Shore, Burgo Smyth felt his self-control faltering, that iron self-control on which (like Mrs. Patel the cleaner) he had prided himself throughout his career. By this time the Prime Minister had delicately stepped back, and his glass was once more ensconced in his hand. Burgo's voice when he answered was unusually husky, but he managed a kind of smile.

"Putting the clock back! Yes indeed. Don't we politicians always wish we could do that?"

"You must have felt great love." H.G. sounded almost wistful.

"I felt great passion. Not always the same thing."

"Ah yes, you're probably right. I wouldn't know about that. Or so my sister tells me. Passion, I mean, not love. I tell her I would be perfectly capable of feeling passion if only the right woman came along. It would serve her right if I did fall violently in love, at my age, and insisted on getting married. Then where would she be?" The frivolous mask was back.

Thus putting the clock back, Prime Minister?" murmured the Foreign Secretary in the same vein. He took another long drink of the magic pale liquid in his heavy tumbler.

At the Centre of the Web

Olga Carter-Fox contemplated the woman she had once known as Nanny Forrester. Her first reaction was surprise at how spry her former nurse was: not yet an old woman, although she remembered her thirty years ago as a middle-aged gorgon. But the former Nanny Forrester was gone; she was now apparently to be called Glenys.

"Since we are more like friends!" said Miss Glenys Forrester with a little laugh. She poured Olga a second cup of coffee out of a bone-china coffee-pot, painted with tiny roses and forget-me-nots. A plate containing sugary biscuits matched exactly and so did the cups, with handles so spindly it was difficult to hold them.

Then Miss Forrester twinkled even more archly, "Especially as I'm going to be able to vote for Mr. Carter-Fox on Thursday. What a surprise to find I was in your constituency after all these years! At the time I just couldn't help dropping Mr. Carter-Fox a wee note, reminding him of the connection, and a card for you.

Then of course there was my problem with the Town Hall, everyone there is so dreadfully left wing. Mr. Carter-Fox did what he could, but I suppose I had hoped for some tiny personal touch from you, Olga..."

She rattled on in what was a parody of amiability, just as Olga remembered her: "Still you must have so many responsibilities. Just one little girl, Elfrida, isn't it? I loved the photo more like Lady Imogen, I thought, than you. The eyes, anyway. But isn't it terrible when they lose their teeth and they will smile to the camera? I bet you and Mr. Carter-Fox had a good laugh about that photograph."

Then Glenys Forrester returned to the subject of their new friendship. "Certainly, I don't expect you to call me Nanny any longer. I haven't been called Nanny since I left you. In my next post I was called Glenys. Mrs. Arkwright considered Nanny to be quite old-fashioned. And later I called the Arkwrights themselves, Jack and Josephine Arkwright, you know, the Arkwright Foundation, they do so much for charity, I was asked to call them Jack and Josephine. Wasn't that surprising?"

Olga wanted to say, "Since those were their names, it would have been surprising if they had asked you to call them anything else." But she bit back the childish impulse. She was here, in this horrible, stuffy, over-furnished West London flat, drinking weak milky coffee and eating sweet biscuits, only because she was desperate. Nevertheless, Olga was reminded how much she had always disliked the late Nanny Forrester, now her friend Glenys. Fortunately, it seemed the dislike had not been mutual.

"Of course Olga, you were always my little pet." Glenys Forrester spoke in a sentimental voice which Olga also remembered from the past, in those days applied to kit tens in baskets, baa-lambs with blue bows, and flower fairies. That's what I told the Arkwright boys, and all my other families. Olga Swain was quite the best behaved little girl I ever looked after. Not that deep down you didn't have a temper your little black clouds we used to call them but your manners were a joy. Millie was quite another matter. What a little liar! As I always told your mother.

"And how is she?" Glenys Forrester hardly varied her cosy tone. "Of course I don't believe all I read in the newspapers." She pursed her lips. "But really, some of the things she says in public! And badgering our poor Prime Minister all the time. As if he didn't have better things to do."

Then a curiously avid expression crossed Glenys Forrester's face. "So what's he like?" she added.

Olga was startled. "H.G.? Very good manners. As you would expect." It seemed an appropriate thing to say to a former Nanny.

"No, no, not the Prime Minister. Randall Birley. Does he come to your dinner parties? I watched Rebecca, I wouldn't move from the set. I told my friends, now just don't telephone me on Sunday nights..."

But Olga Carter-Fox had not dug out Nanny Forrester's change-of-address card (hitherto purposefully ignored by her) to talk about Randall Birley. She thought it best to come right out with what she did want. "Nan- Glenys. Something extraordinary, something horrible has happened. How can I put this? I'm afraid it will be a great shock to you. It was a great shock to me. It's to do with the old days at Hippodrome Square. It's to do with the house itself."

"The house It was Glenys Forrester's turn to look startled. She put down the delicate coffee cup she had been endlessly sipping. Olga knew that she would be even more astonished at what was coming next astonished, and no doubt legitimately horrified. Olga had to press on while she still had the advantage of surprise.

"Glenys, I wonder whether you would talk to someone about the old days, and how you left us so suddenly. The fact is that I have someone with me, someone outside, Jemima Shore, you know, from television, Jemima Shore Investigator."

"Here? Television cameras here, oh Olga, what on earth, I don't understand, an interview' Glenys Forrester touched her hair. "I must make some more coffee." You could almost have said she bridled. The hair style had smartened up since Olga's childhood and there was evidence of a blue rinse.

"Not actually on television," Olga explained patiently. "You see, Jemima Shore's helping us, Harry and me." Olga judged it better not to mention Millie. "This is all absolutely confidential." And there was another thing Olga judged it better not to mention to Glenys Forrester: she was fairly sure the former Nanny would end up having to talk to the police.

But she, Olga, could fight this thing better this thing, whatever you called it, this scandal she could fight it better if she at least knew the facts, the ancient facts. She could hardly persuade Nanny Forrester to trim her story. That would be quite wrong, against the law, no doubt. Olga was conscious of her responsibilities as an MP's wife. Nevertheless, forewarned was forearmed, and there was nothing wrong with probing the mind of her former Nanny. As Glenys Forrester, excited as well as mystified, agreed to talk to Jemima Shore, Olga Carter-Fox blessed the magic persuasive powers of television.

Glenys Forrester did not scream or faint or do anything dramatic when Jemima Shore broke the news that a skeleton had been discovered in the cellar of Hippodrome Square. Jemima referred as euphemistically as possible to 'an accidental death', and an equally accidental discovery. She did not try to cover up Lady Imogen Swain's involvement, but she simply did not mention any other names. At first Miss Forrester said nothing at all, merely pursing her lips again into that narrow line which reminded Olga vividly of the tyrant of the Hippodrome Square nursery. Then she flushed visibly beneath her pale powdery skin, but it was not until Glenys Forrester spoke that Jemima and Olga realised she was not so much shocked as intensely angry.

"That wicked selfish woman! I'm sorry, Olga, but your mother was one of the most selfish mothers I ever had the ill fortune to work for, never a thought for anyone else, no consideration whatsoever. And a wicked temper when no one was looking. That's where you got your little black moods from. Sweetness and light to her friends, but very different where the nursery was concerned." Miss Forrester paused for breath, then returned to the attack as the full enormity of what she had heard struck her.