Sing Like You Know the Words (10 page)

Abbas smiled too.

-I was about to say that history
shows that the realities of power tend to limit the ambitions that
politicians develop in opposition. The cost of making structural
changes is high, with no guarantee that the outcome will be a
success. Just as you said.

-Too many of them are cowards,
commented Irene. That’s the problem. It’s different if you have
self belief, like she does.

-In any case, Abbas continued,
the Prime Minister’s position is not impregnable. She won the
leadership more or less by accident, because other candidates
tripped up.

-Or were too frightened to
stand, said Irene. Doesn’t matter how she won. She is the leader
now. That’s what counts.

Matthew’s mother spoke.

-All those so-called senior
ministers toadying around her make me feel ill. I read one of them
saying how they find her so attractive. But look at her; she’s like
a mad headmistress. And they’re like little boys at public school
who want their matron. She’s got them wrapped round her finger,
looks like.

-Her husband is very rich you
know; a millionaire, Irene said.

-What does that have to do with
it?

-Everything. Money smells of
power, let’s be honest. And rich people know other rich people and
feel comfortable with them. Because Denis is rich, other rich
people will talk to him and to her, like they never would to that
grocer Heath. And so she’ll get lots of good advice from successful
people.

-Why is it good advice? Good for
them you mean?

Matthew could see that his
mother was on the verge of being seriously annoyed, but Irene
smiled at her serenely.

-The people who create wealth
understand things. They are the ones who are able to help make the
country wealthy. Of course it won’t be easy or painless.

Mr Thomas finally spoke. He had
been unusually quiet for a while and David hoped that there was not
going to be a storm. He’d had a lot to drink, but his voice was
calm and very matter of fact.

-She’ll do what she likes, he
said. Where it will end, I don’t know. What I do know, what seems
to be the case in this country; is that the working man has given
up and decided he prefers to be told what to do. I knew she would
win, long before the polling day. I’ll tell you how. I was down at
the Legion. I nip in now and again – beer’s cheap. And there’s this
chap watching the television, intently, and he says to me; who’s
that on the screen? He’s never off it these days. So I looked and
said, that’s Jim Callaghan, he’s the Prime Minister, and he says
well I wish he’d get to the end of what he has to say, I’m waiting
for the racing. I asked him if he knew there was an election on and
he said yes, he was going to vote for the other lot. So I asked him
why, and he tells me have you not seen them posters down the street
saying Labour’s Not Working and a queue of chaps on the dole. Dole
queues and that like the old days. I can’t afford not to work. I
said it’s an advert, it’s not real. The people in the picture are
actors. Have you read anything about what the other lot want to do?
He looked at me like I was daft and he says, what read about it? I
haven’t time for that. One lot is more or less the same as the
other, just a bunch of gobshites all round. And I realized if they
can get shipbuilders and steelworkers and the like, drinking cheap
beer in affiliated clubs; men that haven’t got a pot to piss in,
beg your pardon, to think like that and to vote for them, then it’s
as I say; they can do what they like.

-Aye well, said Uncle Bobby,
smiling a little desperately now. You don’t want to take that to
heart so. It was the strikes you see, in the winter. They just took
it too far. Beyond a joke.

The rest of the afternoon went
well. No food or punches were thrown and even Tim subsided into a
good natured stupor. At the parting, everyone agreed how much they
had enjoyed the day, and there was a friendly haggle over the bill,
all the parents determined to contribute more than their proper
share.

Outside it was still light.
Patricia and her parents had to dash for their train so the
goodbyes were hurried. The Patel family seemed dazed. Tim said he
was off to find a proper drink. Then it was time for Matthew and
David to part. They shook hands, which felt uncomfortable but
necessarily formal.

-You were quiet today, David
said.

-Plenty of other people talking.
Anyway, lots for us to think about isn’t there? One thing is
certain though

-What’s that Matthew?

-From now on, nothing will ever
be the same again. Our lives, the country, maybe the world. I´m
quiet because I´m imagining what it will all be like in a few years
time.

David paused, before answering
in all seriousness.

-It will be what we make it, of
course.

Chapter Two

It wasn´t many years later that
Mr. and Mrs. David Thomas completed the purchase of their first
real home.

The house in Oakland Ridge was
almost too perfect. David would never have found anything like it
at the price if he had not been on such good terms with the agent.
Any of Robert’s buyers who weren’t already signed to a lawyer would
be directed to David, and David made sure that business was good
for both him and Robert. The tip about the house was a way of
cementing their relationship.

It wasn’t in the most
fashionable part of town and its condition when they moved in was
rather neglected, but even then the house was impressive.
Architecturally, its construction was simple and massive. It stood
near the top of a low hill, commanding a view of neighbouring
parkland from the upper floors. The ground floor was surrounded by
an ample garden, gone wild, that was made secret by a high wall of
good soot blackened stone.

There were three floors of huge,
high ceilinged rooms arranged around spacious hallways. The upper
floor bedrooms were a little cosier, nestling under a large
skylight window set in the centre of the roof. The staircase rose
directly under this window, guarded on three sides by an oak
banister, forming a little atrium in the top of the building,
flooded with natural light.

The play of light in the
staircase and hallways was enhanced by the blue and red stained
glass set in the tall windows of the first two elevations, giving
the central space a soft yellow light that was like natural
sunshine but softer.

On the day they moved in, this
was where they stood to take it all in. It didn’t matter that the
carpets were ruined or that the heavy oak staircase was piled with
layers of cracked and discoloured paint. David took Patricia in his
arms and told her that the house would be their home always.
Patricia had never felt so happy. Neither of them spoke about
children; it was too soon for that, but she was glad that there was
more than enough room for a large young family.

Everything was on a grander
scale than the houses either of them had known before. The doorways
were bigger; the ceilings were higher and more airy; even the cream
coloured blocks of stone from which the walls were constructed
seemed oversized. Every room had ornate cornices or little bits of
tiling in odd places, giving each a little magic of its own. The
internal layout had an elegant simplicity without being too
predictable. All the flooring was badly in need of attention and
some of the walls needed replastering, but only the kitchen was
altogether beyond saving.

As the house was built on the
side of a hill, the rear elevation was lower than the front, which
meant that the back kitchen door was above ground and access to the
substantial cellar was down just a few steps. Here David made plans
to establish his den and extend the property. He could picture
himself entertaining in the large rear dining room that looked out
over the garden (they would make the windows bigger) and afterwards
summoning the male guests to his private basement bar.

The house needed work, but it
seemed incredible that after two years of marriage, they could have
this much already. The couple seemed blessed in other ways. It was
clear to all his colleagues that the new boy at Simpson Rose, the
one with the pretty barrister for a wife, was going places fast.
How he managed it was a mystery; and as the carefully planned
social invites began to arrive from Oakland Ridge, there was more
surprise and some muttering that such a junior member of the firm
could afford to live so splendidly and entertain so well. It was
assumed that there must be family money; a misapprehension that
David did nothing to correct. One or two wise heads surmised that
young Mr Thomas was living on credit, gambling on a quick success
and hoping to avoid painful failure. The truth was that David had
given no thought to failure.

There were other colleagues who
thought, privately or not so privately, that a chap like David
Thomas had no business being at Simpson Rose in the first place;
that he was too brash for their taste. After all, although
Simpson’s was not the biggest firm in the city (David had avoided
the biggest firms since they had too many people already in line
for the top jobs) it was considered, at least by its partners and
associate lawyers, to be the firm of quality. Simpson Rose did not
admit just any young solicitor; and once you were in there were
certain standards that had always been observed, even if one didn’t
speak of them.

Then one day, in had marched
this tall young chap; charming, good looking in a not too obvious
way; seeming full of confidence, although he didn’t know anyone and
everyone knew that he’d barely scraped a passable degree from the
local redbrick.

Worse than that, within a year
of qualifying he was being talked of openly as a future partner.
And all he seemed to do was property law; not exactly brain
surgery, though you have to admit it pays the bills. There was talk
of him bringing in a lot of business and being loved by the
clients, as if that had anything to do with being made partner.

It was a sad state of affairs
and times certainly were changing. These days the senior partners
were more likely to ask you to explain your chargeable hours for
the month than invite you for a round of golf.

David had worked out early on
that although property was not intellectually stimulating, not only
did it pay very well, but the other work seemed to flow from it. He
also realized that the senior partners of Simpson Rose were acutely
conscious of these simple facts. Their unspoken policy was to
reward young men like him very well in the early days and to
promise them great things for the future. The work was arduous and
stressful and the idea was to keep the young men running hard until
they burned out, by which time a new intake of young men would be
ready to replace them. But David had no intention of burning
out.

This kind of life was a war and
he already had his plan of campaign. Oakland Ridge would be his
base of operations as well as a weapon in his armoury. Besides it
was an early fulfilment of the promises he had made to Patricia.
For her, the house was simply a blessed space which the dedication
of time and care would make perfect.

***

Patricia’s own career did not
progress so serenely as David’s. It had been hard to find chambers
prepared to accept her as a pupil. A rare first class honours
degree from the local law faculty should have opened doors for her,
but instead it seemed to create new barriers.

Heads of chambers wanted to know
why she was looking at the provincial bar rather than London. As
she made the rounds of interviews, one of them gently suggested
that with an academic standard like hers, perhaps she should
consider postgraduate study. Privately some of the interviewers
noted that she was a rather shrill young girl; a little too
intense. They somehow doubted that she would fit in.

At least Patricia didn’t lack
persistence. Eventually she found a place in a middling set of
chambers that had one or two well thought of names. She resigned
herself to the unavoidable grind of chores; running after the more
experienced barristers, carrying papers, surviving on a meagre diet
of guilty pleas in the magistrates’ courts: appearances that
solicitors were too busy or lazy to attend to themselves. She kept
busy by working extra hours as a volunteer at the local law centre
and the citizen’s advice bureaux. David joined in at first to show
support, but soon he was too busy to continue.

Unfortunately, Patricia felt as
much out of place at the law centre as she did in the courts. All
the time at university, she had been around people who came from a
more privileged world. Matthew was always going on about it.
Patricia recognized the differences but felt no sense of exclusion.
It was the world that her mother had prepared her for, and though
she thought that she disagreed with her mother about most things,
it was the world where she most felt she belonged.

She would share that gracious
existence with the people who were born to it, although her own
life would be validated by a career of good works and dedication to
the cause of justice. But at the law centre, she experienced for
the first time the sense of meeting a different class of people,
whose concerns were really very different to her own. She was
fascinated and sometimes appalled by the smallest details that only
made David shrug and say there was nothing worth brooding over.

At this stage in her life,
Patricia spent a lot of time brooding, not so much about the lower
classes as about the legal profession and her place in it. She’d
told herself she was prepared for the routine frustration and
humiliation of being a pupil working her way up. She’d been told
what it would be like, but the daily reality was not so much the
crushing embarrassments that were painful enough when they arrived,
as the deadly dullness of it. And she didn’t want to become bitter.
She was conscious that the experience of being an outsider,
struggling for a foothold in a strange world, was leaving
scars.