Ten Lords A-Leaping (14 page)

He went off the point once. It was clearly beyond him to resist telling the story he told over and over again of the foreigner who went to a fox hunt. The people, horses and dogs were in the best of spirits, the sky was blue and the air was brisk but not sharp. Everyone was in rattling good form and a good day’s sport seemed certain until disaster struck. The fox, instead of breaking free and leading hounds, horses and men a merry dance, faltered and was caught and killed before he left cover. The foreign gentleman,’ gurgled Poulteney, as he always did at this point, ‘thereupon turned to the Master of Foxhounds and said, “Oh my Lord Duke, I congratulate you on having killed that animal so soon and with so little trouble!”‘ Amiss ground his teeth. While he had advised strongly against representing hunting as vermin control, he had not wished Poulteney to talk of disappointment at a quick kill. Still, considering Poulteney’s normal style and the few speeches of his he had read in Hansard, he marvelled at his own brilliance in managing to produce a performance as good as this one.

The next anti was a gift. As an ex-Minister for Health, he explained, Lord Newman was concerned not with animals but with protecting people – from themselves, if needs be. He launched into a self-congratulatory passage about various reforms he had instituted which had cut back on accidents in school playgrounds, on playing-fields and in the boxing ring. It was his dearest wish that the element of danger be removed as far as possible from British life. Boxing must be banned and helmet and pads made compulsory in all team sports. To pass the anti-hunting bill would be to save a significant number of lives and prevent a large number of injuries. Amiss scribbled a few lines and gave them to an attendant to pass to the baroness, who turned round after reading them and gave him the thumbs up.

The debate wore on for another hour or so, throwing up Admiral Lord Gordon, an apoplectic Master of Foxhounds whom Stormerod had never been able to corral into the group and who spent most of his speech going on about saboteur scum and the need to bring back National Service, flogging, the stocks, capital punishment and a clip across the ear from a policeman to any child who cheeked him in the street. Animals were there for the convenience of man to do with them whatever they liked.

Beesley did rather better than this only because Amiss had done a heroic job in converting his ‘We-won’t-stand-for-it’ thesis into a coolly argued protest against criminalizing a highly respectable section of the population by forbidding people to do what their fathers and forefathers had done. He had also pre-empted Beesley’s likely worst excesses by allowing him to dilate on the subject of how hunting brought out in people the qualities of courage, coolness under pressure, presence of mind and concern for one’s companion in danger that were of such immeasurable value to members of the armed forces. Amiss winced slightly when Beesley brought in the paragraph he had written himself and was very proud of: ‘My noble friends. Often in life we have to say how we judge another man. One may say, “I would go into a slit-trench with him.” Another may say, “I would go into the jungle with him.” I say, “I would ride to hounds with him and trust him to keep a cool and clear head and act at all times like a sportsman.” As a country, as a people, we cannot afford wantonly to throw away this training ground, this breeding ground of our future leaders of men on the battlefield.’

Though Beesley was not a disaster, he was not a great success. However, he was cancelled out by the fifth Baron Neville, a dedicated Marxist, who droned on about the class war and the need to abolish the rich and their degenerate pursuits. By the time the baroness rose, Amiss’s notebook was full of the elaborate geometric doodles that always testified to deep tedium. But he sat up when – dressed for the occasion in an arresting scarlet jacket – she began to speak. It was clear from the outset that her homework had paid off, particularly the slogging over Hansard and the confabulations with Stormerod about how to affect the appropriate modesty for a maiden speaker without undergoing a complete personality change. She had taken his advice that when in doubt, one should opt for flattery.

What an old fraud, thought Amiss affectionately, as he listened to her inject into her voice a tremulous note as she begged the indulgence of the noble lords towards a speech which must perforce – because her first in this noble house – be faltering and inadequate. She craved their indulgence for her apparent arrogance in making her maiden speech after such a very short time in the House but begged their forgiveness on two grounds. The first was that when she had been a mere civil servant she had been a frequent member of the audience, for because the standard of debate was here so much higher than in another place, she had taken every opportunity to attend. And second, because this was a subject so important – not just to her but to the nation as a whole and the preservation of its heritage – that she could not have forgiven herself if she had not stood up and been counted. This was more important than ever now, since as the noble lords were aware, a failure to speak or a failure to vote to preserve this aspect of our national life might be taken by the enemies of democracy – spearheaded by the Animal Avengers, the Animal Liberation Army, the Hunt Saboteurs and all the many other extreme groups – as a reward for their evil, threatening tactics. If they were to scent blood, who knew what might follow.

Her main theme was courage, which she used as a prism through which to pick off one by one the speakers for the motion. Lady Parsons was denounced politely as someone who lacked the courage to accept the national character for what it was: brave, individualistic and with a deep sense of history and a commitment to conserving the British way of life that had kept it for many centuries a beacon of sanity and stability in a world of torment and upset.

‘The noble baroness would do better to take us as we are,’ she announced, as Parsons sat grimly staring into the middle distance, ‘with our foibles and peculiarities and our eccentricities. She should not try to legislate us into blandness and homogeneity.’

She skewered Brother Francis on his lack of realism: ‘If you push people beyond their level of tolerance, you do more harm than good.’ While she applauded deep devotion to animal welfare, he was attempting to bring about not only – as Baroness Parsons had done – a fundamental change in human nature, but also, even more ambitiously, he wished to change, even deny, the nature of animals.

In his mysterious way God had ordained that most animals – and man was an animal – fed on each other. It might seem cruel but it was reality and it was not for us to question in this regard the divine plan. As she came out with this, knowing Jack’s happy atheism, Amiss had to suppress a sardonic grin. She did a particularly neat job on Pangbourne, using to tremendous effect to denounce the Nanny State the verse Amiss had passed over to her. Her voice rang round the chamber and earned by Lords standards a tremendous outbreak of approving murmurs with Adam Lindsay Gordon’s lines:

No game was ever worth a rap

For a rational man to play,

In which no accident, no mishap,

Could possibly find its way.

What had this England that Lord Pangbourne was trying to bring about to do with the England of Alfred the Great and Henry V and Winston Churchill – a world in which Cavaliers rode into battle with daring and derring-do and laughter on their lips?

And, she went on, if she might make so bold, she wished to point out too that courage was not confined to the male sex. Mere women (Amiss feared she was beginning to go slightly over the top here) like Boadicea, Queen Elizabeth I and, more recently, Lady Thatcher, had shown that Englishwomen too have stout hearts. There were those among the noble lords who would remember great exhibitions of courage on the hunting field, which sometimes led to tragedy. But did anyone believe that that great lady, the late wife of the noble Lord Poulteney, would have held back from hunting for a day had she known that her life would end during a chase? Amiss looked rather nervously at Poulteney at this juncture, wondering if she had gone too far and hoping she had cleared it with him first, but he was showing no reaction. He lay back on the bench gazing at the ceiling.

‘And courage, my noble friends, is what this debate is about. For not only must we preserve hunting for reasons of conservation of tradition, of the good of the local community and because it is the least cruel method of keeping down foxes, but because it is our duty to resist what can now only be called terrorism. What was once peaceful protest has changed to civil disobedience and has recently degenrated into criminality; it is a veritable threat to the stability of the kingdom itself.

‘Those who have sought to intimidate some noble lords into acting against their consciences underestimate their mettle. They have underestimated too the intellect of the Lords whom I have the honour to address for the first time, who cannot fail to realize that to give way on this issue will lead inexorably to terrorist agitation on a host of other issues. If we knuckle under now, we will give great heart to those people who wished to terrorize us into becoming a nation of whey-faced vegans.’

She sat down to more supportive noises than any other speaker had yet attracted, both because the speech had been entertaining and because convention required encouragement for a maiden speaker. Yet a few lords refrained from cheering. Amiss was surprised to see that even within his restricted field of vision two lords on the Conservative benches showed no emotion whatsoever; he assumed them to be vegetarians. He guessed Poulteney’s failure to show support meant he thought it bad form to show approval of a speech in which his wife had been praised.

The last three speeches contributed very little that was new and during the last Amiss found himself nodding off. He awoke with a start, feeling slightly guilty, though looking round at the number of recumbent forms he felt his guilt misplaced. It was a relief when Lady Parsons stood up to give the winding-up speech. He found her surprisingly unimpressive, being one of those debaters who merely repeat their earlier points and appear not to understand the questions raised. The hunt employees of whom Stormerod had spoken, she explained, would simply have to retrain in modern skills. She sneered at Beesley’s argument about the qualities required by a member of the armed forces by remarking that the days of the cavalry were well and truly over. And to Poulteney’s point about the importance of the hunt in the social life of rural communities, she said shortly that when their sport was outlawed, it was for them to find some legal leisure pursuit: principle was all. Brisk, complacent and righteous, she brought the debate to an end at ten-twenty.

‘The question is that this bill be read a second time,’ called out the Lord Chancellor. ‘As many as are of that opinion will say, “Content”. The contrary, “Not content”.’ There was a chorus of ‘Content’ from Labour and the Bishops’ benches and a few more from the Conservative and cross benches. As expected, there were no ‘Not contents’.

As Lord Broadsword, the government whip, stood up to move the adjournment, the baroness bustled out of the enclosure and jerked her head at Amiss, who followed her obediently into the lobby.

Chapter 15

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‘Well done. You were very good.’

‘Yes, I was, wasn’t I?’ She smote him playfully in the ribs. His yelp drew a disapproving look from a doorkeeper.

‘So what do you think?’

‘I think you’ve broken a bone. Otherwise, I think that undoubtedly our side won the moral and intellectual argument. Did you spot any unexpected defectors from the “Content” group?’

‘Two,’ she said. ‘I kept a sharp eye on old Basil Hawthorne, one of my ex-ministers, whose instincts would be those of cockney-Labour, but I think he was swayed by Sid. He certainly nodded at him enthusiastically. And me. He definitely didn’t say “Content”. Nor did old Joe Taylor, that vegetarian Tory. Though I think he was asleep.’

‘He wasn’t alone in that. So was Reggie.’

Beesley emerged at the front of a throng of chattering peers a moment later and engaged in a rapid exchange with one of the doorkeepers. They both returned to the chamber.

‘Something’s up,’ said the baroness, ‘we’d better go back in.’

‘Gently, Jack, gently,’ whispered Amiss. ‘Don’t crash through them. You’re not dealing with demonstrators now.’

She moderated her charge and did her best to insinuate herself through the milling peers rather than run them down. By the time they got through to a view of the chamber, it was almost deserted, save for the alarming combination of a clutch of doorkeepers and Tommy Beesley feeling the pulses of several recumbent bodies. Amiss and the baroness glanced at each other in shared apprehension and – running – joined them.

‘What’s going on, Tommy?’

He turned and looked at her, ashen-faced.

‘They’re all dead. Reggie, Robbie, Connie and the others. Dead.’

‘My God.’ She wheeled on the nearest doorkeeper. ‘Get the police.’

‘Oh, my lady, do you really think that necessary? Could it not be a frightful coincidence of natural death?’

Her glare looked sufficiently powerful to bring about death by shrivelling. ‘Very good, my lady,’ he muttered, and left the room at a speed – for once – more urgent than dignified.

The telephone rang at 8.00, startling Amiss out of a nightmare in which he was being strangled by a hairy demonstrator wielding an ermine noose. The culprit turned out to be a sheet that his night-time thrashings had succeeded in winding around his neck. By the time he had disentangled himself and scrambled out of bed, the ringing had stopped. He swore and stumbled back to bed. Within a minute the ringing started again.

‘Good morning.’

‘It doesn’t feel like morning, Ellis. I didn’t get to bed till five o’clock.’