The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (63 page)

As a child there had been some compensations. He remembered his favorite game dashing back and forth in front of the Palace guard, all the time being greeted with the satisfying clatter of boots being scraped and arms being presented until both he and the guard were breathless. But it had never been a proper childhood, alone and unable to reach out and touch like other children, and now they were intent on depriving him of his manhood, too. He would watch television yet couldn’t understand half the commercials. A stream of messages about mortgages, savings plans, money dispensers, new liquids for washing whiter, and gadgets that got the paint into those difficult corners and out of the bristles of the brush. It was as though the messages came from another planet. He already had the softest brand of toilet tissue but hadn’t the slightest idea where to buy it. He didn’t even have to take the top off his toothpaste in the morning or change a razor blade. It was all done for him, everything. His life was unreal, somehow so irrelevant, a gilded cage of miseries.

Even the girls they’d found to help with some of the basics had called him “sir,” not only when they first met and in public, but later when they were alone, in bed, with nothing else between them other than an enthusiastic sweat while showing him how the rest of the world spent their time.

He’d done his best, everything that was expected of him and more. He’d learned Welsh, walked the Highlands, captained his own ship, flown helicopters and jumped out of planes at five thousand feet, presided over charity committees, opened the hospital wings and unveiled their plaques, laughed at the humiliations and lamentable impersonations, ignored the insults, bitten his lip at the vicious untruths about his family and turned the other cheek, crawled on his belly through the mud and slime of military training grounds just as he was expected to crawl through the mud and slime of Fleet Street. He’d done everything they had asked of him, yet still it was not enough. The harder he strived, the more cruel their jests and barbs became. The job, the expectations, had grown too much for any man.

He looked at the bony, balding head, so like his father’s, and the sagging eyes. He’d already seen the morning newspapers, the reports of the debates, the speculation and innuendo, the pontification of the leader writers who either discussed him as if he were known so intimately to them they could peer deep into his soul, or treated him as if he, the man, simply didn’t exist. He was their chattel, a possession brought out on display at their convenience to sign their legislation, cut their ribbons, and help sell their newspapers. They wouldn’t allow him to join the rest of the world yet deprived him of the simple solace of being alone.

The once clear blue eyes were bloodshot with fatigue and doubt. Somehow he had to find courage, a way out, before they broke him. But there was no way out for a King. Slowly his hand began to tremble, uncontrollably, as his thoughts began to tangle in confusion, and the tooth mug started to shake. His damp fingers gripped white around the porcelain, struggling to regain control, yet it was all slipping away and the mug flew off as though possessed, grazed the edge of the bath and bounced onto the tiled floor. He stared after it, captivated, as if watching the performance of a tragic ballet. The mug gave several tiny skips, the handle bouncing this way and that, waving at him, taunting him until, with a final extravagant leap of despair, it twisted over and smashed into a hundred angry, savage teeth. His favorite tooth mug was gone after all. And it was their fault.

Thirty

When he dies they will line the streets in the hundreds of thousands to honor their fallen king. I will be with them as the coffin passes, of course. I shall want to make sure.

January: The Third Week

“Couldn’t I have done this at the Cup Final, Tim? You know how I hate football.” Urquhart was already having to raise his voice to make himself heard above the crowd, and the match hadn’t even started.

“Final’s not until May, and we don’t have time.” Stamper’s bright eyes darted around the ground. His pleasure was not going to be diluted by the whining of his boss; he had been a keen fan since the days he was no bigger than a football. Anyway, it was part of his program to make Urquhart appear a man among the people, a Prime Minister out enjoying himself and keeping in touch. The media would get bored eventually with such spoon-feeding but not, Stamper had reasoned, before March. This was an ideal occasion, a floodlit European Championship qualifying match against arch rivals Germany with passions of victorious wars and World Cup defeats being rekindled on the terraces and in front of televisions throughout every constituency. As he had reminded the recalcitrant Urquhart several times, football fans may not have as much money as the crowd at the Opera House, but they have many more votes and Urquhart was there to be seen helping them defend the nation’s honor.

A roar engulfed them as a wave rippled around the ground, the fans throwing themselves from their seats in the image of their forefathers going over the top at the Somme, Verdun, Vimy Ridge, and countless other bloody encounters with the Hun. The VIPs’ box was littered with an assortment of half-consumed drinks, overweight football bureaucrats, and magazines carrying the latest news of twisted ligaments and even more distorted dressing room gossip. None of it was to the Prime Minister’s taste and he sat hunched, seeming to have withdrawn inside the folds of his overcoat, yet as Stamper leaned over Urquhart’s shoulder from his seat in the row behind he discovered his leader engrossed in the screen of a miniature television, less than three inches across. He was watching the evening news.

“She’s getting too old for a bikini, if you want my opinion,” Stamper bantered.

The liquid-crystal display shone bright with the image of a paparazzi photograph, slightly shaky with the effect of a gentle Caribbean swell on the long distance lens, but unmistakably showing Princess Charlotte cavorting on a secluded beach. The tropical colors were brilliant.

“You don’t do our Royal Family justice, Tim. She is doing nothing improper. It is not a crime, after all, for a princess to be seen on a beach with a tanned companion, even if he happens to be considerably younger and slimmer than she. Nor does it matter that only last week she was skiing in Gstaad. You simply have no appreciation of how hard the Royal Family works. And I do deprecate the unpleasant British characteristic of envy, that simply because we are sitting here freezing our balls off in January while the country is slipping into recession, we should criticize those who happen to be more fortunate than ourselves.”

“I fear others won’t see it in quite the same noble light as you.”

Urquhart wrapped the car rug more tightly around his knees and fortified himself from a thermos of hot coffee amply laced with whiskey. He might feign being a young man while astride Sally, but the cold night air stripped away such pretenses with little mercy. His breath was condensing in clouds. “I fear you are right, Tim. More lurid stories about how many holidays she’s had in the last year, how many nights she’s spent in different parts of the country from the Prince, when she last saw the children. The gutter press will read anything into one harmless holiday snap.”

“OK, Francis. What the hell are you up to?”

Urquhart turned in his seat so that Stamper could hear him better above the noise around the stadium. He took another sip of coffee. “I’ve been thinking. The agreement on the Civil List expires shortly and we’ve just begun renegotiating the Royal Family’s income for the next ten years. The Palace has put in a pretty tall bid based on what some would say was an unreasonably high forecast of inflation over the coming years. It’s only an opening position, of course, something to bargain with, to make sure we are not too mean with them. It would be all too easy at a time of general belt-tightening to squeeze them, to argue that they should share the burdens along with the rest of us.” He arched an eyebrow, and smiled. “But I think that would be shortsighted, don’t you?”

“Give it to me, Francis. Unravel the workings of that devious mind of yours, because you’re way ahead of me and I don’t think I’m going to catch up.”

“I take that as a compliment. Listen, and learn, Timothy.” Urquhart was enjoying this. Stamper was good, very good, yet he didn’t have the magnificent view of the political lowlands afforded from the window of Number Ten. And he didn’t have Sally, either. “I keep reading in the press that we are moving to a position of constitutional…competition, shall we say, between King and Prime Minister, in which the King appears to have considerable if uninformed popular support. If I squeeze him on the Civil List I shall simply be accused of churlishness. On the other hand if I choose to be generous, it will prove I am fair-minded and responsible.”

“As always,” the Party Chairman mocked.

“Unfortunately, the press and public have a simplistic way of looking at the Civil List as rather like a Royal salary. The going rate for the job. And I’m afraid the media will not take kindly to a family that celebrates a huge pay increase by dashing off from ski slope to sun-blanched beach while the rest of us shiver. Even responsible editors like our friend Brynford-Jones are likely to misunderstand.”

“I shall insist on it!” Stamper shouted above the loudspeaker system introducing the players.

“If it appears the Royal Family is abusing the Government’s generosity, I fear that would be more of a problem for the King than the Prime Minister. Little I can do about it. Hope he doesn’t find it too much of a distraction.”

The pitch was in brilliant floodlight, the teams lined up, the referee ready, the official photographs taken, the stadium noisy with the clamor of sixty thousand fans. Suddenly the chorus of raucous shouts subsided to a conspiratorial rustle.

“God Save the King, Tim!”

As Urquhart stood with Stamper for the playing of the national anthem, he felt warmer. He thought, above the perfunctory singing of the crowd, he could hear the sound of collapsing castles.

***

The King’s desk was a mess. Books and copies of
Hansard
were piled along the front edge with pieces of paper sticking out like weeds to mark passages for future reference, the telephone had become submerged beneath a tide of computer printout bearing the accounts of the Duchy of Lancaster, and an empty plate, which had earlier carried his lunch of a single round of wholemeal bread and smoked salmon, floated aimlessly around. Only the photograph of the children in its plain silver mount seemed immune from the encroachment, standing alone like a desert island amid stormy seas. Typically, his brow was furrowed as he read the report on the Civil List.

“A little surprising, don’t you think, David?”

“Frankly astonishing. We seem to be enjoying the spoils of victory without my being aware we’ve yet been engaged in combat. It’s not what I expected.”

“Could it be a peace signal? There’s been far too much gossip about the Palace and Downing Street. Maybe this is a chance for a new start. Eh, David?” The voice sounded tired, lacking in conviction.

“Maybe,” Mycroft responded.

“It’s certainly generous.”

“More generous than I realized he could be.”

The eyes shot a look of reproach across the jumbled desk. He was not a cynic; he liked to think of himself as a builder who found the best in people. It was one of his most infuriating characteristics, Mycroft had always thought. Yet the King did not disagree.

“It enables us to be generous in return.” The King had risen from his chair and moved to gaze out of the window across the gardens, slowly twisting his signet ring. The new gardens were beginning to show definitive and distinctive form, and he found great solace as his mind filled in the many gaps and created a vista of beauty in front of him. “You know, David, I’ve always thought it anomalous, embarrassing even, that our private income from the properties and interests owned by the Duchy of Lancaster and elsewhere remains free of tax. I’m the richest man in the country, yet I pay no income tax, no capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, nothing. And still in addition I get a Civil List allowance of several millions that is just about to be substantially increased.” He turned and clapped his hands. “It’s time for us to join the rest of the world. In exchange for the new Civil List, we should agree to pay tax on the rest of our incomes.”

“You mean a token payment?”

“No, no gestures. The full going rate on it all.”

“But there’s no need,” Mycroft protested. “There’s no real pressure on you, no controversy about it. Once you agree to it you’ll never be able to renege. You will be binding your children and your children’s children, no matter what Government is in power and no matter how punitive the taxes might be.”

“I have no intention of reneging!” His tone was sharp, a flush in his cheeks. “I’m doing it because I think it is right. I’ve been over the Duchy accounts in great detail. Heavens, those assets should provide enough income for half a dozen Royal families.”

“Very well, sir. If you insist.” Mycroft felt chided. It was his duty to offer advice and sound cautionary notes, and he did not care for being scolded. Even after the long years of friendship he was still not comfortable with the Monarch’s flashes of impatience; it’s what came of waiting a lifetime yet being in such a hurry, he told himself. And the outbursts were growing more frequent in the few short months since he had been on the Throne. “What of the rest of the Family? You expect them also to volunteer tax?”

“I do. It would be nonsense if the King were to pay tax yet more junior members of the Firm were not. People wouldn’t understand.
I
wouldn’t understand. Particularly not after the sort of press they’ve managed to organize for themselves recently. I know the media are vultures, but do we really have to offer ourselves up on plates ready to be devoured? A lot more clothing and a little more common sense wouldn’t go amiss at times.” It was as close as he would come to personal criticism of his own family, but it had been no secret in the sculleries and laundry rooms of the Palace how incensed he’d been, both with Princess Charlotte’s lack of discretion and the media’s lack of restraint.