First Among Equals

“Yes, four weeks. I had to hold off telling you until I had severed all the bonds, had resigned, and could be sure of not letting you talk me out of it.”

“Do you know how much I love you?”

“I hope enough to let me go, before it’s too late.”

Charles would not have normally accepted the invitation. Lately he had found cocktail parties to consist of nothing but silly little bits of food, never being able to get the right drink, and rarely enjoying the trivial conversation. But when he glanced on his mantelpiece and saw an “At Home” from Lady Carrington he felt it might be an amusing break from the routine he had fallen into since Fiona had left. He was also keen to discover more about the rumored squabbles in Cabinet over expenditure cuts. He checked his tie in the mirror, removed an umbrella from the hat stand, and left Eaton Square for Ovington Square.

He and Fiona had been apart for nearly two years. Charles had heard from several sources that his wife had now moved in with Dalglish on a permanent basis despite his unwillingness to cooperate over a divorce. He had remained discreetly silent on his wife’s new life except for one or two selected tidbits dropped selectively in the ears of well-chosen gossips. That way he had elicited for himself sympathy from every quarter while remaining the magnanimous loyal husband.

Charles had spent most of his spare time in the Commons, and his most recent budget speech had been well received both by the House and the national press. During the committee stage of the Finance Bill he had allowed himself to be burdened with a lot of the donkey work. Clive Reynolds had been able to point out discrepancies in some clauses of the bill, which Charles passed on to a grateful Chancellor. Thus Charles received praise for saving the Government from any unnecessary embarrassment. At the same time he disassociated himself from the “wets” as the Prime Minister referred to those of her colleagues who did not unreservedly support her monetarist policies. If he could keep up his work output he was confident he would be preferred in the first reshuffle.

By spending his mornings at the bank and afternoons and evenings in the Commons Charles managed to combine both worlds with the minimum of interruption from his almost nonexistent private life.

He arrived at Lord Carrington’s front door a little after six-forty-five. A maid answered his knock, and he walked straight through to a drawing room that could have held fifty guests and very nearly did.

He even managed to be served with the right blend of whisky before joining his colleagues from both the Upper and Lower Houses. He saw her first over the top of Alec Pimkin’s balding head.

“Who is she?” asked Charles, not expecting Pimkin to know.

“Amanda Wallace,” said Pimkin, glancing over his shoulder. “I could tell you a thing or two …” but Charles had already left his colleague in midsentence. The sexual aura of the woman was attested to by the fact that she spent the entire evening surrounded by attentive men, like moths around a candle. If Charles had not been one of the tallest men in the room he might never have seen the flame. It took him another ten minutes to reach her side of the room where Julian Ridsdale, a colleague of Charles’s in the Commons, introduced them only to find himself dragged away moments later by his wife.

Charles was left staring at a woman who would have looked beautiful in anything from a ballgown to a towel. Her slim body was encased in a white silk dress, and her fair hair touched her bare shoulders. But what struck Charles most was the translucent texture of her skin. It had been years since he had found it so hard to make conversation.

“I expect you already have a dinner engagement?” Charles asked her in the brief intervals before the vultures closed in again.

“No,” she replied and smiled encouragingly. She agreed to meet him at Walton’s in an hour’s time. Charles dutifully began to circulate round the room but it was not long before he found his eyes drawn back to her. Every time she smiled he found himself responding but Amanda didn’t notice because she was always being flattered by someone else. When he left an hour later he smiled directly at her, and this time did win a knowing grin.

C

harles sat alone at a corner table in Walton’s for another hour. He was just about to admit defeat and return home when she was ushered to the table. The anger that had developed from being kept waiting was forgotten the moment she smiled and said, “Hello, Charlie.”

He was not surprised to learn that his tall, elegant companion earned her living as a model. As far as Charles could see she could have modeled anything from toothpaste to stockings.

“Shall we have coffee at my place?” Charles asked after an unhurried dinner. She nodded her assent and he called for the bill, not checking the addition for the first time in many years.

He was delighted, if somewhat surprised, when she rested her head on his shoulder in the cab on the way back to Eaton Square. By the time they had been dropped off at Eaton Square most of Amanda’s lipstick had been removed. The cabbie thanked Charles for his excessive tip and couldn’t resist adding, “Good luck, sir.”

Charles never did get round to making the coffee. When he woke in the morning, to his surprise he found her even more captivating, and for the first time in weeks quite forgot “Yesterday in Parliament.”

Elizabeth listened carefully as the man from Special Branch explained how the safety devices worked. She tried to make Peter and Michael concentrate on not pressing the red buttons that were in every room and would bring the police at a moment’s notice. The electricians had already wired the rooms in Beaufort Street and now they had nearly finished at the cottage.

At Beaufort Street a uniformed policeman stood watch by the front door night and day. In Pucklebridge, because the cottage was so isolated, they had to be surrounded by arc lamps that could be switched on at a moment’s notice.

“It must be damned inconvenient,” suggested Archie Millburn during dinner. After his arrival at the cottage he had been checked by security patrols with dogs before he was able to shake hands with his host.

“Inconvenient is putting it mildly,” said Elizabeth. “Last week Peter broke a window with a cricket ball and we were immediately lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Do you get any privacy?” asked Archie.

“Only when we’re in bed. Even then you can wake up to find you’re being licked; you sigh and it turns out to be an Alsatian.”

Archie laughed. “Lucky Alsatian.”

Every morning when Simon was driven to work he was accompanied by two detectives, a car in front and another to the rear. He had always thought there were only two ways from Beaufort Street to Westminster. For the first twenty-one days as minister he never traveled the same route twice.

Whenever he was due to fly to Belfast he was not informed of either his departure time or from which airport he would be leaving. While the inconvenience drove Elizabeth mad the tension had the opposite effect on Simon. Despite everything, it was the first time in his life he didn’t feel it was necessary to explain to anyone why he had chosen to be a politician.

Inch by inch he worked to try to bring the Catholics and Protestants together. Often after a month of inches he would lose a yard in one day, but he never displayed any anger or prejudice except perhaps as he told Elizabeth, “a prejudice for common sense.” Given time, Simon believed, a breakthrough would be possible—if only he could find on both sides a handful of men of goodwill.