So the crowd in front of Francis and Mortima Urquhart began to shuffle back, to make way and allow them through. Many even smiled in automatic reflex. And thus the Urquharts, slowly and arm in arm like a couple stepping out onto a ballroom floor, made their way toward the rostrum.
The impact of these matters on Makepeace was devastating. He knew he had lost the attention of the crowd, now he could see it parting like concubines before the Khan. With a half joke about the arrival of unexpected reinforcements, Makepeace himself turned to the edge of the platform to inspect the cause of the disruption. He found Urquhart and his wife, with Corder a pace to the rear, at the bottom of the steps to the podium and already beginning to climb.
“Tom, good afternoon,” Urquhart greeted.
“This I did not expect.”
“Forgive me, I did not mean to disrupt you. But the deed is already done, you have won. I am tired of the fight, Tom.”
“That is gracious of you.” Then, suspiciously: “Why are you here?”
“To salvage a little pride and respect in defeat, perhaps. On the radio at the start of your speech I heard you say that you did all that you have done more in sorrow than in anger. In that same spirit I have come to express my hopes for conciliation, if not between the two of us then at least for our country.”
“But why?”
“Because I love my country. Because I have led it for too long to wish to see the end of my career languish in bitterness and anger. I have made mistakes, been unfair to you. I would like the opportunity to apologize publicly.”
“What—here? Now?”
“With your permission.”
“Never!” Maria interjected. “You can’t let him hijack your rally like this.”
“I wish only to apologize.”
“Then take an advert in The Times.”
“Maria, Maria,” Makepeace chided gently, “this is our meeting, these are our supporters. Not his. I’ve just been complaining about the lack of free speech and compassion in the Britain of Francis Urquhart; is the Britain of Tom Makepeace to begin in the same ugly fashion? What have I got to lose, apart from his public apology? Anyway,” he jested, trying to deflect her protest, “if I turn him back he’s likely to get lynched.”
“Then I may speak?”
Makepeace turned to the microphones. “It would seem that Mr. Urquhart is so impressed with our gathering that he has come to offer his personal apologies to us.”
Released from the confines of face-to-face formality, the crowd indulged their true feelings. A chorus of wolf whistles and jeers erupted.
“No.” Makepeace held up his hand. “Unlike some, we are forgiving and tolerant. Let us hear him. Before we condemn him.”
The cries scarcely subsided as Makepeace made way at the microphones for Urquhart.
“I still don’t care for it,” Maria was complaining. “I’d rather watch the lynching.”
How much more suitable she would have been as a leader than Makepeace, Urquhart reflected silently, if only she made a better choice of sleeping partner. He moved forward, Mortima at his side. The jeers grew in a crescendo. They volleyed back and forth across the square, gathering in pace and ferocity, the sea of arms and upturned faces turning turbulent and breaking like angry waves against the base of the great column, threatening to overwhelm him.
Suddenly Urquhart threw his hands in the air. “Marchers! Marchers for peace! I salute you.”
It was as though he had thrown a massive blanket over a fire. Calm.
“We carve the mistakes of men upon their headstones, and bury their accomplishments with their bones. If that is my fate, then let it be.”
Even those few in the crowd who had continued to protest were now hushed to silence. This was not what they had expected.
“This is a rally to celebrate peace and I am indebted to your leader Thomas Makepeace for his permission to address you. I, too, have come in a spirit of peace. And reconciliation. For at the end of an election campaign it is time to accept the verdict of the people, no matter how personally hurtful. To bind the wounds. To move forward. Together. That is what I hope for our country today no less than when I first took office as your Prime Minister. I cannot deny that it was my wish to continue in Downing Street, and if that has seemed selfish on my part, then I accept the charge. If ambition is a crime, then I plead guilty.
“I have held ambition for my office, for there can be no greater privilege or higher accolade in a politician’s life than to lead this country and you, its people. You have been kind enough to confer that accolade on me repeatedly for more than a decade, and if you choose to deny me that honor now then again I have no complaint. And certainly not against Tom Makepeace, for he is a decent man.
“I have also held ambition for the people, for it is only through the people that a country may grow great. And if their comfort and prosperity stand at levels that could only be seen as a dream some years ago, then I do not care one jot who is accorded the credit. It is enough for a leader to see those dreams fulfilled, and if others wish to ascribe such prosperity to the influence of Europe, to statistical euphemism, or even to economic accident, then, once more, I have no complaint.”
There was a shout from the crowd.
“No! Not even against Tom Makepeace. For he was a member of my Government for so many of those years. And he is a decent man.
“Yet above all I have been ambitious for our country, to restore it to the ranks of those nations considered great. Great Britain. Not simply another anonymous land indistinguishable from the others, but one for which we can raise our heads with pride and say ‘I am a Briton,’ and for that bold claim to be respected anywhere in the world. And particularly in Europe. I am not anti-European. It is not that I would be the last European, but that I would be the first Briton. That has been my ambition, and if it is an ambition you do not share, as Tom Makepeace does not, then I have no complaint.
“Earlier today Tom Makepeace said that I owe you an apology and I listened to his words, the words of a decent man, with care. And if it is the view of you and other decent men and women that an apology is due, then it is freely given. As freely as I have given my heart and my life for you over these many years.”
His voice seemed to be on the verge of breaking, and there was silence across the square. Maria was staring in hard reproach at Makepeace; he in turn stared stonily at his shoes. Urquhart appeared to be searching the crowd as though trying to reach for each and every one of them. Or searching for someone. On perches and pavements around the square, commentators were rapidly attempting to rewrite their scripts.
“But let me say that I have been brought to this place not so much for Britain as for Cyprus. An island I know well, and that I love. Many of you here will disagree not only with what I have done, but with what I tried to do in Cyprus. Say that I am guilty of confrontation and bloodshed. But that is not what I tried to do. My aspiration, as you all know, was to bring peace to the island. To stop the bloodshed. To bring together the communities. I have failed, but it is an attempt that has failed for over a thousand years in that unhappy place. Yet that prospect of probable failure did not stop me from trying. Yes, if you like, peace was my ambition, and why not? And if I should lose my office because of that failure, how much greater is the loss suffered by ordinary peace-loving Cypriots?”
And then Urquhart saw him, shuffling forward in the crowd, limping and with bent back, his features all but hidden beneath the beret. Drawing closer.
“There are those who do not want to see peace in Cyprus. Wicked men, men of violence. Who have never known peace and who cannot live with peace. Who linger over old death and lost graves rather than looking forward to new life. Who have tried to find division between Cyprus and this country, when some of us sought only reconciliation.”
The attack on Makepeace was all too blunt yet it aroused surprisingly few cries
from the crowd. “The bones. The bases,” one protester yelled from the foot of the platform, waving a banner.
“No, do not misunderstand me. I do not come to dispute Tom Makepeace’s views, decent though they may be; I come only to show that there is another, genuine way. And if there is a division between the interests of Cyprus and Britain then I for one make no apology for saying that I am British, the head of the British Government, and proud to accept the obligations that go with it. Perhaps I have loved my country too much. If so, it has been a fault—a calamitous fault. And calamitously am I asked to pay for it.”
Maria was muttering vehemently into Makepeace’s ear, nodding in the direction of the microphones, but Makepeace placed on her a restraining hand and shook his head. It was too late. The moment was indisputably Urquhart’s. As if to emphasize the point, Mortima stationed herself close behind her husband’s shoulder; if anyone were to make an attempt to seize the microphone, they would have to force her bodily out of the way first.
And Passolides had hobbled to the front of the crowd. He was leaning on his stick directly in front of the podium, less than twelve feet from where Urquhart was standing. He was looking up, the features beneath the beret contorted like an animal in pain, caught in a trap, who had chewed off its own leg in order to escape only to discover the hunter at hand. Urquhart lifted his club and began raining blows down upon his unprotected skull.
“There are some who will not forget, who cannot forget. Evil men who wallow in memories, in selfishness beyond belief, who will sacrifice an entire community in order to indulge their own personal vendettas.” He was staring straight at Passolides. “That is the evil of ambition. Not the ambition to fight for peace, but simply to fight. Old battles, any battles. Sick minds that refuse to forget.”
Passolides’s mouth was working in the greatest agitation. His eyes had filled with blood. Urquhart studied him with analytical care as might an actor on a stage involved in the greatest performance of his life, feeling for his audience, reaching for their emotions, flaying them alive. He believed in this role without reservation, nothing else in the world mattered.
“I have no family, apart from Mortima.” He turned to look at her, a look of absolute trust and gratitude. “I have no children. No brothers or sisters. Tom Makepeace has claimed you all as brothers and sisters today…” A fog had entered his voice; he allowed the words to hang across the square. There was no applause, no one any longer rushing to be identified with Makepeace. Urquhart had them, had turned them. The play was nearly at its end.
He smiled at Passolides. The same cold smile with the touch of British arrogance he had held when photographed as a young Lieutenant in Cyprus. Sneering. Contemptuous. Spitting the words at him. The old man was fumbling at his belt; Urquhart’s eyes never left him.
“Perhaps he had the right to do so. But if he claims the living, then let me claim the dead.”
Passolides seemed to be crying, his jaw adrift. Urquhart claiming the dead. George. Eurypides. This man was the Devil himself…
“The children and brothers and sisters who have dreamed fine dreams, as I have, who have laid down their lives in Cyprus over the years, sacrificed for the peace that I too have sought…”
And then he stopped. Caught his breath. Felt something on his chest. He looked down to see a dark patch beginning to grow on his crisp white shirt. Then a second patch appeared and he felt his knees begin to give way. But not yet. His body seemed reluctant to answer his calls but he turned toward Mortima, saw the look in her eyes, reached toward her, to embrace her, to protect her as another blow hit his back and pushed him into her arms. He slid to the wooden floor as he heard two sharp explosions very close at hand. His eyes were misting but he could see Corder standing with a gun in his hand, pointing it into the crowd. He could see Mortima bending over him, fighting to be brave. And he could see something very bright in his eyes. Was it the sun? Or a burning tree? It was growing brighter.
“Mortima? Mortima! Where are you?”
She was very close, but he could not focus; she was gripping his hand, but he could no longer feel. There was no pain. A sense of exhaustion, perhaps. And exhilaration. Triumph. At having cheated them all, even at the end. And cheated them by his end. Cheated them all, except Mortima.
His lips moved; she kissed them, cradled him as close as she dared, ignoring the blood and the screams about her.
He smiled, his eyes finding her once more, and whispered.
“Great ruins.”
She kissed him again, long, until Corder bent over to separate her from the body.
Epilogue
A nation held its collective breath as it watched and rewatched the televised scenes of Francis Urquhart, his body already mortally wounded, throwing himself protectively in front of Mortima. A noble death. A great death, even, it was said.
Not so for Evanghelos Passolides. He died even before Urquhart, felled by Corder’s bullets. It was never discovered why he had chosen to assassinate the Prime Minister, “Britain’s JFK” as the tabloids put it, but the public knew who to blame. Thomas Makepeace. Close associate and, as was almost immediately revealed, adulterous lover of the old man’s daughter. Criminal-conspiracy charges were considered but nothing could be proved in court, although the circumstantial proof against Makepeace had been established in the minds of the voters long before election day.
From Monday until polling day Urquhart’s body lay in state in the Great Hall at Westminster where the public filed past to pay homage without pause. And on polling day itself they queued to return his now-united party in numbers unprecedented in modern electoral history.
He had won. The final victory.
Not everything was as Urquhart would have wished. The chairman of Booza-Pitt’s constituency party, on opening the letter withdrawing his knighthood, had a heart attack and died on his kitchen floor. He was never able to denounce Geoffrey, who claimed that the photocopied letter sent to the Privileges Committee and the News of the World was a forgery. Indeed, his hand had shaken so much in the writing that his claim was persuasive, and in any event the editor decided there was little profit in attempting to disgrace such a new and obviously grieving widow. So Geoffrey survived, for the moment, in the new Administration.
That Administration was led by Maxwell Stanbrook, whose Jewishness and dubious parentage proved to be distractions rather than direct hits during his campaign to become Prime Minister. The party decided there was nothing wrong with ability. And he made Claire a Minister.
It took a couple of years before Mortima, the Countess Urquhart, had founded the Library on a site beside the Thames donated by the Government, and it was many more years before peace talks began again in earnest in Cyprus. It was still longer before revisionist historians tried to dislodge the memory of Francis Urquhart from the hearts of a grateful nation.
They did not succeed.
The End
About the Author
Michael Dobbs is also Lord Dobbs of Wylye, a member of the British House of Lords. He is Britain’s leading political novelist and has been a senior adviser to Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and David Cameron. His bestselling books include House of Cards, which currently airs on Netflix, as well as To Play the King, The Final Cut, Churchill’s Triumph, Churchill’s Hour, Never Surrender, and Winston’s War. Read more on his website, www.michaeldobbs.com.
Michael Dobbs, The House of Cards Complete Trilogy
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