‘Do I know you? Truth is, I know very little about you.’
‘A maid of mystery.’
‘De Vries. Is that a maiden name, a married name?’
‘Neither. But I was scarcely likely to flourish on Planet Westminster with a name like Molly O’Malley, was I now? We came from County Carlow, my parents were great traditionalists. Molly was good enough for Daddy’s grandmother, so it was good enough for me. Elizabeth de Vries is a stage name that I use in this little basement theatre. On the other side of the water I’m Molly O’Malley and proud of it.’
‘Unusual. Someone in Westminster who seems to know precisely who they are.’
His maudlin observation was interrupted as the door swung open. In came a street cleaner – highway sanitation officer, in the jargon of Westminster City Council’s multiple employment codes, complete with luminous overjacket and cigarette wedged behind his ear. His strides, languorous and loose, brought him clumping across the floor to a point where he stood distractedly in front of Elizabeth, clutching his cap and conducting a patient examination of his nails.
‘Mornin’, Libby.’ He ignored Goodfellowe completely.
‘Good morning to you, Ted,’ she replied, extracting a folded ten-pound note from the pocket on her blouse and handing it across.
Ted replaced his cap with a gesture that might have been a form of awkward salute and, without passing another word, departed.
Goodfellowe sat mesmerized. ‘A man of restricted vocabulary,’ he muttered, ‘but apparently very flexible understanding of the street sweeper’s book of rules. Have I just seen a backhander being passed?’
‘Backhanders are for cynics,’ Elizabeth chided, ‘and totally unnecessary in this island of opportunity which you politicians have created, where the streets are not only paved with gold but always swept scrupulously clean. Particularly outside busy restaurants.’
‘Tell me that wasn’t a backhander.’
Elizabeth gave the point careful, even extravagant consideration before replying. ‘This is the way it works. Ted is my turf adviser. He advises me on the turf. Once a week I give him ten pounds to place on a horse he fancies – after all, what do we Irish lasses understand about such things? He’s very conscientious, regular as rain. Never offers an ungentlemanly word. And who knows, one day I might even win. In the meantime he and his crew do a wonderful job with those messy black bags on the pavement outside, don’t you think?’
‘A damned backhander!’
‘Get a life, Goodfellowe.’ Elizabeth arched an elegant eyebrow. ‘You’ll be telling me next that the glasses of champagne I give to the traffic wardens are no better than bribes.’
‘I am truly shocked.’
‘And I’m a soft touch. I’ve been known to give champagne to almost any waif and stray I find on the doorstep.’
‘Ouch.’ He felt obliged to laugh at himself. ‘You have a way of putting things in perspective.’ Then more seriously: ‘I think that’s why I’ve come.’
‘Your move,’ she said softly. Her words seemed to reawaken the lost rhythm of his thoughts.
‘I used to imagine I was a good man. Sometimes I used to dream I might one day even be a great man. High office. The highest, perhaps. Leaving my mark upon history. A sort of one-man armada on the high seas, someone who could go anywhere, achieve anything. Make a difference. That mattered to me, Elizabeth, making a difference.’
‘Mattered? Past tense?’
‘Turned out I wasn’t the armada but an old barrel which once they’d emptied they threw overboard. No longer needed on voyage. Now I’m a piece of parliamentary driftwood. If I make any mark on the sand, it’s wiped away with the next tide. My shoes pinch, my hair’s going grey. And I seem to have made one awful mess of my life.’
‘I think you’re being too harsh.’
‘Look,’ he said with feelings on the flood, ‘I’m supposed to help run the country yet I can’t even manage myself. My private life’s a ruin, my financial affairs no more than rubble. Sam – you remember, my daughter? – she’s the most important single thing in my life, perhaps the only thing that truly matters any more. Yet in her life I count for nothing. My wife is locked in an institution where she doesn’t know if it’s night or day, and all this, this’ – his voice was beginning to snag on the pain – ‘hell on earth is nobody’s fault, no one to blame. So why is it I feel so bloody guilty?’
‘Because you care, Tom. Perhaps too much.’
‘Or is it because I’m irredeemably arrogant and an ungrateful bloody fool? You know, all this mess could be cured, or at least eased, simply by accepting a proposition from Freddy Corsa that I should allow my thoughts on issues of public importance to grace his newspapers. I should be flattered; no one else seems too interested in what I’ve got to say.’
‘And why not? It’s an offer which Breedon had no difficulty in accepting. It’s the sort of thing politicians have been doing since … well, since there were politicians.’
‘Seems so easy, doesn’t it? Travel in company, and in some comfort, with Fleet Street’s florin in my pocket. My wife needs it, my daughter needs it. Corsa’s proposal is legal, it’s entirely within the rules. So I’ve climbed on board. Written him a note accepting his extraordinarily generous proposition. He’s waiting for the first article now. And yet …’
‘You suspect life is one great backhander.’
‘It’s like rain, Elizabeth. A few drops can make a harvest. Too much and the whole farm gets washed away.’
‘And is there a downpour?’
‘With Corsa? Hell, I don’t know. Half of me wants to find out, the other half keeps yelling that I’m an utter idiot because if I do I wave goodbye to the one chance I might have of sorting out my life. What you don’t know can’t tickle your conscience.’
‘So you want to ask my advice as to whether supping with the Devil and pocketing his thirty pieces of silver is the way out of damnation?’ She examined her glass coyly. ‘After my performance this morning I’m not sure I’m the one to pontificate.’
He touched her hand, lightly, then withdrew it with evident reluctance. ‘You’ve done enough by listening. Anyway, my conscience is a bit like a duck pond; a little muddy, too many weeds, maybe dried up a little since I was a young man. But the ducks eventually come back and flap around. Stir it up. I’ll wake up one morning and know inside myself what it is I have to do.’
‘Then I’m puzzled. What’s the problem?’
‘Uncertainty.’
‘About Corsa?’
‘And about you.’
‘Oh, oh. Somehow I thought I’d be needing this drink.’
He cleared his throat with the sound of feathered thunder. ‘I want to get to know you better, Elizabeth. Very much better. If you’ll let me.’
‘I hate to disappoint.’
‘But if I do it will be too late to wake up in the morning and discover I was wrong. And it might be. Disastrously wrong. My wife and my marriage are of great importance to me yet I hang onto them by the thinnest of threads. It wouldn’t take much to break it.’
‘I see.’ She sounded sad.
‘Part of me now hopes you’ll laugh me out of your restaurant and solve the problem for me.’ The other part clearly didn’t mean it.
Her eyes had melted like Carlow dew. ‘Tom, I can’t decide such matters for you. I’d like to help, very much. More than perhaps up to this moment I’d realized. But whoever else might be in your bed in the morning, the one person you’ve got to be able to wake up with is yourself. Only you can decide if there’s room there for Freddy Corsa. Or anyone else.’
Goodfellowe found dew in his own eyes. ‘Anyway, why on earth would a beautiful woman like you be interested in a piece of overweight baggage like me?’
She puckered. ‘Because if I can’t be the skinniest one at the party, I’m just not going to go.’
Goodfellowe’s desk usually resembled a recycling centre disappearing beneath an overflow of paper. This afternoon, however,
it appeared unusually peaceful. Mickey had taken it over. To one side of the desk was a notebook with a number of different coloured highlighters, to the other a borrowed volume of the current Who’s Who, and in the middle, pinned open by the weight of a wilting potted azalea, was the Register of Members’ Interests.
‘There’s no clear pattern. But maybe that in itself suggests a pattern,’ she said, without looking up at Goodfellowe as he came in. ‘In some cases it’s all too simple. Here’s your Caravan Park Owners’ consultancy, amount and source both listed under your name, clear as a sunny day at Clacton.’
‘It rained last time I went.’
‘But other MPs bowl the ball with a different spin. Take Quentin Cripps. He has a laundry list of company directorships but he doesn’t give any figures. His entry says the directorships are remunerated, but doesn’t give an amount.’
‘Can he do that?’
‘I chatted with his secretary. She says the directorships have nothing to do with his being an MP so there’s no reason why he should go full frontal. Other Members use descriptions like “corporate consultant” and give practically no details at all, even about the source let alone the amount. In fact, going through the Register I can find surprisingly few sources of income listed above ten thousand. As the pile of gold grows higher, the details seem to get lost in mountain mist.’
‘The gods on Mount Olympus shall remain invisible to mortal eye.’ He sat down on the edge of the desk. ‘But what about the winged messengers of journalism?’
‘The mountain mists grow ever thicker. Lots of them list an interest like “occasional journalism” or “income from sundry writing". It’s huge, something like a third of all backbenchers have media income of that sort. But you rarely get any precise figures, how much it’s worth. Or who is paying them.’
The telephone rang, he picked it up. It was Lillicrap. ‘Can’t, I’m busy,’ Goodfellowe barked and replaced the receiver.
‘What about the members of the Standing Committee?’ he pressed.
She consulted her watch. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be there?’
‘This is more important. Both to me and the Committee.’
‘OK. I’ve looked at ten members of the Committee so far, in addition to Breedon. Seven of them list some form of income from journalism or writing, but there’s not a single detail. No mention of who’s paying them or how much. And it’s on both sides, Government and Opposition.’
‘As you say, a pattern of obscurity.’
‘But is it a deliberate pattern? You think they’ve been fixed?’
He took a long time before replying. ‘No,’ he said eventually, shaking his head. ‘I don’t believe it, not of them; many are fine people. Good colleagues. I don’t want to believe it.’
‘That’s not an argument. That’s an epitaph.’
‘You’re right. So let me try a little harder.’ He began pacing in front of the desk, measuring his steps as carefully as he measured his thoughts. ‘I was approached by Corsa. Offered a deal, money in exchange for work, perfectly legitimate. That didn’t corrupt me, at least I didn’t feel corrupted. But maybe it was part of the great editing process of power. I would have been encouraged to feel grateful. Obligated. To see the story through his eyes.’
‘To see the Press Bill through his eyes.’
‘We never got down to that but, yes, I suppose you’re right. I would certainly have to listen to the arguments of my employer and benefactor with the greatest of care. Another thing. No one asked me to write for them until I became a member of the Standing Committee. As much of an egotist as I am, even I was surprised at the interest. I’m not exactly the most obvious parliamentary pin-up of the month. So I suspect I was offered the minimum deal.’
‘If you don’t tell me what it was you’ll never sing baritone again.’
‘Practically twenty thousand, guaranteed. And lots of free holidays. Could even have taken you along, if I wanted.’
Mickey whistled. ‘Of course, personally I’m beyond corruption. But even I have my weaknesses. Barbados. Bermuda. Bognor, in the right company.’
‘And if the majority of the Committee share your keen sense of morality …’
Goodfellowe’s reflections were brought to a sudden end as, without warning, the door burst open. It was Lillicrap, flushed of cheek and with eyes that looked as though they should have been staring from a police poster.
‘Tom, you bloody truant. What the hell are you up to? You’re supposed to be helping the Committee.’
‘I think what I’ve been doing has been helping the Committee …’
‘Not if you’re here you’re not. Dammit, four of our side are away sick or mucking out in their constituencies and I’m about to lose another in ten minutes. When he goes the Opposition will troop out after him. We’ll lose our quorum and the rest of the day’s business. This is an important Bill, Tom, we can’t afford delays, and we can’t afford Government backbenchers playing the spoilt child.’
‘You want my support, Lionel. Just as last week you so readily gave me yours over Breedon?’
‘Grow up, Tom. You weren’t put on this Committee to go frolicking with the Opposition. Or to put the phone down on me.’
‘Lionel, old friend, you’re being offensive.’
The rebuke seemed to calm the flustered Whip. He decided to try another tactic. ‘Sorry, sorry. Look, this Bill is my responsibility. If I make a mess of this, I’m dead. I won’t get another chance. That’s why I wanted you on the Committee, Tom, because I knew you’d understand. Please, as a friend, help me. I can’t afford to lose a day’s business.’
Goodfellowe turned to Mickey. ‘He wants me to step outside, for friendship. Bit like Captain Oates.’
‘Who?’
‘Never mind. Just keep on digging, or filing your nails, or whatever it is you do when I’m not around.’ He turned to Lillicrap. ‘I’ll be there.’
‘Ten minutes, Tom. No more. Ten minutes,’ Lillicrap warned, assertive once more, and dashed out.
Goodfellowe was there in nine minutes forty. Lillicrap knew the timing was deliberately provocative but couldn’t resist a brief look of gratitude, a most un-Whippish indulgence. He still had a lot to learn.
‘The Seventh Cavalry has arrived,’ Breedon announced. ‘We were just about to lose our quorum. The Chair welcomes the Honourable Member.’
Perhaps the remark was meant by way of an olive branch, for settlement of old scores. Goodfellowe took his seat in the back row. He began setting out his papers and signing his constituency correspondence. He kept only half an ear on proceedings for his function as a Government backbencher was clear, rather like that of a log on which the great legislative stones might be laid and then rolled to their final destination. In centuries to come it was possible that people might view the edifice thus constructed with awe. And then again, possibly not. In any event his role would have long been forgotten, buried in the parliamentary mud, but there was always the consolation that without his presence, it might never have happened. Though it never proved much of a consolation. It didn’t help him sleep at nights.
Although the seats reserved for Members were no more than sparsely filled, the twenty or so public seats at the end of Committee Room 10 were crowded and there was considerable traffic between the room and the corridor outside, so much so that Goodfellowe began to find it distracting. Well-dressed men and women, mostly young, shuttled back and forth, sometimes only staying to pass notes via the attendant to a member of the Committee, at other times taking a seat for a murmured exchange. The lobbyists were at work. Goodfellowe had heard they’d been ravenous during deliberations in the Lords where the Bill had been first introduced, and had succeeded in changing their Lordships’ minds on several important clauses. Evidently their task was now to ensure that minds remained changed. The great editing process of power was underway.
Beneath the muzzles of Beryl’s guns, Goodfellowe buried himself once more amongst his papers. The letter in front of him
was from a constituent, a dentist who was complaining that his drill gave him migraines yet he was unable to claim compensation for industrial injury. Could this be serious? But only last month a barman had won compensation for his tennis elbow caused, so he claimed, by the repetitive strain of drying glasses. Goodfellowe thought the injury more likely to have been picked up through wringing the hands of litigious lawyers. He had begun to scribble caustically in the margin of the dentist’s letter when he was distracted yet again by the opening of the door. At the entrance to the Committee Room stood a young man, no more than thirty but with an expression of the most serious intent, gesticulating to one of the Members occupying the Opposition seats. Signals of mutual acknowledgement were exchanged and the young man handed to the attendant a sheet of paper. Goodfellowe could see the sheet of paper clearly, it was of the palest pink. It made its way along the Opposition bench to where the Member was sitting. And from that pale pink sheet the Member, five minutes later and now on his feet, began to read.
‘Mr Breedon, with your permission I would like to speak in support of the amendment which stands in my name on the Order Paper …’
Goodfellowe didn’t follow the proposed revision and the detailed argument being put in its support, his attention remained focused on the earnest young man who was now sitting in the public seats, nodding with authorial approval as the Member read out every carefully crafted phrase.
The Member had resumed his seat when, without warning even to himself, Goodfellowe found himself standing. ‘On a Point of Order, Mr Breedon.’
‘Point of Order, Mr Goodfellowe,’ the Chairman intoned, accepting the interruption.
‘Before this amendment is put to the vote, indeed before any other votes are taken in this Committee, could I draw your attention to the extraordinary degree of interest being shown in the Bill by outside groups? Although I know by convention we never recognize the presence of anyone seated in the public gallery, if we were to do so we would see that most of the seats set out for the public aren’t occupied by the public at all, but by paid advocates.’ From the public seats came a self-conscious shuffling; several copies of PR Week slipped from agitated knees to the floor. ‘I don’t complain,’ Goodfellowe continued; ‘such interest is inevitable. This is a major piece of legislation which will result in fundamental changes in who controls our newspapers. It’s only right we should hear outside advice and opinion. But there is always a danger, particularly with such considerable commercial concerns at stake as there are in this Bill, that those outside interests grow too – how can I put it diplomatically? – enthusiastic, aggressive, in putting their case.’