To Play the King

  'Forget the shoulder muscles, Brent. Time to take care of the inner woman.'

  Lieutenant Brentwood Albery-Hunt, a six foot three Guards Officer on secondment to the Palace as the Princess's personal equerry, gave a sharp salute and stood to attention as his own towel fell to the floor and the Princess cast a critical eye over him in mock inspection. He knew from past form that she was a demanding Colonel of the regiment, and that night-duty under her supervision would be arduous.

  December: Christmas Week

  'It can't be done, Francis.'

  I don't appoint Ministers to tell me things can't be done, Urquhart raged inside. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer was insistent, and Urquhart knew he was right.

  They were huddled in the corner of a reception room at party headquarters where the good and the great of the party had gathered to save money and time by celebrating Christmas and bidding farewell to a long-serving official. The pay of such officials was appalling, their working conditions usually pitiable and they were expected to show independence neither of mind nor manner. In return they expected, after the passage of many years, recognition, in the form either of an invitation to a Buckingham Palace Garden Party, a modest mention in the Honours List, or a farewell reception at which busy Ministers gathered to drink sweet German wine and nibble cocktail sausages while the retiring and frequently unrecognizable servant was feted. But Urquhart had been pleased to attend this function, for an elderly but ebullient tea lady named Mrs Stagg. No one else was sufficiently senior to remember how long she had been there. Her tea was poisonous and her coffee indistinguishable from her tea, but her sense of fun had cut through the pomposity which so frequently befogs politicians and her bustling presence in a room usually managed to defuse even the most sombre of occasions. Urquhart had fallen for her when, as an aspiring MP more than thirty years ago, he had watched transfixed as she had spotted a button loose on Ted Heath's jacket and had insisted on stripping the bachelor party leader to his shirt sleeves while she repaired the damage on the spot. Urquhart was aware that this was her third attempt at retirement but, at the age of seventy-two, it seemed likely to be her very last and he had looked forward to the

  escape from official business. But it was not to last.

  'It simply cannot be done’ the Chancellor repeated. 'Christmas has scarcely happened in the shops and the recession is going to be here earlier than we expected. We can massage the statistics a bit, explain them away for a month or two as rogues, but we won't be able to massage away the school leavers who'll be flooding into the workforce at Easter. Most of them are going to go straight from the classroom to the dole queue, and there's sod all you or I can do about it.'

  The four men standing with heads bowed in their huddle drew closer together, as if to protect a great secret. Urquhart had asked the Chancellor what he thought of the chances of putting off the impact of recession for a month or two, squeezing out a little more time. But the Treasury Minister only confirmed what he already knew.

  Stamper was next to speak, very briefly. There was no use in making a feast of bad news. 'Four points, Francis.' 'In front?'

  'Behind. This aggravation with the King has shot our lead to hell. Four points and moving in the wrong direction.'

  Urquhart ran his tongue along thin lips. 'And what of you, Algy? What bucketful of sorrows do you bring to drench me?'

  As Urquhart turned to the Party Treasurer they had to huddle still closer, for the financier was scarcely more than five feet tall and listening to him in a room full of the buzz of conversation was an effort. Unlike the Chancellor and Stamper, he'd not been told of the plans for an early election, but he was no fool. When a Treasurer is asked how a party living on an overdraft might raise ten million pounds in a hurry, he knows that mischief is afoot. His well-lunched face was flushed as he craned his neck to look at the others.

  'Can't be done. So soon after an election, immediately after Christmas and just about to go into recession ... I couldn't raise ten million pounds this year, let alone this month. Let's be realistic, why would anyone want to lend that sort of money to a party with a slim majority about to get slimmer.'

  'What do you mean?' Urquhart demanded.

  'Sorry, Francis,' Stamper explained. 'The message must be waiting on your desk. Freddie Bancroft died this morning.'

  Urquhart contemplated the news about one of his backbenchers from the shires. It was not entirely unexpected. Bancroft had been a political corpse for many years, and it was time the rest of him caught up. 'That's a pity, what's his majority?' Urquhart had to struggle to provide any form of punctuation or pause between the two thoughts. They were all too aware of his concern, how the lurid headlines of a by-election campaign had a habit of creating a new national mood, usually at the Government's expense as their candidate was put to ritual slaughter.

  'Not enough.'

  'Bollocks.'

  'We'll lose it. And the longer we delay the worse it will be.'

  'The first by-election with me as Prime Minister. Not a great advertisement, eh? I was rather hoping I'd be riding the bandwagon, not being shoved under its wheels.'

  Their deliberations were interrupted by a sallow-faced youth in much-creased suit and crooked tie, whose reluctance to invade what was clearly a very private confabulation had been overcome by the Liebfraumilch and a bet made with one of the lissom secretaries, who had wagered her bed against his bashfulness. 'Excuse me, I've just joined the party's research department. Can I have your autographs?' He thrust a piece of paper and grubby pen into their midst.

  The others waited for Urquhart to move, to instruct that the youth be keelhauled for impudence and dismissed for ill-judgement. But Urquhart smiled, welcoming the interruption. 'You see, Tim, somebody wants me!' He scribbled on the paper. 'And what are your ambitions, young man?'

  'I want to be Chancellor, Mr Urquhart.'

  'No vacancy!' the Chancellor insisted.

  'Yet . . .' the Prime Minister warned.

  'Try Brunei,' Stamper added, in less frivolous tones.

  There was more merriment as the piece of paper did its round, but as the banter died away and the youth retreated in the direction of a deeply blushing secretary, Urquhart found himself staring into the humourless, uncompromising eyes of Stamper. Unlike the others they both knew how important was an early election. If recession and overdraft were the brush of the noose around their necks, then the news of the by-election had come as the sound of the trapdoor-bolt beginning its final slide. There had to be a way out, or else.

  'Merry Christmas, Tim?'

  Stamper's words sighed with the edge of perpetual Arctic night. 'Not this year, Francis. It can't be done. You must recognize the fact. Not now, not after the King. It simply cannot be done.'

  PART TWO

  New Year

  Buckingham Palace 31 December

  My dearest Son,

  Today I begin my first full year as the King, and I am filled with foreboding.

  Last night I had a dream. I was in a room, all white, in soft focus as things sometimes are in dreams, a hospital I think. I was standing beside a bath, white like everything else, in which two nurses were bathing my father, old and wasted, as he was before he died. They were treating him with such tenderness and care, floating him in the warm water, he was at peace, and so was I. I felt a calm, a serenity I have riot felt for many months.

  Then there appeared another nurse. She was carrying a bundle. A baby. You! Wrapped in a white shawl. But even as I reached so eagerly for you the nurse, and the two others attending my father, were gone. I held on to you but without support my father was no longer floating but suddenly submerged in the bath, water washing over his face, his eyes closed. I reached for him with one arm, but you began to fall. To help him, save him, I had to allow you to fall. I could not save you both. I had not a moment longer to decide, he was drowning, you were falling from my arms . . . Then I awoke.

  It is all too clear to me. The Royal Family is intended to symboli
ze the continuity between the past and the future; I no longer think this possible. A King can cling to the past, the traditions, the decay. Or choose to reach out for the future, with all its uncertainties, its dangers, and its hopes. We must choose.

  I am at a crossroads, both as a man and as a Monarch. I know I am well loved, but I take no pleasure in the fact. When that popularity is claimed in part at the expense of the Prime Minister, it can bring neither any good. Mr Urquhart is a man of great resolution and, I believe, little scruple. He lays exclusive claim to the future - perhaps any Prime Minister would - but he does so with an unstinting lack of reserve. Yet if I can have no part in building that future, either as man or Monarch, then I have no manhood, no soul, nothing.

  I shall not seek confrontation, because in the end I will lose. But I will not become merely a silent cipher for an unscrupulous and unwise Government. Watch carefully how this great dispute develops. And learn, for your own time will come.

  Your devoted, Father.

  * * *

  It was supposed to be a masked ball to welcome in the New Year, but Stamper had refused to cooperate. For the first time in his political career people had begun to recognize him, to make all those fawning motions which suggested he was important and to blame only themselves if they became bored talking to him. He was damned if he were going to wrap it all up behind some ludicrous headgear just to please his hostess. Lady Susan 'Deccy' Kassar was the wife of the governing chairman of the BBC. He spent his year trying to ensure that the Corporation's increasingly meagre budget eked out sufficiently to cover his commitments, while she spent it planning how to destroy half his salary in one go at her renowned and monumental New Year's Eve bash. The extravagance of the hospitality was matched by that of the guest list, compiled on computer over the course of the year to ensure none but the most powerful and notorious were included. It was said to be insufficient simply to be a spy master or bank robber in order to gain inclusion, you had to be caught and very publicly identified as such, preferably by the BBC. Stamper had been included only after a second recount. 'Deccy' - named after the decollete for which she had been justifiably famed ever since passing from her teens to the first of three husbands - had decided the invitation was a mistake as soon as she saw Stamper arrive in nothing more elaborate than a dinner jacket.

  She had a passion for masked balls, which hid her eyes and enabled her to be on constant lookout for still more glittering victims while concentrating the guests' attention undistractedly upon her neckline. She didn't care for mutineers at her parties, particularly ones who greased their hair. Deliberately and as publicly as possible she had mistaken Stamper for a television soap star who had recently emerged from a drying-out clinic, while privately vowing not to invite him next year unless he was by then at least Home Secretary. She was soon off in search of more cooperative prey, fluttering her mask aggressively to carve a passage through the crowd.

  It was shortly before midnight when Stamper spied the ample figure of Bryan Brynford-Jones holding forth from within the folds of a Laughing Cavalier's uniform, and passed in front of him.

  'Tim! Great to see you!'

  'Hello, BBJ. Didn't see you there.'

  'This is one for the Diary. Chairman of the Party come disguised as a human being.'

  'Should be worth at least a mention on the front page.'

  'Not unless you leak the information, old chap. Sorry, forgot. Leaks not the favourite vocabulary in Government circles at the moment.'

  The other guests enjoyed the banter, although Stamper had the distinct feeling he'd come off second best. It was not a sensation he relished. He drew the editor to one side.

  'Talking of leaks, old friend, tell me. Who was the bastard who leaked the King's speech? Always wondered.'

  'And wonder you shall. You know I couldn't possibly reveal journalistic sources.' Brynford-Jones chuckled mischievously, but there was a nervous corner to his smile.

  'Yes, of course. But our informal inquiry ran into the sand, bound to over Christmas, never had a chance. This would be just between friends. Very close friends, remember. Who was it?'

  'Never! Trade secret, you know.'

  'I'm very good with trade secrets. Or had you forgotten?'

  The editor looked perplexed. 'Look, Tim, I'll support you in every way I can, you know that. But sources . . . They're the crown jewels. Journalistic integrity, and all that.'

  Stamper's dark eyes burned bright. The pupils were small, almost unnaturally so, which gave Brynford-Jones the impression they were carving at him.

  'Just so we don't misunderstand each other, BBJ . . .' The hubbub around them had fallen to an expectant hush as a voice over the radio announced the chimes of Big Ben were about to strike. Stamper had to lower his voice to a whisper, but not so low that Brynford-Jones could be sure others would not hear. 'Integrity comes in many shapes and sizes, but not in your size and not through an open bathroom window. Don't go coy on me now.'

  There was dead silence as the wheels of the great clock began to turn and engage. The editor wriggled in discomfort.

  'Truth is, I can't be sure. Seriously. Telegraph got it first. We only followed up in the later editions.'

  'But.'

  Brynford-Jones' eyes darted nervously around the room, not settling. The introductory peal of the bells had begun giving him a little cover. The bastard wasn't going to let go. 'But. The story was written by their Court Correspondent, good contacts with the Palace. When we enquired in Downing Street and other Government departments, all we got were squawks of outrage and confusion.'

  'And from the Palace?'

  'Nothing. No denial, no outrage. No confirmation, either. I spoke to the King's press man, Mycroft, myself. Said he'd check it out and get back if he could, but he never did. He knew we'd have to print without a pretty authoritative denial.'

  'So.'

  'It came from the Palace. The King, or one of his merry men. Must've been. They could have stopped it. They didn't.' He was sweating, wiping his pink brow with a handkerchief he had lodged beneath the lace ruffles of his cavalier's sleeve. 'Christ, Tim. I don't know for certain.'

  Big Ben struck and the room echoed with the sound of renewed revelry. Stamper leaned close, forced to shout into the other's ear. 'So you've told me nothing but gossip and your integrity's intact. Sec how easy it was, old friend?' Stamper squeezed the editor's arm tightly, with surprising force for one whose frame seemed so narrow and pinched.

  'Peace and goodwill to all men, eh, Tim?'

  'Don't be a bloody fool.'

  In a bar not more than two miles from Lady Susan's party, Mycroft was also welcoming in the New Year. It would have been easy, too easy, to have moped. At this time of year, alone. Kenny away. An empty, cheerless house. But Mycroft didn't feel sorry for himself. To the contrary, he felt better, more at ease with himself, cleaner than he could remember ever feeling. His feelings had surprised him, but there could be nothing grubbier than going through the motions of sex while pretending it was love, when in truth there was no love to be shared, and he realized he had felt grubby all his married life. Yet with Kenny, Mycroft felt surprised, astonished at some of the things he had been asked to do, but totally untainted. He had wandered around Kenny's flat all afternoon, reading his postcards, playing his records, flopping about in Kenny's slippers and one of his favourite jumpers, trying to touch him in any way he could. He'd never been in love and he was far too old to be misty eyed, but he felt about Kenny as he had done for no other person. He didn't know if it was love but what the hell, at very least it was immense gratitude for Kenny's sharing, his understanding, for putting him straight. Straight! Mycroft smiled as he enjoyed his own joke.

  The desire to share something of Kenny's on New Year's Eve had driven him back to the place where they had first met. This time the club was packed, with lights flashing and a DJ with moustache dyed party purple keeping up a steady patter on the disco. He had propped himself quietly in the corner, enjoying the spectacle. Thr
ee very athletic young men provided a floor show, doing something with balloons which necessitated their taking off most of their clothing, with 'more to come' as the DJ eagerly promised. Mycroft had been anxious that someone would bother him, try to pick him up - 'those queers are such tarts,' Kenny had once teased. He didn't know if he would be able to handle it, but no one tried. He was clearly at ease with himself and his bottle of Mexican beer with lime twist and, anyway, Mycroft mused, he was probably ten years older than anyone else in the bar. Grandfather deserved his bit of peace.

  As the evening progressed the noise level had grown and the company became more boisterous. Men were queuing to have provocative photographs taken with one of the floor-show artistes, a drag queen who was promised for the after-midnight cabaret. Almost out of sight on the far side of the room, men disappeared into the scrum of the dance floor, to reappear many minutes later glowing with heat and often with rumpled clothing. He suspected he would not care for all he might find going on beneath the pulsating lights of the disco's laser system, deciding he was content with his ignorance. There were some doors he wasn't yet ready to pass through.