To Play the King

  He arched an eyebrow.

  'If they thought you'd really forgotten about a late-night meeting with a woman who had a figure like mine, they'd send for the men in white coats.'

  'They are not paid to think but to do as I tell them,' he responded waspishly. He sounded as if he meant every word, and Sally felt alarmed. She decided to change the subject.

  'Talking of opinion polls, you're six points ahead. But before you start congratulating yourself, I have to tell you that the King's tour will blow that lead right out of the water. It's going to be one heck of a circus - lots of hand-wringing and talk of compassion. Frankly, not a game where your side fields a strong team.'

  'I'm afraid His Majesty is going to have distractions of his own before the week is out.'

  'Meaning?'

  'His press officer and close friend, Mycroft, is a homosexual. Shacked up with an air steward.' 'So what? It's no crime.'

  'But sadly the story is just dribbling out to the press, and in their usual disreputable fashion they will be bound to make him wish he were a simple criminal. There's not only the deceit of his family - apparently his poor wife has been forced to leave the marital home after more than twenty years of marriage in disgust at what he's been up to. There's also the security angle. A man who has access to all sorts of sensitive information, state secrets, at the heart of our Royal Family, has lied his way right through the regular vetting procedures. Laid himself wide open to blackmail and pressure.' Urquhart was leaning on the wall button which would summon the private lift to the top-floor apartment. 'And then, most serious of all, is deceit of the King. A lifelong friend, whom he has betrayed. Unless, of course, you wish to be uncharitable and conclude that the King knew all along and has been covering up to help an old friend. Messy.'

  'You're not implying that the King, too—'

  ‘I imply nothing. That's the job of the press,' he responded, 'who, I confidently predict, by the end of the week will be wading in it.'

  The lift doors were open, beckoning. 'Then why wait, Francis? Why not strike now, before the King sets off and does all that damage?'

  'Because Mycroft is no more than a dunghill. The King needs to be pushed not from a dunghill but from a mountain top, and by the end of his tour he will have climbed about as high as he's going to get. I can wait.'

  They stepped into the lift, a small, insalubrious affair which had been squeezed into a recess of the old house during refurbishment earlier in the century. The narrowness of its bare metal walls forced them together and, as the doors closed, she could see the way his eyes lit up, sense the confidence, arrogance even, like a lion in his lair. She could be either his prey, or his lioness; she had to keep pace with him or find herself devoured.

  'Some things you shouldn't wait for, Francis.' Match him step for step, hold on to him, even as he slithered towards his own mountain top. She leaned across him to the control panel, and as her groping fingers found the key the lift stopped quietly between floors. Already her blouse was unbuttoned and he was kneading the firm flesh of her breasts. She winced, he was getting rougher, more bruising, his thrust for domination more insistent. He still had on his overcoat. She had to allow it, to encourage and indulge him. He was changing, no longer bothering with self-restraint, perhaps no longer able. But as she wedged herself uncomfortably in the corner of the lift, bracing her legs against the walls, feeling cold metal on her buttocks, she knew she had to go with him as far as she could and as far as he wanted to go; it was the type of opportunity that would not present itself again. It was once in a lifetime and she had to grab it, whether or not he any longer said please.

  It was four a.m. and pitch dark when Mycroft crept slowly from the bedroom and began to dress quietly outside. Kenny still slept, his body innocently engaged in a tumbling match with the bed linen, an arm wrapped around a toy bear. Mycroft felt more father than lover, driven by a deep and innate sense of protectiveness towards the younger man. He had to believe that what he was doing was right.

  When he had finished dressing he sat down at the table and switched on a small lamp. He needed light to write the note. He made several hopeless attempts, all of which he tore into small pieces and placed atop a mounting pile beside him. How could he explain that he was fractured between his feelings of love and duty towards two men, the King and Kenny, both of whom were now threatened through him? That he was running away because that is what he had done all his life and he knew no other answer? That he would continue running as soon as the King's tour was over-for surely he had three days left before disaster struck?

  The pile of torn paper mounted, and in the end he was left with nothing more than: ‘I love you, believe me. I'm sorry.' It sounded so pathetic, so insufficient.

  He placed the scraps of paper back inside his briefcase, snapping the locks as quietly as he was able, and put on his overcoat. He glanced out of the window to check the street, which he found silent and cold, as he felt inside. As carefully as he could he crept back to place the note on the table where Kenny would find it. As he placed it against the vase of flowers, he saw Kenny sitting up in bed, staring at the case, the overcoat, the note, understanding flooding into his sleep-filled eyes.

  'Why, David? Why?' he whispered. He raised no shout, shed no tears, he had seen too many departures in his life and with his job, but accusation filled every syllable.

  Mycroft had no answer. He had nothing but a sense of imminent despair from which he wanted to save all those he loved. He fled, away from the sight of Kenny clutching a favourite bear to his chest as he sat forlornly amidst his throne of sheets, he ran out of the apartment and back into the real world, into the dark, past the empty milk bottles, his footsteps on the pavement stones echoing down the empty street. And as he ran, for the first time in his adult life Mycroft discovered he was crying.

  Later that day there were tears elsewhere. Tears that hung in the damp night air of winter, that dripped down the mould-covered walls and into the overflowing gullies of the concrete underpass, and clung around the eyes of the old derelict as he stared into the face of his King. The dirt of weeks beneath his finger nails he no longer noticed and the stench of stale urine he no longer smelled, but the King had been aware from several yards away and even more so as he knelt beside the sum of all the old man's possessions - a hand grip tied with sisal, a torn and stain-covered sleeping bag, and a large cardboard box stuffed with newspapers, which would probably be gone by the time he returned the following night.

  'How on earth did he get like this?' the King enquired of a charity worker at his elbow.

  'Ask him,' suggested the charity worker, who over the years had lost patience with the high and mighty who came bearing their hearts on their sleeves, to express their deeply felt concerns yet who always, without exception, did so in front of accompanying cameramen, who treated the down-and-outs as impersonal objects rather than as people, who peered and passed on.

  The King flushed. At least he had the decency to recognize his own crassness. He knelt on one knee, ignoring the damp and the debris which seemed to be everywhere, to listen and to attempt understanding. And in the distance, at the end of the underpass where they had been shepherded by Mycroft, the cameras turned and recorded the image of a sad, tearful man, bent low amidst the filth, listening to the tale of a tramp.

  It was said later by those accompanying members of the media that never had a royal press aide worked more tirelessly and imaginatively to give them the stories and pictures they needed. Without interfering with the King or intruding too savagely on the pathetic scenes of personal misery and deprivation, they were faced with abundance. Mycroft listened, understood, cajoled, wheeled and dealed, encouraged, advised and facilitated. At one point he intervened to delay the King a moment while a camera crew found their ideal position and changed their tape, at another he whispered in the Royal ear and got the King to repeat a scene, steam rising from the drains and beautifully backlit for effect by a street light, with a mother cradling a young baby.
He argued with police and remonstrated with local officials who tried to insinuate themselves into the picture. This was not to be a caravan of officialdom who would pass by on the other side as soon as the obligatory photographs were taken; this was a man, out discovering his Kingdom, alone with a few derelicts and his conscience. Or so Mycroft explained, and was believed. If during those three days the King slept fitfully, then Mycroft slept not at all. But whereas the King's cheeks became more sallow and his eyes more sunken and full of remorse as the tour passed from day to night and back to freezing day, Mycroft's blazed with the fire of a conqueror who saw justification in every scene of deprivation and triumph in every click of the shutter.

  As the King stooped beside the derelict's cardboard hovel to listen, he knew his suit was being ruined by the damp slime which covered everything, but he did not move. He was only kneeling in it, the old man lived in it. He forced himself to stay, to ignore the odours and the chill wind, to nod and smile encouragement as the old man, through the bubbling of his lungs, told his tale, of university degrees, of a faithless marriage which shattered his career and confidence, of dropping out, only to find no way back. Not without the basic respectability of an address. It was no one's fault, there was no blame, no complaints, except for the cold. He had once lived in the sewers, it was drier and warmer down there and no hassle from policemen, but the Water Board had found out and put a lock on the entrance. It took a moment to take in. They had locked this man out of the sewers . . .

  The derelict stretched out his arm, revealing a bandage through which some bodily fluid had escaped and solidified. The bandage was filthy, and the King felt his flesh crawl. The old man drew closer, the misshapen fingers trembling and blackened with filth, thick and broken finger nails like talons, a hand not fit even for the sewers. The King held it very tightly and very long.

  When at last he rose to move on, there was foul smear on the leg of his suit and his eyes were damp. From the bite of the wind, probably, because his jaw was set firm and angry, but from tears of compassion the press would say. 'King of Conscience' the headlines would shout. The King walked slowly and stained out of the dripping underpass and onto the front page of every newspaper in the country.

  Gordon McKillin's advisers had argued the matter through for a full day. The original idea had been to call a press conference, the full works, and deliver as strong a message as possible to ensure that no journalist left with any question unanswered. But the Opposition Leader had his doubts. If the purpose of the exercise was to identify himself as closely as possible with the King's tour, shouldn't he match it in style? Wouldn't a formalized press conference seem too heavy, too intrusive, as if he were trying to hijack the King for party political purposes? His doubt grew into a flood of uncertainty and the plans were changed. The word was circulated. McKillin would be found on his doorstep immediately after breakfast time, bidding his wife farewell in a touching family scene which complemented the informal fashion of the King's tour, and if any cameras or press men happened to be passing . . .

  The scrum outside the front door in Chapel Street was appalling and it took several minutes before McKillin's communications adviser nodded that the multitude of cameras was in position and organized. It had to be right; after all. Breakfast TV was carrying it live.

  'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,' he began as his wife hovered shyly in the background. 'I'm delighted to see you all, for what I assume is an early look at our forthcoming announcements on transport policy.'

  'Not unless it includes the abolition of the Royal Trains.'

  'Hardly.'

  'Mr McKillin, do you think the King is right to take such a high-profile tour?' The questioner was young, blonde, aggressive, thrusting a microphone at him as though it were a weapon. Which, of course, it was.

  'The King is high profile, in that he has no choice. Of course he is right to see for himself how the underprivileged live. I believe what he is doing is admirable and I applaud it.'

  'But Downing Street is said to be very upset; they say that such matters should be left to the politicians,' another voice chimed in.

  'When did Mr Urquhart last visit such places himself, for goodness sake? Just because he doesn't have the nerve' - in his Highland tongue the word sounded like a military drum roll calling troops to the advance - 'to face the victims of his policies, that is no reason why others should also run away.'

  'You wouldn't criticize the King's tour in any respect?'

  McKillin paused. Keep the vultures waiting, guessing, anticipating. His chin came up to make him look more statesmanlike, less fleshy around the jowls, as he had rehearsed a thousand times. ‘I identify myself entirely with what the King has done. I've always been a firm supporter of the Royal Family, and I believe we should be thanking fortune we have a King who is as concerned and involved as he is.'

  'So you're one hundred per cent behind him?'

  The voice was slow, emphatic, very dour. 'One hundred per cent.'

  'Will you be raising the matter in the House?'

  'Och, no. I cannot. The rules of the House of Commons are quite clear in excluding any controversial discussion of the Monarch, but, even if the rules permitted, I would not. I believe very firmly that our Royal Family should not be used by politicians for narrow partisan purposes. So I'm not planning to raise the matter or hold any press conferences. I will go no further than simply expressing my view that the King has every right to do what he is doing, and I join in his concern for the underprivileged, who form such a large part of modern Britain . . .'

  The communications man was waving his hands about his head, drawing one arm across his throat. Time to wrap up. Enough said to grab a headline, not enough to be accused of exploiting the situation. Always keep the vultures underfed, wanting more.

  McKillin was making his final self-deprecating plea to the cameras when from the street came the noisy rapping of a car horn. He looked up to see a green Range-Rover shuffling past. Wretched man! It was a Liberal MP, a neighbour from farther down Chapel Street who took delight whenever he could in disrupting the Opposition Leader's doorstep interviews. The more McKillin protested about fair play, the louder and more sustained became his neighbour's efforts. He knew it would mark the end of interest in the interview from the Breakfast TV producer, he had perhaps only a second or two of live television left. McKillin's eyes lit up with pleasure, he offered a broad smile and cast an extravagant wave in the direction of the retreating Range-Rover. Eight million viewers saw a politician at his best, for all the world as if he were responding graciously and enthusiastically to the unexpected greeting of one of his most ardent supporters. Serve the bugger right. McKillin wasn't going to allow anything to spoil what was turning out to be an excellent day.

  As the producer brought the programme back to the studio, Elizabeth Urquhart dragged her attention away from the flickering screen to look at her husband. He was playing with pieces of blackened toast, and he was smiling.

  The coach taking the party of journalists from the Gorbals to the airport on the outskirts of Glasgow swayed as it turned the sharp corner into the car park. Mycroft, standing in the aisle, clung tightly as he surveyed the results of his handiwork. Throughout most of the coach sat journalists who were exhausted but content, their work having dominated the front pages for three full days, their expenses justified for at least another month. Plaudits were offered in abundance to Mycroft for his Herculean efforts on their behalf. Goodwill expressed itself in face after face, genuine and wholehearted, until his eyes reached the back rows of the coach. There, like truculent schoolboys, sat Ken Rochester and his photographer, alongside another pair from a rival newspaper who had also joined the tour at the last minute. They weren't accredited Royal correspondents but sailed under a flag of journalistic convenience which described them as feature writers. The attention they had been paying him, and the cameras that had been turned in his direction when they should have been pointed at the King, left Mycroft in no doubt as to whom t
hey intended to feature in their next reports. The word was clearly spreading, the vultures were circling overhead, and the presence of competitors would make them all the more anxious to pounce. He had less time than he had realized.

  His thoughts returned to the words which had inspired him and others over the last few days, words he had taken directly from the King. Words about the need to find himself, to respond to those things he felt deep inside, to see whether he was up to the task not just of doing his job, but of being a man. The need to stop running. He thought of Kenny. They wouldn't leave him alone, he was sure of that, the Rochesters of this world weren't the type. Even if Mycroft never saw Kenny again, they would treat Kenny as fuel to feed the pyre, destroy Kenny in order to get at him, destroying him in order to get at the King. He felt no anger, there was no point. That was the way the system worked. Defend the free press and damn the weak. He felt numb, almost clinical, distanced even from his own plight, as if he had stepped outside himself and could regard this other man with the objective detachment of a professional. After all, that's what he was.

  At the rear of the coach Rochester was talking conspiratorially in the ear of his photographer, who proceeded to squeeze off yet another series of shots as Mycroft stood above the heads of the journalists, like an actor before his audience playing out some great drama of the doomed. By the weekend, Mycroft reasoned. That was all the time he had left. Such a pity it was excrement like