High society (4 page)

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS LOBBY, WESTMINSTER

P
eter Paget’s parliamentary assistant felt her heart pounding with excitement. She could hear the roars from inside the debating chamber and knew that her employer was truly in the lion’s den. Samantha had been with Peter for almost four months and had shared with him the build-up to this moment. She felt that it was almost as much her day as his. Unable to stand the tension any longer, she phoned her mother on her mobile phone.

‘He’s in there now, Mum. It sounds like they’re tearing him apart.’

Forewarned by her daughter, Samantha’s mother had been watching the debate on the Parliament Channel and assured Samantha that Peter was acquitting himself splendidly.

‘Oh, he’s so wonderful, Mum. He went through the speech with me this morning, sitting on a bench in Parliament Square. It’s incredible, his passion, his commitment, the things he believes. He’s the only real man in that bloody place. The Prime Minister’s just a moron compared to him. Oh, Mum, I wish you’d seen us out there working together, right in the shadow of Parliament. I felt so proud that he chose me to try out his lines on. He even took a couple of my suggestions! I know! He’s got this bit about the Union Jack draped on a police coffin and as he was talking I looked up and saw the flag that flies above the house and it seemed like providence, so I said that he should draw a comparison between the two flags. He said it was a brilliant idea and promised to use it! He did? Oh, that’s amazing! But it’s all him, of course, I mean it’s him that makes it work. He’s just brilliant, that’s all. He claims his wife helps him with his stuff, but I doubt it, I mean, come on, as if. What would she know? She’s just a boring little mouse. Although I do think it’s sweet of him to be so supportive of her. Honestly, Mum, it was just so exciting going through it all with him…with Big Ben looking down on us and the sunshine on the roof of Westminster Abbey, so romantic…And then when he got up to go in he said ‘Wish me luck’ and I did and then he kissed me! In public! He’s never done that before…I’m not being silly. I just think it’s a sign, that’s all.’

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, WESTMINSTER

I
nside the debating chamber the object of this girlish affection was hot. Peter wanted to remove his jacket, but he knew that there would be dark rings of sweat at his armpits. He wished that he had worn a lighter-coloured shirt. He was experienced enough a politician to know that sweaty armpits were just the sort of thing that could blow an entire speech by securing more coverage than the issues under discussion. Although on this occasion such was the force of Peter’s performance that he could probably have stripped naked and still have the content of his speech properly reported. He had galvanized the emotions of the house in a manner not seen since the heady days of Mrs Thatcher.

‘I am not alone in my thinking, Madam Speaker. I can see that there are Honourable Members here today sitting on all sides of the house who see things as I do, although they’re scared to admit it. And let me tell you this: no less a figure than the senior policeman in my constituency, Commander Barry Leman, agrees with every word I’ve said. He has been my trusted adviser during the preparation of my bill and would be happy to appear before a parliamentary committee to offer a police perspective.’

Madam Speaker observed that it was not for police officers, senior or otherwise, to invite themselves to address parliamentary committees. Madam Speaker wondered if Mr Paget was suggesting that Commander Leman represented the official view of the Metropolitan Police.

‘No, Madam Speaker, I suspect that he does not, just as my views do not represent the official line of my own party. Nonetheless, Commander Leman and I both believe passionately that it is the law that is killing officers in the drugs war! For the law refuses to acknowledge the patently obvious fact that the drugs war is lost! Yes, it is lost, Madam Speaker! Will this house persist for ever in its self-deception? Sufficient people take drugs to make life in this country and indeed the entire world an ever worsening misery. But only, Madam Speaker, only because they must buy them from criminals! We have lost the war! We are currently living under the yoke of a victorious army of occupation! An army of drug barons, gangsters, pushers, traffickers, murderers, petty thieves, prostitutes, muggers, corrupted officials and all the low lifes of a criminal economy, a vast world trade existing outside all law. Can not we, who sit in this house, this house, which is the mother of all parliaments, the proud cradle of democracy in the modern world, can we not once more give that world a lead? Have the courage to do the unthinkable! To do that which would in a single instant pull the rug from beneath ninety per cent of the criminals on this planet? Can we not move to legalize, legalize, mind, not decriminalize, all drugs?’

Afterwards, in the lobby of the house, Peter Paget stood blinking in the light of his instant fame. His had been one of the great parliamentary debuts, for, despite his seventeen years of service, to all intents and purposes debut it had been. The kind of bravura, firecracker performance that weary lobby correspondents had thought had long since been consigned to the romance of history. By the end of his speech, as he himself had noted, Peter had without doubt begun to make a favourable impression on many of his colleagues, and his back had been slapped and his face snarled at in equal proportions. This is not to say that half of the Members of Parliament were going to vote for full legalization, but many were grateful to Peter for having the courage to raise the issues. Particularly since they all viewed his bill as career suicide. Nobody in recent years had sparked such instant and furious debate. Peter Paget was blinking in the limelight and as he smiled at the starstruck face of his parliamentary assistant he knew that he was finally above the radar.

THE LEMAN HOUSEHOLD, DALSTON

T
en minutes after Commander Barry Leman left the house the phone rang.

‘Hello, Leman residence.’

‘Mrs Leman?’

‘Yes. Who is this speaking?’

‘I’d like to speak to your husband.’

‘Who shall I say is calling?’

‘A friend.’

‘I know all his friends. I presume you have a name.’

‘Just put me on to your husband, please, Mrs Leman. It’s in his interests.’

Christine Leman pressed the record button on the answerphone connected to the Snoopy phone’s plinth. She wondered if the caller heard the click. ‘I’m sorry, but we don’t speak to people who refuse to identify themselves.’

‘Then will you give him a message?’

‘Of course.’

‘Tell him to drop his support for Paget’s Private Member’s Bill.’

‘Ah, I see — ’

‘And tell him to drop his inquiries into Drug Squad corruption.’

‘If you have views on either of those subjects you can address them in writing to Dalston Police Station, or alternatively my husband’s email address at the Met is — ’

‘Tell him to drop what he’s doing or we’ll drop him. Did you hear that, Mrs Leman? Do you understand?’

‘I’m recording this conversation.’

‘You can record what you like, Mrs Leman. And once you’ve recorded it, why not play it to your daughter? The one who attends Kingswood School for Girls. The one who walks unaccompanied to drama classes every Saturday morning. The one who attends netball practice Monday evenings six till eight and then gets a lift to the corner of Jackson Road and cuts home through the allotments. Do you understand, Mrs Leman?

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, WESTMINSTER

T
he Shadow Home Secretary glared furiously at the Speaker, to Peter Paget, and then back again.

‘Madam Speaker, in all my years as a member of this house, and they span no less than five parliaments, I have never been so revolted as I am by the comments made by my honourable colleague the Member for Dalston North West. That such an irresponsible man with such dangerous, anarchic opinions feels able to remain a member of Her Majesty’s Parliament simply beggars belief. Just as it is astonishing to me that the high-ranking police officer whose support he claims to have secured, Commander Barry Leman, openly advocates drug use and yet feels able to remain a member of the Metropolitan Police. If there is one thing on which I think all sane and right-thinking people in this country can agree it is that people, particularly young people, particularly children, must be protected from the evils of drugs! Surely that single principle is one which must cross all party boundaries? And yet we have been forced to sit listening to a member of this house, a government backbencher, suggesting that we legalize these lethal substances. That we make them readily available to any bored teenager who might imagine that he or she wants them. I am sickened by the whole idea. Will the Prime Minister not immediately condemn his errant colleague? Will he not withdraw the whip? Banish him from his party, a party which, for all its many faults, has never thus far harboured apologists for criminals and advocates of anarchy!’

The Prime Minister did not need this. He had an extensive legislative programme to push through and already too much parliamentary time and no doubt every headline in the next morning’s papers had been hijacked by the MP for Dalston North West.

He rose to reply.

‘Madam Speaker, as my honourable colleague the Shadow Home Secretary is well aware, the Member for Dalston North West has introduced a Private Member’s Bill, which is his privilege. His opinions form no part of the government’s policy and, like my honourable colleague, I reject them utterly. We shall continue with our cautious approach to the decriminalization of cannabis while committing ourselves with ever more energy to the rigorous enforcement of the law on Class A drugs.’

He sat down to respectful applause, but nonetheless there were doubtful faces on the benches. Paget had lit a touch paper; he had said the unsayable and the genie was out of the bottle. Everybody knew that the war on drugs was if not lost at least unwinnable, and if Paget continued to pursue his crusade with the vigour with which he had started it, the ostrich politics that had informed the drug debate for so many decades would no longer be an option.

ST HILDA’S CHURCH HALL, SOHO

T
he early-morning meeting of Soho Alcoholics Anonymous was normally finished by eight o’clock. Many of the people who attended it were busy professionals who had work to get to. The current session was already overrunning, but nobody seemed minded to leave.

‘Backstage at the Brits was the usual bollocks. They’d given me the second biggest dressing room after Elton John, so I knew immediately that Emily had been right about the Yanks — they hadn’t turned up again. Bastards. I don’t know what’s more pathetic, that they care so little about pissing us off or that we care so much when they do it…Actually, I reckon the saddest thing is that they don’t even care that we care that they don’t care. They just don’t give a toss about what we think either way. We might as well be Bela-shaggin’—rus or Iceland or whatever. And we invented the Beatles! But that’s all just ancient history now, in’t it? The Yanks are back in charge and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Everybody wants to crack the States. That’s the one, in’t it, the only one.

‘I’ve got seven Brit Awards and I’d swap the lot for one Grammy. I’ve headlined the MTV Europe Music Awards for three years in a row now, but I’d happily go bottom of the bill if they’d just knock off that one little bastard word ‘Europe’. The proper MTV Awards aren’t called MTV USA, are they? No, because everybody knows where they’re at. It’s like with American email addresses. We have to put ‘dot uk’ at the end of ours, but not them, everyone knows where they live. Bastards.

‘I might get there. I keep trying. I really thought I’d scored when I went on Jay Leno a few months ago. Leno hugged me in hospitality and said I was a star. But then Pammy Anderson walked in and I realized I was only a star to Jay Leno until a real one came along.

‘I couldn’t believe Pammy Anderson, incidentally. I mean, those knockers are just stupid, aren’t they? She’s deeper than she is long, that bird. I reckon her nipples were at the bar before the back of her arse was through the door. Doesn’t do it for me at all, that. I couldn’t raise a smile.’

Tommy basked in the laughter of the assembled recovering addicts. An audience was an audience to him. It didn’t matter whether it was ten thousand kids at the Birmingham NEC or a tight ring of screw-ups in a church hall in Soho. Tommy always rose to the bait.

‘Anyway, the good thing was that with no Yanks or U2 turnin’ up, I was unquestionably the second biggest star in the house after Elton. I mean, I had outsold him about fifty to one on our last albums, but it’s about longevity, in’t it? So respect and all that. He’s queen of England is Elton. Everybody knows that. They’d put a little astroturf garden with a picket fence an’ all outside his dressing room, which in my coked-up state I thought was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, particularly when I pissed on one of his trees. I could see that the Manics were dead annoyed that they hadn’t thought of that first. Good thing, I reckon. If they’d pissed on Elton’s tree it would have been some sort of political protest. With me it was just a laugh.

‘Backstage it were the usual set-up: concrete hangar, Portakabin dressing rooms, a Hard Rock Cafe in the middle and a sponsored bar, which meant of course that the beer was shite. Decent beers never sponsor poxy backstage bars, because they don’t have to. You never see Stella giving their nectar away, or Boddingtons, do you? And what beer was it? What else but the ever-present, ever shite Budweiser! The beer with the best ads and the worst tae in the world. Fook American beer! No, really, I mean it. Fook American beer. Why does it have to be so sweet’? Because everything Americans consume has to be sweet, that’s why. I’ve been to Disneyworld, mate. They have M&Ms on their fookin’ Coco Pops!

‘Anyway, there I was in me Portakabin screaming for someone to find me a decent beer and feeling dead bored, and the thing is that when I get bored I get randy. Well, you do, don’t you? What’s more, as of the incident at the traffic lights on Brixton High Street, I was officially single again. On top of which, I’d just got on an E that the A and R people had given me. They thought that was terribly funny, by the way: an E from A and R. I said, ‘Yeah, and an F, U, C and a K from me.

‘Anyway, like I say, suddenly I was feeling totally randy and although there was plenty of birds around I decided that I fancied having a crack at Lulu. I’ve always fancied Lulu and I reckon she still looks top even if she’s fifty or whatever and also she looks like she likes a laugh. I mean, she’s always on Ab Fab, in’t she? She’d come to the ceremony with Elton, I think, or else she had a single out or was getting an award for having such a great arse for a granny…I don’t know. The point was she was wearing fantastic tight leather trousers, so I went straight up to her and told her she was pulled.’