Meltdown (35 page)

Suddenly it all seemed so
obvious
.

With their glamorous parties, their invitations to stay on great big yachts and their party donations, the money men had created massive wealth for themselves and given back nothing to society but resentment and fear. They had destroyed faith in the City and respect for honour and rank, utterly compromising the Labour Party in the process.

And now, having brought down two banks, one of the principal villains of the whole sorry episode was sitting before him, refusing to give up the million-pound-a-year pension settlement he had negotiated as the price for stepping aside so that Parliament could begin cleaning up the mess he had created.

Henry felt tired. What was the point?

‘Are you going to give up your entirely unjustified pension, Lord Bennett,’ Henry said wearily, ‘or not?’

‘Of course I’m not,’ Rupert replied. ‘It’s perfectly legal.’

‘Yes, but is it
moral
?’ Henry replied. ‘We shall have to let the public decide, won’t we?’

At which point the committee steward called lunch.

During the recess Henry had an epiphany. It occurred while he was on his way back to his office to eat the sandwiches he had bought on the way into Parliament (and for which he
must
remember to submit a receipt).

Quite suddenly Henry made a decision.

He was going to bring the party back to its senses.

This was his chance. His great opportunity.

He had not been compromised himself by the various blows that had dented New Labour’s credibility. The war. Cash for Honours. The current financial meltdown. He had been only a junior figure in any of it. He was therefore perfectly placed to be a new broom. Known but not tainted. Sweeping out so-called ‘New’ Labour and bringing back real Labour.
Old Labour.
A true party of the people.

He would start immediately. Straight after lunch.

He would return to the committee room and give ‘Lord’ Bennett such a roasting that it would make Henry’s name. He would do this by ignoring the fact that Rupert’s legal position was a secure one and concentrating exclusively on the moral issues.

Then he would call a press conference in which he would expose senior colleagues for having been in bed with the likes of ‘Lord’ Bennett for far too long.

After that he would stand for the leadership!

Brown was a lame duck. Blair was ancient history. What was needed was a new, dynamic, thrusting young figure to offer genuine, principled, moral leadership to the party and to the nation!

What was needed, Henry decided, was Henry.

The previous ten years had been a wasted opportunity. Henry would ensure that the party did not miss its chance again.

As he entered his office, Henry’s secretary handed him his sandwiches and can of Orangina (£5.65 in total) and also a printout of an email she had just received.

Henry could see from her face that it was not good news.

‘You’d better read this, Henry,’ she said. ‘I think something quite big is brewing.’

The letter was from the editor of a national newspaper. It informed Henry that they were in possession of a confidential document detailing MPs’ expenses. They had noted with interest Henry’s decision to charge part of the price of his wife’s hairdryer to the taxpayer and intended to make it the centrepiece of the front-page story that they were publishing the following day. The headline was to be
Parliamentary Pigs with Snouts in Public Trough
and the story was intended to alert the public to the immoral way MPs topped up their salaries by claiming ludicrous expenses.

‘They want to know if you’ve got anything to say,’ Henry’s secretary asked.

Henry was simply furious. He grabbed the phone. This kind of press harassment had to stop.

‘Have I got anything to say?’ he muttered as he dialled the number. ‘Yes, I’ve got something to fucking
say
.’

When he was put straight through to the editor, Henry let rip. ‘For God’s sake, man, this is so trivial!’ he shouted. ‘We are trying to run the country, trying to make responsible decisions about people’s jobs and services and you put this on us. A hairdryer! A few pounds for a bloody hairdryer! Is that the best you can do? Is it the silly season or something? Are you five years old? Laughing at me for using a hairdryer and claiming part of its cost! I am
supposed
to claim my expenses, didn’t you know? That’s the rule. Do you think I like it, wasting my time over bus tickets? You try it! Having to scrape together every bloody tab you spend because MPs are expected to be in two places at once the whole bloody time.
And
look respectable while they’re doing it. And if we don’t, if we look a mess, oh don’t you let us know! This is just stupid. This is insane. This is petty and
poisonous
beyond belief. You will withdraw this ludicrous non-story immediately or I shall go to the Press Complaints Commission and I will win! I swear I will make things so hot for you you’ll wish you’d tried to bully someone else! You have gone too far! Surely you can see that? This isn’t journalism! This is gutless, brainless, principle-less bullying and it has to stop. A hairdryer, front-page news? For God’s sake! Have you no shame? I claimed for a sandwich too this morning because alongside my regular constituency duties I am working a
fourteen-hour
day doing parliamentary committee work for which I receive no extra wages. Do you want to know what the filling was? What flavour crisps I ate? Perhaps you can laugh at them while you have a champagne lunch with your bloody publisher! You puerile, irresponsible, delinquent little hypocrite!’

There was a pause at the other end of the line before the editor replied. When he did, his voice was smooth and silky.

‘It’s not
just
a hairdryer, Henry,’ he said. ‘We thought the hairdryer would be a nice hook. You do have very distinctive hair, after all.’

Henry began to rack his brains. Not
just
a hairdryer? What else? What did they have on him?

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘Flipping, Henry,’ the editor said quietly. ‘Bit more serious than a sandwich, I think.’

‘Flipping?’ Henry replied, momentarily at a loss.

‘The second-home allowance. We feel that you and many of your colleagues have been rather
creative
in deciding which of your homes should receive taxpayer support.’

The penny that had been spinning in Henry’s mind began to drop. He got it. Oh fuck. All of a sudden, he got it.

‘Our investigations seem to suggest,’ the editor continued in the same quiet tone, ‘that you all tend to think that your
bigger
and
better
home should be your second home, i.e., the one for which the public shares the cost. Now correct me if I’m wrong, Henry, but I thought that the idea of an allowance was to help out-of-town MPs like yourself fund a modest London residence to enable them to attend Parliament. Is that right, Henry? You would know, I presume. After all, you have been claiming it.’

Henry felt as if he was going to be sick. He hadn’t seen it coming. He had
not
seen it coming.

Once more, in the absence of a reply, the editor went on.

‘Which of your homes does the taxpayer support, Henry? Is it your rather grubby little flat in Battersea, or is it the beautiful six-bedroom house in four acres of grounds that you recently bought in your constituency? Because that’s the one you’ve been claiming for, Henry. The beautiful house in which your wife Jane writes her novels, while incidentally finding time to do secretarial work for you, Henry, which the public
pays her for
. What is Jane, Henry? A novelist or a secretary? While she’s working in that beautiful second home, bought, I might add, with the proceeds of the sale of your
previous
luxurious second home which the public paid to renovate before you flogged it?’

Henry was stunned.

Everybody flipped. It was common practice among MPs of all parties. They all changed the status of their homes to get the most advantageous public allowance. It was obvious. Common sense. It had never occurred to him that there was anything wrong. That the process might be viewed in the way in which the editor was now viewing it. It was just something they did.

‘It’s . . . it’s perfectly legal,’ he heard himself saying.

‘Yes, Henry. But is it
moral
?’ the editor replied. ‘We shall have to let the public decide, won’t we?’

Making a plan

‘Above all,’ Derek Corby said, ‘you need to hang on to this place until we can work out a way for you to make a planned withdrawal. If they suddenly foreclose and you’re forced out you could find yourself in very real difficulties. It’s astonishing how quickly people’s lives can implode once the regular income goes. As a bank manager I’ve seen it a thousand times.’

Jimmy’s parents had come to see their grandchildren, and Jimmy and Derek had stepped out into the famous front garden to discuss Jimmy’s deteriorating situation away from the others. They warmed their hands on their coffee mugs and tried to avoid treading in cat shit.

‘It all looks a bit hairy, doesn’t it, Dad?’ Jimmy said.

‘The enemies now are panic and inertia,’ Derek replied, as ever the authoritative father.

‘Meaning?’ Jimmy asked.

‘We can’t afford to do nothing, but nor can we afford to flail about doing just anything. We require a formal game plan to try to stave off repossession for long enough for us to develop an exit strategy that we can implement on our own terms.’

‘Pardon?’ said Jimmy and he almost laughed. His father still talked like a bank manager even though he no longer was one. He’d probably talked like a bank manager before he was a bank manager too. The baby Derek Corby had no doubt emerged from the womb at exactly the appointed time and demanded that his milk and rusks be properly itemized before he consented to accept them.

‘Jim,’ Derek said seriously, ‘if the bank takes you by surprise and suddenly repossesses, you’ll be forced to apply to the council for emergency accommodation.’

‘I know,’ said Jimmy quietly. ‘Of course, because there’s kids involved they’d have to find us
something
. They have a statutory obligation, but if there’s no actual houses or flats available . . . they’ll have to board us.’

Father and son looked at each other. They both knew that if Monica and Jimmy were turfed out of the Notting Hill house they would almost certainly be put into a so-called Bed and Breakfast.

Bed and Breakfast. B & B. Such a pleasant-sounding phrase.

Two things that everybody liked.

Bed. Lovely.

Breakfast. Just the job.

Together they were even better. Bed and Breakfast conjured up visions of family holidays by the sea, children frolicking in the surf. Ice creams. Fish and chips. A gentler, more innocent world. Jimmy had been on a number of such holidays as a child. Holidays which had of course been deeply out of fashion even then, but Derek and Nora Corby
were
out of fashion. And proud of it. And Derek genuinely did wonder why anyone would even think of going abroad when they could stand in the rain in West Wittering.

But the modern reality of Bed and Breakfast had nothing whatsoever to do with such rose-tinted memories.

The reality was terrible.

Jimmy knew it and Monica knew it. There were families at the school gate whom the council were housing in B & Bs and it was clear to Jimmy that they lived in hell. Toby had become friends with the child of one such family. But the friend could never invite Toby for tea. He was too ashamed. His parents were too ashamed. Ashamed of the single room in which the boy, his siblings and his parents all lived, sharing a single bathroom with two other families in adjoining single rooms. Or maisonettes, as the landlord called them in the prospectus he had presented to the council when applying to become one of their designated emergency landlords.

Maisonettes
.

Three families on a single floor. With three more families above and another three below. All in single rooms in which they were expected to eat, sleep and refrain from succumbing to utter despair.

That would be Jimmy and Monica, Toby, Cressida and Lillie if the bank evicted them from the Notting Hill house. All five of them in a Bed and Breakfast. Another family above them, a family below them. A family in front of them. A family behind them. A rabbit warren designed in hell.

‘It’s bloody insanity, of course,’ Derek said bitterly. ‘A system gone mad. The landlords are nothing more than criminals. They charge ruinous rates for slum rooms. Milking the system without heart or conscience. But then the system is so damned easy to milk. You can’t just pass a law saying councils
have
to house families, you have to provide the bloody houses for them to do it with.’

Jimmy stared glumly at the cat shit.

‘Anyway,’ Derek went on, ‘there’s no sense moaning about it. We need to make a plan.’

‘What plan, Dad?’ Jimmy asked, and for a moment he sounded like he was eleven years old again. ‘Our problem is the bank wants this house. It’s a real asset, not some toxic waste of space that’s pointless to repo because they wouldn’t be able to sell it on if they did. This is a six-storey house in Notting Hill with a gym and underground private garage. If we lived in a shithole we’d probably be all right, but there are still plenty of people around who could and would pay top dollar for a house like this and the bank’s getting impatient.’

‘The first thing,’ Derek said, ‘is to try not to panic.’

‘OK, Dad,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I’m trying not to panic. What’s the second thing?’

‘Well, initially you’ll get a visit from their pre-litigation team.’

‘
Pre
-litigation team?’ Jimmy said. ‘Shit. Closely followed, I assume, by their actual litigation team.’

‘Well, that partly depends on you,’ Derek said. ‘Of course what they want is for you to go without a fight. So they’re going to put a lot of emphasis on the
cost
for you of trying to stay. Believe it or not, the RLB actually charge you ninety pounds for the pre-litigation visit, which they add to your debt.’