The Child in Time (6 page)

Two hours after Thelma phoned, Stephen set out to walk to Eaton Square from Stockwell by way of Chelsea Bridge. The warm, early evening air was smooth in the throat, and the pavements outside pubs were thick with beer drinkers, dark-skinned and talkative, apparently carefree. The national character had been transformed by a prolonged heatwave. Halfway across the bridge he stopped to read the evening newspaper. The resignation had made the front page, but not the headlines. A boxed inset at the foot of the page spoke of ill-health and, self-consciously scandalous, hinted at some kind of breakdown. The Prime Minister was said to be ‘vaguely annoyed’ at not having
been warned. The diary page ran a short paragraph which said that Darke was too unpolitical, too relaxed in his attitude ever to have expected high office. The Prime Minister distrusted his past connection with books. Only close friends, the piece concluded, would be much moved by his departure. Aware of two beggars bearing down on him, men in long coats despite the warmth, Stephen folded his paper and continued across the bridge.

There had been an evening in a Greek restaurant many years before when Darke had initiated a parlour game. He was contemplating moving out of television management, at which he had been a qualified success, and into politics. But which party should he join? Elated, Darke sat next to Julie pouring wine, making a show of being firm with the waiter, doing everyone’s ordering. The conversation was joky and mock-cynical, but embodied some truth. Darke had no political convictions, only managerial skill and great ambition. He could join any party. A friend of Julie’s from New York was taking the matter seriously and insisting that the choice lay between the emphasis on the collectivity of experience or its uniqueness. Darke spread his hands and said that he could argue for both. For the support of the weak, for the advancement of the strong. The more fundamental question was – and here he paused while someone else completed his sentence – Who do you know who can get you selected as a candidate? Darke laughed louder than anyone.

By the time the Turkish coffees came it was decided that he should make his career on the right. The arguments were straightforward. It was in power and likely to remain so. From his business days Darke knew a good number of people with connections in the Party machine. On the left the selection procedures were tortuously democratic and unreasonably weighted against those who had never been members of the Party. ‘It’s all very simple, Charles,’ Julie said as they were leaving the restaurant. ‘All you have to
fear is the lifelong contempt of all your friends.’ Again, Darke laughed boisterously.

There were initial difficulties, but it was not too long before he was offered a candidacy in rural Suffolk where he managed to halve his predecessor’s majority with some thoughtless remarks about pigs. He and Thelma sold their weekend cottage in Gloucestershire and bought a weekend cottage on the edge of the constituency. Politics brought out something in Darke which the record industry, publishing or television management had barely touched. Within weeks he was on television himself, ostensibly to comment on some irregularity in his constituency – a pensioner whose electricity supply had been cut was dead from hypothermia. Breaking the unspoken rule, Darke talked to camera rather than to interviewer, and managed to insert quick summaries of recent Government successes. He was a barrage-of-words man. He was in a studio two weeks later ably refuting some self-evident truth. The friends who had helped him were impressed. He was noticed at Party Headquarters. At a time when the Government was in difficulties with its own back benches, Darke was a ferocious defender. He sounded reasonable and concerned while advocating self-reliance for the poor and incentives for the rich. After long consideration and more parlour games at the supper table, he decided to speak against the hangers in the annual punishment debate at Conference. The idea was to be tough but caring, tough
and
caring. He spoke well to that theme on a law and order radio panel discussion – earning three solemn bursts of applause from the studio audience – and was quoted in a
Times
leader.

For the next three years he attended dinners and made himself knowledgeable in fields where he thought there might be jobs going – education, transport, agriculture. He kept himself busy. He made a parachute jump for charity and cracked his shin. Television cameras were there. He was on a panel of judges for a famous literary prize and
made indiscreet remarks about the chairman. He was chosen to present his private member’s bill to outlaw kerb-crawling. It was lost for lack of time, but it made him popular with the tabloids. And all the time he kept talking, jabbing his forefinger in the air, uttering opinions he never thought he had, developing the oracular high style of the spokesman – ‘I think I speak for all of us when I say …’ and ‘Let no one deny …’ and ‘The Government has made its position clear …’

He wrote a piece for
The Times
reviewing the first two years of licensed begging which he read aloud to Stephen in the magnificent drawing room at Eaton Square. ‘By removing the dross of pre-legislation days, and aiming for a leaner, fitter public charity sector, the government has provided itself in microcosm with an ideal towards which its economic policies should aspire. Tens of millions have been saved in social security payments, and a large number of men, women and children have been introduced to the pitfalls and strenuous satisfactions of self-sufficiency long familiar to the business community in this country.’

Stephen never doubted that sooner or later his friend would tire of politics and begin another adventure. He kept up a show of wry distance, mocking Charles for his opportunism.

‘If you had decided to go with the other side,’ Stephen had said to him, ‘you’d be arguing just as passionately now for taking the City into public ownership, lower defence spending, and the abolition of private education.’

Darke smacked his own forehead, feigning astonishment at his friend’s naivety. ‘You idiot! I stood for
this
programme. A majority elected me because of it. It doesn’t matter what I think. I have my mandate – a freer City, more weapons, good private schools.’

‘You’re not in it for yourself then.’

‘Of course not. I serve!’ And the two men laughed into their drinks.

In fact Stephen’s own cynicism concealed a fascination with the unfolding story of Charles’s career. Stephen did not know any other MPs. This one was already quite famous in a modest way, and brought back an insider’s tales of drunkenness, even violence, in the House of Commons bar, of the minor absurdities of parliamentary ritual, of vicious Cabinet gossip. And when at last, after three years’ toil in television studios and dining rooms, Darke became a junior minister, Stephen was truly elated. To have an old friend in high office transformed government into an almost human process and made Stephen feel rather worldly. Now a limousine – albeit a rather small and dented one – called at Eaton Square each morning to take the Minister to work, and a certain weary authoritativeness had crept into his manner. Stephen sometimes wondered whether his friend had finally succumbed to the opinions he had effortlessly assumed.

It was Thelma who answered the door to Stephen.

‘We’re in the kitchen,’ she said and led him across the hall. Then she changed her mind and turned.

He gestured at the bare walls where smudged, grey rectangles hung in place of paintings.

‘Yes, the removal people started work this afternoon.’ She had steered him into the drawing room and spoke quickly and softly. ‘Charles is in a fragile state. Don’t ask him any questions, and don’t make him feel guilty about leaving you with that committee.’

Since Darke’s rise in politics, Stephen had seen a great deal more of Thelma. He had kept her company in the evenings and tried to learn a little about theoretical physics. She liked to pretend that he was closer to her than her husband was, that they had a special, conspiratorial understanding. It was not treachery so much as flattery. It was embarrassing and irresistible. He nodded now, as always
happy to please her. Charles was her difficult child, and she had enlisted Stephen’s help many times; on one occasion, to help curb the Minister’s drinking on the eve of a parliamentary debate, on another, to distract him at the dinner table from needling a young physicist friend of hers who was a socialist.

‘Tell me what’s happened,’ Stephen asked, but she was moving back in the echoing hall and putting on a mock-stern voice.

‘Have you just got out of bed? You look awfully pale.’ She nodded briskly as he protested, implying that she would get the truth out of him later. They set off again across the hallway, down some steps and through a green baize door, an item Charles had installed not long after he was offered his job in government.

The ex-Minister was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a glass of milk. He stood and came towards Stephen, wiping away a milk moustache with the back of his hand. His voice was light, oddly melodious. ‘Stephen … Stephen, many changes. I hope you’ll be tolerant …’

It had been a long time since Stephen had seen his friend without a dark suit, striped shirt and silk tie. Now he was in loose corduroy trousers and a white T-shirt. He looked suppler, younger; without the padding of a tailored jacket, his shoulders appeared to be delicately constructed. Thelma was pouring Stephen a glass of wine, Charles was guiding him towards a wooden chair. They all sat with their elbows on the table. There was quiet excitement, news in the air that was difficult to break. Thelma said, ‘We’ve decided that we can’t tell you it all at once. In fact, we think we’d rather show you than tell you. So be patient, you’ll know it all sooner or later. You’re the only one we’ll be taking into our confidence, so …’

Stephen nodded.

Charles said, ‘Did you see the television news?’

‘I saw the evening paper.’

‘The story is I’m having a breakdown.’

‘Well?’

Charles looked at Thelma, who said, ‘We’ve made some well-considered decisions. Charles is giving up his career, and I’m resigning. We’re selling the house and moving into the cottage.’

Charles went to the fridge and refilled his glass with milk. He did not return to his chair, but stood behind Thelma’s, with one hand resting lightly on her shoulder. For as long as Stephen had known her, Thelma had wanted to give up university teaching, move out to the country somewhere and write her book. How had she got round Charles? She was looking at Stephen, waiting for a reaction. It was difficult not to read triumph into the slight smile, and difficult to follow her instructions and not ask questions.

Stephen spoke past Thelma to Charles. ‘What are you going to do in Suffolk? Breed pigs?’

He smiled wryly.

There was a silence. Thelma patted her husband’s hand and spoke without turning to face him. ‘You promised yourself an early night …’ He was already straightening. It was barely eight-thirty. Stephen watched his friend closely, marvelling at how much smaller he appeared, how slight in build. Had high office really made him larger?

‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘I’ll go up.’ He kissed his wife on the cheek and said to Stephen from the doorway, ‘We really would like you to come and see us in Suffolk. It will be easier than explaining.’ He raised his hand in ironic salute and left.

Thelma refilled Stephen’s glass and pursed her lips into an efficient smile. She was about to speak, but she changed her mind and stood. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said as she crossed the kitchen. Moments later he heard her on the stairs calling after Charles and the sound of a door opening
and closing. Then the house was quiet but for the baritone hum of kitchen equipment.