Children of the Master

‘Just a wee word in your ear about what young Callum Petrie’s been saying. And I’m afraid he’s not the only one. It’s not a big problem, Mr Smedley. It’s just one of those silly things. This could get right out of control if the head teacher had to be told. We don’t want to make any trouble. We just want Davie to get his chance.’

Walter Smedley was in his early sixties, and lived with his elderly mother. Divorced with a daughter long gone, no one knew where, Wally had let himself go, if only on the outside. He was an intellectual. That was no problem. The problem was, he looked like one. His clothes were always slightly stained. His shaving had become erratic, giving his great head, an object that seemed crudely carved from sandstone, like Samuel Johnson’s, an awesome ruggedness. His almost supernatural talent for teaching now flickered only intermittently. Living with his books, he spent sleepless nights and long days caring for an angry, half-blind old woman who no longer knew who he was. The private truth was that Walter Smedley was almost a saint.

To Murdoch White, with his famous face, Smedley said nothing – merely nodded his long head. But the following day he visited the Petries’ house after school. With his mother by his side, Callum was asked to repeat what he’d said about the teacher, ‘to my face, boy’. The boy flushed, began to whimper, and tearing himself from his mother, ran upstairs.

Wally Smedley turned to Mary. ‘I wish, Mrs Petrie, that I had not had to put you through this unpleasant experience. And even more, I wish that your husband was here. What I have to say I would have preferred to say to him. But I’m not going to demean myself by chasing around town, trying to find that –’ He stopped himself.

He didn’t look well, but he continued. ‘You may know that Mr Murdoch White, who I gather is working for your husband, and indeed living in this house, has approached me with a very unpleasant story about myself. I don’t blame Callum, or any of the boys – they are only boys, after all – but Mr White has threatened me that he will spread a disgusting and slanderous untruth.’

Mary held up a hand to protest.

‘No, Mrs Petrie, it is worse than that. Please give me a moment. Mr White has implied that unless I back your husband as our parliamentary candidate, he will go to my headmistress, who is a kind but foolish woman. He appears to think that I have rather more pull in the local Labour Party than I do. If he does spread this horrible story, then I’m sure it must be clear to you that whatever the truth of it, my life will be ruined. I have my mother to think of. You’re an educated woman: you may know your Yeats, Mrs Petrie. He famously lamented that the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Good men, weak; bad men, strong, you see. Callum is welcome in my class at any time. He is a clever boy, and I will do my level best by him. But my message to your husband is that I will not, under any circumstances, support him. He didn’t even have the courage to blackmail me to my face, like a man. Tell him, I am my own man still. I have nothing to apologise for. Gossip – and be damned.’ And Mr Smedley, his balding head still streaked with the rain, belted up his mackintosh, turned on his heel, and left the house.

Mary, shaken and impressed, called David to tell him what had happened. He had just been addressing some local Fabians with Murdoch, who said tersely, ‘Well, we must act.’ They went together to the school. As they were waiting for the headmistress to see them, they shared that day’s Guardian quick crossword.

Wally Smedley had, it turned out, the most beautiful copperplate handwriting.

I could not leave her, you see. But thanks to Mr White, I had to. How could I have stayed? It’s all too disgusting, too humiliating – and all completely untrue. WalterSmedley.

He had killed his mother with a shovel, a single blow to the back of the head. Then he must have written his note and left it on the open bureau, before walking into his garage and hanging himself with a length of hosepipe.

The local press treated it as a tragic mystery, and speculated that Smedley had been driven to the edge by the long years of caring. A policeman interviewed Murdoch White, and concluded that the note meant nothing.

Mary and Davie had glanced briefly at one another and tacitly agreed that this was too deep, too dark, to talk about. Later, in the kitchen, Murdoch addressed what had happened. ‘No man ever led other men without doing harsh things. What happened was nobody’s fault; and I for one believe your son.’

In bed upstairs, Callum told his dinosaur, ‘I just made it up, I don’t know why.’ He was quiet for a while, but soon pushed the whole matter behind him, and was once again the cheeky, happy little boy he’d been before.

The selection meeting was perhaps the most exciting few hours of Davie Petrie’s life so far. Coached by Murdoch, he made a belter of a speech. Nothing against any of the folk who had made the journey up north, he told the crowded and overheated room, ‘but is this the kind of town so thin in local talent we have to hire outsiders? Folk who’ve never known how cold it is on Glaikit Glen playing a wee bit fitba. Folk who’ve never been bawled out for backsliding by our own Granny Stalin. Folk who, for whatever reason, couldn’t get chosen in their own backyards, so they’ve come up here to our backyard.’

For each of the incomers he had a carefully prepared line of attack, the result of many hours spent in front of a computer screen over the past weeks. The man from the leader’s office had once written a column for the New Statesman in which he’d said that if he’d been a Scot he’d have voted for independence in 2014. Davie read out the whole paragraph, and was gratified by the hissing. ‘He’s no’ even a Scot, mind, yet he’s a Scottish Nationalist!’ Another, now working for a trade union in London, turned out to have been briefly a member of the Federation of Conservative Students. Two down. As to Patrick Connelly, the depressed-looking bus driver who was his main local rival, Petrie offered the hand of friendship. ‘You all know Pat Connelly. He’s carried you up and down this constituency – aye, and your kids too – and I stand here and I tell you that we may be opponents, but that he is a reliable and a decent man. He’s no’ the most cheerful fellow, perhaps, but we could do a lot worse.’

As Murdoch White had predicted, Petrie’s praise finally sank Connelly. Any candidate who could afford to be so confident and large-spirited clearly had no fear of the former front-runner.

In fact, Petrie nearly overdid it. He needed Connelly to come first in the opening round of voting, preferably ahead of the guy from the leader’s office. But after Davie had spoken, the London blow-in spent the next ten minutes saying that while Pat Connelly might be a good bus driver and a decent councillor in a quiet week, he didn’t have the oomph necessary to make his mark at Westminster. Then an increasingly upset Connelly savaged the London man back – a jumped-up metropolitan hack from Chelsea or somewhere, where a two-bed flat cost more than the entire housing stock of Glaikit, while Petrie stood at the back of the room handing out mugs of instant coffee and waiting.

Still, as planned he came third in the first ballot; and as White had predicted, those who just found Connelly a bit depressing, and those who couldn’t stick the idea of a toff parachuted in from London, switched, and on the second ballot Davie came through triumphantly. He had abused nobody, except in jest. He had committed himself to very little. He had held out the hand of friendship to a man he’d thown. Poor Pat Connelly didn’t know what had hit him; he seemed dazed, and about half the size he’d been at the beginning of the meeting. ‘Welcome to politics,’ said Murdoch White.

‘Local Boy Chosen’, crowed the Glaikit Post. At the sub-sequent election, Davie’s campaign literature would show the Petrie family standing together with the slogan ‘He’s built half of Glaikit. Now let him build a better Britain.’

Funny Farm (#ulink_1c7a8413-d7da-5fdf-86b5-85fb56fa92f0)

The good politician understands that there are no chance meetings, only unexpected chances.

The Master

The collection of brick buildings didn’t make immediate sense. They were too scattered for a farm, too well-maintained for cheap housing, and not substantial enough for a hotel. A riding club, perhaps? And in the late-afternoon sunshine there were indeed a couple of young women on ponies crossing the lawn that backed onto a minor road.

In their path stood a middle-aged man who appeared to have a swarm of insects inside his clothes. He scratched feverishly at his armpits and midriff. He windmilled his arms and stamped his feet in a dance of exasperation. He clawed at his longish hair and shouted, then threw himself onto his knees and rubbed his face in the dampness of the grass.

‘Poor Stephen,’ said one of the young women.

‘Yah. Poor Stephen. Stephen’s fine. He’ll be fine tomorrow,’ the other replied. Both girls were expensively well spoken and gaunt.

Watching all of this from the window of her minicab was Angela. She leaned over, paid the driver for the ride from the station and opened the door, lugging a small suitcase.

‘Thanks. I’ll be fine from here on.’

At St Peter’s Asset Management, Caroline Phillips had been immensely popular. She couldn’t help it. Everybody loved this frantically hard-working and ambitious student of currency swaps; at the heart of the City, the steel and limestone palazzo of Damazer House almost overflowed with laughter as Caro and her new friends bought, sold, crunched the numbers and sold again. All through that first year, from April until early October, the sun seemed to splash through the windows and paddle gold fingers through the hair of the chosen. Caro’s mere presence had lightened St Peter’s, and her manager recommended her for promotion a mere eight months after she joined.

She should have been very happy, and mostly she was. Young Caro had all the joys and sweetmeats that London life could bring in the twenty-first century. She had admiration, a challenging and interesting job which hadn’t even existed a few decades earlier, a colourful collection of international friends, enough money, and a status unthinkable for earlier generations of young, non-royal women. She had, in short, everything … except purpose. For even then, Caroline was too clever, and perhaps too moral, to believe that making money was a purpose.

So when, at a C of E seminar for City employees, held at a Blitz-battered and restored Wren church, she bumped into Angela, her first emotion was jealousy. Caroline had been drifting – working hard as she drifted, admirably, lucratively, pleasantly. Angela, however, had a vocation. Just as when they’d first met at school, Angela had an intensity, a sense of urgency that beautiful Caroline lacked. Caroline’s world was full of promise, stretching out in the sunshine. But Angela’s world was more interesting; it had shadows and meaning, and it wouldn’t go on forever.