The Final Cut

‘Perhaps I do. As Chief Whip, I welcomed the dunderheads and do-nothings, but as Prime Minister you need a little more variety, a different perspective. Oh, and did I say she was under forty and extremely attractive?’ He returned the tease.

‘Thinking of giving her a job?’

‘Don’t know. That’s why we’re going this evening, to find out a little more about her. I could do with some new members of the crew.’

‘But to make room on the life raft you have to throw a few old hands overboard. Are there any volunteers?’

‘I’d gladly lash that damned fool Drabble around the fleet. And Annita Burke was born to be fish bait.’

‘I thought she was loyal.’

‘So is our labrador.’

‘Go further, Francis. Much further. Bring it back.’

‘What?’

‘Fear. They’ve grown idle and fat these last months, your success has made things too easy for them. They’ve found time to dream of mutiny.’ They were passing Buckingham Palace, the royal standard illuminated and fluttering proud. ‘Even a King cannot be safe on his throne.’

For a moment, they lost themselves in reminiscence.

‘Remind them of the taste of fear, the lash of discipline. Make them lie awake at nights dreaming of your desires, not theirs.’ The compact was out again, they were nearing their destination. ‘We haven’t had a good keelhauling for months. You know how those tabloid sharks love it.’

‘With you around, my love, life seems so full of pointed opportunity.’

She turned to face him in the half-light. ‘I’ll not let you become like Margaret Thatcher, dragged under by your own crew. Francis, you are greater than that.’

‘And they shall erect statues to my memory…’

She had turned back to her mirror. ‘So make a few examples, get some new crew on board. Or start taking hormone therapy, like me.’

The door of the buttermilk stucco house set in the middle of Belgravia was opened through the combined effort of two brushed and scrubbed young girls, both wearing tightly wrapped dressing gowns.

‘Good evening, Mrs Urquhart, Mr Urquhart,’ said the elder, extending a hand. ‘I’m Abby and this is Diana.’

‘I’m almost seven and Abby is nine,’ Diana offered with a lisp where soon would be two new teeth. ‘And this is Tangle,’ she announced, producing a fluffy and much-spotted toy dog from behind her back. Tie’s very nearly three and absolutely…’

‘That’s enough, girls.’ Claire beamed proudly from behind. ‘You’ve said hello, now it’s goodbye. Up to bed.’

Stereophonic heckling arose on either side.

‘Pronto. Or no Rice Pops for a week.’

Their protest crushed by parental intimidation, the girls, giggling mischievously, mounted the stairs.

‘And I’ve put out fresh school clothes for the morning. Make sure you use them,’ their mother called out to the retreating backs before returning to her guests. ‘Sorry, business before pleasure. Welcome, Francis. And you, Mrs Urquhart.’

‘Mortima.’

‘Thank you. I feel embarrassed knowing your husband so much better than you.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not the jealous type. I have to share him with the rest of the world. It’s inevitable there should be a few attractive young women amongst them.’

‘Why, thank you,’ Claire murmured, acknowledging the compliment. In the light of the hallway’s chandelier she seemed to shimmer in a way that Mortima envied and which she had thought could only be found in combination with motherhood between the pages of Vogue. Was Claire also the type that had herself photographed naked and heavily pregnant, just to show the huddled, sweating masses with backache and Sainsbury’s bags just how it was done?

Claire introduced her husband, Johannis, who had been standing back a pace; this was his wife’s event and, anyway, he gave the impression of being a physically powerful man who was accustomed to taking a considered, unflustered view of life. He also had the years for it, being far nearer Urquhart’s age than his wife’s, and spoke with a distinctively slow though not unpleasant accent bearing the marks of his Scandinavian origin. Carlsen’s self-assured posture suggested a man who knew what he wanted and had got it, while she displayed the youthful vitality of a woman with ambitions still to be met. Contrasts. Yet it took only a few moments for Mortima to become aware that in spite of the superficial differences, somehow the Carlsens seemed to fit, have an understanding, be very much together. Perhaps she hadn’t married him simply for the money.

Claire led the way through to a reception room of high ceiling and pastel walls – ideal for the displayed works of contemporary European artists – in which the other eight guests had already assembled. Urquhart knew only one of them, but knew of them all; Claire had provided him with a short and slightly irreverent written bio. of every diner, including Johannis. She’d made it all very easy, had chosen well. A bluff Lancashire industrialist who did extraordinary things with redundant textile mills that kept his wife in Florida for half the year and in race horses for the rest. The editor of Newsnight and her husband, a wine importer who had provided the liquid side of the meal, which he spiced with spirited stories of a recent trip to vineyards in the mountains of Georgia where, for three nights, he had resided in a local jail on a charge of public drunkenness, until he had agreed to take a consignment of wine from the police chief’s brother. The wine turned out to be excellent. There was also an uninhibited Irishman-and-American-mistress partnership who had invented the latest departure in what was called ‘legal logistics’; ‘Profiling alternative litigation strategies,’ he had explained; ‘Lawyers’ bullshit; it’s witness coaching and jury nobbling,’ as she had offered.

And Nures. Urquhart had known he would be there, a relatively late addition to the guest list while on a private visit to London for dental treatment; his family’s fruit firm had used Carlsen freight facilities for more than a decade. The Foreign Office would normally have expressed qualms about his meeting the President of Turkish Cyprus in this manner, without officials present, but Nures was no longer an international pariah. Anyway, the Foreign Office couldn’t object because Urquhart hadn’t let them know; they would have felt obliged to parley with Nicosia, Ankara, Athens, Brussels and half a dozen others in a process of endless consultation and compromise to ensure no one was offended. Left to the Foreign Office, they’d all starve.

Claire thrust a malt whisky into Urquhart’s hand – Bruichladdich, she’d done her homework – and propelled him towards the Newsnight editor and the developer, neither of whom would be sitting next to him during the meal.

‘Pressure groups are a curse,’ Thresher, the developer, was protesting. ‘Am I right, Mr Urquhart?’ He pronounced it Ukut, in its original Scottish form, rather than the soft Southern Urkheart so beloved of the BBC, who at times seemed capable of understanding neither pronunciation nor policy. ‘Used to be there was a quiet, no-nonsense majority, folks that mowed their lawns and won the wars. But now everyone seems to belong to some minority or other, shouting t’odds and lying down in t’road trying to stop other folk getting on with life. Environmentalists’ – Thresher emphasized every syllable, as though wringing its neck – ‘will bring this country to its knees.’

‘We have a heritage, surely we must defend it?’ Wendy the Newsnight editor responded, accepting with good grace the fact that for the moment she had been cast in the role of lonesome virtue.

‘Green-gabble,’ Urquhart pounced, joining in the game. ‘It’s everywhere. Knee-jerk nostalgia for the days of the pitchfork and pony and trap. You know, ten years ago the streets of many Northern towns were deserted, now they’re congested with traffic jams as people rush to the shops. I’m rather proud of those traffic jams.’

‘Could I quote you, Prime Minister?’ Wendy smiled.

‘I doubt it.’

‘Here’s something you might quote, but won’t, lass.’ Thresher was warming to his task. Tve got a development planned in Wandsworth centred around one old worm-eaten cinema. Neither use nor ornament, practically falling to pieces it is, but will they let me knock it down? The protesters claim they prefer the knackered cinema to a multi-million-pound shopping complex with all the new jobs and amenities. Daft buggers won’t sit in t’cinema and watch films, no, all they do is sit down in t’street outside, get up petitions and force me to a planning inquiry that’ll take years. It’s a middle-class mugging.’

‘Not in my house, I trust.’ Claire had returned to usher them to the dining room. As they followed her bidding, Urquhart found himself alone with Thresher.

‘So what are you going to do, Mr Thresher?’

‘Happen I’ll take my money away, put it in some Caribbean bank and buy myself a pair of sunglasses.’

‘A great pity for you. A loss for the country, too.’

‘What’s Government going to do about it then, Prime Minister?’

‘Mr Thresher, I’m surprised that a man of your worldly experience should think the Government is capable of doing anything to help.’ Urquhart had a habit of talking about his colleagues in the manner of a world-weary headmaster confronted with irresponsible schoolboys who deserved a thrashing.

‘So it’s off t’Caribbean.’

‘Perhaps the answer might lie a little closer.’

‘How close?’

‘Brixton, perhaps?’

‘You interest me.’

‘I was merely wondering why, if the protesters want a cinema, you don’t give them a cinema.’