Time of Lies Page 10

  While she showered herself, Zack made himself a coffee. Then he sat on the end of the bed as she towelled herself dry and sprayed on some Coco Mademoiselle.

  ‘I think we should take Cairstine to another specialist,’ Zack suggested. ‘I did some looking today and found one in Edinburgh who specialises in analysing speech patterns. Otherwise she might end up holding back your career.’

  ‘I’m not going there. Look, Zack – it would mean taking two days off work. Even if you were offering’ – she looked at him briefly and switched on the hair-drier’ – Cairstine would scream blue murder. In the end, what earthly difference does it make what nonsense she comes out with? Even if another specialist found something, the best we could expect would be another set of pills. She’s on six different ones as it is.

  ‘Besides, she’s not the only one who’s hurting my career. You think you’re helping but you’re not. We have to figure out what we want, for us as well as Cairstine. You’re not doing the listening which would help. Washington for two years isn’t some expenses-paid Mark Warner couples holiday, it’s about who would I become. Who would we become. Topics I don’t fancy discussing with a cannabis plant. Did Troy hear back from the BBC?’

  Zack winced. ‘The Beeb don’t want to do a satirical show about Bob. Read that how you want.’

  Kathy pulled on her stockings. ‘Maybe what they think is, there aren’t going to be satirical shows under a BG government.’

  ***

  Alan’s original suggestion had been, ‘We’ll huddle round a fire and fend off the hailstones of democracy with raclette.’

  Learning a French board game had sounded an excellent way to pass the heavy hours of election night, but raclette turned out to be a melted stinky cheese called, by some, angels’ socks. Served with warm new potatoes, cold cuts and salad and a bottle or three of Roero Arneis, Alan promised that the result would be delicious. Throwing scalding malodorous goo down one’s throat sounded disgusting to Kathy but could fit the election experience perfectly.

  In fact, the food was moreish and fattening as hell. For ‘cold cuts’ read a shoulder of Iberico ham held in a purpose-built wooden and metal bracket. Zack was handed the carving knife (Kathy stepped in) while Alan did tricks with cheese using – well, Kathy could only describe it as an electric doner kebab machine for the upper middle classes. The resulting mixture of salt, fat, aroma and alcohol was the equivalent of opening your living room door to find the four horsemen of the gastronomic apocalypse in an orgy. Kathy’s taste buds joined the party.

  On television, Britain was giving birth to a new government. Like birth contractions, meaningful facts came painfully slowly this early in the evening. Distraction was being provided by a brunette in a green trouser suit standing outside some prison walls, topped with barbed wire. Except it wasn’t a prison.

  ‘We’ll cross now to Oonagh who’s standing not ten miles from somewhere many of our viewers will have been – Loch Lomond. Tell us, Oonagh, what are you doing there?’

  ‘Indeed, I’m standing outside Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde – also known as Faslane, the base for our submarine fleet. Because in the next few hours – in fact sometime between five and six thirty tomorrow morning, according to our experts – that’s right, we expect to have a new prime minister. And a few hours later, once they have been received by the Prince Regent to take up office, to kiss hands as it’s traditionally called, that individual will take control of our nuclear deterrent – of eight Trident missiles carrying up to forty hydrogen bombs lying somewhere in the ocean on board a Vanguard submarine. But there’s one respect, Robert, in which the current prime minister will remain in charge – probably for several weeks.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely. Our deterrent submarines are on patrol for three months at a time. Each captain carries a sealed letter written by the prime minister telling him what to do if he – or of course she – finds one day that he can’t get any communication from the United Kingdom – if he finds one day that Westminster, and perhaps the whole country, has been wiped out. It’s one of the first things a new prime minister has to do. Many who have been in that position say that writing those four letters to the submarine captains – many of them have done it by hand – brings home more than anything else the awesome responsibilities which they have taken on.’

  ‘The power to kill hundreds and thousands of people, on behalf of all of us.’

  ‘Exactly. But it could be up to three months before the first Vanguard patrol sails from Faslane, behind me, carrying the new prime minister’s wishes – because nobody knows where the one at sea right now is. And for the sake of the deterrent, it has to stay that way. So the existing prime minister’s instructions will remain in force for that time.’

  ‘Oonagh, thank you very much. I think we’ll all be crossing our fingers that none of those letters need to be opened anytime soon. And now back to those shoppers in Bristol, who are telling Tyson which frozen foods they think our politicians resemble. He’s been getting some pretty interesting answers.’

  ***

  As the evening wore on, the stone-faced expressions of the spokespeople for the mainstream parties spoke for themselves. They declined to comment or speculate until the polls closed at 10pm. BG, on the other hand, was squealing with excitement.

  At 9pm the cameras were waiting as the BG-striped helicopter skirted the Canary Wharf skyscrapers to touch down beside riverside warehouses on the Isle of Dogs. The Vanguard helipad faced across the river towards Millwall. Reporters clustered around Bob like flies on a rotting peach.

  ‘Bob, Michelle Deeks, your candidate in Houghton and Sunderland South, has been asked to leave a polling station after stripping off. Have you anything to say?’

  Bob Grant turned towards the camera, gravitas phasers set to stun. ‘Anyone who wants to get their tits out for Britain tonight is all right by me. Tonight, the only tits out that matter are the ones we need to throw out of Downing Street.’

  ‘End of,’ murmured Zack in a ghostly wheeze of vapour. ‘There’s a Richard Deshaye movie we could watch on Sky.’ For both Zack and Kathy, Deshaye was the epitome of brilliant acting, although it pained Zack to be the same age.

  Kathy wasn’t having it. ‘Zack, why don’t you take a nap? I can wake you up for the results. What will happen matters. As citizens we need to be there, and awake.’

  Unsurprisingly Alan’s theory was that prime ministers had become too ordinary. ‘Look back at Churchill, Attlee, Thatcher, even Wilson for God’s sake – they were giants compared to this lot. Someone started putting our leaders in the wash without reading the care label. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron – they’ve shrunk smaller each time. OK, May took us back to Brown, but that was only one notch. I’ll fetch another bottle.’

  ‘Zack needs to stick to water for a bit, and I’ll do the same.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ Alan chirped. ‘It’ll be there when we need it later.’

  ***

  Need it they did. Last time round, a national exit poll had been prepared during election day by five experts locked in a room, digesting reports from 140 polling stations on how 20,000 voters said they had voted. At 10pm on 7 May 2015 it had smashed an axe into Britain’s electoral mould with an accurate prediction of a narrow Conservative majority, de-stabilising the Labour Party and taking apart the Liberal Democrats.

  This time round at 10pm the experts finished the job they had started five years earlier. They declared that BG was on course for 294 seats in a 600-seat House of Commons. The splintering of the other parties and the vitriolic relations between them meant that BG would form the government easily. No other party was predicted to get into three figures.

  ‘For God’s sake, wake up!’ Kathy shouted at Zack. She was on the edge of tears.

  Alan had popped into the bedroom. He came out like a fashion model on a catwalk, wearing a pewter-coloured Ralph L
auren V-neck. Onto the left breast he had stitched a yellow B, eight inches by four inches.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Kathy as the dam burst and the tears came. ‘They haven’t passed any laws yet.’

  Alan took her in his arms. Zack was beached on the second sofa, lying on his back with one arm on the floor. His snores sent puffs of cheese and garlic into the air, like distressed smoke signals transmitted by a tribe of Native American gastronomes. Prevailing conditions prevented the tribe from receiving any messages back.

  18

  London, Friday 8 May 2020

  The following morning the seventy-seventh prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland went to kiss hands. To the deep annoyance of the Prince Regent, Bob insisted upon turning up at twenty past seven in the morning. After all, builders up and down the country were at work then – why not the Prime Minister? Bob arrived at Buckingham Palace with two bacon rolls in a paper bag. The Prince Regent refused his, scarcely able to credit that he had to speak to do so. Bob nonchalantly munched both, leaving a light dusting of crumbs on the carpet. Within thirty minutes two staffs had briefed Bacongate to the media with opposite spins.

  Kathy and Patrick were at their desks by eight. The gravity of the occasion had prompted Kathy to add her Royal Navy tricorn hat to the white shirt with shoulder slides, dark tie and trousers. Patrick’s suit was his most formal dark herring-bone, his tie white with thin red and black diagonal stripes – faintly BG but in fact an official college tie (his college had eight). At some point the call would come for Patrick to enrol the new prime minister into the country’s nuclear secrets.

  The MOD’s meeting rooms were swept nightly for bugs. When Kathy arrived, Patrick led her into one and came to the point. ‘I want him. Zack. He’s our ace in the hole.’

  ‘Meaning what, sir?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about those role-plays. We pay him some money, he grows his hair back, he keeps quiet. No media shows, no stand-up comedy, no blogging – in other words no attention, no following, online or anywhere else.’ Patrick crinkled his nose. ‘Well, he’s used to that. We pay him handsomely for six months – all Official Secrets Act of course, no kiss and tell. Maybe some kind of low-profile fellowship at RADA. After six months he would be a free man. His country might never need him. But if we did need him, he would be there.’

  ‘To impersonate his brother? Doing what? Making a broadcast to the country? Attempting to get the Cabinet to agree the opposite of what they all believe?’

  ‘It might not be anything like that. We might ask him to talk to Bob…’

  ‘…Not if you wanted Bob to listen.’

  ‘All right, maybe Zack gives us something on Bob from when they were kids, gives us some kind of hold to stop his brother destroying civilisation as we know it. Frankly, as you can see, I’ve no idea what we’ll need. Everything’s crazy now and we need aces up sleeves. I haven’t been able to put the whole picture together. But I need you to ask Zack. In fact, I want you to sell it to him as your idea.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know how to press his buttons. Is it patriotism? Is it sticking it to Bob? Is it saving the world? Is it the chance of an audience?’

  ‘I won’t do it, and it won’t work,’ Kathy replied. ‘Bob becoming prime minister is probably a disaster for the country, maybe for the world, but we don’t know. But what I do know is, this is Zack’s last chance at a big break. Some kind of show taking the piss out of his brother. He was on such a roll after that estate agents’ dinner. But since then he’s got depressed again.’

  ‘He’s got years of career ahead of him.’

  ‘No, he’s got years of failure ahead of him. Say what you like – believe me I’ve tried – that’s what he feels. He’s forty-two. It won’t be long before I find I’ve got a depressive alcoholic on my hands. Maybe I’ve got one already. It’s not funny.’

  Kathy looked Patrick between the eyes. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not going to tell Zack to hide away when he needs the big time, and for the first time in his life it really could happen. Although apparently the BBC don’t want him…’ Kathy looked up curiously. ‘I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that?’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘As you know, the BBC don’t give a monkey’s what the MOD thinks.’

  ‘OK. I can’t let Zack walk away from his moment in favour of some ‘maybe’ which isn’t even a plan. Even if it is a bit of cash.’

  The aluminium glint in Patrick’s eyes didn’t flicker for a second. ‘So make me a plan. A fuck-off plan.’ He opened the meeting room door and gestured towards Kathy’s desk. ‘Take the morning to go think. Mornings-after the great democratic orgasm, I’ve seen so many of them. They’re quiet. Number Ten will be trying to put together the Cabinet. Then there are all the junior ministerial posts and the whips; BG have never done it before, it’ll take forever. I’ll bet the nuclear briefing will be cancelled; that happened to me last time. So take a walk. Try the Cabinet War Rooms: we might be needing them again soon. Or the spa at the Corinthia – my ex said it was very luxurious. Put it on my expenses. Do what works. Bring me a plan.’

  Kathy was silent.

  ‘You think you can’t do it, but I know you can.’

  Kathy didn’t believe him. Her brain cells were in chaos. Still, taking a walk felt like a good idea.

  ***

  Kathy crossed Whitehall. A triangular drone loitered like a crow above the Banqueting House. She strode past the scarlet tunic, gleaming cuirass and helmeted white plume of the mounted guard at Horse Guards Parade. In two minutes she found herself in the fifty acres of St James’s Park. It was too early in the day and in the year for the park to turn into a sweaty, packed, crumpled rug for locals and tourists to doze, partly stripped, in the sun. For now the park was showing itself in another guise, a magical handkerchief of green lying between Whitehall and Buckingham Palace.

  Historically the park was an anticipation of a Disney theme park. Monarchs from Henry VIII onwards had treated the scrap of land visible from their windows like a playpen for landscaping. There was a story that in the 1600s the park had been home to camels and crocodiles. Now, the exotic beasts had been elected to office.

  It took Kathy six or seven minutes to reach the Blue Bridge, guided by a daylight moon. The bridge straddled a storybook lake. From the bridge Kathy looked eastwards, back towards Horse Guards. Beyond sat the MOD three-slice toaster flying the flags of the Armed Services. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, framed by the London Eye, rode the horizon like a duchess framed by a tiara. Nestled in the duchess’s skirts was Downing Street.

  For a while the machinery of British government was going to resemble a Siamese twin, with Patrick Smath exemplifying one type of head and Bob Grant the other. In her bones Kathy felt that only one could win. Which would it be?

  Patrick saw in Kathy ‘potential’. To Kathy, both what he saw and why he saw it remained mysteries. How far might she rise? To his level – obviously not. So how far? Who could say? At any rate, far enough to find herself well beyond the system of possibility which she had envisaged for her life. Spending a couple of years in Washington DC was simply the outward sign of this – if anyone at school had predicted her mixing with a former black President at Kalorama cocktail parties, she’d have told them they were barking. It wasn’t the going abroad which frightened her (after all, she had joined the Navy), nor leaving Cairstine for a while – as long as it was just a while. Whether Cairstine liked it or not, she would need supported housing, even though her physical health was still good.

  Some of Kathy’s concerns had to do with Patrick’s role and motivations. He was a game player par excellence. She had no doubt that his perception of her potential was sincere, but was it exaggerated? Would he care if he lifted her sights too high? Did he care about her, really? She skipped over the possibility that being newly divorced, might he care to
o much and in the wrong way.

  Her biggest concern about a high-flying career was the kind of person she would become. Someone who would learn (by having to pretend that she already did it) to think about the realm of top jobs as her career habitat, her natural savannah. Someone with limited chances of return to her system of original possibilities, what she had dreamt of as a child. That system might consist of a handful of undistinguished planets circling what Alan would definitely call a very ‘ordinary’ sun, but it was her home.

  With Zack, in Kathy’s mind the issues were clear-cut. Kathy didn’t doubt that Zack cared deeply for her, and for people more generally. He would have no difficulty moving to Washington to support her career, and a change of scene might banish creeping disappointment for a summer. Maybe they would have a baby. Yet although Washington clocks were five hours behind London, they ticked at the same rate. Returning to London aged forty-five and no further ahead would be a recipe for re-doubled scariness. In Kathy’s mind’s eye, Zack was accomplishing nothing beyond burning up his forties one day at a time. 2020 could be, and had to be, a breakthrough year for him. Somehow his relationship with Bob would be part of it.

  West of the bridge sat Buckingham Palace where the new order of things in Britain had been inaugurated less than two hours earlier. The Prince Regent’s standard was flying. Had the Queen withdrawn from public life because she could no longer tolerate its odious idiocy? Had dementia had taken her, as it was taking Cairstine? Could whole countries forget themselves, lose the plot and start spouting nonsense?