“Yes, I had considered that,” said Emma. “In the past your strength has always been that it was your word against that of a young nurse. But this time you won’t be dealing with a frightened young woman but the chairman of the hospital. And yes, I am willing to risk my reputation against yours.”
“You’re bluffing,” said Hands. “You’ve got less than a year to go, and you really wouldn’t want this to be the one thing you’re remembered for.”
“Wrong again, Dr. Hands. When I expose you for what you are, I suspect your colleagues and the sixteen nurses who have provided written evidence—” Emma tapped a thick file on the desk in front of her, which was nothing more than a surveyor’s report—“will be only too grateful for my intervention, while you’ll find it difficult to get a job in a minor African state.”
This time Hands hesitated before he spoke. “I’ll take my chances. I’m confident you don’t have enough evidence to open an inquiry.”
Emma leaned forward, dialed an outside number, and switched the phone to speaker. A moment later they both heard the word, “Editor.”
“Good morning, Reg. Emma Clifton.”
“Which one of my reporters do you want strung up this morning, Emma?”
“Not one of your reporters this time. One of my doctors.”
“Tell me more.”
“I’m about to instigate an inquiry into the behavior of a doctor at the hospital, and I thought you’d want to hear about it before the nationals get hold of the story.”
“That’s good of you, Emma.” Hands began waving at her frantically. “But if the story is going to make the final edition, I’ll need to send a reporter over to the hospital immediately.”
“I have an appointment at eleven,” said Emma, looking down at her diary, “but I’ll call you back in a few moments if I can rearrange it.”
As Emma hung up, she spotted beads of sweat appearing on Hands’s forehead.
“If I’m to cancel my appointment with the reporter from The Bristol Evening News,” she said, once again tapping the file, “I’ll expect you to be off these premises by midday. Otherwise, I recommend you pick up today’s final edition, in which you’ll discover exactly what I think of doctors like you. Be sure to stay by your phone, as I have a feeling they’ll want to hear your side of the story.”
Hands rose unsteadily from his seat and left the room without another word. Once the door had closed, Emma picked up the phone and redialed the number she had promised to call back.
“Thank you,” she said, when a voice came on the line.
“My pleasure,” said Harry. “What time will you be home for dinner?”
* * *
“If you’re going to spend the next month in London,” said Harry after he’d heard Emma’s news, “where do you intend to stay?”
“With Giles. That way I’ll be able to keep a close eye on his every move.”
“And he on yours. But I can’t see him agreeing to such a cozy little arrangement.”
“He’s not going to be given much choice,” said Emma. “You’ve obviously forgotten I own the freehold of number Twenty-three Smith Square. So if anyone’s going to be looking for temporary accommodation, it will be Giles, not me.”
GILES BARRINGTON
1979–1981
6
“DO YOU WANT to hear the bad news?” said Giles as he strode into Griff Haskins’s office and plonked himself down in the seat opposite a man who was lighting his fourth cigarette of the morning.
“Tony Benn’s been found drunk in a brothel?”
“Worse. My sister is heading up the Conservatives’ marginal-seat campaign.”
The veteran Labour agent collapsed in his chair and didn’t speak for some time. “A formidable opponent,” he eventually managed. “And to think I taught her everything she knows. Not least how to fight a marginal seat.”
“It gets worse. She’ll be staying with me in Smith Square for the duration of the campaign.”
“Then throw her out on the street,” said Griff, sounding as if he meant it.
“I can’t. She actually owns the house. I’ve always been her tenant.”
This silenced Griff for a few moments, but he quickly recovered. “Then we’ll have to take advantage of it. If Karin can find out in the morning what she’s up to that day, we’ll always be one move ahead.”
“Nice idea,” said Giles, “except I can’t be sure whose side my wife is on.”
“Then throw her out on the street.”
“I don’t think that would get the women’s vote.”
“Then we’ll have to rely on Markham. Get him to listen in on her phone calls, open her mail if necessary.”
“Markham votes Conservative. Always has.”
“Isn’t there anyone in your house who supports the Labour party?”
“Silvina, my cleaner. But she doesn’t speak very good English, and I’m not sure she has a vote.”
“Then you’ll need to keep your eyes and ears open, because I want to know what your sister is up to every minute of every day. Which constituencies she’s targeting, which leading Tories will be visiting those constituencies, and anything else you can find out.”
“She’ll be equally keen to find out what I’m up to,” said Giles.
“Then we must feed her with false information.”
“She’ll have worked that out by the second day.”
“Possibly, but don’t forget, you have much more experience than her when it comes to fighting elections. She’s going to be on a steep learning curve and relying a lot on my opposite number.”
“Do you know him?”
“John Lacy,” said Griff. “I know him better than my own brother. I’ve played Cain to his Abel for over thirty years.” He stubbed out his cigarette before lighting another one. “I first came across Lacy in 1945, Attlee versus Churchill, and like a Rottweiler he’s been licking his wounds ever since.”
“Then let’s take Clem Attlee as our inspiration, and do what he did to Churchill.”
“This is probably his last election,” said Griff, almost as if he was talking to himself.
“Ours too,” said Giles, “if we lose.”
* * *
“If you’re living in the same house as your brother,” said Lacy, “we must take advantage of it.”
Emma looked across the desk at her chief of staff and felt she was quickly getting to know how his mind worked. Lacy must have been around 5 foot 7 inches and, although he’d never participated in any sport other than baiting the Labour Party, there wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on him. A man who considered sleep a luxury he couldn’t afford, didn’t believe in lunch breaks, had never smoked nor drunk, and only deserted the party on Sunday mornings to worship the only being he considered superior to his leader. His thinning gray hair made him look older than he was, and his piercing blue eyes never left you.
“What do you have in mind?” asked Emma.
“The moment your brother leaves the house in the morning, I need to know which constituencies he plans to visit, and which senior Labour politicians will be accompanying him, so our workers can be waiting for them as they get off the train.”
“That’s rather underhand, isn’t it?”
“Be assured, Lady Clifton—”
“Emma.”
“Emma. We are not trying to win a baking competition at your local village fête, but a general election. The stakes couldn’t be higher. You must look upon any socialists as the enemy because this is all-out war. It’s our job to make sure that in four weeks’ time, none of them are left standing—and that includes your brother.”
“That may take me a little time to get used to.”
“You’ve got twenty-four hours to get up to speed. And never forget, your brother is the best, and Griff Haskins is the worst, which makes them a formidable combination.”
“So where do I start?”
Lacy got up from behind his desk and walked across to a large chart pinned to t
he wall.
“These are the sixty-two marginal seats we have to win if we hope to form the next government,” he said, even before Emma had joined him. “Each of them needs only a four percent swing or less to change color. If both the major parties end up with thirty-one of these seats”—he tapped the chart—“it will be a hung parliament. If either can gain ten seats, they will have a majority of twenty in the House. That’s how important our job is.”
“What about the other six hundred seats?”
“Most of them have already been decided long before a ballot box is opened. We’re only interested in seats where they count the votes, not weigh them. Of course there will be one or two surprises, there always are, but we haven’t the time to try to work out which ones they’re going to be. Our job is to concentrate on the sixty-two marginals and try to make sure every one of them returns a Conservative Member of Parliament.”
Emma looked more carefully at the long list of seats, starting with the most marginal, Basildon, Labour majority of 22, swing needed 0.1 percent.
“If we can’t win that one,” said Lacy, “we’ll have to suffer another five years of Labour government.” His finger shot down to the bottom of the chart. “Gravesend, which needs a 4.1 percent swing. If that turned out to be the uniform swing across the country, it would guarantee the Conservatives a majority of thirty.”
“What are the seven little boxes alongside each constituency?”
“We need every one of them ticked off before election day.”
Emma studied the headings: Candidate, Swing Required, Agent, Chairman, Drivers, Adopted Constituency, AOP.
“There are three seats that still don’t even have a candidate,” said Emma, staring at the list in disbelief.
“They will have by the end of the week, otherwise they could return a Labour member unopposed, and we’re not going to let that happen.”
“But what if we can’t find a suitable candidate at such short notice?”
“We’ll find someone,” said Lacy, “even if it’s the village idiot, and there are one or two of those already sitting on our side of the House, some of them in safe seats.”
Emma laughed, as her eye moved on to “Adopted Constituency.”
“A safe seat will adopt an adjoining marginal constituency,” explained Lacy, “offering it the assistance of an experienced agent, canvassers, even money when it’s needed. We have a reserve fund with enough cash to supply any marginal seat with ten thousand pounds at a moment’s notice.”
“Yes, I became aware of that during the last election when I was working in the West Country,” said Emma. “But I found some constituencies were more cooperative than others.”
“And you’ll find that’s the same right across the country. Local chairmen who think they know how to run a campaign better than we do, treasurers who would rather lose an election than part with a penny from their current account, Members of Parliament who claim they might lose their seats even when they have a twenty thousand majority. Whenever we come up against those sorts of problems, you’ll be the one who has to call the constituency chairman and sort it out. Not least because they won’t take any notice of an agent, however senior, and especially when everyone knows you have Mother’s ear.”
“Mother?”
“Sorry,” said Lacy. “It’s agent shorthand for the leader.” Emma smiled.
“And ‘OAP’?” she asked, placing a finger on the bottom line.
“Not old age pensioners,” said Lacy, “although they may well decide who wins the election because, assuming they can turn out, they’re the most likely to vote. And even if they can’t walk, we’ll supply a car and driver to take them to the nearest polling station. When I was a young agent I even helped someone get to the poll on a stretcher. It was only when I dropped him back at his house he told me he’d voted Labour.”
Emma tried to keep a straight face.
“No,” said Lacy, “it’s AOP, which stands for Any Other Problems, of which there will be several every day. But I’ll try to make sure you only have to deal with the really difficult ones because most of the time you’ll be out on the road while I’m back here at base.”
“Is there any good news?” asked Emma, as she continued to study the chart.
“Yes. You can be sure that our opponents are facing exactly the same problems as we are, and just be thankful we don’t have a box marked ‘Unions.’” Lacy turned to his boss. “I’m told you’re well acquainted with the methods of Griff Haskins, your brother’s right-hand. I’ve known him for years but really don’t know him at all, so what’s he like to work with?”
“Totally ruthless. Doesn’t believe in giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, works untold hours, and considers all Tories were spawned by the devil.”
“But we both know he has one great weakness.”
“True,” said Emma, “but he never drinks during a campaign. In fact, he won’t touch a drop until the final vote has been cast in the last constituency, when, win or lose, he’ll get plastered.”
* * *
“I see the latest opinion poll gives Labour a two percent lead,” said Karin, as she looked up from her paper.
“No politics at the breakfast table, please,” said Giles. “And certainly not while Emma is in the room.”
Karin smiled across the table at her sister-in-law.
“Did you notice that your ex-wife is back in the headlines?” asked Emma.
“What’s she been up to this time?”
“It appears that Lady Virginia will be withdrawing the Hon. Freddie from his posh prep school in Scotland. William Hickey is hinting that it’s because she’s once again short of cash.”
“I’ve never thought of you as an Express reader,” said Giles.
“Seventy-three percent of its readers support Margaret Thatcher,” said Emma, “which is why I don’t bother with The Mirror.”
When the phone rang, Giles immediately left the table and, ignoring the phone on the sideboard, retreated into the corridor, closing the door firmly behind him.
“Where’s he off to today?” whispered Emma.
“I plead the fifth,” said Karin, “although I am willing to tell you his driver’s taking him to Paddington.”
“Reading 3.7 percent, Bath 2.9 percent, Bristol Docklands 1.6 percent, Exeter 2.7 percent, and Truro—”
“It can’t be Truro,” said Karin. “He’s got a meeting at Transport House at eight o’clock this evening, so he couldn’t be back in time.” She paused as Markham came into the room with a fresh supply of coffee.
“Who was my brother speaking to on the phone?” asked Emma casually.
“Mr. Denis Healey.”
“Ah yes, and they’re off to…?”
“Reading, my lady,” said the butler, pouring Emma a cup of coffee.
“You would have made a good spy,” said Emma.
“Thank you, my lady,” said Markham, before clearing away the plates and leaving the room.
“How do you know he isn’t one?” whispered Karin.
7
IF ANYONE HAD asked Emma to account for what took place during the next twenty-eight days, she would have described them as one long blur. Days that began with her leaping into a car at six o’clock each morning continued relentlessly until she fell asleep, usually in an empty train carriage or the back of a plane, around one the following morning.
Giles kept to roughly the same routine: same modes of transport, same hours, different constituencies. Far from them being able to spy continuously on each other, their paths rarely crossed.
The polls consistently showed the Labour Party a couple of points ahead, and John Lacy warned Emma that during the last week of any campaign the electorate tended to move toward the government of the day. Emma didn’t get that feeling while she was out canvassing on the high streets, but she did wonder if the voters were just being polite when they spotted her blue rosette and she asked if they’d be voting Conservative. Whenever Mrs. Thatcher was as
ked about the polls as she traveled around the country, she would always reply, “Straw polls are for straw people. Only real people will be voting on May the third.”
Although she and Mrs. Thatcher only had one conversation during the twenty-eight-day campaign, Emma concluded that her party leader was either a very accomplished actress, or really did believe the Conservatives were going to win.
“There are two factors the polls are unable to take into account,” she told Emma. “How many people are unwilling to admit they will vote for a woman prime minister, and how many wives are not telling their husbands they will be voting Conservative for the first time.”
* * *
Both Giles and Emma were in Bristol Docklands on the last day of the campaign, and when ten p.m. struck and the last vote had been cast, neither felt confident enough to predict the final outcome. They both hurried back to London by train, but didn’t share the same carriage.
John Lacy had told Emma that the hierarchy of both parties would descend on their headquarters—Conservative Central Office and Labour’s Transport House, political sentinels perched at different corners of Smith Square—where they would await the results.
“By two a.m.,” Lacy briefed her, “the trend will have been set, and we’ll probably know who’s going to form the next government. By four a.m., the lights will be blazing in one building and celebrations will continue until daybreak.”
“And in the other building?” said Emma.
“The lights will begin to go out around three, when the vanquished will make their way home and decide who to blame as they prepare for opposition.”
“What do you think the result will be?” Emma had asked the chief agent on the eve of the poll.
“Predictions are for mugs and bookies,” Lacy had retorted. “But whatever the result,” he added, “it’s been a privilege to work with the Boadicea of Bristol.”
When the train pulled into Paddington, Emma leapt off and grabbed the first available taxi. Arriving back in Smith Square, she was relieved to find that Giles hadn’t yet appeared, but Harry was waiting for her. She quickly showered and changed her clothes before the two of them made their way across to the other side of the square.