First Among Equals (10 page)

When Charles
was told the news by telephone later that day, he was appreciative of Kimmins’s
sensible advice and felt he had escaped lightly in the circumstances. He
couldn’t help remembering how many column inches George Brown, the Labour
Foreign Secretary, had endured after a similar incident outside the Hilton
Hotel.

Fiona kept her
own counsel.

At the time,
Fleet Street was in the middle of the “silly season,” that period in the summer
when the press is desperate for news. There had only been one cub reporter in
the court when Charles’s case came up, and even lie was surprised by the
interest the nationals took in his little scoop.

The pictures of
Charles taken so discreetly outside the Hamptons’ country home were glaringly
large the following morning. Headlines ranged from “Six Months’ Ban for Drunk
Driving-Son of Earl” to “MP’s Ascot Binge Ends in Heavy Fine.”

Even the Times
mentioned the case on its home news page.

By lunchtime
the same day every Fleet Street newspaper had tried to contact Charles-and so
had the Chief Whip. When he did track Charles down his advice was short and to
the point. A junior Shadow Minister can survive that sort of publicity once –
not twice.

“Whatever you
do, don’t drive a car during the next six months, and don’t ever drink and
drive again.”

Charles
concurred, and after a quiet weekend hoped he had heard the last of the case.
Then he caught the headline on the front page of the Sussex Gazette: “Member
Faces No-Confidence Motion.” Mrs. Blenkinsop, the chairman of the Ladies’
Luncheon Club, was proposing the motion, not for the drunken driving, but for
deliberately misleading her about why he had been unable to fuffill a speaking
engagement at their annual luncheon.

Raymond had
become so used to receiving files marked “Strictly Private,”

“Top
Secret,”
or even “For Your Eyes Only” in his position as a
Government undersecretary that he didn’t give a second thought to a letter
marked “Confidential and Personal” even though it was written in a scrawled
hand. He opened it while Joyce was boiling his eggs.

“Four minutes
and forty-five seconds, just the way you like them,” she said as she returned from
the kitchen and placed two eggs in front of him. “Are you all right, dear?
You’re white as a sheet.”

Raymond
recovered quickly, sticking the letter into a pocket, before checking his
watch. “Haven’t time for the other egg,” he said. “I’m already late for Cabinet
committee, I must dash.”

Strange,
thought Joyce, as her husband hurried to the door. Cabinet committees didn’t
usually meet until ten, and he hadn’t even cracked open his first egg. She sat down
and slowly ate her husband’s breakfast, wondering why he had left all his mail
behind.

Once he was in
the back of his official car Raymond read the letter again.

It didn’t take
long.

DEAR “MALCOLM,”

“I enjoid our
little get together the other evening and five hundrudpounds would help me
toforget it once andfor all.

Love, MA ND Y

P.S. I’ll be in
touch again soon.

He read the
letter once more and tried to compose his thoughts. There was no address on the
top of the notebook paper. The envelope gave no clue as to where it had been
posted.

When his car
arrived outside the Department of Employment Raymond remained in the back seat
for several moments.

“Are you
feeling all right, sit?” his driver asked.

“Fine, thank
you,” he replied, and jumped out of the car and ran all the way up to his
office. As he passed his secretary’s desk he barked at her,

“No
interruptions.”

“You won’t
forget Cabinet committee at ten o’clock, will you, Minister?”

“No,” replied
Raymond sharply and slammed his office door. Once at his desk he tried to calm
himself and to recall what he would have done had he been approached by a
client as a barrister at the bar: First instruct a good
solicitor.
Raymond considered the two most capable lawyers in England to be Arnold Goodman
and Sir Roger Pelham.

Goodman was
getting too high a profile for
Raymond’s liking
whereas Pelham was just as sound but virtually unknown to the general pub82
lic. He called Pelham’s office and made an appointment to see him that
afternoon.

Raymond hardly
spoke in Cabinet committee, but as most of his colleagues wanted to express
their own views, nobody noticed. As soon as the meeting was over, Raymond
hurried out and took a taxi to High Holborn.

Sir Roger
Pelham rose from behind his large Victorian desk to greet the junior Minister.

“I know you’re
a busy man, Gould,” Pelham said as he fell back into his black leather chair,
“so I shan’t waste your time. Tell me what I can do for you.”

“It was kind of
you to see me at such short notice,” Raymond began, and without further word
handed the letter over.

“Thank you,”
the solicitor said courteously, and, pushing his half-moon spectacles higher
up
his nose, he read the note three times before he made any
comment.

“Blackmail is
something we all detest,” he began, “but it will be necessary for you to tell
me the whole truth, and don’t leave out any details. Please remember I am on
your side. You’ll recall only too well from your days at the bar what a
disadvantage one labors under when one is in possession of only half the
facts.”

The tips of
Pelham’s fingers touched, forming a small roof in front of his nose as he
listened intently to Raymond’s account of what had happened that night.

“Could anyone
else have seen you?” was Pelham’s first question.

Raymond thought
back and then nodded.

“Yes,” he said.
“‘Yes, I’m afraid there was another girl who passed me on the stairs.”

Pelham read the
letter once more.

“My, immediate
advice,” he said, looking Raymond in the eye and speaking slowly and
deliberately, “and you won’t like it, is to do nothing.”

“But what do I
say if she contacts the press?”

“She will
probably get in touch with someone from Fleet Street anyway, even if you pay
the five hundred pounds or however many other five hundred pounds you can
afford.

Don’t imagine you’re
the first Minister to be blackmailed, Mr. Gould.
Every
homosexual in the House fives in daily fear of it.
It’s a game of hide
and
seek
. Very few people other than saints have
nothing to hide, and the problem with public life is that a lot of busybodies
want to seek.” Raymond remained silent, his anxiety showing. “Phone me on my
private line immediately the next letter arrives,” said Pelham, scribbling a
number on a piece of paper.

“Thank you,”
said Raymond, relieved that his secret was at least shared with someone else.
Pelham rose from behind his desk and accompanied Raymond to the door.

Raymond left
the lawyer’s office feeling better, but he found it hard to concentrate on his
work the rest of that day and slept only in fits and starts during the night.
When he read the morning papers, he was horrified to see how much space was
being given to Charles Hampton’s peccadillo. What a field day they would be
able to have with him. When the mail came, he searched anxiously for the
scrawled handwriting. It was hidden under an American Express circular. He tore
it open. The same hand was this time demanding that the five hundred pounds
should be deposited at a post office in Pimlico. Sir Roger Pelham saw the
Minister one hour later.

Despite the
renewed demand, the solicitor’s advice remained the same.

“Think about
it, Simon,” said Ronnie as they reached the boardroom door.

“Two thousand
pounds a year may be helpful, but if you take shares in my real estate company
it would give you a chance to make some capital.”

“What did you
have in mind?” asked Simon, buttoning up his stylish blazer, trying not to
sound too excited.

“Well, you’ve
proved damned useful to me.

Some of those
people you bring to lunch wouldn’t have allowed me past their front doors. I’d
let you buy in cheap... you could buy fifty thousand shares at one pound. When
we go public in a couple of years’ time you’d make a killing.”

“Raising fifty
thousand pounds won’t be easy, Ronnie.”

“When your bank
manager has checked over my books he’ll be only too happy to lend you the
money.”

After the
Midland Bank had studied the authorized accounts of Nethercote and Company and
the manager had interviewed Simon, they agreed to his request, on the condition
that Simon deposited the shares with the bank.

How wrong Elizabeth
was proving to be, Simon thought; and when Nethercote and Company performed
record profits for the quarter he brought home a copy of the annual report for
his wife to study.

“Looks good,”
she had to admit. “But I still don’t have to trust Ronnie Nethercote.”

When the annual
meeting of the Sussex Downs Conservative Association came around in October
Charles was pleased to learn that Mrs. Blenkinsop’s “no confidence” motion had
been withdrawn.

The local press
tried to build up the story, but the nationals were full of the Abervan coal
mine disaster, in which one hundred and sixteen schoolchildren had lost their
lives. No editor could find space for Sussex Downs.

Charles
delivered a thoughtful speech to his association, which was well received.
During Question Time, he was relieved to find no embarrassing questions
directed at him.

When the
Hamptons finally said goodnight, Charles took the chairman aside and inquired,
“How did you manage it?”

“I explained to
Mrs. Blenkinsop,” replied the chairman, “that if her motion of no confidence
was discussed 85 at the annual meeting, it would be awflully hard for the
member to back my recommendation that she should receive an Order of the
British Empire in the New Year’s Honors for service to the party.

That shouldn’t
be too hard for you to pull off, should it, Charles?”

Every time the
phone rang, Raymond assumed it would be the press asking him if he knew someone
called Mandy. Often it was a journalist, but all that was needed was a quotable
remark on the latest unemployment figures, or a statement of where the Minister
stood on devaluation of the pound.

It was Mike
Molloy, a reporter from the Daily Mirror, who was the first to ask Raymond what
he had to say about a statement phoned in to his office by a girl called Mandy
Page.

“I have nothing
to say on the subject.

Please speak to
Sir Roger Pelham, my solicitor,” was the Under Secretary’s suc-cinct reply. The
moment he put the phone down he felt queasy.

A few minutes
later the phone rang again.

Raymond still
hadn’t moved. He picked up the receiver, his hand still shaking. Pelham
confirmed that Molloy had been in touch with him.

“I presume you
made no comment,” said Raymond.

“On the
contrary,” replied Pelham. “I told him the truth.”

“What?”
exploded
Raymond.

“Be thankful
she picked a fair journalist, because I expect he’ll let this one go. Fleet
Street is not quite the bunch of shits everyone imagines them to be,” Pelham
said uncharacteristically, and added, “They also detest two things – crooked
policemen and blackmailers. I don’t think you’ll see anything in the press
tomorrow.”

Sir,
,Roger
was wrong-

Raymond was
standing outside his local newsstand the next morning when it opened at
five-thirty, and he 86 surprised the proprietor by asking for a copy of the Daily
Mirror. Raymond Gould was plastered all over page five saying,

“Devaluation is
not a course I can support while the unemployment figure remains so high.” The
photograph by the side of the article was unusually flattering.

Simon Kerslake
read a more detailed account of what the Minister had said on devaluation in
the London Times and admired Raymond Gould’s firm stand against what was
beginning to look like inevitable Government policy.

Simon glanced
up from his paper and started to consider a ploy that might trap Gould. If he
could make the Minister commit himself again and again on devaluation in front
of the whole House, he knew that when the inevitable happened, Gould would be
left with no choice but to resign.

Simon began to
pencil a question on the top of his paper before continuing to read the front
page, but he couldn’t concentrate, as his mind kept returning to the news
Elizabeth had given him before she went to work.

Once.
again
he looked up from the
article, and this time a wide grin spread across his face. It was not the
thought of embarrassing Raymond Gould that caused him to smile. A male
chauvinist thought had crossed his normally liberal mind. “I hope it’s a boy,”
he said out loud.

Charles Hampton
was glad to be behind the wheel again, and he had the grace to smile when Fiona
showed him the photograph of the happy Mrs.

Blenkinsop displaying her OBE outside Buckingham Palace to a
reporter from the East Sussex News.

It was six
months to the day of his first meeting with Sir Roger Pelham that Raymond Gould
received an account from the solicitor for services rendered-five hundred
pounds.

S
IMON LFFT THE HOUSE and drove himself to Whitechapel Road to
attend a board meeting of Nethercote and Company.

He arrived a
few minutes after the four o’clock meeting had begun, quietly took his seat and
listened to Ronnie Nethercote describing another coup.

Ronnie had
signed a contract that morning to take over four major city blocks at a cost of
26 million pounds with a guaranteed rental income of 3.2 million per annum for
the first seven years of a twenty-one-year lease.