First Among Equals (2 page)

“Yes,” he
replied. “It so happens that, sadly, a young man from Nottingham High School,
who had been offered a place here, was killed in a motorcycle accident last
month.”

“What
course-what subject was he going to read?” Simon’s words were unusually
faltering. He prayed it wasn’t chemistry, architecture or classics. Alan Brown
flicked through a rotary index on his desk, obviously enjoying the little
cross-examination. He peered at the card in front of him. “History,” he
announced.

Simon’s
heartbeat reached one hundred and twenty. “I just missed a place at Magdalen to
read politics, philosophy and economics,” he said. “Would you consider y me for
the vacancy?”

The older man
was unable to hide a smile.

He had never,
in twenty-four years, come across such i request.

“Full name?” he
said, replacing his glasses as if the serious business of the meeting had now
begun.

“Simon John
Kerslake.”

Dr. Brown
picked up the telephone by his side and dialed a number. “Nigel?” he said.
“It’s Alan Brown here. Did you ever consider offering a man called Kerslake a
place at Magdalen?”

Mrs. Kerslake
was not surprised when her son went on to be President of the Oxford Union.
After all, she teased, wasn’t it just another stepping-stone on the path to
Prime Minister- -Gladstone, Asquith...
Kerslake?

Ray Guld was
born in a tiny, windowless room above his father’s butcher shop in Leeds. For
the first nine years of his life he shared that room with his ailing
grandmother, until she died at the age of sixty-one.

Ray’s close
proximity to the old woman who had lost her husband in the Great War at first
appeared romantic to him. He would listen enraptured as she told him stories of
her hero husband in his smart khaki uniform – a uniform now folded neatly in
her bottom drawer, but still displayed in the fading sepia photograph at the
side of her bed. Soon, however, his grandmother’s stories filled Ray with
sadness, as fie became aware that she had been a widow for nearly thirty years.
Finally she seemed a tragic figure as he realized how little she had
experienced of the world beyond that cramped room in which she was surrounded
by all her possessions and a yellowed envelope containing five hundred
irredeemable war bonds.

There had been
no purpose in Ray’s grandmother’s making a will, for all he inherited was the
room. Overnight it ceased to be a double bedroom and became a study, full of
ever-changing library books and schoolbooks, the former often returned late,
using up Ray’s meager pocket money in fines.

But as each
school report was brought home, it became increasingly apparent to Ray’s father
that he would not be extending the sign above the butcher shop to proclaim
“Gould and Son.”

At eleven, Ray
won the top scholarship to Roundhay Grammar School. Wearing his first pair of
long trousers – shortened several inches by his mother-and hom-rimmed glasses
that didn’t quite fit, he set off for the opening day at his new school. Ray’s
mother hoped there were ol
‘ her
boys as thin and
spotty as her son, and that his wavy red hair would not cause him to be
continually teased.

By the end of
his first term, Ray was surprised to find he was far ahead of his
contemporaries, so far, in fact, that the headmaster considered it prudent to
PL:t ‘him Up a form “to stretch the lad a little,” as he explained to Ray’s
parents. By the end of that year, one spent mainly in the classroom, Ray
managed to come in third in the class, and first in Latin and English. Only
when it came to selecting teams for any sport did Ray find he was last in
anything. However brilliant his mind might have been, it never seemed to
coordinate with his body.

In any case,
the only competition he
care
for that year was the
middle school essay prize. The winner of the prize would be required to read
his entry to the assembled pupils and parents on Speech Day, Even before he
handed in his entry, Ray rehearsed his efforts out loud several ‘Limes in the
privacy of his study-bedroom, fearing he would not be properly prepared if lie
waited until the winner was announced.

Ray’s form
master had told all his pupils that the subject of the essay could be of their
own choosing, but that they sbould try to recall some experience that had been
unique to them.

After reading
Ray’s account of his grandmother’s life in the little room above the butcher
shop, the form master had no inclination to pick up another script. After he
had dutifully struggled through the remainder of’ the entries, he did not
hesitate in recommend in a Gould’s essay for the prize. The only reservation,
he admitted to Ray, was the choice of title. Ray thanked hini for the advice
but the title remained intact.

On the morning
of Speech Day, the school assembly hall was packed with nine hundred pupils and
their parents. After the headmaster had delivered his speech and the applause
had died down, he announced, “I shall now call upon the winner of the prize
essay competition to deliver his entry: Ray Gould.”

Ray left his
place in the hall and marched confidently up onto the stage.

He stared down
at the two thousand expectant taces but showed no sign of apprehension, partly
because he found it difficult to see beyond the third ow. When he announced the
title of his essay, some of the younger children began to snigger, causing Ray
to stumble through his first few lines. But by the tirrte hie had reached the
last page the packed hall was still, and after he had completed the final
paragraph he received the first standing ovation of his career.

Twelve-year-old
Ray Gould left the stage to rejoin his parents at their seats. His mother’s
head was bowed but he could still see teais trickling down her cheeks. His
father was trying not to look too proud. Even when Ray was seated, the applause
continued, so he, too, lowered his head to stare at the title of his
prize-winning essay:

“The First
Changes I Will Make When I Become Prime Minister.”

Thursday, December 10, 1964

M
R. SPEAKER ROSE and surveyed the Commons. He tugged at his long
black silk gown,
then
nervously tweaked the
fullbottomed wig that covered his balding head. The House had almost gotten out
of control during a particularly rowdy session of Prime Minister’s Questions,
and he was delighted to see the cleck reach three-thirty.

Time to pass on to the next business of the day.

He stood
shifting from foot to foot, waiting for the five hundred-odd members of
Parliament present to settle down before he intoned solemnly,

“Members
destine, to take the oath.” The packed assembly switched its gaze from Mr.
Speaker toward the far end of the chamber, like a crowd watching a tennis
match.

The newly
elected
member
of Parliament stood at the entrance of
the House of Commons. At six feel four, he looked like a man born with the Tory
party in mind. His patrician head was set on an aristocratic frame, a mane of
fair hair combed meticulously into place.

Dressed in a
dark-gray, double-breasted suit, with a Regimental Guards tie of maroon and
blue, flanked by his proposer and seconder, Charles Hampton took four paces
forward. Like well-drilled guardsmen, they stopped and bowed, then advanced
toward the long table that stood in front of the Speaker’s chair between the
two front benches. Charles was surprised at how small the chamber was in
reality: the Government and Opposition benches faced each other a mere sword’s
length apart. Charles recalled that historically a sword’s length had once insured
the safety of those bitter rivals who sat opposite each other.

Leaving his
sponsors in his wake, he passed down the long table, stepping over the legs of
the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary before being handed the oath by
the Clerk of the House.

He held the
little card in his right hand and pronounced the words as firmly as if they had
been his marriage vows.

“I, Charles
Hampton, do swear that I will be faithful, and bear true allegiance to Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors according to law, so help me
God.”

“Hear, hear,”
rose from his colleagues as the new member ofParliamerit leaned over to
inscribe the Test Roll, a parchment folded into book shape.

Charles
proceeded toward the Speaker’s chair, when he stopped and bowed.

“Welcome to the
House, Mr. Hampton,” said the Speaker, shaking his hand. “I hope you will serve
this place for many years to come.”

“Thank you, Mr.
Speaker,” said Charles, and bowed for a final time before continuing on to the
small area behind the Speaker’s chair. He had carried out the little ceremony
exactly as the Tory Chief Whip had rehearsed it with him in the long corridor
outside his office.

“Congratulations
on your splendid victory, Charles,” said the former Prime Minister and now Leader
of the Opposition, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who also shook him warmly by the
hand. “I know you have a great deal to offer to the Conservative Party and your
country.”

“Thank you,”
replied the new MP, who, after waiting for Sir Alec to return to take his place
on the Opposition front bench, made his way up the aisle steps to find a place
in the back row of the long green benches.

For the next
two hours Charles Hampton followed the proceedings of the House with a mixture
of awe and excitement.

He marveled at
the simplicity and justice of the parliamentary system in lively debate before
him. Labour versus Tory, Government versus Opposition,
the
Minister on the 6ench and his Shadow Minister on the opposite bench.

And as with two
soccer teams, Charles knew every position was covered – Government Minister
continually scrutinized by his Shadow Minister in the Opposition. He also knew
that if the Conservatives won the next election, the Shadow team was well
prepared to take over from the outgoing Labour Government.

Glancing up at
the Strangers’ Gallery, he saw his wife, Fiona
,,
his
father, the fourteenth Earl of Bridgewater, and his brother, the Viscount
Hampton, peering down at him with pride. Surely no one could now be in any
doubt as to which Hampton should have inherited the family title. For the first
time in his life, he had found something that wasn’t his by birthright or by
effortless conquest.

Charles settled
back on the first rung of the ladder.

Raymond Gould
stared down at the invitation. He had never seen the inside of Number 10
Downing Street. During the last thirteen years of Conservative rule few
Labourites had. He passed the embossed card across the breakfast table to his
wife.

“Should I
accept or refuse, Ray?” she asked in her broad Yorkshire accent.

She was the
only person who still called him Ray, and even her attempts at humor now
annoyed him. The Greek tragedians had based their drama on “the fatal flaw,”
and he had no doubt what his had been.

He had met
Joyce at a dance given by the nurses of Leeds General Hospital. He hadn’t
wanted to go but a second-year undergraduate friend from Roundhay convinced him
it would make an amusing break. At school he had shown little Interest in
girls, and, as his mother kept reminding him, there would be occasion enough
for that sort of thing once he had taken his degree. When he became an
undergraduate he felt certain that he was the only virgin left at the
university.

He had ended up
sitting alone in the comer of a room decorated with wilting balloons, sipping
disconsolately at a Coke through a bent straw.

Whenever his
school friend turned around from the dance floor...each time with a different
partner-Raymond would smile broadly back. With his National Health spectacles
tucked away in an inside pocket, he couldn’t always be certain he was smiling
at the right person. He began contemplating at what hour he could possibly
leave without having to admit ithe evening had been a total disaster. He would
have been frightened by her overture if it hadn’t been for that broad familiar
accent.

“You at the University as well?”

“As well as
what?” he asked, without looking directly at her.

“As well as
your friend,” she said.

“Yes,” he
replied, looking up at a girl he guessed was about his age.

“I’m from
Bradford.”

“I’m from Leeds,”
he admitted, aware as the seconds passed that his face was growing as red as
his hair.

“You don’t have
much of an accent, considering.”

That pleased
him.

“My name Is
Joyce.” she volunteered.

“Mine’s Ray,”
he said.

“Like to dance?”

He wanted to
tell her that he had rarely been on a dance floor in his life, but he didn’t
have the courage. Like a puppet, he found himself standing up and being guided
by her toward the dancers.
So much for his assumption that he
was one of nature’s leaders.

Once they were
on the dance floor he looked at her properly for the first time. She wasn’t
half bad, any normal Yorkshire boy might have admitted.

She was about
five feet seven, and her auburn hair tied up in a ponytail matched the
dark-brown eyes that had a little too much makeup around them. She wore pink
lipstick the same color as her short skirt, from which emerged two very
attractive legs.

They looked
even more attractive when she twirled to the music of the four piece student
band. Raymond discovered that if he twirled Joyce very fast he could see the
tops of her stockings, and he remained on the dance floor far longer than he
would even have thought possible. After the quartet had put their instruments
away, Joyce kissed him goodnight before Ray went back to his small room above
the butcher shop.