“Can we come?”
“No. If I find Daddy, I’ll bring him straight back here. Promise.”
Daniella and Matthew exchanged a look, annoyed and half relieved. Julia grinned at them. “Come on, I’ve got a teleconference in a minute, but we’ll have some elevenses together first.”
“No interruptions?” Matthew asked suspiciously.
“None at all.”
David Marchant had been the first New Conservative Prime Minister elected after the PSP fell, a position he held for twelve years and two further elections before finally standing down in favour of his successor, Joshua Wheaton. Julia had found herself regretting his decision with increasing frequency over the last five years. Wheaton was too much like Harcourt, an image merchant desperate for public support, a spin doctor’s cyborg. At least Marchant had the guts to make unpopular decisions on occasion. These days he had settled into a cosy role of elder statesman and New Conservative grandee. Always on the channel current affair casts, ready with an opinion and a quip. Perceived as the power behind Wheaton’s throne. An accurate enough assessment.
When his image appeared on the study’s flatscreen she felt herself relaxing. There had been a lot of head to head sessions in the old days, hammering out deals to their mutual advantage. Nowadays it was done through an army of assistants and lawyers, departmental interfaces, industry and government working groups, advisory committees.
One reason why the whole Harcourt problem had arisen in the first place. No hands-on control any more.
“Hello, Julia,” he said. As always a rich resonant voice, instantly trustworthy.
“Morning, David. I have a problem.”
“Whatever I can do, Julia, you know that.”
“Choosing a better successor would have been a good start.”
David Marchant smiled wisely. “Joshua is right for these times, as I was for mine. We needed strong leadership to recover from the Warming and the PSP, and now we need to loosen up a little, consolidate.”
“There’s a difference between loose and falling to pieces. Wheaton has lost just about all of his authority, over the country and the party. And I have Michael Harcourt on my back because of it.”
“Michael is an ambitious man, admittedly.”
“Michael is a bought man.”
David Marchant laughed. “You’re just annoyed because it isn’t you who owns him.”
“He isn’t from your wing of the party. And if he does snatch the premiership from Wheaton, he’ll purge the cabinet. You really will have to become a professional current affairs presenter if you want your voice to be heard after that. Trouble is, Jepson runs Globecast too. You’ll be locked out. Give you a chance to get your golf handicap down,” she said maliciously. Marchant hated sports; when Peterborough United won the FA cup she had sat next to him in Wembley’s royal box for the match. He had emptied two hip flasks of whisky. Out of boredom, he always claimed…
“If you’d given Wheaton some support over Wales none of this would have happened, Julia.”
“Life isn’t as black and white as it used to be in your day, David. Politics isn’t as simple, nothing is as simple. Which is a step to the good.”
“Hardly, Julia; complexity is a step towards chaos.”
“And simplicity makes control easy,” she countered wryly. “It’s oppressive.”
“The PSP was oppressive, Julia, never us. We created the economic environment you thrived in, you have a lot to be grateful for. And as long as we remain in Westminster, Event Horizon can go on expanding. You have carte blanche, you know that.”
“Event Horizon is already large enough, thank you. Besides, pure capitalism is as unsavoury as pure communism. I never favoured either extreme. There has to be a degree of regulation, and responsibility. A social market somewhere in the middle.”
“That’s rich, coming from you. You know the gains to be made from our policies. Without us acting in tandem this country would only be a second-rate European state, not the leading power we are today.”
“You people, you’re always so hemmed in by geography, aren’t you? It ruins your thinking. The rest of Europe, the rest of the world for that matter, needs to develop their economies to the same level as England. If for no other reason than if they’re poor they can’t buy our goods.”
“Nice in theory, Julia. You’ll never see it in practice. Governments are too parochial, too protective. They have to be; it’s how they get elected.”
She favoured him with an indolent smile. “Unless they’re Welsh governments.”
“Touché. So what did that little shit Harcourt offer you?”
“He claims a direct line to Jepson, which he’ll use to tell me what the other bids are. That’s his edge. The rest of it was a standard government to industry inducement package.”
“Hmm.” David Marchant rubbed the bridge of his nose, thinking hard. “Well, of course, the inducement package will remain, that goes without saying. After all, my natural successors are placed in the Exchequer as well as Number Ten. That just leaves us with the problem of the actual bid. Fortunately, the PM can offer you Treasury backing for any offer you make to Jepson. In which case anything Harcourt tells you becomes irrelevant. I imagine Wheaton will consider a more appropriate position for him afterwards; Minister we can all blame for traffic jams, or somesuch. I take it you are arranging a suitable figure for Jepson with your financial backing consortium.”
“Yes,” she said grudgingly. Another bloody problem. Her finance division chief had briefed her during the flight from Listoel; the banks and finance houses were terrified by atomic structurng, running round like headless chickens. It was making business extremely difficult in the money markets.
“Good. Simply put in a figure you know the kombinates can’t match. We will bridge the gap between that and the imount the banks will advance you. Blank cheque, Julia. And interest free.”
“It will run to tens of billions, if not hundreds.”
“So? Taxpayers are a bottomless source of money for governments. And they’re not going anywhere.”
“As a taxpayer, I object.”
“Ah, but, Julia, you don’t pay much tax, do you? New Conservative policies see to that.”
“What about Wales?”
“I’m sure that if you have a chat with Joshua Wheaton he’ll convince you to see our point of view Perhaps you could say a few words to that effect when you leave Number Ten, there’s always a lot of reporters hanging around outside.”
“Tell me one thing, David. Why do the New Conservatives want to hang on to Wales?”
“A large country is a stable and strong country. Without Wales, we would be weakened, possibly fatally. I have no intention of allowing that to happen, to waste all we have built over the last seventeen years. It would be national suicide.”
“And you would lose your majority in Westminster.”
David Marchant gave a delicate shrug. “If we lose, you lose, Julia.” The flatscreen went blank.
Going to be one of those days, I think, Juliet, her grandpa said.
Yes. And if I’m not extremely careful, it might be the last.
You should have told him about the alien.
No. I don’t want people like him to make first contact; there’s first impressions to consider as well.
And Royan is the perfect choice for that, is he, girl?
She couldn’t answer.
Julia went upstairs for a shower after the teleconference. Wilhom’s master bedroom was large, with a high ceiling, its windows looking out over the lake. A Paris design house had been contracted for the decoration, giving it walls of royal purple and emerald, a mossy cream carpet, gold fittings, heavy curtains that hung from the ceiling to the floor. A solid four-poster made from oak, with a plain white silk canopy.
On impulse she sat on Royan’s side of the bed and opened the door of his cabinet. Inside she found a couple of bottles of aftershave, comb, a hardback set of The Lord of the Rings, AV memox crystal recordings of black and white films from the nineteen-forties and fifties, a cybofax that must have been ten years old, it was so bulky.