After she replaced the receiver she took another sip from her glass. She wondered if she were getting herself in too deep. She had long ago learned that there was no such thing as a free lunch for any member of the Royal Firm, let alone a free fifty thousand pounds. There were strings to everything, and she suspected that Ben Landless would pull hard. 'You're tensing up, Ma'am.'
She rolled over, the towel slipping from her body as she examined her newly tightened breasts.
'Forget the shoulder muscles, Brent. Time to take care of the inner woman.'
Lieutenant Brentwood Albery-Hunt, a six foot three Guards Officer on secondment to the Palace as the Princess's personal equerry, gave a sharp salute and stood to attention as his own towel fell to the floor and the Princess cast a critical eye over him in mock inspection. He knew from past form that she was a demanding Colonel of the regiment, and that night-duty under her supervision would be arduous.
December: Christmas Week
'It can't be done, Francis.'
I don't appoint Ministers to tell me things can't be done, Urquhart raged inside. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer was insistent, and Urquhart knew he was right.
They were huddled in the corner of a reception room at party headquarters where the good and the great of the party had gathered to save money and time by celebrating Christmas and bidding farewell to a long-serving official. The pay of such officials was appalling, their working conditions usually pitiable and they were expected to show independence neither of mind nor manner. In return they expected, after the passage of many years, recognition, in the form either of an invitation to a Buckingham Palace Garden Party, a modest mention in the Honours List, or a farewell reception at which busy Ministers gathered to drink sweet German wine and nibble cocktail sausages while the retiring and frequently unrecognizable servant was feted. But Urquhart had been pleased to attend this function, for an elderly but ebullient tea lady named Mrs Stagg. No one else was sufficiently senior to remember how long she had been there. Her tea was poisonous and her coffee indistinguishable from her tea, but her sense of fun had cut through the pomposity which so frequently befogs politicians and her bustling presence in a room usually managed to defuse even the most sombre of occasions. Urquhart had fallen for her when, as an aspiring MP more than thirty years ago, he had watched transfixed as she had spotted a button loose on Ted Heath's jacket and had insisted on stripping the bachelor party leader to his shirt sleeves while she repaired the damage on the spot. Urquhart was aware that this was her third attempt at retirement but, at the age of seventy-two, it seemed likely to be her very last and he had looked forward to the escape from official business. But it was not to last.
'It simply cannot be done' the Chancellor repeated. 'Christmas has scarcely happened in the shops and the recession is going to be here earlier than we expected. We can massage the statistics a bit, explain them away for a month or two as rogues, but we won't be able to massage away the school leavers who'll be flooding into the workforce at Easter. Most of them are going to go straight from the classroom to the dole queue, and there's sod all you or I can do about it.'
The four men standing with heads bowed in their huddle drew closer together, as if to protect a great secret. Urquhart had asked the Chancellor what he thought of the chances of putting off the impact of recession for a month or two, squeezing out a little more time. But the Treasury Minister only confirmed what he already knew. Stamper was next to speak, very briefly. There was no use in making a feast of bad news. 'Four points, Francis.' 'In front?'
'Behind. This aggravation with the King has shot our lead to hell. Four points and moving in the wrong direction.'
Urquhart ran his tongue along thin lips. 'And what of you, Algy? What bucketful of sorrows do you bring to drench me?'
As Urquhart turned to the Party Treasurer they had to huddle still closer, for the financier was scarcely more than five feet tall and listening to him in a room full of the buzz of conversation was an effort. Unlike the Chancellor and Stamper, he'd not been told of the plans for an early election, but he was no fool. When a Treasurer is asked how a party living on an overdraft might raise ten million pounds in a hurry, he knows that mischief is afoot. His well-lunched face was flushed as he craned his neck to look at the others.
'Can't be done. So soon after an election, immediately after Christmas and just about to go into recession… I couldn't raise ten million pounds this year, let alone this month. Let's be realistic, why would anyone want to lend that sort of money to a party with a slim majority about to get slimmer.' 'What do you mean?' Urquhart demanded.
'Sorry, Francis,' Stamper explained. 'The message must be waiting on your desk. Freddie Bancroft died this morning.'
Urquhart contemplated the news about one of his backbenchers from the shires. It was not entirely unexpected. Bancroft had been a political corpse for many years, and it was time the rest of him caught up. 'That's a pity, what's his majority?' Urquhart had to struggle to provide any form of punctuation or pause between the two thoughts. They were all too aware of his concern, how the lurid headlines of a by-election campaign had a habit of creating a new national mood, usually at the Government's expense as their candidate was put to ritual slaughter. 'Not enough.' 'Bollocks.' 'We'll lose it. And the longer we delay the worse it will be.'
'The first by-election with me as Prime Minister. Not a great advertisement, eh? I was rather hoping I'd be riding the bandwagon, not being shoved under its wheels.'
Their deliberations were interrupted by a sallow-faced youth in much-creased suit and crooked tie, whose reluctance to invade what was clearly a very private confabulation had been overcome by the Liebfraumilch and a bet made with one of the lissom secretaries, who had wagered her bed against his bashfulness. 'Excuse me, I've just joined the party's research department. Can I have your autographs?' He thrust a piece of paper and grubby pen into their midst.
The others waited for Urquhart to move, to instruct that the youth be keelhauled for impudence and dismissed for ill-judgement. But Urquhart smiled, welcoming the interruption. 'You see, Tim, somebody wants me!' He scribbled on the paper. 'And what are your ambitions, young man?' 'I want to be Chancellor, Mr Urquhart.' 'No vacancy!' the Chancellor insisted. 'Yet…' the Prime Minister warned. 'Try Brunei,' Stamper added, in less frivolous tones.
There was more merriment as the piece of paper did its round, but as the banter died away and the youth retreated in the direction of a deeply blushing secretary, Urquhart found himself staring into the humourless, uncompromising eyes of Stamper. Unlike the others they both knew how important was an early election. If recession and overdraft were the brush of the noose around their necks, then the news of the by-election had come as the sound of the trapdoor-bolt beginning its final slide. There had to be a way out, or else. 'Merry Christmas, Tim?'
Stamper's words sighed with the edge of perpetual Arctic night. 'Not this year, Francis. It can't be done. You must recognize the fact. Not now, not after the King. It simply cannot be done.'
PART TWO
My dearest Son,
Today I begin my first full year as the King, and I am filled with foreboding.
Last night I had a dream. I was in a room, all white, in soft focus as things sometimes are in dreams, a hospital I think. I was standing beside a bath, white like everything else, in which two nurses were bathing my father, old and wasted, as he was before he died. They were treating him with such tenderness and care, floating him in the warm water, he was at peace, and so was I. I felt a calm, a serenity I have riot felt for many months.