Landless noticed the exchange of looks between the Princess and the younger Quillington. It was not their first. They had begun the evening sitting well apart at opposite ends of the sofa, but they seemed to have drawn ever closer, like magnets.
'Absolutely, Beany. They know you can't defend yourself so they lay into you without pity,' Mickey continued from his position by the fire. 'We've all worked damned hard for what little we have. Yet they get at the fox-hunting, they attack the landowners, they undermine the hereditary principle, and the next thing you know we're a sodding republic. It's about time we started sticking up for ourselves, stopped taking it on the chin and turning the other cheek.'
Charlotte had finished her glass and was holding it out towards the younger Quillington for a refill. 'But, Mickey, I can't, none of my lot can. The Family's supposed to be the silent service.' She turned to Landless. 'What do you think, Benjamin?'
'I'm a businessman, not a politician,' he protested coyly, but checked himself. She had offered him a chance to break into their tight circle of concerns, there was no point in turning it down. 'Very well, take a lesson from the politician's book. If a Minister wants something said but finds it injudicious to say it himself, he gets somebody else to do the talking. A fellow MP, a business leader, a newspaper editor even. You have friends, influential friends. Like Lord Quillington here, with a voice and seat in the House of Lords.'
'Slave labour, rowing the Government's galley, that's all they reckon we are,' Quillington sniffed.
'And so you shall remain if you don't speak up for yourselves,' Landless warned.
'Sounds like mutiny,' his brother said from the drinks table, 'taking on the Government.'
'So what? You've got nothing to lose. Better than staying silent simply in order to be abused. Remember what they tried with the King's speech? You're in the same firing line.'
'Never did have any time for that Urquhart,' Quillington muttered into his brandy balloon.
'The press wouldn't report it anyway,' his brother commented, handing a full glass back to the Princess. When he sat down, Landless noticed he had drawn even closer to her. Their hands were side by side on the car rug. 'Some press would,' Landless interjected.
'Benjamin, of course, you're a darling,' Charlotte said soothingly, 'but all the rest of them are interested in is a photograph of me with my dress blown up around my ears so they can gossip about where I buy my knickers.'
It was not an entirely accurate picture, mused Landless. The press were mostly interested in where she left her underwear, not where she bought it.
'Shouldn't give honours to press men,' Mickey continued. 'Particularly peerages. Clouds their objectivity. Makes them too damned self-important.'
Landless didn't feel insulted; rather, he felt as if slowly they were beginning to offer him acceptance, setting aside the fact that he was born to a different world.
'You know, perhaps you're right,' Quillington continued. 'Hell, about the only right they allow us nowadays is to get on our hind legs in the Lords, and it's about time we started using it properly. You know, making the Lords and the hereditary principle the first line of defence for you and yours, Beany.' 'If you've anything you want to say, I'll make sure it gets an outing,' Landless offered. 'Just like we did with the Christmas speech.'
'I think we've hit on a damned fine idea, Beany,' Quillington said. Already he was beginning to expropriate the idea for his own. 'Anything you want said, I'll say it for you. If the King can't make a public speech, then I'll make it for him. Into the public record on the floor of the Lords. We mustn't let them gag us.' He nodded in self-approval. 'Sorry you can't stay the night, Landless,' he continued. 'Plenty of other ideas I'd like to try on you.' The conversion was complete. 'Some other time, eh?'
Landless understood the hint and glanced at his watch. 'Time I was going,' he offered, and rose to his feet to make his rounds of farewell.
He would be glad to get out into the fresh air. He didn't belong here, not with these people: no matter how polite they were and no matter how successful he became, he would never belong. They wouldn't allow it. He might have purchased a ticket to the dinner table, but he could never buy his way into the club. He didn't mind, he didn't care to join. This was yesterday, not tomorrow. Anyway, he'd look ridiculous on a horse. But he had no regrets. As he glanced behind him from the door, he could see his host standing by his fireplace, dreaming of chivalrous battles yet to come on the floor of the House of Lords. And he could see the Princess and the younger Quillington, already anticipating the disappearance of the outsider, holding hands on the sofa. There were stories here aplenty, with patience. It had been worth it.
The House of Commons attendant entered the gentlemen's lavatory in search of his quarry. He had an urgent message for Tom Worthington, a Labour MP from what used to be a mining constituency in Derbyshire before they closed the mines, who prided himself on his working-class origins in spite of the fact that it had been more than twenty years since anything other than ink and ketchup had stained his hands. The lavatory was inescapably Victorian with fine antique tiles and porcelain, sullied only by an electric hot-air drier at which Jeremy Colthorpe, an ageing and notoriously pompous Member from the pretentious shires, was drying his hands. 'By chance seen Mr Worthington, sir?' the attendant enquired.
'Can only handle one shit at a time in here, my man,' Colthorpe responded through his nose. 'Try one of the bars. In some corner under a table, most likely.'
The attendant scurried off as Colthorpe was joined at the wash basins by the only other man in the room, Tim Stamper.
'Timothy, dear boy. Enjoying party headquarters? Making an excellent job of it, if you don't mind my saying.'
Stamper turned from the basin and lowered his head in appreciation, but there was no warmth. Colthorpe was known for his airs, purporting to be a leader of local society, yet he'd married into every penny, which only made him still more condescending towards former estate agents. Classlessness was a concept Colthorpe would never support, having spent most of his life trying to escape from its clutches.
'Glad for a chance to speak with you actually, old chap,' Colthorpe was saying, his smile more a simper as he searched keenly in the corners of the mirror for reassurance that he and Stamper were alone in the echoing room. 'Confidentially, man to man,' he continued, trying to glance surreptitiously beneath the doors of the cubicles.
'What's on your mind, Jeremy?' Stamper responded, mindful that during all of his years in the House Colthorpe had never done more than pass the time of day with him.
'Lady wife. Getting on a bit, seventy next year. And not in the best of health. Brave gal, but finding it more than ever difficult to help in the constituency – it's damned large, forty-three villages, don't you know, takes some getting round, I can tell you.' He moved over towards Stamper at the basins and started washing his hands for the second time, trying to evince confidentiality but clearly ill at ease. 'Owe it to her to take off some of the pressure, spend a little more time together. No way of telling how long she may have.' He paused while he worked up a considerable lather as if he were always meticulous about hygiene and to emphasize the depth of his concern for his wife. Both effects were wasted on Stamper who, when Deputy Chief Whip, had seen Colthorpe's private file, which included reference to the regular payments he made to a single mother who used to tend bar in his local pub.
'To be frank, I'm thinking of giving up my seat at the next election. For her sake, of course. But it'd be a damnable pity to see all that experience I've gained over the years go to waste. Would love to find some way of… still being able to contribute, don't you know. To go on doing my bit for the country. And the party, of course.'