Chapter XIX Richard
XIX.
Richard
Different times, Richard supposes, as he strides up the Georgian London street where the Witness has its offices. An arch of fake, pastel-hued flowers announces the entrance and as he walks by, a news photographer he vaguely recognises from the Mail shouts after him.
‘Oi, Richard! How’s the campaign going?’
Richard ignores him and gives his name to a young blonde woman with a clipboard.
In truth, the campaign is going pretty well.
Ben is ahead of Graham Bunn in the polls.
The two of them are due to go head to head in a televised debate next week and Richard has been roped in to help with prepping.
Ben wants him to put together briefing documents on the top six issues he thinks they’ll be pressed on: benefits, the cost-of-living crisis, tax cuts, the NHS, pensions and that staunch Tory perennial: should we build on the green belt?
Meanwhile, Jarvis is coaching Ben on ‘camera presence’, whatever that means.
And as for Martin? He’s disappeared. Richard hasn’t seen him since their itsu sushi summit.
He isn’t sure if it’s because Martin is deliberately making himself scarce, or because Ben has decided to sideline him.
Either way, it’s probably for the best, given what Richard is about to do.
He called Hannah in the end. Asked her to meet for a drink.
She was surprisingly amenable to the idea.
They went to a favourite pub, around the corner from what had been their marital home.
He felt a rush of calm as soon as she walked through the door, heaving a large black wheeled suitcase behind her.
She was wearing what looked like a giant grey scarf but as she sat next to him at the bar and began to unwind it, the scarf transformed itself into a sort of cape and then, when it emerged there were sleeves, he realised it was a coat of such capacious proportions you could probably have hidden Edward Buller’s harem in the pockets.
‘Hello, Richard,’ she said with a frown.
‘I got you your usual.’
He slid the double gin and tonic across to her.
‘Thanks.’
She drank half of it down then licked her lips, visibly suppressing a burp. God, he missed her.
‘So.’ Hannah stared at him with her customary piercing scrutiny. ‘How are you?’
‘Ah, not bad,’ he said. ‘You know. It is what it is.’
He’d read that on a fridge magnet once.
‘You look better than I thought you would,’ she said.
It wasn’t uttered accusingly, simply as a statement of fact.
‘Gosh. Thanks. You look … you look wond—’
She waved the compliment away.
‘Enough of that. Why am I here?’
He traced the condensation on his pint glass with the tip of one finger.
‘Perhaps I just wanted to see you. Is that so hard to believe?’
‘No. I know you always want to see me, but you wouldn’t humiliate yourself to ask unless it was something important.’
She was right, as ever. With Hannah, you never had to second-guess or be mired in a moment’s indecision.
She was the kind of woman who drove ambulances in war zones and made jam for jumble sales and knew how to roast potatoes in goose fat and sew curtains while casually saving an entire nation from sliding into irrelevance.
Hannah knew exactly who she was and what to do and how to do it and she frequently knew what other people should do too, which was why he needed to speak to her.
‘I’ve come into possession of some documents …’ he started.
‘Oh please do stop talking like you’re a lady detective. Cut to the chase, Richard.’
So he told her.
By the time he was done, she’d finished her first G that he had known all along.
‘Burn the fuckers down,’ she said, placing one of her heavy, capable hands over his. ‘Then throw away the matches.’
Walking into the garden at the back of the Witness’s offices, the first person he sees is the Tory peer Lord Cunningham sucking on the end of an obscenely large cigar. Oleander Wellington, the current editor, is standing next to him, obsequiously proffering a lighter.
‘Oleander,’ Richard says. ‘Hi.’
‘Well, as I live and breathe, if it isn’t Richard Take, the kingmaker,’ Oleander says in his high-pitched Welsh accent.
He is wearing a linen suit and a pale pink shirt with one too many buttons undone.
He is deeply tanned. Last week his Instagram Stories showed him dancing in front of a Mykonos DJ booth.
He slaps Richard lightly on the back. ‘Good of you to join us,’ Oleander says. ‘Ben’s coming later, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, yes. He wouldn’t miss it. Neither of us would. We’re very grateful for the Witness’s support.’
‘You’re welcome. We can’t have Graham Bunn in charge. He voted against gay marriage. My husband wouldn’t hear of it.’
It was one of the strange anomalies of the right-wing British cognoscenti that they could be liberal when it pertained to their own lives but harshly condemnatory when it came to anyone else’s.
Oleander routinely savaged feckless benefit claimants and workshy immigrants in the pages of his magazine, but also marched every year for Pride in an assortment of sequins and feathers, holding signs proclaiming that Love is Love.
‘Ben’s doing very well,’ Lord Cunningham says.
‘He’ll be the most handsome PM we’ve ever had,’ Oleander continues, but his green eyes are already darting over Richard’s shoulder, looking at who else he can talk to. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Dorothy Windage has just arrived.’
Dorothy Windage, a decrepit nonagenarian known for being the daughter of Britain’s most notorious wartime fascist and for having once been bounced on Hitler’s lap as a baby, is swathed in purple velvet and being pushed in a wheelchair by a bored-looking young man.
She scowls at the assembled crowd and swats Oleander’s hands away when he tries to embrace her.
‘So, Richard,’ Lord Cunningham is saying, breathing cigar fumes over his face. ‘Tell me, did you really never think of standing for the leadership yourself?’
Richard shakes his head with practised ease.
‘No, no, not at all. I’m not sure the party faithful would have liked it, given my, ah, very public peccadillo.’
Lord Cunningham emits a guffaw which turns rapidly into a wheezing cough.
‘Come now. We’ve all been there.’
‘Ha.’ Richard shifts on his feet, unsure where this is going. ‘Kind of you to say, but …’
‘I don’t mind telling you,’ Lord Cunningham says, his voice dropping as he leans closer, affording Richard a bird’s-eye view of his thinning hair and flaking, liver-spotted scalp.
‘The Conservatives need someone who’ll stand up for our old-fashioned values and get rid of those blasted small boats and ship ’em back to wherever they came from.
I’m not sure your chap Ben Fitzmaurice quite has the balls to see it through. ’
A waiter passes and Richard reaches for a ceramic spoon filled with an unidentified breadcrumbed sphere that might or might not be a Scotch egg. He shovels it into his mouth to avoid having to reply.
‘And this trans business is getting out of hand. Out of hand, I tell you. My wife says the Women’s Institute is being forced to allow in men who identify as female.
The bloody WI! Clue’s in the name. It’s for women.
One of the last bastions of Britishness.
God created men and women differently for good reason, don’t you agree? ’
Not so long ago, Richard would have given a non-committal ‘quite’ and moved the conversation on. But this evening, he finds he doesn’t agree, and then – even more strangely – he finds himself saying so.
‘I don’t, no.’
Lord Cunningham shrinks back, as if pulled by an invisible string.
‘Well,’ he splutters. ‘Well, if that’s what you think, there’s no hope for you.’ He stumbles backwards. ‘Good lord. You won’t get far if that’s your attitude, you mark my words.’
Smoke-scented spittle lands on Richard’s cheek.
He wipes it off with the back of his hand as Lord Cunningham waddles away.
Stupid old codger, Richard thinks. He scans the crowd, wondering where to place himself with just enough but not too much prominence.
The garden is on two levels, adjoined by stone steps.
The upper part is lined with mature magnolia trees and terracotta pots planted with satiny-petalled flowers.
He recognises a Sunday newspaper editor, a film director he thought was dead and the shadow Pensions Secretary standing in a huddle underneath the biggest magnolia tree, but just as he is about to walk over, there is a shifting in the crowd.
He turns to see Ben arriving, hand in hand with Serena, the two of them shining and glamorous and looking like they’ve walked straight off a photoshoot.
He catches Ben’s eye. They nod briefly and then Ben gets waylaid by Oleander and Lord Cunningham sidles up to Serena, putting a grubby hand around her waist and Richard realises with startling clarity that he has always hated this party, full of its self-satisfied guests who trade in contempt.