Chapter XIX Richard #2
Gary Brotherton had insisted he come, said it was ‘good for optics’ – an expression that always made Richard think of eye-wash.
Gary is coming to the end of his contract and Richard won’t be renewing it.
Now that he’s returning to frontline politics, it seems uncouth to have a PR person putting out feelers for the next series of Strictly Come Dancing.
But he will miss him. He’s become accustomed to Gary’s off-colour humour and watermelon-scented vape, not to mention his obsessive fascination with which Love Island contestant has best monetised their five minutes of fame.
And, in truth, Gary has done a pretty good job.
Richard’s TikTok account recently reached 1.
1 million followers, which apparently was impressive for an MP.
His most popular video featured him lip-syncing the words ‘very demure, very mindful’ as Terri filmed him awarding a gleaming marrow first prize at a constituency village fete.
He’ll probably keep the TikTok going – employ some young person from Central Office who knows how to connect with their peer group. Every vote counts and all that.
On his way out, Richard passes Harriet Seeker, the former ITV political editor who now has her own interview show on Friday mornings.
She is the only Black woman fronting a flagship daytime programme on any of the major channels.
A recent study found she received 90 per cent of all racist abuse directed towards the UK’s television personalities, which Richard found both shocking and simultaneously unremarkable.
Ever since Brexit, Britain has made less of an effort to keep its racism hidden.
He has always admired Harriet’s sangfroid in the face of such bile, so when Gary outlined the merits of doing one major campaign interview, Richard mentioned her name. Tomorrow, he is her main booking. She knows nothing yet of the scoop he’s about to give her.
Harriet glances at him from beneath a freshly blow-dried fringe.
‘Going home to prepare for the inquisition?’ she asks, with cut-glass enunciation.
‘Absolutely,’ Richard replies.
‘Great. See you in the morning.’
On the street, the same photographer from the Mail is waiting.
‘Leaving so soon, Dick?’ he shouts. ‘Anything to tell me?’
Richard walks up to him. The snapper looks surprised.
‘Nothing to report this evening,’ Richard says, ‘but tell your editors I’ll have a lot to say tomorrow morning.’
‘OK, mate,’ the photographer says quietly. ‘Roger that.’
In the make-up chair the next day, a woman called Maisie with spearmint breath insists he needs more powder.
‘You’re quite sweaty, aren’t you?’ she says, dabbing at his cheeks with a soft brush. She leans closer but makes no eye contact, instead looking at his face in an assessing manner, as if he were a saucepan on special offer at Le Creuset.
‘That’s better,’ Maisie says, standing back. ‘Now what are we doing with your hair?’
Richard is nonplussed.
‘Side parting?’ Maisie says. ‘Brush it through a bit?’
‘Yes please.’
He’s grateful someone else has taken charge.
‘So what are you on to talk about, then?’ she asks, taking out a wide-toothed comb and running it through.
It’s a strange kind of intimacy. Make-up artists didn’t usually brush his hair, given its regrettable sparseness.
No woman has touched him like this since …
he was about to say Hannah, but she would never have been caught dead brushing his hair, so it was probably his mother.
‘The Tory leadership election.’
‘Righto,’ Maisie says. ‘You’re a politician, then?’
‘Yes,’ he replies, disappointed she hasn’t recognised him.
‘I don’t mean to be rude, but …’
Ah, Richard thinks, the classic opener for someone who is about to be.
‘… I don’t like any of them. That Graham Bunn is scary, isn’t he? He hates everyone! And his pores are terrible.’
‘I don’t disagree,’ Richard says. ‘Not about the pores, I mean. I don’t know about pores.’
‘Trust me,’ Maisie says grimly. ‘And Ben Fitz … whaddya call him? Fitzherbert.’
‘Fitzmaurice.’
‘That’s it. Yeah. Fitzmaurice. He’s too smooth for my liking. Too smooth by half.’
Maisie reaches for a pot of hair gel. Richard is about to tell her not to use it but it’s too late, she’s slathering it across his head, pressing firmly down on any stray bits.
‘And what about that guy caught with his trousers down watching porn in his own office?’ She cackled. ‘You couldn’t make it up. Dirty little bugger, do you know what I mean?’
The silence that follows is broken only by the low-volume chatter emanating from a wall-mounted television.
It’s tuned in to the morning chat show that precedes Harriet Seeker on Politics.
On screen, a woman in a gimp mask and leather-strapped bondage vest is saying ‘Look, it’s just a way of life at the end of the day,’ and the two presenters are nodding their heads sympathetically.
‘Actually,’ Richard croaks, ‘that was me.’
‘Oh my God,’ Maisie says, her hands temporarily suspended above his head. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I get it. It was a stupid mistake.’
He doesn’t make any excuses, doesn’t lapse into his usual spiel about ‘what red-blooded male hasn’t …?’ and doesn’t try and win her over. He’s tired of all that.
‘Do you know what?’ Maisie says, resuming her gel application but with more softness this time. ‘I actually respect you for saying that. Just owning it. Not trying to squirm your way out of it like they normally do. Politicians, I mean. You’re alright, you are.’
She squints at his reflection in the mirror opposite, then gives him a pat on the shoulder.
He is mildly astonished. Is it really as easy as that?
All the months of trying to say the right thing, explaining but never entirely apologising; all the carefully crafted media appearances and speeches designed to resurrect his flailing reputation; the new haircut, the Nehru jackets, the minor celebrity status conferred by reality TV; the fraught alliance with Ben Fitzmaurice, the great white hope of the Tory Party who had promised him chancellor but who had forced him to compromise almost all of his own principles …
and … for what? It turns out all he has to do is say what he actually thinks.
‘OK, you’re done, sweetheart,’ Maisie says. ‘Good luck!’
A man called Mike comes to fit him with a lapel microphone.
Richard is about to make a joke about his name but thinks better of it.
He’s been on the receiving end of too many jokes about his own to find it funny anymore.
Then he’s ushered onto the set – a white table, two metal-framed black leather chairs either side of it.
Harriet is already seated in one and is speaking intently into thin air but then Richard notices the earpiece and realises she’s talking to the producer.
‘Yep,’ she is saying. ‘Yep, got that one. OK. Uh-huh. Hahahahaha. As if. Yes, I know.’
She grins at Richard, mouths ‘one sec’ at him and he tries to ease himself into the chair, which seems to have been expressly designed for discomfort.
He experiments with crossing one leg over the other, then decides against it.
Cody, his stylist, had warned him against creasing his suit unnecessarily.
‘Make sure you pull the back of your jacket down and sit on it so you don’t look all hunched over,’ she’d said as she’d run the lint brush over his black turtleneck.
He feels hot under the studio lighting and immediately begins to worry that the sweat Maisie identified is going to break through the many layers of powder she applied. He doesn’t want to look like a shiny-lipped Nixon in a career-ending TV debate.
‘Hi, Richard,’ Harriet says, leaning forward to shake his hand across the table. ‘Thanks for coming in.’
‘Thanks for having me,’ he says, the words already sounding nervous and stilted.
‘Did you have fun at the party?’
‘Not really, Harriet.’
She smiles.
‘Me neither. Look, we’ve got a couple of minutes before we go live. Anything you want to ask me?’
She gazes at him in the same way she did last night, her eyes hypnotic yet impenetrable.
‘No – er – well, actually, there is one thing.’
She raises an eyebrow.
‘Do I look sweaty?’
She laughs.
‘No.’
The floor manager appears in Richard’s peripheral vision.
‘Right folks, ready to go in five, four, three …’
Richard’s heart beats faster. The floor manager signals the final two counts with the fingers of one hand and then the jazzy theme music starts and before he knows it, Harriet has swung her chair towards the darkness and is speaking directly down one camera, its red light steady and piercing as a laser beam.
‘Good morning and thanks for being here. I’m Harriet Seeker, and this is me … on politics.’
He can see the autocue she’s using and has the surreal experience of reading her introduction to him a fraction of a second before she says it out loud.
‘… after a much-publicised scandal, he lost his cabinet seat but his time on the backbenches allowed him to reconnect with the youth vote through the medium of reality TV. Now, Richard Take is masterminding the campaign to anoint Ben Fitzmaurice as our new prime minister.’
More jazzy music and then Harriet swings her chair back round to face him. Her eyes have narrowed and the glint has been replaced by something steelier and more focused.
‘Mr Take, thank you for joining us.’
‘Pleasure to be here, Harriet.’
His mouth is dry and his voice cracks shrilly on the last syllable of her name. He reaches for the glass of water in front of him.
‘How’s the campaign going, then?’
A softball question, but open-ended enough to allow plenty of rope for Richard to hang himself, should he be so inclined. She’s a pro.
‘It’s been going well, Harriet. There’s been real momentum and I think that’s because we’re only too well aware that this marks a turning point for us as a party and us as a country, and I believe—’