To Play the King

CHAPTER TWO

A man should sleep uneasy in his palace if he wishes to keep it.

It hadn’t been as he had expected. The crowds had been much thinner than in years gone by; indeed, fewer than two dozen people standing outside the Palace gates, skulking tortoise-like beneath umbrellas and plastic raincoats, could scarcely be counted as a crowd at all. Maybe the great British public simply didn’t give a damn any more who their Prime Minister was.

He sat back in the car, a man of bearing and distinction amidst the leather, his tired smile implying a casual, almost reluctant acceptance of his lot. He had a long face, the skin ageing but still taut beneath the chin, austere like a Roman bust with lank silver-sandy hair carefully combed away from the face. He was dressed in his habitual charcoal-grey suit with two buttons and a brightly coloured, almost foppish silk handkerchief which erupted out of the breast pocket, an affectation he had adopted to distance himself from the Westminster hordes in their banal Christmas-stocking ties and Marks & Spencer suits. Every few seconds he would bend low, stretching down behind the seat to suck at the cigarette he kept hidden below the window line, the only outward show of the tension and excitement which bubbled within. He took a deep lungful of nicotine and for a while didn’t move, feeling his throat go dry as he waited for his heart to slow.

The Right Honourable Francis Ewan Urquhart, MP, gave a perfunctory wave to the huddled group of onlookers from the rear seat of his new ministerial Jaguar as it passed into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. His wife Mortima had wanted to lower the window in order for the assorted cameramen to obtain a better view of them both, but discovered that the windows on the official car were more than an inch thick and cemented in place. She had been assured by the driver that nothing less than a direct hit from a mortar with armour-piercing shells would open them.

The last few hours had seemed all but comic. After the result of the leadership ballot had been announced at six o’clock the previous evening, he had rushed back to his house in Cambridge Street and waited there with his wife. For what, they hadn’t quite known. What was he supposed to do now? There had been no one to tell him. He had hovered beside the phone but it stubbornly refused to ring. He’d rather expected a call of congratulation from some of his parliamentary colleagues, perhaps from the President of the United States or at the very least his aunt, but already the new caution of his colleagues towards a man formerly their equal and now their master was beginning to exert itself; the President wouldn’t call until he’d been confirmed as Prime Minister and his aged aunt apparently thought his telephone would be permanently engaged for days. In desperation for someone with whom to share their joy, he and Mortima took to posing for photo calls at the front door and chatting with the journalists on the pavement outside.

Urquhart, or FU as he was often known, was not naturally gregarious, a childhood spent roaming alone with no more than a dog and a satchelful of books across the heathers of the family estates in Scotland had attuned him well to his own company, but it was never enough. He needed others, not simply to mix with but against whom to measure himself. It was what had driven him South, that and the financial despair of the Scottish Highlands. A grandfather who had died with no thought of how to avoid the venality of the Exchequer; a father whose painful sentimentality and attachment towards tradition had brought the estate’s finances to their knees. He had watched his parents’ fortunes and their social position wither like apple blossom in snow. Urquhart had got out while there was still something to extract from the heavily mortgaged moors, ignoring his father’s entreaties on family honour which in despair had turned to tearful denunciation. It had been scarcely better at Oxford. His childhood companionship with books had led to a brilliant academic career and to a readership in Economics, but he had not taken to the life. He had grown to despise the crumpled corduroy uniforms and fuzzy moralizing which so many of his colleagues seemed to dress and die in, and found himself losing patience with the dank river mists which swept off the Cherwell and the petty political posturings of the dons’ dinner table. One evening, the Senior Common Room had indulged in mass intellectual orgasm as they had flayed a junior Treasury Minister within an inch of his composure; for most of those present it had merely confirmed their views of the inadequacies of Westminster, for Urquhart it had reeked only of the opportunities. So he had turned his back on both the teeming moors and dreaming spires and had risen fast, while taking great care all the while to preserve his reputation as an academic. It made other men feel inferior, and in politics that was half the game.

It was only after his second photo call, about 8.30 p.m., that the telephone jumped back to life. A call from the Palace, the Private Secretary. Would he find it convenient to come by at about nine tomorrow morning? Yes, he would find that most convenient, thank you. Then the other calls began to flow in. Parliamentary colleagues unable any longer to control their anxieties about what job he might in the morning either offer to or strip from them. Newspaper editors uncertain whether to fawn or threaten their way to that exclusive first interview. Solicitous mandarins of the civil service anxious to leave none of the administrative details to chance. The chairman of the party’s advertising agency who had been drinking and couldn’t stop gushing. And Ben Landless. There had been no real conversation, simply coarse laughter down the phone line and the unmistakable sound of a champagne cork popping. Urquhart thought he might have heard at least one woman giggling in the background. Landless was celebrating, as he had every right to. He had been Urquhart’s first and most forthright supporter, and between them they had manoeuvred, twisted and tormented Henry Collingridge into premature retirement. Urquhart owed him, more than he could measure, while characteristically the newspaper proprietor had not been coy in identifying an appropriate yardstick.

He was still thinking about Landless as the Jaguar shot the right-hand arch at the front of the Palace and pulled into the central courtyard. The driver applied the brakes cautiously, aware not only of his regal surroundings but also of the fact that you cannot stop more than four tons of reinforced Jaguar in a hurry without making life very uncomfortable for the occupants and running the risk of triggering the automatic panic device which transmitted a priority distress alert to the Information Room at Scotland Yard. The car drew to a halt not beneath the Doric columns of the Grand Entrance used by most visitors but beside a much smaller door to the side of the courtyard, where, smiling in welcome, the Private Secretary stood. With great speed yet with no apparent hurry, he had opened the door and ushered forward an equerry to spirit Mortima Urquhart off for coffee and polite conversation, while he led Urquhart up a small but exquisitely gilded staircase to a waiting room scarcely broader than it was high. For a minute they hovered, surrounded by oils of Victorian horse-racing scenes and admiring a small yet uninhibited marble statue of Renaissance lovers until the Private Secretary, without any apparent consultation of his watch, announced that it was time. He stepped towards a pair of towering doors, knocked gently three times and swung them open, motioning Urquhart forward.

‘Mr Urquhart. Welcome!’

Against the backdrop of a heavy crimson damask drape which dressed one of the full-length windows of his sitting room stood the King. He offered a nod of respect in exchange for Urquhart’s deferential bow and motioned him forward. The politician paced across the room and not until he had almost reached the Monarch did the other take a small step forward and extend his hand. Behind Urquhart, the doors had already closed; the two men, one ruler by hereditary right and the other by political conquest, were alone.

Urquhart remarked to himself how cold the room was, a good two or three degrees below what others would regard as comfortable, and how surprisingly limp the regal handshake. As they stood facing each other neither man seemed to know quite how to start. The King tugged at his cuffs nervously and gave a tight laugh.

‘Worry not, Mr Urquhart. Remember, this is the first time for me, too.’ The King, heir for half a lifetime and Monarch for less than four months, guided him towards two chairs which stood either side of a finely crafted white stone chimneypiece. Along the walls, polished marble columns soared to support a canopied ceiling covered in elaborate classical reliefs of Muses, while in the alcoves formed between the stone columns were hung oversized and heavily oiled portraits of royal ancestors painted by some of the greatest artists of their age. Hand-carved pieces of furniture stood around a huge Axminster, patterned with ornate red and gold flowers and stretching from one end of the vast room to the other. This was a sitting room, but only for a king or emperor, and it might not have changed in a hundred years. The sole note of informality was struck by a desk, placed in a distant corner to catch the light cast by one of the garden windows and completely covered by an eruption of papers, pamphlets and hooks which all but submerged the single telephone. The King had a reputation for conscientious reading; from the state of his desk it seemed a reputation well earned.

‘I’m not quite sure where to start, Mr Urquhart,’ the King began as they settled in the chairs. ‘We are supposed to be making history but it appears there is no form for these occasions. I have nothing to give you, no rich words of advice, not even a seal of office to hand over. I don’t have to invite you to kiss my hand or take any oath. All I have to do is ask you to form a Government. You will, won’t you?’

The obvious earnestness of his Sovereign caused the guest to smile. Urquhart was in his early sixties, ten years older than the King, although the difference appeared less; the younger man’s face was stretched and drawn beyond its years with a hairline in rapid retreat and the beginnings of a stoop. It was said that the King had replaced his complete lack of material concerns with a lifetime of tortured spiritual questioning, and the strain was evident. While Urquhart had the easy smile and small talk of the politician, the intellectual aloofness of an academic and the ability to relax of a man trained to dissemble and if necessary to deceive, the King had none of this. Urquhart felt no nervousness, only the cold; indeed, he began to pity the younger man’s gravity. He leaned forward.

‘Yes, Your Majesty. It will be my honour to attempt to form a Government on your behalf. I can only hope that my colleagues won’t have changed their minds since yesterday.’

The King missed the mild humour as he struggled with his own thoughts, a deep furrow slicing across the forehead of a face which had launched a million commemorative mugs, plates, tea trays, T-shirts, towels, ashtrays and even the occasional chamber pot, most of them made in the Far East. ‘You know, I do hope it’s auspicious, a new King and new Prime Minister. There’s so much to be done. Here we are on the very brink of a new millennium, new horizons. Tell me, what are your plans?’

Urquhart spread his hands wide. ‘I scarcely…there’s been so little time, Sir. I shall need a week or so, to reshuffle the Government, set out some priorities…’ He was waffling. He knew the dangers of being too prescriptive and his leadership campaign had offered years of experience rather than comprehensive solutions. He treated all dogma with a detached academic disdain and had watched with grim satisfaction while younger opponents tried to make up for their lack of seniority with detailed plans and promises, only to discover they had advanced too far and exposed vulnerable ideological flanks. Urquhart’s strategy for dealing with aggressive questioning from journalists had been to offer a platitude about the national interest and to phone their editors; it had got him through the twelve tumultuous days of the leadership race, but he had doubts how long such a game plan would last. ‘Above all, I shall want to listen.’

Why was it that politicians uttered such appalling clichés, which their audiences nevertheless seemed so blithe to accept? The Monarch was nodding his head in silent agreement, his tense body rocking gently to and fro as he sat on the edge of his chair. ‘During your campaign you said that we were at a crossroads, facing the challenges of a new century while building on the best from the old. “Encouraging change while preserving continuity.”’

Urquhart acknowledged the phrase.

‘Bravo, Mr Urquhart, more power to your hand. It’s an admirable, summation of what I believe my own job to be, too.’ He grasped his hands together to form a cathedral of bony knuckles, his frown unremitting. ‘I hope I shall be able to find – that you will allow me – some way, however small, of helping you in your task.’ There was an edge of apprehension in his voice, like a man accustomed to disappointment.

‘But of course, Sir, I would be only too delighted…did you have anything specific in mind?’

The King’s fingers shifted to the knot of his unfashionably narrow tie and twisted it awkwardly. ‘Mr Urquhart, the specifics are the stuff of party politics, and that’s your province. It cannot be mine.’

‘Sir, I would be most grateful for any thoughts you have…’ Urquhart heard himself saying.

‘Would you? Would you really?’ There was a rising note of eagerness in his voice, which he tried to dispel, too late, with a chuckle. ‘But I must be careful. While I was merely heir to the Throne I was allowed the luxury of having my own opinions and was even granted the occasional privilege of expressing them, but Kings cannot let themselves be dragged into partisan debate. My advisers lecture me daily on the point.’

‘Sir,’ Urquhart interjected, ‘we are alone. I would welcome any advice.’

‘No, not for the moment. You have much to do and I must not delay you.’ He rose to indicate that the audience was at an end, but he made no move towards the door, steepling his fingers to the point of his bony, uneven nose and remaining deep in thought, like a man at prayer. ‘Perhaps – if you will allow me? – there is just one point. I’ve been reading the papers.’ He waved towards the chaos of his desk. ‘The old Department of Industry buildings on Victoria Street, which are to be demolished. The current buildings are hideous, such a bad advertisement for the twentieth century, they deserve to go. I’d love to drive the bulldozer myself. But the site is one of the most important in Westminster, near the Parliament buildings and cheek by jowl with the Abbey itself, one of our greatest ecclesiastical monuments. A rare opportunity for us to grasp, don’t you think, to create something worthy of our era, something we can pass on to future generations with pride? I do so hope that you, your Government, will ensure the site is developed…how shall I put it?’ The clipped boarding-school tones searched for an appropriately diplomatic phrase. ‘Sympathetically.’ He nodded in self-approval and seemed emboldened by Urquhart’s intent stare. ‘Encouraging change while preserving continuity, as one wise fellow put it? I know the Environment Secretary is considering several different proposals and, frankly, some of them are so outlandish they would disgrace a penal colony. Can’t we for once in our parsimonious lives make a choice in keeping with the existing character of Westminster Abbey, create something which will respect the achievements of our forefathers, not insult them by allowing some misguided modernist to…’ – his lips quivered in indignation – ‘to construct a stainless-steel mausoleum which crams people on the inside and has its mechanical entrails displayed without?’ Passion had begun to overtake the diffidence and a flush had risen to colour his cheeks.