First Among Equals Read online

  On the business front Simon had advised Ronnie Nethercote not to allow his company shares to be traded on the Stock Exchange until the Tories returned to power. “The climate,” he assured Ronnie, “should be much easier then.”

  Charles Seymour was glad to be behind the wheel again after his driving ban had been completed, and he had the grace to smile when Fiona showed him the photograph of the happy Mrs. Blenkinsop displaying her OBE outside Buckingham Palace to a reporter from the Sussex Gazette.

  It was six months to the day of his first meeting with Sir Roger Pelham that Raymond Gould received an account from the solicitor for services rendered—£500. He sent the check by return of post in a parcel that also contained a copy of the recently published edition of Wisden.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ANDREW HAD BEEN warned by his ministerial colleagues that the first day answering questions at the dispatch box would be an experience he was unlikely to forget.

  Questions for the Scottish Office appear on the order paper on a Wednesday once every four or five weeks, and each minister answers on behalf of his own department between two-thirty-five and three-twenty. There are usually four or five ministers of the Crown, not including the law officer available to represent each great department of state. During the forty-minute to one-hour period the ministers would expect to reply to about twenty-five questions, but it is rarely the questions that are the problem; it is the supplementaries.

  Any member can place a question through the table office to any minister, and can word it in a seemingly innocuous way. “When does the minister hope next to visit Aberdeen?” to which the minister concerned may reply anything from “next week” to “I have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future”—but when the member who put down the question rises from his seat to ask his supplementary he can change the subject completely. “Does the minister realize that Aberdeen has the highest rate of unemployment in the United Kingdom, and what new ideas does his department have to deal with this problem?” The hapless minister must then come up with a convincing reply on the spot.

  In an attempt to see that a minister is adequately briefed, his department will spend the morning scrutinizing each tabled question and looking for pitfalls he might encounter. A variety of possible supplementaries will be placed in his brief with appropriate answers. Ministers can, of course, always ask colleagues on their own side what they are hoping to find out from their tabled questions, but Opposition members use question time to test a minister in the hope of discovering some weakness in his armory, thus making the Government appear incompetent.

  Andrew spent a considerable time in preparation for his first encounter at the dispatch box although the more senior and experienced ministers in the Scottish Office had agreed to handle any questions that looked hostile.

  He ended up having to respond to only one question from the Opposition benches, while fielding four from his own. Added to which, the timing was such that question number twenty-three from the Opposition member seemed unlikely to be reached by three-twenty, when the Solicitor General for Scotland would have to start answering questions himself.

  Andrew’s first four answers to questions numbers five, nine, eleven, and fourteen, went smoothly enough. He opened his dark blue file and was pleased to confirm the well-prepared briefs to everything that was thrown at him. By three-fifteen, when question number nineteen was being answered, Andrew sat back on the front bench and began to relax for the first time that day.

  The Solicitor General for Scotland entered a now packed Commons and, moving alongside the table in the center of the Chamber, he crouched slightly to be sure he did not obscure the Speaker’s view of the Government benches on his right. The Prime Minister had been left a place between the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary and waited for the clock to reach three-twenty.

  The Speaker called question number twenty-one but the member was not present. He called number twenty-two and once again the member was absent. Each had obviously considered that their question had little chance of being reached before three-twenty. At three-eighteen the Speaker called question twenty-three—Andrew’s heart sank—which read on the order paper, “Had the minister been invited to visit the Kinross Nursing Home?”

  Andrew rose, opened his folder, and said, “No, sir.”

  “No one in the House will be surprised by the minister’s reply,” said George Younger, the member for Ayr, “because the nursing home has forty-nine occupants, forty-seven of whom have their own television sets and yet the minister demands forty-seven separate license fees. If they were to congregate in one room, he would expect only one fee. Is this another example of the Labour party’s ‘Care for the Aged’ program that we hear so much about nowadays?”

  Andrew rose to the dispatch box to cries of “Answer, answer,” from the Opposition benches. He had checked his crib sheet while sitting on the edge of his seat. Andrew had a prepared answer for medical facilities, old-age pensions, supplementary benefits, food allowances, medical charges—but nothing on TV licenses. As he stood stranded at the dispatch box he was aware for the first time of the pitfalls that a minister encounters when he is not fully prepared. Such a system might appear wonderfully democratic to onlookers, he thought, until you are the Christian facing the 300 hungry lions.

  A handwritten note was quickly passed along the front bench to him from one of the civil servants who sit in the official box to the left behind the Speaker’s chair. With no time to consider its implications Andrew crossed his fingers and read the note out to the House.

  “This was a decision taken by the last administration, of which the Honorable Gentleman was a member. We have seen no reason to reverse that decision,” he read, thinking how much like a parrot he sounded. He sat down to polite Government murmurs and some considerable relief.

  Mr. Younger rose again and was allowed a second supplementary.

  “Mr. Speaker, this is the sort of inaccuracy we have grown to expect from this Government. The decision he refers to was made by his Right Honorable friend, the Secretary of State, only last year, and I think the minister will find, if he does his research more fastidiously, that his party was in power at the time.” The Opposition howled their delight.

  Andrew rose again and gripped the sides of the dispatch box to avoid anyone seeing that he was shaking in fear. Several members of the Government front bench had their heads bowed. The Opposition had drawn blood and were baying in triumph. Lord Attlee’s words came back to Andrew. “When you are caught out by the House admit it, apologize, and sit down.”

  Andrew waited for the noise to subside before he replied. “The Secretary of State warned me that a new minister will never forget his first question time and I feel bound to agree with him.” Andrew, who knew how the atmosphere in the House can change in a moment, felt such a moment now, and before it could turn back added, “On the question of television licenses in the Kinross Nursing Home, I apologize to the Honorable Gentleman for Ayr for my mistake and I will look into the case immediately and send him a written reply within twenty-four hours.” “Hear, hears” could now be heard from his own benches and the Opposition benches were quietened. Mr. Younger was trying to interrupt again but as Andrew didn’t give way he had to resume his seat, knowing the Speaker would not call on him again once the clock had passed three-nineteen. Andrew waited for silence before adding, “And I blame my grandmother for this who, as President of the Kinross Nursing Home and a staunch Conservative, has always believed in increasing old-age pensions rather than looking for false subsidies that can never be fair to everyone.” By now the Labour members were laughing and all the heads on the front bench were looking toward the new minister, who remained at the dispatch box until the House was silent again. “My grandmother would be delighted to learn that this administration has raised that old-age pension by fifty percent in the three years since we have taken office.” The Labour back-benchers were now cheering and waving their order papers as Andrew resumed his seat, while th
e Opposition were silent and glum.

  The hands of the clock touched three-twenty and the Speaker said, “The Solicitor General’s questions.”

  Andrew Fraser had made a political reputation, and as the laughter echoed round the House the intense figure sitting on the end of the front bench put a hand through his red hair and wondered if he could ever match Andrew’s skill at the dispatch box. On the Opposition back benches Simon Kerslake made a mental note to be cautious if he ever thought of putting a sharp question to Andrew Fraser.

  As soon as the Solicitor General’s questions were over Simon left the House and drove himself to Whitechapel Road. He arrived a few minutes after the four o’clock board meeting of Nethercote and Company had begun, quietly took his seat, and listened to Ronnie Nethercote describing another coup.

  Ronnie had signed a contract that morning to take over a major city block at a cost of fifteen million pounds with a guaranteed rental income of over 1.1 million per annum for the first seven years of a twenty-one-year lease with seven-year rent reviews.

  Simon formally congratulated him and asked if this made any difference to the company’s timing for going public.

  “Why do you ask?” said Ronnie.

  “Because I still feel it might be wise to wait until we know the result of the next general election. If the Conservatives return to power, as the opinion polls forecast, that could change the whole atmosphere for launching a new company.”

  “If they don’t, I shan’t hold up going public much longer.”

  “I wouldn’t disagree with that decision either, Mr. Chairman,” said Simon.

  When the meeting was over he joined Nethercote in his office for a drink.

  “I want to thank you,” Ronnie said, “for that introduction to Harold Samuel and Louis Freedman. It made the deal go through much more smoothly.”

  “Does that mean you’ll allow me to purchase some more shares?”

  Ronnie hesitated. “Why not? You’ve earned them. But only another 10,000. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Simon, or the other directors may become jealous.”

  In the car on the way to pick up Elizabeth Simon decided to take a second mortgage out on the house in Beaufort Street to raise the extra cash needed for the new shares. He thought it might be wise not to trouble her with the details. He savored the prospect of the Conservatives winning the next election, perhaps being given office in the Government and selling his shares for a sum that would make it possible for him to stop the continual worries of how he would finance his children’s education. Perhaps he could even give Elizabeth that holiday in Venice she had talked about so often.

  When he drove up to the hospital Elizabeth was waiting outside the gates. “We won’t be late, will we?” were her first words.

  “No,” said Simon, checking the clock on the dashboard as he turned the car round in the direction of Beaufort Street.

  They arrived at the hall five minutes before the curtain was due to rise. The occasion was their sons’ pantomime, and both Peter and Michael had assured their parents that they had major parts. It was Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, and Michael turned out to be a crab, who although he never left the stage lay on his stomach throughout the entire performance and never uttered a word. Peter, who had spent the week learning his words off by heart, was an unconvincing water baby standing at the end of a row of twelve. His speaking part turned out to be one sentence: “If grown-ups go on eating all the fish in the sea there will be none left for me.” King Neptune fixed his imperial eye on Peter and said, “Don’t blame us, it’s your father who’s the MP,” upon which Peter bowed his head and blushed, though not as deeply as Elizabeth when the audience in front of them turned round and smiled at Simon, who felt more embarrassed than if he had been in the center of a raging debate in the Commons.

  At coffee afterward the headmaster admitted that the sentence had been added without the approval of the late Charles Kingsley. When Simon and Elizabeth took the children home that night they insisted on repeating Peter’s one line again and again.

  “If the Government did an about-turn and devalued the pound, would the Under-Secretary find it possible to remain in office?”

  Raymond Gould stiffened when he heard Simon Kerslake’s question. His grasp of the law and his background knowledge of the subject made all except the extremely articulate or highly experienced wary of taking him on. Nevertheless Raymond had one Achilles’ heel arising from his firmly stated views in Full Employment at Any Cost?: any suggestion that the Government would devalue. Time and again eager back-benchers would seek to tackle him on the subject but once more it was Simon Kerslake who felled his opponent.

  Andrew, sitting on the front bench, composed in his mind a sharp reply about his colleagues’ collective responsibility, but Raymond Gould said rather ponderously: “The policy of Her Majesty’s Government is one hundred percent against devaluation, and therefore the question does not arise.”

  “Wait and see,” shouted Kerslake.

  “Order,” said the Speaker, rising from his seat and turning toward Simon as Raymond sat down. “The Honorable member knows all too well he must not address the House from a sedentary position. The Under-Secretary of State.”

  Raymond rose again. “This Government believes in a strong pound, which still remains our best hope for keeping unemployment figures down.”

  “But what would you do if Cabinet does go ahead and devalue?” Joyce asked him when she read her husband’s reply to Kerslake’s question reported in The Times the next morning.

  Raymond was already facing the fact that devaluation looked more likely every day. A strong dollar causing imports to reach record levels coupled with a run of strikes during the summer of sixty-seven was causing foreign bankers to ask when, not if.

  “I’d have to resign,” he said in reply to Joyce’s question.

  “Why? No other minister will.”

  “I’m afraid Kerslake is right. I’m on the record and he’s made sure everybody knows it. Don’t worry, Harold will never devalue. He’s assured me of that many times.”

  “He only has to change his mind once.”

  Pressure on the pound increased during the following weeks and Raymond began to fear that Joyce might turn out to be right.

  Andrew Fraser had read Full Employment at Any Cost? and considered it a succinctly argued case although he did not agree with all the small print. He personally was in favor of devaluation but felt it should have been pushed through in the Labour party’s first week in office, so that the blame could be left at the door of the Tories. After three years and a second election victory any such suggestion would rightly be considered outrageous.

  As Louise’s time of delivery approached she was getting larger by the day. Andrew helped to take pressure off her as much as he could, but this time he did not prepare so obviously for the birth, as he felt his unbridled enthusiasm might have contributed to her previous anxiety. He tried as often as possible to bring the red boxes home each night, but it remained an exception if he returned to Cheyne Walk before eleven o’clock.

  “Voting every night at ten o’clock and sometimes on through the night into the next day is one system the rest of the world has not considered worth emulating,” Andrew had told Louise after one particularly grueling session. He couldn’t even remember what he had been voting on—although he didn’t admit that to her. “But as no Government of whatever party has ever seriously considered the idea of limiting the time for ending business ‘the troops’, as back-benchers are known, go on charging through the lobbies day in and day out. That’s why the press refer to us as ‘lobby fodder.’”

  “More like a bunch of unruly children,” she chided.

  When Louise went into hospital one week early Elizabeth Kerslake assured her there was nothing to be worried about, and two days later Louise gave birth to a beautiful girl.

  Andrew was in a departmental meeting discussing Glasgow’s high-rise housing program when the hospital staff nur
se rang to congratulate him. He went straight to his fridge and took out the bottle of champagne his father had sent him the day he joined the Scottish Office. He poured a plastic mug of Krug for each of his team of advisers.

  “Just better than drinking it out of the bottle,” he suggested as he left his civil servants to go to the hospital.

  On arrival at St. Mary’s Andrew was relieved to find Elizabeth Kerslake was on duty. She warned him that his wife was still under sedation after a particularly complicated Caesarian delivery. Elizabeth took him to see his daughter who remained under observation in an isolation unit.

  “Nothing to fret about,” Elizabeth assured him. “We always take this precaution after any Caesarian birth as there are a number of routine tests we still have to carry out.”

  She left Andrew to stare at his daughter’s large blue eyes. Although he knew it might change in time the soft down on the crown of her head was already dark.

  He slipped out an hour later when she had fallen asleep to return to Dover House, where he had a second celebration in the Secretary of State’s office, but this time the champagne was served in crystal glasses.

  When Andrew climbed into bed that night the champagne helped him fall into a deep sleep with the only problem on his mind being what they should call their daughter. Claire had always been the name Louise favored.

  The phone had rung several times before he answered it and as soon as he had replaced the receiver he dressed and drove to the hospital as quickly as possible. He parked the car and ran to the now-familiar ward. Elizabeth Kerslake was standing waiting by the door. She looked tired and disheveled, and even with all her training and experience she found it hard to explain to Andrew what had happened.