Only Human (5 page)

‘H
ello and good morning, you're listening to the Early Bird show, my name's Danny Bennett and if you've just tuned in I'm afraid you've just missed Prime Minister Dermot Fraud giving us his Worm's Eye View. And I'll be talking to my next guest, Trevor Swine, about his new book,
Blood Oranges; Mafia Infiltration of the Soft Fruit Authority
, directly after this.'

Dermot Fraud leaned back in his chair and twiddled his thumbs complacently. Good interview - name mentioned (five times), plugged new cuddly animals initiative, laughed to scorn misuse of party funds allegation, side-stepped innuendo about the big redhead from the constituency committee, made jokes (two). All that, in eleven minutes net of jingles. Churchill might have handled it as adroitly, likewise Keir Hardie, Lloyd George and Pericles; but not better. All part of the daily grind of statesmanship.

The red light in the studio went off. He stood up, shook Mr Bennett's podgy little hand with genuine synthetic warmth, and strolled out into the corridor.

‘All right?' he asked.

The minder nodded. ‘You got everything in except one of the extempore jokes,' she replied, ‘so I'm rescheduling that for Thursday week. Means we'll have to move the quicksilver repartee about the shadow foreign secretary's haircut back till next Friday, but that ought to be okay so long as he doesn't grow it back by then.'

‘Unlikely,' Fraud said. ‘Now then, it's the rats next, isn't it?'

‘That's right. The car's out the front.'

‘Speech?'

‘In the car.'

The speech turned out to be the old Mark IV ecology/ our children's children number, which Fraud knew by heart; accordingly he was able to spend the drive to Leatherhead staring mindlessly out of the window. One thing he missed now the party was in power - the only thing, needless to say - was the long, lazy afternoons he used to spend in Parliament, snuggled down during some debate or other with nothing to do but daydream and occasionally make a few rude noises when the other lot were on. So many of his colleagues saw the House as merely a very-last-resort way of getting on telly, rather than as what it really was: a place where stressed-out MPs can go to escape from the phone and vegetate. More fools them.

He sighed. Not likely to be much chance of that when he was Prime Minister; you had to sit at the front and answer questions, frequently with no script. Still, that was the price you had to pay for being the father of your country.

There was still a part of him that found it extraordinary that he, Dermot Fraud, was the twelfth most powerful man in the UK; but it was a part he didn't have much need for these days - his left big toe, perhaps, or one of his eyelashes - and whenever it started whingeing at him, all he had to do was mumble the words
manifest destiny
to himself until it got bored and went back to sleep.

A road sign:
Leatherhead 5.
He pulled himself together and sat up.

‘Remind me,' he said.

‘Leatherhead Zoo,' replied the minder, activating herself like a well-bred robot. ‘You're opening the new Small Fluffy Animals house, for which we owe the curator a knighthood. Get shown around, say twelve minutes; speech, seven-point-three-six minutes, greet children and photos with small fluffy animals, forty-six minutes. All fairly routine.'

Fraud furrowed his brows. ‘You say that,' he muttered, as a nasty thought occurred to him. ‘Could be problems. Like, suppose the animals won't perform? Suppose they can't get the little buggers to come out, or they do come out and crawl all over my head? Bloody fine pictures that'd make. This is a major image event we're talking about here.'

The minder shook her head, making her earrings jangle. ‘We've got that taped,' she said. ‘The animals for the photos'll all be dead. You know, stuffed, cutened up a bit. We had the zoo people get some done for us.
Lifelike
dead, naturally. They're very good at it.'

‘Ah.' Fraud nodded. ‘That's all right, then.' He leaned back, pleased with himself for having spotted the potential problem. Years ago, when he was still just another extremely wealthy lawyer, he'd heard it said that the key to statesmanship was attention to detail, and he'd taken it very much to heart. It was, as he saw it, his duty to the ineluctable upwards tide of history; a right fool he'd look if the manifest destiny of the nation was thwarted by a hyperactive incontinent hamster.

‘While we're at it,' he said, following through on the train of thought, ‘have a quiet word with the curator bloke, tell him we'll sort out some funding for another furry animal thing, something I can come and open in five years' time. Tell him if he calls it the Dermot Fraud Cuddly Animal Sanctuary he can be an earl or something. All right?'

The minder nodded. ‘Will do. Right, we're nearly there. Speech?'

‘Yes. I'm not completely helpless, you know.'

‘Sorry, I was just wondering what you thought about the endangered species bit. I wasn't sure we'd hit quite the right . . .'

‘What?' Fraud sat bolt upright, like Frankenstein's monster in a thunderstorm. ‘What endangered species bit?'

‘The bit about making sure Britain's in the vanguard of the fight to preserve endangered species,' the minder replied anxiously. ‘You did see that bit, didn't you? Only we're using that as a feed for a Channel Four spot a fortnight Wednesday, so it's quite important . . .'

‘Oh for God's sake - here.' He thrust the rolled-up script under the minder's nose. ‘Highlighter pen, quickly. Dear God, woman, you'll be a bloody endangered species if you pull another stunt like that one.'

It was, Fraud reflected later, a tribute to his ability to stay calm in a crisis that in spite of the last-minute panic, when the moment came he delivered the endangered species bit absolutely flawlessly; almost, in fact, as if he'd thought of it himself. Really, it was a shame nobody'd ever know how well he'd coped, because it surely boded well for the future of the country. As it was, he'd excelled himself, picking up quite impromptu the fact that the little furry corpse he'd been given to cuddle - little rat-like chap with orange whiskers, reminded him of a judge he used to have lunch with occasionally - was a Tunisian vole, one of the endangered lot. As a result, they could use the photos for the trailers for the Channel Four thing in the TV magazines. Shrewd, he couldn't help thinking, or what?

The TV cameras had finished and the last few stills flashes were popping. He gave the dead rat a final surreptitious tweak (if he hadn't been a statesman he'd have made a damn fine puppeteer), handed it back to the zoo bloke, waved a last fatherly wave and was about to head back to the car when—

Quite probably, no one will ever know which of the thirty-seven animal rights groups who claimed they'd planted the bomb were the ones who actually did the job and put their hands in their pockets for the cost of Semtex, fuse, timing device, etc.; particularly since they all later denied responsibility when the full reports came through pointing out that they'd made a pig's ear of their basic blast vector calculations; with the result that no people were hurt but the entire cuddly animal house was reduced to brick dust and a few fragments of limp fur. As the minder said to the zoo person in the ambulance, it
is
possible to make omelettes without shredding chickens, but it doesn't make nearly such good television.

The only semi-serious casualty, in fact, was Fraud himself; and it wasn't the bomb
per se
that knocked him silly. What happened was that the bang made the minder drop her laptop, the tube of which ruptured with a sharp
pop!
; which in turn gave Fraud the impression that someone was shooting at him, sending him diving for cover and nutting himself on a low wall. It was nevertheless, as the minder was quick to point out, quite the best thing that could have happened to a struggling premier mid-term. The footage of Fraud being shoved into the meat wagon, the
a nation's vigil
headlines with pictures of anxious crowds gathered outside the hospital (they'd actually come to hand in a petition about waiting lists, but the picture was sensational) - as far as the trade were concerned, it was the bomb that put Dermot Fraud back at the top of the opinion polls, no question about that. In fact, the only unhappy voices at party HQ were those of Fraud's intended successors demanding of their minders why the hell they hadn't had bombs of their own.

 

Dermot Fraud raised his head and twitched his whiskers. It was dark, and something was lying across his back, preventing him from moving.

No answer. He closed his eyes and fought back the panic. Somebody would come soon, surely; they couldn't leave the Prime Minister of Great Britain lying trapped under a fallen telephone, scarcely able to move his tail . . .

Huh?

Review that. Highlight the motifs
whiskers, tail, telephone
and
squeak.

‘Hold on,' said a voice above him, ‘I'm coming. Just stay still, I'll get to you as quick as I can.'

Thank God for - no, wait a minute. What the voice had actually said, as opposed to the gist of the message which had filtered through to his brain, was
Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak.

Something above his head moved, and a shaft of light broke through the gloom, revealing a pointed triangular head with round eyes, a pink nose and whiskers.

‘Got you,' it said (freely translated). ‘Have you out of there in a jiffy. Don't go away.'

The head withdrew, leaving Fraud to reflect that he'd just been spoken to by, and perfectly understood, a large rat.

No, not
that
sort of rat; the four-legged, plague-spreading kind, the sort that have the sense to leave sinking ships rather than try and get elected to run them. An actual rat.

Bloody big rat, then; because its head was about the same size as mine. Just as well it seems like it's on my side, really.

A little dust fell on him, there was a sound of grunting and heaving, and quite suddenly he could move again. He rolled over on to his side, gasping for breath and scrabbling with his paws, as the rat shouldered aside the remaining debris.

‘Oh,' it said. ‘One of you. Needn't have bothered, need I?'

Fraud scowled and bared his teeth. ‘God,' he squeaked, ‘what is it with you people? I'm human too, you know.'

The rat frowned. ‘No you're not,' it said, puzzled. ‘You're a lemming.'

‘Hm?'

‘Hence,' the rat went on, checking Fraud for broken bones with the tip of its nose, ‘there not being much point in my rescuing you. After all, why should I risk putting my back out when as soon as you're back on your feet you'll be trotting round asking directions to the nearest clifftop? Anyway,' it added, ‘for what it's worth, you'll do. Ironic, really. You and me the only survivors; I'm a burglar and you're a ruddy lemming. It's probably an allegory or something.'

‘Huh?'

‘And if you were thinking of saying it can't be an allegory, they all live in the reptile house, then don't. It's been a long day and I still haven't found anything to eat.'

‘Just a—'

The rat sniffed. ‘Present company excepted,' it added. ‘If I had half a brain, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to pull you out of there. Still, that's instinct for you. Guess it explains why we're not the ones who live in houses and make cheese. Go on, shove off before I change my mind.'

‘Excuse me.'

‘Hm?'

‘Did you just say lemming?'

The rat nodded. ‘Did you get a bit of a bang on the head, then?' it asked. ‘Here, how many paws am I holding up?'

‘No, listen.' Fraud could feel panic tugging at his sleeve like a small child in need of the lavatory. ‘I'm not a lemming. I'm the Prime Minister of Great Britain. You'll have heard of me, my name's Dermot Fraud. Dammit, I just opened this building, you must have seen—'

‘
Nasty
bang on the head,' muttered the rat. ‘I think you'd better come home with me, get my wife to take a look at you. Fortunately we live underground, so if you do get the urge to jump out the window you won't come to any harm.'

‘I . . .' Fraud hesitated. A hundred times a day? A thousand? He had no idea how many times he said ‘I' in the course of an ordinary day. Up till now, he'd always had a pretty good idea who it referred to. Now he wasn't quite so sure. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe he'd just imagined that ‘I' referred to a keen, thrusting, ambitious politician, destined to be remembered as the light at the end of the tunnel of the twentieth century, when all along it had meant a small rodent with pale brown-spotted fur. Perhaps all the things he thought were memories were just hallucinations, caused by this bang on the head he'd apparently had. For the first time in his life, Dermot Fraud didn't have an opinion; and it frightened him. Like all politicians (except maybe he'd never been a politician) he was used to having an opinion based on no evidence whatsoever, in the same way as fish, or Jesus Christ, are used to getting across the water without a boat. Now, for the first time (possibly, unless of course he really
was
a lemming dreaming he was the Prime Minister), he was examining the facts before making up his mind. And they weren't even proper facts; proper facts come from TV and newspapers, the way proper food comes from the supermarket. All he had to go by was what his eyes and ears were telling him, and the cupboard-under-the-stairs mess that comprised his memory. Eeek!

‘Hey,' he said feebly, as the nice rat helped him towards the mouth of its hole, ‘are you sure I'm not the Prime Minister?'