The Closed Circle (8 page)

“Well, OK.” He wriggled a little more, then sat up straight, then drummed his fingers on the table. “Well, it's an
alternative.
An alternative to the sterile, worn-out dichotomy between left and right.” He looked to Doug for some sort of reaction, but saw nothing. “That's a good thing, isn't it?”

“It sounds like a very good thing. It sounds like something we've all been trying to find for years. And you guys managed to come up with it in a weekend, as far as I can see. What are you going to turn up next? The philosopher's stone? The Ark of the Covenant? What else has Tony got hidden down the back of a sofa at Chequers?”

For a second or two it looked as though Paul was finally going to lose his temper. But all he said was: “Are our children going to play together or not?”

Doug laughed. “OK, if you want.” He caught the waiter's eye and called him back again. “Do you want to know why? Because I reckon that one of these days, there's going to be some story about you, and it's going to be so huge, so fucking
scandalous
. . . And I want to be around when it breaks.” He smiled combatively. “That's it. That's the only reason.”

“Good enough for me,” said Paul. “And it proves my point, after all.” When Doug looked at him in surprise, he explained: “We do have something in common—ambition. You don't want to stay in the same job all your life, do you?”

“No,” said Doug, “I suppose I don't. But a little birdy tells me I've got a promotion coming up anyway.”

And then, having at last reached an understanding of sorts, they moved on to the more pressing business of ordering food.

Paul returned to his flat in Kennington shortly after eleven. During the week, he lived on the third floor of a converted terrace a few streets away from the Oval cricket ground. This meant that Susan and Antonia were left alone, four nights out of seven, at their country home—a barn conversion on the semi-rural outskirts of his Midlands constituency. This arrangement caused him some pangs of guilt, occasionally (the house was fairly isolated, and he knew that Susan had not yet managed to make many friends in the area), but otherwise it suited him very well. Essentially, he lived like a bachelor, but with the added safety net of a welcoming family life, in which he could take refuge whenever he started to feel stressed out or lonely. The best of all possible worlds.

Susan did not have a key to his London flat. A few days ago, however, he had arranged to have one cut for Malvina. She had seemed nonplussed when he presented it to her, and had asked, “What's this for?” “You might need it,” Paul had answered, meaninglessly, and had then kissed her on the cheek, for the third time in their friendship. As before, she had not recoiled from the kiss; nor had she returned it, exactly. He could not imagine what she made of these gestures—either the kiss, or the gift of the key—and he was not sure, for that matter, whether he really understood them himself. He had not yet admitted to himself how attracted he was to Malvina, or what a large part that attraction had had to play in the decision to employ her. None the less, this attraction was real, and it determined much of his recent behaviour, however incapable he was of owning up to it. In truth Paul would have liked nothing more, now, than to feel the responsibility for his actions being taken out of his own hands, to allow himself to be swept away on a wave of passion that someone else had set in motion. In short, he was waiting for Malvina to do something that she would never do: to throw herself at him.

As he opened the door to his flat that night, therefore, Paul felt a tingle of anticipation: for, ever since he had given Malvina the key, he had been half-expecting to encounter what he liked to call a “James Bond moment.” By this he meant something approximating the scene in countless James Bond films where the hero returns to his hotel room late at night in an exotic foreign location, and turns on the light only to find that his bed is already occupied by a naked
femme fatale,
who stirs languidly between the sheets and invites him to join her by purring some sleepily seductive line. Being blessed, in his more alcohol-fuelled flights of fancy, with something of the suave sexual magnetism of Ian Fleming's legendary creation, Paul continued to hope that it was only a matter of time before something similar happened to him.

Tonight, however, he was again disappointed. His bedroom remained inexplicably Malvina-less, and when he texted her to ask where she was and what she was doing, he received no answer. There was nothing for it but to phone Susan, listen impatiently to her long narrative of the minutiae of her day, and ask her to kiss Antonia for him. Then, after reflecting that his dinner with Doug had been much more successful than he had expected, he fell into a deep and self-satisfied sleep.

25

A little over two weeks later, on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 15th, 2000, the first edition of the
Evening Mail
hit Birmingham's streets bearing the stark headline, “STABBED IN THE BACK.”

The accompanying story made for grim reading. It appeared that the car manufacturer Rover was to be sold off by its German owner, BMW, resulting in huge job losses at the Longbridge factory just outside Birmingham. This in spite of the fact that its future had recently been assured—so everybody thought—by a grant of £152 million from the government the previous year, and in spite of repeated promises from the BMW management that they had every intention of keeping the ailing company afloat. The Labor MP for Northfield, Richard Burden, was promptly quoted as saying: “It would be a gross breach of faith if BMW deviates from its stated plans for Longbridge. This has been a bolt out of the blue. This is playing with the lives of the 50,000 people whose jobs depend on Longbridge. BMW has made a commitment to the British people and the British people have made a commitment to them. It is up to both sides to keep those commitments.”

Next day, towards the end of the afternoon, Philip Chase logged off his computer at the
Birmingham Post
early and drove out to Longbridge, wishing to gauge for himself the mood of the workforce and the local residents. His colleagues on the Business Desk had flown over to Munich that morning, to be present at a press conference with the BMW management team. The news being sent back simply got worse and worse. It seemed that even Land Rover, the most prestigious part of the Rover empire, was to be disposed of, while the Longbridge plant itself was being offered for sale to a small venture capitalist firm called Alchemy Partners, who had already announced their intention to lay off the vast majority of workers, retaining just enough to keep the company going as a small-volume producer of specialist sports cars. The rest of the factory site was to be completely redeveloped, probably as residential property: but who was going to want to live in that community any longer, if there was no industry to sustain it?

There was not much activity at the gates to the South Works that afternoon. A keen March wind was blowing, the sky was grey and puffy with clouds, and the few departing workers Philip managed to detain all had more or less the same thing to say: they were “gutted,” or “devastated”; the decision was a “slap in the face” from those “German bastards.” Within a few minutes, Philip's job was done: these quotes would serve his purpose, even if he could just as easily have made them up at his desk. He didn't want to leave, though. It felt as though history was unfolding here: dismal, melancholy history, to be sure, but still something that demanded to be witnessed, and recorded. Pulling his raincoat tightly around him against the encroaching cold, he began to walk uphill along the Bristol Road. Shortly before reaching the 62 bus terminus, he turned right and made for The Old Hare and Hounds pub, pushing open its doors and, at first, not recognizing the interior: for the place had been redesigned, since he had last been there, to attract a middle-class clientele, and instead of ancient oak tables and an almost impenetrable half-light, he found a number of smaller, more welcoming seating areas, with books on the walls and fake log fires in every corner.

Squeezed into one of these corners was a group of at least twenty men, all discussing the latest developments from Munich in tones of subdued but palpable fury. Philip wandered over and introduced himself. Many of them knew his name and, as he had expected, they were more than happy to talk to a local journalist. Before long they were discussing the initial responses of the media and the Labour party to the evolving crisis, and a good deal of approval was voiced for the comments already made by Richard Burden. At which point somebody asked: “What about Trotter?”

“Who?” said at least four or five voices around the table.

“Paul Trotter. What's he got to say about it?”

“His constituency's miles from here.”

“Yeah, but he's a local lad, isn't he? Grew up round here. I can remember when his dad worked at the factory. What's he got to say about it?”

“Well, we can find that out easily enough,” said Philip, taking out his mobile. “I'll give him a call.”

He retrieved Paul's number from the SIM card memory and hit the dial button. On the fourth or fifth ring, a female voice answered. Philip introduced himself as a journalist from the
Post
who had once been at school with the MP, and after a certain amount of confusion he was put through.

“I was just wondering,” he said to Paul, “what your reaction was to the news from Birmingham yesterday.”

There was a short silence in the pub, while the men round the table leaned forward, attempting vainly to hear Paul's words. Philip's expression was neutral at first, then puzzled.

“Can I just get things clear, Paul?” he asked, before hanging up. “You're saying that you're happy about this announcement, are you?” There were just a few more loud, decisive words from the other end of the line; after which, there was a decidedly quizzical note in Philip's voice as he said: “OK, Paul, thanks for your comments. Good luck for tonight. 'Bye now.”

He clipped the phone shut and laid it on the table in front of him, frowning deeply.

“Well?” someone asked.

Philip looked around him at the circle of attentive faces, and told his listeners, in a tone of wonderment. “He said it was good news for the industry, good news for Birmingham and good news for the whole country.”

When Philip phoned, Paul was sitting in the dressing room of a television studio on the South Bank in central London, his cheeks pink with newly applied blusher. Longbridge was the last thing on his mind, as it happened. He was actually practising the delivery of a joke about chocolate.

It had begun the day before, with a phone call from Malvina.

“You're on,” she said. “This week. They're recording tomorrow afternoon.”

“On what?” Paul asked, and she reminded him of her promise to secure him an appearance on a satirical TV show: a weekly panel game on which young comedians would sit around making scathing jokes about the news, sometimes joined by a high-profile politician. It was considered a great
coup
for an MP to be invited on to this programme, even though he (it was rarely she) would often find himself subjected to a barrage of mockery from the other guests, and could sometimes scarcely be expected to leave with his reputation intact.

Paul could hardly believe it.

“They want me? You talked them into it? How on earth did you do that?”

“I told you—I know one of the people who works there. He was my mother's boyfriend for a while.” (Malvina's mother had, by the sound of it, lived with a good many different partners during the last few years, so this explanation sounded plausible enough.) “Remember? A couple of weeks ago I told him you'd be available at short notice, in case someone else dropped out. You know, someone they really wanted to have on.”

“That's fantastic,” said Paul—who, upon hearing any piece of good news, seldom noticed if there was an insult buried in it. But almost immediately afterwards he became nervous. “Hang on, though—am I expected to be funny?”

“It is a comedy programme,” Malvina pointed out. “It wouldn't do you any harm to make a joke or two.”

“I don't really do jokes,” Paul admitted. “I mean, what other people find funny . . . I can never quite see it.”

“Well, you'll just have to develop a sense of humor,” said Malvina, pragmatically. “You've got about twenty-four hours. I should start working on it if I were you.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“Go home tonight,” she said, “with all of the newspapers, sit down and read them, and see if you can think of anything funny to say. Try and choose a story that has something to do with you, some personal connection. Don't be shy, go in for a little bit of self-advertisement. And try to be irreverent. That's what it's all about.”

“But everyone at Millbank watches that show. I think even Tony watches it. They might not like it if I'm irreverent.”

Malvina told him not to worry. She had noticed, by now, that humour was not Paul's strong point. And yet his tendency to take everything seriously was one of the very things that most endeared him to her. It made him so easy to tease.

Back at the flat, Paul spent all evening reading through the newspapers and flicking through the satellite channels from one news station to another. There wasn't much that caught his eye. The Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson, had announced that 500 troops were to be called back to the mainland, and British Aerospace had been given a £530 million grant to develop a European “superjumbo” to be introduced in 2007. BMW were selling off the Rover factory at Longbridge—which was all very sad, of course, and a Birmingham story of sorts, but hardly the stuff of comedy. The only item that struck Paul as at all promising was the news that EU ministers had at last agreed to allow the sale of British chocolate in other European countries: previously it had been ruled that it contained too much milk and vegetable fat, and not enough cocoa solids.

He mulled over this last development and had cautiously begun to feel, by the time he went to bed, that here was a story that might well suit his purposes. For one thing, the main beneficiary of the ruling would be the Cadbury factory in Bournville: by mentioning it, then, Paul would appear to be speaking up for Birmingham, his home town, where he generally seemed to be regarded with suspicion and almost invariably got a bad press. Also, it was a positive, upbeat story about a much-loved British product, so he would certainly endear himself to the party leadership by bringing it up. (Much more so than by dwelling on that miserable Longbridge business.) All he needed to do, then, was to think of a joke on the subject, and to make sure that somehow or other he was able to shoehorn it into the programme.

“And what did you come up with?” Malvina asked the next day, as their taxi stopped and started its bottlenecked journey through the central London traffic in the direction of the South Bank.

“Nothing much so far,” Paul admitted. “The only thing I could think of was—isn't there a sort of . . . old cockney expression, or something, ‘I should coco'?”

Malvina nodded solemnly.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“It means, ‘I should say so.'”

“Well, perhaps I could say that.” In response to her blank stare, he added: “It would be a pun, you see. A pun on ‘cocoa.' ”

“Yes.” She nodded again, seeming to weigh his words with uncommon seriousness. “And when are you going to bring this up, exactly? How are you going to . . . drop it into the proceedings?”

“We could be talking about the EU story,” Paul explained, “and one of the other guests could say to me, ‘What about you, Paul? Do you like British chocolate?' And . . .” his voice faltered, losing all confidence, in the face of Malvina's unwavering stare, “that would be . . . when I said it . . .”

“From what I've heard,” she replied, after a significant pause, “they have gag-writers on the set. They can supply you with material if you get into trouble.”

Paul looked away, glancing out of the taxi window, offended. “It'll be funny in context,” he said. “Wait and see.”

And he was still turning the joke over in his mind as he sat in his make-up chair later that afternoon. The last two hours, which had been taken up with rehearsals and awkward small-talk with his fellow-panellists, had done nothing but make him even more nervous. He didn't understand any of these people, didn't speak their language, couldn't even tell half of the time whether they were trying to be funny or serious. Having been provided with a list of the questions that were supposed to provide a springboard for the televised banter, he was alarmed to see that the subject of European sales of British chocolate was not mentioned anywhere. He had raised this issue with one of the producers, run his “I should cocoa” joke past him, and been rewarded simply with incredulous silence.

“He just ignored me,” Paul complained to Malvina. She was sitting in the chair beside him as he waited in front of a brightly lit mirror for the return of the make-up girl, who had been called away to the telephone. “Just looked at me and didn't say a word.”

“I wish he'd ignore
me,
” Malvina answered. “He had me pressed up against a wall for most of that rehearsal. You'd think it was enough that he'd already shagged my mother.”

“You know what's the matter with all these people, don't you?” Paul leaned in towards her and lowered his voice to a whisper. “
They're all on
drugs.
” He directed her gaze to a large bowl of white powder which stood on the shelf in front of him. “I was offered that, you know. By the make-up girl, if you please. Brazen as anything. ‘Do you normally use this, Mr. Trotter?' she said. Can you believe it? Can you imagine if I had, and she'd blabbed to the newspapers? That almost amounts to entrapment, don't you think?”

Malvina got up and inspected the contents of the bowl. She dipped her finger in, took a lick and grimaced.

“Paul, calm down, can't you? It's loose powder, for God's sake. You put it on your face. It covers up the sweat.”

“Oh.”

Paul's mobile rang, and, while Malvina was answering it, he carried on thinking about his joke. To him it seemed every bit as funny as some of the wacky flights of fancy invented by his team captain (a popular TV comedian), or the cynical point-scoring of his opposite number (the smart-arsed editor of a satirical magazine). And besides, it was important that the public knew about this. Chocolate was of interest to everybody. Cadbury's was a great British company. Why shouldn't this story be given a bit of prominence?