9. The Perils of Tory Ambition

What Ho Proles!

Having signed off on young Finley’s plans for his rearmament, I was feeling a little like the Minister for Defence. It was not a good feeling, by any stretch of the old ministerial imagination. Those chaps who sold bits of the Super Gun to Iraq probably felt far superior about themselves; which is why I spent an uncomfortable afternoon going from one seminar to another, never finding a seat that could relieve the pressure from a grumbling right buttock, nor the proverbial pin pricking my sore conscience.

When two o’clock struck, I was stuck in a seminar with a clinically depressed Tory councillor from Cheam who was instructing us the art of ‘avoiding the European question’; which is an odd thing in itself given I always get rather chirpy at a chance to tell people the reasons why the Good Lord put twenty two miles between us and the French. I also fail to see why the party should have a problem with that. It’s not as though you ever get to meet a French Tory.

At three o’clock, the depressive from Cheam was replaced by a hyperactive woman from Altringham. This time it was a lecture about ID cards. She explained that they’d be the next ‘big thing’ but suggested that we should avoid mentioning them at all cost on account of the Party having no official line on the subject. Again, I couldn’t see a problem. I have an official line which is that the gentry should be excluded from carrying the blasted things. Everything one needs to know about our legal right to be in this land of ours is to been glanced in the aristocratic arch of a nose, the stateliness of our bearing, the elevation of a brow, and the sheer Britishness found in the lobes of our ears.

Not that anybody was really listening when I made these points to the seminar crowd. In fact, they seemed genuinely hostile if one is to judge by the raspberries they blew and the newspapers they threw my way. I was glad when it was time to hurry upstairs to my rendezvous with the Beast of Finley Hall. A blighter he might be but at least he doesn’t threaten to send letters to Michael Ancram just because of something I said about the number of idlers in Lancashire.

When I found Frederick, he was sitting on the top step of the staircase and playing with a penknife.

‘You’re late,’ he said, rather haughtily.

‘Earlier than you deserve,’ I answered. ‘Now stop chopping chunks out of the balustrade and let’s get on with this, shall we? Where’s your Father’s office?’

He pulled himself up and without another word walked me into the private wing of the house where we found his Father’s study. The room was protected by the sort of heavy panelled door that usually keeps German troops at bay for ten minutes in war films.

‘This is it,’ he said and waited for me to test the handle before he carried on. ‘Of course, you can’t get in that way. He always keeps it locked.’

‘Locked!’ I exclaimed. ‘You didn’t mention anything about locks.’

Frederick just shook his head with the weariness that comes of being fourteen years old. ‘I didn’t mention it because it was obvious we could do nothing about it. Good heavens, Murgatroid. Why do you think I’m asking you to help me? As soon as I saw you, I knew you were the right man for the job.’

‘Then how am I to get in?’ I asked, hating to dwell on the point but I thought it necessary.

‘Just do what you did this morning.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t face eating any more eggs,’ I assured him.

‘I meant climb across the ivy,’ he said and then sighed rather heavily. ‘Look. Father’s window is always open. He says it’s healthier to be cold than it is to be warm.’

‘And has he ever mentioned that it’s healthier to be on the ground than it is to be forty feet up an ivy covered wall?’ I asked this expecting an answer but the boy was not listening. He just turned and entered a room adjacent to his father’s study.

Within five minutes, I was on the outside of the building, forty feet above a concert courtyard, and standing on a ledge only five inches deep. I was also grabbing at ivy like someone determined to cross extreme sports with gardening. I’d only agreed to the boy’s ridiculous plan at the last moment because I could see the study window open, but now I was half-way across, so too were my eyes, mouth, pores, and a few other parts and glands it’s better not mention without a medical dictionary.

I hope you appreciate the danger I was in. This was straight out of the Big Book of Great Moments of Empire. Like Hilary climbing Everest and Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes trimming off his last toe, the Hon. J.P. Murgatroid’s ascent of the east side of Finley Hall was the stuff to make all blue blooded Englishmen weep. Indeed, I was weeping quite copiously when I finally fell into the room.

It took me minutes to gather myself, but between sobs, I could see that I’d landed in a room which was typical of an English Lord. And I don’t mean one of those ‘new’ Lords the government has created in the last few years. They’re likely to have a study in ceramics, chrome, and leatherette. No, I mean the study of a traditional English Lord. And when you’ve seen one, you’ve literally seen them all. Book cases contained books bound only in leather embossed with gold. A prize salmon hung on one wall along with the tackle that had been used to land him and the mallet used to cave his skull in. Another wall contained a rather fine painting of a hunting scene, which was evidently the Hall in better days counting the number of dead red deer lining the lawn.

I found the boy’s rifle after a couple of minutes of mildly curious searching. It was standing beside the door and turned out to be a powerful little thing and certainly not a weapon I’d have given a child unless I could be sure they’d do only good with it. To my eye, it looked more powerful than the army’s standard assault rifle and I was damn sure it wouldn’t clog up in the desert nor freeze when it got cold.

Armed better than the Parachute Regiment, I was about to leave when something caught my eye on his Lordship’s desk. It was a folder with the logo of the party on the cover. One rarely learns good of oneself when nosing around in official documents, but even by the usually standards of nosing around, I really couldn’t believe what I found. It was the results of the morning’s interrogation by the media consultants with annotations in his Lordship’s hand.

Over ten typewritten pages, the Murgatroid character was assassinated in unequivocal fashion. It ended with a rather terse conclusion.

Murgatroid proved himself to be an argumentative, dogmatic, and constantly patronising candidate. His interview scores are the lowest we have seen in ten years of testing candidates. We have no doubt in saying that his tendency to condemn large swathes of the population as ‘louts’, ‘grifters’, ‘greasers’, and ‘proles’ will harm any party he represents.

To which Lord Finley had added. ‘I agree.’

What can I say? I was in a daze as I flicked through the reports of the other candidates. By comparison, each one of them should have been nominated for a sainthood.

In only came out of my trance when I turned a page and found a report on Rosa Shaw. On an otherwise blank sheet, the following typed across the centre.

Highly articulate candidate. Sure to do well in any circumstance.

Below which, I read, in Lord Finley’s hand:

Rosa’s attachment to her campaign manager, Melvin Jenkins, should be watched carefully. The party cannot condone such a relationship, though she has helped him immeasurably to overcome his compulsive need to eat. I’ve told the chef not to prepare any kind of potato snack during the course of this conference in order to help the poor man. I believe this has been a success and I recommend that we should adopt this policy for our other weekends. A fit party is a party that believes in fitness.

Somewhat chagrined, I unlocked the study door and handed Frederick his weapon.

‘Make it quick,’ I said, presenting my chest to the barrel of the gun.

‘What’s wrong with you?,' he said. 'I thought you’d be happy. I’ve delete the photo, you know?’

But my heart wasn’t for explaining. Nor was it for taking comfort in small triumphs. I felt like my ambitions for the party leadership lay in ruins. I needed to lie down. I needed a drink. I needed time to think.