Children of the Master Read online

  Andrew Marr

  Children of the Master

  FOURTH ESTATE·London

  Copyright

  Fourth Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.4thestate.co.uk

  Copyright © Andrew Marr 2015

  The right of Andrew Marr to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance

  with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  Extract from ‘Canto XIII’, from THE CANTOS OF EZRA POUND, copyright ©1934 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

  Source ISBN: 9780007596454

  Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007596461

  Version: 2015-08-21

  Dedication

  For Isabel Claire

  Kung walked

  by the dynastic temple

  and into the cedar grove,

  and then out by the lower river,

  And with him Khieu, Tchi,

  And Tian the low speaking

  And, ‘we are unknown,’ said Kung,

  ‘You will take up charioteering?

  ‘Then you will become known,

  ‘Or perhaps I should take up charioteering, or archery?

  ‘Or the practice of public speaking?’

  And Tseu-lou said, ‘I would put the defences in order,’

  And Khieu said, ‘if I were lord of a province

  I would put it in better order than this is.’

  And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves:

  If a man have not order within him

  He can not spread order about him;

  And if a man have not order within him

  His family will not act with due order;

  And if the prince have not order within him

  he cannot put order in his dominions.

  And he said

  ‘Anyone can run to excesses,

  It is easy to shoot past the mark,

  ‘It is hard to stand firm in the middle.’

  And they said: If a man commit murder

  Should his father protect him, and hide him?

  And Kung said:

  He should hide him.

  From Ezra Pound, ‘Canto XIII’

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Photographs

  Absolutely No Partners

  After the Funeral

  The Early Life of David Petrie

  A Perfect Girl

  A Terrible Story

  On an Island

  David the Ruthless

  Funny Farm

  Caro Gets Selected

  Politics Today

  Peter Quint

  Interlude: How to be a Political Columnist

  In the Rose Garden

  David Petrie, MP

  A Lesson at a Dinner

  Pebbleton

  A Warning from Bunty

  Public Servants

  A Table for Three

  The Sports and Social

  In the Master’s House

  Family Life

  Barker

  Health and Efficiency

  Cleanliness

  How to Cure a Columnist

  Bathtime Talk

  Immorality

  Whitehall Life

  The Education of David Petrie

  A Moving Speech

  The Joy of Routine

  In the Country

  A Sermon in Barker

  What Happened to the Idea?

  How to Bring Down a Prime Minister

  The Choice

  A Flying Pot

  Building a Better World

  To Glaikit – and Back

  Back in Barker

  In the Hotel

  The Happy Accident

  A Frank Talk

  In the Gallery

  A Clever Plan

  Showtime

  A Stranger in Barker

  The Triumph of the Fourth Estate

  A Minor Failure of Empathy

  Making Good

  Final Reckonings

  Postscript

  Also by Andrew Marr

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Photographs

  A good politician seizes the moment; and if the moment resists, she knocks the bugger against a hard surface until it gives up.

  The Master

  There are special days. Not so many. Far more often come the amiable days when we dress, shower, eat and work, when we laugh at one another and we pass on secrets, and we eat moist chicken and drink cold beer … and none of it really touches our inner selves. Most days we slip through, the snow creaking, barely touching the sides. As in a symphony, not every moment – not every day – can be intense. And there are also the days whose smells, music and colours burn themselves into us so that we are changed for good. On such days, speckles of dirt on a kettle lid can be beautiful, and a song whistled in the street can sit inside our skulls forevermore.

  Caro Phillips, who was a good person, believed that today would be a special day. She pulled open the curtains and a cold, pre-dawn light filled her bedroom.

  She had acted ruthlessly. Because she had acted, everything had changed. She saw the orange and green rug under her bare feet properly, for the first time. She’d bought it years before. Beautiful, just beautiful. She saw her dressing gown flopping from its hook on the door, a dollop of shadow beside it, and felt love for its soft familiarity. She saw her own shadow, quivering, and reached out to touch it. She didn’t glance in the direction of the bedroom mirror, saving that until she reached the bathroom.

  The face, as she’d hoped, was both familiar and, this morning, strange. It was a good face. Laughter lines; there had been a lot of laughter. A slight caramel tan, the residue of life-changing days in Rome. She smiled at herself: teeth tamed in adolescence by train tracks, a slightly overlong top lip, summer-sky-blue eyes. Ever since she could remember, she’d been able to knock people backwards, almost literally, with her smile – men and, yes, absolutely, women too.

  And because she was a good person, all her life strangers had brought her good things. She looked harder into the mirror. No, not a sign of dangerous redness or a broken vein. Self-control, an early renunciation of delicious tobacco, and caution with alcohol. And then she looked at herself properly: the eyes were looking at the eyes, complete self-consciousness. This was the face of the king’s first minister of the treasury, the most powerful face in the United Kingdom, the face of Nefertiti or Gloriana.

  Now Caroline noticed its coldness. This was the face of a woman who had done something terrible – not murder, but something like murder. She felt she could smell her own electricity. She thought of poor Angela, poor sweet Angela, who smelled not of that, but of the coast, and of honeysuckle, and who was at this very moment in a cramped prison cell, perhaps bereft, feeling that her life was over. Caro washed, peed, showered, towelled and began
to dress.

  She could imagine the prison cell vividly. The walls would be painted to a height of about four feet in a medicinal green; and above that in white. They would be covered with little raised bumps, which would break and flake if you pressed them. There would be small messages, not many, scratched into the paint or written in pencil, not all misspelled.

  Back in Caro’s bedroom there was a large black-and-white photograph of Angela in a silver frame, given to her on a previous anniversary. Under the Master’s direction, she had allowed a journalist from The Times to take that picture away with him after an interview; the paper had used it on the front page. It had done Caro a lot of good. Angela was staring with her dark, intense look, her wiry black hair blowing across her face like seaweed, her collar shining like a bone. The picture had been taken down at Pebbleton in Devon in the good days. Caro remembered taking it, and she noted that it was well composed: the stubby tower of the church, beside which they lived, was clearly visible over Angela’s black-shirted left shoulder.

  Behind Angela’s picture, but larger than it, was a more recent photograph: the unmistakable, world-famous face of the Master. Caro had a lot to confess to him. He would talk as he always did about keeping it simple, about honesty and clarity and her brand. ‘One lover, heaven; two lovers, hell.’ That was one of his. But somehow, she felt, he probably already knew what had happened. He knew everything. Well, not everything; she would surprise him later.

  Walking down the narrow stairs towards breakfast, Caro noted a great dark blaze of sunrise, a bruise-coloured mountain rolling fast across east London. Today was without doubt going to be special.

  Then, on the bottom step, Caro saw the interloper. Wearing the familiar pink cheesecloth nightie, one bare foot tucked over the other to keep it warm, she was looking up at Caro with a solemn expression. It was the girl. Caro did not believe that her house was haunted, nor that, in any conventional sense, she had a guardian angel. But at important times, on days that mattered, she was accustomed to meeting herself, her earlier self, aged eight or nine; and talking. Caroline could see her ribs moving under the nightie, and her cold toes wriggling. She stopped. She could go no further, neither around nor through this … inconvenient moment, this folded, unavoidable interruption.

  ‘Why the long face? I would have thought that today, of all days, you might want to celebrate with me. It’s not as if I’ve killed anybody.’

  The girl replied in a calm, clear voice. But I used to have a lisp, Caro thought. ‘Caroline, you are not stupid. You know perfectly well that you can end a person’s life without actually killing them. You can starve them of the future, and then they … waste away.

  ‘Why are you doing this? You didn’t used to be cruel. We were tough, you and me, but we were never cruel … I haven’t killed Angela, not in any way, you silly little thing. She’s destroyed herself. She was always weak, and you can’t just hold up the weak forever. We have always been a good person, and we still are. But now we have the courage to act, and make the world a better place.’ For 7.30 a.m., and before breakfast, it was a long speech.

  Caro’s younger self seemed, if not satisfied, at least disinclined to continue the argument; so Caro walked through her, filled the kettle, popped on two pieces of toast and turned on Radio 4.

  There was a lot to do today – media, the PLP, perhaps the Palace – and Caro couldn’t afford to daydream or dawdle. As she sipped and munched, however, she allowed herself some quiet reminiscing. The soft side of Angela’s breast; her tight tummy muscles; pushing her down onto a bed. Flushing slightly, Caro concentrated on John Humphrys, who was interrogating her Tory opposite number about the speech she’d given yesterday in the House of Commons. The poor chap couldn’t decide whether he was for it or against it; whether it was an outrageous betrayal or a moral stand. Humphrys was having gentle fun with him, batting him around like a cat whose claws were still sheathed.

  ‘Wa- wa- well, John,’ went the south London MP, ‘we’ve given Miss Caroline Phillips the benefit of the doubt, haven’t we … We have to ask what she’s wa- wa- wa- up to, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Porter, we do, and that’s why we asked you to come on the programme this morning, and that’s why I have to press you for a clear answer.’

  ‘Wa- wa- wight. Absolutely wight, John …’

  ‘Have you any idea what you think, Mr Porter? Or perhaps, you haven’t been told what to think yet?’

  This was all too easy: the old Welshman wasn’t even trying. Perhaps things were going to be all right after all.

  Caro leafed through the Guardian. There was a poll showing the Labour lead down to five points. She scanned the news pages, but there was no mention of her. She knew she needed to get a move on, but still she lingered. She flicked over from Today to Radio 3, and struck lucky: a Mozart piano sonata, one of the B-flat majors; almost certainly Uchida. Yes, today would be a good day.

  Before she left the kitchen table, Caro flicked her laptop open to check Twitter, her alerts, and Buzzfeed. Lots of below-the-line chatter from the usual racists, homophobes and sad-sacks; but from the party, nothing but bland approval.

  The pre-agreed statement by the outgoing prime minister, Alwyn Grimaldi, was still running, unchanged.

  The Rome conference, apparently, was still grinding on. The Mail Online had a picture of David there, looking lean and dashing in a white suit, with the vice president of the United States. They were speaking from behind lecterns set up in a conference room of the hotel, with their national flags behind them. The usual old bollocks, no doubt.

  Rome had been … transformational. But that was not something Caro could allow herself to think about this morning. She put Rome into a small mother-of-pearl box to be opened later on, when there was quietness.

  Caroline went downstairs, still listening to the radio: she’d had speakers positioned up and down the narrow townhouse so that she could follow a radio interview or, more often, music, from room to room. Then her train of thought was rudely derailed by the phone. That wasn’t unusual at 7.32, but it was the house phone, not either of her mobiles. Who had that number? She couldn’t bear to speak to her parents yet – the anxious bleating, tinged with disapproval. Still, curious, she picked up the receiver.

  ‘That was magnificent. Magnificent. I told the editor. He wasn’t sure. But I told him. Magnificent, I said. Absolutely magnificent. Speaking for the common people. Giving us all, in the Westminster bubble, a bit of a lesson, bit of a kicking. Magnificent. I’m saying so in my column today, and I’ve got them to put it on the front. They do what I say. I wanted you to hear it first.’ Caro automatically moved the receiver just a little further away from her ear.

  It was Peter Quint. Whenever she spoke to Quint, she had the sensation of being just a little dirtied; already she felt that there was greasy plug of something in her ear.

  ‘Peter! How lovely to hear your voice. But I’m a little surprised, so early in the morning. We haven’t spoken for a while. I thought you were very much a David Petrie man. Didn’t you call him “the future of socialism” only last week?’

  ‘Yes, yes, mock away. Now I’m calling you “the future of Britain”, which I think trumps that, doesn’t it?’

  There was definitely something in her ear. Itchy.

  ‘Peter, it’s early. I’m heading off for a busy day. How can I help you?’

  ‘Not just a busy day. This is a momentous day, Caroline – I can still call you Caroline, I hope – and I just wanted to know exactly how momentous. We’re bidding for the first proper interview after you’ve moved into Number 10. I’d talk to your press people, but I wanted to give you a heads-up myself.’

  ‘I’ll get somebody to call you later, Peter, I promise. I’m all at sea myself, as I’m sure you’ll understand.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Angela? In your position, with all the resources of the Home Office, you must …’

  ‘Goodbye, Peter.’

  Loathsome man. But if Peter Quint was fawning on
her to that extent, she must be home free.

  The house phone began to warble again. Caro glanced at the number, and let it ring. She allowed herself to think properly about David Petrie, his Scottish joking and his dark, long-lashed, girlish eyes. Gay men, she knew, tended to like him. In all truth, before the past twenty-four hours he had hardly even looked at her, and had probably hated her on principle. But he’d made her heart race, long before they’d spoken properly, because of his naked, contemptuous and threatening ambition. Well, that was another unopenable door safely closed. And, after all, neither of them was free. He was married, and untainted by scandal. And she was famous for the other thing. No, it was completely impossible at every level. It couldn’t be happening.

  As she opened the front door, Caro drained the last of her coffee, and smiled briefly to herself. She would need David Petrie in the months ahead. That last little undefined crack of possibility kept her cheerful. The car was waiting. The office had sent the Rover, she hoped with Paul inside.

  There was just one photographer outside on the pavement. She couldn’t see any camera crews. Good. Fixing her face into a smile, she walked through the door and into the midst of half a dozen men who’d presumably been crouching behind the low brick front wall, and who now leapt into the air like a ragged rugby lineout. She reeled back slightly to avoid being hit in the face by a camera, and closed her ears to the sudden hubbub of questions, spittle-flecked lobs of sound – ‘Oi, wha’ say, Caroline?’ – ‘Arter a job?’ – ‘Oo’s ya boss?’ – ‘Yah-yah-yah?’