Michael Dobbs - To play the king

'It simply cannot be done' the Chancellor repeated. 'Christmas has scarcely happened in the shops and the recession is going to be here earlier than we expected. We can massage the statistics a bit, explain them away for a month or two as rogues, but we won't be able to massage away the school leavers who'll be flooding into the workforce at Easter. Most of them are going to go straight from the classroom to the dole queue, and there's sod all you or I can do about it.'

The four men standing with heads bowed in their huddle drew closer together, as if to protect a great secret. Urquhart had asked the Chancellor what he thought of the chances of putting off the impact of recession for a month or two, squeezing out a little more time. But the Treasury Minister only confirmed what he already knew. Stamper was next to speak, very briefly. There was no use in making a feast of bad news. 'Four points, Francis.' 'In front?'

'Behind. This aggravation with the King has shot our lead to hell. Four points and moving in the wrong direction.'

Urquhart ran his tongue along thin lips. 'And what of you, Algy? What bucketful of sorrows do you bring to drench me?'

As Urquhart turned to the Party Treasurer they had to huddle still closer, for the financier was scarcely more than five feet tall and listening to him in a room full of the buzz of conversation was an effort. Unlike the Chancellor and Stamper, he'd not been told of the plans for an early election, but he was no fool. When a Treasurer is asked how a party living on an overdraft might raise ten million pounds in a hurry, he knows that mischief is afoot. His well-lunched face was flushed as he craned his neck to look at the others.

'Can't be done. So soon after an election, immediately after Christmas and just about to go into recession… I couldn't raise ten million pounds this year, let alone this month. Let's be realistic, why would anyone want to lend that sort of money to a party with a slim majority about to get slimmer.' 'What do you mean?' Urquhart demanded.

'Sorry, Francis,' Stamper explained. 'The message must be waiting on your desk. Freddie Bancroft died this morning.'

Urquhart contemplated the news about one of his backbenchers from the shires. It was not entirely unexpected. Bancroft had been a political corpse for many years, and it was time the rest of him caught up. 'That's a pity, what's his majority?' Urquhart had to struggle to provide any form of punctuation or pause between the two thoughts. They were all too aware of his concern, how the lurid headlines of a by-election campaign had a habit of creating a new national mood, usually at the Government's expense as their candidate was put to ritual slaughter. 'Not enough.' 'Bollocks.' 'We'll lose it. And the longer we delay the worse it will be.'

'The first by-election with me as Prime Minister. Not a great advertisement, eh? I was rather hoping I'd be riding the bandwagon, not being shoved under its wheels.'

Their deliberations were interrupted by a sallow-faced youth in much-creased suit and crooked tie, whose reluctance to invade what was clearly a very private confabulation had been overcome by the Liebfraumilch and a bet made with one of the lissom secretaries, who had wagered her bed against his bashfulness. 'Excuse me, I've just joined the party's research department. Can I have your autographs?' He thrust a piece of paper and grubby pen into their midst.

The others waited for Urquhart to move, to instruct that the youth be keelhauled for impudence and dismissed for ill-judgement. But Urquhart smiled, welcoming the interruption. 'You see, Tim, somebody wants me!' He scribbled on the paper. 'And what are your ambitions, young man?' 'I want to be Chancellor, Mr Urquhart.' 'No vacancy!' the Chancellor insisted. 'Yet…' the Prime Minister warned. 'Try Brunei,' Stamper added, in less frivolous tones.

There was more merriment as the piece of paper did its round, but as the banter died away and the youth retreated in the direction of a deeply blushing secretary, Urquhart found himself staring into the humourless, uncompromising eyes of Stamper. Unlike the others they both knew how important was an early election. If recession and overdraft were the brush of the noose around their necks, then the news of the by-election had come as the sound of the trapdoor-bolt beginning its final slide. There had to be a way out, or else. 'Merry Christmas, Tim?'

Stamper's words sighed with the edge of perpetual Arctic night. 'Not this year, Francis. It can't be done. You must recognize the fact. Not now, not after the King. It simply cannot be done.'

My dearest Son,

Today I begin my first full year as the King, and I am filled with foreboding.

Last night I had a dream. I was in a room, all white, in soft focus as things sometimes are in dreams, a hospital I think. I was standing beside a bath, white like everything else, in which two nurses were bathing my father, old and wasted, as he was before he died. They were treating him with such tenderness and care, floating him in the warm water, he was at peace, and so was I. I felt a calm, a serenity I have riot felt for many months.

Then there appeared another nurse. She was carrying a bundle. A baby. You! Wrapped in a white shawl. But even as I reached so eagerly for you the nurse, and the two others attending my father, were gone. I held on to you but without support my father was no longer floating but suddenly submerged in the bath, water washing over his face, his eyes closed. I reached for him with one arm, but you began to fall. To help him, save him, I had to allow you to fall. I could not save you both. I had not a moment longer to decide, he was drowning, you were falling from my arms… Then I awoke.

It is all too clear to me. The Royal Family is intended to symbolize the continuity between the past and the future; I no longer think this possible. A King can cling to the past, the traditions, the decay. Or choose to reach out for the future, with all its uncertainties, its dangers, and its hopes. We must choose.

I am at a crossroads, both as a man and as a Monarch. I know I am well loved, but I take no pleasure in the fact. When that popularity is claimed in part at the expense of the Prime Minister, it can bring neither any good. Mr Urquhart is a man of great resolution and, I believe, little scruple. He lays exclusive claim to the future – perhaps any Prime Minister would – but he does so with an unstinting lack of reserve. Yet if I can have no part in building that future, either as man or Monarch, then I have no manhood, no soul, nothing.

I shall not seek confrontation, because in the end I will lose. But I will not become merely a silent cipher for an unscrupulous and unwise Government. Watch carefully how this great dispute develops. And learn, for your own time will come. Your devoted, Father.

It was supposed to be a masked ball to welcome in the New Year, but Stamper had refused to cooperate. For the first time in his political career people had begun to recognize him, to make all those fawning motions which suggested he was important and to blame only themselves if they became bored talking to him. He was damned if he were going to wrap it all up behind some ludicrous headgear just to please his hostess. Lady Susan 'Deccy' Kassar was the wife of the governing chairman of the BBC. He spent his year trying to ensure that the Corporation's increasingly meagre budget eked out sufficiently to cover his commitments, while she spent it planning how to destroy half his salary in one go at her renowned and monumental New Year's Eve bash. The extravagance of the hospitality was matched by that of the guest list, compiled on computer over the course of the year to ensure none but the most powerful and notorious were included. It was said to be insufficient simply to be a spy master or bank robber in order to gain inclusion, you had to be caught and very publicly identified as such, preferably by the BBC. Stamper had been included only after a second recount. 'Deccy' – named after the decollete for which she had been justifiably famed ever since passing from her teens to the first of three husbands – had decided the invitation was a mistake as soon as she saw Stamper arrive in nothing more elaborate than a dinner jacket. She had a passion for masked balls, which hid her eyes and enabled her to be on constant lookout for still more glittering victims while concentrating the guests' attention undistractedly upon her neckline. She didn't care for mutineers at her parties, particularly ones who greased their hair. Deliberately and as publicly as possible she had mistaken Stamper for a television soap star who had recently emerged from a drying-out clinic, while privately vowing not to invite him next year unless he was by then at least Home Secretary. She was soon off in search of more cooperative prey, fluttering her mask aggressively to carve a passage through the crowd.