Michael Dobbs - The Final Cut

'Not just forty thousand pounds, Max. That's forty thousand pounds a year. We'll have to ensure that a fund is available to generate that sort of money for at least ten years, otherwise the taxpayer will end up footing the bill. We couldn't have that.'

'Not when I'm just about to announce a freeze on nurses' pay,' the Health Secretary insisted jovially.

'And where's the Chancellor of the Exchequer? His Prime Minister wants him. Ah, Jim, don't be bashful.'

The Chancellor was thrust by many willing hands from seclusion at the rear of the assembly amidst a chorus of laughter.

'Chancellor. A fund sufficient to generate forty thousand pounds a year for a minimum of ten years. How much are we talking about?'

Jim Barfield, a rotund Pickwickian figure with a shock of hair which made him look as though his brains had exploded, scratched his waistcoat and sucked his lower lip. 'Not used to thousands. Throw a few noughts on the end and I'd have no trouble but…' He scratched once more. 'Let's say a quarter of a million. Just between friends.'

'Mr Stanbrook, has the Society got a quarter of a million pounds? In addition to the eighty for casting said statue?'

Stanbrook, not knowing whether to laugh along with the rest, to fall to his knees and kiss the grass or to crawl away in humiliation, simply hung his head. 'No graven images!' a voice from the west flank of Whitehall insisted. The others applauded. 'Then it is with much regret…'

He had no need to finish. The Cabinet to a man, even Stanbrook, applauded as if on the green trimmed sward of Westminster they had been watching one of the finest conjuring tricks of the decade. Which, perhaps, they had.

He felt good. He had shown he was still the greatest actor of the age, it had been as important to remind himself as to remind the others. His view had been salvaged, the past exorcized. Now to exorcize the future. Claire ran into him as she was scurrying out of the House of Commons Library. She was clutching papers and he had to reach out to prevent her from toppling. 'Hi, stranger.'

'Hello to you.' The voice was soft, the old chemistry still at work. Reluctantly Makepeace withdrew his supporting arm and let her go. 'Running errands for the boss?' he enquired, indicating the papers and regretting it immediately. Urquhart had already come too much between them.

'Would it seem silly if I suggested I'd missed you? I've thought about you a lot.'

'I'm sure that's true,' he retorted, hurt male pride adding a sharper edge than he'd intended. 'I suppose coming from an acolyte of Urquhart I should take such attention as a compliment.'

She searched for his eyes but they remained elusive, darting along the corridor, falling at his feet, unwilling to allow her to inspect the wounds she had inflicted on him. He was acting more like a secret and bashful lover than when they'd shared something to be secretive about.

'I'd like to think that we could still be friends,' she offered, and marvelled immediately at her own hypocrisy. She meant it; she retained a strong sense of affection and respect for him, a man with whom she had shared so much. Yet she was also the woman who was trying to bring him to his knees. For the first time she began to be aware of how far she had moved, had strayed perhaps, from her own image of herself. She'd become two people, political animal as well as woman, in two worlds, one black, the other white, and the dark world where she stood in the shadow of Francis Urquhart was tugging her away from her roots and those she had loved.

'Claire, there are only two sides in this place right now. Those who stand with him, and those who don't. There's no room in the middle anymore.'

A colleague passed by and they both stood in embarrassed silence as though their past secrets had been betrayed to the evening press.

'I've not sold out' she began again, anxious to reassure herself as much as him.

Disdain sharpened his eye. 'Spare me that sweet talk about means and ends, Claire. Like curdled milk, I'll only swallow it once. With him, there is but one end. Francis Urquhart. And any means will do. Face up to it. You've sold out.'

'I wasn't born to all this like you, Tom. I've had to fight and scratch for every little thing I've achieved in this place. I've taken all the jibes, the patronizing, the gropers, the men who preach equality yet only practise it when they go a Dutch treat for dinner. Perhaps you can afford to, but no way am I going to pack up and walk away at the first sign of trouble.' 'I haven't walked away. Not from my principles.'

'Great. You preach, and in the meantime Big Mac wrappers will inherit the Earth. We both have our ideals, Tom. Difference between us is that I'm prepared to do something about them, to take the knocks in pursuing them, not simply sit on the sidelines and jeer.' 'I'm not sitting on the sidelines.' 'You ran off the bloody pitch!'

'There are some games I simply don't want to play.' His tone implied that in politics, at least, she was nothing more than a tart.

'You know, Tom Makepeace, you were a better man in bed. At least there you knew what the hell to do.' She didn't mean it, was covering up for her own pain, but she'd always had a tendency to a phrase too far and this one tore across their respect like a nail across silk.

She knew she'd cut him and watched miserably as a bestockinged messenger handed Makepeace an envelope bearing a familiar crest. As he wrenched it open and read she began to frame an apology but when his eyes came up once more, inflamed no longer with wounded pride but unadulterated contempt, something told her it was already too late.

'Those who stand with him, Claire. And those who don't.'

He turned on his heel and strode away from the ruins of their friendship.

10 Downing Street Dear Thomas, I am replying to your recent letter. I have nothing to add to the reply I gave in the House last week, or to the policy adopted by successive Governments that security considerations prevent such matters being discussed in detail. Yours sincerely, Francis It had been couched in terms intended to offend. His name had been typed, not handwritten; the dismissal of his request was as abrupt as was possible for an experienced parliamentarian to devise. Perhaps he should be grateful, at least, that the letter had dispensed with the hypocrisy of the traditional endearment between party colleagues which suggested that the author might be 'Yours ever'. As Makepeace entered the Chamber, the letter protruding like a week-old newspaper from his clenched hand, he trembled with a sense of his own inadequacy. There was a time, only days gone by, when a word from him would have had the System producing documents and reports by the red box load; now he couldn't raise more than a passing insult.

Claire, too, had made a fool of him – not simply because he'd said things in a clumsy manner he'd not intended, but because he hadn't realized how much of his affections she continued to command, in spite of Maria. He should know better, have more control, yet she'd left him feeling like a schoolboy.

If he was flushed with frustration as he sat down to listen to the debate on the European Union Directive (Harmonization of Staff Emoluments), within moments his resentment had soared like a hawk over Saudi skies. The House was packed, the Prime Minister in his seat with Bollingbroke at the Dispatch Box, holding forth on matters diplomatique with the restraint and forbearance of a bricklayer approaching payday.

'Emoluments!' he pronounced with vernacular relish. 'Wish I 'ad some of them there Emoluments. It says in this Sunday newspaper' – he waved a copy high above his head – 'that apparently one of the Commissioners took a personal interpreter with him on a ten-day visit he made recently to Japan. By some oversight, 'owever, the young lady turned out to be qualified only in Icelandic and Russian.' He shrugged as though confronted with a problem of insurmountable complexity. 'Well, I dunno, they probably all sound the same and I'm sure she had her uses. But it's a bit much when they come back and start asking for more.' Mixed shouts of encouragement and objection were issuing from all sides when, in a stage whisper which everyone in the Chamber (with the exception of the scribe from Hansard) had no trouble in hearing, he added: 'Wonder if I could get it on expenses?'