Barbara Vine - The Birthday Present

His mother and Juliet had done what he asked and Ivor was alone. He'd aged ten years. His hair hadn't turned white overnight because, contrary to popular belief, that doesn't happen, but there seemed more gray in it than when I'd last seen him. He'd eaten nothing since he left Ramburgh at nine that morning but he'd put away a good deal of whisky and had moved on to red wine. Iris found the fridge well stocked with food by prudent Juliet and she made us sandwiches.

“Someone will ask a question in the House tomorrow,” Ivor said.

“And you'll be there?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, as if it were a foregone conclusion. “It'll be that cliché about ‘we who are about to die salute thee' crap. I wonder why those poor old Christians bothered to say that. I wouldn't if I were about to be eaten by a lion. I'd tell the emperor to fuck off.”

“D'you think you'll be eaten?”

“Of course. It's the end of me, Rob. I've become the story. No secretaryship of state now. I'll never get into the Cabinet. No re-election. They won't like this in Morningford.”

I asked where Juliet was and he told us she'd stayed behind in Ramburgh. “I considered just breaking things off with her, you know. Tell her it wasn't working out. It's been nice knowing you and please keep the ring.”

“You wouldn't do that,” Iris said, aghast.

“Well, I didn't. I only said I'd considered it.”

We ate the sandwiches, or Iris and I did. Ivor took one but didn't eat it. He opened another bottle of Burgundy and said he'd probably have a hangover in the morning.

“But that may be no bad thing. It will distract me.”

The expensive babysitter phoned then and said Adam was crying and complaining of pains in his stomach, so we had to go. We left at once, Iris already overanxious. There was nothing wrong with Adam. He shut up when he saw us, so I suppose it was a ploy to fetch us home. But I wished we could have stayed longer with Ivor. I hated leaving him alone. He shook hands with me and kissed Iris, which were most unusual actions, but he was already half drunk and I thought that must account for it.

We didn't sleep much, either of us. After trying to get to sleep, I went downstairs and picked up a book I'd been reading all day, on and off, in an effort to distract myself from Ivor's troubles. I have often thought about English gentlemen in literature and the recourse to which certain authors drive them, and here in this Dorothy L. Sayers novel was a classic example of the very thing. It was The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club and toward the end Dr. Penberthy faces disgrace, a trial and, in those days, execution. I'm going to quote from it because it was extraordinarily apt, though of course I didn't know that at the time.

“Dr. Penberthy,” said the old man, “now that that paper is in Lord Peter Wimsey's hands, you understand that he can only take the course of communicating with the police. But as that would cause a great deal of unpleasantness to yourself and to other people, you may wish to take another way out of the situation … If not—”

He drew out from his jacket pocket the thing which he had fetched.

“If not, I happen to have brought this with me from my private locker. I am placing it here, in the table drawer, preparatory to taking it down to the country tomorrow. It is loaded.”

“Thank you,” said Penberthy.

I finished the book, which, by the way, was what people who know about such things call “a good read,” and went back upstairs. Iris was still not asleep; a wakeful child—it was Adam—had joined her and very pretty they looked with their arms round each other. It was ten past four. I carried Adam back to his bed. Should we phone Ivor in the morning, I asked Iris, or would a call from us just be a nuisance to him? When someone close to you is in the sort of trouble he was in, you don't want to let him feel isolated or feel that you don't care. We phoned. He said he'd slept a bit, more than he'd expected, and the strange thing was he'd woken up feeling quite fresh and calm, not a trace of a hangover.

“I won't drink before I go into the chamber. I'll have a drink afterward.”

“Is it certain it's going to happen?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “As luck will have it, I have a statement to make and once I've made it, while I'm still at the dispatch box, some Opposition backbencher will ask me if there's any truth in the Menhellion story. It goes without saying. That is what will happen.”

I asked him what he'd say.

“Christ knows. Well, I suppose I do know. I'll tell the truth. I have to. I'm not getting into that sort of shit, lying to the House of Commons. I'll tell the truth, but it won't necessarily be the whole truth.”

“Will the whole truth have to come out?”

“You know, Rob, I don't think it will. I really don't think it ever will.”

That should have alerted me, that should have rung an alarm, but it didn't. I listened to the Today program on Radio Four. It devoted a full five minutes to the Lynches, the Furnals, and Jane Atherton, with an aside that Ivor Tesham, the Air Power Overseas Minister, would have some explaining to do and that, though invited, he had been unwilling to come on the program. I listened to all that and then I went to work. When I got there I read a selection of the morning papers. They were full of follow-up stories, including life histories of the Lynch family and Sheila Atherton's account of her dead daughter's school and university days, a boy friend called Callum and another who was the son of a wealthy glass manufacturer. Gerry Furnal maintained his dignified silence. What the point was in showing a large photograph of his new baby, I have no idea. I suppose Pandora, silent and otherwise reserved, gave it to the newspaper with pride.

• • •

I COULD EASILY have found out exactly what happened in the Commons that day but I didn't. By the time the paper came next day I couldn't bear any more. Did Ivor have notice of the question the Labour backbencher Mark Saddler intended to ask him? Do they have to table a question like that or can they just get up and ask it? I don't know. But I do know what Ivor said, because it was headlines. It was on television and radio; it was everywhere.

Saddler was a notorious anti-royalist and well known for his derisive wit. At each State Opening of Parliament, when Black Rod summoned the Commons “to attend Her Majesty in the House of Peers,” he regularly shouted out some ribald comment, insulting the Queen over her expenditure or the conduct of her children. He was notorious as a troublemaker and an enfant terrible.

It must have been known by the afternoon that something exciting and probably of political significance was about to happen. The House was packed, no room left on those ribbed green leather benches. After Ivor had read his statement—something pedestrian about the cost of an episode in the Balkan wars—Saddler got up and asked him if he had anything to say about the implications of a report in The Times of that morning. I suppose everyone thought Ivor would prevaricate, bluster perhaps, or say he had no comment to make. He did neither.

The dispatch boxes in the Commons are of polished wood with dull brass fittings. Slightly to the right of them, on the table, lies the mace, symbol of royal authority. On his feet at the dispatch box, he said, “The honorable gentleman is quite right to ask this question. The allegations are true. Certain details are incorrect but the account of what I did is substantially true. Hebe Furnal was my mistress. I did arrange her abduction, though not against her will. I am paying a pension to the driver of the car, Dermot Lynch, brother of Sean Lynch, at present on remand for the alleged murder of Jane Atherton.”

What happens in Parliament being privileged, Ivor could mention Sean Lynch with impunity. A gasp had gone up (according to the newspaper) from all sides of the House. It turned into a roar like that of hounds baying in pursuit of some hunted creature. But Ivor was no fox or hare and, in his peculiar way, I think he must have enjoyed it. Perhaps, then, he knew the answer to why those Christians gave their humble yet defiant salutation to the emperor. I imagine he looked round at the benches, at the ranked faces, the yelling mouths, with the same kind of panache. Then he sat down. I suppose there was some discussion, more questions perhaps, but when the Speaker moved on to the next business he walked out. His departure met with utter silence.