Gillian Slovo - Ten Days

‘Issues?’ The sergeant sounded clueless: he must have been an acting, and a new one at that.

‘Any likelihood of things going pear-shaped?’ How much more clearly did Billy need to put it? ‘Any reason for me to get my kit? Come over? Lend a hand?’

‘Hold on a mo.’ Maybe he was a pretender rather than an acting, because he now covered the phone rather than putting Billy on hold, so that Billy could hear a muffled conversation, the bozo who’d answered consulting one of his colleagues and then at last coming back to say, ‘We’ve done a risk assessment and there’s no reason to be concerned.’

There was always a reason in Rockham, but it wasn’t Billy’s job to point this out. He’d asked and they’d answered, and they’d ring if things started to go wrong. Shoving his mobile into a pocket, he went to the shed to fetch the clippers and a spade — he needed also to pull out all those bastard shoots which were coming up through the dried-up lawn — and then he set to dealing with the hedge.

11 a.m.

‘Excellent choice.’ Peter made his way to the back of the garden to where Frances was sitting in the shade of the oak. ‘It’s far too stuffy inside.’ He leant over to kiss Frances. The dog, who had been lying under her chair, barked and would have nipped his leg had he not jumped smartly back. ‘What’s got into her?’

‘She’s hot like the rest of us.’ Frances laid the stack of Saturday papers she’d been leafing through onto the table. ‘How was Cabinet?’

‘Bloody.’ He sat down heavily in one of the wrought-iron chairs, nodding his thanks as Frances poured him a tumbler of iced tea. ‘Coventry wouldn’t be nearly far enough for them; they’d have sent me to Timbuktu if they could.’ He drank the tea in one and stretched out his glass for a refill. ‘The full Cabinet and not a single person as much as glanced my way. And when it was over, they evaporated faster than the clouds.’

‘I wouldn’t worry.’ Frances dropped ice from an ice bucket into his glass: ‘They’re only trying to figure out when to jump.’

‘Perhaps that’s it.’ He put his glass back on the table, and in doing so displaced one of the newspapers. ‘Oh. There’s my mobile. I wondered where it had got to.’ Despite the cooling effect of Frances’s iced tea, he was still desperately hot. He undid his laces and removed his shoes, checking that Patsy was out of biting distance before peeling off his socks. Such a relief. He stretched out his legs, feeling the dry grass prickle the soles of his feet. ‘The PM was off to the summit as soon as it was over. He made a point of saying that. Three times in fact. I guess he thinks that the sight of him grinning in a sea of world leaders will give him a boost.’

‘Too late for that. He’s already haemorrhaged too much support.’

‘I expect you’re right. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, though. At one point when he passed a note to the Foreign Secretary, his hands were visibly trembling.’

When Frances did not reply, he looked across at her. Her gaze, he saw, was focused on his feet, or more accurately on his white socks, yellowed by perspiration, that he had taken off. Although her face was partly shaded by the oak, he wondered whether that was distaste in her expression. But, no, he must have been mistaken. When she raised her head, her blue eyes were clear and calm, and she was smiling as she said, ‘The PM’s lost it.’

‘So it seems.’ Politics was such a cruel game. ‘And so quickly. I can’t help wondering why.’

‘Who knows. Maybe it’s his bitch of a wife’ — the two women never had much liked each other — ‘or his errant son. But it doesn’t matter why. The truth is that he is simply not up to the job. His spell in Number 10 has finished him.’

As it could finish me, he thought, and not for the first time.

‘Without someone new at the helm,’ Frances said, ‘the election is as good as lost.’

Right again. The PM knew it, the pollsters knew it, and the Party knew it. Most important of all, the hacks had started to say it out loud.

But it was one thing to accept that change was due and another to be the one to wield the knife. The PM, as ineffective as he was, was also liked by the Party; the person who deposed him could end up bearing the brunt of any backlash.

All very well for Frances to urge him on: she didn’t have to put up with the side glances when they thought you weren’t looking and, worse, vicious stage whispers they meant you to overhear. And what made her so sure he was going to win?

They’d been married so long she read his thoughts. ‘You won’t fail,’ she said. ‘They won’t let you. They can’t. You’re the only viable candidate.’

‘But people hate disloyalty. Now I’ve fired the starting gun, I could be trampled in the stampede.’

‘What people really hate, Peter, and here I am talking about MPs, is losing their seats.’ Her raised voice woke the dog, who looked up, accusingly, at Peter. ‘But this isn’t just about our MPs. It’s about the whole Party. It’s about the whole Country.’

The way she capitalised the Country — and made it sound right — made him think, as he often did, that she should have been the politician. She would have made a good enforcer: a fabulous whip.

‘If the opposition win the election,’ she was saying, ‘they’ll wreck everything you and the Party, and yes, let’s give him credit where it’s due, the PM, have worked so hard to achieve. Someone has to stop the rot. We can.’

He noted her use of the collective noun — another of her habits that could annoy. Yes, he’d be the first to admit that they were a team, and a good one. But he was Home Secretary and potential new Leader of her precious Country, and she was just his wife.

He was overcome, suddenly, by the most terrible fatigue.

It’s the humidity, he thought, which had climbed even higher since the episode of the phantom clouds. The air was now so thick he was almost tempted to try to grab hold of it and squeeze it out. Water, that’s what he craved. Not to drink but to immerse himself in. If only there had been a nearby stretch of water into which he could throw himself and for one glorious moment expunge the memory of the PM’s trembling hands and the prospect of the fight to come. He let the imaginary water wash over him, and soon it was almost as if he really was floating down a river in a different country where life moves at a slower pace, with the sound of the cicadas’ rubbing feet creating a reassuring background thrum…

‘Third time this morning; you’d better answer it.’

He snapped his eyes open. The sound he had taken for cicadas was his phone vibrating on the metal table. When he reached for it, he registered the caller’s name. ‘Yes?’

A reply so indistinct he had to strain to hear it.

‘This is a terrible line.’

Another soft sentence.

‘I still can’t hear you.’

Some more words, just as soft but also blurred, as if her mouth was latched on to her phone. He gave her a moment, straining to make sense of what she was saying, before cutting her short: ‘You’re still inaudible. Later.’ He hung up and tossed the phone onto the table. ‘Silly girl.’

‘What did she want?’

‘She’s looking into Yares’s connection to the PM. There’s something between the two, I am convinced of it. Patricia seems to think she’s found that something, but I could make neither head nor tail of what she was saying. Turns out she was in a pub surrounded by police officers. Doesn’t she know how leaky they are?’

‘She’s young.’ Frances’s tone was even and even disinterested. Must have got over her uncharacteristic fit of jealousy. ‘But at least she’s keen.’