Andrew Marr - Children of the Master

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?’

She remembered what the Master always advised: ‘Whatever they say, keep smiling. Wave at them. Smile, smile, smile. They’re looking for a guilty or an angry face – that’s what sells a photo to the picture desk. Smiles are small change.’

So that was what she did, not even flinching when one snapper, scurrying to get the best angle, banged against the wing mirror of the waiting car and knocked it off.

All the paps had their own personal tricks: one of them specialised in walking backwards in front of his target, and then appearing to trip and fall. The innocent victim would automatically reach forward, with a look of concern or shock, to catch him; and that was the picture the snapper had been waiting for – that grimace, that moment of shock. The snapper snapped fast, even as he was going down. More Westminster careers had started to slide downwards, the Master had told her, after a distorted face appeared in the papers, than had ever been destroyed by parliamentary inquiries.

Once she was inside the car, buckling up, Caro held her smile. Paul was driving. As the car pulled off, with hands banging on the roof, she closed her eyes and tried to remember her last peaceful moment that morning.

Leaving the house, she had passed a wall of pictures and photos. There were snaps of Devon, of Angela, the boys. A Peter Brookes cartoon from The Times that showed her in a pulpit. A pin board just inside the front door was covered with scraps torn from newspapers, and other mementoes. Prominent among them was a stained, creased cardboard invitation, engraved with gold leaf and signed by the Master himself. He’d given it to her, and told her to keep it safe: ‘That’s where it all began.’

For the politician, every party, every social engagement, is a puzzle, a crossword to be solved. There are hidden clues, connections to be made, information to be passed on. You solve the puzzle. And then you leave.

The Master

Ten years earlier, when the new century was still a kid, that invitation had been new, stiff and with a thin line of gold leaf around its edges – just one of several hundred dropping that morning into letterboxes around London, Edinburgh, the Cotswolds. Each had the name of the recipient handwritten at the top in faultless italic, clearly by an expensive fountain pen held by an expensively educated hand. Then came swirls of black, embossed Gothic print. ‘Neil Savage invites you to his All Hallows Party. Formal wear. Absolutely no partners. Refusals only.’

The party had been held at Worcestershire Hall, in Worcester Square, Mayfair. One of the last grand Edwardian houses still in private hands in central London, the address underlined the lavish nature of the invitation, and refusals had been few. Neil Savage – more properly, Lord Lupin – was not, in any case, a man accustomed to being refused. Private banker, art collector, philanthropist, crossbench peer, he was known for his foul temper and his brilliant wit. ‘Often disliked, never ignored,’ he said of himself, with intense satisfaction.

And that Halloween, as the black German limousines nudged one another around the dark and windy square, the party had begun with a certain style. Young men, their gold-sprayed torsos bare despite the cold, stood at intervals along the front of Worcestershire Hall holding blazing torches, so the arrivals had to squint against the billows of smoke, and brush small embers off their clothes. Straggling up the Portland stone stairs and into the house, they were greeted by servants in white tie and tails offering cocktails with squid ink and peppers, vodka and absinthe. Champagne was available for the weak-stomached.

Lord Lupin himself, dressed all in black with a red bow tie, whiskers painted onto his chalky face, gave a passable imitation of Mephistopheles as he greeted the guests one by one. In they flowed: one former prime minister – no, two former prime ministers; half a dozen other senior politicians from each party; once-feared newspaper editors; minor royals, portly and inclined to be affable; radical playwrights with long, well-cut grey hair; radical establishment artists who made large plastic eggs for the Chinese market; gelded rock musicians; celebrated lawyers; notorious bankers … plus, of course, the shadowy PR men who kept the country moving – in the wrong direction. By 7.30 p.m. it was already clear that this was a party like no other; not a single face here, not one, was anything other than exceedingly famous.

In those days Worcestershire Hall had not yet been gutted; but it was dilapidated. Chilly, underlit rooms, with dusty curtains and dirty Dutch pictures, led off from one another in endless confusion. ‘No Old Masters here, I’m afraid. Just Old Pupils. The family …’ Lupin said. Dark little staircases spiralled up and down, apparently pointlessly. Only when the guests reached the old ballroom, laid out for a feast and glittering with hundreds of wax candles, was there any real glow of welcome. At one end, a small Baroque orchestra was playing melancholy and haunting music, a tripping gavotte, a dying fall. In front of the orchestra, exquisite young men and women dressed as satyrs and fauns were performing some old, complicated dance, as if in a Peter Greenaway film.

The guests gathered in knots, broke up again and re-formed as they circulated around the house. In even the most neglected rooms there was always a candelabra and a sofa, where a journalist or a photographer might be placed. The flashes of photography ricocheted through the house like perpetual lesser lightning. And there was plenty to photograph – all those seamed, creased, famous faces: the curving eyebrows and drawn, tortured, gathered-up and stitched flesh of actresses better known for who they had bedded than for their talent; the pendulous, hairy jowls and stained-toothed smiles of public servants. There a law officer, here a criminal; and here the two together, a hand resting lightly on a shoulder. Swarming through the dark honeycomb of the house, human crocodiles, human lampreys, human prairie dogs, all jostling and snapping when they spoke.

And, just as there was plenty to capture, so there was plenty to speak about, so many old friends to discover. Stories of old political battles, long-forgotten legal suits and complicated love tangles were being rehearsed as the drink disappeared. Good old Burgundies, flinty unoaked and vintage Chardonnays circulated on the silver trays – sweet, succulent southern sunshine for gaping, dusty northern gullets. For those who preferred, the best Islay malts and vintage brandies were there to scald and burn on the way down. The massive mahogany table at one end of the ballroom was expertly stripped by the beautiful staff, who brought round plates of bloody grouse, like the aftermath of a Balkan massacre, and slivers of white halibut, and dishes of oysters.

All was going swimmingly until, about an hour into the party, something strange began to happen.