Andrew Marr - Children of the Master

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Copyright © Andrew Marr 2015

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of this work has been asserted by him in accordance

with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

Extract from ‘Canto XIII’, from THE CANTOS OF EZRA POUND, copyright ©1934 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780007596454

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007596461

Version: 2016-04-26

For Isabel Claire

Kung walked

by the dynastic temple

and into the cedar grove,

and then out by the lower river,

And with him Khieu, Tchi,

And Tian the low speaking

And, ‘we are unknown,’ said Kung,

‘You will take up charioteering?

‘Then you will become known,

‘Or perhaps I should take up charioteering, or archery?

‘Or the practice of public speaking?’

And Tseu-lou said, ‘I would put the defences in order,’

And Khieu said, ‘if I were lord of a province

I would put it in better order than this is.’

And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves:

If a man have not order within him

He can not spread order about him;

And if a man have not order within him

His family will not act with due order;

And if the prince have not order within him

he cannot put order in his dominions.

And he said

‘Anyone can run to excesses,

It is easy to shoot past the mark,

‘It is hard to stand firm in the middle.’

And they said: If a man commit murder

Should his father protect him, and hide him?

And Kung said:

He should hide him.

From Ezra Pound, ‘Canto XIII’

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue: Photographs

Absolutely No Partners

After the Funeral

The Early Life of David Petrie

A Perfect Girl

A Terrible Story

On an Island

David the Ruthless

Funny Farm

Caro Gets Selected

Politics Today

Peter Quint

Interlude: How to be a Political Columnist

In the Rose Garden

David Petrie, MP

A Lesson at a Dinner

Pebbleton

A Warning from Bunty

Public Servants

A Table for Three

The Sports and Social

In the Master’s House

Family Life

Barker

Health and Efficiency

Cleanliness

How to Cure a Columnist

Bathtime Talk

Immorality

Whitehall Life

The Education of David Petrie

A Moving Speech

The Joy of Routine

In the Country

A Sermon in Barker

What Happened to the Idea?

How to Bring Down a Prime Minister

The Choice

A Flying Pot

Building a Better World

To Glaikit – and Back

Back in Barker

In the Hotel

The Happy Accident

A Frank Talk

In the Gallery

A Clever Plan

Showtime

A Stranger in Barker

The Triumph of the Fourth Estate

A Minor Failure of Empathy

Making Good

Final Reckonings

Postscript

Also by Andrew Marr

About the Publisher

A good politician seizes the moment; and if the moment resists, she knocks the bugger against a hard surface until it gives up.

The Master

There are special days. Not so many. Far more often come the amiable days when we dress, shower, eat and work, when we laugh at one another and we pass on secrets, and we eat moist chicken and drink cold beer … and none of it really touches our inner selves. Most days we slip through, the snow creaking, barely touching the sides. As in a symphony, not every moment – not every day – can be intense. And there are also the days whose smells, music and colours burn themselves into us so that we are changed for good. On such days, speckles of dirt on a kettle lid can be beautiful, and a song whistled in the street can sit inside our skulls forevermore.

Caro Phillips, who was a good person, believed that today would be a special day. She pulled open the curtains and a cold, pre-dawn light filled her bedroom.

She had acted ruthlessly. Because she had acted, everything had changed. She saw the orange and green rug under her bare feet properly, for the first time. She’d bought it years before. Beautiful, just beautiful. She saw her dressing gown flopping from its hook on the door, a dollop of shadow beside it, and felt love for its soft familiarity. She saw her own shadow, quivering, and reached out to touch it. She didn’t glance in the direction of the bedroom mirror, saving that until she reached the bathroom.

The face, as she’d hoped, was both familiar and, this morning, strange. It was a good face. Laughter lines; there had been a lot of laughter. A slight caramel tan, the residue of life-changing days in Rome. She smiled at herself: teeth tamed in adolescence by train tracks, a slightly overlong top lip, summer-sky-blue eyes. Ever since she could remember, she’d been able to knock people backwards, almost literally, with her smile – men and, yes, absolutely, women too.

And because she was a good person, all her life strangers had brought her good things. She looked harder into the mirror. No, not a sign of dangerous redness or a broken vein. Self-control, an early renunciation of delicious tobacco, and caution with alcohol. And then she looked at herself properly: the eyes were looking at the eyes, complete self-consciousness. This was the face of the king’s first minister of the treasury, the most powerful face in the United Kingdom, the face of Nefertiti or Gloriana.

Now Caroline noticed its coldness. This was the face of a woman who had done something terrible – not murder, but something like murder. She felt she could smell her own electricity. She thought of poor Angela, poor sweet Angela, who smelled not of that, but of the coast, and of honeysuckle, and who was at this very moment in a cramped prison cell, perhaps bereft, feeling that her life was over. Caro washed, peed, showered, towelled and began to dress.

She could imagine the prison cell vividly. The walls would be painted to a height of about four feet in a medicinal green; and above that in white. They would be covered with little raised bumps, which would break and flake if you pressed them. There would be small messages, not many, scratched into the paint or written in pencil, not all misspelled.

Back in Caro’s bedroom there was a large black-and-white photograph of Angela in a silver frame, given to her on a previous anniversary. Under the Master’s direction, she had allowed a journalist from The Times to take that picture away with him after an interview; the paper had used it on the front page. It had done Caro a lot of good. Angela was staring with her dark, intense look, her wiry black hair blowing across her face like seaweed, her collar shining like a bone. The picture had been taken down at Pebbleton in Devon in the good days. Caro remembered taking it, and she noted that it was well composed: the stubby tower of the church, beside which they lived, was clearly visible over Angela’s black-shirted left shoulder.