Michael Dobbs - Goodfellowe MP

Then there was Sammy.

He could not stifle a sharp intake of breath. The clothes themselves, designed by Samantha and made up by other more skilled seamstresses, consisted of carefully flared trousers which began three inches below her navel and had laces down the thigh. Her shoes had huge heels which made his blistered feet weep in sympathy. Three inches above the navel began a crop-top which outlined a figure that had become undeniably soft and feminine. At that moment and for the first time he realized that his little girl, so innocent in school uniform and shapeless jeans and jumpers, was growing up all too fast. It made her unfamiliar; he was suddenly afraid he was losing her. A large waistcoat of patchwork velvet finished off the clothes. Above, around her neck, was a gap where her mother’s locket might have been.

So far, none of this was exceptional apart from the effervescence and simple sense which had gone into the effect. What caused further intakes of breath from all around – not just from himself but most noticeably from Miss Rennie – were the deeply personal accessories. The spikes of brilliant orange where before had been soft auburn hair. Purple lips. The bared left shoulder from which sprouted the tattoo of a rose in bloom. And another gap, between halter and hipsters, where a gilded chain encircled her hips and threaded up to an all too obvious gold ring that had been pierced straight through the flesh of her navel.

The cameras were beside her now, following her confident strides up and down the catwalk. She appeared heedless of the stir of unease from parents in the audience, perhaps even relishing it. Yet in the farther recesses of the hall something else stirred. Approval and applause began to break through like spring daffodils, cautiously at first, then more abundantly and with greater confidence until they had spread inexorably through the carefully planted rows of chairs and were swirling around the foot of the stage. The cameras turned on the audience, which began to respond, elders matching the enthusiasm of their offspring.

But not Goodfellowe. He remained immune to the infection sweeping through the hall. This was his little girl, barely out of braces and bobby socks. Or was it? She seemed strangely unfamiliar, unknown to him. ‘What on earth do you call that … that …’ – words failed – ‘grunge?’

‘You’re out of date, Mr Goodfellowe. That’s definitely post-grunge,’ Miss Rennie offered without a trace of humour, but joining in the applause as the cameras panned towards her. It was the only way. Apparent enthusiasm. The honour of the school was at stake.

Cameras appeared to be everywhere that week.

It was Friday, mid-afternoon, and Goodfellowe was driving – more correctly being driven – back to Marshwood. One of the few blessings of being stripped of his licence was that the Member for the neighbouring constituency, Lionel Lillicrap, was a colleague of long standing and had been more than willing to help with lifts. In fact, Lionel was the only blessing which arose from that sorry episode – apart from the fact that he could drink without damnation for at least another eight months.

Goodfellowe and Lillicrap had entered the House together, twelve years earlier, sharing in the early days both ambition and a Commons office, yet it had been Goodfellowe on whose brow the laurels of early promotion had fallen. Indeed, he had been the coming man. He was granted grudging respect by his civil servants and, more grudgingly still, by his colleagues, and it was agreed by consensus that Goodfellowe had far to go. Cabinet Ministers engaged in backstairs battle in order to secure his services as their Number Two, regarding him as a rock in the stormy legislative night. They reserved for Goodfellowe the highest parliamentary accolade, that he was ‘a safe pair of hands’. As he hacked his path through the Ministerial jungle his diary had struggled to fit in days in Davos and weekends in Washington. An invitation to sit around the brown-baize Cabinet table seemed an inevitable next step.

It had been the trip of a lifetime and as companion on that trip he had taken Lillicrap as his PPS. Rising Ministers are allowed Parliamentary Private Secretaries, ambitious men and women who are willing to engage in the most menial of tasks around the House on behalf of their masters, pouring drinks, running errands, taking in dirty parliamentary laundry, carrying their Minister’s papers in the hope that one day they will be able to carry such papers in their own right. One foot on the ladder, yet with the other still stuck in the cloying mud of the backbenches. If it had been innately irksome for Lillicrap to watch his contemporary speed ahead of him, at least he was grateful for the opportunity to follow, and he took reassurance from the fact that he was fully five years younger than Goodfellowe – he had time on his side.

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