Джеффри Арчер - This Was a Man

Giles sank further into his seat.

‘And remembering the noble lord’s distinguished record in another place, as a Foreign Office minister, perhaps we could close half a dozen of our embassies. That should do the trick. We could even leave him to decide which ones. Washington? Paris? Moscow perhaps? Beijing? Tokyo? I’m bound to ask, is this another Labour Party policy they forgot to mention in their manifesto?’

Suddenly the government benches were alight with laughter and cheering.

‘No, my Lord Speaker,’ continued Emma once the house had fallen silent again, ‘the truth is, words are cheap, but action comes more expensive, and it’s the duty of a responsible government to consider priorities and make sure it balances the books. That undertaking was in the Tory manifesto, and I make no apology for it.’

Emma was aware that she only had a couple of minutes left, and the cheering of her delighted colleagues was eating away at her time.

‘I must therefore tell the House that I consider education, pensions, defence and our role in world affairs every bit as important as my own department. But let me assure your lordships, when it comes to my own department, I fought the Treasury tooth and nail to keep those three new hospitals in the budget.’ She paused, raised her voice and said, ‘This morning the Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed that the nurses will be awarded a six per cent pay rise.’

The benches behind her erupted in prolonged cheers.

Emma abandoned the final pages of her script and, looking directly at her brother, said, ‘None of this, however, will be possible if you follow the noble lord into the Not Contents lobby tonight and vote against this bill. If I am, as he suggests, an infidel storming the hallowed gates of the National Health Service, then I must tell him that I intend to open those gates to allow all patients to enter. Yes, my lords, free at the point of use, to quote his hero Clement Attlee. And that is the reason, my lords, I do not hesitate to urge you to join me in the real world and support this bill, so that when I return to my department tomorrow morning, I can set about making the necessary changes that will ensure the future of the National Health Service and not allow it to languish in the past, along with my noble kinsman, Lord Barrington, who will presumably still be reminiscing fondly about the good old days. I, my lords, will be telling my grandchildren, and also my great-granddaughter, about the good new days. But that will only be possible if you support this bill, and join me in the Contents lobby tonight. My lords, I beg to move the second reading.’

Emma sat down to the loudest cheer of the night, while Giles sat slumped back, aware that he shouldn’t have raised his head above the parapet, but should simply have feigned boredom and allowed Emma to dig her own grave. She glanced across the chamber at her brother, who raised a hand, touched his forehead and mouthed the word ‘Chapeau’. Praise indeed. But both of them were well aware that the votes still had to be counted.

When the division bell rang, members began to make their way towards the corridors of their conviction. Emma entered the Contents lobby, where she spotted one or two fence-sitters and waverers casting their vote. But would it be enough?

Once she had given her name to the teller seated at his high desk, ticking off each member, she returned to her seat on the front bench and joined in the inconsequential chatter that always rises like hot air from both sides while members wait for the whips to return and deliver the verdict of the House.

A hush descended on the chamber when the four gentlemen ushers lined up and marched slowly towards the table at the centre of the chamber.

The chief whip held up a card and, once he’d double-checked the figures, declared, ‘Contents to the left, four hundred and twenty-two.’ Emma held her breath. ‘Not Contents to the right, four hundred and eleven. The Contents have it. The Contents have it.’

Cheers erupted from the benches behind Emma. As she made her way out of the chamber, she found herself surrounded by supporters telling her they had never doubted she would win. She smiled and thanked them.

She finally managed to break away and join Harry and the rest of the family in the peers’ guest room, where she was delighted to find Giles opening a bottle of champagne. He filled her glass and raised his own.

‘To Emma,’ he said, ‘who not only won the argument but also the battle, as our mother predicted she would.’

Once the rest of the family had departed, Harry, Giles, Emma, Karin and Freddie — his first glass of champagne — walked slowly back to their home in Smith Square. Emma climbed into bed exhausted, but an intoxicating mix of adrenaline and success made it impossible for her to sleep.

The following morning, Emma woke at six, her cruel body clock ignoring her desire to go on sleeping.

Once she had showered and dressed, she hurried downstairs, looking forward to reading the reports of the debate in the papers while enjoying a cup of tea, and perhaps even a second slice of toast and marmalade. The papers were already laid out on the dining table. She read the headline in The Times and collapsed into the nearest chair, her head in her hands. That had never been her intention.

Emma knew that ‘resigned’ was a parliamentary euphemism for sacked.

Harry put down his pen, leapt in the air and shouted ‘Hallelujah!’, which was what he always did whenever he wrote those two words. He sat back down, looked up at the ceiling, and said, ‘Thank you.’ Another ritual fulfilled.

In the morning, he would send copies of the script to three people, so they could read Heads You Win for the first time. Then he would suffer his annual neurosis, while he waited to hear their opinions. But just like him, they all had their own routines.

The first, Aaron Guinzburg, his American publisher, would leave his office and go home the moment the manuscript landed on his desk, having given clear instructions that he was not to be disturbed until he had turned the last page. He would then call Harry, sometimes forgetting what time it was in England. His view could often be discounted because he was always so enthusiastic.

The second was Ian Chapman, his English publisher, who always waited until the weekend before he read the book, and would call Harry first thing on Monday morning to offer his opinion. As he was a Scotsman who was unable to hide his true feelings, this only made Harry more apprehensive.

The third, and by far the most intuitive of his first readers, was his sister-in-law, Grace, who not only offered her disinterested opinion, but invariably accompanied it with a ten-page written report, and occasionally, forgetting he was not one of her pupils, corrected his grammar.

Harry had never considered Grace to be an obvious William Warwick fan until in an unguarded moment she admitted to a penchant for racy novels. However, her idea of racy was Kingsley Amis, Graham Greene (the ones he described as entertainments) and her favourite, Ian Fleming.

In return for her opinion, Harry would take Grace to lunch at the Garrick, before accompanying her to a matinee, preferably by her favourite racy playwright, Terence Rattigan.

Once the three manuscripts had been despatched by courier, the agonizing wait began. Harry’s three readers had all been warned that Heads You Win was a departure from his usual fare, which only made him more anxious.

He had considered allowing Giles, who had a lot more time on his hands lately, and Sebastian, his most ardent fan, to also be among the first to read his latest manuscript, but decided not to break with his usual routine. He would allow them to read the final draft over Christmas, after his line editor had suggested any changes.