Boris Johnson - Seventy-Two Virgins

And Cameron’s anxiety was rising with every one of her accelerating steps, as she went down the cloister, her papers clutched to her bosom. Roger watched her go, and so did several others.

Just then a taxi pulled up outside the Members’ Entrance. The occupant got out, tipped, and was rewarded with a blatant fistful of blank receipts. It was Felix Thomson, who had spent the last few minutes sitting in the back while rubber-gloved officers subjected the taxi to prostatic indignities, scoping and palping for bombs, and gazing with dental mirrors at the undercarriage.

‘Ah, Felix,’ said Roger, and they adopted attitudes as transparently insincere as Molotov hailing Ribbentrop.

‘My dear fellow,’ said Felix, shaking his grey locks.

‘And how is Felix this fine morning?’

‘Felix is little short of superb,’ said Felix.

‘I saw your proprietor the other night,’ said Roger, who knew how to irritate a journalist.

‘Ah,’ said Felix, and made a face of holy hypocrisy, like a cardinal discussing the health of the Pope.

‘I think I should let you know that he thinks the media are a seething mass of mushy-minded anti-American pinkos, especially on his own papers.’

‘You amaze me.

‘Not that you’ll be doing any of that anti-American stuff today, not in your sketch.’

‘I’d sooner be dead,’ said Felix.

‘The usual knockabout?’

‘Good, clean fun.’

‘Tremendous.’

Felix had turned to go, fishing for his press gallery pass. Roger Barlow felt temptation welling up. ‘Hey Felix.’

‘Yes old man?’

‘I wonder whether I could beg a favour off you.’

‘Provided it doesn’t mean reporting one of your speeches.’

‘No, no, it’s nothing, it’s … Well, you know in newspapers .

‘Yes.’

‘Well, in newspapers you chaps probably have a pretty good idea in the morning what you are going to put in the paper that day.’

‘Well, I don’t have the faintest idea.’

‘Not you, I mean the chaps in general. The top chaps, what do you call them, the sub-editors and things, don’t they draw up some kind of list of the main items of the day?’

‘Yeah, yeah, the newslist, yeah.’

‘Right. The newslist.’

‘Is this going to take much longer, old boy, because I’ve got an urgent appointment with a cup of coffee and a jam. doughnut.’

‘Absolutely, we’re just coming to the point here now. This newslist: this is something which is presumably accessible to anyone who is in the newspaper.

‘Yeah, but . .

‘And you are in the newspaper.

‘Well, I am on the newspaper.’

‘Exactly. You are on it. Is there any way, Felix, that you could have a squint at that newslist for today?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t normally.’

‘I know, but if you had a spare second, do you think you could conceivably flip it up, dial it up, download it?’

‘Do you mind my asking why?’

‘To be perfectly honest, and this is very embarrassing, I want to know if they are doing an article about me.’

‘An article about you?’

‘Yes, and if they are I promise I won’t make a fuss or do anything about it. I just kind of want to know, because it has been eating me up.

‘And what kind of article might this be? Are you making a speech?’

‘Well, actually I am making a speech today.’

‘About?’

‘It’s about water fluoridation, but I don’t expect the article will be about that.’

‘Right.’

‘It may well be about something else.’

‘Right you are, guy, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for an article about Roger Barlow, not mentioning water fluoridation.’

Felix went into the press gallery whistling Papageno’s Song, and Roger felt the accustomed sweat of shame and idiocy on his brow. Everywhere people were coming and going as they got ready for the ceremony: reporters, MPs, researchers, security men and camera crews.

POTUS coming through now.

The bawling in Parliament Square reached a crescendo. On the roofs of the Cabinet Office, Portcullis House, the Treasury, the Welsh Office, the Foreign Office and all the way down Whitehall, police marksmen lay in the July sunshine, their black weapons soaking up the heat.

Eyes gazed through scopes. Fingers curled on triggers. Toes shifted in the guttering.

In plotting the route of the cavalcade, Colonel Bluett of the USSS had reasoned that the Embankment, being built up on only one side, offered fewer opportunities to the sniper. Whoomf, went the Chevrolet people carriers, stuffed with bulging security men, as they now approached Millbank, passing the knots of people behind the security barriers. It was not their speed that was impressive, so much as the air they displaced.

Whooomf went the Cadillacs, the hugest Cadillacs anyone had ever seen. With their high roofs, athletic flanks and shredproof tyres they were preposterously suggestive of a dominating class, the functioning, air-conditioned American version of a discredited Soviet idea.

Whoomf went the first decoy presidential car. Whoomf went the second decoy presidential car. Whoomf, whoomf whoomf

Just so must the tribes of Britannia have stood by the same gleaming brown river in AD 43, not knowing whether to cheer or boo, as the muddy legions of Claudius marched into Londinium, fresh from settling the Atrebates or the Belgae. Just so had the Saxons crowded round when the Norman conqueror was crowned on Christmas Day 1066, setting up such an ambiguous roar that the knights thought it was a revolt, and cut them down.

Except that Britain wasn’t a colony of America, was she? She could hardly be called a vassal state, could she? No, she was an ally, a close and trusted ally, though she stood in relation to America as the most loyal member of the Delian league had stood to Athens. Or so it seemed to some of the more cynical folk who lined the route.

‘Fact is, America has got bases, military bases, in places like Uzbekistan,’ said a scruffy history professor to his wife as they walked up behind the railings.

‘I mean, twenty years ago those places had missiles pointed at us.’

‘Unbelievable,’ said his wife.

‘Of course, most people in this country don’t give a stuff about American dominance, do they? They just think all human civilization has been pyramidal in structure since, well, since the Pyramids. They just think America is the boss and that’s all there is to it. No point moaning. And this demonstration is really pretty small beer compared to the anti-Vietnam demos in the sixties.’

‘Didn’t we use to go on pro-Vietnam demos?’ asked his wife.

‘We did, darling, but times have changed.’ The professor and his wife sat on their shooting sticks and took out their placards. In quavering magic marker the mediaevalist had written: ‘Hop it, Yanks!’

‘I don’t mean you, of course.’ The professor smiled at a group from the Rutgers University debating team, who were out with plastic stars and stripes to support the President, and having a tough time of it.

‘That’s all right, sir,’ said the well-bred students.

‘Yay,’ they shouted now as the cavalcade shot past them like a black river of steel, and their cries were drowned out by the British mob.

The noise of her President’s arrival made the hairs prickle on Cameron’s bare arms, and she clacked ever faster in her strappy shoes down the stone tunnel that led to Portcullis House, and the turquoise tiles of the Tube station.

She felt a pang. It was guilt. But — if you considered the enormity of what she was about to do — it was only the tiniest frisson of guilt. In her current mood she could feel herself squashing her guilt like an aphid on a rose.