Cometh the Hour by Jeffrey Archer
“If it’s at all possible, sir, be assured I’ll do my damnedest.” Emma regretted the word the moment she’d uttered it.
“I suspect your damnedest is pretty formidable, Mrs. Clifton.” They both laughed. “And Mr. Clifton, I need your help with an even more demanding challenge, which if I had to ask you on bended knee I would happily do.” He paused to take a sip of tea. “The highlight of tomorrow’s ceremony would have been Mr. Babakov’s acceptance speech. I can think of no one better qualified, or more appropriate, to take his place for the occasion, and I have a feeling he would be the first to agree with me. However, I realize such a request would be onerous at the best of times, and I will of course understand if you feel unable to consider it at such short notice.”
Harry didn’t reply immediately. Then he recalled the three days he’d spent in a prison cell with Anatoly Babakov, and the twenty years he hadn’t.
“I’d be honored to represent him, sir, although no one could ever take his place.”
“A nice distinction, Mr. Clifton, and I’m most grateful because, as a feeble orator myself, who has three speechwriters to carry out the task of preparing my words, I am only too aware of the challenge I have set you. With that in mind, I will detain you no longer. I suspect you will need every minute between now and tomorrow evening to prepare.”
Harry rose, not having touched his tea. He bowed again, before accompanying Emma out of the room. When the doors opened, they found the equerry waiting for them. This time he led them in a different direction.
“His Majesty has put this room aside for you, Mr. and Mrs. Clifton,” he said as they came to a halt outside a door which another footman opened to reveal a large corner suite. They walked in to find a desk and a large pile of paper, as well as a dozen of Harry’s favorite pens, a double bed turned down and a second table laid for supper.
“The King can’t have been in much doubt that I would agree to his request,” said Harry.
“I wonder how many people turn down a king,” said Emma.
“You will have two secretaries at your disposal, Mr. Clifton,” said the equerry, “and if there is anything else you require, a footman will be waiting outside the door with no other purpose than to carry out your slightest wish. And now, if there is nothing else you need, I will accompany Mrs. Clifton back to the hospital wing.”
* * *
During the next twenty-four hours, Harry managed to fill three wastepaper baskets with rejected material, devour several plates of meatballs and far too many freshly baked bread rolls, sleep for a couple of hours and take a cold shower, by which time he had completed the first draft of his speech.
Somewhere in between, the King’s personal valet took away his suit, shirt and shoes, and they were returned an hour later, looking even crisper and cleaner than they had on his son’s wedding day. For a moment, and only a moment, Harry experienced what it was like to be a king.
Secretaries appeared and disappeared as each new draft was produced and, like his books, every page was worked on for at least an hour, so that by four o’clock that afternoon he was checking through the twelfth draft, changing only the occasional word. After he had turned the last page, he collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep.
* * *
When Harry woke, he could hear a bath being run. He climbed off the bed, put on a dressing gown and slippers and padded into the bathroom to find Emma testing the water.
“How’s Yelena?” were his first words.
“I’m not sure she’ll ever fully recover. But I think I finally managed to persuade her to attend the ceremony. What about you? Have you finished your speech?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure it’s any good.”
“You never are, darling. I read the most recent draft while you were asleep, and I think it’s inspired. I have a feeling it will resonate far beyond these walls.”
As Harry stepped into the bath he wondered if Emma was right, or if he should cross out the final paragraph and replace it with a more traditional ending. He still hadn’t made up his mind by the time he finished shaving.
He returned to his desk and checked through the latest draft, but made only one small change, replacing “magnificent” with “heroic.” He then underlined the last two words of each paragraph to allow him to look up at the audience, so that when he looked back down, he would immediately find his place. Harry dreaded experiencing the same problem he’d suffered at his mother’s funeral. Finally he added the word “mandate” to the last sentence, but still wondered if the ending was too great a risk and he should scrap it. He walked across to the door, opened it and asked the waiting secretary to type the speech up yet again, but this time double-spaced on A5 cards, in large enough print for him not to have to rely on glasses. She’d run off even before he had time to thank her.
“Perfect timing,” said Emma, turning her back on Harry as he returned to the room. He walked over to her and zipped up a long crimson evening gown he’d never seen before.
“You look stunning,” he said.
“Thank you, my darling. If you don’t intend to deliver your speech in a dressing gown, perhaps it’s time for you to get dressed too.”
Harry dressed slowly, rehearsing some of the speech’s key lines. But when it came to tying his white tie, Emma had to come to his rescue. She stood behind him as they both looked in the mirror and she managed it first time.
“How do I look?” he asked.
“Like a penguin,” she said, giving him a hug. “But a very handsome penguin.”
“Where’s my speech?” said Harry nervously, looking at his watch.
As if they’d heard him, there was a knock at the door and the secretary handed him the final draft.
“The King is downstairs waiting for you, sir.”
* * *
That same morning, Virginia caught the 8:45 from Paddington to Temple Meads, arriving in Bristol a couple of hours later. She still had no idea what was in either package, and she was impatient to complete her side of the bargain and return to something like normality. Once again, Miss Castle unlocked the chairman’s office, and left her alone. Virginia took down the oil painting she didn’t much care for, entered the safe’s code and placed the large package where the smaller one had previously been.
She had considered opening both packages, and even ignoring Mellor’s instructions, but hadn’t done so, for three reasons. The thought of what revenge Mellor might exact when he was released in a few weeks’ time; the possibility of even more largesse, once Mellor had his feet back under the boardroom table; and, perhaps the most compelling, Virginia hated Sloane even more than she despised Mellor.
She locked the safe, returned the painting to the wall and joined Miss Castle in her office. “When are you next expecting Mr. Sloane?”
“You can never be sure,” said Miss Castle. “He often turns up unannounced, stays for a few hours, then leaves.”
“Has he ever asked you for the code to Mr. Mellor’s private safe?”
“Several times.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. I didn’t even know Mr. Mellor had a private safe.”
“If he should ask you again, tell him that I’m the only other person who knows the code.”
“Certainly, my lady.”
“And I think you have something for me, Miss Castle.”
“Oh, yes.” The secretary unlocked the top drawer of her desk, took out a thick white envelope and handed it to Lady Virginia.
This package she did open, but not until she was locked into a first-class lavatory on the train to Paddington. As promised, it contained a thousand pounds in cash. She only hoped Desmond would ask her to visit him again, and in the not-too-distant future.
49
FOUR OUTRIDERS FROM the royal motor pool led a convoy of vehicles out of the palace gates and made their way toward the city centre. King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia traveled in the first car, while Prince Philip and the two princesses were in the second
A large crowd had gathered outside the town hall, and cheers broke out when the King’s car came into sight. The royal equerry and a young ADC leapt out of the fourth car even before the first had come to a halt and were standing to attention when the King stepped out onto the pavement. King Carl Gustaf was met on the steps of the town hall by Ulf Adelsohn, the Mayor of Stockholm, who accompanied Their Majesties into the building.
When the King entered the great hall, half a dozen trumpeters nestling in the archways high above them struck up a fanfare, and three hundred guests—the men in white tie and tails, the women in brilliantly colored gowns—rose to greet the royal party. Yelena, Emma and Harry were guided to three chairs in the middle of the row behind the King.
Once Harry was seated, he began to study the layout of the room. There was a raised platform at the front, with a wooden lectern placed at its center. Looking down from the lectern, a speaker would see eleven high-backed blue velvet chairs set out in a semicircle, where that year’s Laureates would be seated. But, on this occasion, one of the chairs would be left empty.
Harry glanced up at the packed balcony, where there was no sign of an empty seat. But then, this was not one of those occasions you might decide to miss because you’d received a better offer.
The trumpets sounded a second time to announce the arrival of the Nobel Laureates, who processed into the hall to warm applause and took their places in the semicircle of seats.
Once everyone was seated, Hans Christiansen, the chairman of the Swedish Academy, made his way up onto the stage and took his place behind the lectern. He looked up at, for him, a familiar scene, before he began his speech, welcoming the prizewinners and guests.
Harry glanced nervously down at the cards resting in his lap. He reread his opening paragraph and felt the same raw emotion he always experienced just before making a speech: I wish I was anywhere but here.
“Sadly,” continued Christiansen, “this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the poet and essayist Anatoly Babakov, cannot be with us this evening. He suffered a severe stroke yesterday morning, and tragically died on his way to hospital. However, we are privileged to have with us Mr. Harry Clifton, a close friend and colleague of Mr. Babakov’s, who has agreed to speak on his behalf. Will you please welcome to the stage, the distinguished author and president of English PEN, Mr. Harry Clifton.”
Harry rose from his place and made his way slowly up onto the stage. He placed his speech on the lectern and waited for the generous applause to die down.
“Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished Nobel Laureates, ladies and gentlemen, you see standing before you a rude mechanical who has no right to be in such august company. But today the paperback has the privilege of representing a limited edition, who has recently joined your ranks.
“Anatoly Babakov was a unique man, who was willing to sacrifice his life to create a masterpiece, which the Swedish Academy has acknowledged by awarding him literature’s highest accolade. Uncle Joe has been published in thirty-seven languages and in one hundred and twenty-three countries, but it still cannot be read in the author’s native tongue, or in his homeland.
“I first heard of Anatoly Babakov’s plight when I was an undergraduate at Oxford and was introduced to his lyrical poetry that allowed one’s imagination to soar to new heights, and his insightful novella, Moscow Revisited, evoked a sense of that great city in a way I have never experienced before or since.
“Some years passed before I once again became acquainted with Anatoly Babakov, as president of English PEN. Anatoly had been arrested and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. His crime? Writing a book. PEN mounted a worldwide campaign to have this literary giant released from an out-of-sight—but not out-of-mind—gulag in Siberia, so that he could be reunited with his wife, Yelena, whom I’m delighted to tell you is with us this evening, and will later receive her husband’s prize on his behalf.”
A burst of sustained applause allowed Harry to relax, look up and smile at Anatoly’s widow.
“When I first visited Yelena in the tiny three-room flat in Pittsburgh in which she was living in exile, she told me she had secreted the only surviving copy of Uncle Joe in an antiquarian bookshop on the outskirts of Leningrad. She entrusted me with the responsibility of retrieving the book from its hiding place and bringing it back to the West, so that it could finally be published.
“As soon as I could, I flew to Leningrad and went in search of a bookshop hidden in the backstreets of that beautiful city. I found Uncle Joe concealed in the dust jacket of a Portuguese translation of A Tale of Two Cities, next to a copy of Daniel Deronda. Worthy bedfellows. Having captured my prize I returned to the airport, ready to fly home in triumph.
“But I had underestimated the Soviet regime’s determination to stop anyone reading Uncle Joe. The book was found in my luggage and I was immediately arrested and thrown in jail. My crime? Attempting to smuggle a seditious and libellous work out of Russia. To convince me of the gravity of my offense, I was placed in the same cell as Anatoly Babakov, who had been ordered to persuade me to sign a confession stating that his book was a work of fiction, and that he had never worked in the Kremlin as Stalin’s personal interpreter but had been nothing more than a humble schoolteacher in the suburbs of Moscow. Humble he was, but an apologist for the regime he was not. If he had succeeded in convincing me to repeat this fantasy, the authorities had promised him that a year would be knocked off his sentence.
“The rest of the world now acknowledges that Anatoly Babakov not only worked alongside Stalin for thirteen years, but that every word he wrote in Uncle Joe was a true and accurate account of that totalitarian regime.
“Having destroyed the book, the inheritors of that regime then set about attempting to destroy the man who wrote it. The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Anatoly Babakov shows how lamentably they failed and ensures that he will never be forgotten.”
During the prolonged applause that followed, Harry looked up to see Emma smiling at him.
“I spent fifteen years attempting to get Anatoly released, and when I finally succeeded it turned out to be a pyrrhic victory. But even when we were locked up in a prison cell together, Anatoly didn’t waste a precious second seeking my sympathy, but spent every waking moment reciting the contents of his masterpiece, while I, like a voracious pupil, devoured his every word.
“When we parted, he to return to the squalor of a gulag in Siberia, me to the comfort of a manor house in the English countryside, I once again possessed a copy of the book. But this time it was not locked in a suitcase, but in my mind, from where the authorities could not confiscate it. As soon as the wheels of the plane had lifted off from Russian soil, I began to write down the master’s words. First on BOAC headed paper, then on the backs of menus and finally on rolls of toilet paper, which was all that was still available.”
Laughter broke out in the hall, which Harry hadn’t anticipated.
“But allow me to tell you a little about the man. When Anatoly Babakov left school, he won the top scholarship to the Moscow Foreign Languages Institute, where he studied English. In his final year, he was awarded the Lenin Medal, which ironically sealed his fate, because it gave Anatoly the opportunity to work in the Kremlin. Not a job offer you turn down unless you wish to spend the rest of your life unemployed, or worse.
“Within a year, he unexpectedly found himself serving as the Russian leader’s principal translator. It didn’t take him long to realize that the genial image Stalin portrayed to the world was merely a mask concealing the evil reality that the Soviet dictator was a thug and a murderer, who would happily sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of his people if it prolonged his survival as chairman of the party and president of the Presidium.
“For Anatoly, there was no escape, except when he returned home each night to be with his beloved wife, Yelena. In secret, he began working on a project that was to become a feat
“And then Stalin died, a fate that even dictators cannot escape. At last Anatoly believed that the book he had worked on for so many years could be published, and the world would discover the truth. But the truth was not what the Soviet authorities wanted the world to discover, so even before Uncle Joe reached the bookshops, every single copy was destroyed. Even the press on which it had been printed was smashed to pieces. A show trial followed, when the author was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor and transported to the depths of Siberia to ensure that never again could he cause the regime any embarrassment. Thank God that Samuel Beckett, John Steinbeck, Hermann Hesse and Rabindranath Tagore, all winners of the Nobel Prize for literature, weren’t born in the Soviet Union, or we might never have been able to read their masterpieces.
“How appropriate that the Swedish Academy has chosen Anatoly Babakov to be the recipient of this year’s award. Because its founder, Alfred Nobel,” Harry paused for a moment to acknowledge the garlanded statue of Nobel that rested on a plinth behind him, “wrote in his will that this prize should not be awarded for literary excellence alone, but for work that ‘embodies an ideal.’ One wonders if there can ever have been a more appropriate recipient of this award.