To Play the King by Michael Dobbs

  The former estate agent glowered. 'You want to shoot any more?' he enquired, placing another bullet in the chamber.

  'Tim, I want a veritable war.' Urquhart raised the rifle to his well-padded shoulder once more, peering fixedly down the telescopic sight. 'I've decided. It's on again.'

  'Another of your campus jokes.'

  Urquhart obliterated a further paper portrait before turning to Stamper. His smile was withering.

  'McKillin's in trouble. He went out on a limb, and it broke. So sad.'

  'We're not ready, Francis. It's too soon,' Stamper objected, deeply unconvinced.

  'The Opposition will be even less well prepared. Parties facing an election are like tourists being pursued by a man-eating lion. You don't have to outrun the lion - you can't. All you have to do is make sure you run faster than the other bastard.'

  'The country might be buried under a foot of snow at this time of year.'

  'Great! We've got more vehicles with four-wheel drive than they have.'

  'But we're still four points behind in the polls,' the Party Chairman protested.

  'Then there's no time to lose. Six weeks, Tim. Let's get a grip on them. A major policy announcement every week. A high profile foreign trip, the new PM taking Moscow or Washington by storm. Let's have a row in Europe, demand some money back. I want dinner with every friendly editor in Fleet Street, on his own, while you tickle the political correspondents. And, if we can get away with it, a cut in interest rates. Castrate a few criminals. Get a bandwagon rolling. We've got McKillin on the floor, let's be sure to kick hell out of him while he's down. No prisoners, Tim. Not for the next six weeks.'

  'Let's hope His Majesty decides to cooperate this time.' Stamper couldn't hide his scepticism.

  'You're right. I've been thinking we should take a new approach to the Palace. Build a few bridges. Put your ear to the ground, find out what the gossip is. What's going on in the dark places.'

  Stamper cocked an ear, as if he heard the sound of prey lumbering through the forest.

  'And we need foot soldiers, Tim. Loyal, dedicated. Not too bright. Men who would be happy to charge across those bridges, should the need arise.'

  'That does sound like war.'

  'Better win it, old boy. Or they'll be putting us up there as targets. And I'm not talking about paper images, either.'

  January: The Second Week

  The gravel of the long drive leading from the gate lodge to the front of the old manor house rattled against the bodywork of the car as it drew up alongside the other vehicles. The polished dark-blue Rolls-Royce seemed out of place alongside the battered Land-Rovers and muddy estate cars, and Landless already knew he would not fit in. He didn't mind, he was used to it. The manor house was the ancestral home of Mickey, Viscount Quillington, and commanded magnificent views over the rolling countryside of Oxfordshire, although a grey January afternoon was not the best of settings. The fabric of the building charted the chaotic progress of an ancient aristocratic family and was mostly William and Mary or Victorian with a hint of Tudor in the wing nearest the tiny chapel, but of the twentieth century there was little sign.

  The damp seemed to follow him into the rough and tumble of the large entrance hall filled with tangled hunting dogs, mucky Wellington boots and a variety of anoraks and outer garments all struggling to dry. The floor tiles were badly chipped and there was not a hint of central-heating anywhere. It was the type of house which in many other parts had been rescued from decay by an expanding Japanese hotel group or golf-course consortium, but not here, not yet. He was glad he had declined the invitation to stay the night.

  The Quillingtons traced their line back to the time when one of their ancestors had travelled to Ireland with Cromwell, collected his estates for bloody services rendered, and returned to England at the time of the Restoration to make a second fortune. It was a fine history, on which the current generation of Quillingtons, impoverished by time, misfortune and inadequate tax planning, reflected with awe. The estates had gradually been whittled away,

  the ties with Ireland finally broken, many of the paintings sold, the best pieces of furniture and silver auctioned, the large staff pared. This was old money, and it was growing increasingly short.

  Meeting the other guests proved something of a trial for the businessman. They were all old friends, some dating from nursery days and displaying the type of public-school clannishness boys from Bethnal Green find impossible to penetrate. His clothes hadn't helped. 'Country casual' he'd been told. He had turned up in a check two-piece with waistcoat and brown shoes; they were all wearing jeans. Not until Princess Charlotte greeted him warmly did he begin to feel less defensive.

  The weekend had been built around the Princess. Arranged by Quillington's younger brother, David, it was an opportunity for her to relax amongst old friends away from the petty intrigues of London's socialites and gossip columnists. Here they were almost all scions of old families, some older than the Windsors, and to them she was a friend with a job to do, still the 'Beany' of childhood squabbles in the swimming pool and fancy-dress parties organized by po-faced nannies. She had insisted on a private bedroom well away from other guests and David had seen to all the arrangements, tidying the two detectives and chauffeur of the Royal Protection Group well away at the back of the house. The Princess had the Chinese Room, not so much a suite but more a single vast room on the first floor of the East Wing, with David occupying the only other bedroom on the floor. Her privacy was ensured.

  There was a certain sadness in surveying the house with its ancient wiring, frayed edges, dank corners and one wing almost completely closed down, yet it had character and a great sense of history, and the dining room was magnificent. Fifty feet long, oak-panelled, lit by two fern-like chandeliers whose lights shone deep into a burnished table constructed from the timbers of an old Man o' War and crafted by prisoners from Napoleon's navy. The silver was old and monogrammed, the crystal assorted, the effect timeless. Old money, even in short supply, certainly knew how to eat. Quillington presided at the head of the table, on his right the Princess and on his left Landless, with others further down, and they listened politely to the publisher's stories of City life as their ancestors might have listened to explorer's tales of the South Sea islands.

  After dinner they took their port and cognac into the Old Library, where the ceiling was high and the winter air clung tenaciously to the far corners, where leather-clad books were piled along endless shelves and smoke-darkened oil paintings covered the one free wall. Landless thought he could see marks on the wall where paintings had been removed, presumably for auction, with the remainder spread around a little more thinly. The furniture seemed as old as any part of the house. One of the two large sofas crowding around the roaring log fire was covered in a car rug to hide the ravages of age, while the other stood battered and naked, its dark-green fabric torn by the insistent scratching of dogs, with its stuffing of horse hair dribbling out like candle wax from underneath one of the cushions. Within the embrace of the Library, dinner guests became almost family and the conversation grew more relaxed and uninhibited.

  'Shame about today,' Quillington muttered, kicking the fire with the heel of his leather boot. The fire spat back, sending a shower of sparks up the broad chimney. He was a tall, streaky figure much used to wandering around in tightly tailored jeans, high boots and a broad kangaroo-skin fedora, which looked eccentric if not vaguely ridiculous on a fifty-year-old. Eccentricity was a useful cover for encroaching impoverishment. 'Damned hunt-saboteurs, buzz like flies around horse shit. There they are, on my land, and the police refuse to arrest them or even move them on. Not unless they actually attack someone. God knows what this country is coming to when you can't even prevent layabouts like that rampaging all over your own land. Home a man's damned castle, 'n'all that.'

  It had not been a successful day's hunting. The animal-rights protesters had waved their banners and spread their pepper and aniseed, unsettling the horses, confusing t
he hounds and outraging the huntsmen. It had been a soggy morning overflowing with drizzle, not good for picking up trails, and they had lumbered through the heavy clay of the countryside to find nothing more enthralling than the carcass of a dead cat.

  'You can't throw them off your own land?' enquired Landless.

  'Not bloody likely. Trespass isn't criminal, police'll do damn-all about it. You can ask them politely to move on, they tell you to piss off. You so much as lay a finger on them and you find yourself in court on assault charges. For protecting your own bloody property.'

  'Chalked up one of the yobs, I did,' the Princess intervened gaily. 'Saw him hovering close behind my horse so I backed the beast up. Scared all hell out of him when he saw sixteen hands shunting straight towards him. He jumped back, stumbled, and fell straight into a pile of fresh crap!'

  'Bravo, Beany. Filled his pants, I hope,' David Quillington interjected. 'You hunt, Mr Landless?'

  'Only in the City.'

  'You should try it sometime. See the countryside at its best.'

  Landless doubted that. He had arrived in time to find the stragglers returning from the hunt, faces red and blotched, covered in mud and thoroughly soaked. Mix in the sight of a fox being torn apart, its entrails smeared over the ground and squelched beneath horses' hooves, and he thought he could well do without such pleasures. Anyway, boys born and brought up in concrete tower-blocks surrounded by broken street lamps and derelict cars tend to have a naive empathy for the countryside and the things that live in it. He hadn't seen any of England's green and pleasant pastures until a school day-trip when he was thirteen and, in truth, he held an undemanding admiration for the fox.

  'Foxes are vermin,' the younger Quillington continued. 'Attack chickens, ducks, new-born lambs, even sick calves. Scrounge off city rubbish dumps and spread disease. It's too easy to knock the landowners but, I tell you, without their work in protecting the countryside, keeping it clear of pests like foxes, rebuilding the walls and hedgerows, planting woodlands for fox and pheasant cover — all at their own expense - those protesters would have a lot less countryside to protest about.'

  Landless noticed that the younger Quillington, seated on the sofa next to the Princess, was moderate both in his language and his drinking. That could not be said of his brother, leaning against the Adam fireplace, glass in hand. 'Under threat. Everything under threat, you know. They trample over your land, shouting, screaming like Dervishes, waving their banners and blowing their bloody horns, trying to pull the hounds onto busy roads and railway lines. Even when they manage to get themselves arrested some damned fool magistrate takes pity on them. And me, because I've got land, because my family have worked it for generations, devoted themselves to the local community, done their bit for the country in the House of Lords, because I've tried so hard and got no bloody money left and nothing but bills and bank letters to read, I'm supposed to be a parasite!'

  'There's no sense of proportion anymore,' the Princess agreed. 'Take my family. Used to be held in respect. Nowadays journalists are more interested in what goes on in the bedroom than the State Room.'

  Landless noticed the exchange of looks between the Princess and the younger Quillington. It was not their first. They had begun the evening sitting well apart at opposite ends of the sofa, but they seemed to have drawn ever closer, like magnets.

  'Absolutely, Beany. They know you can't defend yourself so they lay into you without pity,' Mickey continued from his position by the fire. 'We've all worked damned hard for what little we have. Yet they get at the fox-hunting, they attack the landowners, they undermine the hereditary principle, and the next thing you know we're a sodding republic. It's about time we started sticking up for ourselves, stopped taking it on the chin and turning the other cheek.'

  Charlotte had finished her glass and was holding it out towards the younger Quillington for a refill. 'But, Mickey, I can't, none of my lot can. The Family's supposed to be the silent service.' She turned to Landless. 'What do you think, Benjamin?'

  'I'm a businessman, not a politician,' he protested coyly, but checked himself. She had offered him a chance to break into their tight circle of concerns, there was no point in turning it down. 'Very well, take a lesson from the politician's book. If a Minister wants something said but finds it injudicious to say it himself, he gets somebody else to do the talking. A fellow MP, a business leader, a newspaper editor even. You have friends, influential friends. Like Lord Quillington here, with a voice and seat in the House of Lords.'

  'Slave labour, rowing the Government's galley, that's all they reckon we are,' Quillington sniffed.

  'And so you shall remain if you don't speak up for yourselves,' Landless warned.

  'Sounds like mutiny,' his brother said from the drinks table, 'taking on the Government.'

  'So what? You've got nothing to lose. Better than staying silent simply in order to be abused. Remember what they tried with the King's speech? You're in the same firing line.'

  'Never did have any time for that Urquhart,' Quillington muttered into his brandy balloon.

  'The press wouldn't report it anyway,' his brother commented, handing a full glass back to the Princess. When he sat down, Landless noticed he had drawn even closer to her. Their hands were side by side on the car rug.

  'Some press would,' Landless interjected.

  'Benjamin, of course, you're a darling,' Charlotte said soothingly, 'but all the rest of them are interested in is a photograph of me with my dress blown up around my ears so they can gossip about where I buy my knickers.'

  It was not an entirely accurate picture, mused Landless. The press were mostly interested in where she left her underwear, not where she bought it.

  'Shouldn't give honours to press men,' Mickey continued. 'Particularly peerages. Clouds their objectivity. Makes them too damned self-important.'

  Landless didn't feel insulted; rather, he felt as if slowly they were beginning to offer him acceptance, setting aside the fact that he was born to a different world.

  'You know, perhaps you're right,' Quillington continued. 'Hell, about the only right they allow us nowadays is to get on our hind legs in the Lords, and it's about time we started using it properly. You know, making the Lords and the hereditary principle the first line of defence for you and yours, Beany.'

  'If you've anything you want to say, I'll make sure it gets an outing,' Landless offered. 'Just like we did with the Christmas speech.'

  'I think we've hit on a damned fine idea, Beany,' Quillington said. Already he was beginning to expropriate the idea for his own. 'Anything you want said, I'll say it for you. If the King can't make a public speech, then I'll make it for him. Into the public record on the floor of the Lords. We mustn't let them gag us.' He nodded in self-approval. 'Sorry you can't stay the night, Landless,' he continued. 'Plenty of other ideas I'd like to try on you.' The conversion was complete. 'Some other time, eh?'

  Landless understood the hint and glanced at his watch. 'Time I was going,' he offered, and rose to his feet to make his rounds of farewell.

  He would be glad to get out into the fresh air. He didn't belong here, not with these people: no matter how polite they were and no matter how successful he became, he would never belong. They wouldn't allow it. He might have purchased a ticket to the dinner table, but he could never buy his way into the club. He didn't mind, he didn't care to join. This was yesterday, not tomorrow. Anyway, he'd look ridiculous on a horse. But he had no regrets. As he glanced behind him from the door, he could see his host standing by his fireplace, dreaming of chivalrous battles yet to come on the floor of the House of Lords. And he could see the Princess and the younger Quillington, already anticipating the disappearance of the outsider, holding hands on the sofa. There were stories here aplenty, with patience. It had been worth it.

  The House of Commons attendant entered the gentlemen's lavatory in search of his quarry. He had an urgent message for Tom Worthington, a Labour MP from what used to be a mining constituency in Derby
shire before they closed the mines, who prided himself on his working-class origins in spite of the fact that it had been more than twenty years since anything other than ink and ketchup had stained his hands. The lavatory was inescapably Victorian with fine antique tiles and porcelain, sullied only by an electric hot-air drier at which Jeremy Colthorpe, an ageing and notoriously pompous Member from the pretentious shires, was drying his hands.

  'By chance seen Mr Worthington, sir?' the attendant enquired.

  'Can only handle one shit at a time in here, my man,' Colthorpe responded through his nose. 'Try one of the bars. In some corner under a table, most likely.'

  The attendant scurried off as Colthorpe was joined at the wash basins by the only other man in the room, Tim Stamper.

  'Timothy, dear boy. Enjoying party headquarters? Making an excellent job of it, if you don't mind my saying.'

  Stamper turned from the basin and lowered his head in appreciation, but there was no warmth. Colthorpe was known for his airs, purporting to be a leader of local society, yet he'd married into every penny, which only made him still more condescending towards former estate agents. Classlessness was a concept Colthorpe would never support, having spent most of his life trying to escape from its clutches.

  'Glad for a chance to speak with you actually, old chap,' Colthorpe was saying, his smile more a simper as he searched keenly in the corners of the mirror for reassurance that he and Stamper were alone in the echoing room. 'Confidentially, man to man,' he continued, trying to glance surreptitiously beneath the doors of the cubicles.