‘We have a right to defend ourselves, sir. We had that right before nine-eleven. Now we have the right to demand it. And we’re going to have it whether it suits people like you or not. If you want to be part of it, fine. But if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’
‘You know something, Mr Hecht? Back when I was a teenager, just starting to think for myself, I came up with a very basic formulation. I decided that whenever somebody says, You’re either for us or against us, you had to be against them. Because only moral simpletons and outright conniving rogues see, or even claim to see, the world in such preposterously black and white terms. I am deeply dubious about being on the same side as anybody that stupid or that disingenuous, and certainly will not be led by them. Evil always starts with a good excuse, Mr Hecht. George W. Bush may be, in effect, President by acclaim now, and, compared to the people who attacked America, he’s personally almost blameless, but the fact remains he got where he is by chicanery and deceit and – not even very deep down – he’s a sad, inadequate little man.’
‘Go to hell, sir, as you surely will.’ Mr Hecht hung up.
‘Think we lost him, Notty.’
I took a deep breath. ‘That is your single deployment of that word for this year… Philly-Willy.’
‘US Embassy on line one!’
‘Oh, stop it, you’re killing me.’
‘Ken, great to meet you. Come in, come in. Ah, yes, let this delightful young lady take your coat…’
‘Nice to meet you, ah…’
‘Jamie. Call me Jamie. No standing on ceremony here. Come on in to the body of the kirk, as they say. I have Scotch blood too, you know. Us Heelanders have to stick together against these Sassenachs, eh? Listen, we’re all really excited about you joining us at Capital Live!. I hear you’re doing incredibly well. Caught you a few times myself; wish it was more. Schedules, meetings, business; you know, but I’ve heard you. I have heard you. Very good, very good. Very near the bone, very near the bone, but I like that. That’s my style, too. Edge work. Nothing like it, is there? The danger, the risk. Risk-taking; that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Don’t you think? So, how are you settling into the old Temple Belle?’
‘Ah, very nicely,’ I said. I hesitated, wondering whether to point out that I’d been settled in there for over a year.
‘Brill. Superb, superb! Ah. Helena. Like you to meet Ken. Ken Nott. Ken; this is my wife, the lovely Helena. Ah; drinks. Excellent, excellent. Ken. Champagne?’
‘Lady Werthamley,’ I said, nodding to her. ‘Thank you.’
Sir Jamie Werthamley, our Dear Owner, had a penthouse in the top two storeys of his own newest office building, Limehouse Tower, overlooking the river at Limehouse Reach. This was April 2001 and I’d been working for him for nearly a year by then – three months of that on the relatively prestigious late-morning show – but this, one of his birthday parties, was my first chance to meet him (strictly no presents, the invitation had said, which might have seemed superfluous for a man who owned several gold mines, a bank, a Caribbean archipelago and his own airline. Anyway, I’d happily complied).
Sir Jamie was a young-looking fifty; ginger going grey. The trademark pony-tail was long gone but the single diamond stud in his ear was still there. He was dressed casually in designer jeans, a white T-shirt and a blue jacket that looked glossily fine and very expensive. I’d dressed in my best smart-but-casual but I felt like a tyke next to him.
There were maybe a hundred people in the sunken space of the main room, which, famously, had been fashioned by a film-set designer. The room held the crowd easily. I had my coat whisked away by what looked like one supermodel and a glass of dark gold champagne slipped into my fist by another before I’d really had a chance to draw breath. Sir Jamie was the touchy-feely sort; taking your hand, cradling your elbow, patting your back, gentle-punching upper arm, all that stuff. And all the time talking in that intense, breathily enthusiastic manner, words only just getting out of each other’s way in time. In that respect he was exactly the same as when he was interviewed on TV.
His wife sat, upright and poised, in a tall, high-tech wheelchair. Lady W had suffered a bad fall horse-riding ten years earlier, not long after they were married. She wore something blue and gauzy, and a few shimmering pieces of diamond and platinum jewellery. She was maybe ten years younger than her husband and had raven black hair and violet eyes.
‘Call me Helena, please,’ she said, letting go of my hand.
‘Thank you, Helena.’
She turned the wheelchair round using a little joystick at her right hand and moved it towards the steps down into the sunken part of the room. ‘I listen to your show, Ken,’ she said over her shoulder as I walked after her.
‘Thank you.’
‘You are terribly outspoken, aren’t you?’
‘That’s my job, Helena,’ I said as Lady W’s chair got to the top of the steps and stopped.
‘You do upset a lot of people.’
‘I’m afraid I do.’
‘A lot of important people, in fact.’
‘Guilty as charged, ma’am,’ I agreed.
‘I know quite a lot of those people.’
‘I… I’d be surprised if you didn’t,’ I said evenly.
She snorted in a very English public schoolgirl way and looked up at me, winking. ‘Yes, well, keep up the good work. Now, who shall we find for you to talk to?’ She surveyed the room. I did, too. The space itself was very swoopy and primary coloured. It did look like a film set; actually it looked like the bad guy’s lair in an Austin Powers film, which was a funny thing to spend a couple of million quid on, but there you were. The windows, facing south and west, were three metres tall and easily fifteen long; great slabs of darkness sprinkled with the lights of London.
There were a lot of famous faces, from, I guessed at the time, pretty much every walk of life that led to people getting their faces into the papers or onto TV apart from crime. (Actually I was wrong about the crime bit.) I imagined that the people I didn’t recognise were just plain rich, or powerful in a low-profile way, or both, and realised there was a decent chance that I was the least important person in the whole apartment, with the not-a-given exception of the supermodel-resembling serving staff.
‘Ah,’ said Mrs W decisively. ‘You might be interested to meet Ann and David Schuyler. She teaches Political Philosophy at the LSE and he’s a Tribune Group stalwart. Come on.’ The wheelchair lurched forward and – using a rotating three-wheel set-up at each corner – descended slowly, motors whirring, to the dark red carpet below.
The Schuylers were charming and fascinating and interesting to talk to and I chatted to various other people who were all or most of those things during the course of the evening and passed some pleasant time with a Formula One driver, a Junior Minister who was about fifteen years older than me but still amazingly attractive (and who had an even more amazing, eye-watering contempt for her Minister) and a beautiful young actress whose name I could still recall weeks later but whose personality entirely escaped me. I drank the champagne and sampled some of the melt-in-the-mouth food circulating on silver salvers borne high by the catwalk-grade serving staff.