“My own interest is intellectual. You are a fool. But fools can be taught. I despise your whole view of the world. But Harold is right that you have a talent for words. Every Johnson needs his Boswell. You have been wasted on reactionary old Winston. Come with me to Russia, and I will make your name immortal.”
I was saved the trouble of a reply when the door opened and Macmillan hurried in. Foot picked up his remote control and waved it at me with a quiet smile. Macmillan poured himself a whisky and perched on the side of his desk.
“The first guests have been sighted,” he said. “There’s thirty of them, which will mean a certain doubling up and more of sleeping arrangements. Michael, I hope you won’t mind sharing your room with Edward Heath. Young Markham can sleep with me—er, I mean, he can share my room.” He finished his whisky and put a trembling hand up to his moustache.
“You’ll be pleased to know that Cook has got an old log stove working, which means we shall dine properly after all. I’m afraid dinner will be at ten. But we shall start our little revolution after the main course.” He smiled nervously and looked at the decanter. “Yes, the Revolution will precede the dessert—and every mouthful has already been put on ministerial expenses.”
He slid off his desk and reached out his left hand to me.
“Come along, Anthony,” he urged. “One of these days, you will describe all this in the vivid tints you gave to the asides between Churchill and Lloyd George in those Cabinet discussions that took us to war. I wouldn’t have you miss the arrival of the guests.”
I took his hand and got to my feet. As we walked from the study, I noticed that Foot was carrying his radio box.
Because there was no electricity, the drive had been lit by filling the basin of its central fountain with something flammable. The fire coiled about and hissed in the thin drizzle of a March evening, and threw a doubtful light over the gravel. The three of us stood together just inside the main door. Macmillan’s butler stood respectfully behind us. Behind him, the entire household was lined up in readiness. I looked out into the chill darkness. Macmillan had been sure the guests were arriving. How or when this would be I had no idea. Except for the sound of a gentle wind in the trees beyond the gate, all was silent.
I thought of the fissile materials and rolls of film loaded into the helicopter for Foot’s departure. He’d said there would be a Russian submarine to collect him. The helicopter was somewhere above us on the darkened roof. Would it really be able to make the midnight rendezvous? Foot had been very confident. Somewhere out beyond the trees, Stanhope would be waiting with his men. There was no point calling out to them. The only working telephone was buried away below stairs. I really was like a fly stuck in a web. I shivered slightly and reached into my pocket for my own cigarettes.
“Can you hear them, Anthony?” Macmillan suddenly whispered. I strained. About half a mile away, I could hear what might have been the throbbing of a diesel engine. It grew insensibly louder. Then I saw, reflected on the higher branches of the trees, the glow of car headlamps.
First to arrive, in his official and diesel-powered car, was the Home Secretary. Even before the car had come fully to a halt, Heath had its back door open and was jumping out. He walked briskly across the gravel to us and took Macmillan’s hand. He was polite to Foot, and gave me a long and thoughtful smile. Being the most wanted man in England, I’d expected some acknowledgement. I found Heath’s stare a touch unsettling. He might have lingered out in the drive. But other cars—all these smaller and powered by electricity—were now arriving. They came through the gates, sometimes singly, sometimes in convoys of two or three. Only Heath had been grand enough for his own driver. The other guests had all driven themselves. It was difficult, in that central firelight, to see much of the cars. What I could see of them, though, told me that most were at least second hand, and several had holes in their glass fibre bodywork. Heath aside, it was unlikely to be a grand occasion. But, as if they’d all carried persons of a certain quality, the man Krellburger had sent back into the house two nights earlier waved and danced about as he guided each vehicle to its parking place in the majestic drive.
Macmillan made sure, as he greeted them, to introduce everyone to me. If it was his fancy that I should write the inside history of what he was planning, it made sense that I should know who else was to be in on the plot. To be honest, I’d never heard of half these people. I knew Kenneth Tynan, of course—who hadn’t read those obscene, drink-fuelled tirades in the newspapers? But John Braine, Harold Wilson, the Reverend John Robinson, Hugh Carleton Greene, Roy Jenkins, Ian Gilmour, Leslie Scarman, Robin Day, and all the others—who on earth were these? I’d never heard of them. Foot knew some of them. I could see, though, that he was frequently as vacant as I was as Macmillan called out his effusive greeting and introductions. For their part, the guests were pretty well overawed. They fawned on Macmillan, of course. They treated Foot with all the respect due to a party leader and the presenter of an important television programme. They even ignored that I was a wanted sex murderer and were most deferential to Anthony Markham, the famous young historian.
Inside the house, all was uproar, as servants ran about with cases and stacks of paper and led the guests away to their rooms. Macmillan strode grandly about the hall, laughing and patting backs and cracking little jokes. Even though the lack of electricity had thrown it into still darker gloom, the house had come properly to life for the first time in my various stays there.
“I’ve had your dinner suit laid out in my room,” Macmillan said to me. “I’m sure we’ve much to discuss while we change for the reception.”
“And I’m sure I’d love to hear it all,” Foot added with a civil leer. He took my left hand and stroked the bracelet about my wrist. “It will be so much more interesting than a lecture from Heath on the proper manner of conducting Britten’s Fourth Symphony.”
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
“Is it true, Michael, that the death penalty has now been abolished in Russia?” Foot smiled back at the fat, greasy Welshman.
“It has indeed been abolished, Roy,” he said. “More than that, however, the new penal code actually abolishes trials. What happens now is that suspects are interviewed in private about their crimes. Once they’ve confessed, they are consulted on the fit punishment. Many ask to be allowed to commit suicide. Some are persuaded to accept a period of re-education, accompanied by socially useful labour, in the bracing climate of the north.”
The Welshman nodded eagerly and launched into a monologue about his own plans for law reform in England. They struck me as ludicrous, but were less tiresome than the lecture I’d just escaped on something called “child-centred”—or was it “comprehensive?”—education. Whatever it was called, this seemed to involve not teaching anyone to read or write at school, and carefully forcing all the cleverer children into the company of the most stupid. Macmillan had stood by me throughout this, nodding and smiling at every refinement of the scheme. He’d been jollying everyone along for about an hour now, and looked as if he were enjoying himself no end. For myself, the only compensation I’d found for attending this ghastly reception was the one or two bottles of champagne I’d been able to down.