'I thought you were the one with all the bright campaigning ideas.' It was Urquhart, his tone sharp, back amongst them. 'Geoffrey, why don't you go and have a wander through the Long Library before lunch? Fascinating collection of first editions -Sartre, Hemingway, Archer. Right up your street.'
'Maybe a little later, F.U.?' he suggested, determined not to be written out of the plot. 'Geoffrey. Be a good fellow and bugger off.' 'Yes, right. Long Library. See you at lunch then.'
She marvelled at his resilience to insult. Even now, she suspected, he was working on how he would divulge to others the privilege of the PM's personal invitation to inspect his rare editions. 'He'll not love you for that,' she commented.
'Geoffrey is incapable of love for anyone except himself. His adoration of his own inadequacies is as total as it is astounding and leaves no room for anyone else. I suspect I shall survive, as will he.'
In the distance a lunch gong was being beaten and the squeals of children echoed with renewed impatience, but he ignored the summons, instead gripping her arm and leading her through french windows which brought them from the terrace into the house. They were in his study with the windows firmly closed behind them, shutting them off. Suddenly she felt claustrophobic, the rules had changed. This was no longer a summer stroll around the garden making sport with Booza-Pitt, but one on one, she and Urquhart, in an atmosphere of personal intensity she'd never felt with him before.
'I'm sorry, Francis, did I offend you, talking about the possibility of defeat?'
'No. You managed to express, and most eloquently, something that…' – he was going to say 'voices inside my own head' – 'my own thoughts have been telling me all too sharply.' 'So you think it could happen?'
'I'm not a fool. Of course it could happen. We're no more than passengers on a tide,- even as we are rushed along by it, only one small slip could sweep us under.'
'And if we were to slip and he were to win, just once, there would be no way back for us. Tom's always been committed to proportional representation – he'd change the election law himself, skew it in favour of the small parties, the minnows.'
'Who would grow into great pikes and tear any Government apart. This country would be turned over to chaos. By legislative order of Booza-Pitt and Makepeace, destroyers of civilization. Hah!' To her alarm he sounded as if he found ironic pleasure in the prospect of the Apocalypse. 'You would be history,' she warned. 'And favoured by it all the more!'
She realized why she had begun to feel so claustrophobic. She was standing beside not just a man, but a political Colossus whose deeds would be writ large. Yet she had known that from the very start; wasn't that why she had agreed to join him, for her own selfish place in his shadow, the thrill and experience of standing beside a great chunk of that story? Up so close, so privately, it left her not a little in awe.
'There is one major gap in his armour,' Urquhart continued in a state of considerable animation, 'his point of greatest vulnerability. He must keep his momentum going, appear irresistible before enough people will take their courage in their hands and march with him. But to raise an army he needs time. Time which is ours to give, or to deny. We must keep an eye on young Tom.'
'I already am,' she responded a little sheepishly. She'd intended to keep it secret, in case he disapproved, but the atmosphere of intimacy overcame her caution. 'He has a new driver who is – how shall I put it? – extremely keen to share his experiences, especially when he picks up his weekly pay cheque. From a very close friend of my husband.'
'Really? How splendid. I should have thought of that. I'm slipping.' 'Or perhaps I'm learning.'
He began to look at her quizzically, in a new light. 'I do believe you are – turning out to be a truly remarkable find, Claire, if you'll allow me to say so.' He had turned to her, taken her hands, his voice dropping to a softer register. He'd already invited her to share so much yet there was a new and pressing intimacy in this moment. 'One thing I have to ask. You've been pretty tough about Tom Makepeace. Politically, I mean. Yet from the way you understand him so well I get the impression – a sense, perhaps – that once you and he were… close. Personally.' 'Would it have mattered?' 'No. Not so long as I could be sure of your loyalty.'
Loyalty tied by bonds at least as secure as any she had shared with Makepeace. 'Francis, you can. Be sure of my loyalty.'
She felt herself being pulled by the enormous force of gravity which surrounded him. She panicked, realizing she was losing control, her lips reaching up towards him. Suddenly she was afraid, of both him and her own ambitions. She was falling, yet couldn't find it within her to resist, even in the knowledge that coming so close to him was likely to leave her burnt up and scattered like cinders. As had happened to others. She was on fire.
Then there was ice. Urquhart drew back, allowed her hands to fall and deliberately broke the spell that tied her to him. Why, she would never know, and Urquhart would never admit, even to himself.
For how can a man admit to such things? The guilt he felt for others he had taken in such a way, used, discarded, left utterly destroyed. With the passage of time he felt himself being drawn towards the day of his own judgment and such things bore more heavily on his mind. Some might even mistake it for conscience. Or was it merely the knowledge that in the past such entanglements had caused nothing but grief and turmoil, confusion he could do without in a world which, thanks to Thomas Makepeace, had suddenly grown far more complicated?
Yet there was something else which turned his blood cold. The gnawing dread that Francis Urquhart the Politician had been constructed on the ruins of Francis Urquhart the Man. Incapable of children, denied immortality. A desert, a barrenness of body that had infected the soul and in turn had been inflicted upon Elizabeth, the only woman he had ever truly loved. The others had all been pretence, an attempt to prove his virility, but in the end a pointless exercise, a scream in a sound-proof chamber.
And, as she stood before him, desirable and available, he was no longer sure he could even raise his voice. The end of Francis Urquhart the Man.
Francis Urquhart the ageing Politician stepped back from temptation and torment.
'Best that we keep you as my good-luck charm, eh?'
In the Cypriot capital the crowds streamed through the entrance gates for an evening with Alekos, a young singer of talent from the mainland who had built a remarkable following amongst Greeks of all ages. The young girls swayed to the rhythm of his hips, old women fell for the voice which dripped like honey on dulled ears, the men won over by the manner in which he crafted the images and emotions of Hellenism into music of the Greek soul more powerful than a first-half hat-trick by Omonia. He had flown from Athens for a special concert in support of the Cyprus Defence Fund. Few of the several thousand enthusiasts at the open-air auditorium gave a thought to how a concert could raise money for the CDF when all the tickets had been given away, as had the large number of banners which were being waved above the heads of the emotion-gripped crowd. We Shall Not Forget, the refrain in memory of the victims of Turkish invasion, was thrust high alongside other soul-slogans such as Let Us Bury Our Dead With Honour, British – Give Back Our Bases and, yes, even Equality With Orchids.
The Bishop was much in evidence, cloaked dark in the seat of honour and surrounded by a hard-working team of his theological students. Theophilos was well pleased. Even the occasional outbreaks of alcoholic excess brought on by the heat and the ready supply of beer he bore with paternal fortitude. For three hours Alekos and his supporting musicians stirred, scratched, tickled and whipped their passion; as the night grew deeper, he reached for the refrain of Akritas Dighenis, a tale of heroic defiance against the foreign foe, of cherished memories from the mists of time and, above all, of victory. They sang and swayed with him, lit matches and candles, their faces illuminated by hope in the darkness as the tears flowed freely from men and women alike. Alekos had them in his palm.