'Have you forgotten?' he breathed into the microphone, his voice stretching out to touch every one of them. 'No,' they sobbed. 'Do you want to forget those who died?' 'No..
'Who gave their lives for a free Cyprus? Some of whom lie buried in unknown graves?' His voice was firmer now, goading.
(Later when he heard the reports, Hugh Martin was to wince at how Alekos in one emotional sweep had entangled together the subject of British graves with the Turkish invasion.) 'No, no,' they replied, with equal firmness.
'Do you want your homeland given away for British military bases?'
He stirred the muddy waters of old hatreds like a shark's tail. In the darkness they began to lose their individual identities and become as one. Greek. Full of resentment.
'Then will you give your homeland away to bastard Turks?' 'No! Never!'
'Do you want your sisters and daughters to be screwed by bastard Turks, like your mothers were when the bastards invaded our country?' His clenched fist beat the night air, his bitterness transmitting to others. 'NO.'
'Do you want your President to sign a treaty which says it's all right? All forgotten? All over? That they can keep what they stole?' 'NO,' they began to shout. 'NO. NO. NO.' 'So what do you want to say to the President?'
'N-O-O-O-O!' The cries lifted through the Nicosia night and spilled across the city. 'Then go and tell him!'
The doors were thrown open and thousands swarmed out of the auditorium to find buses lined up to take them the two kilometres to the Presidential Palace, whose guards they taunted, whose gates they rocked and whose wrought-iron fencing they festooned with their banners. By the light of a huge pink Nicosia moon, the largest demonstration in the city since the election came to pass, and twenty-three unwise arrests ensured that the stamping of angry feet would continue to grab headlines for days afterwards.
Like every other detail of the concert, even the encore had gone to plan.
'Gaiters and gongs again tonight.' Urquhart sighed. He had lost count of the number of times he'd climbed into formal attire on a summer's evening in order to exchange inconsequential pleasantries with some Third World autocrat who, as the wine list rambled on, would brag about his multiple wives, multiple titles and even multiple Swiss bank accounts. Urquhart told himself he would much rather be spending his time on something else, something more fulfilling. But what? With a sense of incipient alarm, he realized he didn't know what. For him, there was nothing else.
'I see they're pegging out the lawn for that wretched statue.' Elizabeth was gazing out of the bedroom window. 'I thought you'd told Max Stanbrook to stop it.' 'He's working on it.'
'It's preposterous,' she continued. 'In a little over a month you will have overtaken her record. It's you who should be out there.'
'She wasn't supposed to lose, either,' he reflected softly.
She turned, her face flecked with concern. 'Is all this Makepeace nonsense getting you down, Francis?' 'A little, perhaps.' 'Not like you. To admit to vulnerability.'
'He's forcing my hand, Elizabeth. If I give him time to organize, to grow, I give him time to succeed. Time is not on my side, not when you reach my age.' With a silent curse he tugged at his bow tie and began again the process of re-knotting it. 'Claire says I should find some way of calling his bluff. Fly the flag.'
'She's turning out to be an interesting choice of playmate.'
He understood precisely what she was implying. 'No, Elizabeth, no distractions. In the past they've caused us so much anguish. And there are voices everywhere telling me I shall need all my powers of concentration over the next few months.' 'People still regard you as a great leader, Francis.'
'And may yet live to regard me as a still greater villain.'
'What is eating at you?' she demanded with concern. 'You're not normally morbid.'
He stared at himself in the mirror. Time had taken its undeniable toll; the face was wrinkled and fallen, the hair thinned, the eyes grown dim and rimmed with fatigue. Urquhart the Man – the Young Man, at least – was but a memory. Yet some memories, he reflected, lived longer than others, refused to die. Particularly the memory of a day many years earlier when, in the name of duty and of his country, he had erred. As the evening sun glanced through the window and bathed the room in its rich ochre light, it all came back. His hands fell to his side, the tie unravelled again.
'When I was a young lieutenant in Cyprus' – the voice sounded dry, as though he'd started smoking again – 'there was an incident. An unhappy collision of fates. A sacrifice, if you like, in the name of Her Majesty's peace. Tom Makepeace today wrote to me, he knows of the incident but not my part in it. Yet if it were ever to be made public, my part in that affair, they would destroy me. Ignore everything I have achieved and strip me like wolves.'
He turned to face her. 'If I give Makepeace any of what he wants, he will pursue the matter. If I don't, he'll pursue me. Either way, there is an excellent chance I shall be destroyed. And time is on his side.' 'Then fight him, Francis.' 'I don't know how.' 'You've plenty of strings to your bow.'
He joined her by the window, took her hands, massaged her misgivings with his thumbs, gently kissed her forehead. 'Strings to my bow. But I'm not sure I have the strength any more to bend the bloody thing.' He laughed, a hollow sound which she chose not to share. 'We must have one more victory, one more successful election behind us. The Urquhart name, yours and mine, written into history. The longest-serving Prime Minister this century.' 'And the greatest.'
'I owe that to you even more than I owe it to myself. I must find some way of beating him, destroying him – any way! And quickly. Everything I have ever achieved depends on it.' 'And what then, Francis?'
'Then perhaps we can think about stepping back and I can become an intolerable old man in carping retirement, if that's what you want.' 'Is that what you want?'
'No. But what else is there? Apart from this I have nothing. Which is why I'm going to fight Tom Makepeace. And all the others. So long as I breathe.'
For Elizabeth it sounded all too much like an epitaph; she held him close in a way they'd not embraced for a considerable time, nuzzling into loose flesh and afraid she was falling into the deep pit of his empty old age.
Suddenly he stiffened, measurably brightened. Something over her shoulder had caught his eye. The workmen had finished laying out the stakes – miniature Union flags, would you believe – and a large lawn mower was lumbering towards them. It approached hesitantly, its progress obstructed, forcing it to slow, to stop and swerve to avoid them. It did so with considerable difficulty, chewing up the neat turf and knocking over several flags as the gardener wrenched at the wheel. Clearly it was not a machine designed to mow in such confined circumstances. Urquhart observed all this with growing interest.
'Anyway, my love, a great general doesn't need to bend his own bow, he gets others to do that for him. All he needs are ideas. And one or two have just come knocking at my door.' 'Max!' he summoned.
Ministers were trooping into the Cabinet Room where they found him at its far end, slapping his fist like a wicket keeper waiting for the next delivery, rather than in his accustomed chair beneath the portrait of Walpole.
Stanbrook made his way over as the others milled around, uncertain about taking their seats while he was still standing.
'Max, dear boy' Urquhart greeted as the other approached. 'Our little conversation about the statue. You remember? Haven't signed the Order yet, have you?'