ACCORDING TO HIS DIARY, he has a meeting at 2 p.m. in – of all places – an itsu sushi on Piccadilly. He squints at his phone, trying to make out further detail. At his last appointment, his optician told him he would probably need reading glasses but Richard refuses to believe it, as if the refusal is enough to make the belief true. Wearing reading specs would make him look weak, particularly at this sensitive juncture in the leadership campaign. Ben Fitzmaurice recently came out on top of the MPs’ ballot and then aced the hustings and emerged, triumphant, as the frontrunner of the final two.
Ben’s opponent is Graham Bunn, who has the support of the rabid anti-woke, anti-Europe, anti-immigrant right-wingers, but not much traction with the centre of the party. Also – and there’s no kind way to say this – Graham Bunn is a very ugly man. Sparse hair and eyes of the protruding variety that physicians look for when diagnosing an over-active thyroid. His face is a map of burst capillaries and he has a squat, flaky wart on the tip of his nose that reminds Richard of an unforgiving portrait he once saw of Oliver Cromwell. Compared to Ben, with his dashing good looks and extraordinarily well-groomed hair, there is no contest. However racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant the Tory heartland might be, there’s surely no way a majority of them would want to be represented by the odious Graham Bunn on the world stage?
It’s ‘Ben Versus Bunn’, as theEvening Standardput it on yesterday’s front page. There are only a few weeks left before an internal popularity contest in which the future fate of the entire country rests on thegut instincts of 0.00000149 per cent of the population. Richard has worked it out: the party membership amounts to a grand total of 172,437 and the UK population is approaching 67 million, so, you do the math, as Mickey Minton might say.
In order to read the diary entry Terri has seen fit to add in without his permission, Richard has to hold his phone out at arm’s length and tilt his head down to a 45-degree angle. He accidentally presses the camera button and takes a selfie in which he possesses several double chins and a ghostly pallor. He gasps with repulsion, deletes it and then returns to the diary app, where he is finally able to make out the name.
‘Martin Gilmour,’ he reads aloud. ‘What the fuck?’
Terri has an annoying habit of putting in meetings when he least expects them. The man on the next table glares at him. He is reading a hard copy ofHansardand returns to the thickly bound tome when Richard gives him an apologetic shrug.
Richard is sitting in the Portcullis House lobby. He’s just bought himself a Korean squid and seafood stew from The Debate café, purely because it sounded so fantastical. When he tastes it, the texture is sponge-like and off-putting. As he lifts the fork to his mouth for a second go, an unshakeable splotch of brown lands on his tie, reminding him of the burst sewage pipe onShit Happens!. He slides the carton away from him. He’ll be able to get something in itsu, he thinks, although why on earth Martin Gilmour wants to see Richard is beyond him. He’s never warmed to the fellow. The last time they crossed paths was at a campaign strategy ‘brainstorm’ at Tipworth Priory. Richard hadn’t been sure what Martin was doing there. The only thing he’d contributed over the course of a two-hour meeting was to suggest Ben rolled up his shirtsleeves for the forthcoming televised leadership debate.
When Martin left, Richard ventured to ask: ‘What’s he doing for you, exactly?’
Ben talked vaguely of ‘the need for a cultural advisor’ and then added: ‘He’s got a good instinct for how things might play out in areas we don’t have access to.’
‘Such as?’
‘Plebs and poofs,’ Jarvis answered, with his usual crassness.
Richard felt obliged to titter. It had been made clear to him that he was expected to defer to Jarvis in all matters, including whether things were funny or not.
‘And,’ Ben continued, ‘I’ve found in the past that, with Martin, it’s a case of better in than out.’
‘That’s what she said,’ Jarvis added, with tiresome inevitability.
‘I find it difficult to get a read on him,’ Richard offered.
Jarvis snorted.
‘Yeah. He’s a slippery little fucker.’
‘Jarvis has never been his biggest fan,’ Ben said. ‘And Martin has certain … well, shall we say, complexities. But he’s been loyal—’
‘Devoted, some might say.’ Jarvis smirked.
‘Now, now.’
‘What you need to know, Dick—’
‘Richard.’ He always tried to stop Jarvis calling him Dick.
‘What you need to know is that Martin has been madly in love’ – Jarvis adopted the campy, effete voice of a 1960sCarry Onstar – ‘with Benny Boy for longer than either of us can remember.’
‘Oh.’
Ben shook his head but Richard couldn’t help but notice he was grinning. Over the preceding weeks, Richard had come to understand just how much Ben revelled in attention of any description. It didn’t matter who it came from or what the context might be. What mattered most was that it was there.
‘Look, he’s only human,’ Ben said, holding up his hands with a goofy smile.
Richard, unsure what to say, studied the beige-knotted carpet in Ben’s study with great intensity. His eyes wandered to the kelim rug under Ben’s desk, woven with a repetitive triangular pattern in reds and browns.
‘I know he’s a bit of a pest, Jarvis, but would it really be too much to ask for you to play nice?’ Ben added. ‘Just until the leadership contest is over?’
‘Of course, of course,’ Jarvis said. ‘As long as we don’t have to appoint him to cabinet. Make him minister for the limp-wristed or some crap.’
‘I promise,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll find him some inoffensive non-exec role where he can’t do any harm, or I’ll just pay him off again.’
