Читать книгу A Scandalous Man - Gavin Esler - Страница 13

It was the day the scandal broke in 1987. Harry was in the hallway of the family house in Pimlico, chewing the cuffs of his blazer, looking at his reflection in the big mirror with the pitch pine surrounds. He could hear his father and mother arguing in the breakfast room. A newspaper was thrown. A door was slammed. More doors were slammed. There was coming and going. His father switched the radio on so he could listen to the Today programme. His mother switched the radio off so she did not have to listen to the Today programme.

‘Elizabeth, please!’

‘How could you, Robin? How could you?’

‘Elizabeth, I …’

‘But how could you! Did you never once think of me or the children? Just once think of someone other than yourself? Ever?’

His father’s silence was the loudest silence Harry had ever heard. He pushed his maths book into his school bag. He tried to screw up his courage. He wanted to walk into the breakfast room and tell them to be quiet, but he did not dare. Amanda was at the top of the stairs wide-eyed. She was near to tears as she clumped down and stood next to him.

‘I need my gym kit,’ Harry said.

‘And I need to leave,’ Amanda responded. ‘Let’s go in together, Aitch.’

He did not look convinced.

‘Come on,’ she took his hand, sticky with sweat. ‘How bad can it be?’

Both children were brittle and nervous. Amanda opened the door. Their mother was sitting at the table, head in hands, crying. Their father was standing behind her in his dark blue suit, white shirt, red tie, his patriotic Union Jack uniform. He was pleading with her.

‘Elizabeth, can I …’ He looked up and yelled at the children in the doorway. ‘What on earth do you want?’

‘Robin!’ his mother screamed, like a whip in the air. ‘Don’t talk to them like that. They are only children for god’s sake, and they live here too. I take it you did not give a moment’s thought to them, either, when you embarked on this … this … adventure?’

Then she changed tone.

‘Yes, my darlings.’ She started drying her eyes. ‘What is it you need?’

Harry started to explain about his gym kit. Their father stomped out of the room. Ten minutes later they heard his black ministerial car pull up outside and a lot of shouting from the reporters as he left. Their mother took them into the hallway. Harry bit at his blazer cuff. Amanda danced on her toes. His mother quickly put on her coat and sensible shoes, then opened the front door.

The sound of camera lenses and flashbulbs hit them like machine-gun fire. And the shouting. The start of the siege. Harry wanted to take cover in his burrow, or to die. Either way, to get it over with.

‘Mrs Burnett, just a quick word …’

‘How did you find out, Mrs Burnett?’

‘Did your husband tell you why he did it?’

‘What do you think of the girl?’

‘… male menopause …’

(Laughter.)

‘… Carla Carter in her knickers?’

‘Can he really expect to keep his job?’

‘… midlife crisis?’

‘… Victorian values … would this be one of them, then?’

‘She says he was a great and considerate lover …’

‘—did you …’

‘—boob job?’

‘Slapper?’

‘… Carla Carter …’

(Laughter.)

‘… can you …?’

‘…lover…’

‘… how are the children taking …’

‘… lover …’

Harry’s mother stared at the cameras, big-eyed like a seal about to be clubbed. She grabbed both children by the collars of their jackets and pulled them back into the house, slamming the door on the marauders. They stood for a moment together, unsure what to do, then his mother fell to the floor in the hallway and began sobbing uncontrollably on her knees. Harry went towards her and put his arms round her neck. He fell on her, in tears. Amanda did the same. None of them noticed the letter box opening. Fingers pushed inside, with exquisite slowness. Then a camera lens stuck through. The camera captured the moment for the following morning’s newspapers. The by-line for the story was for Stephen Lovelace, and above it the word ‘EXCLUSIVE’ in big black letters. The headline said: ‘BETRAYED!’ The photograph showed what looked like a protective circle of the three of them, arms round each other’s shoulders, the heap of a broken family. The lingerie model pictures were on pages 3, 4 and 5. Sometime later that year at the UK Press Awards the photographer won a prize. The picture was described as ‘one of the iconic images of the twentieth century.’ One art critic compared it to Canova’s Three Graces, under the headline: ‘Three Dis-Graces.’ Another called it ‘a twentieth century political pieta.’

A columnist in the Guardian described it in his book about Mrs Thatcher as ‘the symbolic moment when Thatcherism began to hollow out from the inside, like a meringue. Though it took several more years to collapse, this was the moment when we knew she was doomed. She probably knew it too.’

Harry stared into the mirror. He thought of himself and his mother and sister together in the hallway of their own home, in tears, and of the moment when Mrs Thatcher was doomed. Like a meringue.