Читать книгу Both Your Houses - Philip Gibbs - Страница 3

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A square-built, square-faced man of about fifty years of age—possibly fifty-five—stood for a few minutes looking down at the old Thames by Westminster. He took off his black felt hat and let a light breeze touch his silver-grey hair which needed cutting. He thought of that. ‘I must get a hair cut,’ he thought. There never seemed time now for things like that. It was a hard life, this political game. Not much home life. Not enough time for sleep—not eight hours which he regarded as his minimum. His wife—‘Mother’ as he called her—had startled him the other day, though he laughed at her, by a remark over the breakfast table.

“I wish we was back in the old days,” she said, “when you was foreman in the engineering shops at Rugby. We had a home then and you wasn’t a stranger to your own wife. It’s your ambition which has spoilt everything.”

Ambition? Yes, he supposed she was right in a way. He had always been ambitious. He liked leadership, the sense of mastery over men and affairs, the satisfaction of feeling that his words and his ideas had an influence over other men’s minds and made them act in the way he wanted—sometimes!

He had first tasted all that as a Trade Union leader, in Rugby. He had discovered the power of words, ‘the gift of the gab’ as some of his old pals called it. But there had been honesty behind it. He had never spoken insincerely. He had never been a liar, though now he knew that some of his early ideas and speeches had been very crude and violent. He had lost a lot of prejudices, perhaps too much of his old fire and passion. The House of Commons had tamed him down, and made him see the enormous difficulties of any Government. It was not so simple as he had thought, not so easy. England now was up against it. In only a few months—if American aid were not forthcoming—all our reserves would be gone. What then? Real hunger, perhaps, something like national bankruptcy. Inflation uncontrolled. Blue ruin for everybody!

And the international situation was deteriorating, to say the least of it. Oh well... Somehow old England would struggle through. He was certain of that.

This square-built, square-faced man became conscious of the scene about him, a familiar and beautiful scene on this day when there was a touch of spring, a faint far-off promise of spring, in the air. There was a glint of sunshine on the old river. Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament rose into a sky blue between the scudding white clouds.

On the Surrey side the brown roof of the County Hall looked old and mellow like a Dutch picture. On this side the Abbey was a symbol of English history, a shrine of all its ghosts from the beginning. He had read a bit of history. He had a sense of it in his bones and blood, and now he was helping to shape it as a Member of Parliament and one of the big noises in the T.U.C. Ambition? Not for pure selfishness, he hoped, nor for personal vainglory. He wanted to serve England in a time of enormous crisis when some of his political friends were getting frightened. Some of the Labour Ministers were frightened men.

He glanced up at Big Ben again. Ten minutes to three. Time to take his place for the debate on Foreign Affairs.

A young man spoke to him, a shabby young man in a dirty old raincoat, who leaned over the Embankment by his side.

“The Talking Shop!” he said. “Makes one sick.”

The elderly man glanced at him and smiled beneath his spiky eyebrows.

“Feel like that about it?”

“How long is this Labour Government going to play the fool?” asked the young man who, in spite of his shabbiness, spoke in a cultured way, ‘the Oxford accent’ with every ‘h’ in its right place.

“Doing its best,” said the elderly man.

“Making a shocking mess,” said the shabby young man. “Refusing to face realities. Taking away all our old liberties, on the way to totalitarianism on the Russian pattern.”

“Nothing like that,” answered the elderly man. “You’ve got it a bit wrong, young fellow. Think again.”

The young man breathed hard for a moment and there was a flash of anger in his eyes.

“I’ve thought a hell of a lot for the past six years, like others of my age and crowd who were fighting to save England. We expected something better than this grim kind of pantomime. ‘Work or Want’—work and want is more like it. There was one of those Labour swine on the wireless last night—talking about Pride of Work—Stephen Inchbold—‘Our Steenie’ as they call him—Chairman, or something, of the T.U.C. I wanted to strangle him.”

He stared fiercely at the elderly man and then a look of astonishment came into his eyes and he gave an uneasy laugh and spoke with a kind of stutter.

“Good lord!... Those eyebrows!... Low’s cartoons... You’re—you’re——”

“Yes,” said the elderly man with a grim kind of smile. “Good afternoon.”

He walked to the gate of the Palace of Westminster where a policeman saluted him smartly. Outside the gate a small group of men raised a spluttering cheer and one of them called out “Good old Steenie!”

Ambition? Those words nagged in the mind of Stephen Inchbold as he walked towards the entrance of the House. Well, he liked to get a cheer now and then. He enjoyed a fighting debate. And it was pretty marvellous that a boy who had been to an elementary school in Rugby, going hungry sometimes when his father was out of work, should now be helping to decide the fate of England. One day he might be in the Government. He wouldn’t shirk it though he knew the burden and the toil and the vast responsibility.

An aristocratic old man whom he knew by sight crossed his path and said, “Good afternoon, Inchbold,” very civilly. “I liked your broadcast talk last night.”

It was Lord Bramley, once Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and for forty years, off and on, holding high office in Tory administrations.

“Thanks, my lord,” answered Stephen Inchbold. He had to make an effort even now to address a Peer on equal terms.

“It ought to be an interesting debate this evening,” said Lord Bramley. “Thank God we have a Foreign Secretary who stands up for England in no uncertain way—at least as far as Russia is concerned.”

Inchbold nodded and then smiled slightly.

“A boy of the bulldog breed. But it’s all very dangerous—I mean our relations, or lack of relations, with Russia.”

“I agree.”

Lord Bramley gave a little groan. Inchbold noticed that the old man was not wearing an overcoat though there was a little bite in the wind despite the whisper of spring. His clothes hung loosely on his thin old body and his white shirt was frayed at the cuffs. But there was something elegant and aristocratic about him.

“I must be getting on,” said Inchbold. “Good afternoon, my lord.”

“Just a moment, Inchbold,” said this tall old man. “There was something I wanted to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“Have you a young relative on the Allied Control in Berlin?”

Inchbold was startled. Why should this old man ask him about Julian, that boy of his who never wrote unless he wanted some more money or a consignment of cigarettes which he seemed to use for barter purposes in Germany?

“Yes,” he answered, “my boy Julian.”

“Oh, really!” said Lord Bramley. “Well, good afternoon. I mustn’t keep you.”

He raised an ebony stick and passed on towards the entrance to the Lords.

It was very odd that when Inchbold was in the lavatory of the House of Commons a young Conservative member, Christopher Harington—rather a live wire and making a name for himself on the back benches—should ask the same question.

“By the way, sir,” he said after a moment’s comment on the debate, “do you happen to have a relative on the Allied Control in Berlin?”

“Yes,” said Inchbold. “My boy Julian. Why do you ask?”

Young Harington shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“Somebody mentioned him in a letter. I just wondered.”

For a second or two Stephen Inchbold felt uneasy. He hoped his boy Julian had not got into any trouble. Lord Bramley, Christopher Harington. Why were they asking about him? Julian had never been very reliable. Even as a schoolboy he had been very troublesome. There was that affair of pinching another boy’s pocket money. It was never quite proved against him, but was most painful to his father and mother. But he had done well in the war. How very odd that Bramley and Harington should enquire about him!

Inchbold went to his place on the Labour side of the House, and forgot this domestic question. There was a full house for the debate on Foreign Affairs.