The Madness of July Read online

  ‘I heard something yesterday. Just a word muttered in the undergrowth. That’s why I scrambled you overnight; got you here fast. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Give it to me, Sam.’

  ‘It could be you.’ His hand was on Flemyng’s arm. ‘The one they’re after.’

  2

  Lucy Padstowe, twenty-nine and a woman of steely confidence, was shaking as she put down the phone. Melancholy visited her from time to time; but genuine alarm, the kind that penetrated to the core, was rare. Her habitual calm had been strengthened by two years in charge of the private office, riding the excitements and ploughing through the weary troughs, so the cabinet secretary’s words had brought on a tremor of unease that was unfamiliar to her. She closed the door to the inner office and sat behind Flemyng’s desk.

  The window was shut despite the heat, and long white net drapes kept out the glare of the sun. She arranged his papers, embarrassed herself by trying the top drawer of his desk and finding it locked, and started trying to track him down. She’d turn to his network, which was hers as well as Flemyng’s, the gift of her ministerial patron to his closest civil servant which shaped her days and coloured both their lives. She took to its byways to try to find him.

  Ringing Jonathan Ruskin’s office on the other side of Downing Street was a natural start. The Co-ordinator sat in an island mid-stream and events flowed towards him. Colleagues thronged at his door, with favours to trade. Although he was a graceful bird of passage in government and a master of the soothing phone call, the barons of Whitehall had a natural resistance to his existence. With the power to break the territorial rules by which officials lived, Ruskin was a constant irritant. For gossip, however, he was always reliable. And around the watering holes of Westminster, he was fun.

  She rang his office first: ‘Lucy in Will Flemyng’s office. Has my man dropped in?’ – but she got nothing, tried Jay Forbes’s private secretary next and felt the tinge of frost that came with Defence, even gave Sparger’s people at the Home Office a call despite their minister’s serpentine ways, and talked to Harry Sorley’s bag-carrier at Education, although she was sure Flemyng would avoid that quarter for the moment. There were two or three others, and a disingenuous call to the press people downstairs just in case. No news. His constituency secretary knew nothing, but begged for a quick word in the afternoon; Flemyng’s chairman was agitated.

  Lucy was lost.

  She considered her options and after a few moments rang the cabinet secretary’s office, aware of her nerves. ‘Is Paul around? Lucy Padstowe again. Sorry to come back so quickly, but I need him if he’s there.’

  The line went quiet, a red light winking every two seconds on Flemyng’s phone as she waited. Then Paul Jenner himself. ‘Have you spoken to Will?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no. I’m sure he’ll be here soon. But I’m afraid I have to confess something that I didn’t say earlier. I don’t know where he’s been, or why.’ She added, by way of defence, ‘Does this sound odd?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Paul. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m just saying.’

  She found herself continuing without waiting for an answer. ‘It’s natural that I’m a bit worried, given what you said a few minutes ago. Unusual things have been happening.’ Her voice was speeding up. ‘He’s been distracted. Off-kilter. No fun around the office, and you know what he’s like.’ She rushed on. ‘I’m sorry, I know this is a little embarrassing. Private secretaries shouldn’t blab.’

  ‘I wish more of them did. Let me know when Will’s back. I’ll need him here. He’s just away from his phone. Some day we’ll find a way of tracking them everywhere – can’t come soon enough for me – but there’s nothing we can do for now. Try not to worry.’

  The conversation was over. Having wound herself up, the words tumbling out, Lucy felt a heaviness in the room as if time was slowing down around her, forcing her to think. She’d suspected from his voice that Paul Jenner, spider at the centre of her web, was trying to suppress a tremor of his own, which surprised her because his command appeared effortless and the power of his writ was unquestioned, running through every channel of government, from its sacred places to the last secret corner. Nothing bypassed Paul. She pictured him at his vast desk, looking to the high bow window that gave on to the park, his perfectly round grey eyes unblinking while he concentrated. Flemyng said that when he was in that mood it looked like the onset of petit mal; but Paul never lost control.

  Back to her minister. One of her assistants had seen Flemyng leave the office about an hour earlier, and told Lucy that nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Jacket over his shoulder, he had traded smiles with her in the corridor as he turned towards the broad staircase to take him down, gesturing to the sunshine outside. His tie was loose, the collar of his pink shirt open.

  He had told the office that he would need no driver, so Lawrence could have a quiet lunchtime with no fear of a summons. The weather was up and there were personal errands to run, no more than that. The word was a welcome breeze in the private office. ‘He’ll be buying a birthday present,’ someone said. ‘No,’ said Lucy. ‘Covent Garden for lunch, I’d say.’ But she wondered why he hadn’t told her.

  In his absence, a lazy air settled on the three rooms that protected Flemyng’s own; the tea trolley squeaked to a stop in the corridor, and a little queue formed; leisurely gossip flowed through ministerial offices, each protecting its own oasis. Everyone was trying to enforce the calm, driven on by the heat. Meetings were cancelled across Whitehall, as if to hurry summer along.

  Little Simon, than whom no one was more junior, was putting together pen portraits of backbenchers due for end-of-term drinks on Monday, writing in loopy longhand because the new electric typewriters ran away with him – and because it was a shirt-sleeve day and lunchtime, with the minister not at his desk, he pushed the boat out, rowing with schoolboy gusto, stripping the guests of their last shreds of dignity. Wife trouble, new boyfriend, money worries, love affairs with the booze… all the chatter he’d heard. It would be filleted and cleaned up in the afternoon, the list rendered acceptable for Flemyng’s overnight red box, but no one took Simon aside for a heavy word of advice, which was a symptom of the season, because in sharper, cooler times he’d have been pressed against the wall and filleted himself for his foolishness. But it was hot, and rules were suspended.

  Summer had come and parliament would rise in a few days. Relief, and everyone felt the beguiling touch of an unexpectedly balmy time. From the office they could sniff the atmosphere beyond the long windows, see the greenery through the scaffolding that had gripped the building for a year and more. Layers of soot and grime were being scraped away and carted off in processions of wagons that left black trails along Whitehall; the inner courtyard held a ring of iron skips filled with decades of pigeon droppings from the roof, and an acrid reminder lingered in every hallway. Some day, they were told, their Victorian palace would shine again, a painting with its bloodless colours restored and cracks healed. But not yet.

  Lucy wondered how she would explain to Flemyng why Paul wanted to see him. Peering through her window, streaked with dust, she sensed the warmth outside.

  Taking to the corridor to steady herself, she set off on a clockwise circumnavigation of the building. It echoed to scraping and banging from the courtyard. They were carrying off the skips again.

  It would have been no reassurance to her as she walked out of the office if she had known that at that moment Flemyng had been lost to the world for a minute or two in the fetid heat of a phone box near Oxford Circus. A hand banged on the door. ‘Get on with it!’ Then banged again. Flemyng, who had not entirely lost his capacity for embarrassment, burst from the box without ringing Lucy as he’d meant to, and walked quickly to a bus stop with his head down. She would have to wait. He ignored a taxi rank, climbed on the platform of a bus that was crawling towards the traffic lights, and swung through a crowd of Dutch schoolchildren on the bottom deck
. It would be a slow haul down Regent Street, and the more welcome for that.

  The man next to him leaned across.

  ‘I know who you are.’

  Flemyng’s head snapped back.

  ‘Sorry, but I saw you on TV the other night. You weren’t bad. Better than the bird in the red dress anyway. A bimbo, that one.’

  Flemyng said, ‘Well, we try our best.’

  ‘Mind you, I can’t remember your name. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Flemyng.’

  ‘That’s it. I’ve always had you down as one of the posh ones. Top drawer. I’m surprised to see you on the bus, Mr Flemyng. Nice, though. You working today?’

  ‘There you are, you see. Taking the bus, taxpayers’ interests at heart. Just out for a few minutes.’ Flemyng smiled and leaned towards his companion. ‘Good to meet you.’ They had reached Pall Mall. He took his leave, crossed the street and headed for the park. From the top of the Wellington steps he could see the window of his own office through the trees, three along from the foreign secretary’s corner lair. Five minutes away at a gentle pace.

  Behind the window, Lucy was back at her desk and making another call. ‘Francesca, it’s me.’

  ‘Hi. What’s up?’

  ‘Have you got my wandering minister with you?’

  ‘Wandering?’

  ‘I need him.’

  ‘No. Don’t you know where he is?’ Flemyng’s wife laughed. ‘That’s a change.’

  ‘Just out, that’s all.’

  She knew Francesca would be alerted by the oddness of the word. Lucy was precise about where her man was, day and night, the dog who was never off his leash. ‘Out’ carried no conviction.

  ‘Any ideas?’

  Francesca wondered aloud whether he might be present-hunting for her birthday the next month, then they shared their puzzlement in a moment of silence.

  ‘Probably a quick walk in the park,’ Lucy said, unconvincingly.

  She could sense Francesca treading water. Her voice was deep and smooth. and Flemyng often spoke about its hypnotic effect, her style being elegant and unhurried. She was two years older than him, although she had looked the younger at their wedding the previous summer, and Lucy had concluded early in her time with him that it was from Francesca he absorbed some of the free spirit that enlivened their office. She often thought that in Flemyng’s character, gaiety and darkness were always struggling with each other. Without Francesca there might have been more frenzy.

  Now Francesca said, ‘Well, he needs to be back for the opera,’ changing the tempo. In her professional role as social manager at Covent Garden – queen bee of the opera party, Flemyng called her – she had become the famed impresario of the interval encounter, and a simple supper she had planned for the private room was getting bigger by the hour. ‘The cabinet secretary’s office has been on,’ she said. ‘There are two Americans coming from somewhere, and now it’s going to be Paul Jenner himself and two other ministers on top of that. I still don’t know who. His office have put it together. All of a sudden it’s turned quite… political. They’re laying on lobster – the works. Can you warn Will?’

  ‘Americans?’ said Lucy.

  ‘Yup. But from where I don’t know, if you see what I mean. I expect you’ve noticed he’s been a bit distracted in the last week or two. I don’t know how much he’s told you.’ No response from Lucy, so Francesca plunged on. ‘There’s a thing going on in his family that seems to be awkward. News to you?’

  Lucy said that organizing his life in government was difficult enough without families getting in the way, and avoided the point.

  The conversation made a quiet and quick gear change, without warning, as if they had pushed open a door together. ‘Can I be frank?’ said Francesca.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Something else has knocked him sideways, and I’m not sure what it is. You know how much Will enjoys his politics. Now it all seems to be turning sour for him, and quickly. That’s what troubles me.’

  Lucy didn’t hesitate, aware that a pause would produce awkwardness. ‘I’ve noticed. Don’t know anything about family matters, of course.’ By unspoken agreement, as if the conversation needed to be wrapped up before it took on too many complications, they were quick to wind things up.

  Francesca asked, ‘Anything on your desk that might have caused all this, if you’re allowed to tell me?’

  ‘Nothing that comes to mind. Pretty routine right now.’

  Then an offer from Francesca. ‘Lunch next week, OK?’

  ‘Please.’

  Francesca said, ‘I’m glad. I’ll fix it.’

  The two women spoke of a sultry weekend, and the unreliability of men who didn’t say where they were going, and made cheerful farewells because neither wanted the conversation to drift. Lucy closed the outer door again to get some quiet, ignoring a thick file that she saw being placed on her desk. There was too much uncertainty. Americans turning up, names unknown, to sit with him and two other ministers for a whole evening, and at the bidding of the cabinet secretary. Paul should have told her. She shifted in her chair. Coincidences, Flemyng always said, were never what they seemed.

  *

  At the Royal Opera House, Francesca was feeling a ripple that disturbed the heaviness settling over everything with the rising heat. She didn’t believe the birthday-present story that she’d concocted for reassurance, knowing Flemyng to be a last-minute merchant, but she had needed to confide in Lucy. She leaned out of her window near the top of the building, put both elbows on the ledge, and found a faint stream of fresh air. The crowds of high summer were down below, around the old vegetable market, now empty and a place of bare stone since the last traders had been shunted south of the river to their new home. A place of memories and sweet echoes. Murmurs from the holidaymakers rose towards her. She looked over the rooftop landscape towards the river. It was just an unusual day. Her man had wanted to be out of the office, get some air, have a break. That was all.

  But Lucy was off balance, which broke the pattern on which they all depended. Francesca let her eyes scan the heads of the crowd below, an anonymous throng, close and yet unaware of her gaze. A singer was practising in a dressing room one floor below, window open, and Francesca listened for a few minutes. The voice was Russian, melancholic, lonely.

  The phone on her desk was just behind her, and its ringing shook her out of her mood. A secretary from Paul Jenner’s office.

  ‘I have the names. They’re all looking forward to it. We’re so glad Will can make it, and we’re sorry to be in such a rush. You know how it goes.’

  ‘That’s just how we like it,’ Francesca said. ‘It’s opening-night panic here.’

  In Whitehall, the pavements were thick with gangs of visitors, the curious and the lost. Crackling commentaries spilled from the open-topped tour buses and a few words floated through the window in Flemyng’s inner office that Lucy had decided she must open at last.

  She was still at the desk, fiddling with a heavy black pen but writing nothing. She didn’t know he had arrived back until the door opened and he was standing in front of her. She noticed sweat stains on his pink shirt, and a hint of wildness in his hair. But he smiled.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I went for walk. I’m allowed to, don’t you think?’ He was still smiling, hanging his jacket on the coatstand, undoing another shirt button. Looking away as he spoke, he said, ‘Anything up? An exciting telegram maybe?’ He busied himself with an open red box on the corner of the desk, and she saw the nervousness in his shuffling with the files inside. He closed it and turned the lock with the tiny brass key that went back into his pocket.

  Lucy was ready. Her tremble had gone, and she was alert to every change in his expression. He was relaxing, but she spotted the effort in masking the tiredness. Lucy said he should sit down, and even gestured to his chair as she stood up from it, in charge again.

  She took his place in the doorway, turning away to close the door quie
tly. Spinning round, strands of light red hair sweeping across her face, she sensed that they were both reluctant to break the deep silence. His eyes were fixed on her, and she realized that his concentration had kicked in.

  ‘You’re going to have to get to Paul’s office quickly,’ she said.

  ‘Paul? Quickly?’

  She watched him lean back and slip one hand into his shirt, touching the scar.

  ‘When you were out…’ and she added with a deliberate hint of the cruelty that intimates understand ‘… wherever you were…’

  He was utterly still.

  ‘…I heard some strange tidings from Paul. And bad, however you look at it.’

  His hands were back on the desk and she saw that he was trying to hold them still.

  ‘There’s a dead American. And he has your phone number in his pocket.’

  3

  Half a world away, at the moment when Flemyng got his summons to Paul Jenner’s office, the clock on Grauber’s kitchen wall in New York was showing eight-fifteen. He set coffee on the hob and quickly took the four steps outside the house for a walk to the bakery three blocks away.

  Hannah would be up when he got back, kids too, and there would be time together before he headed uptown to the mission and his desk. He wanted to lift his mood after a broken night, and the auguries were good. A storm had powered down the Hudson Valley in the evening and was safely out to sea, leaving a layer of lightness on the city. The skyline sparkled in gratitude, the weight of the last week gone and the air on the move. The freshness encouraged Grauber to find a spring in his step, despite the day ahead.

  He was above medium height, though not tall enough to stand out, and slim. Against the fashion his hair was cut close to the skull, almost to stubble, and that often gave him a serious look whether he liked it or not. He had the advantage that when he smiled, a dimple on his chin gave him an air of cheerfulness that even suggested frivolity. His outward appearance could change in an instant. But most of the time his jet black eyes under shadowed lids, and lips that were heavier than his finely boned face might have promised, seemed to veer towards gloom. This was misleading but helped at work, where he carried serious burdens.