A Scandalous Man. Gavin Esler
smiling, with cups and a plate of bourbon biscuits.
‘The burglar alarm in the flat is off,’ he said, placing the tray in front of Harry. ‘I turn it off for the cleaners. I will re-set it when you leave. Your father was very particular about his security. I’m pleased to say he trusted me. Trusts me. He called this his “Place of Safety”. I like to think of it like that. A haven, if you will.’
Harry waited for an explanation. There wasn’t one. Sidney picked up his own tea-cup and smiled again.
‘You knew him well?’
Sidney shrugged.
‘For many years I have had the pleasure of knowing your father in my professional capacity. We are neighbours, so to say. My wife and I have a flat in the basement here. Very handy, it is. Otherwise we would certainly never be able to afford Hampstead, prices being what they are. Your father was – is – a great man, Harry. I hope you don’t mind me saying so. I am sure he will pull through.’
‘Thank you again,’ Harry responded, now somewhat embarrassed. ‘Why do you think he called this his “Place of Safety”?’
Sidney Pearl looked thoughtful.
‘I am not sure that I could answer that, except to say that many of our owners put a lot of store in their privacy. And who can blame them? We have television people here, business people, politicians. Celebrities, so to say. These kind of people have no privacy nowadays, do they?’ Sidney nodded at the window, ‘Not out there, in that world. It’s a fishbowl. Always someone trying to sneak a picture or ask an impertinent question. I sometimes think there is no such thing as privacy any more for anyone who seeks to serve the public. But in here in the Mansions, well, it’s different, isn’t it? Safe. And after… well, you know … after it all blew up around your father, I suppose that a lot of things happened that made him … cautious.’
‘Yes,’ Harry agreed. ‘A lot of things did happen.’
‘They hunted him, sir.’ Sidney Pearl sounded aggrieved. ‘They hunted him like it was a sport.’
‘Fox-hunting and politician-hunting,’ Harry replied. ‘Traditional British blood sports. Ought to be banned.’
They agreed it was an awful business. Harry sipped his black tea and sucked a bourbon biscuit. Sidney Pearl put his own cup to the side and busied himself with a ledger on the desk.
‘May I ask you something, Sidney?’
‘Of course. Anything at all.’
‘You said my father was a great man. Why was that exactly?’
Sidney Pearl looked surprised, as if the answer was so obvious it did not bear repeating.
‘Well, he changed this country, didn’t he? He – and others like him – got us back to work, got the unions off our backs, made us feel it wasn’t all hopeless.’
Now it was Harry who looked surprised.
‘Oh, you’re too young to remember, a young man like you.’
Harry agreed.
‘I was born in 1979. On the day Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister. My sister jokes that I am one of Thatcher’s Children and that if I’d been a girl my father would have called me Maggie.’
‘Were you born that day? Were you indeed?’ Sidney beamed. ‘Well then, until the moment you arrived among us this country couldn’t do anything right. Our cars were rubbish. I had a British Leyland. Montego it was. Named after a Bay in Jamaica. Very fancy. Only it leaked oil in my driveway and wouldn’t start in the winter. Chap next door had Japanese – a Honda. We laughed at him at first, but it didn’t leak anything, ever, and started every morning without trouble. Nowadays the Japanese have a car industry and we don’t. Tells you something, doesn’t it? People were always on strike. The buses, the trains, the council workers. Your father helped turn it all around. On top of that he is a gent, a real gent. Invited me and the family to the House of Commons. Several times, it was. A big man always has time for the little people, if you get my meaning. The cleaners, the gardeners. Your father always had a kind word or two. He has character, Harry. And character is destiny, isn’t that what they say?’
Harry finished his biscuits in silence. The man Sidney Pearl had just described was a complete stranger to him.
‘Why don’t you go up to the flat,’ Sidney said. ‘I’ll send the police on, when they arrive. If they ever do turn up. You can’t be certain, can you, with any of the public services nowadays? You get what you pay for.’
Harry thought for a moment and then did as he was told. He wanted to look around the home of a person of character. A big man. A great man. And he wanted to see what a Place of Safety might look like.
The elevator was retro. It had criss-crossed metal doors, glass panels, 1920s art deco in style, but it moved up the shaft to the top floor silently, with twenty-first century efficiency. The doors opened on a marble-white corridor which Harry noticed smelled of disinfectant. The hallway was lit by gleaming chandeliers. The carpet was rich, thick and blue. Everything seemed very clean, especially compared to the grime of the Tube.
‘A Conservative party carpet,’ Harry muttered jovially. ‘Rich, thick and blue.’
He had the sensation that he was bouncing on a trampoline, jumping in the air like a child on Christmas day, as he approached the apartment door.
‘My inheritance,’ he whispered.
There were two locks. Harry twisted the keys and eventually managed to get the door open. A yellowish glow from the sun was falling on the windows. They faced out towards the heath. Harry took a deep breath and walked quickly around. It was bigger than he had imagined. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, three reception rooms, a hall and an enormous modern kitchen, granite and sherry-coloured wood with German appliances. Harry stood for a moment gazing in wonderment. He did not know much about property prices, but the apartment would be worth at least two million pounds, probably more. Three million. Hampstead prices. And it did not look like anything his father would ever buy.
Besides, how could he afford it? Robin Burnett had not earned anything, as far as Harry knew, since the scandal broke. He had resigned immediately from the government and quit as an MP. He had no job. He had written no memoirs. There was no deal with the press. No income. Despite the offers from the newspapers, from Stephen Lovelace and the others – or perhaps because of them – Harry’s father had defiantly refused to write his side of the story. No kiss, no tell, for almost twenty years. Or at least, not by him. The only quote Robin Burnett was known to have given on the scandal was typically opaque. He was challenged by a TV crew on the doorstep of his Pimlico house as he left it for the last time.
‘Those who speak, do not know,’ he said. ‘Those who know, do not speak.’
‘What do you mean by that, Mr Burnett?’ the interviewer shouted.
‘Res ipsa loquitur,’ was all they got by way of explanation. The thing speaks for itself. As far as Harry knew, that was his father’s last public statement to anyone about anything, and typical of his father, it was in Latin.
Immediately in front of Harry in the apartment there was a striking antique mirror, full length, with pitch pine surrounds. Harry had seen a mirror like that before. In another hallway.
In another life, during his childhood in the house in Pimlico. As he stared at it, the memories shaking his bones, the telephone rang. He followed the noise and found the phone in the main room of the apartment, on a table next to a baby grand piano.
‘It’s Sidney Pearl, Harry. The police have just called. They say they do not think they can make it today. Can you believe it? Two shootings of teenagers in South London. Bad traffic. The election being called. Some kind of security alert. Bomb scare. Every excuse in the book except that the dog ate their homework. They wondered would it be convenient to call at the flat tomorrow morning, and meet you then?’
‘Of