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Chapter One: Office I spent May 2, hungover, waiting by the telephone. Practically everyone in the Parliamentary party did the same. Even newly elected MPs, callow youths of twenty-three who against every possible expectation of pundit or psephologist had taken seats from crusted and crusty sitting members, sat by their phones if they had them, wondering if their stunning victories had somehow caught the new Prime Minister's eye, and he would ring them and offer them something. Only the party's gadflies, too pleased with themselves and their careers as comic irritants, kept up the victory celebrations and let the phone go hang -- and even one or two of them by the next day had received a call and had had to be paged in alcoholic dens or discreetly fetched from houses of ill-repute.

Because it was the next day that mattered, of course. May 2 was for cabinet posts and for important noncabinet jobs in the Foreign Office or the Treasury. May 3 was for the lesser jobs in the lesser ministries -- posts that people like me, four years in Parliament and an occasional Opposition front-bench spokesman, might hope for. And how we did hope! How we did watch the television, dash out for an evening newspaper and dash back to the phone, ring our friends for hurried conversations about who was in, who had heard nothing yet, who was sure to hear before long.

At ten past two the phone rang. And it wasn't a friend, wasn't a constituent congratulating me or a local newspaper wanting a quote. It was Downing Street, inquiring whether it would be convenient for me to come and see the Prime Minister. Suppressing any inclination to irony or witticism, I murmuredrespectfully that it was quite convenient and that I would be there as soon as possible. I put the phone down reverently, but with a sudden rush of blood to the head I burst out into Cavaradossi's "Vittoria! Vittoria!" -- the cry of triumph turning into a horrible shriek on the high C as I ran to the door of my flat, straightening my tie in the hall mirror. I was already wearing my only suit.

I wonder what it felt like for those who didn't get a call, taking off their suits at night.

Twenty minutes later it was over. The scenario was this: drive from my Pimlico flat to the House, walk across Parliament Square to Downing Street, greet the policeman on the door and be ushered in (first time ever), brief wait, then into the PM's office, get the offer, restrain extravagant thanks (he'll have had enough of those, with nearly a hundred jobs to fill -- already the grin is a bit strained), then back to the front door, and out into Downing Street again.

There were still flushed and happy crowds at the gates that lead into Whitehall. As I'd gone through them I had heard people ask, "Who's that?" As I stood for a moment on the step, with the odd camera flashing, I wanted to go over to them and say: "I'm Colin Pinnock, and I'm the new junior minister in the Department of Education and Training, with special responsibility for the handicapped and the disadvantaged." On second thought it didn't seem like a good idea -- politicians have to have a quick nose for the potentially ridiculous -- and with one more smile to the much-diminished band of photographers, who were snapping as much for the record as for the newspapers, I walked directly to my new department in the tall, gloomy building in Great Smith Street.

They knew I was coming, of course. They'd been alerted from Downing Street as soon as I'd accepted. I was the fourth new minister they had received in two days.

"Welcome to the Department, Minister," said the doorman, and gestured to a little knot of welcomers, including the civil servant who was to be my private secretary and several members of his staff. After routine, slightly wary greetings all round they led me to the obscure part of the building from which our section functioned, and to my private office, where I was to assume responsibility for the halt and the blind, the slow learners and the underachievers, the late developers and the kids with special needs, the dyslexics and the inner-city dropouts.

"Let's get down to work," I said to my private secretary. "That means you briefing me."

Five hours later, in mid-evening, I decided to call it a day. I had learned volumes in that time. I decided I liked my private secretary, Patrick Latterby -- liked him in a trusting, low-keyed kind of way: I would no doubt have a drink with him from time to time, but it was never going to be a socializing, buddy-pal kind of relationship. He was straightforward, dependable, unexciting. Would anybody want an exciting civil servant (supposing one could be found) as his private secretary? I decided I was lucky.

I realized quite quickly that my predecessor had been a career politician with no interest in his particular responsibilities at the Ministry. All the initiatives and projects had come from his civil servants, and Patrick went over not only these but also various other options which had been discarded or put on the back burner and which he thought I might want to revive. We discussed the parameters of my job, the possibilities of it -- and, most usefully, the dangers. I was taken to meet the permanent secretary, a woman close to retirement age called Margaret Stevens, and we had a getting-to-know-you chat. She is the Secretary of State's principal adviser, a great force in the Department, practically a god. She dropped by into my little portion of her kingdom later on -- a most unusual occurrence, but changes in government bring exceptional necessities with them, and this dropping in brought the only oddity of my first day at the Department.

Patrick and I were going over papers, and I was conscious of the door opening. I glanced up, only to see her start. It was a tiny jump -- almost imperceptible, yet I perceived it, in the fraction of a second before my eyes tactfully went back to my papers again. Then she came forward and I rose to welcome her. She was entirely self-possessed by now, and put a folder down in front of Patrick.

"Potential land mine," she said. "Utmost secrecy and action soonest."

"Nothing to do with my appointment, I hope," I said smiling.

"Nothing at all. A matter your predecessor said he'd seen to six months ago but hadn't, and it could blow up in our faces. Patrick will fix it. You concentrate on the future."

That was all, and I put it out of my mind, and that tiny start as well. At eight o'clock we wound things up.

"You'll want to get back to your family," I said to Patrick, "and all I want to do at the moment is get back to my flat, pour myself a drink, feel chuffed with myself for an hour or two, then have an early night."

"Sounds sensible," Patrick Latterby said. "You're sure there's nothing else you want from me?"

"Nothing that can't wait till tomorrow."

He went off like a man who's beginning to think he's #in luck with his new boss. I packed a pile of papers into my nice new red box and walked back to fetch my car from the Palace of Westminster parking lot. I'd told Patrick I wouldn't want an official car and driver until next morning. The policeman on the gate gave me a broad grin.

"Got yourself a nice new job...sir?"

PC Marrit was always perky and always friendly. He had been complained about several times by ministers in the former government who equated friendliness with lack of respect. No doubt some of our people, with time, would contract the disease of self-importance.

"Department of Education. Couldn't have asked for anything more to my taste. Dealing with the handicapped and the deprived."

"Well, I'll expect results for my daughter, then."

"Is your daughter handicapped?"

"Not really -- only by the school she goes to. They don't expect anything from the kids so they don't get anything out of them."

I nodded.

"London schools are going to be one of our problems, or our challenges I suppose I should say."

I stayed talking to him for a minute or two, and then went to get my car. Even now, the evening after our election victory, driving was still that bit hazardous around Westminster -- there were people milling around, some of them drunkenly lurching off onto the road, camera crews still interviewing new MPs and in the interval sampling vox pop. I made it home, though -- in any case the intoxication of victory would not register on a Breathalyzer.

My flat is in a block called Ruskin Terrace that used to be all Council tenants. Some of them had been sold to tenants by Westminster City Council, and the man who sold me his made a breathtaking profit on the deal. It's on the third floor, has a view of the river, and is a good-sized family flat. I should feel guilty about living there, but mostly I just don't think about it. Someone farther along the balcony clapped as I approached my flat, and I grinned and waved like royalty. I took the lift up, let myself into the flat, stepping over a small mountain of post, and switched on the lights. The living room was clean and welcoming -- I had tidied up in the morning, while waiting for that phone call. I went into the kitchen, pulled out from the freezer a frozen portion of Bolognese sauce, then put it into a saucepan on the hot plate and began boiling water for the spaghetti. I stood for a moment savoring normality in the midst of tremendous upheaval. I opened a bottle of red wine, poured a good-sized glass, and went back to the living room.

Alone. Alone as a member of the government. Alone as a minister of the Crown. Alone as the minister responsible for children and adults who'd had a raw deal. The opportunities! The challenges! The dangers! I was high on the future, high on my career. I felt my life had been leading up to this, every tiny event a step forward, culminating in that handshake in Downing Street. I wondered if it would have felt even sweeter if I'd still had Susan to share it with me. Being honest with myself I didn't see how it could have been.

Music. I needed music. Not anything raucous and triumphal now -- something gentle, ruminative. Maybe something En-glish. English music isn't usually one of my things, but I found Vaughan Williams's Fifth and put it on the CD player. Then I went back to the hall to pick up my post.

Most of it wasn't post. The normal business of living and working and sending bills somehow gets suspended in Britain at election time. The real post at the bottom of the pile, which had been there when I left the flat that afternoon, was dwarfed by the cards, notes, scruffy pieces of paper that had been stuffed through my letterbox by neighbors and by friends who lived in the vicinity. Somehow or other the news of my appointment had got around. The cards and notes were congratulatory, hortatory, humorous, or satirical. Only one was a little snide -- not bad by the standards of political life. An Australian research assistant I'd used, a young student with the most exquisite English accent, had scrawled "Good on yer, Cobber" on a National Portrait Gallery card of Clem Attlee. I chuckled, suspended operations for the moment, and went to put on the spaghetti. Then I came back to continue going through the pile.

The top one was an old-fashioned plain postcard, rather grubby round the edges. It had a stamp on it, but the stamp hadn't been postmarked. The address was correct, in easily legible, rather old-fashioned handwriting which somehow suggested to me that the sender didn't do a great deal of writing these days. I turned the card over. On the blank reverse there was written, in capitals, one stark question:

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Copyright © 1999 by Robert Barnard