Part Forty Six
Snowball was led back through the gates of Larkhall by a coldly silent Di barker whose wall of cold hatred even she could feel. Her eyes travelled not an inch away from the route her eyes had marked out for herself to her cell, neither looking to left or right.
"Did it go all right in court, man," Denny's cheeky voice piped up with much more of an edge of total loathing behind it."I mean, did they hang you out to dry."
"Aye, Merriman." Al's broad Scottish voice echoed the general feeling."Hanging's too good for you."
"You bitches." Was all that Snowball replied. She wanted to be alone with her own thoughts.
It had galled her that, day after day, she had watched from the sidelines while witness after witness were out to bring her down, first Ritchie's goddam mother, then that evil slag Betts, then that slimy creep Fenner, and then, and then…….that spineless mother's boy Ritchie. She loved him, more than anything else in her own troubled life yet he meekly caved in to that bitch of a barrister. She had watched him that day and saw how weak he was despite all his tough talk about being an Atkins. But then again, she had always known how to wrap him round her little finger. The truth was that she wore the trousers in their relationship.
And all the time they were getting all the attention and not her. She was just this blond haired woman who might as well be doing a walk on part instead of being centre stage where she belonged. She had always wanted attention ever since she could remember and, being a blond American babe, that gave her that attention. It didn't even matter if they hated her, at least she wasn't overlooked. She would make sure that everyone would remember her name like the repeat of that 'Fame' series sang. She wished she was there instead of in this prison dump, languishing behind bars. That kinda thing never happened to Greta Garbo. She, Snowball Merriman, did not 'vant to be alone', no siree.
In a different setting, George Channing elegantly sipped a glass of dry white wine while Neil Houghton had his back turned to her, sat in an armchair and reading the Daily Telegraph. A tall lampstand casting its limited glow on him and him alone gave him all the illumination that he needed. In a domestic setting, he did not have the juvenile fantasies that his leader Tony Blair had of being a failed rock star, dressing down in jeans and open neck shirt and getting his Fender Stratocaster guitar out of its case and playing some abominable row for the neighbours. No, Neil Houghton was a more serious minded man altogether, believing that any distraction in his private life, detracted from his single minded purpose of being in the driving seat of the most professional Labour Party cabinet there had ever been. He was proud of himself, being in that rarefied, most exclusive club of all time partaking of that most addictive drug of all time, that of the appetite for power. Not that he would himself have thought of it in these terms as that required a capacity for insight into the workings of his own mind that he would sooner leave quietly undisturbed. He merely took it for granted that his way of thinking was what motivated mankind, responsiveness to the rewards of peer approval, of being in the right place at the right time, the knowledge that Gordon and Tony smiled on his ability to deliver good news every time. He knew what that approval was worth as he saw also their looks of disdain at the less adept of his colleagues when they failed to deliver their agenda mapped out for them. The name of the game, as a cabinet minister, was that there was no failure. You only had one chance at the most before you sensed that the political fixers would whisper in Tony's ear and next thing you knew was that there was a Cabinet reshuffle and it was back to the anonymity of the back bench, worse that you were labelled a 'has been' and that was not what he had entered politics for.
That wasn't the entirety of his daily business. There came the time when he had to take himself to his local Party Constituency activists and mouth platitudes to keep them happy, to allay their irrational fears like a father would do to his child. That was what he was there for. Worse still were the two monthly MPs surgeries when he had to take himself to some ageing Victorian draughty social club in some bare room and hear the whinges of some local busybody with too much time on his hands who had some frustrated celebrity fix, even if in opposition. They would take some crumpled paperwork out of their inside pockets and ask, half demanding, half-servile, that he himself would personally ensure that such and such little thing could be put right. He did the verbal equivalent of patronisingly pat them on the head and mouth some vague promise while, all the time, scribble some notes and hand it to the lowest underling in his department and dismiss it from his mind. He would then take his car and drive a hundred miles home and shower all the grubby filth of meeting these bodies off of himself. Of course, whoever heard of an MP actually living in the Constituency that he served. You got placed as MP according to your status. Some new one would be MP on the make got to stand for Epsom. A Cabinet Minister of his importance got the dead safe seat of a Manchester constituency with the added bonus that the airport nearby could jet you to Heathrow in half the time it took by ministerial car or, heaven preserve him, some rattletrap train, even if it was first class.
This is where George came in. she was the perfect consort, with all the aristocratic graces you could wish for which, in these days of New Labour, wasn't going to interfere with his political allegiance. He could square that with his beliefs in the same way that he could square anything he could put his mind to.
George could be counted upon to help smooth the way at social occasions with her perfect style and was a positive asset to the relationship as people are judged, not only themselves, but by the woman on his arm. He felt totally confident that he could handle an intimate night out with Tony and Cherie. She does things so well. The only problem is that Deed irritant that she got hitched to in a moment of madness but then again, everyone has his moment of youthful indiscretion, like the CND march that he went on once. Thank heavens no paparazzi were around then to take photographs of a numberless, nameless member of the Labour party as it was then.
He did have the sense to never tie himself with the Unions. In his youth, they were the untrammelled wreckers of society, out on strike at the drop of the hat, ready to pose for the press and shout their ranting hyperbole at anyone within earshot. Thank god, Margaret Thatcher cut them down to size and soften them up for when we took over.
But now there are the least likely obstructionists around to cause trouble, the radical judiciary. Instead of sleeping their way through the political process and letting the executive gently guide them, a number of them have been infected with that malcontent spirit which in New Labour had been stamped out. Envy of the rich, an irresponsible desire to pull down the wealth creators is what burns their every thought, none more so than this Deed fellow. To make it worse, he is a renegade member of the upper classes. The very way Deed raised his eyebrows, the intonation of his speaking voice, the way he holds a cup and saucer speaks to him of an in-born comfortable privileged life which he seems hellbent in disrupting.
He brooded on the latest thing George is involved with, that fire at some prison. Some nameless criminal had died and some Americanised tart had been responsible who had also stabbed a photographer in Florida. Well, if the woman wants to make herself as an American, let our transatlantic friends have the privilege of putting her up on trial. Besides, their crime was the graver of the two even if the tart did come from Wigan in the first place. It caused a real stink in the press when it came out that some antiquated Victorian prison had let the woman construct a home made bomb, set off an explosion in the confusion of which, she nearly walks out through the front gate on an open day. If this is their idea of running a prison, places like them need a good shake up, wake their ideas up.
Neil Houghton put his paper down and George's voice spoke out of the increasing darkness outside the glow from the standard lamp.
"Neil darling, I thought it best to tell you that the court is likely to find the two defendants in the Larkhall Prison fire guilty of arson, and the death of a prisoner. I can see that they will be found guilty. There isn't much of a case to defend. I can see it coming a mile away." George spoke from out of the blue. She had been mulling over how best to give Neil the bad news before opting for the blunt truth.
"Is it that Deed character's doing?" Neil Houghton said in his coldest, most unpleasant tones. "You were sent in there to win this one for us, for the Government. How will I explain this one to the cabinet? Tony will hold me to blame and, up till now, I've always delivered, even if I have to bang a few heads together and threaten a few civil servants with compulsory transfers to Swansea DVLC and break a few careers. Lean on people enough and you get results. That's how we all work."
"It isn't as easy as that, Neil." George spoke more patiently than was her habit. "I'm a professional barrister, not a Minister able to click his fingers at civil servants to do his bidding."
"With your ex on the bench, I would have thought it would be perfectly easy to get that woman out of the government's hair and on a one way trip to the electric chair in Florida. Instead, I suppose the British taxpayer will have to stump up for her upkeep in a British prison."
"This is exactly why it is difficult, Neil. Do you honestly suppose that John would do me a favour for old time's sake? He'd be more likely to do the opposite to spite us." George was never known for her patience or her diplomacy and a strong urge was taking charge of her to tell this man who didn't comprehend anything outside his narrow world.
"I don't agree with you, George. I don't agree with you at all." Neil shook his head not wanting this sort of unwelcome news. In his Department, he had brought in a Human Resource psychologist who had looked at the way the Department was run and had hit upon the notion that if you changed the ways of expressing ideas, more favourable outcomes would result. At work, nobody came to him with a problem, that smacked of negativity. His underlings raised issues which could be resolved, action plans formulated and the right man would take the issue forward and report back to him. So why was he putting up with this obstreperous woman who kept arguing back at him and disagreeing with him. Than goodness, the civil servants who worked for him never saw him at home with the sort of domestic arguments, which were becoming more frequent, these days.
"The judiciary are independent of the executive or haven't you heard that one, Neil." George said coldly.
"Why, George. We appoint these people." Neil Houghton spoke in that manner that infuriated any person capable of human decency. However, because of the culture of nepotism, servility and a language that shackled free thought and free speech, he had no one around to act as a 'morals control', let alone a 'reality control.' That was the real problem with Government these days.
"It's like the bad old days of the unions which I thought we'd seen the back of with the likes of Deed around. God knows why you ever married him." sneered Neil Houghton.
His animosity towards the unions had been one consistent feature of his political life. It came down the basic fear that they represented an out of control, anarchical threat to the natural order which he was accustomed to of a political party exercising control over the political process for the people's best. That fear of anarchy took concrete and vivid form in the waves of discontent that exploded out of nowhere and wrecked the chance of an electable Labour Government. Characters like Deed were merely trade union rabble rousers, speaking in public school accents and wearing judge's robes. The lack of deference to their political betters was exactly the same.
"Look here, Neil." George said summoning up the last reserves of her patience. "I'm doing my best for the defendants to be found not guilty but I can't work miracles. If they are found guilty, don't you ever say that no one warned you." George ignored Neil Houghton's crack about John. She never passed up the chance to get embroiled in a heated argument with John when she met him but it was another matter for Neil to make insulting remarks. Quite why that was, she could never explain.
Snowball was led back through the gates of Larkhall by a coldly silent Di barker whose wall of cold hatred even she could feel. Her eyes travelled not an inch away from the route her eyes had marked out for herself to her cell, neither looking to left or right.
"Did it go all right in court, man," Denny's cheeky voice piped up with much more of an edge of total loathing behind it."I mean, did they hang you out to dry."
"Aye, Merriman." Al's broad Scottish voice echoed the general feeling."Hanging's too good for you."
"You bitches." Was all that Snowball replied. She wanted to be alone with her own thoughts.
It had galled her that, day after day, she had watched from the sidelines while witness after witness were out to bring her down, first Ritchie's goddam mother, then that evil slag Betts, then that slimy creep Fenner, and then, and then…….that spineless mother's boy Ritchie. She loved him, more than anything else in her own troubled life yet he meekly caved in to that bitch of a barrister. She had watched him that day and saw how weak he was despite all his tough talk about being an Atkins. But then again, she had always known how to wrap him round her little finger. The truth was that she wore the trousers in their relationship.
And all the time they were getting all the attention and not her. She was just this blond haired woman who might as well be doing a walk on part instead of being centre stage where she belonged. She had always wanted attention ever since she could remember and, being a blond American babe, that gave her that attention. It didn't even matter if they hated her, at least she wasn't overlooked. She would make sure that everyone would remember her name like the repeat of that 'Fame' series sang. She wished she was there instead of in this prison dump, languishing behind bars. That kinda thing never happened to Greta Garbo. She, Snowball Merriman, did not 'vant to be alone', no siree.
In a different setting, George Channing elegantly sipped a glass of dry white wine while Neil Houghton had his back turned to her, sat in an armchair and reading the Daily Telegraph. A tall lampstand casting its limited glow on him and him alone gave him all the illumination that he needed. In a domestic setting, he did not have the juvenile fantasies that his leader Tony Blair had of being a failed rock star, dressing down in jeans and open neck shirt and getting his Fender Stratocaster guitar out of its case and playing some abominable row for the neighbours. No, Neil Houghton was a more serious minded man altogether, believing that any distraction in his private life, detracted from his single minded purpose of being in the driving seat of the most professional Labour Party cabinet there had ever been. He was proud of himself, being in that rarefied, most exclusive club of all time partaking of that most addictive drug of all time, that of the appetite for power. Not that he would himself have thought of it in these terms as that required a capacity for insight into the workings of his own mind that he would sooner leave quietly undisturbed. He merely took it for granted that his way of thinking was what motivated mankind, responsiveness to the rewards of peer approval, of being in the right place at the right time, the knowledge that Gordon and Tony smiled on his ability to deliver good news every time. He knew what that approval was worth as he saw also their looks of disdain at the less adept of his colleagues when they failed to deliver their agenda mapped out for them. The name of the game, as a cabinet minister, was that there was no failure. You only had one chance at the most before you sensed that the political fixers would whisper in Tony's ear and next thing you knew was that there was a Cabinet reshuffle and it was back to the anonymity of the back bench, worse that you were labelled a 'has been' and that was not what he had entered politics for.
That wasn't the entirety of his daily business. There came the time when he had to take himself to his local Party Constituency activists and mouth platitudes to keep them happy, to allay their irrational fears like a father would do to his child. That was what he was there for. Worse still were the two monthly MPs surgeries when he had to take himself to some ageing Victorian draughty social club in some bare room and hear the whinges of some local busybody with too much time on his hands who had some frustrated celebrity fix, even if in opposition. They would take some crumpled paperwork out of their inside pockets and ask, half demanding, half-servile, that he himself would personally ensure that such and such little thing could be put right. He did the verbal equivalent of patronisingly pat them on the head and mouth some vague promise while, all the time, scribble some notes and hand it to the lowest underling in his department and dismiss it from his mind. He would then take his car and drive a hundred miles home and shower all the grubby filth of meeting these bodies off of himself. Of course, whoever heard of an MP actually living in the Constituency that he served. You got placed as MP according to your status. Some new one would be MP on the make got to stand for Epsom. A Cabinet Minister of his importance got the dead safe seat of a Manchester constituency with the added bonus that the airport nearby could jet you to Heathrow in half the time it took by ministerial car or, heaven preserve him, some rattletrap train, even if it was first class.
This is where George came in. she was the perfect consort, with all the aristocratic graces you could wish for which, in these days of New Labour, wasn't going to interfere with his political allegiance. He could square that with his beliefs in the same way that he could square anything he could put his mind to.
George could be counted upon to help smooth the way at social occasions with her perfect style and was a positive asset to the relationship as people are judged, not only themselves, but by the woman on his arm. He felt totally confident that he could handle an intimate night out with Tony and Cherie. She does things so well. The only problem is that Deed irritant that she got hitched to in a moment of madness but then again, everyone has his moment of youthful indiscretion, like the CND march that he went on once. Thank heavens no paparazzi were around then to take photographs of a numberless, nameless member of the Labour party as it was then.
He did have the sense to never tie himself with the Unions. In his youth, they were the untrammelled wreckers of society, out on strike at the drop of the hat, ready to pose for the press and shout their ranting hyperbole at anyone within earshot. Thank god, Margaret Thatcher cut them down to size and soften them up for when we took over.
But now there are the least likely obstructionists around to cause trouble, the radical judiciary. Instead of sleeping their way through the political process and letting the executive gently guide them, a number of them have been infected with that malcontent spirit which in New Labour had been stamped out. Envy of the rich, an irresponsible desire to pull down the wealth creators is what burns their every thought, none more so than this Deed fellow. To make it worse, he is a renegade member of the upper classes. The very way Deed raised his eyebrows, the intonation of his speaking voice, the way he holds a cup and saucer speaks to him of an in-born comfortable privileged life which he seems hellbent in disrupting.
He brooded on the latest thing George is involved with, that fire at some prison. Some nameless criminal had died and some Americanised tart had been responsible who had also stabbed a photographer in Florida. Well, if the woman wants to make herself as an American, let our transatlantic friends have the privilege of putting her up on trial. Besides, their crime was the graver of the two even if the tart did come from Wigan in the first place. It caused a real stink in the press when it came out that some antiquated Victorian prison had let the woman construct a home made bomb, set off an explosion in the confusion of which, she nearly walks out through the front gate on an open day. If this is their idea of running a prison, places like them need a good shake up, wake their ideas up.
Neil Houghton put his paper down and George's voice spoke out of the increasing darkness outside the glow from the standard lamp.
"Neil darling, I thought it best to tell you that the court is likely to find the two defendants in the Larkhall Prison fire guilty of arson, and the death of a prisoner. I can see that they will be found guilty. There isn't much of a case to defend. I can see it coming a mile away." George spoke from out of the blue. She had been mulling over how best to give Neil the bad news before opting for the blunt truth.
"Is it that Deed character's doing?" Neil Houghton said in his coldest, most unpleasant tones. "You were sent in there to win this one for us, for the Government. How will I explain this one to the cabinet? Tony will hold me to blame and, up till now, I've always delivered, even if I have to bang a few heads together and threaten a few civil servants with compulsory transfers to Swansea DVLC and break a few careers. Lean on people enough and you get results. That's how we all work."
"It isn't as easy as that, Neil." George spoke more patiently than was her habit. "I'm a professional barrister, not a Minister able to click his fingers at civil servants to do his bidding."
"With your ex on the bench, I would have thought it would be perfectly easy to get that woman out of the government's hair and on a one way trip to the electric chair in Florida. Instead, I suppose the British taxpayer will have to stump up for her upkeep in a British prison."
"This is exactly why it is difficult, Neil. Do you honestly suppose that John would do me a favour for old time's sake? He'd be more likely to do the opposite to spite us." George was never known for her patience or her diplomacy and a strong urge was taking charge of her to tell this man who didn't comprehend anything outside his narrow world.
"I don't agree with you, George. I don't agree with you at all." Neil shook his head not wanting this sort of unwelcome news. In his Department, he had brought in a Human Resource psychologist who had looked at the way the Department was run and had hit upon the notion that if you changed the ways of expressing ideas, more favourable outcomes would result. At work, nobody came to him with a problem, that smacked of negativity. His underlings raised issues which could be resolved, action plans formulated and the right man would take the issue forward and report back to him. So why was he putting up with this obstreperous woman who kept arguing back at him and disagreeing with him. Than goodness, the civil servants who worked for him never saw him at home with the sort of domestic arguments, which were becoming more frequent, these days.
"The judiciary are independent of the executive or haven't you heard that one, Neil." George said coldly.
"Why, George. We appoint these people." Neil Houghton spoke in that manner that infuriated any person capable of human decency. However, because of the culture of nepotism, servility and a language that shackled free thought and free speech, he had no one around to act as a 'morals control', let alone a 'reality control.' That was the real problem with Government these days.
"It's like the bad old days of the unions which I thought we'd seen the back of with the likes of Deed around. God knows why you ever married him." sneered Neil Houghton.
His animosity towards the unions had been one consistent feature of his political life. It came down the basic fear that they represented an out of control, anarchical threat to the natural order which he was accustomed to of a political party exercising control over the political process for the people's best. That fear of anarchy took concrete and vivid form in the waves of discontent that exploded out of nowhere and wrecked the chance of an electable Labour Government. Characters like Deed were merely trade union rabble rousers, speaking in public school accents and wearing judge's robes. The lack of deference to their political betters was exactly the same.
"Look here, Neil." George said summoning up the last reserves of her patience. "I'm doing my best for the defendants to be found not guilty but I can't work miracles. If they are found guilty, don't you ever say that no one warned you." George ignored Neil Houghton's crack about John. She never passed up the chance to get embroiled in a heated argument with John when she met him but it was another matter for Neil to make insulting remarks. Quite why that was, she could never explain.