Dryden scribbled the quote – relying on his erratic spidery shorthand.
Inside the Maltings the ceremonies had begun. The place was an industrial palace in newly pointed brick. All the usual suspects were up on a makeshift stage, most of them with some variety of bent-spoons strung round their necks. A crowd of about a hundred, enlivened by a free sherry, was prepared to listen politely to a speech by the Lord Mayor, Councillor Roy Barnett. Kathy started taking a note and gave Dryden her wallet.
At the bar he ordered a pint of bitter and a Campari and soda – he could not resist that sickly red colour. Inside the wallet was a picture of Kathy’s father, Eugene. Dryden had heard the story several times, always in a bar. A Catholic lawyer in Londonderry, he’d specialized in taking cases against the IRA – harassment, punishment shootings, extortion. He’d stood and been elected to the new Ulster Assembly, until a midnight knock at the door had left him with a gunshot to the head. He was the most potent of all role models for his daughter – a dead one.
The mayor was speaking from what appeared to be handwritten notes in green ink: two bad signs in one. He looked no better than usual – a Bobby Charlton haircut spread over skin the colour and texture of grey lard. Kathy was taking a crude note which she would tidy up into proper sentences later for a piece. She knew that if most politicians were quoted accurately they’d sue.
Beside the mayor sat his wife, Liz, a Labour councillor herself and one-time leader of the party on the district council. The mayor’s office was largely ceremonial. The party leadership had involved the wielding of some real political power – even if it had been on a tiny provincial stage.
Roy Barnett’s speech was rambling, incoherent, and extremely badly delivered. A model of its kind, it also ran for twenty-three minutes. Kathy had time to visit the bar regularly and both she and Dryden were much happier by the time the mayor sat down – the gasp of delight this produced being a mark of relief not admiration.
Kathy recognized a couple of pliable councillors and slipped off to see if they were in an indiscreet mood. Liz Barnett caught Dryden’s eye across the second round of sherries and motioned him towards the bar. By the time she got there Dryden had bought her a large malt whisky and for himself a deliberately understated brandy and Babycham.
She noted the malt with a slight nod of appreciation and Dryden’s drink with horror. ‘The press,’ she said, as a toast.
Liz Barnett was one of those women who inspire two questions. How, followed promptly by why: how did the appalling Roy get her to the altar in the first place and why had she stayed with him for more than thirty years? She had been a beauty once and was still striking. Auburn hair turning grey, with no attempt to cheat nature. Strong features and a naturally tanned skin supported by industrial quantities of make-up expertly applied. Her secret was colour: she wore shawls, dresses, headscarves, and various layers of material in bright gypsy designs. She was fifty-four and looked good: husband Roy was sixty and struggling to keep a beer gut inside a nylon shirt.
The mayoress’s political assets were impressive. She could give an impression of genuine, rapt interest while being shown round a basket-weaving class for the fifth time in a year. She had proved adept at slipping into the clothes of New Labour while preserving a sharp edge of social antagonism towards the middle classes. Socialism had never been a great force in the Fens – radical Liberalism being the natural successor to religious nonconformism and rural deprivation. But Liz Barnett had channelled some of those forces into support for Labour during the Thatcher decade. If she hadn’t been a woman she’d have made it to Westminster. But being a woman had taught her one thing, the corrosive evil of prejudice. Dryden looked at her feet. She still wore an ankle bracelet, a gypsyesque touch that had caused a scandal at Roy’s investiture as mayor at the start of the year.
Liz Barnett was also ferociously street-wise and had realized early the power wielded by the press. Her friendship for Dryden had been – at first – entirely manipulative. There was now a grain of genuine respect as well.
‘Your wife?’ she asked, nodding to the barman to repeat the malt whisky and Dryden’s concoction.
Dryden could never answer this particular question without feeling that he was lying in some way, keeping back some part of the truth.
‘The same. No better, no worse. What can I say?’
She was enough of a professional not to apologize for the question. She stepped a foot closer. Dryden appeared to be having one of those days. It was a tribute to the mayoress that she could produce such effects at such a tender age. Her husband was holding forth on the other side of the room to a captive audience that looked as though it had been injected with concrete. His face was mottled crimson with a dash of what could only be called cardiac blue.