A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin Read Free Book Online

scattered near a floor cushion by the window. Red despatch boxes were stacked in the hallway awaiting collection by a Ministry chauffeur. Another stood open on the writing desk in the corner with half its contents still awaiting attention in a neat pile.
    If Perkins was cooking, the meal would be simple. Pâté, a Marks and Spencer pie, vegetables, and a bottle of not very expensive wine. If, as was more often the case, Molly was cooking, the meal might run to a joint of lamb. Since Perkins didn’t have time to shop, she would bring the food with her in a wicker basket. He would always insist on repaying her, usually by cheque since he never seemed to have the time to go to a bank.
    Conversation centred around what Perkins had been up to in the previous week. Sometimes they gossiped. Molly liked discussing the private lives of public figures. Inside information, however trite, gave her a small thrill. Occasionally Perkins would regale her with an account of a little coup he had scored at a Cabinet sub-committee. Now and then they would discuss politics. Usually it was fairly basic stuff. He would talk of kicking out the American nuclear bases and she would say, “What about the Russians?” They would argue for perhaps five minutes before Perkins gave up, feigning disgust. “You sound like the bloody
Daily Mail
,” he would say half seriously. She would kiss him and they would go to bed, leaving the washing up in the sink.
    It wasn’t much of a love affair and by Molly’s standards the Secretary of State was not much of a lover. Her other lovers wooed her with flowers, dinners in West End restaurants andexpensive presents. The only present she ever received from Perkins was a copy of
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
. In the front he had written with a red felt pen, “To a slightly Tory lady in the hope that she will see the light.” It was signed, “Love, Harry” and followed by three kisses. She struggled through the first fifty pages and then gave up. Molly had never had much time for books.
    After about a year Molly stopped coming. Her disappearance was announced in a note which was only a little longer than the one with which Perkins had first brought her into his life. It read: “Dear Harry, on Saturday I’m getting married so we’ll have to call it a day. Please understand. Good luck. Molly.” For about an hour Perkins was devastated. He made himself a cup of tea and paced his modest living room composing a reply which in the end he did not send. He toyed with the idea of telephoning, but rejected it on the grounds that the telephone might be answered by Molly’s prospective husband. Instead he placed the note in his in-tray along with a pile of other unanswered correspondence. A few days later he filed it away in a green folder together with a postcard she had once sent him while on a skiing holiday in Austria and several notes, none more than half a page long, which mainly concerned arrangements for their Sunday night rendezvous and who should get the shopping. He labelled the folder ‘Molly’ and placed it between similar files labelled ‘Micro-chips’ and ‘Multinationals’ in a steel filing cabinet in the spare bedroom. His only other souvenirs were a yellow plastic bathing cap and a Wisdom toothbrush which she left behind in the bathroom.
    Perkins had been in the Cabinet for three years when the government started to close down steel mills. He resigned at once to take part in the resistance. The following year he was swept on to the Labour Party National Executive. Three years later he was topping the poll. Looking back, his election as leader of the Labour Party seemed inevitable, but at the time it took everyone by surprise.

3
    By the time Harry Perkins became leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, Labour had been out of power for a decade. Although the National Unity government had brought inflation under control,