Free First Among Equals by Jeffrey Archer Page A

finger of
her left hand. Three months later a wide gold band joined the engagement ring.
    After Mr. and
Dr. Kerslake had returned home from their honeymoon in Italy they both settled
happily into Beaufort Street. Elizabeth found it quite easy to fit all her
possessions into the little Chelsea house, and Simon knew after only a few
weeks that he had married a quite exceptional woman.
    In the
beginning the two of them had found it difficult to mesh their demanding
careers, but they soon worked out a comfortable routine. Simon wondered if this
could continue as smoothly if they decided to start a family or he was made a
Minister. But the latter could be years away; the Tories would not change their
Leader until Heath had been given a second chance at the polls.
    Simon began
writing articles for the Spectator and for the Sunday Express center pages in
the hope of building a reputation outside the House while at the same time
supplementing his parliamentary salary of three thousand four hundred pounds.
    Even with
Elizabeth’s income as a doctor, he was finding it difficult to make ends meet,
and yet he didn’t want to worry his wife. He envied the Charles Hamptons of
this world who did not seem to give a second thought about expenditure. Simon
wondered if the damn man had any problems at all. He ran a finger down his own
bank account: as usual there was a figure around five hundred pounds in the
right-hand margin, and as usual it was in red.
    He pressed on
with demanding questions to the Prime Minister each Tuesday and Thursday. Even
after this became routine, he prepared himself with his usual thoroughness, and
on one occasion he even elicited praise from his normally taciturn Leader. But
he found as the weeks passed that his thoughts continually returned to
finance...or his lack of it.
    That was before
he met Ronnie Nethercote.
    Raymond’s
reputation was growing. He showed no signs of being overcome by his major role
in a department as massive as Employment. Most civil servants who came in contact
with Raymond thought of him as brilliant, demanding, hardworking and, not that
it was ever reported to him, arrogant.
    His ability to
cut a junior civil servant off in mid-sentence or to correct his principal
private secretary on matters of detail did not endear him even to his closest
staff members, who always want to be loyal to their Minister.
    Raymond’s work
load was prodigious, and even the Permanent Secretary experienced Gould’s
unrelenting “Don’t make excuses” when he tried to trim one of Raymond’s private
schemes. Soon senior civil servants were talking of when, not whether, he would
be promoted. His Secretary of State, like all men who were expected to be in
six places at once, often asked Raymond to stand in for him, but even Raymond
was surprised when he was invited to represent the Department as guest of honor
at the annual Confederation of British Industries dinner.
    Joyce. checked to see that her husband’s dinner jacket was well
brushed, his shirt spotless and his shoes shining like a guard officer’s. His
carefully worded speech-a combination of civil-servant draftsmanship and a few
more forceful phrases of his own to prove to the assembled capitalists that not
every member of the Labour Party was a “raving commie”-was safely lodged in his
inside pocket. His driver ferried him from his Lansdowne Road home toward the
West End.
    Raymond enjoyed
the occasion, and, although he was nervous when he rose to represent the
Government in reply to the toast of the guests, by the time he had resurned his
seat he felt it had been one of his better efforts. The ovation that followed
was certainly more than polite, coming from what had to be classified as a
naturally hostile audience.
    “That speech
was dryer than the Chablis,” one guest whispered in the chairman’s ear, but he
had to agree that with men like Gould in high office, it was going to be a lot
easier to live with a Labour Government.
    The man