Free Political Suicide by Robert Barnard Page B

people, led by a bossy lady in spectacles, staffed the main office on the first floor, through which callers could be filtered to the various functionaries for the campaign (Publicity, Meetings, Canvassing, and so on). But before one could even get to the formidable five, one had to get past a gentleman Jerry placed at the bottom of the stairs. An unemployed miner, he was massive and T-shirted, with snakes entering naked ladies tattooed up and down each arm and around his throat, and manners that would have been considered uncouth in nineteenth-century Arkansas. To warn off unnecessary approaches to this representative of working-class macho at its least acceptable, Jerry had a large notice made for the front door, which read:
    NO MEDIA PERSONS ALLOWED
    BEYOND THIS POINT
    RING BELL AND WAIT
    He taped this up with his own hands, and was pleased to be photographed by a media cameraperson as he did so. When all this preparation had been completed, Jerry stood in the hall with Fred Long and rubbed his hands.
    â€œRight,” he said, “now we’re ready to go.”
    â€œFirst stop City Square,” said Fred. “How do you think we should arrange it?”
    â€œI thought I’d go round for a bit, shake a few hands, then get up on the van and give a five-minute speech.”
    â€œFine. What are you going to talk on?”
    â€œThe need for open government,” said Jerry.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Oliver Worthing, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party, woke on the first morning of the by-election with a stale taste in his mouth, and a sense of listlessness that seemed to permeate every limb of his body. He had indulged, the previous evening, in a half-bottle of Hungarian Riesling, but surely that could not account for the fact that he was today so lacking in fizz? Perhaps, he told himself, he did not really want to fight the campaign. Perhaps his political ambitions had been sated by fighting Bootham at the General Election. I fought it quite well, he told himself, to buck himself up, but maybe once was enough. Then he thought with a sinking heart of the immensely greater media coverage there would be on this occasion. For three weeks politics would mean Bootham. For three weeks he would be a national figure. Please God let me speak briefly and to the point, said Oliver to himself. Please God let me not go on.
    Why on earth do I, an unbeliever, say “Please God,” even in my thoughts? Oliver asked himself. He cast round in his mind for Social Democratic divinities, and composed a short prayer to Shirley. This made him feel much better humoured, and he got up. He washed and shaved and sat unconscionably long on the lavatoryseat. His toilet-roll packet promised him “A New Experience in Toilet Tissues,” and he was wondering why he could remember so little about his earlier experiences in toilet tissues. The fact that they had left so little impression made him feel guilty. Almost anything could make Oliver Worthing feel guilty.
    His children, for example: should he phone his children? There was no particular reason why he should do so on the first day of the campaign: he had phoned them three days ago, and Wendy, his ex-wife, didn’t particularly like his phoning them too often, though she never said anything. But would the children expect it? Would they feel he had failed them if he didn’t? He went on in this way as he prepared a boiled egg and toast and a mug of instant coffee. By now it was ten minutes after the time he should have left for campaign headquarters, so the decision made itself.
    Arriving late at the decrepit first-floor offices due for demolition that had been loaned free to the SDP by a local businessman in a passing fit of “a plague on both your houses,” Oliver Worthing found that everybody else had got there early and was frantically busy. Whether anybody was co-ordinating with what anybody else was doing, or whether they really knew what