Free To Play the King by Michael Dobbs Page A

her.
    ‘I hope you are enjoying yourself.'
    'To be frank, not a lot. I get very irritated when men try to grope and pick me up simply because I happen to be an unattached woman.'
    So that's what was bothering her. 'I see. Which man?'
    'Prime Minister, I'm a businesswoman. I don't get very far by being a blabbermouth.'
    'Well, let me guess. He sounds as if he's here without a wife. Self-important. Probably political if he feels sufficiently at ease to chance his hand in this place. Something of a charmer, perhaps?'
    'The creep had so little charm he didn't even have the decency to say please. I think that's what riled me as much as anything. He expected me to fall into his arms without even the basic courtesy of asking nicely. And I thought you English were gentlemen.'
    'So . . . Without a wife here. Self-important. Political. Lacking in manners.' Urquhart glanced around the room, still trying to avoid the stares of the matrons who were growing increasingly irritated. 'That gentleman in the loud three-piece pinstripe, perhaps?' He indicated a fat man in early middle age who was mopping his brow with a spotted handkerchief as he perspired in the rapidly rising warmth of the crowded room.
    She laughed in surprise and acknowledgement. 'You know him?'
    ‘I ought to. He's my new Minister of Housing.'
    'You seem to know your men well, Mr Urquhart.'
    'It's my main political asset.'
    'Then I hope you understand your women just as well, and much better than that oaf of a Housing Minister ... In the political rather than the biblical sense,' she added as an afterthought, offering a slightly impertinent smile.
    'I'm not sure I follow.'
    'Women. You know, fifty-two per cent of the electorate? Those strange creatures who are good enough to share your beds but not your clubs and who think your Government is about as supportive and up-to-the-mark as broken knicker elastic?'
    In an Englishwoman her abruptness would have been viewed as bad manners, but it was normal to afford Americans somewhat greater licence. They talked, ate, dressed differently, were even different in bed so Urquhart had been told, although he had no first-hand experience. Perhaps he should ask the Housing Minister. 'It's surely not that bad . . .'
    'For the last two months your Party has been pulling itself apart while it chose a new leader. Not one of the candidates was a woman. And according to women voters, none of the issues you discussed were of much relevance to them, either. Particularly to younger women. You treat them as if they were blind copies of their husbands. They don't like it and you're losing out. Badly.'
    Urquhart realized he was relinquishing control of this conversation; she was working him over far more effectively than anything he could have expected from the charity representatives, who had now drifted off in bitter disappointment. He tried to remember the last time he had torn apart an opinion poll and examined its entrails, but couldn't. He'd cut his political teeth in an era when instinct and ideas rather than psephologists and their computers had ruled the political scene, and his instincts had served him very well. So far. Yet this woman was making him feel dated and out of touch. And he could see a piano being wheeled into a far corner of the huge reception room.
    'Miss Quine, I'd like very much to hear more of your views, but I fear I'm about to be called to other duties.' His wife was already leading the tenor by the hand towards the piano, and Urquhart knew that at any moment she would be searching for him to offer a suitable introduction. 'Would you be free at some other time, perhaps? It seems I know a great deal less about women than I thought.'
    ‘I appear to be in demand by Government Ministers this evening,' she mused. Her jacket had fallen open to reveal an elegantly cut but simple dress beneath, secured by an oversized belt buckle, which for the first time afforded him a glimpse of her figure. She saw he had noticed, and had