Breaking the Code Read Online Free Page A

Gerald?’ which was certainly a mistake. He was easy-going and perfectly charming (great black bags under his eyes, cigarette constantly on the go), but I sensed he was wary of me, so after my first sortie with him I steered clear. I don’t think he’ll be voting for me, but I felt the others might.
    On Saturday the format was as before: fourteen inquisitors in a horseshoe around the candidate seated at a small card table. The Community Charge stuff was fine – I remembered all the figures and trotted out the Central Office brief.
    For my manifesto:
    I begin with first principles. I am a Conservative because I believe in freedom – individuality – choice – initiative. I know they can deliver what we want forourselves and our children: a society that’s happier, healthier, more prosperous, more open – what John Major calls ‘a society of opportunity’. A society of opportunity, a compassionate society, a society that prospers and uses its prosperity to create a better quality of life for all.
    It felt as if it was working. Thank you, Sir Tom!
    I was okay-ish on the questions – except on farming. I’d done no homework on farming. I know nothing about farming. But that didn’t seem to matter. The room was with me. When it was over I made for the loo and when I emerged they were all coming out of the interview room. A couple of the women whispered ‘Well done!’ as they passed, and the chairman – on crutches, he’s ex-RAF, avuncular, Mr Pickwick meets Mr Punch – came struggling up, rather embarrassed, and said, ‘Good show – but I forgot to ask – anything I ought to know – skeletons in the cupboard – that sort of thing – need your word.’
    ‘I don’t think so.’ I tried to say it meekly. ‘I think you’ll be all right with me.’
MONDAY 11 MARCH 1991
    We were still in bed with the early morning tea when Sir Tom called.
    ‘It’s going well. Going well. But I think you ought to go and see Sir Peter Morrison. I sense he’s got one or two reservations.’
    ‘But he’s never even met me!’
    ‘Exactly – needs a bit of reassurance. He’s not certain about your contribution to the party. Give his office a call and see if he can fit you in.’
    Then John Gummer called: ‘Peter Morrison will move hell and high water to stop you. He’s got his own man and doesn’t want you at any price.’
    At five o’clock, on the dot, I rang the doorbell at 81 Cambridge Street, SW1. Sir Peter opened the door and beamed. He could not have been more courteous. He is tall, fat, with crinkly hair, piggy eyes, a pink-gin drinker’s face, effortlessly patrician, a non-stop smoker and a proper Tory grandee. (I checked him out in
Who’s Who
and the credentials are impeccable: Eton, Oxford, White’s, Pratt’s, son of Lord Margadale, his brother’s an MP, his sister is Woman of the Bedchamber to the Queen!) He introduced me to his secretary – ‘This is the real Member of Parliament for the City of Chester’ – and then we climbed the stairs to a little first-floor drawing room where he sat back on a sofa, glass in one hand, cigarette in the other, and I sat forward facing him, perched on the edge of my seat, willing him to see me as a surprisingly straight bat. Unfortunately he wouldn’t lead the conversation. I had todo the talking. I struggled. I asked him about the constituency and he answered in vague generalities. But he said there are going to be boundary changes that’ll make it safer. I asked him about the local press. ‘I never talk to them,’ he said with satisfaction. I asked him why he was giving up (he looks sixty, but he’s only forty-six): ‘When you’ve been a Minister of State, deputy chairman of the party, worked with the Prime Minister at No. 10 76 and you know you’re not going to get into the Cabinet – and I’m not – it’s time to do something else. If I get out now I’ve got time for a second career. I’m going into business, going to make some money.’ After