The Lords' Day (retail) Read Online Free PDF Page B

was deeply affronted when she discovered that she had been beaten to the post. Her resentment grew as she recognised the culprit. Ahead of her,
leaning on his walking stick by the ornate fireplace near the entrance to the chamber, was Archie Wakefield.
    They went back a long and, at times, deeply wounding way. Theirs was a clash not only of parties but also of personalities. When she had been a tough-minded and notoriously sceptical Foreign
Secretary, he had described her mind as being like a laundry basket, where the dirty linen took up so much more room than the fresh. He also claimed that her politics were easily understood once
you had read Mein Kampf in the original. He, on the other hand, was an unrefined former sailor in the merchant marine who had come up through the ranks of the working class, in the days when
there was still a working class, and had difficulty understanding why she took his gentle humour so seriously. None of his colleagues took him seriously; he was a token son of toil in a party that
had long since forsaken its working-class roots, while she had progressed partly through her sharp intellect and finely whetted tongue in a party that didn’t understand women and had tried to
bury her energies in responsibility. In making her Foreign Secretary they had hoped that she would travel but, as they soon discovered, she didn’t much care for abroad, or for foreigners.
    She was now seventy-three, he was a couple of years younger, and while she had developed a face like orange peel after spending too long in the sun, he had recently come to fat with a swollen,
very pink face and was totally bald. It gave him the appearance of a baby in a bathing cap. She disliked self-indulgence and thoroughly detested Archie Wakefield; she thought of turning on her heel
and tottering off, but that would only hand him the victory. She had never been known to duck a fight and this moment, with this man, was scarcely the excuse to start.
    ‘Morning, duchess,’ he greeted in an accent that fell one side of the Pennines or the other, she couldn’t be sure which. And she wasn’t a duchess, merely a common or
garden variety of peer, like him.
    ‘I always thought royal sports too rich for your appetite, Archie.’
    ‘Try anything once. Twice, even, if there are no cameras about.’
    ‘Ah, I’d forgotten you were sensitive to cameras. What was her name, that diary secretary of yours who enjoyed being photographed so much? Sonya, wasn’t it?’ She
remembered Sonya all too well, and the photographs – well, anyone in the country who was older than thirty did. The resulting scandal had required Archie to resign from the Cabinet but it had
made him a household name, and since the headlines he created had smothered media interest in a financial crisis, it had seemed only fair that he should be kicked upstairs to the Lords.
    ‘You ever get tempted, duchess?’
    ‘Not by you.’
    ‘Thank God. For a moment I thought you were pursuing me. Being seen with you at this time in the morning is just a little more than my reputation can take.’
    ‘You’re welcome to leave. I won’t be hurt.’
    ‘Then I’ll stay.’
    ‘You are the most studiously offensive man I have ever met.’
    ‘You’re wrong there, duchess. Never studied it. Never studied much at all, as you well know. My type of people didn’t get the chance to go to posh universities like your
lot.’
    ‘Oh, spare me the working-class chip on both shoulders.’
    ‘If I have, it’s given me a balanced outlook. Which is more than anyone’s ever said about you.’
    ‘Dammit, man, why have you come? You hate the Royal Family, you hate the House of Lords, you’re always mocking us. You’ve never been anything other than a professional
complainer, so what the devil are you doing here anyway?’
    ‘Curiosity, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘Never done it before. Thought I’d try it, while I’ve the chance.’ And he turned his back on her, not intending