Be Careful What You Wish For (The Clifton Chronicles) Read online

  Sebastian was chatting to the ambassador when he heard the siren, but didn’t give it a thought until the ambulance came to a halt outside the hotel and two smartly dressed orderlies jumped out and rushed inside wheeling a stretcher.

  “You don’t think—” began Sir John, but Sebastian was already running up the steps and into the hotel. He stopped when he saw the orderlies bearing the stretcher toward him. It only took one look at the patient for his worst fears to be confirmed. When they placed the stretcher in the back of the ambulance, Sebastian leaped inside, shouting, “He’s my boss.” One of the orderlies nodded while the other pulled the doors closed.

  Sir John followed the ambulance in his Rolls-Royce. When he arrived at the hospital, he introduced himself and asked the receptionist on the front desk if Sir Giles Barrington was being seen by a doctor.

  “Yes, sir, he’s being checked out in the emergency room by Dr. Clairbert. If you’d be kind enough to take a seat, your excellency, I’m sure he’ll come and brief you as soon as he’s completed his examination.”

  * * *

  Griff switched the television back on to catch the seven o’clock news on the BBC, hoping that Giles’s speech was still the lead story.

  Giles was still the lead story, but it took Griff some time to accept who the man on the stretcher was. He collapsed back into his chair. He’d been in politics too long not to know that Sir Giles Barrington was no longer a candidate to lead the Labor Party.

  * * *

  A man who’d spent the night in room 437 of the Palace Hotel handed his key into reception, checked out and paid his bill in cash. He took a taxi to the airport, and an hour later boarded the plane back to London that Sir Giles had been booked on. On arrival at London airport he queued for a taxi, and when he reached the front of the line he climbed into the back seat and said, “Forty-four Eaton Square.”

  * * *

  “I’m puzzled, ambassador,” said Dr. Clairbert after he’d examined his patient for a second time. “I can’t find anything wrong with Sir Giles’s heart. In fact, he’s in excellent shape for a man of his age. However, I’ll only be sure once I’ve had all the test results back from the lab, which means I’ll have to keep him in overnight, just to be absolutely certain.”

  * * *

  Giles dominated the front pages of the national press the following morning, just as Griff had hoped he would.

  However, the headlines in the first editions, Neck and Neck (the Express), All Bets Off (the Mirror), Birth of a Statesman? (The Times) had quickly been replaced. The Daily Mail’s new front page summed it up succinctly: Heart Attack ends Barrington’s chances of leading the Labor Party.

  * * *

  The Sunday papers all carried lengthy profiles of the new leader of the opposition.

  A photograph of Harold Wilson aged eight, standing outside 10 Downing Street dressed in his Sunday best and wearing a peaked cap, made most of the front pages.

  * * *

  Giles flew back to London on the Monday morning, accompanied by Gwyneth and Sebastian.

  When the plane touched down at London Airport, there wasn’t a single journalist, photographer or cameraman there to greet him; yesterday’s news. Gwyneth drove them back to Smith Square.

  “What did the doctor recommend you should do once we’d got you home?” asked Griff.

  “He didn’t recommend anything,” said Giles. “He’s still trying to work out why I was ever in hospital in the first place.”

  * * *

  It was Sebastian who pointed out to his uncle an article on page eleven of The Times that had been written by one of the journalists who’d been in the bar of the Palace Hotel when Giles collapsed.

  Matthew Castle had decided to stay in Brussels for a few days and make further inquiries, as he wasn’t altogether convinced that Sir Giles had suffered a heart attack, even though he’d seen the whole incident unfold in front of his eyes.

  He reported: one, Pierre Bouchard, the deputy president of the EEC, had not been in Brussels to hear Sir Giles’s speech that day, as he was attending the funeral of an old friend in Marseille; two, the barman who had phoned for an ambulance dialed only three numbers, and failed to give whoever was on the other end of the line an address to come to; three, the St. Jean Hospital had no record of anyone phoning for an ambulance from the Palace Hotel, and was unable to identify the two orderlies who wheeled Sir Giles in on a stretcher; four, the man who left the bar to meet the ambulance never returned, and no one paid for the two drinks; five, the man in the bar who said he was a doctor and claimed Sir Giles had suffered a heart attack hadn’t been seen since; and six, the barman didn’t report for work the following day.

  Perhaps this was nothing more than a string of coincidences, suggested the journalist, but if it wasn’t, might the Labor Party now have a different leader?

  * * *

  Griff returned to Bristol the following morning, and as there wasn’t likely to be an election for at least another year, he spent the next month on a bender.

  JESSICA CLIFTON

  1964

  21

  “AM I MEANT to understand what this represents?” said Emma, looking more closely at the painting.

  “There’s nothing to understand, Mama,” said Seb. “You’ve missed the point.”

  “Then what is the point, because I can remember when Jessica used to draw people. People I recognized.”

  “She’s past that phase, Mama; she’s now entering her abstract period.”

  “I’m afraid they just look like blobs to me.”

  “That’s because you’re not looking at it with an open mind. She no longer wants to be Constable or Turner.”

  “Then who does she want to be?”

  “Jessica Clifton.”

  “Even if you’re right, Seb,” said Harry, taking a closer look at Blob One, “all artists, even Picasso, admitted to outside influences. So, who’s Jessica influenced by?”

  “Peter Blake, Francis Bacon, and she admires an American called Rothko.”

  “I haven’t heard of any of them,” admitted Emma.

  “And they probably haven’t heard of Edith Evans, Joan Sutherland or Evelyn Waugh, whom you both admire so much.”

  “Harold Guinzburg’s got a Rothko in his office,” said Harry. “He told me it cost him ten thousand dollars, which I reminded him was more than my last advance.”

  “You mustn’t think like that,” said Sebastian. “A work of art is worth what someone will pay for it. If it’s true for your book, why shouldn’t it be equally true for a painting?”

  “A banker’s attitude,” said Emma. “I won’t remind you what Oscar Wilde said on the subject of price and value, for fear you might accuse me of being old-fashioned.”

  “You’re not old-fashioned, Mama,” said Sebastian, placing an arm around her. Emma smiled. “You’re positively prehistoric.”

  “I admit to forty,” Emma protested, looking up at her son, who couldn’t stop laughing. “But is this really the best Jessica can do?” she asked, turning her attention back to the painting.

  “It’s her graduation work, which will determine if she’s offered a postgraduate place at the Royal Academy Schools this September. And it might even make her a bob or two.”

  “These paintings are for sale?” said Harry.

  “Oh, yes. The graduation exhibition is the first opportunity for a lot of young artists to display their work to the public.”

  “I wonder who buys this sort of thing?” said Harry, looking around the room, whose walls were covered with oil paintings, watercolors and drawings.

  “Doting parents, I expect,” said Emma. “So we’ll all have to buy one of Jessica’s, you included, Seb.”

  “You don’t have to convince me, Mama. I’ll be back here at seven when the show opens, with my checkbook ready. I’ve already chosen the one I want—Blob One.”

  “That’s very generous of you.”

  “You just don’t get it, Mama.”