This Was a Man Read online

  Emma glanced up at the Distinguished Strangers’ Gallery to see members of her family seated in the front row, but they were also members of Giles’s family, and she suspected that they were equally divided. Harry, Sebastian, and Samantha unquestionably supported her, while Karin, Grace, and Freddie would back Giles, leaving Jessica to hold the casting vote. Emma felt they only mirrored the feelings of her fellow peers.

  When Lord Samuels, an eminent former president of the Royal College of Physicians, sat down having delivered the last speech from the crossbenches, a buzz of expectation went up around the chamber.

  If Giles was nervous when he got to his feet, there was no sign of it. He gripped the sides of the dispatch box firmly and waited for silence before delivering his opening line.

  “My lords, I stand before you this evening painfully aware that the fate of the National Health Service rests in our hands. I wish I was exaggerating, but I fear I am not. Because tonight, my lords, you, and you alone, will decide if this dreadful bill”—he waved the order paper high above his head—“will become law, or simply a collector’s item for those interested in the footnotes of history.

  “I do not have to remind your lordships, that it was the Labour Party, under Clem Attlee, which not only founded the NHS, but has been defending its very existence ever since. Whenever this country has had to suffer the travails of a Conservative administration, it has been Labour’s responsibility to ensure that the NHS survives attack after attack from the infidels storming its hallowed gates.”

  Loud cheers erupted from behind him, which allowed Giles to turn a page of his script and check the next sentence.

  “My lords, I am ashamed to admit,” he continued, with an exaggerated sigh, “that the latest of these infidels is my own kith and kin, the Baroness Clifton of Chew Magna.”

  Both sides of the House joined in the laughter, while Emma wished she had been bestowed with the gift to switch from grave pronouncement to light humor in a moment, and at the same time to carry the House with her.

  Giles spent the next twenty minutes dismantling the bill line by line, concentrating particularly on those clauses about which Tory waverers had expressed concerns. Emma could only admire the skill with which her brother heaped praise on the statesmanlike contributions of the few Tories who remained undecided, before adding. “We can only hope that those men and women of conscience display the same courage and independence of mind when the time comes to enter the division lobby, and do not at the last moment cast their true beliefs aside, hiding behind the false mask of party loyalty.”

  Even by Giles’s standards, it was a formidable performance. Colleagues and opponents alike were on the edge of their seats as he continued, like Merlin, to cast his spell over a mesmerized House. Emma knew she would have to break that spell and drag her colleagues back to the real world if she hoped to win the vote.

  “Let me end, my lords,” said Giles, almost in a whisper, “by reminding you of the power you hold in your hands tonight. You have been granted the one opportunity to throw out this flawed and counterfeit bill, which, were it to become law, would spell the end of the National Health Service as we know it, and stain the memory of its glorious past, and of those good old days.”

  He leaned across the dispatch box and looked slowly up and down the government front bench before saying, “This bill proves only one thing, my lords: dinosaurs are not only to be found in the Natural History Museum.” He waited for the laughter to die down before he lowered his voice and continued, “Those of you who, like myself, have studied this bill word for word, will have noticed that one word is conspicuously absent. Search as I might, my lords, nowhere could I find the word ‘compassion.’ But why should that come as a surprise, when the minister opposite, who will shortly present this bill, has herself personally denied hardworking nurses a living wage?”

  Cries of “Shame!” came from the opposition benches, as Giles stared across at his sister. “And you don’t have to read between the lines to understand that the government’s real purpose in this bill is to replace the word ‘National’ with ‘Private,’ because its first priority is to serve those who can afford to be sick, while leaving on the scrap heap those of our citizens who are unable to bear the cost. That is, and always has been, the overriding philosophy of this government.

  “My lords,” said Giles, his voice rising in a crescendo, “I invite you to vote decisively against this iniquitous bill, so those same citizens can continue to enjoy the security of a truly national health service, because I believe that when it comes to our health, all men—” he paused and stared across the dispatch box at his sister—“and women, are born equal.

  “My lords, I don’t ask you, I beg you, to let your views be clearly heard by our fellow countrymen when you cast your votes tonight, and soundly reject this bill.”

  He sat down to resounding cheers and the waving of order papers from behind him, and silence from the benches opposite. When the cheers finally died down, Emma rose slowly from her seat, placed her speech on the dispatch box, and gripped its sides firmly in the hope that no one would see just how nervous she was.

  “My lords,” she began, her voice trembling slightly, “it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge the performance of my noble kinsman, Lord Barrington, but performance it was, because I suspect that when you read his words in Hansard tomorrow, you will see that his speech was long on rhetoric, short on substance, and devoid of facts.”

  A few muted “Hear, hear”s could be heard from her colleagues seated behind her, while the members opposite remained silent.

  “I spent seven years of my life running a large NHS hospital, so I don’t have to prove that I am just as concerned about the future of the National Health Service as anyone sitting on the benches opposite. However, despite all the passion mustered by the noble lord, the truth is that, in the end, someone has to pay the bills and balance the books. The NHS has to be funded with real money, and paid for with the taxes of real people.”

  Emma was delighted to see a few heads nodding. Giles’s speech had been well received, but it was her responsibility to explain the finer details of the proposed legislation. She took their lordships through the substance of the bill clause by clause, but was unable to kindle the flame of passion that her brother had ignited so successfully.

  As she turned another page, she became aware of what her grandfather, Lord Harvey, once described as losing the attention of the House, that moment when members become listless and begin chattering among themselves. Far more damning even than jeering or cries of “Shame.”

  She glanced up to see an elderly peer nodding off, and when, moments later, he began to snore, the members seated on either side of him made no attempt to wake him, as they were all too clearly enjoying the minister’s discomfort. Emma realized the minutes were slipping away before the House would be asked to divide and the votes would be counted. She turned another page. “And now I would like to acknowledge the backbone of the NHS, our magnificent nurses, who—”

  Giles leapt to his feet to interrupt the minister, and in doing so strayed onto enemy territory. Emma immediately gave way, allowing her brother to command the dispatch box.

  “I am grateful to the noble lady for giving way, but may I ask, if she considers nurses are doing such a magnificent job, why are they only receiving a three percent pay rise?” Convinced that Emma was now on the ropes, he sat down to loud cries of “Hear, hear!”

  Emma resumed her place at the dispatch box. “The noble lord, if I recall his words correctly, demanded a fourteen percent pay rise for nurses.” Giles nodded vigorously. “So I am bound to ask him where he expects the government to find the extra money to pay for such an increase?”

  Giles was quickly back on his feet, ready to deliver the knockout blow. “It could start by putting up taxes for the highest earners, who can well afford to pay a little more to assist those less fortunate than themselves.” He sat down to even louder cheers, while Emma waited patiently a