She heard the
news on the radio while taking her elevens’. She’d missed it on that morning’s
TV, hung-over and late for work with barely a moment to brush her teeth and
clumsily grab a cup of tea before running for the bus. Gillian, plump,
mousy-haired and thirty-two, began to listen more intently to the news
announcer’s words as she caught the name, blocking out the younger girls’
chatter in the main area of the salon.
Slowly, she
found their meaning through the fog of last night’s Bacardi’s as she sat hunched
in concentration. She saw a disguarded Sun and snatched it up.
“IRON LADY IN
RED – Maggie to Become New Labour PM!”
Her hands
trembled as she read it; “After the Chancellor’s monetary irregularities and
his bitter rival’s brawling in a Glasgow pub, stunned Labour MP’s learnt last
night of behind the scenes moves to make ex-Prime Minister…” (She still
couldn’t speak the woman’s name) “…their party’s new leader after she resigned
from her seat in the Lords yesterday.”
“For some
time I have pondered a return to politics, and now New Labour have finally come
around to my point of view, I think we can do business together…”
The rest was
lost in a haze as Gillian’s eyes refused to focus. One of the girls sat down
noisily opposite her and glanced up. “You OK, love?” Gillian gave an
embarrassed nod. “Boyfriend?” She shook her head and quickly returned to the
salon. At going home time she asked her boss for the next day off and he
grumpily agreed.
It had been on
the Six O’clock News when she’d got home, then later a Newsnight special in
more detail. The party had given a press conference. Gillian recognised the
patronising smile of old, now a little wan as she sat flanked by two young men
in smart suits.
“When will you
be holding the leadership contest?” a girl asked.
“We’ve already
held a secret ballot. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the next
leader of New Labour.”
Cameras clicked
and lights flashed. A man put his hand up.
“Is this
anything to do with the new drug you’ve been taking, Ma’am?”
The woman gave
her questioner a frosty stare. “I don’t take drugs, young man. I just do what I
can to help my country. Where there is strife let us bring peace, where there
is…”
Gillian switched
it off. She took down the picture of her father with his dark overalls and
grimy, grinning face from the bookshelf and stared at it for a long while until
she found herself crying.
Her father’s
grave lay beneath a large knotted pine at the bottom of the churchyard, her
brother’s beside that, the clean brown marble top and headstone shiny in the
strong morning sunshine. It had turned chilly, but she hadn’t noticed. Peter’s
grave was definitely the posher of the two, paid for from her father’s
redundancy package and the war office’s cheque they’d received three weeks after
the funeral. The rest of the money had been put in trust for her but until
today she’d swore never to touch it. She swept off the leaves, replaced the
little flowers in the jugs with fresh ones and dipped her head in prayer.
Then she turned
and walked quickly away down the hill.
On the train
Gillian forced herself not to breathe heavily. The hotel had been booked on the
Internet, as nearby as possible. She’d quickly found what she was looking for
in Peter’s things. Now it was wrapped in a towel nestling in her overnight bag,
making it unexpectantly heavy. She made a mental note to get a taxi rather than
risk the security checks on the underground.
Her sleep that
night in the unfamiliar bed had been invaded by the whinnying of horses, shoes
clattering on the road outside her old bedroom window as their white-helmeted
riders in their black padded jackets forced them onto the crowd below, pushing
them backwards along the street. She could see the wild-eyed animals’ breath
clouded in the yellowy streetlights, and now her father, caught up in a crush
of angry men. She glimpsed his face turning away as a long black truncheon fell
from the sky and then he was gone, down beneath the flailing hooves.
Her morning call
roused her at six thirty. She showered and dressed in the smart new jacket,
blouse and skirt she’d bought the previous day and left for the short walk to
Downing Street. Too nervous to eat, Gillian felt her stomach rumble as she
joined the crowd already stretching along the security gates towards the police
checkpoint. Pretending to tie her shoelace, she hunched down to push the
child’s stuffed toy police dog through the iron bars. Nobody seemed to notice
or care. It had been a good plan then; she was suddenly pleased with herself.
She got around
to the other side just in time to grab it back from a little girl too surprised
to start crying. Then the crowd swallowed her up as Gillian allowed herself to
be carried steadily along the narrow track of pavement between the
well-scrubbed brick walls and the yellow crush barriers towards ‘number ten’.
She squirmed to the front and waited behind the tape as important looking
people came and went. Finally, as flashbulbs flared and television cameras
lumbered forward, the black door opened and a woman in matching red skirt and
jacket with a red rose clipped to its collar stepped out.
A young man
escorted her to a bank of waiting microphones. “I have just informed Her
Majesty the Queen of my intention to accept…”
Gillian had
ducked below the arms of the policemen holding back the crowd and now stood in
the road, twenty paces before the woman. She held Peter’s service revolver in
front of her, still partly covered in the toy’s straw stuffing.
“No, I can’t let
you do that.” She heard the metallic clicks and rustle of automatic machine
guns before the words left her mouth.
The woman
flinched then straightened again impressively. “We don’t give in to terrorism,
my dear.”
“No, you’re very
brave with other people’s lives; my brother’s. You don’t believe in community
but you wrecked ours. You crippled my dad and took away his hope. You made
people mean, and distrusting and uncaring, and I won’t let you do it again.
People have to see…”
Gillian
hesitated, her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“See… what
you’ve really done. What you’ll do to them. What you’ve done to me.”
She arched the
gun backwards, rested the barrel against the roof of her mouth, and squeezed
the trigger.
As her body
slumped to the ground a woman screamed followed by two more, birds took off
skywards as the pistol crack reverberated around the rooftops. Several
policemen in flak jackets hurried the woman in red back inside. As the black
door opened for them the TV cameras caught her face as she stared back
uncomprehendingly at Gillian’s body in the road.
