33. fic: uncertain sideways streets, part two (the thick of it)
WELL, THEN.
Title: uncertain sideways streets (part two of two)
Fandom: The Thick of It
Rating: PG-13, language
Summary: During the election, Nicola Murray hits a wall.
Part one is here.
part two. where things that don't match meet
A man named Mr. Chattisbourne is telling Nicola about his difficulties finding employment in the last year. Nicola leans in his doorway, nodding at intervals, but she's repeating to herself over and over again: don't ask about the deer head, don't ask about the deer head, don't ask about the...
"That's an interesting, um, piece you have above your fireplace, Mr. Chattisbourne."
Oh, fuck.
He turns around to look at the great big fuck-off dead monstrosity above his fireplace that Nicola cannot take her eyes off of, and she inwardly berates herself. Never remark on people's home furnishings. Compliments come off as patronizing or ingratiating, anything else sounds like an insult, and anyway it derails whatever conversation you're trying to have.
"Oh, that," says Mr. Chattisbourne, turning back around with a glimmer of pride in his eyes. "That's Bessie. Snagged her last summer, me and my brother."
Nicola isn't sure from this distance, but she thinks the dead deer might possibly have a dead rabbit in its mouth.
"Well, it's," Nicola struggles to find the appropriately politic response, "quite impressive?"
Mr. Chattisbourne smiles, pleased, and then says, "Actually, that reminds me, I wanted a word about that fox hunting ban-"
Conversation officially derailed. Nicola sighs.
Five minutes later, she manages to extricate herself from the now entirely awkward doorstep meeting, and walks a couple houses down to where her lone aide is waiting, with a clipboard.
"All right, ma'am?" he asks, taking out his earbuds.
She nods. "Arthur," she says, "I know you're not doing it on purpose, but could you try to look a little less...lurking about? I don't want people thinking you're about to rob them."
He looks chagrined.
"It's fine," says Nicola. "You didn't know."
While the local universities' political clubs are an excellent source of cheap labor (pizza, plus the opportunity for externship credit, does the trick), the students tend to lack a certain amount of training. Any training, really, but since all Nicola needs is someone to wait outside houses and make sure no one lures her inside and tries to murder her, that's all right.
The clipboard is unnecessary, but Nicola figures it makes people feel more important.
"Any notes, ma'am?" asks Arthur, as they head back to her car.
"Well," says Nicola, "I think you can cross his name off." She pauses. "And write 'dead deer' in the margin."
*
On her first afternoon of canvassing, Nicola gives up on the list of previous contacts that her constituency office has provided for her, and just starts randomly knocking on doors, roughly following the marked-up constituency map she's kept from her first election. It's a crude strategy, but with no money, or staff, the only resource Nicola has left is herself, and she is out of ideas.
Canvassing is a fiddly business. Eventually, every politician in the world runs into the same problem with it: it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to be interested in every single person one happens to come across. Logically, this makes perfect sense, even your best friend is boring when she won't shut up about her fucking teacup poodle or her kidney operation, but canvassing supposedly implies that a politician is deeply interested in the opinions of her constituency, and especially in those of the person she is speaking to at the moment. No matter what those opinions might be.
It thus becomes necessary to lie a little bit, if not in words, then in manner.
Nicola knocks lightly on another door, carefully arranging her face to look interested and competent and sympathetic, and to hide, as always, the tiny surge of fear. It's not as though she hasn't done this a thousand times, Nicola, nearly alone among her profession, actually likes canvassing, but then she's never found it particular difficult to listen to people. Which is mostly what's required.
Journalists, on the other hand, expect her to talk. Then again, Nicola's not sure she'd quite classify journalists as people anymore.
It's just-it's a little like playing Russian roulette with your self esteem. Behind one door is someone who thinks well of you, behind the next, you're basically Satan.
The door opens. Nicola smiles, says her name, asks if there's anything they'd like to discuss.
Repeat, repeat, repeat, until the houses run out. Which, Nicola has calculated, will take three years, four months, and twenty-two days.
She has two and a half weeks.
*
Someone must have seen her working her way down one street or another, because by the end of the first week, there's an article in the Telegraph that-
"They've called me the Wandering Minister? That doesn't even make any fucking sense, plus it makes me sound fucking senile," Nicola complains over the phone to Olly, dropping her voice as Katie and Ella pass through the kitchen.
"Anyway," she continues, "Malcolm won't be best pleased, will he?"
"It's on page five, Nicola," Olly says, "and anyway, the story's not really about you, is it? You're only mentioned in passing."
The story is in fact about several low-level ministers who are having difficulties in their constituencies. Nicola is named only near the end, practically an afterthought. She'd had no idea there were five or six others in as much trouble as her, not that it makes her feel any better about her own predicament.
Plus, she's inadvertently broken Malcolm's no-press decree, so she's expecting her house to be firebombed at any moment.
Olly is being shouted at on the other end of the line. Nicola waits for the noise to die down, and then asks, "Was that anything to do with the debate last night?"
"Got it in one," he says, wearily. Nicola has found that Olly is much more tolerable when he's too exhausted to make jokes. "We weren't expecting much from Tom, but we weren't expecting the Others to come up and fucking debag us either."
(At the beginning of the election, the staff at headquarters was referring to the various parties involved as Us, Them, and Those Other Fuckers. Politics being a business filled with nerds, this last got shortened to just 'the Others' pretty quickly.)
"I suppose you wouldn't let me trade places with you for a bit?" Olly asks. "Crap food, four hours' sleep a night, fucking psychotic Press and Comms officials constantly breathing down your neck?"
"I have had," replies Nicola, "three men answer the door in their pants. Today."
"Well, good luck with that, then," he says quickly.
"Thanks ever so much for your support, Oliver."
"We’re always here for you, Minister."
She rings off as the front doorbell chimes.
"Parcel for you, ma'am?" The bicycle courier hands over a bulky, wrapped package. Nicola resists the urge to ask whether it's been checked for incendiaries or anthrax, as it's sealed with familiar document tape and she recognizes the courier.
Inside is a binder, which she sets on the hall table, and a note.
Nicola,
A wee fucking birdie has informed me that, since your main activity these days consists of stumbling around neighbourhoods like an improperly tranquillised fucking glue-bound racehorse, you might have a spot of free time in your schedule to look over these hospital figures for the next debate, a task which I am farming out to you because the inmates at HMP Happy Happy Fun Election Time are all very very fucking busy dealing with figures that are massively more consequential. I would humbly ask you take some time from spouting nonsense to the hoi polloi for this, and by ask I of course mean I expect this back with notes at fucking doors open tomorrow morning, at the very latest.
If a breath of this gets to the press, I will rip out your fucking lungs and turn them into a decorative holiday centrepiece, etc. etc.
Cheers,
Malcolm
Nicola leans in the doorway, eyes shut. "I could kill him," she muses, half-under her breath. "No one would care. I could move to Greece, take an assumed name-"
"Ma'am?" says the courier, a little worriedly.
Nicola shakes her head, opens her eyes. "Do I need to sign something?"
"I just need a time for pickup tomorrow."
"Seven, no. Better make it six." Nicola picks up the binder, looks towards the study.
"Six? Only that's before my rounds start," the courier manages before Nicola shuts the door. She hesitates for a moment.
"Coffee," she decides, and heads for the kitchen.
*
Is there anything in particular that makes you feel that way? is one of Nicola's favourite redirects, a bit of rhetorical alchemy that can turn generalities and soundbytes into something she can actually work with.
"I'm just not comfortable with the way the government is run right now," says one woman.
"Okay," says Nicola, trying not to disagree, conceding a small point in order to win a larger one. "Is there anything in particular that makes you feel that way?"
She tosses out that phrase and gets back stories, of all shapes and colours. Lost jobs, missing benefits, wayward children, all the ills of the world, pieced out house by house. If she's being honest, she's always rather pleased at how well it works, in a tiny sort of way. (Any real pride Nicola ever felt at being able to play conversational ping-pong has evaporated thanks to prolonged contact with Malcolm, who plays five-dimensional chess.)
Mostly, Nicola can't do anything but listen, but she tries to help where she can, if only because the constant sense of powerlessness is exhausting, would overwhelm her completely if she let it. She gives out names, information, one afternoon she recalculates someone's LHA on the back of a take-out flyer. On more than one occasion, she hands out phone numbers and instructions to mention her name, not that, Nicola thinks wryly, that will have much of an impact, not that any campaign manager (which she doesn't fucking have, thank you very much) wouldn't call her efforts a waste of valuable time. But, well, it's something; it is her fucking job, after all.
For the next two weeks, anyway.
The binders keep coming. Nicola doesn't sleep much, starts wearing her hair in loose, messy ponytails, and spends hours at night poring over graphs and summaries and making notes. Her constituency office puts together a few community meetings, a few innocuous little stories run in the local press, and her constituents begin to look as though they're expecting her knock at their doors.
Occasionally, she puts the television on late at night, very quietly, in order not to wake anyone, and watches as the bad news keeps piling up, and a succession of government officials implodes in interesting ways on camera. It's a bit like watching a star collapse in on itself; sometimes she's grateful not to be anywhere near the action. Number 10 feels very far away.
One evening, she scribbles on the first page of a preliminary budget (not theirs, but she isn't going to ask how he'd gotten it):
Malcolm,
Your last dispatch had quite the expansionary effect on my youngest's vocabulary. If you could see fit to tone it down, much appreciated. Furthermore, this is absolute rubbish. If they want to balance out like this they'll have to auction off the NHS, the Queen, and the Isle of Wight, and whoever's doing means testing over there ought to be given an award for Total Fucking Bollocks, please ref. pages 56-57, charts 13 and 24, and especially page 87, which is in several pieces in the back pocket of the binder. Further notes follow.
- Nicola
The next binder to arrive (education statistics) has the Oxford English Dictionary definition of "fuck" taped onto the cover, along with a note in Malcolm's handwriting, which is getting increasingly unsteady as the days pass:
Nicola,
It takes a fucking village. Just doing my bit.
- Malcolm
She smiles properly for the first time in days.
*
Nicola has resigned herself to watching from the sidelines as her party slowly collapses, when Tom manages to do something so outrageously, mind-bogglingly, un-fucking-believably stupid, she's honestly surprised she can't see a miniature fallout cloud rising above the city.
When she's out that morning, it doesn't seem like a total catastrophe, the reactions of the people she speaks to are sympathetic, fairly measured, even understanding. But as the day wears on, they start sounding more and more like neatly-packaged phrases gleaned from the news, and Nicola detects the hand of Opposition HQ in the wording, the emphases, the inevitable conclusions drawn.
Basically, they're completely fucked.
She gets one mass-mail text from Malcolm (NO. FUCKING. PRESS.), and picks up immediately when Glenn rings her that evening.
"This is really fucking bad, right?"
"Well," says Glenn, indistinctly, HQ sounding like complete bedlam behinds him, "I suppose no one has actually died as of yet, although I believe Jamie has frequently come quite close to making that statement inaccurate."
Nicola sighs. "I'm guessing you didn't just call to commiserate."
"I'm to reiterate to you that it would be extremely advisable not to talk to any press right now."
"Right."
There's a long pause.
"And?" Nicola prompts. The background noise abruptly dies down; she has the strong suspicion that Glenn has just shut himself into a cupboard.
"Nicola," he whispers, "Olly and I, well, we were noticing some strangeness with the polling data."
"I'm not following."
He takes a breath. "We think the figures out of headquarters are being doctored."
"What?"
"We haven't got proof or anything, but I've found some discrepancies in the press releases, and we think the numbers, not just yours, several others, too, are being tilted. Significantly."
"But," Nicola says, feeling ill. "How fucking far back am I, then? Ten points? Eleven? Glenn, what the fuck am I going to do?"
"I'm sorry, Nicola, but we really thought you ought to know."
"Right," says Nicola, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Well, thank you. I suppose."
"Nicola-"
"I'm sure you've got lots to do, Glenn, you should probably get out of that cupboard." She pauses, steadying her voice. "And that was not in any way intended as a reference to your sexuality."
Glenn lets this pass. "Be well, Nicola."
"Thank you," she says, meaning it, and rings off, although she's not well, not well at all.
*
In the last days of the campaign, Nicola's efforts are subsumed into the larger Party operation, as HQ deploys scores of people onto the streets to knock doors and hand out voting information (which is always necessary, if you can think of a way to hypothetically fuck up a ballot, rest assured, several thousand people have already actually done it). The volunteers have energy levels that Nicola finds baffling after three continuous weeks of canvassing; they wear red from head to toe and cheerfully carpet the streets with literature.
Nicola, who's always disliked the colour, limits herself to a single red rosette, not really keen on displaying party loyalty at this particular time in her life. She quietly steels herself for election night, reminding herself that yes, it will be terrible, yes, it will be humiliating, but at least it will be fucking over, and then she can go take a nap or fall off a cliff or do whatever the fuck she wants.
*
So when she wins, it does come as a bit of a shock.
*
The room is complete pandemonium and Nicola's mobile buzzes at approximately the same moment that she is tackled by all four of her children at once, so it's a little while before she manages to dig it out and read the message:
Congratulations, Nicola. Your presence is kindly requested at headquarters, we have a car waiting outside, JN.
Nicola frowns at Julius's text, but hasn't time to consider it properly, what with instructing James to watch the children, yes, all the children, no, I don't know for how long, and hustling outside to the car, dodging cameras and reporters, feeling utterly confused, but like a massive weight has been lifted off her shoulders.
She's won. She doesn't know how, but she's fucking won.
In the car, though, she takes out her mobile and looks at the message again, not able to ignore the niggling feeling that something isn't right.
She raps on the dividing window of the car, and the driver rolls it down.
"I'm terribly sorry," she says, "but when did you get the call to bring the car down here?"
"This morning, ma'am. Is there a problem?"
"No, no," she says, and slumps back in her seat, thinking.
Suddenly, she sits bolt upright. "Oh, fucking hell. Oh, fuck. They knew. Oh, I'm going to fucking kill him."
The driver gives her a slightly-alarmed look through the rearview mirror, and Nicola dimly realizes the window is still rolled down.
"Sorry, sorry, not you," she says quickly, and the driver gives her another strange look and puts the window up. Nicola spends the rest of the drive punching numbers into her mobile, but the lines are all busy.
*
Headquarters is a fucking disaster zone. The activity swirling around Nicola as she arrives is intense and frantic, everyone she sees has at least one phone glued to their ear. Those people not yelling orders into electronic devices are walking around looking shell-shocked. Things seen to be rapidly going down the shitter. Nicola manages to walk around for a while completely unnoticed by anyone, a little awed at the sheer amount of movement, of kinetic energy.
Someone calls out the name of a constituency and everything stops, all eyes turn to the television sets scattered everywhere. Nicola, backed into a corner of the room to avoid being run over, feels as though the entire building is holding its breath, waiting. When the results are announced, it's like a collective blow to the stomach, this one is a major, major loss for the Party, and if anyone had any illusions that they might win tonight, they've surely vanished now.
Only once or twice before has Nicola actually been able to sense history twisting around her, shifting into a new pattern before her eyes, and it always feels the same: uncanny, the strangest, unsettling joy.
She'll never tell anyone, but it nearly makes the whole fucking thing worth it.
"Nicola!" She's walking through a corridor when she's hailed by Olly and Glenn, and there's some awkward hugging (Glenn) and apparently sincere congratulations (Olly).
"A bit of good news amongst the general carnage, right, Minister?" says Glenn, smiling.
"I think you can probably stop calling her that now," says Olly. Nicola rolls her eyes at him.
"Glenn," she says. "Do you remember that conversation we had about the polling?"
He exchanges glances with Olly. "It must have been nothing, I mean, obviously you won, and we were never able to find any proof."
"No, no, never mind that, I'm your fucking proof. Glenn, did you ever consider that the numbers might have been doctored down instead of up?"
"But that's ridiculous, why the fuck would anyone-?"
"I don't know," says Nicola. "I don't know, but I certainly know who the fuck to ask. Where's Malcolm?"
Her two aides exchange glances.
"He's up on the roof," offers Olly.
She blinks. "What?"
"He's upstairs, somewhere? On the roof, I think?" repeats Olly.
"We've just lost an election," says Nicola, slowly, "and Malcolm's on the roof."
They look at her, uncomprehending.
Nicola sighs. "Where are the fucking stairs?"
*
She's nearly to the roof when she runs into Julius, who beams congratulations at her and shakes her hand.
"Well done, Nicola, well done, indeed, your family must be very proud, I hope?"
"I-well, yes, I suppose they must be," Nicola says, smiling hugely at him and not taking her eyes off the door to the stairs. "If you'll excuse me, Julius, I just have to-"
"Right, well, I was hoping you might be able to come to a little meeting we're having in a while, just a little strategy discussion, to plan for the exciting weeks ahead."
Nicola looks at him blankly. "You want me to come to a strategy meeting."
"Well, one election isn't the end of the world, Nicola. Like a phoenix, we shall rise again, you know. And given your exceptional performance today, and the help you've managed to give us with some of that material Malcolm was passing along to you, I think your input would be extremely valuable."
"Um," says Nicola. "Um, okay?"
"Splendid," Julius says. "I shall see you anon." He brushes past her, and she stands motionless, staring after him in blank incomprehension. She shakes her head, and opens the stairwell door.
*
Nicola isn't sure what she expects to find up there. A bonfire of confidential documents, maybe, or a wedding's worth of empty beer bottles. But there's only Malcolm, leaning against the parapet and looking down at the hubbub below. She carefully props the door open and walks over.
She's sure he notices her long before he says anything. "Hey, it's the fucking gypsy girl. Back from your wanderings, yeah?"
"Malcolm," she greets him simply. She carefully leans over the parapet to get a look for herself. The press has set up camp all around the entrance to headquarters, their floodlights making the building look like a castle about to be stormed by a torch-bearing mob.
Malcolm nods down at the light below. "Care to do some looting before the zombie hordes arrive? I've got my eye on Julius's fucking laser printer."
Nicola picks speculatively at the stone wall. "I never was seven points back, was I?"
He very nearly laughs, then says shortly, "No."
"Jesus, Malcolm." She takes a breath, and turns abruptly to look him full in the eyes. "You really are a fucking bastard, you know that? Do you have any idea what the last three fucking weeks have been like for me, you insufferable, megalomaniacal, fucking manipulative fucking arsehole?"
Malcolm watches her impassively, which only serves to make her angrier: "Yes! All right! I admit it, I fucked up with Steve Fleming, okay? But what the fuck do you think gives you the right, Malcolm, the right to play games with my fucking life?"
She storms away from the barrier, only to be stopped in her tracks by a wall of sound coming from the stairwell, an argument even more vitriolic than the one she's currently having with Malcolm, although his contributions have thus far been limited to a single raised eyebrow.
"God," she says to herself, bewildered, "what the hell's going on down there?"
"Aye, I see the fucking circus games have started," says Malcolm, just behind her. Nicola refuses to admit that he can startle her even when they're both standing on a fucking flat fucking roof, so she simply puts a hand to her throat and breathes, her eyes tracking Malcolm as he moves around her to the open door.
At the same time, there's a roar from the edge of the roof and the hazy glow from the street suddenly brightens, flashes like lightning, it seems someone has gone outside to talk to the press. Nicola shivers, moves closer to the door.
"Listen to that," says Malcolm, standing on the side of the doorway opposite her. "You hear that? They're dead, those people. Walking fucking corpses. Look in the papers tomorrow, it'll be their fucking obituaries printed on the page. This one's interview. This one's fucking scandal. That one's fucking retarded excuse for a policy agenda. Dead and buried. Gone. But you," and at this point she's almost afraid to look at him, but she can't not. "You're still alive, Nicola. Your name's not on the fucking burning lists. All those cunts down there, people hate them now, but, oh, not you. You're fucking loved."
Nicola finds she wants to speak, but no sound comes out, at first.
"You," and she stops, because it's absurd, it doesn't make any sense, she almost wants to laugh. "Keeping me out of the press…you were protecting me? Malcolm, I-why?"
He looks at her strangely, and she thinks she should already know the answer…Julius, something Julius said. Phoenix. Lazarus.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Nicola breathes. "A contingency plan. You knew we'd lose all along."
"The Greeks," Malcolm nods towards the parapet, "are inside the fucking walls, Nicola. We're going out the fucking back gate."
Nicola lifts an eyebrow. "And…what, then we found Rome?"
He gives her a look of utter derision. "Well, if you're fucking married to that particular fucking analogy. Although I think 'wait until the Greeks have settled in a bit, and then come back and fucking torch the place' would be a slightly more accurate description of what I have in mind."
"Vive la résistance," mutters Nicola.
"Oui, chérie," he replies.
Nicola crosses her arms. "You've just thrown the entire upper echelon of the party to the wolves, haven’t you? Not to mention the massive lies you've told the press for the last three weeks. Fucking hell, Malcolm, remind me not to trust you."
He narrows his eyes at her. "I'll make a note of it. Now, c'mon, I think the Lord of the Fucking Baldy Fairies is expecting us." He kicks the prop away from the door and Nicola follows him down the stairs.
"Oh," she says, with mock-innocence, "were you invited as well?"
"Invited?" He stops in the stairwell and twists around to look at her. "Fuck off. Invited. It's my fucking meeting." He starts back down the stairs again. "I'm only letting Julius run it so he doesn't have time to hang himself with one of his expensive lordy ties. Waste of good silk."
"Sorry," Nicola says lightly. "My mistake."
"Yeah, well," Malcolm turns again at the entry to the noisy upper floor. "Events are going to get a wee bit fucking complicated from now on, Nicola. Try and fucking keep up, will you?"
Nicola pauses. She regards him quietly, her hand resting on the edge of the rail.
"Yes," she says, finally. "Yes. Of course."
Title: uncertain sideways streets (part two of two)
Fandom: The Thick of It
Rating: PG-13, language
Summary: During the election, Nicola Murray hits a wall.
Part one is here.
part two. where things that don't match meet
A man named Mr. Chattisbourne is telling Nicola about his difficulties finding employment in the last year. Nicola leans in his doorway, nodding at intervals, but she's repeating to herself over and over again: don't ask about the deer head, don't ask about the deer head, don't ask about the...
"That's an interesting, um, piece you have above your fireplace, Mr. Chattisbourne."
Oh, fuck.
He turns around to look at the great big fuck-off dead monstrosity above his fireplace that Nicola cannot take her eyes off of, and she inwardly berates herself. Never remark on people's home furnishings. Compliments come off as patronizing or ingratiating, anything else sounds like an insult, and anyway it derails whatever conversation you're trying to have.
"Oh, that," says Mr. Chattisbourne, turning back around with a glimmer of pride in his eyes. "That's Bessie. Snagged her last summer, me and my brother."
Nicola isn't sure from this distance, but she thinks the dead deer might possibly have a dead rabbit in its mouth.
"Well, it's," Nicola struggles to find the appropriately politic response, "quite impressive?"
Mr. Chattisbourne smiles, pleased, and then says, "Actually, that reminds me, I wanted a word about that fox hunting ban-"
Conversation officially derailed. Nicola sighs.
Five minutes later, she manages to extricate herself from the now entirely awkward doorstep meeting, and walks a couple houses down to where her lone aide is waiting, with a clipboard.
"All right, ma'am?" he asks, taking out his earbuds.
She nods. "Arthur," she says, "I know you're not doing it on purpose, but could you try to look a little less...lurking about? I don't want people thinking you're about to rob them."
He looks chagrined.
"It's fine," says Nicola. "You didn't know."
While the local universities' political clubs are an excellent source of cheap labor (pizza, plus the opportunity for externship credit, does the trick), the students tend to lack a certain amount of training. Any training, really, but since all Nicola needs is someone to wait outside houses and make sure no one lures her inside and tries to murder her, that's all right.
The clipboard is unnecessary, but Nicola figures it makes people feel more important.
"Any notes, ma'am?" asks Arthur, as they head back to her car.
"Well," says Nicola, "I think you can cross his name off." She pauses. "And write 'dead deer' in the margin."
*
On her first afternoon of canvassing, Nicola gives up on the list of previous contacts that her constituency office has provided for her, and just starts randomly knocking on doors, roughly following the marked-up constituency map she's kept from her first election. It's a crude strategy, but with no money, or staff, the only resource Nicola has left is herself, and she is out of ideas.
Canvassing is a fiddly business. Eventually, every politician in the world runs into the same problem with it: it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to be interested in every single person one happens to come across. Logically, this makes perfect sense, even your best friend is boring when she won't shut up about her fucking teacup poodle or her kidney operation, but canvassing supposedly implies that a politician is deeply interested in the opinions of her constituency, and especially in those of the person she is speaking to at the moment. No matter what those opinions might be.
It thus becomes necessary to lie a little bit, if not in words, then in manner.
Nicola knocks lightly on another door, carefully arranging her face to look interested and competent and sympathetic, and to hide, as always, the tiny surge of fear. It's not as though she hasn't done this a thousand times, Nicola, nearly alone among her profession, actually likes canvassing, but then she's never found it particular difficult to listen to people. Which is mostly what's required.
Journalists, on the other hand, expect her to talk. Then again, Nicola's not sure she'd quite classify journalists as people anymore.
It's just-it's a little like playing Russian roulette with your self esteem. Behind one door is someone who thinks well of you, behind the next, you're basically Satan.
The door opens. Nicola smiles, says her name, asks if there's anything they'd like to discuss.
Repeat, repeat, repeat, until the houses run out. Which, Nicola has calculated, will take three years, four months, and twenty-two days.
She has two and a half weeks.
*
Someone must have seen her working her way down one street or another, because by the end of the first week, there's an article in the Telegraph that-
"They've called me the Wandering Minister? That doesn't even make any fucking sense, plus it makes me sound fucking senile," Nicola complains over the phone to Olly, dropping her voice as Katie and Ella pass through the kitchen.
"Anyway," she continues, "Malcolm won't be best pleased, will he?"
"It's on page five, Nicola," Olly says, "and anyway, the story's not really about you, is it? You're only mentioned in passing."
The story is in fact about several low-level ministers who are having difficulties in their constituencies. Nicola is named only near the end, practically an afterthought. She'd had no idea there were five or six others in as much trouble as her, not that it makes her feel any better about her own predicament.
Plus, she's inadvertently broken Malcolm's no-press decree, so she's expecting her house to be firebombed at any moment.
Olly is being shouted at on the other end of the line. Nicola waits for the noise to die down, and then asks, "Was that anything to do with the debate last night?"
"Got it in one," he says, wearily. Nicola has found that Olly is much more tolerable when he's too exhausted to make jokes. "We weren't expecting much from Tom, but we weren't expecting the Others to come up and fucking debag us either."
(At the beginning of the election, the staff at headquarters was referring to the various parties involved as Us, Them, and Those Other Fuckers. Politics being a business filled with nerds, this last got shortened to just 'the Others' pretty quickly.)
"I suppose you wouldn't let me trade places with you for a bit?" Olly asks. "Crap food, four hours' sleep a night, fucking psychotic Press and Comms officials constantly breathing down your neck?"
"I have had," replies Nicola, "three men answer the door in their pants. Today."
"Well, good luck with that, then," he says quickly.
"Thanks ever so much for your support, Oliver."
"We’re always here for you, Minister."
She rings off as the front doorbell chimes.
"Parcel for you, ma'am?" The bicycle courier hands over a bulky, wrapped package. Nicola resists the urge to ask whether it's been checked for incendiaries or anthrax, as it's sealed with familiar document tape and she recognizes the courier.
Inside is a binder, which she sets on the hall table, and a note.
Nicola,
A wee fucking birdie has informed me that, since your main activity these days consists of stumbling around neighbourhoods like an improperly tranquillised fucking glue-bound racehorse, you might have a spot of free time in your schedule to look over these hospital figures for the next debate, a task which I am farming out to you because the inmates at HMP Happy Happy Fun Election Time are all very very fucking busy dealing with figures that are massively more consequential. I would humbly ask you take some time from spouting nonsense to the hoi polloi for this, and by ask I of course mean I expect this back with notes at fucking doors open tomorrow morning, at the very latest.
If a breath of this gets to the press, I will rip out your fucking lungs and turn them into a decorative holiday centrepiece, etc. etc.
Cheers,
Malcolm
Nicola leans in the doorway, eyes shut. "I could kill him," she muses, half-under her breath. "No one would care. I could move to Greece, take an assumed name-"
"Ma'am?" says the courier, a little worriedly.
Nicola shakes her head, opens her eyes. "Do I need to sign something?"
"I just need a time for pickup tomorrow."
"Seven, no. Better make it six." Nicola picks up the binder, looks towards the study.
"Six? Only that's before my rounds start," the courier manages before Nicola shuts the door. She hesitates for a moment.
"Coffee," she decides, and heads for the kitchen.
*
Is there anything in particular that makes you feel that way? is one of Nicola's favourite redirects, a bit of rhetorical alchemy that can turn generalities and soundbytes into something she can actually work with.
"I'm just not comfortable with the way the government is run right now," says one woman.
"Okay," says Nicola, trying not to disagree, conceding a small point in order to win a larger one. "Is there anything in particular that makes you feel that way?"
She tosses out that phrase and gets back stories, of all shapes and colours. Lost jobs, missing benefits, wayward children, all the ills of the world, pieced out house by house. If she's being honest, she's always rather pleased at how well it works, in a tiny sort of way. (Any real pride Nicola ever felt at being able to play conversational ping-pong has evaporated thanks to prolonged contact with Malcolm, who plays five-dimensional chess.)
Mostly, Nicola can't do anything but listen, but she tries to help where she can, if only because the constant sense of powerlessness is exhausting, would overwhelm her completely if she let it. She gives out names, information, one afternoon she recalculates someone's LHA on the back of a take-out flyer. On more than one occasion, she hands out phone numbers and instructions to mention her name, not that, Nicola thinks wryly, that will have much of an impact, not that any campaign manager (which she doesn't fucking have, thank you very much) wouldn't call her efforts a waste of valuable time. But, well, it's something; it is her fucking job, after all.
For the next two weeks, anyway.
The binders keep coming. Nicola doesn't sleep much, starts wearing her hair in loose, messy ponytails, and spends hours at night poring over graphs and summaries and making notes. Her constituency office puts together a few community meetings, a few innocuous little stories run in the local press, and her constituents begin to look as though they're expecting her knock at their doors.
Occasionally, she puts the television on late at night, very quietly, in order not to wake anyone, and watches as the bad news keeps piling up, and a succession of government officials implodes in interesting ways on camera. It's a bit like watching a star collapse in on itself; sometimes she's grateful not to be anywhere near the action. Number 10 feels very far away.
One evening, she scribbles on the first page of a preliminary budget (not theirs, but she isn't going to ask how he'd gotten it):
Malcolm,
Your last dispatch had quite the expansionary effect on my youngest's vocabulary. If you could see fit to tone it down, much appreciated. Furthermore, this is absolute rubbish. If they want to balance out like this they'll have to auction off the NHS, the Queen, and the Isle of Wight, and whoever's doing means testing over there ought to be given an award for Total Fucking Bollocks, please ref. pages 56-57, charts 13 and 24, and especially page 87, which is in several pieces in the back pocket of the binder. Further notes follow.
- Nicola
The next binder to arrive (education statistics) has the Oxford English Dictionary definition of "fuck" taped onto the cover, along with a note in Malcolm's handwriting, which is getting increasingly unsteady as the days pass:
Nicola,
It takes a fucking village. Just doing my bit.
- Malcolm
She smiles properly for the first time in days.
*
Nicola has resigned herself to watching from the sidelines as her party slowly collapses, when Tom manages to do something so outrageously, mind-bogglingly, un-fucking-believably stupid, she's honestly surprised she can't see a miniature fallout cloud rising above the city.
When she's out that morning, it doesn't seem like a total catastrophe, the reactions of the people she speaks to are sympathetic, fairly measured, even understanding. But as the day wears on, they start sounding more and more like neatly-packaged phrases gleaned from the news, and Nicola detects the hand of Opposition HQ in the wording, the emphases, the inevitable conclusions drawn.
Basically, they're completely fucked.
She gets one mass-mail text from Malcolm (NO. FUCKING. PRESS.), and picks up immediately when Glenn rings her that evening.
"This is really fucking bad, right?"
"Well," says Glenn, indistinctly, HQ sounding like complete bedlam behinds him, "I suppose no one has actually died as of yet, although I believe Jamie has frequently come quite close to making that statement inaccurate."
Nicola sighs. "I'm guessing you didn't just call to commiserate."
"I'm to reiterate to you that it would be extremely advisable not to talk to any press right now."
"Right."
There's a long pause.
"And?" Nicola prompts. The background noise abruptly dies down; she has the strong suspicion that Glenn has just shut himself into a cupboard.
"Nicola," he whispers, "Olly and I, well, we were noticing some strangeness with the polling data."
"I'm not following."
He takes a breath. "We think the figures out of headquarters are being doctored."
"What?"
"We haven't got proof or anything, but I've found some discrepancies in the press releases, and we think the numbers, not just yours, several others, too, are being tilted. Significantly."
"But," Nicola says, feeling ill. "How fucking far back am I, then? Ten points? Eleven? Glenn, what the fuck am I going to do?"
"I'm sorry, Nicola, but we really thought you ought to know."
"Right," says Nicola, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Well, thank you. I suppose."
"Nicola-"
"I'm sure you've got lots to do, Glenn, you should probably get out of that cupboard." She pauses, steadying her voice. "And that was not in any way intended as a reference to your sexuality."
Glenn lets this pass. "Be well, Nicola."
"Thank you," she says, meaning it, and rings off, although she's not well, not well at all.
*
In the last days of the campaign, Nicola's efforts are subsumed into the larger Party operation, as HQ deploys scores of people onto the streets to knock doors and hand out voting information (which is always necessary, if you can think of a way to hypothetically fuck up a ballot, rest assured, several thousand people have already actually done it). The volunteers have energy levels that Nicola finds baffling after three continuous weeks of canvassing; they wear red from head to toe and cheerfully carpet the streets with literature.
Nicola, who's always disliked the colour, limits herself to a single red rosette, not really keen on displaying party loyalty at this particular time in her life. She quietly steels herself for election night, reminding herself that yes, it will be terrible, yes, it will be humiliating, but at least it will be fucking over, and then she can go take a nap or fall off a cliff or do whatever the fuck she wants.
*
So when she wins, it does come as a bit of a shock.
*
The room is complete pandemonium and Nicola's mobile buzzes at approximately the same moment that she is tackled by all four of her children at once, so it's a little while before she manages to dig it out and read the message:
Congratulations, Nicola. Your presence is kindly requested at headquarters, we have a car waiting outside, JN.
Nicola frowns at Julius's text, but hasn't time to consider it properly, what with instructing James to watch the children, yes, all the children, no, I don't know for how long, and hustling outside to the car, dodging cameras and reporters, feeling utterly confused, but like a massive weight has been lifted off her shoulders.
She's won. She doesn't know how, but she's fucking won.
In the car, though, she takes out her mobile and looks at the message again, not able to ignore the niggling feeling that something isn't right.
She raps on the dividing window of the car, and the driver rolls it down.
"I'm terribly sorry," she says, "but when did you get the call to bring the car down here?"
"This morning, ma'am. Is there a problem?"
"No, no," she says, and slumps back in her seat, thinking.
Suddenly, she sits bolt upright. "Oh, fucking hell. Oh, fuck. They knew. Oh, I'm going to fucking kill him."
The driver gives her a slightly-alarmed look through the rearview mirror, and Nicola dimly realizes the window is still rolled down.
"Sorry, sorry, not you," she says quickly, and the driver gives her another strange look and puts the window up. Nicola spends the rest of the drive punching numbers into her mobile, but the lines are all busy.
*
Headquarters is a fucking disaster zone. The activity swirling around Nicola as she arrives is intense and frantic, everyone she sees has at least one phone glued to their ear. Those people not yelling orders into electronic devices are walking around looking shell-shocked. Things seen to be rapidly going down the shitter. Nicola manages to walk around for a while completely unnoticed by anyone, a little awed at the sheer amount of movement, of kinetic energy.
Someone calls out the name of a constituency and everything stops, all eyes turn to the television sets scattered everywhere. Nicola, backed into a corner of the room to avoid being run over, feels as though the entire building is holding its breath, waiting. When the results are announced, it's like a collective blow to the stomach, this one is a major, major loss for the Party, and if anyone had any illusions that they might win tonight, they've surely vanished now.
Only once or twice before has Nicola actually been able to sense history twisting around her, shifting into a new pattern before her eyes, and it always feels the same: uncanny, the strangest, unsettling joy.
She'll never tell anyone, but it nearly makes the whole fucking thing worth it.
"Nicola!" She's walking through a corridor when she's hailed by Olly and Glenn, and there's some awkward hugging (Glenn) and apparently sincere congratulations (Olly).
"A bit of good news amongst the general carnage, right, Minister?" says Glenn, smiling.
"I think you can probably stop calling her that now," says Olly. Nicola rolls her eyes at him.
"Glenn," she says. "Do you remember that conversation we had about the polling?"
He exchanges glances with Olly. "It must have been nothing, I mean, obviously you won, and we were never able to find any proof."
"No, no, never mind that, I'm your fucking proof. Glenn, did you ever consider that the numbers might have been doctored down instead of up?"
"But that's ridiculous, why the fuck would anyone-?"
"I don't know," says Nicola. "I don't know, but I certainly know who the fuck to ask. Where's Malcolm?"
Her two aides exchange glances.
"He's up on the roof," offers Olly.
She blinks. "What?"
"He's upstairs, somewhere? On the roof, I think?" repeats Olly.
"We've just lost an election," says Nicola, slowly, "and Malcolm's on the roof."
They look at her, uncomprehending.
Nicola sighs. "Where are the fucking stairs?"
*
She's nearly to the roof when she runs into Julius, who beams congratulations at her and shakes her hand.
"Well done, Nicola, well done, indeed, your family must be very proud, I hope?"
"I-well, yes, I suppose they must be," Nicola says, smiling hugely at him and not taking her eyes off the door to the stairs. "If you'll excuse me, Julius, I just have to-"
"Right, well, I was hoping you might be able to come to a little meeting we're having in a while, just a little strategy discussion, to plan for the exciting weeks ahead."
Nicola looks at him blankly. "You want me to come to a strategy meeting."
"Well, one election isn't the end of the world, Nicola. Like a phoenix, we shall rise again, you know. And given your exceptional performance today, and the help you've managed to give us with some of that material Malcolm was passing along to you, I think your input would be extremely valuable."
"Um," says Nicola. "Um, okay?"
"Splendid," Julius says. "I shall see you anon." He brushes past her, and she stands motionless, staring after him in blank incomprehension. She shakes her head, and opens the stairwell door.
*
Nicola isn't sure what she expects to find up there. A bonfire of confidential documents, maybe, or a wedding's worth of empty beer bottles. But there's only Malcolm, leaning against the parapet and looking down at the hubbub below. She carefully props the door open and walks over.
She's sure he notices her long before he says anything. "Hey, it's the fucking gypsy girl. Back from your wanderings, yeah?"
"Malcolm," she greets him simply. She carefully leans over the parapet to get a look for herself. The press has set up camp all around the entrance to headquarters, their floodlights making the building look like a castle about to be stormed by a torch-bearing mob.
Malcolm nods down at the light below. "Care to do some looting before the zombie hordes arrive? I've got my eye on Julius's fucking laser printer."
Nicola picks speculatively at the stone wall. "I never was seven points back, was I?"
He very nearly laughs, then says shortly, "No."
"Jesus, Malcolm." She takes a breath, and turns abruptly to look him full in the eyes. "You really are a fucking bastard, you know that? Do you have any idea what the last three fucking weeks have been like for me, you insufferable, megalomaniacal, fucking manipulative fucking arsehole?"
Malcolm watches her impassively, which only serves to make her angrier: "Yes! All right! I admit it, I fucked up with Steve Fleming, okay? But what the fuck do you think gives you the right, Malcolm, the right to play games with my fucking life?"
She storms away from the barrier, only to be stopped in her tracks by a wall of sound coming from the stairwell, an argument even more vitriolic than the one she's currently having with Malcolm, although his contributions have thus far been limited to a single raised eyebrow.
"God," she says to herself, bewildered, "what the hell's going on down there?"
"Aye, I see the fucking circus games have started," says Malcolm, just behind her. Nicola refuses to admit that he can startle her even when they're both standing on a fucking flat fucking roof, so she simply puts a hand to her throat and breathes, her eyes tracking Malcolm as he moves around her to the open door.
At the same time, there's a roar from the edge of the roof and the hazy glow from the street suddenly brightens, flashes like lightning, it seems someone has gone outside to talk to the press. Nicola shivers, moves closer to the door.
"Listen to that," says Malcolm, standing on the side of the doorway opposite her. "You hear that? They're dead, those people. Walking fucking corpses. Look in the papers tomorrow, it'll be their fucking obituaries printed on the page. This one's interview. This one's fucking scandal. That one's fucking retarded excuse for a policy agenda. Dead and buried. Gone. But you," and at this point she's almost afraid to look at him, but she can't not. "You're still alive, Nicola. Your name's not on the fucking burning lists. All those cunts down there, people hate them now, but, oh, not you. You're fucking loved."
Nicola finds she wants to speak, but no sound comes out, at first.
"You," and she stops, because it's absurd, it doesn't make any sense, she almost wants to laugh. "Keeping me out of the press…you were protecting me? Malcolm, I-why?"
He looks at her strangely, and she thinks she should already know the answer…Julius, something Julius said. Phoenix. Lazarus.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Nicola breathes. "A contingency plan. You knew we'd lose all along."
"The Greeks," Malcolm nods towards the parapet, "are inside the fucking walls, Nicola. We're going out the fucking back gate."
Nicola lifts an eyebrow. "And…what, then we found Rome?"
He gives her a look of utter derision. "Well, if you're fucking married to that particular fucking analogy. Although I think 'wait until the Greeks have settled in a bit, and then come back and fucking torch the place' would be a slightly more accurate description of what I have in mind."
"Vive la résistance," mutters Nicola.
"Oui, chérie," he replies.
Nicola crosses her arms. "You've just thrown the entire upper echelon of the party to the wolves, haven’t you? Not to mention the massive lies you've told the press for the last three weeks. Fucking hell, Malcolm, remind me not to trust you."
He narrows his eyes at her. "I'll make a note of it. Now, c'mon, I think the Lord of the Fucking Baldy Fairies is expecting us." He kicks the prop away from the door and Nicola follows him down the stairs.
"Oh," she says, with mock-innocence, "were you invited as well?"
"Invited?" He stops in the stairwell and twists around to look at her. "Fuck off. Invited. It's my fucking meeting." He starts back down the stairs again. "I'm only letting Julius run it so he doesn't have time to hang himself with one of his expensive lordy ties. Waste of good silk."
"Sorry," Nicola says lightly. "My mistake."
"Yeah, well," Malcolm turns again at the entry to the noisy upper floor. "Events are going to get a wee bit fucking complicated from now on, Nicola. Try and fucking keep up, will you?"
Nicola pauses. She regards him quietly, her hand resting on the edge of the rail.
"Yes," she says, finally. "Yes. Of course."