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permanent secretary at the Ministry, and the person whom, quite wrongly, I regarded as my boss.
    â€œNothing formal,” she said. “I’m asking Chris Cunningham and his wife as well. You don’t have a partner, do you?”
    â€œNot at the moment,” I said. Margaret and I were getting on rather well by now, more relaxed and appreciative in each other’s company, so I added: “I asked one of my constituents recently if he had a partner, and he said: ‘My brother George—you know that, Mr. Pinnock. We’re plumbers.’ And when I said that I meant did he live with anyone he said, ‘Mind your own fucking business, Mr. Pinnock.’”
    She laughed.
    â€œWell, so long as you’re happy to come on your own. When you’re Prime Minister you’ll have to ask your sister or someone like that to act as the Downing Street hostess.”
    I shook my head, smiling.
    â€œNo sister. No relatives of any kind or of either sex. Didn’t Mr. Heath do without a hostess when he was Prime Minister?”
    â€œPerhaps that was Mr. Heath’s problem,” she said tartly.
    So Margaret and I were now on the sort of terms where comment of a personal nature could be made on politicians of the past. Nevertheless I was careful over dinner about what I said, and I saw no evidence that she was on similar terms with Chris Cunningham—but his wife’s presence may have made Margaret more careful than she otherwise would have been. Chris’s wife, Mary, was heavily pregnant with what the pair called their Party Conference baby, and soon after dinner they had to leave rather precipitately. It certainly wasn’t anything they ate. Margaret was a good cook of a very traditional kind. There were no exotic dishes or ingredients, and the results made clear that she would have no truck even with the crunchy vegetables nonsense.
    â€œYou’ll stay, won’t you?” she said, as Chris and Mary retreated to the lift and out to the official car. “It’ll make them feel worse if they hear they brought the whole evening to an end.”
    â€œI’d like to,” I said, coming back into the beige and blue living room of her Earl’s Court flat. “I bet Chris and his wife would have planned things differently if they’d known he would get a ministerial post.”
    â€œIf they planned at all,” she said lightly. “Sex and politics—the two great imponderables.”
    She sat down and began pouring the coffee, which had been sitting stewing during the minor panic of Mary’s bad turn.
    â€œI think I handle the political hazards more confidently than the sexual ones,” I said, keeping the tone of the conversation light.
    â€œBut then you’ve been in the political thick of things for a long time, haven’t you?”
    â€œOh yes—I’ve been ‘politically active’ since my teens,” I said, leaving well to one side the question of my sexual activity. “First locally, then nationally. But of course government is another matter.”
    â€œNaturally. More exacting, and more dangerous. But you’ve proceeded very cautiously, I think.”
    â€œOh, I make mistakes. Making little jokes about my predecessors to civil servants, for example. Second nature to me, that kind of joke.”
    â€œOh, everyone with a sense of humor makes that kind of mistake. It’s very minor. But you do see the problem, don’t you?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œWe’ve all served lots of masters and mistresses, we who work in the Civil Service. Some we’ve liked, some we’ve loathed. The liking or loathing has little or nothing to do with their performance as ministers. You can have a minister who’s totally incompetent, a one-man disaster area, someone who drives you to distraction professionally, yet personally you may be very fond of him. I’ve even been fond of one who