letterhead of the Mayor of Tower Hamlets but ran to several sheets, with the unmistakable look of a petition:
We, the undersigned call on you to ban a proposed march by the Free Briton Brigade in east London on September 30. Clearly this march has been planned to disturb community preparations for Eid-al-Fitr, and in such a place as to revive an ignominious tradition of fascists seeking to parade through multi-cultural east London. The FBB bring a message of hate to our borough. We call on you to secure our streets, protect our citizens, and ban this march!
The list of signatories was long and staunch. Blaylock passed the pages back to Geraldine with a nod. ‘Okay, I’ll need to speak to Bannerman, if His Holiness will grant me five minutes.’
‘Got it. The Inspector of Constabularies would like to ride with you in the car to the police conference tomorrow, is that fine?’
‘Tell him I’d be glad of his company.’
‘And can we tell Number Ten you’ll be at the black-tie do at the Carlton on Thursday night? They’re chasing all Cabinet members.’
‘Aye, if I really can’t get a better offer.’
Geraldine nodded and left. Blaylock moved to his desk, where a laptop sat dormant – his immovable note to self that all important exchanges in the building take place face to face, all important information pass from hand to hand. ‘ I don’t want people in this building lobbing grenades over email ’ had been his day-one decree.
Setting Geraldine’s one-sheet down he glanced to the silver-framed photo of his children: a posed studio portrait, their gift to him last Christmas, decently done. He liked to imagine the kids had come up with the idea, but suspected it was their mother’s initiative. Alex’s irked eyes betrayed displeasure in having to pose; Cora’s querulous look rather challenged the lens; but at the foot of the pyramid Molly’s smile was so wide she was probably saying ‘Cheese’.
Hearing footsteps Blaylock looked up to see the Permanent Secretary bearing down on him, having entered without a knock.
‘Good morning, Home Secretary. Heavens, if you wanted to come in late you needn’t have gone to such lengths.’
Thus Dame Phyllida Cox’s version of Managing a Situation with Humour, accompanied by a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Possibly she had learned it from a manual. From Cambridge via the fast stream, Phyllida had always commanded big jobs in big departments. Not that ‘command’ was a term she acknowledged. ‘By golly’ – she had assured him at their first meeting – ‘we are here to serve our Home Secretaries, not to make problems for them.’ That plural, though – Secretaries – had stayed with Blaylock, in its sense of successive ministers as mere fly-by-nights passing through a far more entrenched world.
Dame Phyllida stood six feet tall, her robust frame routinely softened – as today – by furled and pinned scarves, gemstone brooches and heathery-tweedy coats. Her nose was prominently curved and her cheeks coloured easily, whether from pique or discomfort or a generalised sense that things were not being done as the manual decreed. Blaylock saw her as a Head Girl type: her voice must have carried at assembly, and she would have been a useful bully on the hockey pitch. But he could imagine, too, the unrulier girls ganging up after lights-out to truss her vengefully into her bedsheets.
‘I’ve drafted this,’ said Blaylock, thrusting at Phyllida the envelope on which he had composed in the car. ‘A letter to the editor of Today , copied to the Head of News and the chairman of the Trust.’
She held it between finger and thumb as she perused. ‘Yes. I heard this. You’re really concerned? Laura Hampshire didn’t let the Jabirman chap get away on anything.’
‘Phyllida, I know newsrooms. Desmond speaks for nobody, but someone at the BBC either finds him very impressive or else they reckon he livens up their show. So they let him talk a load of
We, the undersigned call on you to ban a proposed march by the Free Briton Brigade in east London on September 30. Clearly this march has been planned to disturb community preparations for Eid-al-Fitr, and in such a place as to revive an ignominious tradition of fascists seeking to parade through multi-cultural east London. The FBB bring a message of hate to our borough. We call on you to secure our streets, protect our citizens, and ban this march!
The list of signatories was long and staunch. Blaylock passed the pages back to Geraldine with a nod. ‘Okay, I’ll need to speak to Bannerman, if His Holiness will grant me five minutes.’
‘Got it. The Inspector of Constabularies would like to ride with you in the car to the police conference tomorrow, is that fine?’
‘Tell him I’d be glad of his company.’
‘And can we tell Number Ten you’ll be at the black-tie do at the Carlton on Thursday night? They’re chasing all Cabinet members.’
‘Aye, if I really can’t get a better offer.’
Geraldine nodded and left. Blaylock moved to his desk, where a laptop sat dormant – his immovable note to self that all important exchanges in the building take place face to face, all important information pass from hand to hand. ‘ I don’t want people in this building lobbing grenades over email ’ had been his day-one decree.
Setting Geraldine’s one-sheet down he glanced to the silver-framed photo of his children: a posed studio portrait, their gift to him last Christmas, decently done. He liked to imagine the kids had come up with the idea, but suspected it was their mother’s initiative. Alex’s irked eyes betrayed displeasure in having to pose; Cora’s querulous look rather challenged the lens; but at the foot of the pyramid Molly’s smile was so wide she was probably saying ‘Cheese’.
Hearing footsteps Blaylock looked up to see the Permanent Secretary bearing down on him, having entered without a knock.
‘Good morning, Home Secretary. Heavens, if you wanted to come in late you needn’t have gone to such lengths.’
Thus Dame Phyllida Cox’s version of Managing a Situation with Humour, accompanied by a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Possibly she had learned it from a manual. From Cambridge via the fast stream, Phyllida had always commanded big jobs in big departments. Not that ‘command’ was a term she acknowledged. ‘By golly’ – she had assured him at their first meeting – ‘we are here to serve our Home Secretaries, not to make problems for them.’ That plural, though – Secretaries – had stayed with Blaylock, in its sense of successive ministers as mere fly-by-nights passing through a far more entrenched world.
Dame Phyllida stood six feet tall, her robust frame routinely softened – as today – by furled and pinned scarves, gemstone brooches and heathery-tweedy coats. Her nose was prominently curved and her cheeks coloured easily, whether from pique or discomfort or a generalised sense that things were not being done as the manual decreed. Blaylock saw her as a Head Girl type: her voice must have carried at assembly, and she would have been a useful bully on the hockey pitch. But he could imagine, too, the unrulier girls ganging up after lights-out to truss her vengefully into her bedsheets.
‘I’ve drafted this,’ said Blaylock, thrusting at Phyllida the envelope on which he had composed in the car. ‘A letter to the editor of Today , copied to the Head of News and the chairman of the Trust.’
She held it between finger and thumb as she perused. ‘Yes. I heard this. You’re really concerned? Laura Hampshire didn’t let the Jabirman chap get away on anything.’
‘Phyllida, I know newsrooms. Desmond speaks for nobody, but someone at the BBC either finds him very impressive or else they reckon he livens up their show. So they let him talk a load of
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