The tribulations of a beleaguered grandee
Nigel Spivey
THE HOUSE by Christopher Lee Mandarin, f4.99, pp. 312 His name is resonant with steadiness. Sir Charles Bannister: schooled at Eton, where 'along with the Latin prize he gath- ered a furrowed brow', and intellectually polished at Cambridge, where his rigorous- ly Socratic tutor specialised in 'treachery' (do the buffers of the Reform and Rag still use that term of incrimination?); now Party Chairman, struggling to hold that party together in the face of a rotten economy, sliding polls, and a Prime Minister who would be a grey eminence, if only he could get eminent. The last thing that Bannister needs is a book of confessions from an erst- while cog of the KGB, threatening to expose the father of a cross-bench friend of his — especially when father is his former tutor.
Motoring between London and Cam- bridge in his trusty Alvis, Bannister emerges as a rather unusual man. Everyone around him is more or less putrid. His school chum, Home Secretary Dougal Bax- ter, is as putrid as they come, fornicating with the long-legged girl who writes his speeches (on family values, of course). His brother-in-law at MI6 is no better: a toady old sodomite in a green bowler hat, Henry Colvil loves to address eveyone as 'dear heart', even when he is metaphorically wielding knives. Bannister's daughter is leaving home to set up with a Thatcherite pup in red braces. His wife mistakes friend- ships for affairs. And his boss simply lives up to his sobriquet, 'the Bombardier': class- less, and lacking class in everything he does. In short, Bannister is a beleaguered grandee.
Even his cross-bench friend, Juliet the bosomy socialist, mocks him for his com- mitment to the antique spirit of British administration. She calls him 'Chang': to her, Bannister is a Mandarin. She, it has to be said, is an implausible single female Member of the House. Her politics require her to be flat-heeled and vegetarian, but she seems not at all the sort. She even pow- ers about on a superbike. Her implausibili- ty is not helped by the twist of plot requiring her to be the daughter of some- one whose personality can only belong to a bachelor don: but perhaps it is as well that one or two stereotypes are flaunted, in a novel where so many others are obeyed. For this is Westminster soap turned into Gatwick pulp, and addicts of the pre- dictable will not be shocked by reading it.
On the radio, I find The House a series whose instalments blur into a murmur of Glenmorangie-sodden encounters some- where between Pall Mall and Parliament. As a novel, the author's affection for Charles Bannister is more readily appreci- ated. Through the Gatwick lounge treat- ment, a genuinely attractive hero survives.
Bannister claims to have a suspicious mind. But he is always perplexed by the machinations of others. It does not occur to him that ministers will release secrets; that files are being kept on his Alvis- motored movements; that a woman might offer him a drink with more than whisky on her mind. He spends a night platonically comforting a distraught bosomy socialist, and then is amazed when others accuse him of impropriety. Poor booby: he is not of this world. He gazes up at his favourite Westminster portrait, of Admiral Beatty, as if it were totemic: directing the simple moralities of doing one's duty, biffing the enemy, and playing a straight bat. Hence the air of elegy conjured by Christopher Lee. His hero is the last grandee. The state of siege in which this novel leaves him is, I suppose, yet another charge to be laid at the feet of Baroness Thatcher.
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