Charivari

Spiro Agnew has just published a 5,000-word extract from his novel in progress called A Very Special Relationship. As the world now knows, the book tells the story of an American Vice-President who unwittingly becomes a pawn of foreign political intriguers. Pure fiction, insists Agnew, but one ts allowed to assume that the fantasies he sPins about his former job are as selfrevelatory in their way as his actual perforMance. Coincidentally this column has managed to acquire the right to publish extracts (unfortunately rather short ones) from novels being written by some other well known political figures. Here they are.

The old man was well out to sea but the big fish had eluded him, when suddenly a storm blew up. It was the worst he had encountered in a lifetime aboard his boat. The rain rained and the thunder thundered and the giant waves tossed the frail craft up and down, but the old man was not afraid.

He shook his fist at the black sky and Shouted: "Do your worst. I will not be beaten hY the brute elements, for I have a mandate to sail this sea and catch the big fish, and in the end that fish will be mine." If anyone had been there to listen to him, they would have thought him mad, but he was not mad, simply full of the obstinate pride of an old Man, who had fought the sea many times and survived.

The storm did not abate, and the old man did not cease cursing. At evening on the third day he raised his fist again to the heavens and declaimed: "I have laboured for three days bailing and I have no doubt you are trying to exhaust me. But three days is enough, I will work no more and I defy you." For as he grew weaker so he grew more Obstinate, and perhaps now he had become a little mad after all. He lay down and willed the storm to blow over. He had a strong will and secretly he believed that even the elements must obey it. But he was wrong. The wind blew and the boat filled with water and finally it capsized. The old man swam and cursed as he !Warn. Then suddenly the storm ceased. He floated on his back and saw another boat, whose crew had not refused to bail for more than three days. And now some of the crew were giving thanks to the heavens and others were putting out the lines to fish. "They too are after the big fish," thought the old man, "but it will not be just if they catch it when I have hunted it so long and so determinedly and have never hesitated to change course in doing so, however far out to sea that took me."

And he thought that when he got back to land he would buy another boat and resume the hunt. But he felt very tired and he began to wonder for the first time whether this could have been his last voyage.

—The Old Man and the Sea of Troubles by Edward Heath.

"These Altruist Party fellows," grunted Lord Copper, "bad for the country."

"Definitely, Lord Copper," assented Pry, chief reporter of the Daily Beast.

"Talk a lot of high-sounding nonsense. Most of them are up to their necks in corruption, though, aren't they?" "Up to a point, Lord Copper," said Pry guardedly.

"Corruption's the thing. That and a bit of adultery if we can get it. Bound to be some adultery if we look hard enough. Always is. I want some good strong stuff on the front page. You can be relied upon for that, I suppose."

"Definitely, Lord Copper."

"Go get 'em, then."

At the same time almost precisely similar conversations were going on at the Daily Brute and the Sunday Bruiser. Within hours word reached the muck-raking magazine Private Parts that Fleet Street was preparing to pursue the Altruists into territory that PP had securely taken to be its own. "Don't worry," said editor Dick Ingrate. "we can always come up with something they daren't print."

Pry did his rounds. "Always pay his bills, did he?" he asked the fruiterer who had delivered to the Altruist Leader's home before he moved into No. 10.

"Never a penny missing." "Come on," wheedled Pry, "can't you do better than that?" He waved a tenner under the man's nose. "Let me see now. There was something a bit odd once. But that was a long, long time ago. You wouldn't be interested."

"Try me. That tenner looks lonely. Maybe I can find another one to keep it company."

"Well, him and his missus they had this charlady, Mrs Whim, who did for them. Not so much a charlady really, more a home help. Nice looking woman she was, I always had a soft spot for her meself. She comes here one day with a young man, says he's her cousin, could I do her a favour and let 'him have 501b of South African oranges at the special discount I was allowing His Nibs. Well, I agreed and later I discovered he went down the market and sold the lot at a profit. I was a bit narked, to tell the truth" "Special discount?" queried Pry.

"Yes, wholesale price actually. Only fair seeing as how having His Nibs as a customer was doing me a lot of good."

"You're sure those oranges were South African?"

"Certain. His Nibs always agreed they were the best."

Pry snapped his notebook shut. "Thanks pal. That's worth another couple of tenners."

The bill for the 501b of oranges, which the fruiterer with some more encouragement managed to find a copy of, took up half the front page of next day's Beast. Unfortunately some of Pry's thunder was stolen by the splash in the Brute which reported how the Altruists' Deputy Leader had, many years before when he was a plumber, fixed a blocked drain for a party colleague and failed to declare the fee on his income tax return. And even that story was topped as Ingrate had promised, by a long account in Private Parts of the exact relationship between the Beast's political editor and Mrs Whim.

Meanwhile, the Altruists, who had better things to do than rake over the trivial ashes of the past, went on governing the country. When they nationalised the press and put the merged Beast and Brute directly under the authority of the Home Office, Lord Copper had only himself to blame. —Snoop by Harold Wilson and Edward Short.

Chad Babble