The Fall and Rise of Gordon Coppinger

He puts the bottle down beside him, where it will be handy if he needs it during the night. He wraps his old stained rags around him and lowers himself carefully on to the ground. He will be relatively cosy, tonight, in his own sunken grotto.

Just as sleep is about to envelop him, there are two loud bangs from somewhere nearby. He is irritated rather than alarmed. He knows what they are. They are not the signal to start a revolution. They are not the first shots in a gangland battle. They are fireworks. Tonight is Guy Fawkes Night. He knows this because he knows that November the fifth is Bonfire Night, and he knows that it is November the fifth because he always knows the date. There are often pages of newspapers bouncing in the wind along London’s dirty streets, and although he may look half drunk and extremely filthy, he still has a good brain, and he has very little to feed it, so he grabs what scraps he can.

Now sleep will not come. He thinks back to all those Bonfire Nights in Dudley, watching the municipal fireworks display with his brothers, gasping with shared astonishment, which was about the only thing they shared. They weren’t allowed to have fireworks themselves. There were a lot of things they weren’t allowed to have. They weren’t allowed to go to the swimming pool in case they contracted polio. He enjoyed the Saturday-morning film shows but his two brothers had grown out of such things, if indeed they had ever been into them. His elder brother almost certainly hadn’t. He had no sense of fun. There hadn’t been any point in playing games with him. He had no talent for games.

The middle brother, now, he had been different. He had been rather good at games, at make-believe, but he had never had the time. He had never had the time for anything, really, except for making money. He used to go to the baker’s, buy cakes, take them home, and cut them into pieces – rather small pieces to be honest – and sell them by the slice. He preferred that to any game, which was a pity.

Does the man in the privileged position beside the warm-air outlet welcome these reminiscences, or are they an irritation which prevents him from sinking into the unconsciousness he craves, if indeed he does crave it? How does he feel about his lifestyle? Is he happy? Is he sad? Is he resigned? Is he bitter?

What goes on inside his head is actually the only privacy he has left in his life. Perhaps we have intruded enough.

Staring at himself with astonishment (#ulink_35f13a02-cdef-5a45-a457-26b5fa4fb3b3)

This was the bit that he liked best – the moment before anybody arrived. He stood in the middle of the enormous drawing room, rich in plump settees and elegant standard lamps, two of them in the art deco style – who said he was a philistine? On the walls hung a Cézanne, two Pissarros and a Stanley Spencer – again, who said he was a philistine? Log fires crackled gently at both ends of the great room. They were known as the west fire and the east fire. Some people described this as affectation, but Lady Coppinger said that it was necessary in order to give definite and simple instructions to the servants.

He walked slowly through the ground floor of his ‘cottage’, and every prospect pleased him.

The rosewood (what else?) dining table, the long rustic table in the far kitchen and the trestle tables erected for the occasion in the conservatories were all beautifully laid with plates of rare beef, pink lamb, pork with liberal crackling, smoked duck, venison sausages, five moist whole salmon that had once been wild, six stuffed trout that hadn’t been too pleased either – the old jokes were the best in Sir Gordon Coppinger’s book. It was all so quintessentially British, to use Peregrine Thoresby’s favourite word. Not a salami or a snail in sight. Good old Siobhan.

In the vast entrance hall with its anachronistic Doric pillars, the two lovely Pembroke tables were bedecked with all the rich promise of alcoholic excess. On the table to the left were bottles of champagne and long antique flutes. On the table to the right bottles of red wine stood opened and breathing and were surrounded by glasses of a size to cheer the most sombre of hearts. All the wine was British. It pained Sir Gordon not to be able to serve great French wine, but his reputation as a patriot was paramount.

The serving staff stood at their posts, young enough, smart enough, alert enough and attractive enough to pass muster even to this stern critic. Good old Siobhan.

Oh, it was wonderful. The food elegant and untouched, the bottles full, the glasses gleaming, the carpets spotless, and Lady Coppinger safely in her dressing room deciding which shade of lipstick to favour and which necklace to wear.

He climbed the stairs with the energy of a young man, and made a final security check round the eight bedrooms, the three dressing rooms and the eight bathrooms, six of which were en suite. Everything was as it should be. He’d known that it would be but he was glad of the excuse to look round and admire his cottage without seeming smug about it.

He switched off the lights on the landing that would have seemed long enough and wide enough to be called a gallery if he hadn’t been to Flaxborough Hall so recently, and peered out of one of the windows into the impenetrable dark. The rain hadn’t amounted to much, the bonfire would burn well. In a couple of hours this dark sky would be alive with bright colours and sensational patterns.

He could just see, through the gently swaying trees, the lights in Top Field, where a marquee had been set up to serve beer and wine and pork pies and sausages (not venison) to the good people of Borthwick End, Borthwick Magna and Borthwick Juxta Poynton. How generous I am, he thought, to allow them to marvel at the sensational waste of money which is at the heart of this evening at this critical economic moment in our island’s story.

Yes, this was the bit he liked best. Soon they would be here, headlights frightening the owls in the trees that lined the drive, tyres churning up the grass in the Front Meadow and the Back Meadow, exclamations of astonishment as if they’d never seen tables laid with food before, the wild salmon and the unhappy trout skeletonized before his eyes, and the chatter, the roar of the trite remarks of 250 people, what did they find to talk about? The showy coats piled on the beds in the guest bedrooms, the crumbs and wine stains on the carpet, the soiled bowls in the many lavatories, it would be downhill from now on.

He braced himself against the invasion. He consulted the database in his head. He must be prepared.

People invited included his elder brother Hugo; his doctor Hamish Ferguson and Mrs Ferguson; his centre forward Raduslav Bogoff and his not so svelte wife Svetoslava Bogoff; his creative left-side midfielder Danny Templeton and Mrs Templeton; his goalkeeper Carl Willis and Mrs Willis; Keith Gostelow, Dan Perkins, and Adam Eaglestone from GI (Keith Gostelow and Adam Eaglestone accompanied by their better halves, Dan Perkins accompanied by his worse half); his daughter Joanna, accompanied by nobody; Siobhan and Liam McEnery; Field Marshal Sir Colin Grimsby-Watershed (retired) and Lady Grimsby-Watershed (retired); Admiral Lord Feltham of Banbury (retired) and Lady Feltham; Gloria Whatmough, Head of Charitable Giving, and her friend June Wellington; Peregrine Thoresby, Curator of the Coppinger Collection and his partner David Emsley; and, last but least, his son Luke and his latest girlfriend, Emma Slate.

People not invited included his younger brother Jack; his deceased mother Margaret; Fred Upson; Martin Fortescue; Helen Grimaldi; Kirkstall; Alice Penfold with her stud and ring; Fiona Bruce; A.A. Gill; Giles Coren; the Mayor of Dudley; Mandy of Hair Hunters of Hackney; Francesca Saltmarsh of the Perseus Gallery with the sweetest little bedroom upstairs; and Jenny Boothroyd, Sandy Lane, Isla Swanley, Kerry Oldstead, Gill Goldthorpe, and Ellie Streeter, all of whom he had taken to his secret seduction suite on the twenty-second floor during the last six months.

The phone rang, loud and shocking in this last moment of silence.

A few moments later, Farringdon called out to him.

‘A Mr Liam McEnery on the telephone for you, sir.’

‘Thank you, Farringdon.’

He approached the phone as if it was an unexploded bomb.

‘Coppinger.’

‘I’m so sorry to bother you when you must be so busy, Sir Gordon.’

Yes, so get on with it.

‘I’m afraid we aren’t going to be able to come, sir.’

No Siobhan! What do I do if things go wrong? How selfish is this, to let me down at this late hour?

‘It’s the wee mite, sir.’

Oh, bloody Ryan. Might have guessed it. Children! Bastards!

‘I’m afraid he’s not well, sir.’

‘Oh dear. Nothing serious, I hope, Liam.’

‘I’m afraid it may be, sir. We’ve had to rush him to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

This really is very inconvenient, though. Why are kids always so inconvenient? And who will orchestrate the evening now?

‘Please give Siobhan my very best wishes, and tell her not to worry at all about the party, I’m sure her planning is absolutely foolproof.’

‘Thank you, sir. She’ll appreciate that.’

First arrivals. Suddenly Lady Coppinger sailed out from the harbour of her bedroom, exuding welcome, dripping with real pearls and false charms.

‘Hello! Oh, you look gorgeous.’

‘Well, so do you.’

‘And that new rose you bred last year. Divine. What was it called again?’

‘The Crimson Rambler.’

‘Marvellous.’

‘Thank you.’

They were off. It had begun. Siobhan was forgotten.

Who the hell are this couple? Quick, access the database of the brain, search. Ah, yes. Stanley Welton, the big cheese at Stilton (ha, ha) and Mrs Welton. ‘How are Olivia and Toby?’ ‘Oh, how clever of you to remember.’ We’re off, we’re at the races, who needs Siobhan? I can do this.

Chat, chat, chat. Sip, sip, sip.

The chosen footballers of Climthorpe United were among the first to arrive, awkward in their suits, none more awkward than Raduslav Bogoff. They had a Derby match against Charlton next day, and to invite so many of them tonight had been to indulge that love of risk that is an essential ingredient of the make-up of all great men.