The Perfect Sinner

‘You’re looking fine tonight, Ma’am,’ said the chauffeur as she ducked into the back seat, and she had no idea whether that was the sort of thing New York chauffeurs always said or whether he was stepping out of line, so for once she said nothing, breathing deeply and trying to refocus on the evening ahead.

‘Park Avenue?’ the man asked, and she nodded as he closed the door. The traffic was slow moving and she looked at her watch anxiously. Tonight mattered. She slowed down her breathing, deeply and deliberately, and by the time the car drew in to the kerb she felt she was back in control. The chauffeur opened the door for her and she thanked him as she got out, still unsure of the etiquette. It wouldn’t do to hurry, however late she was. Beth looked up for a moment, abruptly dwarfed and dizzied by the soaring perspective of the building above her. There was a banner above the doorway ahead and the words on it said, ‘To reach the future’s heights, freedom is the only ladder.’

Checking her appearance in the reflection of the glass door, she frowned at what she saw. However much time she spent scrubbing away with the hotel toothpaste, she still had English teeth. However much she had spent on new American clothes, she still wore them as an Englishwoman would, folding and crumpling and migrating to parts of her body where they weren’t meant to be. The women of this city seemed to have glued their clothes straight to their skin. However carefully she applied make-up, she could not achieve that perfect, sprayed-on look that she now saw on every side. The people entering the building around her wore that look effortlessly and Beth desired above all to merge with them, to show she was with them in body as well as in spirit. At that moment Beth thought that to be English seemed so dull. Her compatriots were so literal, so lacking in vision and suspicious of power. Above all else, she wanted to be taken seriously by the woman she had come to hear because, finally, she was somewhere where her ideas fitted in.

The revolving door took her into a crowded lobby and heads turned towards her. A photographer took her picture and suddenly there were people approaching her, breaking off their conversations and pushing through the crowd to greet her from all sides.

Beth had learnt to hate that certain sort of male smile that was aimed entirely at her face and not at the mind behind it. In most fields of human endeavour it helped to be a good-looking young woman but in the cynical world of the British political system, dominated by battered bruisers, it could count against you. Four years ago, they’d thought Beth too pretty to take seriously but then her tough message had started to chime with the shocking events of the times. She needed to be sure it was those ideas, not the way she looked, that had helped her up the political ladder. This crowded tour of the power-souks of America was her reward and it had already showed her just how good life could get. Her aide, her very own aide, had met her at the airport. Her schedule had been presented to her in the latest and tiniest of electronic notebooks along with the gift of the notebook itself. When she realised just how inappropriate her wardrobe seemed, so carefully chosen in London and so deeply provincial here, Marianne, her aide, had sensed her doubts and conjured a selection of New York’s best, brought by smiling women to her hotel room for her to try. They assumed payment would be no problem and so Beth had handed over her credit card and crossed her fingers.

The whole swirling melee of a Manhattan evening in spring was intoxicating. For a year, she had been the silent voice of her master, doing just what the chief adviser to a government minister should, breathing cues into his ear, drafting his speeches, stiffening his resolve. In these last few days, she had come out from her master’s shadow. People all along the East Coast had come to hear her, Beth Battock. Those people had risen to their feet and applauded her. Journalists had interviewed her, quoted her because what she had to say was just what they wanted to hear. She was no longer invisible. Her star was on the rise, the people now converging on her the proof of that, and tonight was the high point of her journey.

This time Beth had come to listen, not to speak. Tonight she would finally be in the physical presence of the woman who had been her inspiration and whose every word she had studied, borrowed and adjusted to fit the contours of British politics.

She checked the lobby quickly with her eyes but could see no sign of the woman she sought and then there was a man in front of her shaking her by the hand.

‘So glad you made it, Beth,’ he said. ‘It’s our great pleasure to have you here with us tonight. Athan Tallis, Vice President of External Affairs for the Institute.’ He let go of her hand and swept an arm towards the back of the room. ‘There are some members of our committee over here who are just dying to meet with you.’

She followed him through the crowd to a small, expectant semi-circle of older men and women and tried her best to catch all their names as a cold glass of white wine was pressed into her hand.

‘Miss Battock,’ said a gaunt woman in a long silver gown. ‘We’ve been reading your views with great interest and, if I might say so, with enormous approval. It’s been reassuring to see that some people in your country appreciate what our President is doing for the security of all of us.’

Beth nodded and was about to answer when another man joined the circle. Athan Tallis broke in. ‘Beth, this is Senator Packhurst. We’ve asked him to be your host for the evening.’

She turned to shake hands and the group broke up, leaving the two of them together. He was fifty-ish, tanned, attractively grizzled and decidedly predatory. ‘Forget the Senator crap,’ he said. ‘Call me Don.’

‘Beth Battock.’

‘Oh, I know that. I’ve been reading all about you, young Beth, and it makes a very interesting story. Hey, maybe we should go through and get our seats and then you can tell me how we get back all those British hearts and minds.’

She took a sip of the wine and looked around for somewhere to leave the glass.

‘Bring it in with you,’ he suggested. ‘We might need some refreshment.’

‘I don’t think I will,’ Beth replied a little sharply, and he raised an eyebrow.

‘I see you’re true believer,’ he said.

They went into the auditorium and sat down in the seats reserved for them right at the front. Don Packhurst started on a long anecdote about the last visit of the British Prime Minister as the other seats filled up but Beth was only half listening, her gaze fixed on the empty dais, eager for the event to start. She was more excited than she had ever been waiting for a play to start.

The speaker was announced by a former Vice-President. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said after an introduction hinting that he was responsible for many of the ideas they were about to hear, ‘I give you our inspiration, Christie Kilfillan,’ and Beth was on her feet, clapping with all the rest.

‘And so in conclusion,’ said Christie Kilfillan ninety minutes later, ‘I would ask you all to keep this idea firmly in your minds through the difficult months ahead. This country, this administration, this President, our brave men and women of the armed forces, they have all acted as they have done for the very best of motives and they deserve our continuing support. It has become fashionable to insist that democracy calls for a slower and more muddled approach to international affairs but I have this to say to you.’ She hunched nearer the microphone and narrowed her eyes. ‘You don’t mess around with a cobra.’ Waiting until the eruption of applause faded away, she wagged a declamatory finger in time with her words. ‘You don’t call in the United Nations. You don’t put down a motion. You don’t set up an inquiry. You don’t consult the people. You take out your sword and you cut off its head.’

This time, the applause went on and on and on.

As the crowd filed out again, buzzing with the reaffirmation of their beliefs, Don Packhurst took Beth firmly by the arm and led her to the side of the stage where the star of the evening was holding court. She went up to Christie Kilfillan with all the thrilling trepidation of a pilgrim approaching a saint. Kilfillan stood there as the crowd swirled around her, fifty looking like forty, her face in profile as fine and fierce as a goshawk, tolerating the adulation as people manoeuvred to shake her hand, congratulating her on her speech and seeking to engage her in unsuitably long exchanges. Beth waited until Senator Packhurst, standing just behind her, urged her forward.

‘Just get in there,’ he said. ‘We don’t stand in queues like you Brits.’

Still Beth held back, watching for the right moment. She had waited seven years for this, more than two and a half thousand days since she had first read Kilfillan’s books and fallen under the spell of her argument. The strength of Kilfillan’s principles, the realisation of the complete and utter rightness of her stance on the world, had been as overwhelming as falling in love. Taking those principles, bending them to fit the softer politics of old England, arguing for a new form of the special relationship between America and Britain at the head of a new world order, had put Beth where she was now.

There was a second when a gap appeared and Kilfillan’s eyes focused on her through it, narrowing, considering. She knows who I am, Beth thought with delight. She’s read about me, been told about me. Maybe she’s even been to hear me speak. In the smaller Washington meetings at the State Department, at the Pentagon and the like, she had scanned the private audiences, hoping for a glimpse of Kilfillan, and she had been disappointed. The New York and Boston meetings which followed had been much larger, public events and anyone could have been there, lost in the haze of faces. Someone else wanting Kilfillan’s papal blessing filled the gap before she had taken more than a step, then Don Packhurst seized her by the arm and pushed her in front of her idol, so that there they were together, shockingly together.

‘Christie,’ he said.’This is our new British friend, Beth Battock. You’ve been hearing about her, I’m sure.’

Beth waited for her response, for the slightest sign of approval.

‘I can’t say I have,’ said Kilfillan with her characteristic rasp, failing to take Beth’s outstretched hand, giving her no more than a quick and supercilious glance.

‘You haven’t read the Post? “Message of support from Britain’s bright hope”? This kid’s the future of the old alliance and by the way, she’s also your greatest fan.’

Beth studied Kilfillan’s face while Kilfillan looked at the Senator with no hint of interest. Beth waited, mute, still certain that at any moment the woman in front of her would begin to engage, would smile, would reach out.

Kilfillan did look at her then, just for a moment, just long enough to say, ‘Right. That one. Yes, I caught it.’ Then she narrowed her eyes again. ‘You’ve got a way to go, little girl. A cute face won’t do it. You got backbone? I don’t think so,’ and turned away into the crowd.

Packhurst grimaced. That’s our Christie,’ he said. ‘Come on, I booked us a table at a place I know you’re going to love.’

Over the meal he did his best to persuade her it meant nothing.

‘She’s a tricky bitch, always has been,’ he said. ‘You’re the future. She sees that, you bet she sees that. The green-eyed monster was riding her back.’

‘Maybe she was right,’ Beth had said, not believing that for a moment as she chased seared scallops round her plate. She wished she’d picked something else which didn’t drip butter on the way to the mouth.

‘She was not. Listen, so far as we’re concerned, you’re Miss Great Britain. It’s all been music to our ears. Remember what they called you on CBS? Winston Churchill’s brain in Jennifer Lopez’s body? We thought our old allies were going cold on us until we heard you. Back to back, the Yanks and the Brits. Together we fear no one. That’s the stuff to give the troops.’

In another ten minutes they’d covered the full range of agreement on that one then he asked her, inevitably, to tell him all about herself.

‘Start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘I want to know how you got so smart. Your parents must have been something special.’

‘My mother died when I was born,’ Beth answered, slowly. ‘My father was a historian.’

‘Oh really? What’s his first name?’

‘Guy, Guy Battock.’

‘What’s he written?’

‘Nothing you would have come across. English medieval social history.’

‘I’ll look out for it.’

‘Oh, it was mostly academic monographs. Regional stuff. You won’t find it in the bookshops.’

‘Is he still writing?’

‘No, he’s dead too. Died a few years ago.’

‘OK. That’s tough. So you’re a poor little orphan.’ He reached across and squeezed her hand. ‘Are you a Londoner?’