Afterwards and for many years, people said it was the best speech he ever made. He thanked the people of Purbridge who had always treated him with courtesy and made him welcome. He thanked those who had worked so hard for him. He said he was naturally sorry that he would be unable to speak for Purbridge in the Commons, because he had so much to say; he spoke of the philosophy of the party, that the weak should have a voice, have rights.
He spoke passionately of the National Health Service, one of the party’s proudest achievements. ‘We are all shocked by apartheid,’ he said. ‘But that was exactly what we had here, before Bevan launched the National Health Service. Good healthcare for the fortunate few with money; little or none for the unfortunate many.’ He spoke of Labour’s heart, of its passion to see justice done, of its determination to educate every child in the land, its promise that every family should be in decent, rather than adequate, housing. He looked extraordinary, standing there, eyes blazing, his hair wild as he pushed his hands through it every now and again. His speech was entirely unprepared; it took him by surprise, never mind his entourage. They and all those Labour voters, watching or listening at home, shook their heads in disappointment that they had not got this extraordinary young man as their representative, and more than a few hundred Tories had the same thought. When at last he became aware that his time was up, he stopped abruptly, and said, ‘Let me say, I will never, as long as I have breath in my body, abandon the party I love and all it has done for this country and indeed for you.’
The next day it could have been assumed that Labour had won the by-election. Tom got far more coverage than the winning candidate. His potential, his talent for oratory, combined with his looks, his charm and his credentials – humble beginnings, grammar-school education, young family, pretty young wife – meant the press pounced upon him like some huge bird of prey, picking him up, flying off with him, up towards the sun.
Substantial quotes from Tom’s speech, referring to his passion for the National Health Service and his hero, Aneurin Bevan, appeared in the Daily Mirror and the Herald. The Mirror showed a picture of him at the count with Alice.
Tom, stunned by the reaction, sat at his desk at Herbert & Herbert as everyone in the office came to congratulate him.
‘But I lost,’ he kept saying. ‘I didn’t win.’
Donald Herbert arrived, almost as excited as if Tom had won. ‘You have won, Tom,’ he kept saying. ‘You, Tom Knelston, political force, the future is yours – nobody can take it from you.’
Tom gave in and decided to bask in his own glory; he seemed, entirely by accident, to have gained a foothold into history. He was summoned to Transport House, feted there, promised a win in the next election. Alice, interviewed in the Daily Sketch in a feature that filled half a page, spoke of her faith in Tom and the Labour ideal.
Once the excitement, the euphoria, had gone, once he was back where he had been, an ambitious nobody with no constituency, Tom was as close to depression as he had ever been. This was not the wild grief he had experienced after Laura died; it was a dull heavy misery. Whatever people said, however much he was feted, and his speech quoted, he was a failure, and it hit him very hard. He went endlessly over ‘if only’s in his mind. If only he’d knocked on five more doors each day, if only he’d made a better speech at that librarians’ dinner – he’d been tired and a bit lacklustre, he knew – if only he’d supported the young mothers trying to open a crèche a bit more enthusiastically, if only he’d written a better speech for the Rotary Club, if only he’d done all those things, then he might have got five hundred more votes.
Useless for Alice to tell him he was wonderful and it was only a very short year to the general election and another chance to win, or for Donald Herbert to promise he’d see him into a safe Labour seat; useless for Robert Herbert, who promised him a junior partnership in a year’s time, to tell him. He felt he had let not only himself down but also the Labour Party. He was a failure; and he couldn’t cope with it. As a miserable Alice said to Jillie, he had never known failure. All his life, apart from losing Laura – which was a dreadful thing but the blame for which could not possibly be set at his door – things had gone well for him, at school, at Pemberton & Marchant, during the war, and then at Herbert & Herbert. From his first tentative dip into the world of politics, he had succeeded.
Jillie said that was true, but failure was a necessary ingredient to life’s mix and everyone should know something of it. ‘Look at me, I’m finding out about it too.’ Tom would get over it and be a better person and a better politician for it. Alice hoped she was right, and later decided she had been wrong.
The small Miss Knelston, for whom neither Alice nor Tom had yet thought of a name, duly arrived three weeks early, just as her brother had, in the middle of the following April. She was almost as equable as her older brother – her birth as easy, and even swifter – and she lay, looking out at the world through eyes as wide and blue as his, clearly well satisfied with what she saw.
It was one of Tom’s sisters, who gave her her name.
‘I once had a doll who looked a lot like her,’ she said. ‘Big blue eyes and little round mouth. She was called Lucy.’
‘Lucy!’ said Alice. ‘That’s lovely. If Tom likes it, then Lucy she shall be.’
Tom liked it very much, but Kit’s version was Loopy; Alice rather feared that might stick.
‘Cheer up, Gunning. You look as if you’d lost a shilling and found sixpence.’
‘I haven’t found anything at all, actually,’ said Jamie.
‘What’s up, old chap?’
‘Oh, doesn’t matter.’
‘Course it does. We’re meant to be blood brothers, remember. Come on, spill the beans.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Jamie. ‘But you are not to tell anybody, Richards – this is top secret.’
‘Blood brothers don’t tell on each other,’ said the small Richards. ‘We mingled our blood, didn’t we?’ And indeed they had, pricking their fingers and letting the drops of blood fall on a saucer and then mingling them carefully.
So behind the squash courts, which was the accepted place for confidence sharing, Jamie told Richards the appalling news.
‘I got a letter from my mother this morning. She and my father are getting divorced.’
‘Oh, crikey,’ said Richards. ‘That is a bit rough. Funny way to do it, in a letter.’
‘They’re coming to see me on Sunday. Both of them. My mother said this would give me a chance to get used to the idea, before we all talked.’
‘Oh, I see. How rotten. Sorry. But you know Northfield’s parents are divorced. He says it’s really excellent. They both want him to like them best, so they give him amazing presents – his father gives him the top-class Meccano set, then his mother a full set of Biggles books and so on. Not all bad, you see.’
Jamie contemplated this for a moment, then said, ‘I’d rather have two parents than a Meccano set.’