They took two taxis to Downing Street, even though the five of them could have fitted into one. Clive said that it would look undignified, bumping heads and extricating limbs while policemen and assistants watched. Sophie wanted to be with Clive, but he said he didn’t want the stars to be in one cab and the nobodies in another.
‘I wouldn’t have thought of that,’ said Sophie.
‘You know why not?’ said Bill. ‘Because you don’t think in terms of stars and nobodies.’
‘You know what I mean,’ said Clive. ‘You’re not a nobody to me. You’re just a nobody to the rest of the world.’
They had to knock on the door, as if Number Ten was a house, and a secretary showed them into a reception area before leading them upstairs. On the wall over the staircase there was an ascending line of pictures, paintings and then photographs of every prime minister in the history of Britain, and Sophie silently chastised herself for recognizing so few of the names.
Marcia Williams was waiting for them in a sitting room upstairs. She was excited to see them, or pretended to be, and when she shook Sophie’s hand she gave her arm a little squeeze at the same time. She seemed nice, Sophie thought, but it was hard to think of her as the Prime Minister’s mistress. It was hard to think of her as anyone’s mistress. She was obviously very brainy, and her teeth were too big for her mouth. She wondered whether it was a case of needs must. Harold probably didn’t meet thousands of glamorous women in an average year, what with all the TUC meetings and the visits to the Soviet Union. Marcia might have been the closest Harold could get to Raquel Welch. But Sophie suddenly felt self-conscious, and wished she’d worn a longer skirt. She didn’t want to make Harold unsatisfied with his lot, if it was true that Marcia was his lot, or some of his lot. And she didn’t want to have to rebuff the Prime Minister, if he liked what he saw. That would be embarrassing.
Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams
They sat down, and Marcia ordered coffee and biscuits, and offered them cigarettes from a lacquered case on the coffee table. They talked about Number Ten, the odd shape of it, its deceptive size, how there was another entrance in another street entirely. Marcia’s answers were so smooth that they’d been worn away to almost nothing, and Sophie suspected that none of them had asked a question she hadn’t heard a thousand times that week.
‘Harold’s just on his way,’ said Marcia. ‘But I thought it would be nice to have a little chat first.’
‘Lovely,’ said Sophie.
‘Ever since I started watching Barbara (and Jim),’ said Marcia, ‘I’ve been brewing up plans.’
‘Oh,’ said Dennis. ‘What sort of plans?’
‘Well, it seems silly that whenever you’ve shown Jim at work, his office is in a BBC studio. But he works here, at Number Ten. So what I was wondering was, would you like to film somewhere in here?’
‘Gosh,’ said Dennis.
‘I don’t mean every week,’ said Marcia. ‘Worse luck. I’d like it, but Harold would probably start grumbling.’
They laughed politely.
‘But I’m sure we could manage something as a one-off.’
‘Golly,’ said Clive.
‘And we’d like to do it quite soon,’ said Marcia.
‘Oh,’ said Dennis.
‘The thing is, everyone says this election is really boring, and Harold’s going to win easily, and we’re desperately trying to think of ways to pep it up a bit,’ said Marcia. ‘Otherwise it’s all a terrible grind, and the turnout goes down, and if we do win, it’ll start off with a bit of a whimper, rather than a bang.’
There was a lot of smiling and nodding, but still nobody said anything.
‘We wouldn’t ask you to take sides, of course,’ said Marcia. ‘The BBC wouldn’t have that. But an amusing debate about the issues between Barbara and Jim would do so much more than party political broadcasts. People love the programme so much.’
‘That’s very kind of you to say so,’ said Bill.
Sophie wondered whether everyone else had gone mad except her. The Prime Minister’s secretary was asking them whether they wanted to film in Number Ten and all anyone said was ‘gosh’ and ‘golly’.
‘We’d love to,’ said Sophie.
‘Good,’ said Marcia, and she beamed at them all.
Dennis, Tony and Bill looked at Sophie as if she had spoken out of turn.
‘But I’m not sure that …’ said Dennis.
‘Here’s Harold,’ said Marcia, and there he was, the Prime Minister, sucking on a pipe as if nobody would recognize him without it.
They stood up and introduced themselves, except before Sophie could speak he stopped her.
‘And you must be Barbara,’ he said, and everyone laughed politely.
‘Yes,’ said Sophie. ‘Sophie.’
He looked perplexed for a moment.
‘I’m Barbara in the programme,’ she said.
‘Of course you are,’ said Harold. ‘I’ve seen it. Very good.’