Holly Lester by Andrew Rosenheim

Author:Andrew Rosenheim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

Part Three

Chapter 13

The Professore was right. In the first ten days after Labour’s landslide victory, business at the gallery boomed. A party of three Egyptians bought all four of the Tysons Billings was showing, which paid his rent for the next eighteen months. A Reminstein sculpture of wire and Pyrex, shown by Billings as a favour for a dealer in New York, went for £11,000 to a Kuwaiti who carried it out on the spot to his waiting limousine. Even the fine watercolours of Lionel Elgar, a quiet middle-aged painter who lived in Kent, sold well, though usually as modest afterthoughts to purchases of more expensive abstracts (Tara was particularly effective at generating these add-on sales).

Such was the surge that Billings thought briefly of opening on Saturdays, but this spasm of Thatcherite madness passed. He gave Tara a rise in salary of two thousand pounds, resisted the temptation to spruce up the gallery, and banked the rest. He had been more frightened than he had realized by the pre-Election drought in sales.

Labour assumed power with confidence and press relations panache. Harry Lester’s cabinet appointments proved unsurprising, as all his shadow ministers assumed the posts they had in theory been preparing for, but other symbolic gestures made the news and gave an immediate air of action to the new government. Alan Trachtenberg was appointed Chief of Staff, a new position lifted wholesale from the White House, and also made a member of the Cabinet. Ten Downing Street was to be open to the public on one Sunday per month. The Prince of Wales was praised publicly by Harry Lester. Hyacinth, the lead singer in the rock group Express who had worked for UNICEF, was to be made a Life Peer in the following month’s Honours List.

Holly rang him several times during this buoyant beginning, usually in the evening when, still light outside, Billings would sit in his living room with the windows open, listening to the news on Radio 4 with a drink in his hand. Out of interest he now watched the television news, and once found himself speaking to Holly on the telephone while watching a piece on the news showing her supervising movers outside the Primrose Hill house.

She was vehement about the new Downing Street quarters. ‘They’re a tip. One always heard about Mrs Thatcher making late night cuppas for herself and Denis – along with the whisky. Well, the reason she did it all herself is there isn’t any room for anyone else in the kitchen! It’s the size of a galley on a tiny boat.’

‘Aren’t the reception rooms nice?’

‘They’re okay. A bit tatty. And the bedrooms are ghastly.’

‘Have you got to live there?’

‘Funny you should ask. That’s exactly what I’m wondering. If we sleep in Primrose Hill, who would be the wiser?’

‘I suppose security would be an issue.’

‘Not if we keep quiet about it. And who’s to say Downing Street is any safer? Nobody’s thrown mortar bombs at Primrose Hill lately.’

This phone relationship was pleasant, and safe – Billings had no wish to encounter Harry Lester again in his own bedroom.

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