Absolute Friends by John Le Carre'

Author:John Le Carre'
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: FIC006000
ISBN: 9780759508699
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2004-01-12T10:00:00+00:00

9

KATE IS GETTING ALONG splendidly.

So is young Jake, now aged eight.

Jake is a boisterous, rough-cut fellow who, according to family lore, bears no resemblance to either of his parents but is the dead spit of his granddad Des: stocky, outspoken, large-hearted but quick to anger, and no friend of fine distinctions. Unlike Mundy or Sasha, Jake entered the world without mishap. After a squally infancy, he passed his first year at primary with flying colors, to the relief of his parents who were beginning to fear he might need specialized attention. The present anxiety is how he will handle the move to Kate’s hometown of Doncaster where, if she is to stand any chance of reversing the pro-Tory swing in her marginal constituency, she must reclaim her roots.

In the years between, Kate’s political ambitions have made impressive strides. She is billed as one of the Labor Party’s rising modernizers. Her blistering denunciation of the wreckers of St. Pancras—FEARLESS SCHOOLMARM BLASTS ‘ENEMIES WITHIN,’ Hampstead & Highgate Express—did not escape the eye of Labor Party headquarters. Her fighting nomination speech as parliamentary candidate for her native constituency of Doncaster Trent, praised for its unsparing realism, earned her loud applause from the new centrists. And while she is heartbroken to be saying goodbye to her pupils and colleagues in Hampstead—not to mention uprooting Jake just when he’s settling down at last—well, the best-rated secondary in South Yorkshire is bidding for her services, there’s a house that comes with the job, and a primary for Jake right round the corner and a kids’ sports center where he can let off steam.

But it’s Ted, as the whole family agrees, who’s come through this looking like the trooper Des always said he was. Without Ted’s support, Kate would never have made it out of the trap, says Des, who loves a greyhound. He goes one further, inspiring a family joke that never quite goes to rest, much as Mundy might wish it to:

“I’ll tell you this, and in a minute I’m going to drink to it,” he warns, while Mundy carves the Sunday beef and Jake tries to get everyone to join him in “One Man Went to Mow.” “When our Kate takes up residence at Number Ten, which she will, I’m not joking—Jake, shut up a minute, will you?—when she does, Ted here is going to do a bloody sight better job than what Denis Thatcher is doing today, or should I say not doing? Ted here will not be playing golf all day, and he will not be more than somewhat refreshed by four o’clock in the afternoon or somewhat sooner—In a minute, all right, Jake darling?—Ted here, unlike Denis the Menace, will be where he belongs, at my darling daughter’s side, giving her moral support from every angle in exactly the way—Belt up, Jake!—in the same way that Prince Albert did for Queen Victoria—don’t laugh, Kate, please, I am totally serious. He’ll be your consort is what he’ll be. And he’ll be the best bloody consort there ever was, bar none.

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