A Scandalous Man - Gavin Esler

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they had delivered in the mornings. Harry decided it must be one of the smaller ones. His father said the Lady called the smaller ones, ‘Comics for Grown-Ups’. He thought that was very funny.

      ‘You must be Harry,’ the voice said.

      Yes, Harry thought. I must be Harry. Still he said nothing.

      ‘You’re big for an eight year old.’

      Harry was puzzled now. He most definitely was NOT big for an eight year old.

      It irritated him. This pair of bright blue eyes in his letter box were connected to a mouth which knew things about him – his age – and yet which was saying things about him which were obviously not true. Why would he do that, this Stephen Lovelace person? The eyes in the letter box reminded him of something. He frowned. Not a wolf, after all. Not even the bright blue eyes of the husky-type dog in the park. No, it was the hypnotizing stare of the snake, Ka, in the cartoon of Jungle Book. Harry felt woozy.

      ‘Listen, Harry,’ Stephen Lovelace said, eyes whirling. ‘My paper wants to do all right by you and the family, put your dad’s side of the story. So can you tell your dad we just want to hear his side, that’s all. He can name his price. You got that?’

      Harry nodded.

      ‘Want to repeat that?’ Stephen Lovelace said, his eyes swirling in the letter box. ‘Your dad’s side of the story …’

      ‘His side of the story.’

      ‘… and name his price.’

      ‘Name his price.’

      ‘You’re a clever boy, young fellow-me-lad.’

      This irritated Harry even more. How would the eyes in the letter box know that? Did this Stephen Lovelace spy on him at school? Perhaps people who worked in newspapers, especially the small ones that the Lady and his father called the comics for grown-ups, perhaps these people knew everything about you. Ooooooh! That made Harry feel strange. Did they spy on him when he did something bad, like picking his nose? Or farting? Without warning, the letter box shut. The eyes of Ka disappeared. His father came down the stairs with Amanda in tow, her schoolbag hanging from her shoulders.

      ‘Right,’ his father said. ‘Time to … to … what’s that on the floor?’

      They looked down at a pool of liquid spreading out under Harry’s shoes on the parquet flooring.

      ‘It’s wee,’ Amanda said, half in amazement, half in triumph. ‘Harry’s peed himself!’

      Harry thought he saw steam rising from the pool of liquid by his feet, though he might have imagined it. He burst into tears, not because of what he had done, not because his crotch and trousers were wet and uncomfortable, sticking to his legs, not even because his sister was joyous in his humiliation, but at the thought that the bright blue eyes-in-the-letterbox called Stephen Lovelace might have seen him do it, and that he would write about it in his newspaper, the small one, the one the Lady called a comic for grown-ups. And he knew something else. He knew he would remember those eyes. Forever.

       London, Spring 2005

      As soon as Amanda rang off, Harry Burnett called the Metropolitan Police on the number his sister had given him. To his surprise, someone answered almost immediately.

      ‘Hello, my name is Harry Burnett and …’

      ‘You are Robin Burnett’s son, Harry Burnett?’ the voice interrupted.

      ‘Yes.’

      The last time Harry had called the Metropolitan Police was six months before. He had been mugged in a park near Fulham Broadway. The muggers had stolen his iPOD and run off towards the Peabody Estate, a housing estate so rough it had become almost a no-go area. That time, the police telephone rang for forty-five minutes without any police officer managing to answer it. That time, Harry had given up. This time was different. Instant access. Suddenly, he realized, he was Somebody. Or the Son of Somebody.

      ‘Yes. I’m Harry Burnett,’ he confirmed. ‘My sister said you were interested in meeting me at my father’s flat in Hampstead?’

      The detective said yes, he was indeed very interested to meet Robin Burnett’s son at his father’s flat in Hampstead.

      ‘Can I check the address with you?’ Harry said.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because I’ve never been there. Until a few moments ago I didn’t even know my father owned a flat in London.’

      ‘Oh?’ The officer sounded genuinely puzzled. ‘And – um – why is that?’

      ‘Because … because I have not talked to my father in years.’

      ‘Oh.’

      The policeman confirmed the address and they fixed a time. Harry checked his watch and decided to head to the flat immediately. He walked towards Fulham Broadway Underground Station marvelling at how his father’s name opened doors for him, and how even the affable TV reporter had known about his father’s most precious political gift, right from the very beginning, of perfect timing.

      The beginning was 1979. Harry thought of 1979 as Year Zero. A lot of things happened in Year Zero, including Harry, who – in tribute to his father’s impeccable timing – was born on the same day that Mrs Thatcher was elected Prime Minister.

      ‘The Lady will just love it,’ Robin Burnett told Harry’s mother, Elizabeth, when he suggested they schedule her Caesarean section for polling day. ‘The Lady just loves the idea of traditional families. The more babies the better.’

      ‘Oh, good,’ Elizabeth responded. ‘Obviously I am pleased to go through with surgeon-assisted childbirth on a day that best suits the future Prime Minister.’

      Robin Burnett did not respond to sarcasm. Perhaps he did not even hear it. Besides, he and the Lady were busy with other matters. She celebrated her historic election victory, that May of 1979, and immediately offered Harry’s father a place in her government. Harry, meanwhile, was throwing up in hospital. It took the doctors twenty days of head-scratching to figure out what was wrong and then to operate and put it right. It meant, coincidentally, that when nowadays the TV networks show library pictures of Mrs Thatcher’s election victory they are also showing TV footage of the day of Harry’s birth. He had seen it so often, it was as if he had witnessed it first hand.

      In the TV library pictures from May 1979 the Lady is always radiant, twin-sets, pearls, handbags, surrounded by pale-faced, earnest-looking men wearing bad spectacles. Flag-waving crowds cheer the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

       Hurrah! Hurrah!

      She smiles quizzically, cocking her head to the side, trying not to look too pleased with herself, but Harry can tell that she is very, very pleased with herself. She has a helmet of blonde hair which manages to be stiff and wavy at the same time. Then she quotes the words of St Francis of Assisi, as if speaking to a class of particularly slow-witted children.

      ‘Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy.’

      Every time he saw the TV clips, Harry thought: that was Mrs Thatcher, wasn’t it? Love. Faith. Hope. Light. Oh, yes, and joy. Mustn’t forget the joy.

      Rejoice. Rejoice.

      As they went through the divorce, Harry’s mother told him that during those first twenty days of his life, Robin Burnett visited the hospital just three times, and never for more than fifteen minutes. She kept score. She said she ‘counted him in, and counted him out.’

      ‘The hospital was the best place for you,’ Robin Burnett

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