Damage Read Free

all.’
    Ingrid smiled, conspiratorially I thought afterwards. But I was flattered. I arrogantly believed that I could soften Edward Thompson’s brand of Conservatism, just a little, and make my own contribution. My inner doubts slipped away that night. I was pleased with the idea. I was proud of myself.
    After years of carefully watching every move I made in order to avoid being dominated by my own father, I now found myself about to embark on a whole new course of life, because my father-in-law had flattered me into it.
    Ingrid and I sat and talked more intensely that evening than at any time in our marriage. She was very excited. I realised that she must always have hero-worshipped her father. She was now thrilled by the thought of my following in his footsteps.
    We agreed I would pursue a safe seat, which had just become vacant close to where we lived. There my influence as a doctor would be at its most powerful. Though I was opposed by a clever, older, local businessman, Party officials clearly wanted a member of the ‘caring’ professions. I was quickly selected as a Tory candidate. At the by-election they must have felt they had made the right decision, because I was elected with a substantially increased majority. Ingrid retired into herself again, satisfied. The normal working mechanism of our relationship re-established itself. She was content. The tranquillity which had always characterised our daily lives returned.
    Years later, I often wondered how much had been discussed between Ingrid and her father, before the fateful dinner party. Had they found me so easy to manipulate? Or was my guard so low with them, as with everyone, because I thought myself unknown by anyone, and unthreatened?
    I was an adman’s dream. I was forty-five, with a beautiful and intelligent wife, a son at Oxford, and a daughter at public school. My father had been a well-known businessman. My father-in-law was a leading politician who had paid his dues to the Party.
    I was reasonably good-looking. Not handsome enough for my supposed good looks to precede me, like some ill-deserved reputation, but enough to be pleasing on television — the new gladiatorial arena. There, those who combat to the political death salute not Caesar, but the people whom they are about to betray. This gives the masses an illusion of power which serves to hide the fact that, however bloody the battle to the death seems, the politician always wins. In a democracy, some politician, somewhere, is always winning.
    I intended to be the politician who won. My suit was a strong one. I was elected and rose to higher ranks with the ease that had attended all my endeavours. I believed as strongly in my cause as I did in medicine. But neither endeavour had cost me anything. Time, for a man who has never truly felt a second of it, is not a great sacrifice; nor is effort that brings worthwhile results; nor energy from a man in middle years and perfect health.
    In politics I committed myself to the same old values I had practised in a busy surgery — honesty, a kind of prickly integrity, a total lack of interest in personal power, combined with the maddening arrogance of one who knows that, if he decided to play, he would win.
    I avoided all the basic suppositions on which parliamentary life is based. Loyalty to the Party as a form of self-advancement, the trading-off of favours, the recognition and grudging acceptance of emerging leaders — the masters of the future, who need to be acknowledged and have fealty sworn to them: all this I found repugnant.
    However, to appear unambitious amongst the ambitious is to invite loathing or fear. To be in the game, but not playing with intent to win, is to be the enemy.
    It was improbable, but not impossible, for me to emerge at the top. All I needed was the cutting edge. Perhaps I did not have it. Or perhaps it was just hidden. I became an enigma to my colleagues — a seemingly purposeful man, but without a purpose. My obvious