A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [56]
They debated the speech and passed a bill—again per tradition—declaring their autonomy from the Queen’s rule. Several people stopped and clapped Lenox on the back forcefully, saying welcome, Members from both sides of the aisle. He found it tremendously collegial of them.
On it went for hours and hours, all of it fascinating. What it reminded him most of was being new at school, when he was twelve. There was the same overwhelmed, excitable feeling, as if a new adventure had been embarked upon and now there was nothing to do but figure out its multitude of small necessities, rules, traditions. At Harrow—his school—there had been the same sort of insular world, with its own terminology: Teachers were beaks; a bath was called a tosh. It had taken weeks before he felt at home with all the slang.
Finally, a little after three that afternoon, Edmund led him out through the Members’ Entrance again.
“Well?” he said when they were a few streets clear of the din of Parliament.
Lenox simply grinned and told him what he had been thinking about Harrrow, where Edmund had been, too.
“It makes a strange impression, doesn’t it? Don’t worry. You’ll soon feel at home there. Look—a pub. Let’s duck in for a celebratory drink.”
They spent an hour then drinking to each other’s health, the Queen’s health, and the House. It was a pub called the Westminster Arms, with honey-colored walls and low raftered ceilings and the gleam of brass and glass everywhere.
“What’s all this about cholera?” Edmund asked finally, after they had sat down with their drinks.
“What did you hear?”
“Hilary spoke a word to me in Bellamy’s. Said he was rather taken aback by your insistence that it be addressed.”
“Insistence? Of course I was insistent.”
“Things move slowly in politics, Charles.”
“They ought to move a sight faster.”
Edmund smiled indulgently. “No doubt you’ll change it all?”
“You think me foolish?”
“No! The farthest thing from it—I’m full of admiration for you—but this is a matter I know about. Perhaps you may be a bit innocent. It will be difficult.”
“Graham has a plan.”
“Does he? Then things will be well. I was surprised about that, by the way. Not that you deemed him worthy for the position, but that you considered it wise. There was a rumble among the secretaries. They fell in line after Percy Field, however.”
“I wondered if it were taking a toll on Graham.”
“Be careful. You compared the House to Harrow—well, it’s just as rigid and orderly. They don’t like people jumping the queue.”
“Graham’s thought was to find a group of Members who felt the same way about the issue of cholera. With strength in numbers we could approach a frontbencher—Brick, Hilary, you.”
“I’m not a frontbencher.”
“In all but name, Edmund.”
“At any rate, you needn’t gather a group to speak to me.”
“What did Hilary tell you?”
“Pretend he told me nothing.”
Lenox recounted the same story he had for Hilary, dwelling on the potential risk to the people in East London of a cholera outbreak.
“It’s unquestionably a valid concern,” Edmund finally answered, sipping at his pint of mild ale. “You must keep me apprised. Wait, though—about Ludo—isn’t—”
“Just a moment, before you go and change the subject please.”
“Me?” said the baronet innocently.
“I know you too well for that, Ed. What’s wrong with it? I hate you being tactful. It irritates me.”
Edmund sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, Charles. It’s only that there’s so much against it. A major public works has just finished, at tremendous expense and after tremendous difficulty. No public body backtracks this quickly. ‘We just finished with all that bother’ will be what people say. I promise you.”
“They won’t! Did you hear a word I said? The imminent danger of it all?”
“I know, I know. It’s only a feeling. I hope I’m wrong.”
At home Lady Jane was full of a dozen questions, and Graham—whom Lenox studied closely for signs of anxiety—was full of good cheer and shook his hand solemnly, before going straight back to work into the night with Frabbs. There was an ominous pile of