knee to hail Gold Cup Day with an elegant genuflection, Henley hesitates between pride and sophistication to welcome the Regatta, Epsom bustles with democratic fervour as Derby day approaches, Cowes bows with dignified grace as curving yachts carve another niche in her temple of fame, Aintree wakens and waves to saints and sinners on Grand National day, and Wimbledon wallows for a week in a racket of rackets.
The House of Commons has its Budget Day …
The afternoon sun broke into a smile after an April shower, and beamed through the leaded glass in the western wall, throwing lustre on the dark-panelled woodwork, turning brass into a blaze of gold, brightening the faces of Members of Parliament, revealing dancing specks of dust so that they scintillated with the brilliance of diamonds. One widely elliptical ray wandered from the stream of the beams, and bathed the spot where Edgar Reardon, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was to stand. The ray glistened on the brassbound despatch box at the corner of the table and shimmered beyond to waste its beauty on the floor. Nature, in a generous moment, had provided a theatrical spectacle.
The flood of golden light brought no solace to the men who stared at it from above. For the leaders of finance and industry shuffled their feet on the floor of the gallery, and waited for the worst while hoping for the best. They were not thinking of happy omens, portents, and auguries as they eyed the sun beaming on the despatch box. With the passage of years their hopes had faded until budgets meant burdens. Ladies in the grille abandoned their furtive whispers to advance with muffled tread and peer over the brass-work in front of them, looking first of all for relatives, and later, for celebrities.
Members blinked as the sun winked in their eyes. The lambent glow was even noticed by the Cabinet Ministers, who sat out of the beams, arrayed on the Treasury Bench, endeavouring to look as wise as Pythian oracles. The wandering radiance actually distracted attention from Mr Speaker, resplendent in his robes, although an errant ray stabbed a glimmer on the silver buckle of the shoe which he elevated so carefully in the general direction of Heaven. The sun had fascinated the spectators so effectively that few spared a thought for the lesser glories of the Sergeant-at-Arms, although he wore archaic dress, and exercised his privilege of being the only person in the House to bear a sword.
In the minds of the onlookers the sunbeams had one competitor. They were thinking of the man for whom the vacant place on the Treasury Bench had been reserved—and of his deficit!
A stranger casting a casual glance round the House might well have imagined the Members as wholesale breakers of minor laws. For each one apparently held a police summons in his hand. But they were not summonses—only blue papers giving details of how the deficit was made up, but not a single hint of how it was to be met. The filling of the gap between revenue and expenditure was reserved for a white paper, perhaps so coloured to signify the cleansing power of gold, maybe so blanched to prepare the nervous for the shock, but never issued until industry trembles and the City is at rest.
Joe Manning, the Opposition leader, flung down his blue paper as though the sheet were wasp-ridden and turned to Fred Otwood—a small, beetle-browed man who had been Chancellor in the previous Government, and hoped to repeat the performance in the next.
‘Fred,’ said Manning aggressively, ‘if Reardon runs his household as he does national finance the bailiffs would have called on him long ago. As a Chancellor of the Exchequer he’d make a good confidence man.’
‘I said that last year,’ remarked Otwood wearily, ‘and the tale’s getting a bit worn at the corners. No sense in attacking Reardon whatever he says. After all, Joe, somebody has always to pay.’
Manning pulled his whiskers into a new shape and looked at his lieutenant somewhat critically. There were times when Otwood seemed to lack all the requisites for instructing and moulding public opinion. The former Prime Minister glanced away from the sunlight and looked along the line of faces on the Treasury Bench.
‘I can’t understand it,’ he remarked. ‘They’re all smiling as if they were disposing of a surplus. Anyone would think that Willie Ingram had arrived to give a present to the nation.’
Ingram, the Prime Minister, had a flabby face, a fleshy nose, an outsize in eyebrows, and a polished skull. The eyes redeemed other features. They were brightly keen and puckishly humorous.
‘He must think he’s backing a winner,’ said Otwood.
Joe Manning continued to stare at them until he suddenly gripped Otwood’s arm and whispered another pointer for his forthcoming speech:
‘Callous indifference, Fred. That’s the note to strike.’
‘Perhaps it’s still a good line, Joe, but doesn’t it begin to sound a bit like a cracked gramophone record?’
The conversation was halted by a new arrival. Tranter, a doctor from the north, made his way with difficulty to a place behind them, and sat perched upon the knees of two unwilling supporters. Tranter had one fixed panacea for political ailments, but each time he produced it with the earnestness of an original performer.
‘Couldn’t we make a stand for inflation?’ he whispered. Currency inflation was Tranter’s method by which money could be raised without anyone paying for it. As he received no reply he moved away, satisfied that he had struck another blow for national welfare. Fortunately, he did not hear Otwood’s comment:
‘If that man, Joe, had studied medicine as he’s studied economics he wouldn’t know enough to bandage a cut finger.’
Manning tugged more viciously at his moustache and peered anxiously at the clock. During all this time the ritual of question time was proceeding, carried on by a scratch crew under the guidance of Mr Speaker. People grew restless, whispers increased, feet shuffled.
There was a crowd at the Bar. Eric Watson, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Mr Chancellor Reardon, sat with his face bathed in the sunlight. He ought not to have been there. On such a day there must have been many other things for him to do. But the occasion was great, and Watson took his share of the limelight, basking with the self-importance of a cock pheasant flaunting before a hen at mating time.
Watson had made a name for himself by a couple of striking speeches. Now he was consolidating his position, pushing steadily towards minor office in the recognised way—by bottle-washing for someone who had already arrived. He was tall and too handsome. The fine features suggested—to those who were unkind—that strength might have been sacrificed in the process of modelling. He looked round the House, and spoke with unnecessary emphasis:
‘Wait until Edgar comes. He’ll tickle them up more than a bit.’
A Member sitting behind him chuckled softly. It was Dick Curtis, yet another who had joined the long procession and added politics to a legal profession. Curtis imagined that the ranks were full in the present Government. Perhaps that explained why he belonged to the Opposition.
‘He may find that he’s tickling a pike instead of a trout,’ he said. ‘Deficits are not like air bubbles. They won’t be burst and they refuse to blow away.’
Watson smiled tolerantly. He had faced Curtis in many a wordy war in the Law Courts, knew his gift for banter, his flair for argument. Curtis had a full, round voice, and a tonal range that embraced most varieties of expression. Some air of prosperity was conveyed by the figure which indicated the commencement of a senatorial roundness. His next words showed that his banter covered a judicial brain:
‘Reardon’s got one great thing in his favour, Watson. The City isn’t frightened of him. I know the Account that’s closed resembled business in a deserted village, but there was some brisk buying on the Stock Exchange before that. From your pestilential point of view that’s not a bad sign.’
‘Reardon is pleased about that,’ whispered Watson. ‘I know he wants to carry the City with him.’ He spoke as though he had rendered more than a little assistance to his chief in the bearing of the burden.
‘He doesn’t seem in any hurry to arrive,’ said Curtis. ‘Wife with him?’
Watson nodded a wordless affirmative.
‘I