The injured Stuart line is gone,

A race outlandish fills their throne;

An idiot race, to honour lost;

Who know them best despise them most.

Robert Burns

CHAPTER 17 PORTCULLIS HOUSE

Irene Adler dried her hands in the hot air blower, frowned and re adjusted her skirt. Smoothing it out over her hips. She was smart enough for Government work.

Out of the loo, she crossed the stairwell, with its view over the big glass roofed courtyard, and was thinking of phoning Alex when she saw the odious Philip Green MP plodding down the corridor towards her.

“Hallo my dear. Why the frown eh? Pretty little girl like you eh? Its working for Charles that does it eh? You should work for me eh?”

“Hmm.” Irene smiled politely and walked on. Thank God the corridors were wide enough not to get bumped into, not like most cheapo Government buildings. Portcullis House, the modern extension to Parliament, had cost a scandalous fortune, though with swine like the Honourable Philip Green to cope with, it was probably worth it. But what kinky minded purv asked for padded walls in the lifts?¹

“Whatz the matter with you?” asked Vera Gresty

“Oh Nothing,” said Irene closing the office door “Just that bastard Philip Green saying what a nice little girl I was.”

“At leazt he don’t get you alone in a lift.” Over a quarter of the people living in London had been born abroad and uncounted millions had parents or grandparents born overseas. Vera came from the old Soviet Union and given half a chance she would tell everyone about her journey to England in the back of a Polish truck.

The story got longer every time she told it.

“So that’s why the lifts have padded walls,” said Irene, whose mother, a single parent, came from East Germany.

“I think iz a very dirty old man who azk for it. Probably iz Philip Green. But why do they keep voting for him? Iz he not go feeling bumz of women at home? Iz he different to hiz voterz?

“Very different. He’s a wonderful constituency man. He listens to everybody’s troubles, then really tries to help them. He’s always there for school speech days and local fund raising and opening charity dances and things. He knows there are too many people get down to Westminster and start to play the international big man and forget home and then get surprised when they're voted out.”

“Zo iz not happen to him?”

“No, not him. He’s too popular. He’s the little man standing up to Government. Always complaining. Doesn’t matter which party is in, even his own. He criticises them all. Sees it as his duty to keep the Ministries on their toes.”

“Do you think Chalez Milez is good to his voterz?”

“Only when his party remind him. I’m afraid he wants to be the big man. The party strategist. The ideas man. He could easily forget who voted him in.”

Irene sat at her desk under the shelves that lined one wall and turned sideways to see out of the window into the courtyard. All around were similar offices for MPs who weren’t important enough to have a suite of rooms in the old Palace of Westminster. But Charles Miles had done well to get two rooms. Some had only one room, some were up in the roof.

She must phone Alex Holder. She toyed with the remains of a salad sandwich she’d bought in “The Dispatch Box.” She really ought to make packed lunches back at her room in Hammersmith, but at night she was too tired and in the morning she was too rushed, so she wasted money here and….this was an excuse not to dial.

It rang

“Alex Holder.”

“Hallo? Alex?”

“Yes.”

“It’s me. Irene……Well don’t say you’ve forgotten me.”

“Uh, no. Of course not…..It’s just……You see, I’ve got a girl friend now.”

“I know. Of course I know. You can’t go out with an actress like Amelia Saint Simon without being noticed.”

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