The Ghost

in a strange way, despite all the sadness, that it made you stronger?”
    “Stronger?” He turned away from the window and frowned at me.
    “In the sense of being self-reliant. Knowing that the worst thing that could possibly happen to you had happened, and you’d survived it. That you could function on your own.”
    “You may be right. I’ve never really thought about it. At least not until just lately. It’s strange. Shall I tell you something?” He leaned forward. “I saw two dead bodies when I was in my teens and then—despite being prime minister, with all that entails: having to order men into battle and visit the scene of bomb blasts and what have you—I didn’t see another corpse for thirty-five years.”
    “And who was that?” I asked stupidly.
    “Mike McAra.”
    “Couldn’t you have sent one of the policemen to identify him?”
    “No.” He shook his head. “No, I couldn’t. I owed him that, at least.” He paused again, then abruptly grabbed his towel and rubbed his face. “This is a morbid conversation,” he declared. “Let’s change the subject.”
    I looked down at my list of questions. There was a lot I wanted to ask him about McAra. It was not that I intended to use it in the book, necessarily; even I recognized that a postresignation trip to the morgue to identify an aide’s body was hardly going to sit well in a chapter entitled “A Future of Hope.” It was rather to satisfy my own curiosity. But I also knew I didn’t have the time to indulge myself; I had to press on. And so I did as he requested and changed the subject.
    “Cambridge,” I said. “Let’s talk about that.”
    I’d always expected that the Cambridge years, from my point of view, were going to be the easiest part of the book to write. I’d been a student there myself, not long after Lang, and the place hadn’t changed much. It never changed much: that was its charm. I could do all the clichés—bikes, scarves, gowns, punts, cakes, gas fires, choirboys, riverside pubs, porters in bowler hats, fenland winds, narrow streets, the thrill of walking on stones once trodden by Newton and Darwin, etc., etc. And it was just as well, I thought, looking at the manuscript, because once again my memories would have to stand in for Lang’s. He had gone up to read economics, briefly played football for his college’s second eleven, and had won a reputation as a student actor. Yet although McAra had dutifully assembled a list of every production the ex–prime minister had ever appeared in, and even quoted from a few of the revue sketches Lang had performed for Footlights, there was—again—something thin and rushed about it all. What was missing was passion. Naturally, I blamed it on McAra. I could well imagine how little sympathy that stern party functionary would have had with all these dilettantes and their adolescent posturings in bad productions of Brecht and Ionescu. But Lang himself seemed oddly evasive about the whole period.
    “It’s so long ago,” he said. “I can hardly remember anything about it. I wasn’t much good, to be honest. Acting was basically an opportunity to meet girls—don’t put that in, by the way.”
    “But you were very good,” I protested. “When I was in London I read interviews with people who said you were good enough to become a professional.”
    “I suppose I wouldn’t have minded,” Lang conceded, “at one stage. Except you don’t change things by being an actor. Only politicians can do that.” He looked at his watch again.
    “But Cambridge,” I persisted. “It must have been hugely important in your life, coming from your background.”
    “Yes. I enjoyed my time there. I met some great people. It wasn’t the real world, though. It was fantasyland.”
    “I know. That was what I liked about it.”
    “So did I. Just between the two of us: I loved it.” Lang’s eyes gleamed at the memory. “To go out onto a stage and pretend to be someone else! And to have people applaud you for doing it! What could be better?”
    “Great,” I said, baffled by his change of mood. “This is more like it. Let’s put that in.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Why not?” Lang sighed. “Because these are the memoirs of a prime minister .” He suddenly pounded his hand hard against the side of his chair. “And all my political life, whenever my opponents have been really stuck for something to hit me with, they’ve always said I was a fucking actor .” He sprang up