Power Cut

The procession started in Chamberlain Square and moved along New Street, thinning out as the roadway narrowed. There were several hundred people, wearing overcoats against the iron wind; it was early December. Each of the marchers carried a lit candle in a glass jar or paper shield. Every so often, one of them would stop to relight a flame that had blown out. Above their heads, premature Christmas lights hung from wires strung across the roadway.

At this time in the evening, there wouldn't be much traffic for the procession to interrupt. As usual Lake felt he'd been singled out. He waited in a side road, watching the passing figures from his car. Candlelight gave their hands and parts of their faces a peculiar glow. Lake wished he could drive through them. Who were they trying to impress? There was nobody around to pay attention. Minutes passed, and the number of marchers began to unnerve him.

His flat had been empty since the previous weekend. It was colder than he expected. There were only a few letters for him; but then, most of his correspondence went through his office in London. Not many people knew his private address. Lake put a takeaway meal into the oven to warm up, and lit the gas fire in the living room. He was just in time for the local news round-up on Central TV. Sure enough, there was a mention of the candlelit procession; and similar events in other cities.

The week before, they'd quoted Lake as saying that to spend public money on a local hospice for AIDS victims would be to betray the local community.

The hold that the welfare state lobby seemed to have over the media didn't impress Lake at all. Why should ordinary people have to shoulder the responsibility for AIDS? Besides, there were deeper issues at stake. To modernise the health service was an essential step towards the new society. The Midlands had to be dragged out of the mire of 1950s welfare state apathy, and brought to life the same way as was happening in the South. So many people just didn't seem capable of understanding. Even his own party didn't have the clarity of purpose it had had a few years back. Things weren't making sense; the leadership had crumbled. But Lake refused to panic. He felt strangely calm, sitting in the silent flat, and still cold in spite of the gas fire; it was as though the blue flames were only for display.

He tried calling Alan, but heard only a disembodied voice telling him to leave his name and number. Lake felt suddenly at a loss for words. Just before the machine cut out, he managed to speak. 'It's David. Ring me.' They hadn't seen each other in weeks, but Lake knew he could depend on Alan. The thought was a flicker of symbolic warmth.

The next morning, he wondered if something had been wrong with the takeaway; perhaps he shouldn't have reheated it. But he didn't have the normal symptoms of food poisoning - gut pains, nausea, diarrhoea. It felt more as though something inside him were coated with frost. He rubbed the mist from the bedroom window, then breathed it back in place. The room was chilly, but well above zero. Outside, the day was unexpectedly bright.

After breakfast, which he couldn't taste, Lake phoned his doctor. The receptionist took a message, but wouldn't make him an appointment. 'Dr Wilson will contact you as soon as possible, I'm sure.' Well, he'd intended to have a quiet weekend; he needed a break from work. It would be Christmas soon, and there were people he had to get in touch with - friends and family. He'd been headbutting the brick walls in Westminster for too long; he was lonely. Realising that made him feel paralysed. What if nobody was there?

It was noon when he phoned Alan. This time there was an answer. 'Hello? Who's that?'

'Alan, it's me.' There was no response. 'It's David. How are you?'

'Oh, I'm fine. No problems.' There was a silence. Lake felt it stretch across twelve miles of telephone cable, like a thread leading him into a maze of blind tunnels. He took a deep breath; still silence.

'Alan. Are you there?'

'Yes. What can I do for you?' The voice was deliberately empty of anything recognisable. Why was Alan pretending to be a stranger?

'Can I see you?'

'Yes. If your X-ray telescopic vision is in working order. We're on opposite sides of the city, after all. Then there's the curvature of the Earth to consider. And you're probably facing in the wrong direction anyway.' More silence. 'Where were you when I needed you, David? Where would you be now if I still did? Where would I be if I still did? Tell me something.'

'What?. Go on, what is it?'

'Do you know what flowers grow in winter?' Lake wasn't sure he'd heard that correctly; but the next sound was the click of the receiver. He went on listening to the dead line for minutes, like a child pressing a shell to his ear to hear the sea.

Lunch tasted of less than breakfast. Midway through the afternoon, Lake switched on the TV and watched an hour of soap opera. The rage and torment of the characters stuttered in his mind. He blinked away tears and felt them trickle to the corners of his mouth, where he tasted their fresh salt. Feeling somewhat better, he phoned his doctor and got the receptionist again. 'Dr Wilson's not available. There's no space in his appointment schedule. I'm sorry.' Lake stared at the receiver as if it had bitten his ear. Well, he'd have to hire another doctor.

He didn't have to wait for help.

It was dark by four o'clock, and far colder than the morning had been. Lake typed out a series of letters to constituents on the solid Underwood typewriter he kept at home. His sense of perspective restored, he went out for a short walk. As far as the off-licence and back again. Harborne's streets were reassuringly empty. Rain shattered the windscreens of parked cars. Through a few uncurtained bay windows he saw glass flowers, bookcases, paintings hung on dark-panelled walls. Lake felt a shock of loss, and didn't understand why. He'd always fought his own battles. It didn't seem to matter that he had no friends. He'd been a grammar-school pupil; there was no old-boy public school network to support him. He believed in power and the respect that power earned. You could trust authority; you couldn't trust people.

The way back took him under a railway bridge that crossed the main road. A car came up the hill towards him; and in the same moment, a train flickered past overhead. Lake felt as though his heart had stopped. He stood quite still. To one side, the streetlamp lit up points of rain on the dark thorns of a shrub. He reached out and touched them. They pricked his hand, without breaking the skin. He drew his hand back and pressed it against the flat bottle in his coat pocket. What was wrong with him?

Lake ate alone, at home. This seemed to have been the most isolated and purposeless day of his life. Something had to change. He phoned Alan, but put down the receiver before it could ring at the other end. Alan had sounded disturbed; he was evidently having problems. It wasn't Lake's business to help. Things like that were beyond him. How was he going to make this weekend a success? By eight o'clock, the whisky was at least a technical fire in his stomach and mind. He'd have to hit town tonight. But he'd better not drive in this condition.

And which town? He didn't want to risk being recognised.

Secrecy, he thought, was not only necessary but correct.

The train to Wolverhampton took him through Dudley and Tipton, past empty and poorly-lit streets whose terraced houses were more than a century old. Security lights flooded the ground floors of the factories. Whenever the carriage window looked onto darkness, Lake saw his own face flicker across the view. He was shivering, like his reflection. A copy of the Express & Star was spread face down on the seat opposite; he picked it up and tried to read better news into its headlines. The sports pages at the back were easier to follow, because they meant nothing to him.

He caught a taxi from the station to the club, though he could have walked there in a few minutes. The centre of Wolverhampton was surprisingly quiet for a Saturday night. The sky was cloudy; mist made the upper air a canvas for the town's light. A car park jumped in perspective, becoming a cobbled yard. Everything bright seemed closer than it was; and warmer, too. Lake felt himself sobering up. He'd have to reverse that.

Two hours later, he was walking back along the same route.

His companion was a tall youth in a grey leather jacket and black jeans; his name was Gary. He lived in a rented room on the other side of town. It was too late to go back to Birmingham, and Lake wouldn't have wanted that anyway. This arrangement suited him; he understood business better than he understood people. Why was he doing this? It wasn't recklessness, he knew that. With Alan it might have been, if he hadn't...