Greeted by Kindness

By Stephen Morris

Can you always trust Kindness?

The ghost writer of her autobiography thought so. The government that made her Lady Kindness and its minister thought so too.

Kindness definitely believed it, but fact checking left some big questions unanswered.

Whatever Kindness believed, it does matter that you are who you say you are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035863181

Stephen Morris

Steve Morris has been writing about computers and software packages for 14 years. His first book (Getting to Know Your IBM PC ) came after a degree in Maths, an MSc in Statistics and 5 years' experience in market gardening! He has written about most aspects of computers, with books ranging from beginner's guides to more advanced reference manuals. Although he has written over 40 titles, he remembers with particular affection such gems as 'Business Computing with the Merlin Tonto' and 'The Automated Office'. Stephen is the Author of the following Made Simple Computer Books: Excel for Windows 3.1 Excel for Windows 95 Excel 97 EXCEL 2000 Excel 2000 in Business Lotus 123 (v5) for Windows 3.1 Visual Basic Delphi Made Simple Visual C++ Made Simple Windows Programming He is also author of the following Digital Press title: Object Oriented Programming under Windows: A practical handbook and has also authored the following Newnes titles: Newnes File Formats Pocket Book Newnes PC Programmers Pocket Book

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About the Author

Stephen lives in London. This is Stephen Morris’s fourth novel. His previous three novels have all been published by Austin Macauley: Memoir, A Novel By Stella Kelly, The Winter Archivist, and Don’t Lie.

Copyright Information ©

Stephen Morris 2024

The right of Stephen Morris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528914703 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035863181 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Chapter One

The building was familiar. It flanked Whitehall across from the Cenotaph and ended with the gated opening to Downing Street. I had never thought about what the building housed. It came as part of the package. Government, Westminster, power and politics came into my mind when I stood in front of the structure regarding the doorway into which I needed to enter.

A couple of young men in suits walked past me, and I felt in the way. They had a clear purpose. They assumed importance. Everything here assumed importance, except I did not and did not want to. Mainly, I wanted to turn away. I knew I could not.

I sat in a small reception. The receptionist had my name on a list and asked me to wait, so I waited. There were two chairs tucked to one side as other people came and went; all of them were smartly dressed and young. They paid me no attention. I did not exist for them. No one who had to wait mattered.

I was early, not on purpose. I had allowed a generous amount of time for my bus here. I did not want to be late. Now sitting on one of the two uncomfortable seats provided for any visitors, I wished I had arrived at the exact time of my appointment by waiting outside where it was easier to disappear although, I reminded myself, it would be difficult to be less visible than I was here. In any case, I argued with myself, if I had arrived at the exact correct time, I may well have waited as long again for the man who eventually arrived to usher me through the electronic gate for which I would never possess the means of entry.

He was dressed like the others. A smart suit, either new or newly cleaned, with shoes that were polished. I had thought long and hard about what to wear. I had given in to the need to conform. It was neither the right nor wrong decision. Now I wish I had worn some casual clothes because either way I stood out until I once again remembered my invisibility here; here where I did not count.

The man was speaking to me, welcoming me. He was telling me something about the building. How it was really just an extension of Number Ten. It had all been completely remodelled in the 1960s. He was pointing at some bricks, which, he was authoritative, were remains from the palace in the time of Henry the Eighth. I nodded.

I wanted to be enthusiastic. I had not had any proper chance to prepare myself except the choice of the single old suit I retained for funerals, of which there were more, and weddings that never now happened. I had wanted to discuss this meeting with someone.

The obvious person was Kindness herself. I wasn’t prohibited from speaking with her about it, but I got the feeling when I received the call that it would be better if I didn’t discuss it with anyone, least of all Kindness herself. If I had had a partner, that would have been an obvious person with whom to discuss it, but I didn’t have a partner, so I had satisfied myself with the choice of clothes and left the rest to chance.

I didn’t feel anxious. I had expected the man to have a secretary and for me to be collected by a secretary. That wasn’t how it worked here. He had to collect his own guests. He offered me tea or coffee after we had followed a number of passages before entering a bland room with two chairs (the same type it seemed to me as the uncomfortable ones in the reception area) and a small table. I asked for a tea.

He suggested I sit and disappeared to fetch the drink himself. I waited again. I didn’t have a bag or anything in my hands. I sat resting them on my knees. The seat was rather low so my knees were at least level with or even higher than my hips. I think this is why these seats were so uncomfortable. I wondered who ordered the chairs, how they came to be here, and if there were thousands of them dotted around government buildings.

It was a surprise, when I thought about it, that I had never been in a government building or office before. Then why should I have been? I was like everyone else who walked past them and looked over at them from the top deck of a bus not even really noticing that they existed or the people who worked in them doing, I presumed, more or less useful things just like the man I was meeting now who had returned through the door carrying two paper cups, which he must have bought from a cafe somewhere in the building itself. He was effortlessly jovial.

He sat himself in the chair opposite having handed me both cups so he didn’t spill any liquid. He moved the side table so that it was between the two of us. I put down both cups. He hoped I didn’t take sugar as he had forgotten to ask but then produced a throwaway wooden stirring stick and two sachets of white sugar from his jacket pocket just in case. This manoeuvre was complicated, but now he had sat down.

The chairs were unaccommodating for this or any activity. He apologised as I declined the sugar and removed the lid from his cup. I did the same.

He wasn’t sure, he explained, and I was to understand I think that this marked the formal start of our meeting, whether I had been told why we were meeting. This struck me as odd. If I did not know why I had been asked to attend, I would not have attended. He nodded at that.

Only, he explained, it was, as a matter of routine, that the meeting was both official and unofficial. Sometimes, I am inclined to think people in positions such as his make the world more complicated than is necessary. I didn’t say as much. I wondered if he had some inkling of what I was thinking from my silence.

He left his statement without further explanation, so I broke the silence to ask if he would be taking any notes. He raised his hands. There was no hidden notebook. It made me think the meeting was being videoed. Perhaps that was the reason for the slightly too low to be comfortable chairs.

By this point, I recognised that I was completely unprepared. No discussion with Kindness. No discussion with her secretary who I am sure would have been able to supply some more detailed background for the meeting, what it was for, why it was happening, as well as guidance on how I should conduct myself. Still, my one firm conclusion before arriving remained solidly in place. I would not volunteer information. I would not elaborate on any answers I may need to give.

I would actively seek to withhold information. I had been a little uneasy on that last point. I felt I was going too far, being unhelpful, immoral even. Now I was certain. I would answer any questions the man might have for me honestly, but in doing that, I would disclose less than I might and, I hoped, than I should.

Vetting, the man was explaining as I checked off my list of interview dos and don’ts was official and unofficial. That was the point he was making. That is what he claimed, in any case, was the point he was making, and I should not read anything too much into it. Kindness, he reminded me, was a high-profile public person so it was inevitable that in the interests of national security people like him needed to facilitate an understanding of who she in fact was.

There would be no official record of this meeting. That was not needed. What was needed was simply the opportunity to ascertain from me whatever I might know, in particular, whatever I might know that may be detrimental to her reputation should it come to light. I understood him to be asking me to dish the dirt on Kindness, but this suggestion was greeted by a weary shrug of the shoulders as he sipped from his cup.

I think I had already failed some test of decorum, so I took the first sip of my drink. It surely would not have been treated with a truth serum, a thought I kept to myself as my interrogator was not, it appeared, light-hearted. Then he laughed. Dishing the dirt was not really what he had in mind, he explained. It was much more usual for something apparently inconsequential and random to provoke the fury of the media. That, for people like Kindness, was the bigger danger.

I asked him, breaking my own prohibition to do no more than answer questions, what people like Kindness were like, to which he was quick to respond. It was why I was the ideal person for him to be having a chat with just now. What sort of person was Kindness like?

My failure to prepare properly meant I was caught out by the question. It was far too vague. I suppose I was expecting specific questions. How could I be cagey, saying no more than was necessary, less even, when the question was so broad? I stalled my interrogator. I felt it was very difficult, to sum up straightforwardly what Kindness was like.

I managed to stop myself from elaborating. A score draw, I thought. I took another sip of tea, and the man did the same appearing to muse on my reply and await more. I was not going to oblige. It was certainly too soon to say I needed to be going, but I felt a step ahead in the game.

As it became clear that I wasn’t planning to elaborate on my answer, the man himself began to speak about what he had found out about Kindness. He continued to avoid anything particular and spoke only in general about her character. He warmly endorsed her. It was difficult for me not to agree. I think I may have nodded.

His characterisation sat easily with the person I had come to know. She was, as he said, genuine, the real thing. There was nothing assumed about her intentions towards her fellow human beings. It would be difficult to imagine, his words, that there was a malign streak in her body. He wanted to know if I had any examples of her that showed the type of person he had heard so much about from others.

It was a reasonable question that invited a non-committal reply. I did not see how I could simply ignore him this time around. To say, I had no examples would show me to be rather shallow after my agreement with the portrait he had given of Kindness. I took the plunge and started my story. It was, I believed, a safe bet although I had not in the least expected to be telling a story I usually recounted when people asked me in a work setting to talk about Kindness.

So what could be the harm? None, clearly. It was a story I had often aired in many settings.

We met, I explained to the man who now sat back and listened carefully but still without any notes, by accident. By accident, I meant a real accident. It was later in the evening, and I had been cycling home across the main junction by Camberwell Green before carrying on along Camberwell Church Street. There was a drizzle, and before I could stop, a car had turned left across my path knocking me off my bike.

I don’t know whether the driver knew what he had done. Kindness who saw what happened told me later that they must have felt a jolt at the impact. Still, the driver did not stop, and I was sprawled in the gutter beside my bike. It was Kindness who had come over to me to find out if I was OK. I was very shaken. Worse my poor bike had suffered.

The car had in fact driven right over the front wheel, which was now bent and made the bike impossible to ride. Despite the rain, Kindness helped me over to sit on a wall to recover myself. Then the pain in my wrist caused me to stumble. At first, I had felt nothing, shocked as I went through the sense of falling out of control that accompanied the accident. As I sat down, not only did the pain in my wrist strike me, but I saw I was bleeding onto the pavement in front of me from my face.

It was dark and quite difficult to see in the rain where the blood was coming from. Somehow, Kindness who had sat beside me on the wall was able to use a tissue she had from somewhere to stem the blood on my face, which she told me looked like it was coming from a cut on my lip where I had fallen off the bike. I told her about the pain in my wrist, which she tried to raise and that was when I really couldn’t stand it and screamed. I think I screamed. It was certainly a loud noise.

Kindness had the forethought to place my hand and wrist back in my lap and told me to use my other hand to create a sort of sling for it so that it didn’t wobble too much. I would need, she told me, to go to the hospital, but for the moment, I should just wait there.

It was Kindness who called someone—Kindness always knows someone to call and no more so than on her own turf—someone who drove me up to the A&E at King’s. I needed to wait there and get this; Kindness, who had come with us in the car, waited with me although I wasn’t treated until late in the evening, and I wasn’t allowed to go home until after midnight. She spent all that time with me in the hospital.

She arranged for the same man who took me there to drive me to my door. It wasn’t far, but it was late, and it was a long wait. She didn’t leave until I left the hospital myself and made me agree to come and find her as soon as I felt well enough. She wanted to know if I was getting better. I had her card. That was a card worth having. I would say that it was an accident worth having.

The man had been listening throughout. I forgot as I told the story where I was until I looked across at him still sipping his tea. I left mine on the table half-drunk as it was lukewarm with all the storytelling.

He wanted to know about the bike. It always surprised me how many people wanted to know about the bike. That was interesting too, at least to me, if you wanted to know about Kindness’s character. She had got the bike chain off me from my rucksack and the combination for the lock. Then she had locked the broken bike to a lamppost herself so that it could be recovered in the morning.

When I went to find her to thank her at her office in Camberwell the next day, it was already fixed standing in the hall for me to collect. I was astounded. That is Kindness. She is full of surprises.

He hadn’t finished with his questions, but I had had enough of talking for a while. Still, these were easier questions, at least to begin with. How long ago this was? How many times I had seen Kindness since then? When I had begun to work for her? I took issue with that. If I did work for her, which was true in a sense, I was not employed by her. I worked as a freestyler, that’s what I called it, so I was my own boss. Always need to be my own boss.

He wanted to know what we talked about. I wasn’t going to get into that so I stalled; when did he mean? He meant when we waited in the hospital, and I thought that was safe because when I recovered a little from the accident and my wrist had settled into an intense throbbing pain rather than the shooting pain that happened when it got moved, I spent most of that time answering questions from Kindness. She was really interested in me, which was a puzzle because no one is that interested in me.

I tried a joke with him. I’m not really that interested in myself. He didn’t laugh. That was a bit of a giveaway. We weren’t really friends, but then I knew that although I still expected him to try and win my trust through some sort of friendliness but it never happened.

I remember smiling at him. That was a mistake because he saw it as his opportunity. He wanted to know about the biography. He asked me straight up. He wanted me to confirm that I was writing a biography of Kindness.

I could have just stuck to the narrow facts and told him I was not writing her biography. It would have made no difference to him. Still, I wanted him to have the correct picture. I couldn’t rely on all the other people he was questioning, the people from whom he had gleaned his insight into Kindness and her character.

As I told him, I was working as her publicist, and that involved supporting her in writing her own autobiography. I even had to encourage her to do it. It was an uphill task being her publicist if she weren’t interested in writing her own story.

I don’t think he bought that last line; the line about it being an uphill task being her publicist. That was going too far.

He was asking me if I wanted another cup of tea, and I looked down to see the abandoned cold liquid. I wanted to know if we were going to be much longer. I could spare the time. I hadn’t known how long we were going to be. He didn’t apologise. I thought I was owed at least an explanation, but there was no chance of that