This Was a Man (The Clifton Chronicles #7)(129)

The roar of laughter that came from outside quickly spread to those inside the cathedral, helping Giles to relax.

‘This natural superiority continued to manifest itself when he crept into the washroom. Clifton had neither a toothbrush nor toothpaste, and had to borrow from me. The following morning, when we joined the other boys for breakfast, my superiority was even more apparent when it became clear that Clifton had never been introduced to a spoon, because he licked his porridge bowl clean. It seemed a good idea to me at the time, so I did the same. After breakfast, we all trooped off to the Great Hall for our first assembly, to be addressed by the headmaster. Although Clifton clearly wasn’t my equal – after all, he was the son of a docker, and my father owned the docks, while his mother was a waitress, and my mother was Lady Barrington. How could we possibly be equals? However, I still allowed him to sit next to me.

‘Once assembly was over, we went off to the classroom for our first lesson, where yet again Clifton was sitting next to Barrington. Unfortunately, by the time the bell sounded for break, my mythical superiority had evaporated more quickly than the morning mist once the sun has risen. It didn’t take me much longer to realize that I would walk in Harry’s shadow for the rest of my life, for he was destined to prove, far beyond the tiny world we then occupied, that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

‘This state of affairs continued after we left St Bede’s and progressed to Bristol Grammar School, when I was placed next to my friend once again – but I must admit that I only gained a place at the school because they needed a new cricket pavilion, and my father paid for it.’

While those outside St Paul’s laughed and applauded, decorum allowed only polite laughter inside the cathedral.

‘I went on to captain the school’s first eleven, while Harry won the prize for English and an exhibition to Oxford. I also managed to scrape into Oxford, but only after I’d scored a century at Lord’s for Young MCC.’

Giles waited for the laughter to die down before he continued.

‘And then something happened that I hadn’t been prepared for. Harry fell in love with my sister Emma. I confess that at the time I felt he could have done better. In my defence, I wasn’t to know that she would win the top scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford, become the first female chairman of a public company, chairman of an NHS hospital and a minister of the Crown. Not for the first time, or the last, Harry was to prove me wrong. I wasn’t even the superior Barrington any more. This is perhaps not the time to mention my little sister Grace, then still at school, who went on to become Professor of English at Cambridge. Now I am relegated to third place in the Barrington hierarchy.

‘By now I had accepted that Harry was superior, so I made sure that we shared tutorials, as I had planned that he would write my essays, while I practised my cover drive. However, Adolf Hitler, a man who never played a game of cricket in his life, put a stop to that, and caused us to go our separate ways.

‘All the conspirators save only he

‘Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.





‘Harry shamed me by leaving Oxford and joining up even before war had been declared, and by the time I followed him, his ship had been sunk by a German U-boat. Everyone assumed he’d been lost at sea. But you can’t get rid of Harry Clifton quite that easily. He was rescued by the Americans, and spent the rest of his war behind enemy lines, while I ended up in a German prisoner-of-war camp. I have a feeling that if Lieutenant Clifton had been in the next bunk to me at Weinsberg, I would have escaped a lot sooner.

‘Harry never talked to me or anyone else about his war, despite his having been awarded the prestigious Silver Star for his service as a young captain in the US Army. But if you read his citation, as I did when I first visited Washington as a foreign minister, you’d discover that with the help of an Irish corporal, a jeep and two pistols, he convinced Field Marshal Kertel, the commanding officer of a crack panzer division, to order his men to lay down their arms and surrender. Shortly afterwards, Harry’s jeep was blown up by a land mine while he was travelling back to his battalion. His driver was killed, and Harry was flown to the Bristol Royal Infirmary, not expected to survive the journey. However, the gods had other plans for Harry Clifton that even I would not have thought possible.

‘Once the war was over and Harry had fully recovered, he and Emma were married and moved into the house next door, although I confess a few acres still divided us. Back in the real world, I wanted to be a politician, while Harry had plans to be a writer, so once again we set out on our separate paths.

‘When I became a Member of Parliament, I felt that at last we were equals, until I discovered that more people were reading Harry’s books than were voting for me. My only consolation was that Harry’s fictional hero, William Warwick, the son of an earl, good-looking, highly intelligent and a heroic figure, was obviously based on me.’

More laughter followed, as Giles turned to his next page.

‘But it got worse. With every new book Harry wrote, more and more readers joined his legion of fans, while every time I stood for election, I got fewer and fewer votes.

‘He only in a general honest thought

‘And common good to all, made one of them.





‘And then, without warning, as is fate’s capricious way, Harry’s life took another turn, when he was invited to be the president of English PEN, a role in which he was to display skills that would be the envy of many who consider themselves to be statesmen.