God's Country

Part Twenty-Six

'Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around.'

Penn Jillette

"Charles...I am your friend...I trust you and your judgement...and I believe we are doing a good job here...something important...but you have to know how this is going to play out? It is like throwing a chicken into a lion enclosure." Peter Munroe suggested as the two men walked across the bridge towards Meadvale Cathedral, wrapped up in thick jackets against the bitter breeze with their hands buried in their pockets.

"I am certainly assuming that they will focus on the age of my blushing bride."

"Good plan...hang on to the sense of humour, you are going to need it." Munroe growled a little at such flippancy. "Damn it Charles...we have something here...but we keep giving them ammunition to beat us all the time. We come up with a new policy and they print pictures of covered schoolgirls, you do well in the polls and then we tell them that you are marrying a child you can't have known more than a few months...its suicide."

"I am not hiding anything...it is what it is," Buckingham shrugged, staring out across the river.

"Of course you don't...it is admirable...it is one of the things that is working...and I know that Madeleine Craig is quite happy with the...arrangement...but that isn't the point when it comes down to public perception. We are politicians seeking election...so we have to think about how things like this affect our electability?"

"I don't see how it matters? I am either a lucky bastard marrying a teenager...although she actually turns twenty in a day or two for the record...or people assume that is some kind of arranged marriage. Prince Charles had an arranged marriage to Diana Spencer...admittedly not the most positive example...the queen too, I think...and love marriages have a sixty six percent failure rate. Yes it might cause a minor fuss for a few days but no one will care about it in four years time when we are approaching an election...no one will care in a week for goodness sake, certainly not in a month. And by then I will just be a happily married man just as the public expects their politicians to be."

"Okay...it's your life, your choice...but I just don't get it. You don't need to do this Charles and it feels like too much, too soon...first of all Elizabeth, and now this." Munroe stopped and leant on the bridge, watching the water, swollen by recent rain, flowing underneath him. "I get the new career...I am enjoying it as much as you are...but this is too much...what is going on Charles?"

"I don't blame you for asking...you are my friend and you are here with me...so you have every right to ask. And I will try and answer you honestly Peter...but it really isn't a simple question to answer...I am not entirely sure I know myself." Buckingham sighed, perching on the cold stone wall and facing the other way, looking up at Michael Winstanley's Cathedral in some awe. It was a spectacular monument to Winstanley's ambitions, paid for by his two billionaire friends, Harrington and Craig. It had substance and some style. It also had a stability and a strength that Charles Buckingham found comforting and reassuring. In short it already felt like home. "I found God long before I met Harrington or Winstanley. It was after my poor wife died...well, even before she died I suppose...but God did not answer my prayers straight away by any means. I used to slip into churches and pray for her...I told God what a total bastard he was as she faded away...and then he took my career away as well. From that moment on I was not in control anymore...I was drifting or drowning...I am not sure which anymore. Elizabeth probably felt the same...she was floundering just as much as I was, more probably...but I could not be there for her...I was not even there for myself. I had absolved all responsibility for it I suppose...I was withdrawn...in shock maybe? And then dear old David Harrington made me come down here. I tried to say no but he pressed all my buttons, made me an offer I could not possibly refuse, even at my lowest ebb."