A Parliamentary Affair (14 page)

‘The photographer is on his way, and if you don’t mind we’ll take a few snaps of our own too. When you’ve finished with Dorothy would you be kind enough to come into the lounge and meet a few of the others? Most are not really up to it, but one or two would be pleased to shake hands. If I let you go without introducing you I’d never hear the last of it. It’s not often we get an important visitor.’

Eventide was a new home, neatly built in red brick by a consortium of three local Asian doctors. Modern stained glass with iridescent parrots, galleons and irises graced double-glazed windows, their garish colours reflected on pale-grey wall-to-wall carpets, set off by magnolia paint and apricot velvet curtains. Familiar prints of landscapes, dogs and chubby children hung cosily over pseudo-marble fireplaces. Baskets of bright artificial flowers made the place look more like a hotel, while muzak floated from small loudspeakers perched high out of wavering reach. To most of the old people gratitude was obligatory, yet an air of resentment and unhappiness pervaded the lounges. On the other hand, here were no illusions and the whole place functioned on professional lines. Its plush style and remarkable cleanliness were reassuring to distant relatives paying the bills.

Elaine commented favourably on the immaculate condition of the home. Mrs Swanson agreed: ‘Thank you for noticing. It’s the doctors. They insist there should be no smell of urine in here. Bad for business, you know. Our job is to banish the reality of old age, not bow down to it. I would get the sack.’

The bedrooms were equally pristine. Elaine and Mrs Swanson paused at the threshold of one room. How clinical, how aseptic: even though more flowers filled this room and chased each other over the wallpaper in merry profusion, despite frills and fringed lampshades, the effect was of a nun’s cell, devoid of the life and mess of real human bodies. It was as if denial of the process of normal physical disintegration could postpone mortality for ever.

The matron led Elaine to Mrs Holmes’s bedroom, which she shared with another resident, ‘young enough to be her daughter – only eighty-one, but blind. The two boss each other about.’ As they knocked and entered, a solidly built but diminutive figure in a dark-green tweed suit struggled to its feet, leaning heavily on a stick and waving a beringed hand.

‘Aah! My dear! So you have come to see me!’

Dorothy Holmes was not at all what Elaine had been expecting. It was not the strong, tough face with its intelligent eyes and smudged lipstick which startled her so much, though the blonde wig, slightly askew and held on with two large hairpins sticking out at the back, was striking enough. Nor was it the vigorous personality, after the glimpse of vacant faces in the lounge? It was Dorothy’s voice that was her most arresting feature: broad, rich, fruity, whooping and flirting with vowels, running its tongue in delicious satisfaction over consonants, making the most of every note. She was increasingly deaf and was aware that she talked too loudly. From this arose a greater duty to be good company.

‘I’ve come to wish you Happy Birthday for Thursday,’ Elaine began formally, handing over a large card and a box of House of Commons mint chocolates.

Dorothy seized the box with cries of delight. ‘How wonderful, Mrs Stalker! That will impress my sons no end, I can tell you. You are most kind, my dear, most
kind
. Now I will put them
here
, on the table where all my visitors can see, and I will deny myself any at all, until the great day.’

Music hall stars and prima donnas must have talked like that. Dorothy turned ‘kind’ into a word of half a dozen syllables, while there was an octave difference between ‘self’ and ‘day’. The rheumy old eyes caught hers and winked.

There was a knock on the door and Mrs Swanson ushered in the local newspaper’s photographer, a middle-aged and permanently harassed man with whom Elaine was already familiar. The photographer fussed and flashed as Dorothy leaned on both her stick and Elaine’s arm, grinning on command like a Cheshire cat. She was heavy but her head came barely up to Elaine’s shoulder.

‘How tall are you?’ Dorothy hissed at one point as the film was being changed.

‘About five foot six,’ Elaine replied.

‘Are you? I used to be even taller than that. Shrunk, you know. Crumbling away. Awful, isn’t it? Don’t get old, my dear.’

When at last the man had finished and left, the old lady settled herself in a high-backed chair and examined her visitor for a moment without speaking. Satisfied, she pointed to a cupboard with her stick.

‘Now, my dear, you will join an old lady in a drink to celebrate. Sherry? Of course. Can you reach the glasses and bottle? Let’s have a chin-wag, a real heart-to-heart. I have been looking forward to meeting you.’

She pronounced ‘sherry’ as if its sweetness were already rolling pleasurably around her tongue. Elaine’s unasked question as to whether the voice owed its origins to any terpsichorean links was partly answered as she obeyed Dorothy’s instructions. The cupboard held a jumble of ancient books, records and sheet music of long-forgotten comedy numbers, with modern cassette tapes on top. There was no time to glance through them all. On a black-lacquered tray sat six assorted crystal glasses and two enormous opened bottles, one cream sherry, one Irish whiskey.

‘The hard stuff is for the men; most of my relatives are Irish,’ Dorothy explained. ‘Unless you would prefer…? Fine. Bring two big glasses. I have decided to be tipsy between now and the great day or I will never survive all these unctuous congratulations.’

‘Unctuous’ journeyed around the old mouth, slithering out slowly, onomatopoeically. ‘You’re to start me off. Good girl’ – as Elaine poured two tumblers of sweet sherry.

‘Do you like being here?’ Elaine asked, looking around.

‘Me? No, of course not. Would you? I have no choice: can’t manage by myself at all these days. It is ghastly being old, my dear. I suggest you pop off around seventy, before the aches and pains set in. Well, what am I to do? My sons and their wives are pensioners themselves. They couldn’t look after me. My grandchildren have their own lives, one in America, one in Brussels – that’s the clever one, George. He works for Mr Delors – you should hear the tales he tells of what goes on! No, I’m better off here.’

The gnarled fingers drummed restlessly on the wooden arm of her chair. It was not home. Then the old lady brightened.

‘Now you tell me about yourself. Far more interesting than me. Do you like being an MP? Is it as exciting as it looks on television?’ Like millions, the old lady was an avid watcher of the live broadcasts of Prime Minister’s Question Time twice a week and was familiar with many of its regular performers. Her comments were observant and unorthodox.

‘You were pulled up by Madam Speaker in Question Time recently, weren’t you? May I call you Elaine? What was that for?’

‘Yes, I was. We’re not allowed to make any kind of demonstration in the Chamber – not supposed to wave banners or placards, or even newspapers. That’s the reason we wave order papers:
all that’s allowed. One Kent MP, a very distinguished knight of the shire, was hauled up for eating an apple when making a point about Kentish agriculture. It’s all in the interests of good order. On the occasion you mention, I was seated next to David Amess, the young Basildon MP, who’s a pal of mine. He was planning to ask a question about his constituency, so I waved a car sticker saying “I Love Basildon” as he rose to his feet. It was a very
small
car sticker, but the Speaker had a fit.’

Dorothy gurgled with delight. ‘I suppose you have to watch what you say, too?’

Elaine nodded. ‘Yes and no. We have parliamentary privilege: we can say whatever we wish without fear of being sued. I’ve used that very sparingly – only once, in fact, to accuse a local councillor of being a crook. He is, too; the police are investigating him. I couldn’t have exposed him any other way. But we do have to watch our language. Since we are all “honourable members”, you can’t call someone a liar, for example. Do you remember Churchill getting around that by accusing an opponent of “terminological inexactitude”?’

‘Rather! These days you would say he was being economical with the truth, isn’t that right?’ Dorothy’s eyes were gleaming with pleasure. She gestured at the sherry bottle. I’ll have a little more, if you please.’

Elaine settled in and told more stories, glad of an appreciative audience. The old lady hung happily on every word as the sherry slopped over the glass. ‘Well, my dear, you seem to be making a great success of it. I’m so pleased that there are more women there now. Do you know, I couldn’t vote until I was thirty? We were all regarded as too stupid before that. A man could be a drunken layabout, but he could vote. I was a fully qualified nurse, but I couldn’t. Power to your elbow! I’ll drink to that!’ And she did, with a shaky hand and a mischievous grin.

‘But you were interested in music hall,’ Elaine commented. Dorothy raised an eyebrow. ‘The sheet music in your cupboard.’

‘Oh, that!’ The old woman was dismissive. ‘Only amateur, my dear. Nursing was as close as I could get to freedom, and that was quite a fight to persuade my parents. There were so many things young ladies couldn’t do in those days. You have a much easier time of it now, believe me.’

‘Were you a suffragette?’ Elaine asked, curious.

‘A bit,’ the old lady confided. ‘I went on a few marches before the war. I never had the courage to do what some of those poor brave women did, going to prison, the hunger strikes and forced feeding and all that. Ruined their constitutions for the rest of their lives. Asquith has a lot to answer for – wicked, cruel man.’

The clock was ticking away. Dorothy spoke more urgently. ‘Listen to me, Elaine. You stick to your guns, you hear? You’re representing a lot of women like me who didn’t get your chances. Make the most of them.’

There was a lump in Elaine’s throat as she began to gather jacket, handbag and briefcase. So often was she just a symbol to people; so frequently did she herself relegate those she met into categories. Dorothy was vividly real and her humanity touched her visitor.

‘Now you are to come and see me again. I may look like a stupid old woman but there’s nothing wrong with my brain and I admire you enormously. I expect you have lots of family of your own, but if you would enjoy popping in for a chat you would brighten an old lady’s day. And you can rely on me: I can keep secrets. Some of what this old duck has got up to in her life would bear telling too, believe me. Will you come?’

The two women looked at each other, one anxious, one hesitant. A growing wave of sympathy and affection swept over Elaine. She bent and put an arm ground Dorothy’s shoulder.

‘I feel I’ve found a friend, Dorothy. Yes, I should like to come again. I’ll bring more booze next time, shall I? From the House of Commons, the kind we drink ourselves. You look after yourself till then.’

Elaine kissed the soft cheek. Close to, instead of the smell of decay she had been steeling herself against, there was an unexpected whiff of lavender. Dorothy’s face had wrinkles everywhere and the skin was so fine the little blue veins were clearly visible. Her strange wig was now quite lopsided, a few sparse, fine, silver hairs escaping from underneath. Elaine realised she must be nearly bald.

The old woman put a hand on Elaine’s sleeve, detaining her. ‘I had a daughter, you know, Elaine. She died of diphtheria when she was seven. I was a nurse: I watched her die.’ Her eyes were filmy with tears. ‘I had to hold her down on the kitchen table as the surgeon cut open her throat to help her breathe, but we couldn’t save her. I still miss her after all these years.’

‘And I had a son,’ Elaine said softly. ‘Perhaps I’ll tell you about him. Next time. Take care, Dorothy. And God bless.’

She touched the old lady’s face. It was as if she had touched eternity: still warm, the blood faintly flowing, yet this soul was already turning towards the light. Dorothy recovered herself, blew her nose noisily on a lavender-perfumed handkerchief, dashed off the remains of the sherry and gamely waved her stick in farewell.

An unwelcome noise reverberated through Tessa Muncastle’s brain. On the bedside radio a few inches from her ear John Humphrys and Brian Redhead, professional and laconic, were talking about Bosnia. A reporter at the front line in Sarajevo crackled in, fear raising the pitch of his voice. From the comfort of her bed in London Tessa wondered what to do with her gut feelings about the daily diet of misery on the radio. Not that she felt in any way responsible or involved in these atrocities: quite the reverse. She wanted desperately to switch off, or at least start the day with music or something more cheerful or trivial. Her selfishness was wicked, especially since those people had so little while she and Andrew had so much. She resolved to go to mass in Westminster Cathedral later in the day. It might help. It would certainly help her.

Andrew was whistling in the bathroom. Downstairs Barney was getting ready to go to school, teasing the au pair, spilling milk on the kitchen tablecloth, picking raisins out of the muesli and leaving them in a neat line by his plate. In a couple of years the child would be off to prep school as a boarder, under the care of Andrew’s old headmaster, living in a dormitory with ten other boys, far from London and home. Andrew said Barney’s separation from his parents would not be a problem; he would get used to being away and would enjoy himself in the company of lots of friends. To Tessa it seemed cruel, but both Andrew and Sir Edward were adamant that a similar pattern of parental deprivation had done them no harm and a great deal of good. She was too shocked at the prospect to fight them effectively. Because of her pleading it had been agreed that the child should only be a weekly boarder, could come home after Saturday-morning school or around 5 o’clock following afternoon games if he won a place in a team. Tessa felt rebellious against this cold upper-class English style which still insisted on sending children away. Something warmer in her own blood, Irish maybe, or Italian from a grandparent, said Barney should be with his mother.

It had to be admitted that the au pair was far more efficient at getting the boy to school on time properly and tidily dressed. Here Tessa was, still listlessly in bed, wondering what to do with the day. She forced feelings of inadequacy to one side. It was better for children to be with their mother: of course it was. It was certainly better for the mother. A wave of bereavement and self-pity overwhelmed her, and she buried her face in the pillow.

The bathroom door was opening. Quickly she wiped her face on the sheet and blew her nose on a tissue. By the time Andrew entered the room, towel around his waist, she was sitting on the edge of the bed reaching for fluffy pink mules and pretending to be bright and breezy.

‘You’re up early, darling. It’s not yet seven thirty.’

Andrew was looking preoccupied. ‘Where’s my ankle protector, Tessa? You know, the elastic-webbing one. Last week my foot turned on the Powerjog machine. I keep forgetting I’m not an athletic kid any more.’

He started to rummage in a cupboard, pulling clean undergarments and woollen socks all over the floor. Tessa quickly reverted to duty and gave up her bed. She rose and pointed to a large carrier next to his briefcase.

‘I packed all your gym things last night. It’s in there. I hope you’re getting some benefit from all this early rising. Makes me feel groggy even to think of it.’

Tessa’s fluttery tones failed to irritate him this morning. Now that the House had returned after recess he was looking forward to his twice-weekly visit to the Commons gymnasium, pumping a little modest iron, nothing too dramatic, enough to keep encroaching thirties flab at bay. His reward so far, he noted with satisfaction, was the loss of eight pounds in weight and a definite firmness of waistline, chinline and step. Over time the effort might increase his stamina – useful for late-night sittings and the grind of travelling.

Maybe something else too. He watched Tessa tying the belt of her all-enveloping pink dressing gown. Apart from her head and neck, now bent, all he could see was the narrowness of her Achilles tendons spreading down into fleshy heels half hidden in the slippers, concealing everything important elsewhere.

‘How is the eczema these days, Tessa?’ No harm in asking.

A haunted look told him everything. ‘Still bad, I’m afraid,’ she apologised, rubbing her arm absent-mindedly.

He reached over and lifted her chin, forcing her to concentrate on the question really being put to her. His naked chest, his skin, the smell of his talcum powder were too close and made her shrink back. She pulled the dressing gown tighter. One distracted fingernail started scratching at her palm. A flush of angry colour spread about her neck.

Why couldn’t he leave her alone? Did he realise how miserable it was, being pawed and entered and hurt, feeling humiliated and disgusted and unclean afterwards? Why were men like that, even decent men like Andrew? They could do it, just do it, and put everything away afterwards, see
it
all shrink and subside, until the next time. It was dangling there under his towel right now, animal and hungry. To men, sex was separate, an appendage. Women could not react in the same way: for women, intercourse was a violation of their very being. The thought of opening up again to her husband, of somehow relaxing, as the doctor had suggested to her, lying on her back with her legs open and her privacy all gone, made her shudder. If he did it anyway, as he used to before the eczema provided an effective barrier, the raw ache was not a figment of her imagination but stayed deep inside all day, a reminder that men were always in the ascendant, had to be obeyed, and women would suffer.

A woman in her social class was of course expected to marry, and to be a helpmeet to her husband. In everything else she did her willing though not very competent best. Had she known before the wedding day exactly what was entailed in marriage she might have chosen a different life. It had been worth it for Barney, but now they wanted to take even him away from her. Maybe the nuns in her convent school had had the right idea, lying in their crisp white night habits between clean sheets all alone, hands crossed protectively over their breasts, loving only in the spirit and married only to Christ. Jesus was not likely to come pestering late at night after a hearty House of Commons dinner. She caught her breath at her own blasphemous thoughts. Mass would have to be preceded by thorough confession to Father John – maybe watered down a bit, to save the poor man embarrassment.

The gymnasium was busy as Andrew signed in. Abba music blared over the loudspeakers, covering grunts and gasps and clashing machinery, the sounds of the overweight hurling sweating flesh against metal and mortality. He recognised several policemen and security staff, for whom fitness was an obligation. That formidably brainy lady from the enquiry desk in the Commons library was here too. Nicholas Baker in white shorts was pounding away at the exercise bike reading
The Independent
. Dapper little Jerry Hayes, his gingery hair and curly beard making him look more than ever like a miniature Caligula, was on the step machine. No wonder Mrs Thatcher used to doubt whether such a chap, apparently more suited to picket lines and student activism, was indeed ‘one of us’.

The gymnasium’s manager Vicki Rose was demonstrating the pec deck to Elaine Stalker. Andrew found himself looking at both women appraisingly. Vicki was in her twenties and recently married. She had that ripe happy look of a girl who loves every minute of life; Mrs Stalker was in her mid-thirties, mother of a teenage daughter, trim-figured but just starting to get solid around the hips. She didn’t talk much about a Mr Stalker, though there was one; Andrew was fairly sure he had never met him. There was no hint of divorce or separation either. Maybe this was one of those private marriages, contented and productive at home, never paraded outside, a personal matter, not a
parliamentary affair. Many parliamentarians protected their family life by refusing to bring its members into the limelight at all. Given Tessa’s hatred of attention, maybe that was wise.

He paused on the rowing machine as Elaine passed and nodded agreeably to her. He set to, bent himself, back and forth, as flickering numbers measured time elapsed and distance travelled. They had all come a long way since their first days as new recruits. There was something different about Elaine even now. Andrew looked closer. Surprised, he noted the same happy light in her face as in Vicki’s eyes. Maybe she was in love too; how lucky for her if she had that kind of marriage. He felt almost disappointed – and it was not simply a twinge of jealousy but a faint sense of loss that Mrs Stalker was clearly already spoken for. The idea that he might be attracted to her himself was really too silly. For his own taste she was a bit old and far too domineering, at least in reputation. If he fancied anybody, it would be a younger woman, and not a blonde: a woman with thick dark hair and laughing eyes, who enjoyed going to bed with him.

Then Andrew Muncastle realised that for the first time he was raising his eyes from Tessa’s dismal bed and beginning, just beginning, to look elsewhere.

‘Good morning, sir!’

Despite the weather, Gerry Keown was enjoying his first morning on duty outside 10 Downing Street. The wind blew leaves in skittering gusts from Whitehall, found chilly gaps in his well-buttoned uniform and whistled down the narrow passageway to St James’s Park. A hint of rain was in the air. Umbrellas nestled in ministerial cars drawing up outside the famous door. Keown’s radio crackled fitfully. Journalists on the pavement opposite stamped cold feet and pulled their jackets closer at the neck.

The Secretary of State for National Heritage arrived early looking pleased with himself as usual. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Citizens’ Charter, despite his grand title, was ignored by the press. The Home Secretary strode up, cheerily aware that the significance of a Cabinet job is in inverse ratio to the length of its title. Sir Nigel Boswood beamed as he hauled himself out of the big car, nodded to the policeman on duty, adjusted his bow-tie and fastened his double-breasted jacket with a flourish. Old friends and comrades stood around in the tiled hall of No. 10 chatting amicably. Most, however, having been thoroughly briefed at their own departments, had a sense of foreboding.

The Cabinet Room is light and airy, surprisingly small, and is decorated in warm yellow and cream. The famous polished wood table is not square, nor oval, but more angularly ellipsoid, so no one is hidden or can hide. Red leather blotters inscribed ‘Cabinet Room 1st Lord’ greeted each place. The Prime Minister was already seated facing the window in the only chair with arms.

Official business was dealt with briskly. Decisions had previously been reached in Cabinet committees of ministers and civil servants. Cabinet would confirm those views, resolve disputes and hear briefings on foreign matters or forthcoming summits. Minutes were taken and carefully checked before confirmation and burial for the next quarter-century. All present adhered to Cabinet responsibility: once a decision was taken all were committed to it, all would defend it. At least until the next U-turn, or their memoirs.

As the formal proceedings closed, the Cabinet Secretary tactfully left the room, to be replaced by the Party Chairman and his deputy. The atmosphere hardened. Chairs were drawn a little closer and twenty-five well-groomed heads came together. Nigel Boswood cleared his throat and reached for a glass of water. He hoped he would not be required to contribute to the discussion. Under the last Prime Minister one could stay quiet apart from grunting sagely at strategic points, but this one had a disconcerting habit of going round the table and listening attentively as every single participant was put on the spot. The thought made his easy-going soul quiver. It was so difficult to equivocate afterwards about one’s position. It made taking sides easier for those with an itch to do so, and these
did not include Nigel. Next to him the gaunt Leader of the Commons looked desperate for a cigarette, forbidden in this beautiful room. Well-known faces, troubled, sardonic, wise and vacuous, glanced around.

‘As you know, we are confronted with adverse conditions necessitating some quite difficult decisions,’ the Prime Minister began. No wonder he had such a reputation for understatement. Briefly their Leader summarised what everyone present already knew. Phrases such as ‘substantial unplanned devaluation’ and ‘budget deficit around one billion pounds a week’ floated into Nigel’s consciousness. The numbers were so huge his brain refused to grasp them. He recalled the suggestion of an old schoolmaster that it was not worth worrying about matters which appeared to have no solution. It was a comfortable thought, but a cop-out.

‘We also have a trade deficit of around a billion pounds sterling
a month
,’ the Prime Minister was saying. Nigel forced himself to listen. He did find economics so unfathomable. ‘We expected the recession to improve matters there, but it hasn’t. Actually we expected the recession to be over by now, but it isn’t either. So we have to take some action.’

Things ain’t going too well, Nigel translated to himself, so we have to
do something
. The question is, what?

The President of the Board of Trade sounded more cheerful. ‘One effect of the devaluation is a fall in the prices of our goods sold overseas,’ he pointed out. ‘So there’s a wonderful opportunity for exporters. I propose we have a big multi-million pound advertising campaign to promote British exports.’

Visions of the incumbent off on the first plane, dining with expatriate managers in the far outposts of the trading world, filled the minds of all present.

The Chancellor answered sourly, ‘I’m afraid there will be no advertising or campaigning budgets in your department or any other. We no longer have the money to buy time. Just get yourself on the box, dear, and do it for free.’ There was no love lost between these two.

Nigel Boswood was a natural optimist. All this doom and gloom unsettled his stomach. Given a task he could tackle it with a will, even a hopeless task: he would gladly put his finger in a crumbling dyke for the sake of the country, the government, the party. What he hated was the ineffectual discussion now trudging round the table. It all seemed too reminiscent of a small-town Micawber waiting for something to turn up. Maybe in the end the economy ran itself. Maybe in future it would be run by the Brussels Commission, or by international businessmen. If things went wrong it might be run on the instructions of the International Monetary Fund, as in the seventies. This Cabinet seemed an increasingly small and irrelevant cog in a swirling machine. Not the way he was brought up, when a quarter of the known world was British and subject nations did what they were told. He wondered quite what he was doing there.