All in the Mind (27 page)

The graves of children were the most moving, and often the best kept. Martha Rudd (1989–2001).
You lit up our lives every second you graced our world
. It wouldn’t be true of course. There would have been times, during her twelve years, when little Martha must have annoyed Mr and Mrs Rudd. But they wouldn’t remember those. The tragedy of a child dying young would leave them memories only of the joy and beauty they now missed so much. It was a nice thing to have on a headstone, he thought. He reflected that even Mrs Temple would be hard pressed to say of her own son that ‘he lit up our lives’.

Who would ‘our’ be? There was only his mum really, and truth be told he often darkened her life with his terrible moods and his incessant staring at a fixed point in the near or middle distance, which is why she relied so heavily on God and Father Nicholas. When he felt his equilibrium was kind of OK, he made her life hard enough, but when, as now, he was low, he knew he made it even harder. He loved her for the way she just kept going, trying to make him happy and comfortable, even when she probably thought it was a lost cause, but it wasn’t enough to lift his mood.

If he were to drop down dead right now, he thought, there wouldn’t be many at his funeral. A few people from work, a few more from up and down the street, provided they could get time off, and no doubt Mum would round up some from church. Would his dad come? He doubted it. How would he know David had died? And how would he cope with the guilt he was bound to feel, surely, at leaving him so young, and wondering whether he had something to do with his early death? Or perhaps he wouldn’t feel any guilt. Perhaps he’d forgotten David long ago. Perhaps he had a new family who knew nothing of his old one.

He took out his notebook and tried to write an inscription for himself. Really, it just boiled down to his mum, and his being a troubled soul.
‘Here lies David Temple, a troubled soul, loved by his mother.’ Was that it? Was that how he wanted to be remembered?

He tried again. ‘Here lies David Temple, a troubled man who did his best to look after his mum, and look after himself.’

It didn’t read right. ‘Did his best’ sounded so weak.

He walked a little further to study more graves. He preferred the messages that gave a sense of the person’s character rather than what they were or did. ‘He blessed us with his love’ was a nice one. ‘One of life’s givers’ was OK. ‘You were a friend to all who knew you’ a bit yucky, and probably untrue.

David found a little grass bank opposite a section devoted to overseas servicemen and women, mainly Poles, who died in the Second World War. He sat down and turned to a blank page in his notebook. Then he drew his own gravestone. He based it on the rusty-coloured stone about eight yards away. It was taller than most, with a small cross at the top, then a name, Pawel Dabrowski (1922–1942), followed by a brief message in Polish.

David drew a clutch of flowers at the base. Then he faltered. Did he have any quality that was worthy of note? He thought again of the line Professor Sturrock had put on his homework once. ‘
You may think that you are less important than others, but what I think you are is humble. And humility is a fine quality
.’

Humility. It was one of Professor Sturrock’s favourite themes. He believed that humility was the key to self-respect and mutual respect. At first when Professor Sturrock had called him ‘humble’, David had read it as meaning he was lowly and insignificant. But gradually he’d come to realise there was a more favourable interpretation, and though he would never go so far as to say it had made him feel special, he felt he understood what Professor Sturrock meant. He remembered an occasion when Professor Sturrock told him there was a humility in the way he gave expression to his feelings that he rarely saw in people far better off and far better educated than he was, and it was something he should be proud of.

He remembered too the time when he was complaining to Professor Sturrock about how some of the people at work treated him.

‘You don’t behave like that, David,’ Professor Sturrock had said, ‘because you have a sense of humility. If you can understand humility, then you have the key to life.’

Looking at the gravestones, David thought that maybe he was beginning to understand why Professor Sturrock had set the exercise. He took his pencil and filled in his gravestone.

Here lies David Temple

A humble and loving son.

Through his mother, and through struggle in life,

he learned that humility is the key to humanity.

He was pleased with it.

Several weeks ago, Professor Sturrock had asked him to write something about humility. Now he felt ready to do so. He turned to a fresh page and started to write, hoping the service inside the church would not be ending any time soon.

26

It transpired that even the little Ralph Hall knew about Davina Owens was false. She was not in marketing: she was a former model. It was not her house she had taken him to, but one that had been rented for the night. She worked part-time for a freelance press agency which specialised in undercover scams. They had been put on to Ralph by the
Sun
who sometimes used freelances in these kind of operations in case things went wrong and they could have a little bit of deniability.

Who had put the
Sun
on to Ralph, he could only imagine, but he clearly had an enemy out there. Not for the first time he kicked himself for indiscreet phone calls made from the car when he knew his London driver was a man who nurtured a grievance. But he couldn’t believe his driver had the initiative to set up something like that. No, it was someone with more clout. Someone after his job perhaps.

Once Ralph had summoned the energy to pick himself up off the doormat of his house, he had a shower, shaved and dressed, and then went to phone Sandie. Then he changed his mind and called Number Ten instead. He told the PM’s private secretary the facts – that he had got very drunk last night, he had been targeted by a woman and he had slept with her. The
Sun
had interviewed the woman and he feared the worst. He asked whether the PM had been told anything. ‘Yes,’ the private secretary had said, curtly. He asked how he had reacted. ‘He just wants to know the facts before he can decide anything.’

‘But he didn’t say it was curtains per se?’ asked Ralph, conscious of how pathetic and pleading he sounded.

‘No, he didn’t. As I told you, he’s waiting for the facts.’

Ralph said he was heading back to London, he would be saying nothing to the paper, and he would keep in touch.

‘Yes,’ said the Number Ten official. ‘Let’s keep in touch.’

He bottled out of the conversation with Sandie and decided to text her from the train instead. If he asked her to collect him from the station in the car, he thought, he could get her away from the reporters who would be sure to gather on his Pimlico doorstep as soon as he got back, and also use the short drive to tell her what had happened.

There was another photographer waiting at Newcastle station. ‘Damn,’ said Ralph, realising he should probably have got the cab driver to take him all the way to London. It meant they knew what train he was on so there would be more than Sandie to the welcoming party. Once the train had pulled out of the station, he texted Sandie to say his driver was ill and he couldn’t get an ordinary cab because of the nature of some government papers he was carrying. It was lame, he knew, but the best he could think of given his hangover and his general state of mind. ‘I’m jetlagged,’ she texted back. ‘Can’t you get another driver?’ ‘Please xxx,’ he replied. ‘OK,’ came the response, her reluctance clear.

The train was due in just after half past two. He spent most of the journey staring out of the window and trying to avoid conversation with the couple at his table. The man had nudged his wife and motioned towards Ralph as he sat down. She had looked a little perplexed, then her husband whispered, ‘Ralph Hall, the politician,’ and she said, ‘Oh yes,’ and smiled.

‘Just telling the wife,’ said the man. ‘Recognised you.’

‘Like it’s a fucking quiz game,’ Ralph thought of saying, but instead he just smiled.

‘You must get used to it. Sorry,’ said the man.

‘It’s fine,’ said Ralph. ‘If you can’t stand the heat and all that.’

He thought ahead to tomorrow, and the conversation his travelling companions would have when they learned they had sat on a train with a man whose sexual shenanigans would be all over the news, and possibly lead to his demise as a minister.

He studied the woman’s thin lips and imagined her leaning on a garden fence telling the neighbours, ‘You’d never guess for a second he was in trouble. Like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.’ Now she was looking at him, smiling.

When the food and drink trolley came round, Ralph bought a small bottle of white wine, a cheese sandwich and three bottles of water, which he drank so fast the woman opposite appeared mesmerised. As the trolley went into the next carriage, he pretended to be going to the toilet, but actually followed it in order to get three miniatures of whisky. Then he did go to the toilet, to drink them.

Another reporter and photographer greeted him as he stepped off the train on to the platform at King’s Cross. The couple from his table were just behind him. ‘What a life,’ said the husband to his wife. ‘Having the press turn up wherever you go.’

‘Do you have anything to say, Mr Hall, about the claims made by Ms Owens?’ asked the reporter.

‘I don’t,’ he said. He was aware of how ghastly he must have looked leaving Davina Owens’s place, so he agreed to stop and pose for a photo in the vain hope the paper would use this one rather than the shots of him emerging bleary-eyed and half dressed from what the paper would call the ‘love nest’, not to mention the shot of him throwing orange juice at a reporter. He also hoped that if they got a picture now, and got the message he wasn’t talking, they might leave him to walk to meet Sandie alone. He had no such luck.

He didn’t know how to begin to tell Sandie what a mess he was in. All these years, she had supported him and now he was about to put her to the kind of test no politician could wish for his wife. He knew how humiliating it would be, for both of them. But at least it would be more humiliating for him, and he was hopeful that she would see the whole sorry episode as a twisted way of getting his problem out in the open, and stand by him. Clearly, he would have to say something when the story broke, and he thought that Sandie would want to as well. He imagined her in one of her smart dark suits walking calmly down the steps from the front door at home, standing absolutely still until the media had settled and were listening
politely
, then telling them it would take much more than one drunken night and a newspaper set-up to destroy their marriage and their family. Then she’d hire someone to run the business for her and take six months off to help him fight the demon drink. Telling her about last night would be tough, but though he was almost sick with nerves, he retained confidence in her and confidence that, together, they’d get through this.

The reporter and the photographer followed him all the way to the car park, the photographer walking backwards and so drawing unwelcome attention to Ralph holding his suit carrier and his red box. Sandie was parked just round the corner from where a little queue of tourists were having their photo taken by the Harry Potter wall, Platform 9¾. Ralph was desperate for her to stay in the car and not get out to meet him. He hurried to the car, opened the boot, threw in his bags and jumped in. The photographer was crouching over the bonnet getting shots of both of them, Sandie looking confused, Ralph looking flustered. As he tried to shut the car door, he found the reporter’s body in the way.

‘Mrs Hall, has your husband told you about Davina? What do you have to say?’

Ralph banged the door hard against the reporter’s hip, three times, and eventually he was able to force him away and slam the door shut.

‘Go, go, go, Sandie. Go. Fast.’

But she was going nowhere.

‘Who is Davina? Who are these people? What is going on?’

The reporter was tapping on her window, asking if she realised she had a rival. The photographer had a fantastic shot of Sandie looking thunderstruck as Ralph put his head in his hands.

‘Please, Sandie. Please drive. I’ll tell you what’s happening when we’re away from these animals.’

Reluctantly she started the car and sped off. After a quarter of a mile, she turned off York Way, and parked up opposite a little hotel.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘Start with Davina.’

‘Can I start earlier?’

‘OK. Start earlier, and end with Davina.’

‘I haven’t wanted to worry you but I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist for a while. About my drinking. I met him through a policy review and when I realised I had a problem I asked for his help.’

‘And he suggested Davina as a cure?’

‘Please, Sandie, don’t make this even harder. He suggested I try to stop drinking. But I can’t. I have been drinking quantities like you wouldn’t even imagine.’

‘You seem to think I’m blind, Ralph. I have seen a few signs.’

‘It’s worse than you think. Far worse. Anyway, it’s been going on for a while and getting worse and worse and last night I’m afraid I got absolutely smashed, and I seem to have been targeted by this woman and it turns out she was doing it for a newspaper. So the top and bottom is I’ll be all over the
Sun
tomorrow, and it will be absolutely humiliating and I will probably get the sack.’

Sandie had both hands on the steering wheel. She sighed and her head fell forward, almost hitting her hands. Then she sat up and looked at him. He was trying to read her eyes. There seemed to be more understanding than hurt or panic.

‘You know, I’ve been expecting something like this, Ralph. You’ve been slipping away from me.’

‘Sandie, I promise you it’s not what you think.’

‘Do you really know what I think? Do you ever take the time to consider what I might think?’

‘Of course I do.’