The Sweetness of Liberty James (42 page)

The first five pages covered the ‘story' angle. A journalist who had in fact been hired by a society magazine for the evening had written the story and been only too happy to sell it to the rag, gaining himself a reputation of sorts.

‘Are we all fed up with toffee-nosed Members of Parliament telling us to live more moral lives and save the world? Let me
show you how clean, green, Grahame de Weatherby spends his free time.'

The article continued: ‘
Super eco-champ Grahame de Weatherby, whose lineage dates back to the Norman Conquest, has been campaigning for all of us to put up with wind farms and incinerators in our villages and towns. Maybe this is how the other half keeps warm in winter
.

‘His sordid secret is now out. His boyfriend, interior designer Julian Tracey Jackson–
'

‘Tracey!' Liberty exclaimed.

‘Not the point, darling, do read on,' said Deirdre.

‘No, don't,' sobbed J-T. ‘How did they find out who I am?'

He turned on his phone to try and call Bob. He didn't want him to read the article before he had talked to him. They had already had a fight when J-T told him he had done something awful. Bob understood ‘awful' to mean ‘unfaithful', which to him meant ‘unforgiveable'. So he stormed out of the house, little realising how public the situation was.

J-T's phone rang. He said ‘no comment' to a reporter before listening to his messages. Most were from his personal assistant, Catherine, who tearfully reported that she had been fooled by someone who called pretending to be a client desperately trying to find where he was, as their sofa had collapsed. She was not the brightest girl and, keen to earn brownie points by working on 1
^st
January, she had thought this must be her first interior design disaster and had given away too much information about his friends and family so the client could find him.

‘That means press on the doorstep,' said Deirdre grimly. ‘I'll close the curtains at the front. I should have done that last night.'

The women's thoughts turned to Grahame.

‘Do you think he's told Jonathan?' said Deirdre. ‘Oh, the poor, poor boy.'

Just then Paloma wandered in, eyes sleepy but full of love and happiness, mouthing, ‘What a perfect day.' Then she took in the papers strewn over the kitchen table, and the horror-stricken
faces, unusual lack of food on the table and said calmly, ‘Right, I'll do breakfast, you call Jonathan.'

Paloma and Liberty clucked round J-T, telling him he would get through this. Bob would realise he had made a rash decision. They put eggs before him, and J-T actually smiled at this and said, ‘You don't cheer up a gay man by forcing calories on him.' But he took a mouthful of poached egg on toast to be polite.

Deirdre came off the phone and relayed to the others that Jonathan and his sons had been up all night. ‘The papers and their journalists are homing in on Gray, no pun intended, as he is the bigger story – sorry J-T, but he is an MP – and they have been arriving in their droves and are camped out up there. Gray has told Edmund and his Pa all they need to know. I'm not sure whether anything would shock Jonathan at the moment, but he sounded horrified the press had caught hold of the story.'

Paloma was pacing. ‘Should I go to see him?' she asked Deirdre.

‘With all the press outside, I don't think Jonathan would appreciate visitors now. You can always call him and talk, but right now he needs to concentrate on his son.'

Paloma was desperate to comfort her new love, but understood, and felt for the sobbing young man sitting before her.

‘Gray hadn't told his family he was gay – he hadn't told anyone,' sobbed J-T. ‘And here is me, showing the world! Oh God, what am I going to do? I can't live without Bob, and he has taken Feran and Bulli.'

Thank goodness
, was Deirdre's first thought. She hated the yapping duo.

‘Talking of which, you two don't seem surprised,' said Paloma, pouring coffee and looking from Liberty to Deirdre.

‘I have known for years,' said Liberty. ‘Since I was a child, really, but I didn't realise you knew, Mother.'

‘I didn't. I just guessed, I suppose. I was always surprised Jonathan didn't suspect, but I think he always hoped to have more grandchildren so maybe he blanked it out.'

Liberty didn't allow her mind to wander towards Edmund. He had filled her dreams all too vividly last night.

‘Anyway,' continued Deirdre briskly, ‘I don't think it prudent to go over to see them, or for J-T to go anywhere near the house. The press will be all over us, and hopefully there will be a bigger story for them to cover tomorrow.'

Sadly for J-T and Grahame, the following week was a quiet one for news desks, so the photographers and journalists hovered around the village for several days, trying to get a new angle. Most people were loyal to their beloved MP; however, an unnamed source gave a full account of the party with her own additions – it was accepted that Miss Scally was the source – that homosexuality was encouraged at The Nuttery and why did Alain leave Deirdre, after all? This gave Alain the opportunity he had been looking for to phone Deirdre and roar with laughter down the phone that he hoped next time he visited she would be reclining in bed with some ‘buxom, rosy-cheeked villager'. Deirdre told him to stop being so frivolous when ‘all around is falling apart'. But she felt comforted that he had called.

Four days after the news broke, Liberty announced she was going to move into Duck End, if only to get out of her mother's house and take the press and J-T away from her. Paloma phoned Jonathan to tell him she had to return to France to await the arrival of her grandchild, but she hoped he would visit her soon. Jonathan said he understood, but he was devastated. He had at last found feelings he thought he had buried with his wife, only to be dragged away by his family. Was this a message from Helena? He loved his son, but his timing concerning coming out could have been better. As she thought about J-T's statement that the scandalous story had ruined three lives, Deirdre reflected that there were several more relationships hovering in the balance.

Liberty had wanted J-T to stay a while once she moved, but he said, sensibly, that he had to return to London to try and sort things out with Bob. They may have drifted apart over the past few months, and he had in a moment of drunken insanity given
way to his feelings of neglect, but he knew they had something worth fighting for.

Opposition members of Parliament were trying to use the story to discredit Grahame, but his constituents were being surprisingly loyal for such a conservative area, despite many of them having old-fashioned prejudices. They had seen for themselves what a good person and MP he was. He had stood up for their country rights many times, and they had to admit that green energy was the way forward. He had obtained many grants and other monies to rent land for turbines, so now the majority of them had stopped worrying about how their countryside would look and started realising anything that paid for itself had to be good. It saved them money, after all.

Grahame, however, was devastated. One moment of weakness after too much alcohol had brought his lifetime's terror upon him. He had always felt the knowledge of having a homosexual son would be devastating to his father. Jonathan hadn't even blanched when Gray sat him and Edmund down and told them the situation that fateful night after the party, but he knew his Pa was hurt, mostly in memory of his mother, Helena, who would have loved a home full of grandchildren.

Edmund only said, ‘Mama would have been proud of you, so don't worry, we'll get through it.' But Gray would like to have heard this from his Pa, too.

Savannah had phoned when she heard the news on the BBC World Service.

‘Are you OK, darling?' she asked. But she went on to say that Khalid had been mortified the children had been staying with a gay man, so Gray knew Savannah was even more depressed than before, although she didn't say so.

He had always wanted to make the world a better, happier place, and now he was bringing his family's world down around their ears. He recognised that he had to stand down and disappear from public life, grateful though he was for his constituents' support. When at last he returned home he found
a brick had been thrown through a downstairs window with ‘HORE' and ‘POUF' written on a piece of paper wrapped round it. The typo gave him the chance to smile, but he thought to himself
nothing changes
, as he cleared up the glass.

A knock at the door. He steeled himself to open it. A gaggle of press photographers stood outside. ‘What next, Gray?' they asked in unison.

Gray thought for a moment, before giving the dreaded speech he had rehearsed in his head a thousand times in the last few days. ‘I have already written to those who need to know, and with great sadness tendered my resignation. There will be a by-election, of course. I thank all those who have supported and stood by me through these difficult days.'

As the photographers clicked away and the journos asked questions, he felt sick to his stomach. He found he couldn't stand there any longer before breaking down. ‘That is all I have to say,' was all he could muster before he shut the door on the cruel world, sat down at his computer and quickly wrote emails to those people he professed already to have informed. Once sent, he put his head in his hands and cried his heart out, feeling more alone than ever.
What a bloody waste
, was all he could think,
and what for?
A moment of bliss. At this, he allowed himself a smile. J-T had been gentle, reassuring and kindness personified; he hated to think what was becoming of the one man who had understood, ever.

The response was immediate. ‘Gray for Green – vote him back in!'

Nature eventually intervened, providing a bigger news story: dramatic flooding in Bangladesh, over a quarter of a million people feared drowned and many more destined to die from disease.

Gray took this as a message from the gods to do more to help the real world. He had realised over the past few days that he had become increasingly disillusioned by central government workings, and the control held by the European Court over
Middle England constituents who merely wanted to cut a hedge or build an affordable home, only to be told that section nine, paragraph 3.2.11 of the European Diktat stated that no home without triple-glazing (at vast personal cost) could be built unless on a brownfield site, etcetera, etcetera. He was totally fed up with petty fights. He would leave Edmund to wrestle with Denhelm's alternative power research, and volunteer his services to whoever needed his help.

His talents were greedily snapped up by UNESCO, one of whose senior officers was an old school friend and knew how good Gray was at achieving the impossible by sheer persistence. With conflicts springing up around the world, and the global economic situation so dicey, promoting cultural diversity had become increasingly difficult. Grahame was the perfect candidate to get things done. Therefore, much to the regret of his constituents, Gray announced he was off to Bangladesh to attempt to help people far more deserving and needy than those in the UK. He would travel via Abu Dhabi, he added to Jonathan and Edmund, to try and see Savannah.

‘I want to see her and the children, check she is OK. I couldn't bear for her to be unhappy for long.'

Jonathan understood his younger son's decision, but was sad to see another of his children disappear off round the world.

‘I'll be back. The job is only for a few months and then I will be ready for something here. I just need for everyone to forget what happened.'

‘I feel I only just know you now,' said Jonathan, giving his son a hug. ‘Maybe I should come with you and see what I can do to help Savvie and the children.'

‘I don't think Khalid is going to welcome me with open arms, and he may see you as a threat,' said Gray. ‘If I think there's trouble at the mill, albeit the gold-plated mill, I'll let you know.'

He also wrote a heartfelt apology to J-T at his office, not wanting to compromise any reconciliation between him and Bob by sending it to their home. He simply said he was sorry
for all the publicity and embarrassment and hoped he and Bob could sort out their differences.

Bob had in fact benefited from the publicity. Headlines such as ‘Famous duo in MP's downfall!' meant everyone had heard of The Small Dog Design Company and of his gallery. He was furious with J-T, who had been allowed back into their apartment, but was relegated to the spare bedroom. Bob appreciated that he was working too hard, but J-T had been the one to leave him for a jolly with Liberty. He knew designing the interior for a country cottage would have taken all of one brain cell, and he was perfectly aware that his partner had spent most of the time having fun. Loyalty and fidelity were incredibly important to Bob. He had been humiliated, and wondered if it had been the first time J-T and Gray had been intimate. He seconded the call by opposition MPs for Gray's resignation, but then, with time to mull it over, felt a little sorry for the man. His career would be over, but Bob couldn't believe Gray hadn't told his family earlier that he was gay. There must have been a reason. He thought perhaps he had tried, and was met by Jonathan simply refusing to acknowledge his son's existence any longer, as had happened to Bob. If that was the case, he was truly sorry for the man.

J-T's parents had been desperately angry when he told them in early adolescence, and were initially disgusted with him, but it was at least a reaction, whereas Bob's father had never spoken to him again. Not for twenty-five years, for heaven's sake. Bob felt terrible, thinking of the horrible time Gray must be going through. Every gay person unites in the terror of telling their nearest and dearest. Some parents are surprisingly accepting, despite being seemingly truly conservative in their outlook. J-T's parents had always been so laid-back, having spent most of the 1960s and 1970s caravanning around the world to promote peace and free love. They got stoned regularly and refused to commit to work until dragged kicking and screaming into the real world when a child arrived. Sadly, by the time J-T
announced to his parents he was gay, they had morphed into the very people they had spent their formative years rejecting.