A Parliamentary Affair (29 page)

‘Whew! Bit crowded in here. Do you enjoy all this, Mrs Stalker? I bet you do.’

‘It’s all part of the job. Got to support the troops.’ Elaine found herself imitating Caroline’s hearty manner. Despite herself she liked the woman very much; it was impossible to feel any jealousy. It dawned on her that Roger needed them both, fulfilling different roles, both peripheral to him firmly at the centre, the bright sun around which both moons orbited, attracted by the same magnetism. Only a man could think or function like that, could take for granted that his own needs came first. There was no chance whatsoever that one affection could replace the other, that she could ever take this steady woman’s place at the heart of Roger’s life. That was plain in the protective way Roger stood by Caroline, a hand on her elbow, like those Victorian photographs, Roger the paterfamilias, Caroline the strong yet subordinate wife, mother and helpmeet.

Having made the introduction, Roger deftly moved Caroline away. For a moment Elaine felt bereft. Goodness knows when she might talk to him again, in circumstances where flirting could take place, with the gentle skirmishes which re-established contact. Humbly she recognised that she had a
little too much in common with Tessa Muncastle’s mixed feeling of regret and anguish at not being at the centre of her man’s universe. Not that Elaine wanted to function by being the centre of any man’s life. What she achieved she did herself. Yet it was not comfortable being on the receiving end of such a brusque reminder that, should Roger ever have to choose between his wife and his mistress, like most politicians he would choose his wife.

Her musings were interrupted by being bumped hard from behind. Freddie Ferriman had been to two receptions already. He was red-faced and talkative and not quite in control of his limbs. Hanging on his arm was a lissom young woman, with a long neck, lightly tanned skin, a mass of tumbled mid-brown hair and a vacant look in her eyes. Freddie was contrite.

‘Elaine! So sorry. Did I knock your glass? Here, let me get you another one. Orange juice, is it? But the drinks are free. Look, you chat to Marlene here and make her feel at home.’ He headed unsteadily towards the bar.

Elaine was embarrassed. She had a feeling that she had seen this girl before. ‘I’m Elaine Stalker MP. And you…?’

‘Marlene Weisacker. I’m Mr Ferriman’s research assistant.’ A Texas accent accompanied a flashing double row of perfect teeth. Elaine made one more comparison between the women present tonight and reflected drily that no one could be more different to Caroline Dickson. Since Roger’s taste apparently ran to real women, intelligent women, he was unlikely ever to take up with a dumb bimbo like this. Elaine decided to tease, gently.

‘That must be so interesting for you! Mr Ferriman is a wonderful man. So well thought of.’

‘He is?’ The girl sounded doubtful. Not so dumb, then. Elaine’s expression was studiously neutral. The girl readjusted swiftly. ‘Oh, yeah! You’re so right. I’m here for a year as part of my studies at the University of Austin, Texas. I’d like to go into politics myself, so this is valuable experience.’

I’ll bet, thought Elaine. ‘Which branch? Are you thinking of standing for Congress some day?’

‘Oh, I’m not sure yet, Mrs Stalker. Maybe I’ll join a lobbying organisation. We have a lot of those in Washington these days.’

‘It would give you plenty of opportunity to exercise your talents,’ Elaine offered sweetly. She had just remembered where she had seen those long legs before. Ferriman was returning clutching three glasses. ‘Your research assistant is a very special and interesting young lady, Freddie. I congratulate you.’

He puffed out his chest with pride as if the compliment had been paid to himself. Marlene stood beside him, her face unreadable.

The party was breaking up as dinner time approached. At last Elaine was able to make her way to Mrs Horrocks and her cronies. Since Major-General Horrocks had died, all but one were widows, the exception being married to a retired gentleman who hated politics and preferred to spend the week golfing at nearby Lytham St Anne’s. Courteously the women explored whom she was with (nobody) and her plans for the rest of the evening (nothing much). Shrewd Mrs Horrocks had come to the tentative conclusion that her MP’s home life was not all it was cracked up to be, but was discreetly sympathetic. An invitation to join the ladies for a modest meal was pressed. Elaine accepted with alacrity.

Boswood tapped on the bedroom door, once, then twice close together, then once more, a code worked out with Peter on arrival. There was silence, then a shuffling sound from within.

‘Who is it?’ A hoarse whisper.

Boswood bent his face close to the door. ‘Me. It’s all right. Are you decent? Let me in.’

Down the corridor a woman secret service officer, dressed as a hotel maid, paused by her trolley full of cleaning materials and observed Sir Nigel Boswood talking to the door of his own room. Somebody else was inside. She had tried to gain entry earlier with her pass key but had been thwarted by the door being bolted on the inside. Her respectful request to turn down the bedclothes had been met with a brusque ‘Go away!’ Like any other guest Sir Nigel was entitled to share his bed with whomsoever he pleased. Her job, however, was to check names and faces against lists. Unidentified visitors left her and her boss feeling jumpy.

The door opened a crack on the chain. Peter checked suspiciously, muttered, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ and let Nigel in.

‘You sure you want me to stay the night here, Nigel?’ he said uneasily. ‘The place is crawling with fuzz. I can smell them a mile off.’

‘Certainly,’ Nigel answered, making his voice sound brisk. He had a headache and his throat was hurting. He hoped he was not about to come down with a cold: Friday was too important. ‘You’re my official parliamentary research assistant; why not? You stayed doing some work on my speech and it was too late to go back to your digs. So you kipped the night on the sofa here. What could be possibly wrong about that?’

The younger man was still troubled. ‘Can’t stand this place, that’s all,’ he muttered. ‘If it’s all right with you, Nigel, I’d like to go back to London tomorrow morning. More my scene.’

‘What about my speech on Friday?’ Nigel sounded hurt.

‘I’ll watch it on telly, and make notes for you. Better than hovering around on the fringes of the conference with a not very convincing story. There are police here from all over, even the Met. I could be recognised, do you realise? I’ve no desire to be arrested for loitering.’

It gave Peter a twinge of satisfaction to see his lover wince. Increasingly, partly as a way of reasserting his own independence, he reminded Nigel of how he earned his living. That usually produced some useful cash as a disincentive to further pick-ups, but paradoxically it reinforced Nigel’s own strange need to be disgusted with the liaison. Had Peter talked about leaving this life and becoming respectable, going to college perhaps, Nigel would have pulled out all the stops to help; but the relationship would have lost its power and excitement, and the boy would have become no more than a neutral acquaintance. Peter had long since worked out Boswood’s psychology. He had no intention of letting go yet.

‘I’d almost certainly have to watch on TV anyway and I’d feel happier doing that in the flat. I won’t miss, I promise. Please?’

The boy sidled up to Nigel. He placed a long-fingered hand on the man’s chest, on the shirtfront under the jacket so that his young flesh was separated by only a few strands of cotton from Nigel’s body. Peter gave his blue-eyed little boy look, long perfected, capable as a wizard’s wand of guaranteeing most of what he asked for. It worked this time too. Nigel sighed heavily.

‘If you must, then. Tomorrow, after breakfast – don’t go dashing off at dawn, they really will arrest you then. Now we need to tidy up in here. In about half an hour my new speech-writer is coming and Roger Dickson, the new minister, to go over this debate for Friday. Have we got any aspirin? Do you know I haven’t made a conference speech for four years? I feel quite anxious about it. Be a good lad and sit quietly in the background. Fill their glasses but don’t say a word. I know you won’t let me down.’

Peter felt irritated. The need to be free of entanglements was beginning to reassert itself. He was fond of Nigel, but then he had been fond of Jack Hudd, and thought with intermittent affection of Hermann and Gustav and one or two others, and there would always be fresh faces on the Amsterdam scene. Being with the same person all the time, even one as generous and caring as Nigel, was becoming a bore. Having to behave in company not of his choosing was an imposition, yet Nigel had
failed to notice his peevishness. A bad sign. More than anything else he would not be taken for granted.

Further knocks on the door produced Roger and Marcus Carey together. With a word in the right place from Roger, Carey had what he wanted and had slipped into his new post a month before. The arrivals were formal and reserved with Peter, whom they had not seen before. Then they stood in the doorway of the room gazing around with more than a little envy. As a senior Cabinet minister Boswood was entitled to a fine suite. The lavish bathroom was crammed with miniatures of soap and cologne, the large sitting room furnished with big sofas and plush Wilton rugs, its mahogany writing-tables and an enormous leather topped desk surmounted by a huge display of fresh flowers and foliage, pot plants in brass holders and oversized ashtrays. Its exotic chintz fabric was not to their taste, but the television was wired for satellite and CNN, a distinct bonus. A large beribboned basket of fruit was half eaten, mainly by Peter, who after a vague introduction from Boswood played at being the helpful assistant and then lounged in the background munching a pear.

‘By Friday the delegates will all be feeling pretty jaded, and they are really waiting for the Prime Minister’s speech, so you have the most important job of all this week – the warm-up.’ Roger was teasing his boss. He liked the man’s self-deprecation, which was based on genuine surprise that a steadfast devotion to duty should have propelled him to one of the highest offices in the land. ‘The speech therefore needs some funnies to get them going on a cold morning, a knock at the opposition, and a clear statement of our own policy. Have we any new initiatives to announce?’

Boswood looked askance. ‘New initiatives? You have to be joking. It has been heaven’s own job holding the budgets together at all this year. The new Jerusalem will have to wait.’ He pulled a face and turned to Marcus Carey. ‘I’m glad you could make it. Now: what have you come up with?’

Marcus pulled out a sheaf of notes from his briefcase and began chattering a little too enthusiastically. Roger caught Boswood’s eye and suppressed a half-smile. For the next hour the three put their heads together, trying out phrases, rummaging for synonyms and euphemisms, soaring with hyperbole, searching for a suitable quote from Shakespeare or Burke or Churchill or somebody else the audience might possibly have heard of. As a good phrase occurred, Boswood would jump up and stride round the room, waving his arms, booming and gesticulating, testing its timing.

Marcus marvelled at the skill with which his mentors used words both to convey and to conceal meaning. Some ministers speak well before enthusiasts at Party Conference but are truly terrible in the Commons. Others are useless on the platform, but come into their own in parliamentary debate. In a world dominated by television, old-fashioned oratory still mattered, but Boswood, Dickson and Carey all knew that in the twenty-five-minute speech what rated most was the crisp sound bite of two or three sentences. Boswood needed to go out on a high; this could be his conference farewell. He intended to make a workmanlike job of it.

From the shadows Peter entertained himself by observing Boswood’s two companions, sizing them up. Dickson was masculine and at ease in his skin. A sensual man, Peter guessed, but with a preference for bold handsome women, not boys or men. He could picture Roger as a well-muscled young student, playing rugby or cricket and drinking jocularly with male friends, but always withdrawing politely and without rancour at the slightest sexual approach from one of them. Carey was a different matter. Peter watched him silently for a long time and was amused that Marcus was uncomfortable at being examined. The smooth, shaven black face was eager to please; his well-educated mind and literary turns of phrase were placed doggedly at the service of the two older men despite the faintly patronising way they treated him. The body language was submissive, like the pictures in old history books drawn by Victorian explorers of the native bowing the knee in subjugation. There was a mixed-up psyche in there somewhere. Peter entertained himself briefly with a daydream of seducing Carey, knowing that his chances of ever finding out if the man was gay were slim. He would not have been interested anyway. He didn’t like blacks.

That both Carey and Dickson were married would not have surprised him nor stilled his imagination. Many of his clients were married. Some were bisexual, some genuinely homosexual but hiding in an apparently straight relationship. There was only one group of homosexuals whom Peter never met – the gay man in a contented long-term partnership with another gay, where discovery presented no problems. Along with many heterosexuals, Peter would have scoffed at the notion that such couples exist. It suited him that homosexuality, even where legal, should carry a powerful stigma. If gays could live in tranquil happiness, he and his ilk would be out of business.

At last the three were satisfied. Marcus would phone through the agreed text to Central Office and have it faxed back for checking. A speaking copy typed in phrases would come up in the red ministerial box. Once out on the wires and on the autocue on Thursday night, it would nestle in the hands of bored hacks on Friday morning as Boswood spoke. The smarter ones would notice any changes and write clever pieces on the turn of a single word.

Boswood was looking tired. Roger wished Carey would stop gabbling so they could leave. He could sense rather than see the shifty impatience of the blond young man seated in the corner, legs crossed, hands in lap. Boswood’s personal tastes were not unsuspected, but having a boy in one’s room was taking a risk. Perhaps the bloke was getting demob-happy: that could be dangerous. At last Dickson rose, nodded a dismissive goodnight in Peter’s direction and a more genuine one to Nigel, grabbed Marcus’s elbow and shepherded him firmly out of the room.