A Parliamentary Affair (30 page)

Andrew Muncastle picked up a toothbrush and methodically began to clean his teeth in preparation for bed. Peering into the mirror he caught his wife’s dismal face, and with a sigh turned to her.

‘You might
try
, Tessa. It’s becoming very noticeable.’

His wife sat miserably in her night clothes on the edge of the hotel bed, twisting a damp tissue in her fingers. ‘I
do
try,’ she said defensively. ‘I’m fine in the constituency, with people I know. It’s mixing with strangers I find so awkward. Please, Andrew, do I have to be here? Couldn’t I go home?’

Andrew hesitated. Keeping Tessa on track was a wearying business. He suspected she needed psychiatric help but was at a loss as to how to broach the subject. He walked over to her in an effort to be more gentle and took both her hands in his own. Turning them to examine her palms he exclaimed in astonishment.

‘Your eczema is back with a vengeance, isn’t it? Look, Tessa, don’t you think you should have a word with Dr James? You’ve always been tense, but it seems to be getting worse.’

She pulled her hands away, hiding the sore patches. At least in a long-sleeved cotton nightgown the flaming areas by her elbows, under her arms and in her groin were not visible.

‘You haven’t answered my question. Can I go home, please? It might be best. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about me.’

Andrew pondered, then shrugged. ‘All right, if it’ll make you feel better. But on two conditions. First that you go and see Dr James. Please, for all our sakes. Second, we’re on the platform Friday morning. If you felt able to come back in time for that, I would appreciate it. Alec, Roger Dickson’s driver, is driving up first thing Friday to bring the boxes and to give Roger a lift home. You could come up with him. Would that do?’

Tessa nodded dumbly. At least it would mean the rest of the week in peace.

Long after Andrew’s regular breathing assured her he was asleep, Tessa lay awake, staring at the ceiling. She needed to understand, but had neither insight, experience nor vocabulary to express her fears. Educated by nuns, she had been taught from an early age to despise her body and to pray to be free of fleshly desires. The priest preparing them for marriage had quietly given her a booklet. Once alone, she dutifully glanced through it, then threw it away in distaste. It was impossible to believe that Andrew expected her to do all that and like it.

The night of their wedding had been a nightmare. Fortunately both she and Andrew had had quite a lot to drink; enveloped in a haze of blessing she had quite enjoyed the woozy tumbling about on the bed, until Andrew had returned from the bathroom, much as now, naked except for his underpants and with a towel around his neck. He looked so silly she had started to giggle, and was still laughing as he struggled to undo hooks and eyes and buttons on the long white lacy dress, so much that she rolled over and did it all for him, tossing the crumpled garment on to the floor and kicking her satin shoes after it. It was only then that she wondered what he was doing, but she was drunk enough not to struggle, just to gasp and cry out with surprise. Andrew was no great lover, had no finesse to prepare her nor any recognition of the state of her ignorance. Once he climaxed he had kissed her happily, rolled over and fallen asleep.

Months later she timidly broached the subject with her mother, who grimaced and admitted that she did not enjoy it either, but that it was a wife’s duty. Thus Tessa never knew the sheer joy of sex, and quickly came to hate and fear it. Before long, however, she was pregnant with Barney.

Barney’s birth was the most terrible thing Tessa had ever known. Labour was long and painful and not helped by her own tension and terror. In the antenatal clinic the doctors and midwives seemed so secure in their knowledge that she had nodded whenever she was asked if she understood the implications of ‘natural’ childbirth. Instead the pain blasted all human dignity out of her, until in the final stages she was screaming and begging to be allowed to die. After that, all Tessa could remember was Andrew’s frightened eyes above a surgical mask, matching her own humiliating horror as the sweating obstetrician worked feverishly away under the canopy formed by her green-tented legs, strapped so helplessly into loops hung from poles. The baby’s face, when he was laid at last in the crook of her arm, was purple with bruising from the forceps and streaked with her own bright blood.

It would not happen again, not ever. Her version of the healing process meant closing in on herself. At first Andrew was openly sympathetic, for she had had a hard time. It was months before it dawned on him that normal relations would not easily be resumed. Tessa had never been responsive in bed before; now she told him it hurt her. Her lack of interest and adroitness at finding polite excuses fended him off, especially as he was working flat out at politics, nursing the seat, frequently arriving home dog-tired, content to give her a peck on the cheek and turn in.

After the election he had gained a new lease of life and complained bitterly. For the moment, however, he seemed more sensitive and had not pressed her for ages. Perhaps he too was losing interest; in time, if he was kind, she might be able to respond once more. Nevertheless the idea of sleeping alone the following couple of nights filled her with relief. She looked at his head on the pillow, as his chest rose and fell with his steady breathing. None of this was his fault. ‘I’m sorry, Andrew,’ she whispered, but he was dreaming, and could not hear her.

It was raining. Elaine had suddenly remembered the tea party with Mr Sutton. The old chap would be worried.

She pictured him as she hurried along the windswept front. The spidery handwriting suggested someone slight and frail. For some reason she attracted the devotion of several lonely old gentlemen, complete strangers, whose interest in her activities was intense and well informed. One sent her all the press cuttings featuring her name or picture that he could lay hands on, every week. Having fans was highly flattering to her ego, especially when few ministers could claim the same. It also troubled her, for it was as if her own being was disappearing, being subsumed into the powerful images on the screen. Parliament was becoming a giant soap opera, a happening for the benefit of the watching public, its personalities existing only as long as somebody had the set switched on. It made her shiver.

Mr Sutton was her most persistent correspondent. He had tried to invite himself to lunch in the House of Commons more than once. In one letter he had mentioned heart trouble. Elaine did not want to be responsible for his having a heart attack on the long train journey south; anyway, he was not her constituent. The tea party proposal was a more appropriate alternative.

As she rushed into the hotel lounge, shaking her umbrella and tossing her damp coat over a chair, several people rose to greet her. Two photographers and two journalists, one from the local radio station, introduced themselves. A reunion between pen-pals intrigued their editors, especially when one correspondent was the famous Elaine Stalker and the other a local resident.

Elaine looked round for Mr Sutton as she apologised for keeping them waiting. A large middle-aged man, a very large man, enormously obese and huffing heavily, moved slowly out from behind the journalists and held out his hand.

‘My darling Elaine,’ he began, ‘don’t apologise, please: waiting for you has been so worthwhile. I am so thrilled to see you at last. After all this time…’

The man towered and swayed over her. He was built like a Sumo wrestler and it was all fat, nearly 300 pounds at a guess. A large grey mackintosh like a Scouts’ badly erected tent, flapping and frayed at the edges, covered faded corduroy trousers and a scruffy sweater. He waddled as he came towards her, trouser fabric rubbing in loud protest between overlapping thighs. His face was flushed, with fine beads of sweat standing on the brow. From the smoothness of his skin and his mousey hair he could not have been more than fifty.

She stood stock still, rooted to the spot. Mr Sutton grabbed her hand in a huge paw, squeezed it till her bones crunched and pressed it to his fleshy lips, kissing it loudly. The action dragged Elaine close to him as light bulbs flashed. She fought to control her distaste as a powerful wave of cheap aftershave emanated from the pink cheeks. If he came any closer he was going to lunge and kiss her on the face. That was clearly his intention. With an effort she pulled free and backed off, quickly putting space between them. His chest heaved and he looked sad.

‘Yes, well, er, Mr Sutton…’

‘Call me Jack. You must, I beg you.’

One of the girl journalists was having a fit of giggles. Sutton looked around offended and poked her hard on the shoulder.

‘This is a very special occasion for me. My beautiful Elaine has asked me to tea. She is the most wonderful politician, the best MP in the whole country, in the world. You are not to make fun of her, do you hear?’

The hack looked up at the huge bulk and glaring eyes and subsided, mouth open.

The man did not seem simple, but was definitely strange. Elaine could not put her finger on it. The event posed several conundrums: how to extricate herself from it (and the overall relationship, such as it was) with the minimum pain to the peculiar Mr Sutton; how to avoid a row or appearing ungracious in the presence of the press; and her own curiosity – always a danger – to find out what made this oddity tick.

For the moment she had to behave as if nothing untoward had occurred. Elaine ordered tea and seated herself warily on the other side of the low table while Sutton squeezed his bulk into the biggest armchair, which sagged protesting under his weight.

‘You told me you were in the newspaper profession.’ It seemed a suitably anodyne remark.

He shuffled his feet and gazed down at his vast belly, brow furrowed. ‘No … o, not exactly. I’m retired now, as I told you, on invalidity benefit. Oh, please forgive me, Elaine. I so admire you. All I did was sell newspapers at a kiosk until ill health prevented me from carrying on. I thought if I put it like that you would never write to me.’ He had a point.

‘And I had the impression, Mr Sutton, that you were a little, well, older,’ Elaine said weakly as she poured the tea. ‘You must have been very young when you lost your wife.’

The man put a paw on each knee and examined his hands solemnly, first one, then the other. The fingers flickered up and down, as if divorced from the slothful body. With a ponderous sigh he answered: ‘Yes, she was only thirty. She was a very beautiful woman, Elaine, just like you. Same blonde hair, same lovely figure.’

He raised his eyes a little, lower lip thrust out, and stared at her legs. Quickly she hid them under the chair and handed him a plate of fruitcake and a cup of tea.

‘What happened to her? Would it help to talk about it to me?’

Whatever the story, she would do her best to be kind to him for these few minutes.

Mr Sutton looked mournful. ‘It was in all the papers,’ he intoned, and picking up the piece of cake devoured it in a single bite. Elaine was puzzled.

The older of the two photographers paused in changing a film. ‘Sutton? Round here, was it? I remember. Nasty murder, that. Never caught the bloke, did they?’

The young journalist opened her mouth again, then, moving around behind Sutton’s back, began scribbling furiously. The man shook his head morosely and stared at the carpet.

‘Don’t want to think about it all now. Gives me a bad headache. Not now I’ve got my beautiful Elaine with me.’ And he groped forward, trying to reach her hand. A gleam of malevolence lit up his face. ‘You want to be careful about these people, Elaine,’ he muttered, waving his lumbering head in the direction of the journalists. ‘Write lies all the time, they do. They write terrible things about you, don’t they? If you ever want them sorting out, tell me. I’d do anything for you. You look so pretty. I am thrilled to see you at last, to touch you.’

A mental picture of Mr Sutton sorting out Anne Cook entertained her fleetingly. It seemed wiser to bring the exchange to a speedy close.

‘I’m afraid I have to get back. I have constituents waiting for me – they are my first responsibility, after all.’

She started to rise, a paper napkin fluttering to the ground, her cup of tea half full. Anxiety crossed his pudgy features.

‘Oh no, not yet. We’ve only just started. I wanted to have such a nice chat with you, Elaine. I was hoping we could stay here for a couple of hours, and then you would let me take you out to dinner. I have money; I could take you somewhere really nice. And then bring you back here – this is your hotel, isn’t it? And I could look at you, and you could talk to me, just like you do on the television. Please, Elaine – Mrs Stalker – don’t go yet.’

Time to be extremely firm. She hoped he was not planning to hang about in the lobby for her. She turned to the press.

‘Happy? Got all you want? Good. Would you forgive me, then? I’m sure Mr Sutton would be delighted to answer any further questions you may have. I must go. Goodbye now.’

Formally and rapidly she shook hands with the assembled crew, then turned to Sutton, who was struggling to rise from the low chair. A look of anguish played over his purple face. Firmly she pushed him back down again. ‘No, don’t get up. I am so sorry. Goodbye, goodbye.’ And patting him quickly on the shoulder, avoiding that crunching handshake or any danger of another attempted embrace, she gathered up coat and umbrella, and fled.

How had this happened? The biter bit, indeed. Then she understood. Television is a one-way medium. If programme-makers could observe the audience, the unimaginable millions watching, they would know all human life is there in its batty, misshapen glory. Those faces in the flickering dark are only data on a survey sheet and are not real entities at all to the broadcasters, not picturable, until occasionally like Mr Sutton they switch off the set and appear, alarmingly, in front of their idols, and demand to be loved in return.

Elaine hastened through the swing doors back out into the rain, knowing that the next edition of the local newspaper would splash the pictures of herself and the fearful Mr Sutton, with perhaps
more stills from long ago, of Mrs Sutton, poor woman. Presumably the police had investigated. Maybe he had only gone nutty since, through loneliness. With any luck he would now pursue somebody else – Selina Scott, maybe, or the Princess of Wales. She had enough complications in her life without him.