A Parliamentary Affair (34 page)

Left in a vacuum, Mike and Elaine tested each other’s mood. She was pleased with life, for Roger had phoned at the office. A few minutes’ conversation had brightened her day, even though contacts in recess would always be difficult. Long after she had replaced the receiver and headed for school to pick up Karen the pleasurable sensation persisted; she would be friends with everyone, all weekend, including her husband. Quickly she put an arm round him and kissed him, on the cheek.

There was a chicken casserole in the fridge, and a salad readymade. Mike felt doubly guilty as Elaine explained that both had been prepared by the neighbour, who was aware of all the problems a family such as theirs faced, and was anxious to help. She mistook Mike’s scowl for disapproval. So it
was; but mostly he felt inordinately cross with himself. That neighbour had her uses and should not have received such a curt rejection.

Conversation across the table was stilted and formal. As a family they had never been great communicators, but repeated absence was causing them all to lose the little verbal touches which re-create and confirm closeness in people who love and need each other. Elaine could put over almost any point or message in her work: that was her job. But to tell her family out loud that she was glad to see them was somehow much more difficult. The logistics were also horrendous. To get all three together at home, especially as Mike’s schedules became ever more erratic as he was promoted, required comparison of timetables and diaries months ahead. Yet Elaine needed occasions such as this to concentrate on her husband and daughter, or the two would play no part in her emotions at all.

‘What are we to do with you, miss, at half-term?’ Mike wanted to know of their daughter. Karen was wolfing down the casserole; the surviving child in her ensured a healthy appetite. ‘You planning to stay with friends again? We must owe everybody you know umpteen holidays in return.’

Karen, fork in hand, was avidly reading a magazine collected en route at the village shop. She looked up and brightened. ‘Oooh, could I invite Marie and Catherine to stay here for half-term? We’d behave and keep the place tidy, honest we would.’

‘No!’ Elaine spoke sharply. She had no half-term holiday as such, though a few days could be wangled. It would not go down too well if she had to ask the whips for time off to look after her daughter and friends. Another reason for not promoting Mrs Stalker, as if she needed any more. ‘I would rather you stay in the flat in London, where I can keep an eye on you,’ she said. Another tack occurred to her. ‘Would you be interested in earning some money?’

In her childhood Karen had had her fill of washing dishes and tidying up for peanuts. The greatest event ever in that household was the arrival a couple of years back of a large dishwasher. Dad liked it so much he happily loaded it all by himself. Suited her fine. The alternative, a visit to her grandparents, was to be avoided at all costs. There she would be given the worst chores to do without argument or reward, and have to watch boring TV programmes other people chose, for there was only one set. No fun at all. However, if negotiation brought more interesting work from her mother, with a near-adult rate for the job, she was prepared to haggle. She put her head on one side and eyed her mother.

‘Doing what?’

Elaine caught her coyness immediately. ‘You could come into my office and help Diane. Open the mail, answer the phone, fetch and carry, do the photocopying, and send off the signed photos, raffle prizes and standard notes. Plenty to keep you busy.’

‘How much?’

‘You want paying by the hour? Well, now. It means you’ll have to be in the office when Diane is, in the morning at nine. No mooning about in bed till two in the afternoon.’

‘Fine, I can do that.’

Elaine and Mike exchanged parental glances, amused and astonished.

Elaine tried a figure. ‘Two pounds fifty an hour?’

‘Huh. That’s below old Wages Council rates. We had to do a project on minimum wages for economics GCSE. I know all about that.’ Karen gave a triumphant look of mock belligerence.

‘Then you will know that young workers under twenty-one were not protected by Wages Councils, even when we had them,’ countered Elaine in mock fierceness. ‘Don’t trifle with me, miss! Only one of us is the politician. I will pay you two pounds fifty an hour while you learn the job. You’ll need a full pass for the Commons. If you’re any good –
if
, mind, for there’ll be no nepotism in this family – you can expect a pay rise next time.’

Karen grinned. ‘That’s OK, Mum. I hoped you would say that. I’ll start on the Monday. By the way, what’s nepotism?’

Her mother had to go out again; her father settled to the evening paper and a spot of reading. Upstairs Karen stretched out on the bed, absent-mindedly cuddled an old teddy bear and flicked through the latest batch of teen magazines.

A pile of recent copies lay scattered over the bed. She had entered a couple of competitions, got nowhere, but wanted to check the answers. The despised school uniform lay in a discarded heap on the floor. It had been replaced by tight black jeans and a black sweater, scoop-necked, so that, when she bent to check her socks, down its front her breasts showed round and pale in their low-cut black bra.

She sat up and examined herself critically in the mirror. Not bad, these days. Still too many spots, but the Biactol seemed to be working. Ears too big, real Prince of Wales’s own. Mum would not let her have surgery to pin them back. Hair awful, still. Uncertain how to style it, she had ended up having it done once too often and now it was too short. Boys liked it, though.

Around the mirror, from the limited number of posters Mum would allow to adorn her walls, men and boys looked back at her, hungry, moody, half-naked. Most were pop or film stars in standard publicity shots with smouldering eyes, silver lashes, semi-developed pectorals above smooth stomachs, faded blue jeans undone at the waist, hands thrust inside belts as if to check that something in good working order lurked down below. Half the faces had cigarettes hanging, in defiance of official bans. Cigarettes were smart.

Had Mike leaned over Karen’s shoulder to read his daughter’s magazines with her, he might have been even more alarmed at her generation’s heedless flirtation with rampant sexuality.

‘SEXY! The
Mizz
readers’ sexiness survey results’ was among the more harmless. Asked ‘Which bum would you most like to grab?’ the answer came: ‘Brad Pitt had better watch out. Our poll shows that, given half a chance, three out of ten of you would happily pinch his pert little bot. Could the lone Birmingham fan who voted for Prince please explain how she could possibly fancy such a scrawny bum?’

‘
More
!’ screamed another title. Karen liked this one: it was more sophisticated. ‘She’s got sex appeal: a siren of style, this girl dresses to cause a reaction. No novice in the flirting stakes, she wears provocative clothes to show off her sexy figure. She seeks attention and loves glamour. This is a girl who knows her assets and knows just how to
FLAUNT THEM
!’ In illustration, a pretty dark-haired girl sat at a café table before a tempting ice cream sundae. A dribble of cream ran down the side of the glass. Sensually, eyes half closed, the model was licking ice cream off a cherry, tweaking it by its stalk before her pouting lipsticked mouth.

Another copy of
Mizz
caught her eye: while the face on the cover could have been thirteen or thirty, the headlines pulled no punches. ‘How to snog a celeb!’ on one side vied with ‘Boys you fancy (who fancy your Mum!)’. A
Mizz
reader’s true story was headed ‘My Mum gave me condoms’. Further down the pile,
Just Seventeen
highlighted ‘Ten Lies Boys Tell’ and ‘Readers’ Bedrooms Revealed!’ with most of the readers featured aged fourteen or fifteen. Karen’s friends reckoned
Just Seventeen
was aimed mainly at twelve-year-olds, with tell-tale signs the competition prizes of two nights at a horse-riding centre and M&Ms sweets dispensers.
Mizz
went one better, with ‘Boys in their bedrooms: what are they like when you’re not looking?’ and ‘I snogged my best friend’s boyfriend … in front of her.
YOUR WICKED SINS INSIDE
!’

Karen turned to
More
!
, at £1 every two weeks well within her pocket money. The lady at the village newsagent’s handed it over to her without even a glance. It was more meaty than the other glossies. Editor Fiona Gibson asked, ‘How often have you made the mistake of spying a
hunky-looking
bloke in a club, giving him the come-on and then, when he is glued to your side and it’s too late to escape, discovered you’ve made a horrible mistake? That, in fact, he’s got the charisma of a
slug?’ Karen pulled a face. Chance would be a fine thing. She sighed and turned over, and settled happily for ‘Sex Special! Laugh him into bed … and put a smile on
your
face!’ This was more like it.

Karen chewed her thumb reflectively. So much to know about: so much to come. The world which beckoned so tantalisingly, so near, was one in which sex clearly played a huge part, far more important than exams and college entrance and careers. These magazines were as crammed with useful information on how to please men as ever her mother’s had been. But this time not with good cooking.

She read on quietly, a half-smile on her face.

Elaine opened the jar of face cream and began to remove her make-up. Her skin was beginning to lose its springiness. In another year or two crow’s feet would appear.

Mike pottered about at the other end of the room, unpacking his overnight bag, methodically heaping underwear and crumpled shirts into a laundry basket. Years in a cramped cockpit had made him abhor mess. He glanced at Elaine absent-mindedly and stood up, rubbing his shoulder. Both had strong reasons for seeking a good night’s sleep. Both were wondering, almost as a matter of course, or out of a remote and accustomed politeness – and each knew the other’s thoughts, almost automatically – whether the other was feeling sexually aroused and whether a performance was expected.

Both waited for a signal, somewhat stoically. Neither felt like energetic activity; and no signal came.

Mike yawned as he pulled on his pyjamas. As she brushed her hair Elaine avoided looking at him, as she had avoided kissing his mouth. With a twinge of anxiety she realised it was quite a long time since he had put the question, or reached out for her across their orderly bedroom; even longer since she had taken the initiative, as once he had loved her to do. She toyed with the idea briefly, but it was clear that Mike had had a hard day, though he said nothing.

Supposing she leaned across and touched him on his belly or buttock, stopped him pulling up those striped cotton pants. They were the old-fashioned sort with a white pyjama cord, whose knobbly ends straggled down inelegantly. He might grumble and give in with bad grace, to do her a favour. With Roger in her life there was no longer that need. Or he might snap at her, yank himself away from her outstretched hand, turn his back. Nobody in this room was desperately seeking rejection. There was more to marriage than sex. She got into bed and pulled the duvet up to her chin.

The trouble was, without the sex the mortar between the bricks of their home was slowly drying out and losing its strength. Marriage was not just friendship either, nor a sterile compilation of shared experience and responsibility. There was no obvious sign, yet each failure to connect allowed hairline cracks to appear, and the edifice was weakening a little more each time.

She lay quietly near her husband but not in contact with him. He wriggled and groaned at the painful shoulder. Sympathetic, she leaned across and lent him her pillow, tucking him in as a mother might a child.

If he did not want to talk, maturity and familiarity suggested letting him be. More than ever Elaine understood what it meant to have a pressured job. If he did confide, she would have to listen and concur, might even have to take some action, cancel engagements to be with him, perhaps feel obliged to arrive home occasionally before he did. How inconvenient that could be. There was the forthcoming fact-finding trip to Sweden, for example, with a group of MPs: she did not want to miss that. Fleetingly she realised that it seemed easy for her to find time for that, yet not for Karen or Mike’s needs. He had looked cheesed off when she and Karen had come home.

Perhaps that was part of the problem. If so it might be safer not to enquire. In truth, if it meant changes to her way of life, she did not want to know.

Within a few moments, back to back, breathing quietly, both were asleep.

‘May I see your pass, please, Miss?’

Gerry Keown was on duty again at the main gate leading to Members’ Entrance. A chill wind was blowing down Whitehall. The nights were drawing in; the previous weekend the clocks had been put back, a sure signal that winter was on its way.

‘Of course,’ Karen Stalker responded proudly, holding up the brand-new pass which hung on a chain around her neck. ‘Here.’

A new name. Keown examined the pass with care, his eyes moving from the photo to the bright young face above it, which smiled back at him cheekily, thoroughly enjoying the examination. On her way down Victoria Street the Army and Navy store had beckoned. Karen strolled fascinated through their cheap jewellery department. The result, her new silver-gilt earrings, dangled and twisted in the wind, drawing attention to the sparkle in her eyes and her slim neck. Long legs stretched out from under a black miniskirt. The fashion editors said calf-length skirts were in; but they also said to flaunt one’s assets.

‘Stalker? Would you be Mrs Elaine Stalker’s daughter?’ Karen subsided, deflated. She twiddled an earring. The last thing she wanted was to be known as her mother’s daughter: she, Karen, was a person
in her own right
.

‘Yes, I am, as it happens. Does it matter?’

‘No, no. It’s our job to know everybody who comes in here, pass or no pass.’

He was looking at her again. Not waving her through, and not indifferent. His lilting accent was definitely not London, though she was too inexperienced to place it. Her spirits rose. Head on one side, making the earrings dance, she smiled up at him again. He had dark, almost black hair, eyes not an English china blue but a sort of sea-greeny, mixed-up colour. Maybe mid-twenties. Clean-shaven – a point in his favour; beards and moustaches did not appeal. None of the magazines explained what you did to avoid getting all that spiky hair in your mouth. Of medium height he was easily topped by that older policeman standing nearby, the one with the cheerful face and sideburns; but this one stood straight, hands on hips, mouth puckering into a sardonic smile. Keown became aware that he was being examined almost as intently, and flushed. He was not used to female attention.