A Parliamentary Affair (43 page)

‘
Bollocks!
’ Dickson spat out the word.

Tom Sparrow was equally angry. He had trusted Roger. ‘What exactly is bollocks, Roger? That you two may be having an affair, or that she might tell anyone?’

Dickson bit his lip, dragged the chair away from the desk and sat down heavily. He looked around, as if seeing the untidy room for the first time. Above the blocked-up fireplace a poster from the last election bid all and sundry to vote for him. A photo of himself, Caroline and the children, the original of the one on his successful election address, hung on the wall.

‘She would not tell anyone. She would not say a word.’

The atmosphere shifted. Long accustomed to worming the truth out of men in his years as an NCO, Tom Sparrow perched slowly on the edge of the desk. ‘Maybe you were seen.’

‘But where? We’re never together in public. I don’t take her out to dinner, if that’s what you mean. She has as much to lose as I have – more, in fact. Her seat is much less safe than this one. Her career is much less secure.’

‘Do you need me to remind you that there is no such; thing as a safe seat?’ Sparrow was grim.

‘I know. Or a secure job. Even if the Prime Minister detests the press hounding his ministers.’ Sparrow had too much tact to mention any names. Roger’s unsettled demeanour was telling him a great deal, but not yet enough.

‘You’re very attached to her, Roger, aren’t you?’

The other man shifted uneasily and laughed, a sad, hollow sound. ‘What makes you think that, Tom? Is it so terribly obvious?’

‘Because I know you. I know how important your career is to you. You wouldn’t be risking it just for a fling. She must be something special – she is, of course, I’ve seen her on TV, and been to her house. I’ve always felt the party ought to make much better use of her. You have taste, I’ll say that.’

Dickson grunted, brooding. He ran his finger over the faded gold beading of the
leather-topped
desk, backwards and forwards. Sparrow had never seen him like this before, warring with himself. Sparrow’s own feelings towards his MP were affectionate, paternalistic and anxious. For so long had he channelled his energies and regard into the party, into this younger man and his success, that his work was in effect his family. It was threatening to disintegrate in front of his eyes. His indignation and anger rose again.

‘And what are you going to do, Roger? It has to stop, you know. Love or no love.’

‘No.’ Dickson passed a hand over his eyes as if trying to shut out a picture. He turned his back on the photograph on the wall.

Sparrow caught the movement and allowed his own glance to linger pointedly on Mrs Dickson’s cheery face, Roger’s children dressed and primed for the official photographer. Roger uncertain, irresolute, divided was a new phenomenon and deeply disturbing. Time to be brutal. He gestured at a newspaper on his desk.

‘I wouldn’t trust that bastard not to phone Caroline and ask her.’

Silence. The rules Roger Dickson set himself – not to think of his wife and his mistress in the same instant, not to get them mixed up – were in danger of breaking down under Sparrow’s skilled onslaught.

‘What are you going to do, Roger? You know perfectly well what could happen if this gets out, however discreet Mrs Stalker may be. You have your duty to the government, first of all. And we can’t afford a by-election, here or anywhere else.’

It was hard to tell whether Roger’s continued silence was the recalcitrance of a naughty child or agonies of guilt at wrongdoing, or simply that the man, usually so fluent, could not see the way ahead and did not know what to say. Sparrow considered for a moment, but the confused expression on Roger’s face led him slowly to this last conclusion. He leaned over and placed a sympathetic hand on Dickson’s shoulder.

‘You don’t need me to give you any advice, Roger, but if I were in your shoes I’d look for an opportunity to bring it to an end, soon as you can.’

A look of pain crossed Dickson’s eyes. ‘I
need
her, Tom. I need her. I never thought that would happen, but it has. I haven’t told anyone else. I’m not sure even she knows. But I wait for the moments we can be together…’ His voice tailed off. The words sounded silly, inadequate, foolish. Like most Englishmen he was no more used to articulating his emotions than he was to examining them with any honesty.

Sparrow spoke softly. ‘You’re not going to tell me that you can’t live without her, are you? Because in that case you can give up politics, at least round here. The party workers are fond of Caroline and wouldn’t forgive you. If you want Mrs Stalker that’s two divorces and two ruined careers, not one. Is that what you’re contemplating?’ Dickson sank lower into the chair. A clock in the corridor outside struck seven. Sparrow stood up with a sigh. ‘Look, I have to go now. There’s trouble with the women’s committee and I promised I’d attend their meeting tonight. If I leave you here, will you lock up, and switch on the answerphone as you go?’

The agent reassumed his official demeanour, collected papers and files, slipped on coat and scarf, fussed over a handkerchief, car keys, gloves. The nights were chilly: it would soon be Christmas. Dickson was still sitting slumped in the chair, staring at the middle distance, fingers of one hand wavering, tremulous, slowly backwards and forwards on the desk edge.

Sparrow hesitated. A sudden fear surfaced, urgently. ‘Goodnight, Roger. And think on. You won’t do anything silly, will you?’

Dickson spoke almost to himself. ‘What, sillier than I’ve done already? No, Tom, don’t worry. I’ll be all right. And thank you for the advice.’

Twenty minutes later, Sparrow used his car phone to call into the office. His own voice answered; the answerphone was reassuringly switched on. For the rest of the evening he tried to concentrate, and wondered sadly if there was anything he could do to help.

The meeting between Warmingshire county councillors and local MPs trotted quickly through matters of mutual importance, then drifted off into how many new car parking spaces were required for the council’s ever-increasing, ever-better-paid staff. Elaine, bored, made her apologies and slid away.

An hour to spare. Too much time to waste, yet not enough to get home before attending South Warmingshire Ladies’ Circle choir concert. She could murder a cup of tea. The map of the constituency, spread out on her lap, gave her an idea.

On an impulse she telephoned the Eventide Home. Mrs Swanson was not on duty, but her deputy was glad to report that Mrs Holmes was in good health and would be delighted to see her. They would go and tell her right away. A few moments for Dorothy to put herself in order would be appreciated. That means she’s putting on her wig, thought Elaine. The old lady must be allowed her dignity.

On several occasions Elaine had taken up Dorothy Holmes’s invitation to friendship and found her a lively, intelligent observer who, though frail, refused to give in. Whatever Elaine’s own problems and disappointments, the old lady’s vitality and continued mental energy were always a tonic. Talking about times past brought history to life, for the old lady remembered Queen Victoria clearly, had heard both Lloyd George and Churchill speak and had first attended a debate in the Commons during the First World War. She had been inspired to enter nursing by the death of Florence Nightingale in 1910, but had faced implacable opposition from her middle-class family. The war had given many well-bred women precious opportunities so long denied. She entertained her visitor with horror tales of primitive nursing at the front and later in field hospitals in Egypt where she fell in love with a dashing young officer, wounded in the leg.

‘He turned out to be a big mistake, my Oliver,’ Dorothy reminisced, gazing into the far distance. The man had been dead forty years, before Elaine was born.

The two women were drinking tea laced with a little whisky and tucking into a box of House of Commons chocolates left over from her last visit.

Dorothy’s theatrical voice told the tale. ‘He was a drunk, you see, a serious alcoholic. I didn’t know that at the time; men always drank heavily then, unless they were TT or chapel. He had a lot of pain from that wound, that was his excuse, but really it was because he could never settle to a humdrum civilian life. I had to cover up for him. After the babies were born I got my old nanny in. I went back to work to pay the bills, nursing privately, just odd jobs, mostly sitting at night with the dying. Better than waiting for Oliver to come home, hitting out at all and sundry, including me.’

She looked curiously at Elaine. ‘You don’t talk about your husband much. Aren’t you happy with him?’

‘I don’t know.’

It was the first time she had admitted to anyone her uneasy sense of a problem growing beyond her control. Normally all her remarks about her husband were pleasant and appreciative. Slowly, Elaine began to feel for new words. Talking in negative terms about her marriage felt strange and unpleasant.

‘He’s a good man – nothing like your Oliver! – and we’ve been married a long time: sixteen years. Our daughter was born a year after we married and we both dote on her. But he just doesn’t share my life at all. I don’t think he wants to. I’ve got used to that, but it’s such a demanding existence I lead, and I need to talk it through with someone who knows me well. Not every night, only occasionally. I’d much rather it were my husband, but he’s … well, not there, literally and in every other sense.’

The old woman looked at her shrewdly. ‘He probably finds your new-found importance hard to take. Men, especially married men, have big egos, you know. They much prefer to be king in their own castles, not troubadours to a queen. How about somebody else? In my day it was quite accepted for a married woman in high places, once she had done her duty producing an heir, to find her own friend, as long as both were discreet.’

Elaine was silent. Dorothy leaned across, tapped her on the knee and forced her fine vowels into a conspiratorial whisper.

‘You have got somebody else, haven’t you? Is he nice? Handsome? Rich? No, no, that would not entice a clever woman like you. Things have changed since my day: you earn your own money. So he must be somebody interesting. Someone in the political world. Am I right?’

Despite herself Elaine was laughing. ‘Dorothy! Don’t be so nosy.’

‘Oh, go on. I’m only an old woman. Your face lit up when I mentioned a friend. Is he one of the other MPs?’ She caught Elaine’s hesitation. Putting her gnarled hand on Elaine’s arm, she said softly, ‘I think the world of you, Elaine Stalker. I’m not about to tell tales out of school. If you have a lover, so much the better. You’ll be an old hag like me one day. Enjoy your youth and health while you have them.’

Elaine swallowed hard, opened her mouth to answer and burst into tears. All the tension of the last few weeks came flooding out, inarticulate and confused. So planned, so ambitious a life had taken an unexpected turn in which instinct and emotion loomed large and dangerous. For so long she had lived and thought like a man in a man’s world, and been supremely successful, as if camouflage gave an added advantage. Like the religious convert she was more zealous than those born to it; she could manipulate, cajole and intimidate as well as any man, and with the same goal in mind, namely to get her own way. Now she was trying to cope with an unfamiliar set of feelings arising from the most female side of her nature. Her inexperience showed, like flesh through a threadbare garment, and she was scared, and worn out from trying to understand.

Dorothy sat back, distressed, pulling a lacy handkerchief from her sleeve and waving it helplessly at her visitor. The perfume of old lavender filled the air.

‘Oh, there. I am sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, my dear, not for the world. Oh, dear.’ And she began crying noisily herself.

‘Nonsense.’

The scene of two weeping women was so incongruous that Elaine gulped, half choked, and eventually laughed cheerlessly. Pulling herself together she scrabbled in her bag for a tissue.

‘It’s just that I’m in such a muddle, Dorothy. I don’t want to lose my husband but I’m beginning to lose touch with him. I want to be close to him again, but I’m forgetting how. With Roger I have exactly the opposite problem. It all started as a bit of fun but I’m getting far too fond of him. There’s not a chance of us ever getting together – married, I mean; and it wouldn’t work, anyway. I couldn’t be the kind of wife he needs and he has one already who suits him fine. But what am I to do if I fall in love with him? That wasn’t in the game plan at all.’

‘It sounds like you’re in love with him already,’ Dorothy observed.

Elaine sighed. ‘You may well be right. I’m extremely reluctant to examine my feelings too closely, for fear of what I might find. If truth be told, Dorothy, I started the relationship in part for what I could get out of it. I thought it might assist my career – he’s in a position to help. We were to be equals – comrades in arms. And it is like that most of the time. But it’s hard to sleep with a man, over and over again, and not get – at the very least – extremely fond of him.’

‘Some women can; but you’re a good woman, Elaine, a loving person. Does he love you?’

A tear dropped slowly down Elaine’s cheek. Surely that could not be the problem – that she, always so self-sufficient, was in love and wanted the man to fall in love in turn? But what for? What would it serve, if Roger were mooning about over her instead? That would have been inconvenient, and she would have brought the affair to a swift and probably tactless end.

‘I have no idea. He doesn’t say. He keeps coming to see me, but that’s not the same thing.’

‘Does he make life better or worse?’

‘That’s easy. Better, infinitely so. Without him I think Westminster would be a terrifying, empty place. It’s so competitive, so macho, so aggressive. The politics are marvellous and that side I adore. I love having a ringside seat. But without Roger I should feel lost and unhappy. With him, to be honest, life is great. And he’s wonderful in bed. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. Do you condemn me?’

‘Condemn you? Silly girl! Of course not. I envy you!’ The old lady shifted painfully in her chair and smoothed her skirt down over tired legs. ‘Damn this arthritis. Do you know I’m still shrinking – I am an inch shorter than I was this time last year.’