A Parliamentary Affair (49 page)

‘If she’s passed out, that’s not surprising. Doesn’t mean she’s not there. Is there a neighbour?’

‘Yes.’ A rush of relief. ‘She’s not far away.’

It took several minutes of agonised explanation to get through to Barbara what was going on. Elaine’s voice quavered in terror and irritation as the awful phrases were repeated. Drunk. Tablets. Seems to have passed out. At last the penny dropped.

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Stalker. The house is all in darkness, but I’ll go over there right now. I thought I saw her coming in earlier. I’m sure it’s nothing serious. You know what kids are like. You’re coming? Right, see you shortly. Don’t drive too fast. We don’t want another casualty.’ Elaine’s mind had not focused on the long drive. Her hands shook as she reached for her keys. Roger waited quietly.

Do you want me to drive you?’

‘Don’t be silly. That would be the first thing everybody would notice. No one knows yet what Karen has done, if anything. And if there’s trouble I shall need my car.’ Roger smiled softly. ‘So we’re not owning up just yet. In that case, we have one more quick phone call to make.’ Once more he dialled his office and used the touch-tone. This time code was for ‘Delete’. He waited, redialled, listened to the now silent tape. Nodded at Elaine, satisfied. ‘All done,’ he whispered.

Then Roger turned to her and gave her her marching orders, like an experienced officer to a terrified soldier about to go over the parapet. ‘Listen to me. Take care, and drive carefully. You are to phone me and let me know what’s happening, and if I can help in any way, ask. Don’t worry too much, it’s probably nothing. If she is upset you have the whole of the Christmas holidays to spend with her. Take as much time you want. The whips are very understanding about things like this.’

They stepped out into the darkened hallway. In a trice the flat was locked and she ran down the stairs. He waited, hearing the car door slam, hearing her rev urgently away. Footsteps on the pavement outside passed and died.

When all quiet once more he walked down the stairs and out into the night.

The next hours passed in a blur. Afterwards Elaine could not remember it all, the jumble of noise, lights, stomach pumps, nurses, stethoscopes, drips, bleeps, trolleys, low voices, dark glances, white coats, questions, incomprehensible instructions.

Barbara had turned out to be the soul of efficiency. She found Karen before the ambulance arrived and shoved fingers down her throat, making her sick on the spot. A reporter from a local agency who made a habit of listening into police radios arrived as the ambulance left, and after a few quick photos of the house jumped back in his battered car and followed the vehicle to the hospital. At the entrance to Casualty he nearly became a casualty himself as two local thugs, bloody-headed after a minor battle, took exception to his flashbulbs and threatened to beat him up in the car park. By the time Elaine drove up, face ashen, press reinforcements had arrived. So had the hospital’s press officer, who barred the way with cool competence. It would all be headline news tomorrow. Especially if the child died.

Elaine waved everyone away. Just a cup of tea. Sorry to be a nuisance. No idea what had happened. A phone call. Who knows, with today’s kids? Bad school report seemed to upset her, but you wouldn’t think… He’ll be in New York in an hour or so. Phone number. Ask him to call here. Thank you. I’ll stay with her.

The trolley with its immobile occupant was wheeled into a single room in intensive care. All around men and women were dying, denied the dignity of doing it in their own beds. In the end Elaine gave up the futile effort to remain sensible and controlled and huddled in a chair at the foot of the bed, away from prying eyes, helpless and alone. Wanting Mike. Wanting Roger. Willing her child to live. To wake up, and not be damaged.

Divine punishment. Revenge. She was being punished, for denying her family, for breaking her marriage vows. However rationalist Elaine’s upbringing, however seldom she turned to God,
in extremis
her incoherent mind feared that those long coils of superstition might be true. Swear a vow before the vengeful deity and you must keep that promise. To break it, for whatever reason, however driven and necessary, meant retribution. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord: I will repay. Maybe through the mechanism of a guilty conscience, maybe by being found out. Or through the tragic effects on other people like Karen, more vulnerable, less able to cope. Elaine could live with ambivalence; it had become her nature. Without it politics would have been an impossible world for her, with its constant deceptions. Lying about her lover was no problem, especially as his love brought such joy; that piece of double-talk made surviving easier, not harder. But that was not true of her family. Politics was a brutal world, depressingly and catastrophically destructive – not least of the lives of those not directly involved. Innocent victims. Like Karen, whose laboured breathing, hour on hour, now filled the sterile room as her soul struggled to leave it.

Even now Elaine felt horror at the pattern of her own thoughts. She had thought about herself, how she was being punished. Not about Karen’s suffering, or why she had done it. Look what damage this political life had wreaked already. Once her children’s needs would have come first, automatically. No longer.

Elaine gazed at the supine body, almost unrecognisable under curling tubes, straps and masks. The hissing of a ventilator, sinister and mechanical, was the only sound. Still she had not thought through what Karen had done or meant to do, or why. It was almost too painful to contemplate. Yet what made a healthy fifteen-year-old take tablets and make a phone call like that?

Her contacting Roger’s office must mean that her daughter knew about the connection. That alone would be enough to throw a young life into turmoil. What did she know? And, if she knew, who else?

Elaine’s mind twisted and turned, but she could recall no hint from anyone, no leer or nudge or wink. She was quite certain that neither she nor Roger had left a trail. Not that the newspapers needed evidence. Effective innuendo could be constructed on almost any juxtaposition of a famous man and an attractive woman. Proving the negative, eradicating doubt, was then almost impossible. Nobody need tell the truth to be hailed as an investigative journalist of the highest order.

Not that Elaine had any intention of telling the truth. Except perhaps to Karen, if she asked. When she woke up. If she…

There was no one around. She moaned softly, then put her head in her hands and begged, praying half openly, half silently, not just for her daughter’s life, but forlornly, as for a lost cause, for strength for herself, for Roger, for Mike, for the bad times which almost certainly lay ahead.

Then towards dawn Karen stirred and sighed.

The monitor bleeped urgently and a red light flashed. Elaine woke from her doze with a start, but a doctor and nurse were already bending over the bed. Karen wriggled, shrugged them off, muttered. The doctor lifted her eyelid, felt her pulse again, checked a printout, turned to the nurse, prepared an injection.

‘What is it? What’s happening?’ Elaine pleaded.

The doctor spoke cautiously. ‘Her blood pressure appears to be almost back to normal. Pulse is still erratic, but stronger. Out of her coma, Mrs Stalker, I believe. It looks like we caught her in time. She seems to be sleeping now.’

Elaine’s heart missed a beat. ‘She looks so strange. You sure?’

He pointed at the girl. ‘She’s in one hell of a drunken stupor still, and will have the mother and father of all headaches when she wakes up. But she should recover from all that. We will keep her in a day or two. Alcohol poisoning’s not funny even without nitrazepam on top, and you never know. However, she’ll be all right with us now, if you want to go home.’

‘Not yet. My husband should be ringing soon.’

‘Fine. We will make her comfortable. You can tell him the scare’s over. No need for him to worry.’

A great flood of relief washed over her. Standing for the first time in hours, she staggered and almost fell. The doctor caught her arm, and suddenly she was laughing hysterically, clinging to him and talking gibberish as he made soothing noises, until at last the tempest subsided.

A nurse entered to say that her husband was on the line. With an effort her public persona reasserted itself as she walked into the corridor to sympathetic smiles and glances from the departing night staff. A ray of weak sunlight suffused the waiting room. The conversation with Mike was disjointed, his stilted words failing to match the terror she had just lived through, the gushing relief of its end. For a moment she toyed with the notion of playing it all down, but then he would have wondered at the urgent message to phone. In the end she stuck to a simple description of what had happened and her official belief that it was a silly accident caused by experimenting illicitly with the contents of the drinks cabinet. The sleeping pills were not mentioned. There had been so few in the bottle that even if Karen had taken them deliberately it was reasonable to suppose she had only meant to scare them.

In all her explanations with both Mike and the police Elaine found she stuck rigidly to the claim that Karen had phoned her at the flat. It was much easier that way, especially as there was now no evidence to the contrary. In time she almost came to believe it herself.

Leaving Karen behind and brushing away pressmen, she returned to the house, intending to bathe arid change before going back. She wanted to be at the bedside when eventually Karen woke up.

The house was a disaster area. Wearily Elaine walked around, picking up bottles, righting furniture. The neighbour had already been in and washed the vomit from the bedspread. Now it lay on the kitchen table drying out, garishly pink in the dawn light, the large darker wet patch leaving a tidemark. With a furious gesture of rejection, Elaine bundled it into a black plastic bag and dumped it by the bin. Something, even an inanimate object, had to bear the weight of her distress.

Her study was in total disorder. Papers and Hansards littered the floor and Drambuie was spilled all over the place. Mechanically she began tidying up, sorting into piles, throwing away. One piece of paper stopped her in her tracks. It was covered in scrawl, spidering across the page, up the edge, over the other side. Karen’s handwriting, but disorderly. Puzzled, Elaine sat amongst the debris and tried to decipher it.

In the note Karen told her mother what she knew about the affair and begged her to end it: she did not want her parents to divorce, and she was sure it wasn’t her mother’s fault. Perhaps it was her own, in which case she was sorry for being so useless.

Elaine sat still for a long time, reading bits out loud.

Then, crying quietly, she folded the paper and put it in her pocket.

Gerry Keown in ordinary clothes stood shyly clutching a bouquet of sweet-smelling flowers which must have taken a fair chunk out of that week’s wages. The Ulster accent was noticeable. He looked sheepish and was blushing under his dark hair though his eyes were watchful. To get into the hospital had taken quite some effort, given the administrator’s laudable determination to keep media and gawkers out. First he had telephoned security, who carefully checked his identity with the Commons office. On his arrival he had shown his Commons pass. His name had been given to the ward sister, who asked Karen whether it was familiar. The girl’s immediate request for her hairbrush was answer enough.

‘I do hope you don’t mind.’

‘No, of course not. It’s really lovely of you to come, Gerry. I feel such a fool causing all this fuss.’

‘That’ll teach you to lay into the liquor.’ He seated himself respectfully. Elaine had made a few remarks to satisfy the press.

The two chatted, both feeling uncomfortable in unfamiliar surroundings. Karen examined the tall slim man with his sea-green eyes with more appreciation, remembering ruefully that it was her rejection of his ordinariness which had led to her accepting Betts’s invitation in the first place. She would have done much better to stick with Gerry. He might have greater potential for being boring and have far less cash to play with, but he was safe.

She put her head on one side. ‘You a Catholic, Gerry?’

He swallowed. ‘Yes, I am. Does it matter?’

Time to be bold. ‘Do you believe in sex before marriage?’

His glance darted round the room, took in the white virginal bed in which she lay, propped up, his flowers nestled by her side, dark circles under her eyes. What was she getting at?

‘I don’t believe that sex should be the central factor in a relationship,’ he answered slowly. ‘That’s how I was brought up. There are more important things.’

Whatever he had said, Karen appeared satisfied. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I think so too. When I’m back in London, could we go out again?’

The man’s face broke into a smile of pleasure. ‘I’d be delighted. You get yourself better now, then tell me when you’re coming.’

The girl sniffed at the flowers. Colour was returning to her cheeks. ‘I will indeed, and shall look forward to it.’

Nigel Boswood was well aware that he looked silly, perched on the big comfortable bed in his crimson velvet dressing gown, plump white-haired chest bared and a wilting bunch of daffodils in his hand, smiling for the camera.

‘Hold still!’ Peter admonished. ‘How am I supposed to get a souvenir, to gaze on for the rest of my life in nostalgic adoration, if you keep fooling around?’

The boy seemed to have grown taller since that first night in Amsterdam. His jawline had put on more bone; the babyishness had gone. A charming light-brown moustache, grown after Davos to avoid shaving windbitten skin, now graced the upper lip. The hair was still wispily blond, though Nigel had grumbled about a bottle of hair-lightener left carelessly in the upstairs bathroom. The effect was, if anything, to make Peter’s looks more striking, more masculine. The trim body on which Nigel feasted his eyes was a boy no longer, but a young man with hard eyes, firm buttocks and a knowing air.

‘Haven’t you finished yet? If I don’t get a move on I shall be late for this dinner.’

‘Oh, the dinner.’ Peter airily waved it away. ‘You’re the most important person there; they won’t start without you.’ He fiddled with the camera, squinting with the viewfinder, a sly look on his face. The daffodils were drooping. Peter pointed at them and crooked his middle finger with a lewd remark. Nigel grinned and tossed the bunch aside on the bedside table. The camera was then perched on top of the chest of drawers and propped up with a towel, pointing at the bed. In a trice Peter was seated next to Nigel and cuddling up. ‘Now, don’t move. Just one or two more. I’ve set the timer; we have about five seconds. Say cheese.’

Nigel had barely opened his mouth to protest when the shutter went off with a dull click. Peter fell off the bed laughing.

‘No, that won’t do! You looked like a fish out of water. Wait, I’ll do it again. This time would you please smile? Just for me.’

‘I don’t think this is a good idea. What’s it all for, anyway?’

‘I told you. You’ve made me so happy, Nigel, that I want a teensy-weensy souvenir. Very private. To keep next to my heart. Ready?’

The timer hissed and the camera shutter clicked again. Boswood suddenly felt apprehensive. At Davos on the ski slopes Peter had been dancing around like this, a glint of determination in his eye, camera in hand. The camera was new, too. Automatic, didn’t need flash. Surely a boy with his background would be ultra-cautious what ‘souvenirs’ he acquired on his travels?

But Nigel found it hard in his current mood to sustain any anxiety. In the months since Peter turned up at the House of Commons his life had been transformed. Now he understood why uxorious men return home nightly, eager to dine with their wives and to lie with them afterwards. Having Peter installed in the basement was like being married, even though the younger man sometimes played hard to get, or threatened to leave, to go back to his sister or to the Netherlands. It was designed to maintain Nigel’s dependence, even he could see that: to retain his love. No harm in it. This coquettishness was all part of the delightful sexual game Peter played with his lover, like a young bride married to an older man.

His immaturity showed, naturally. Constantly asking for money; but then most young people seemed to go through it like water. Given the age difference, a generation gap was to be expected. After the little row about money before Christmas, Nigel increased the amount and ensured it was left regularly, in large-denomination notes, always cash, in a House of Commons plain envelope on Peter’s pillow at the beginning of every week. It seemed to help, too, that Peter now visited that sister in Stoke Newington regularly. The complaints about penury had ceased. Maybe she helped him out as well.

It did not occur to Nigel that he was being had for a sucker. Or perhaps, in so far as he ever suspected the fact, his mind was firmly closed to the possibility. He knew little about the boy’s background and did not enquire. That the incident in Amsterdam was a pick-up he did not doubt for a moment, but his romantic side wistfully concluded that Peter, an ordinary British boy seeking his fortune working abroad, had been hard up and that he, Nigel, had simply come along at the right time. Lucky for them both that he had. The bond between them was so powerful that anything sordid had now been effaced. How quickly Peter had understood Nigel’s self-loathing, how gently he had dealt with it, talking quietly, kissing and loving, so that gradually the old pain and desperation fell away. Never completely: its shadow remained, but it was such a joy to be relieved of its lifelong burden. Nigel was at last content.

‘Did the snaps from Davos turn out at all?’

‘Don’t know yet,’ Peter lied. ‘I shall have to be careful where I leave them. Mr Ferriman won’t want pictures of him and his girlfriend getting into the wrong hands.’

‘They did make it rather obvious, didn’t they?’ Nigel chuckled.

‘Can’t see what she saw in him at all.’

‘I hope the one of us coming downhill together turns out well. I hadn’t realised you were such a good skier, Peter. Really made up for my clumsiness this time.’ He gestured ruefully at purple bruises on his thigh. ‘Lucky not to break anything. I may give it up, before I have an accident. Sixty now, you know.’

‘You don’t look it and you certainly don’t act it.’ Nigel demurred graciously as Peter wound the film back in the camera. The boy wagged a finger. ‘Don’t run yourself down. You’re still nifty on a pair of skis, and good for many years yet. I enjoyed watching you. It was a marvellous holiday.’

‘It was fun, wasn’t it? The snow was as good as I’ve known it and the apres-ski was excellent this year. Wasn’t that Ancient Worlds party a scream? Of course there’s always a last-night party, and they’ve been wilder even than that. I was a bit concerned at first but everyone joined in, and it was all so innocent, just a bit of larking about, really. I thought of going as a slave-driver, but in the end that would have been a bit dull. You were right about that. Your idea of an Egyptian queen was brilliant. You don’t think I overdid it?’

Peter appeared to be struggling with the camera, which might have explained his grimace, or perhaps he was having trouble keeping a straight face. ‘Well… everyone knew who you were, of course. Even with the make-up. Freddie Ferriman stole the show with his Dance of the Seven Veils, so although it might dent your ego I don’t think you were really the centre of attention.’

‘I hope not. Though it was only a party, and perfectly harmless. But I’m glad that you didn’t take any photos there. Could be misconstrued.’

Peter nodded, inscrutable, then smiled.

He didn’t take them, but they were taken.

‘… and the government’s commitment to ensuring that hazardous waste from other countries does not reach our shores remains as firm as ever.’

A faint scattering of ‘Hear, hears’ greeted the minister’s statement. Roger Dickson eased himself back into his chair and wrinkled his nose at the portrait of Joseph Chamber- lain with his purple orchid on the wall opposite.

What would Chamberlain, arch-advocate of the empire, have made of all this? Wednesday mornings in European Standing Committee A of the House of Commons were tedious in the extreme. None of the histrionics downstairs occurred. No TV or even radio; the press were next door, watching Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of
The Sun
, explain with raucous pomposity how he understood the national interest better than those elected to do so. Meanwhile hardly anybody attended this weekly committee. Parliamentary democracy, wittered the Euro-sceptics, was at risk from the depredations of
the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels. Not half as much, in Roger Dickson’s informed opinion, as from the laziness of Members of this House.

Dickson looked around. He watched the flabby expanse of Labour MP Mrs Dunwoody in a floral tent as she sourly demonstrated her hostility to all things European, while David Harris on his own side courteously responded. They resembled Jack Sprat and his wife.

Dickson glanced behind and was reassured by Elaine’s presence. She looked a bit despondent. The pressure of work had kept them apart for three weeks now. He would have to make an effort soon, for her sake as well as his own. A watery spring sun filtered into the room. The season demanded it; the sap was rising. In the royal park crocuses in yellow, purple and white unfolded across grassy banks in great swathes of colour, as if Her Majesty’s velvet cloaks had been lovingly spread out to dry. The black swans and pelicans in St James’s Park had been at it already – some pairs were being followed even now by anxious bobs of quacking brown fluff. He ventured a wink at Elaine.

Behind Roger, Andrew Muncastle was feeling glum. It was weeks since he had seen Miranda in Il Portico; there had not been a single phone call. That could be because she was working flat out to save the newspaper, which still stubbornly appeared nightly on the news stand by Victoria station. On the other hand it might mean she had already left the country, and had changed her mind about inviting him to join her. Frankly it had been a strange suggestion. Of course haring off would have been impossible, with all the work overwhelming ministers at the department, not to mention the government’s desperate unpopularity. However much of a heel he might know himself capable of being, Andrew would not have walked out at such a tricky time. But what if Miranda was even half serious? Then the offer might remain open – assuming she had had the power to make it in the first place.

If this silence continued he would be faced with the risk of calling her himself – never wise, especially in view of
The Globe
’s reputation – or giving her up without a final word. He wished she would call.

Andrew shifted in his seat. Remembering Miranda he was suddenly too warm and took off his jacket. In the bored stillness of the room his action promptly drew all eyes. He blushed, for it was as if they could read his thoughts. He was unsure which would have embarrassed him more – that he daydreamed about a stunning woman with skin like amber and mocking eyes and a warm welcoming body; or that he had the chance to leave behind the dusty world of Westminster and fly to the sun and instant success.

Seated on the platform near the chairman, Marcus Carey was also failing to pay full attention. He did not need to: the Environment Department’s expert on waste disposal, spectacles perched on his quivering nose, was at Marcus’s side, only a few feet from the minister, ready to pass scribbled notes should Mrs Dunwoody turn nasty. Not that it mattered. The discussion was for show and not much else. It would all be decided at the next session of the European Council of Ministers, and would then be a
fait accompli
.

Nestling in Marcus’s pocket was something much more significant. It could make him as well known as the MPs before him. If he played his cards right, he, Marcus Carey, in the next Parliament, might well be sitting on those green benches himself.

For after careful consideration of his curriculum vitae, after glowing references from such luminaries as Sir Nigel Boswood, after an agonising weekend at a secret hotel with thirty others undergoing a battery of tests and explaining himself in repeated interviews, Marcus had that morning been informed that his name had been put on the list of approved candidates at Conservative Central Office.

On the list: the first hurdle over. How amazing British democracy was. In most other countries in Europe, as the son of an immigrant he would not have even been a citizen, let alone
permitted to stand for Parliament. Here, however, he could truly say he had received nothing but encouragement, at least officially, whatever the strange looks and whispered comments of others, including some of his fellow hopefuls.

Marcus gazed round the room. Everybody present had successfully cleared the next big hurdle: being selected for a winnable seat. Dickson had fought a bad one and earned his spurs before gaining his current constituency. Mrs Stalker had got in first time. Possibly it helped being a woman. Yet of all the dozens of spare good seats at the previous election only six had dared select women and only one, in West London, had been brave enough to pick a black man. The women faced odds of nearly ten to one. The odds facing Marcus Carey were far more adverse.

Marcus’s gaze remained on Elaine. There might be a chance to emulate Mrs Stalker. Access to a good seat first time might not be impossible, given his close links with Nigel Boswood. Rumours were flying round the office about the old man’s impending retirement. Almost certainly it would mean his leaving Parliament at the next election. That created one of the juiciest vacancies in the country.
And he, Marcus Carey, ought to try for it
.

Wasn’t he special adviser to the Secretary of State? Speech writer, amanuensis, colleague and friend? More or less, anyway, though most of his work was for Roger Dickson. If Sir Nigel could trust a black man – not any black man, this black man – at his side, the selection committee need have no worries. He would hint that having worked for Sir Nigel he now wanted to deliver the speeches as well as write them: a suggestion to be offered, naturally, with a modest dip of the head. Suitable phrases began to engage his mind. It was only a matter of time.

The old Rover drew to a halt in a lay-by opposite the school. Elaine switched off the lights and sat for a moment in the gathering gloom, watching other parents in flashier cars fussing over their offspring. She turned to the daughter sitting quietly beside her and appraised her frankly.

Karen’s dark hair had grown; no longer did she affect a tomboyish, challenging style. The girl was pale and had lost a lot of weight, but seemed less listless. Her hands showed tendons and blue veins stark under white skin, but they were resting calmly in her lap. Whatever had been burning the girl up before Christmas appeared to have lost its intensity. Or perhaps the child was learning to cope better, was growing up. About time.

Elaine caught herself sharply. It was not wise, or right, to assess Karen in such negative terms. Maybe this was half the problem, her own tendency to treat activities such as returning the girl to boarding school after the weekend break as tedious chores, as a nuisance and intrusion into her own busy life. Her petulance could well have communicated itself to Karen. What a mistake not to see the regular half-hour journey as a precious opportunity for uninterrupted discourse. Maybe taking those pills had not been an accident; Karen had been trying to tell her something – perhaps most of all that it had become almost impossible to tell her anything.