A Parliamentary Affair (65 page)

Elaine hauled Dominic to his feet, smiling despite herself. ‘I simply need to tick you off and not bother you any more. Polling day is a week on Thursday. Will you support us?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ grinned the blonde. ‘You can put us girls down. We’re in favour of free enterprise, we are. Citizens’ Charter and all that: looking after the customer, innit? The Prime Minister is lovely. Why didn’t you bring him? If he came here we’d…’

The party fled before the graphic details of the potential Prime Ministerial entertainment could be enunciated. Four precious ticks could be entered on the computer. It seemed wisest to head back to headquarters.

Marcus, Keith Freemantle and Roger had arrived. Elaine was greeted with hugs and kisses by all three. Two more volunteers were clearing space on tables and the place had begun to hum. Coffee was offered again, this time suitably accompanied; Mary was looking happier.

In public Roger and Elaine were awkward, almost gruff with each other. The danger of discovery was so real that even an undue friendliness might have produced gossip. Both were aware that Karen was observing them with undisguised curiosity. Elaine sighed inwardly. A strange melancholy romance it was, only enacted in bed; however deep and close after making love, the warmth did not, could not, exist at any other times. Roger might joke with another woman colleague; she might tease a man, and certainly had no compunction about describing, out of his hearing, Dominic’s introduction to Hambridge tarts. Together under watchful eyes they had no choice but to be cool and formal. Yet after a while all love affairs, legitimate or otherwise, need something more than sex and pillow talk. Most relationships mature, as tastes in common are explored, other experiences shared. With Mike she had learned over the years to walk down the street with longer paces than usual so as to fall into step with him. She used to know how high to wear her shoes in order to be exactly the right height to put her head on her husband’s shoulder. With Roger she knew none of these things, for they had never walked down the street together, only once in the dark at Blackpool. It was all encapsulated, limited, the boundaries immovable. It was beginning to feel like a straitjacket, not a release. And yet he was still by far the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Karen was not tempted to compare her father and Roger. Her father had been away a great deal during her years of growing up. She wondered if it might have been something to do with the dead baby; he had become withdrawn, as if reluctant to entrust his soul to any living being. At least her mother had made the effort, becoming stronger and more diverse in her life afterwards, and closer to her remaining child. The way Elaine handled the shambles of the morning made Karen proud and certainly showed her mother in a more human light. The girl looked candidly from mother to lover and back again. They made a handsome couple, real politicians, capable and wise and powerful. Her mother’s face was flushed and pretty, her hair tumbled with the wind. In an ideal world, great prince and beautiful princess, they would be acknowledged as equal partners, like the Queen of Sheba and Solomon. How much duller today that people who adored each other could not show their affection, that formalities had to be observed. It couldn’t be making them happy.

Monday is often a lean news day when reporters are glad of an opportunity to get out of the office, where hangovers and boasting of weekend conquests predominate. Jim Betts had done his share of the boasting, naturally, but then he had always been an accomplished liar. A kidney infection had left him feeling a bit under the weather, not helped by a ban on mixing alcohol with medication. Thus his mood was not of the brightest on this dismal February morning as he lounged on a squeaky chair in the town hall in Hambridge, not too far from the gents’ toilet just in case, waiting for Dickson and the entourage to arrive.

The place filled slowly with party faithful bussed in from all over the region who were now shaking coats and plastic rainhoods and commiserating with each other. It was generally agreed that
this must be the wettest by-election ever. With a higher proportion of women working of any major country, the availability of people of middle age during daylight was somewhat limited: thus most of the audience were aged over seventy, many of whom had already found the excursion tiring. Security considerations made it a ticket-only affair. In fact there were no ordinary unconverted present waiting to be suffused with amazement at the pearls of wisdom about to drop from Roger’s or Marcus’s lips. The event was directed solely at Betts and his press companions, including the photographers sprawled out on the front row and prowling up and down the side aisles looking for character shots.

Betts had every intention of ignoring the speech. Most of the article for the following day’s sketch was already written, gleaned from remarks made by harassed party workers scurrying in and out of campaign headquarters, including Mary, ever honest, who confessed to being ‘not optimistic’. That was his headline. Labour were hardly bothering. At Liberal HQ morale was high.

Carey seemed to know it too. His manner lacked the eager confidence of the successful. Instead his posture was stooped as if carrying a heavy weight. The murky light inside the town hall made him look blacker; had he been European there would have been tell-tale circles under his eyes. Betts liked that line and made a note of it. The wife was not there either. She had the excuse, as a doctor, of having patients to see, but, whereas Carey with his white wife appeared modern and competent, without her he looked vulnerable and ill placed, like a little boy at a grownups’ soiree, or a slave at an auction.

As the platform group entered, Betts sat up and took more notice. So Mrs Stalker was here too! That couldn’t be a coincidence. Rapidly energised he began to scribble notes on her appearance – the blue suit, tousled blonde hair a little longer than it used to be, slim and fit. She must be – what? – thirty-eight. Dickson was a bit older but not much. She looked ten years younger and very fetching except for that controlled expression around the mouth. Betts could almost fancy her himself.

From the high point of the platform, seated behind the long table with its blue tablecloth adorned with posters acclaiming his name, watching as the supporters lifted their faces in anticipation, Marcus Carey for the first time wondered quite what he was doing there. Alison was right: this had all been a terrible mistake. Instead of being so ambitious he should have tried his hand first as a no-hoper in some horrible inner-city seat, to win his spurs, and to grow some scar tissue. As it was, what should have been the greatest opportunity of his life was becoming a nightmare, not because any one small correctable thing was going wrong but because the whole mixture was sour and curdling. By-elections were bad news for everyone, particularly the defending candidates, sacrificial lambs put up for the slaughter: their greatest burden was the government’s failures, and the longer a government had been in power the higher the heap of errors to plague them. The British believe in devilry and spells. A favourite British Victorian painting,
The Scapegoat,
shows the animal haunted, desperate and mad, left in the wilderness by the self-righteous Hebrews to die in expiation. It was but a small step to transform that pitiable creature into human form. The key feature was a slow death, in public. Marcus knew all about it.

Karen was learning fast. She had no desire to join the platform group and had hung back as the greats including her mother headed up the main stairs, had taken a different entrance and come in from behind the audience. It would be interesting to watch Roger and Elaine in action. And Marcus too, but he seemed dwarfed by the grandees. Thus she became aware of the scruffy man in a raincoat several rows in front writing in a notepad.

It was him.
Him again.
The smell of alcohol and cigarettes and coffee mingled with sex and violation and pain powered through her. The room went cold. She felt sick and began to tremble. In the pit of her belly a throbbing pain, physical reminder of that appalling night, gripped her. Her head went up and for a moment she nearly cried out, but then slunk back into the shadows at the back of the hall and fought to regain control. The bastard was not going to haunt her, nor try it on again. He
could not get at her. She would not make the same mistake. An opportunity to punish him, however, would not go amiss. From then on she was watching Betts and no one else.

‘The government are keen to ensure that the environment is maintained and preserved, of course we are,’ Dickson smoothly assured an elderly questioner. ‘The problem, as always, is to reconcile conflicting priorities. This year the government have put an extra twenty million pounds towards the cost of insulating homes. You should ask your council about it.’

‘It’s Liberal-controlled,’ Elaine hissed.

Without a break Dickson continued, ‘And if you’re not satisfied with the response you should demand some action from this Liberal-controlled council. I’m afraid they’re not known for their competence.’

‘Hear, hear!’ came from the audience. Experienced hands, they knew when to applaud. Several old gentlemen, previously fast asleep, awoke with startled expressions, checked that the meeting still had some while to run, and discreetly dozed off again.

Even Dickson was not trying very hard, Betts noted. There was no point. Journalists including Betts himself, shifting, uncomfortable and bored on the hard chairs, were taken care of by a press handout containing the quotable bits of both Dickson’s and Carey’s speeches.

A chair creaked quietly behind him. Betts decided to check out the audience and half turned in his seat. To his considerable shock he found himself staring straight into the eyes of a bitter young face from the recent past.

‘Hello, James,’ Karen said in a hoarse whisper.

Before he could stop her she leaned forward and snatched his notebook out of his hand. He opened his mouth to protest but shut it again quickly. The last thing he needed was anyone noticing that he knew Miss Karen Stalker. With baleful eyes and a twisted smile the girl flicked over the pages. The notes were in bad shorthand which even he could barely read, but proper names were written in capitals. Most of the girls he knew in the office were clericals who could do Pitman’s with far greater skill. Karen glanced up and took in his fearful expression. It clearly panicked Betts to think she could follow the squiggles. Hiding her ignorance, she raised eyebrows on page after page as if reading, then paused at last at her mother’s name. Deliberately she tore out the page and the ones following and preceding it, then handed the mangled notebook back to its dumbfounded owner.

‘You won’t be needing these, James, dear,’ she said quietly, and stuffed them in her pocket before rising elegantly and moving to the far side of the hall, where she leaned against the wall, arms crossed, and stood watching him like a warder in a prison.

Her action rang a bell. If only those antibiotics did not make him feel so spaced out. Then he remembered the letter torn in quarters and secreted in his raincoat. After that chaotic evening he had emptied his pockets and, never the tidiest of souls, put the bits somewhere safe in the flat. Worth retrieving, surely, if that big affair was still on. Then he caught Karen’s unforgiving eyes. She could not be seventeen even now, yet she had a toughness which belied her years. He felt deeply apprehensive. He had never forgotten her threat to scream to the police if he linked her mother’s name with Dickson. Sixteen months ago he had been unsure whether she was capable, but after today, looking at that young face so suffused with hatred, he understood that she would not hesitate. Indeed her manner suggested she would relish the prospect of rubbing his face in it. Betts slumped back in his seat and let his mind wander. He needed a drink.

Keith Freemantle considered starting a new cigar and decided against it. No point in wasting any more of his precious Davidoffs on this lot.

In a corner of the committee room a heater puffed steamy vapour into the air. Unused posters wilted on an empty chair; the printer stood silent at last. With a sigh Freemantle surveyed the collection of grey faces around the table.

Mrs Farebrother had worked like a Trojan and now had a bad cold. She sat sniffing and mulled in a scarf. Bulstrode, his expression set in gloom, had placed himself as far as possible from Freemantle, as if party HQ were the enemy. Marcus Carey sat beside his chairman, trying to draw comfort from his stolid Englishness. Freddie Ferriman was still cracking jokes but no one was laughing: he would sleep alone in Hambridge’s only hotel that night, for a bored Marlene had returned to London. Dominic, whose morose face had marred (or symbolised) the entire campaign, was pottering around in the back room. Fred Laidlaw was out doggedly delivering last-minute leaflets in the rain, and Mary had been sent home to bed. All their diminishing stores of energy would be needed the following day as the polling stations opened.

Freemantle took a deep breath. ‘Well, now, lady and gentlemen, we’re on the last lap. We’ve put up a good fight, and whatever the result tomorrow Milton and Hambridge can be proud of the way it has handled itself. And proud of its candidate.’

‘It’s been a bloody shambles,’ muttered Bulstrode. Faces turned towards him; certain things needed to be said, and now was the time to say them. He folded his arms aggressively. ‘All right, we weren’t the best-prepared constituency. Never needed to be. We always won easily with Sir Nigel; we made it our business to ’elp others nearby. But I must say that if Central Office think they know ’ow to win by-elections then I beg to differ.’

His audience waited.

‘You overestimated ’ow many ’elpers we could provide with two good legs and an ’ead on their shoulders. It’s no use producing thousands of leaflets if no one can deliver them. By asking people to do too much you annoyed them – not that some needed much excuse for clearing off, I grant you.’

‘It’s not as bad as that. We’ve had a thousand volunteers from all over the country,’ Freddie protested. What a dismal bunch. He would be heartily glad to leave this God-forsaken hole for ever. Bulstrode was warming to his theme. ‘Aye, and many of them altogether too posh for us. It may be a safe seat – or was – but a lot of the residents are ordinary working people. Toffee-nosed accents on council doorsteps ’ave gone down very badly. And ordering our local ’elpers around. Bloody arrogant, I call it.’