A Parliamentary Affair (69 page)

‘Tessa,’ he started slowly, then tentatively reached out and put his hand on hers. She trembled, but did not withdraw it. ‘Tessa: if we stay together, we have to do it on a different basis. We have to work at being friends again. I would like more children. I would like a normal home life. I can’t be a monk, not after … well, you know. I can accept your not wanting to be more involved in my political work; that’s not really a problem. But at home? If there’s no real love here, then it won’t work.’

She sat quite still but the struggle not to weep played out on her face. Then, a victory, drawing on strength coming from God knew where. She half smiled and squeezed his hand.

He persisted. ‘Tessa, it must have taken great courage and determination to stand up to me as you have just done. Will you give up now, or will you take on board the next step, of standing up to yourself? Do you think you could try?’

‘It will take some time. You would have to be patient too.’ Her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear. Then, suddenly, a soft chuckle. ‘Maybe you’ve learned a thing or two from that girlfriend. Some of the gentle arts. Perhaps you could teach me.’

Andrew was startled. His acquaintance with Catholic teaching on sex was sketchy but he was pretty certain that some of Miranda’s favourite activities were seriously proscribed. Nevertheless a window was opening, however small the chink. If the new life with Tessa were not a raving success he could always sublimate any excess energy into his work, tackling the consultation process for the White Paper, undertaking speaking tours of Scotland, and ensure he was always dog-tired at night. Or there might be other possibilities – discreet, careful women, less visible than Miranda, less draining, less vivid. For a moment her face swam before his eyes. With an impatient gesture he swept it aside and smiled at his wife.

‘I suggest we say for the moment that we are facing marital difficulties but that we intend to sort them out. I have to talk to Miranda – have to. I’m sorry, I can’t just leave her in the lurch. She thinks she’s getting married.’

‘I feel sorry for her,’ Tessa said. There was no triumphalism in her voice. Her prey was on his knees before her; now was the moment for compassion.

Andrew rose to go.

‘Wait!’ she commanded. ‘I will tidy my hair, and we will go out together. If they’re going to take photos let them be of the two of us side by side. A picture is worth a thousand words. Isn’t that right?’

After dropping Karen off at the college Elaine drove to Carvers’ Rocks, a local beauty spot overlooking one of the network of Midlands reservoirs. On a weekday morning it was deserted, the
view over the lake empty of all human presence except for a lone fisherman crouched in green waterproofs in the distance. A flight of black and cream Canada geese flew overhead, honking loudly, like bombers on their way to devastate some unlucky city.

Elaine pulled on wellingtons and a jacket and locked the car. A walk would do her good, or at least no harm. Here she was at the heart of her constituency, in one of its prettiest spots. On summer weekends the green slopes were crowded with city picnickers and covered in litter; during a damp spring, it appeared, more devoted and intrepid country-lovers took their litter home. She trudged down to the waterline half looking for ducklings. Waterhens hooted at her approach and fluttered away, leaving their offspring stranded on the bank. A swan was a better parent, standing its ground and hissing at her. An angry blue tit chattered at her, an insistent repetition which sounded like ‘He did it! He did it! He did it!’ She wished she had brought some bread or barley, or a camera, anything to distract her from the unpleasant thoughts crowding her mind.

Until Mike’s letter no decisions were in the offing. It was vaguely known that her husband had faded away as one of her official appurtenances, but there had been no announcements that he had also disappeared entirely from her household. The intention, in part, was to enable Mike to return without a fuss, had that been his choice, but it also suited Elaine to pretend that nothing untoward had happened. She had no other male escort and politely refused invitation from divorced or widowed men, however well meaning or charming. Being seen out with anyone else even innocently would have forced the issue. She was content for the time being to leave matters as vague as possible. Since her own needs were met, by and large, by Roger Dickson, it did not matter much if otherwise she slept alone.

For so long had she been the central link in a threesome that it had begun to feel as if it could go on forever. Elaine with Mike: married, public, easy-going, not very visible. His disappearance or, rather, non-appearance at public events aroused no curiosity. MPs who always turned up with a dutiful spouse in tow were less common these days.

But a divorce would unquestionably be a public matter, even if Mike took all the blame. With a pregnant girlfriend he could hardly do otherwise, though he might hint in court that Elaine had driven him to it. The apologetic tone of the letter suggested, however, that he was keen to avoid such nastiness. He always was squeamish, Elaine reflected bitterly. A quickie divorce was his request and she did not entertain for a moment any thought of refusing him. The baby would be Karen’s half-brother and deserved the best possible. It was the least she could do.

But it was as if she had been seated for years in a familiar armchair, balanced and at ease, and then one of the arms had suddenly broken away. Marriage had been an undemanding prop. Taking it for granted had led to its destruction, she now realised; marriage needs as much effort as any affair, and with more subtlety, and for longer. Yet while it was there the construction had been a crucial part of her life. As a married woman she had certain roles and status and was treated with respect, particularly by her constituents. Given the parlous state of many of their own liaisons, the fact that their lady MP had managed to combine home, family and career was a definite mark in her favour. How competent she seemed to harassed women on their second divorce, or puzzled second wives struggling with stepchildren and three mortgages. How stable, how genuine, to old men wed for fifty years to the same loving wife. Elaine did not flaunt her married state, but she instinctively shared these values. There were times when she could not remember what had possessed her to start her affair in the first place.

But Mike had gone of his own accord: the affair had nothing to do with his leaving. At this point the old armchair creaked and sagged, revealing its fragile inner framework, the part she might have preferred not to see. Perhaps the affair had played a significant part, without her husband ever realising. Maybe, without noticing, she had stopped trying with him. If Mike had been all she had, she might have done her best to persuade him to stay that awful night; might have changed her ways,
made the effort to meet his own needs rather better. Maybe some intensity had been transferred to Roger, as her husband inexorably lost his place at the centre of her emotional universe. Mike would have believed it was simply that she was enjoying her job at Westminster; his letter revealed no inkling that she might have someone else. But then Mike’s male ego would have found that difficult to credit. It was better that he did not know. Let the guilty feelings remain on his side. She could get used to a one-armed armchair; or at least would try.

She would have to tell Roger. And he would show, in his eyes, or in a slight withdrawal of manner, that it worried him. Playing around with a married woman who had no intention of endangering her marriage and, by implication, his was one thing. She was not likely to push the affair too far, or demand too much. Like him, she would insist on secrecy and be prepared to accept all the unhappy sacrifices that entailed: no dinners under candlelight in bijou restaurants, no touching in public, no sweet looks, no gentle acknowledgement. On the other hand, playing round with a free woman, who might be on the lookout for a suitable catch, would be an entirely different matter. As Roger would see it, the risks then became enormous. A strong-minded woman like Elaine Stalker might well set her sights on pulling her man away from his loving wife and capturing him for herself. Her naturally competitive nature made that a genuine possibility. For a brief moment Elaine allowed herself to consider it, but Roger’s family life had never shown the least sign of flakiness. It had always flattered her own ego that she and no one else had managed to entice this marvellous man into an illicit bed. It said something about her, not him. And if she regretted the loss of her own once happy wedded state she was not about to compensate for it by destroying his.

Yet her aloneness, more than anything else, spelled danger for her affair as well. All too clearly Elaine could see that Roger would wish to start pulling back, disentangling himself. Mike’s letter was thus more than the end of her marriage. It must, sooner or later, herald the end of Roger too.

Elaine leaned against the wet bark of a tree. She had walked a long way sunk in thought, and was now close to the lone fisherman. He was in a world of his own, still, almost lifeless. Discoloured dark-green waterproofs were draped around a stolid body perched on a little folding stool, and he stared at the bobbing end of his line. He resembled nothing so much as a large, old toad. To Elaine the habits of the fisherman were incomprehensible. How could anyone just sit there all day? Without even a good novel to read, or a radio to listen to? Then it occurred to her that possibly the fisherman, like her, was lost in his thoughts and neither needed nor welcomed interruption. She began to retrace her steps towards the car.

It was deeply unpleasant, opening the front door to let Barney and the au pair in and forcing herself to nod to the policeman and smile at the eager cameras. Tessa drew the line at posing with Barney, but pictures of the three of them, two protective women and a wide-eyed child, were all over the front pages next day.

Yet she found in herself a newly forgiving nature; the press were only doing their job, as demanded by a voracious public. It was news because it sold newspapers. If as in France it was generally held that the private lives of politicians were nobody’s business but their own, then the Muncastle home would not be such a target. The result, in Mitterrand’s France, had been that hidden sins went further than mistresses, into slush funds and corruption. The Italians too had turned blind eyes for years but the uncovering of their political scandals had shaken their republic to its very foundations. Tessa reflected that the fear of discovery kept many politicians on the straight and narrow. Had Andrew believed he would be found out, he might have sighed but said, ‘Thank you, but no thank you’, to Miranda Jamieson on day one. Whenever that was.

With a sickening feeling Tessa realised she knew nothing whatever about the origin, duration or intensity of the relationship, and now, unless she asked Andrew – which was unthinkable – she would never know. A great chunk of her husband’s inner life was lost to her for ever. On the other
hand, if he had never started the affair, or even ended it quickly before discovery, their cold marriage might have foundered entirely, and sooner. Andrew would have found somebody friendlier to take his name, bear his children, support him in the constituency and bring him his morning tea. Divorced and remarried, promptly, before his climb up the ladder really started. She would have been left with no husband, no status, and no explanation she could legitimately offer. Only the child, had she been granted him by a court, to bring up alone. Tessa shivered and closed the door.

As she passed down the hallway she rubbed her palm almost by habit, but the usual comforting itchiness did not respond. Puzzled, she moved into the light and examined her hands. The appalling events of the last few hours must have intensified the eczema, surely. Yet her skin, though red and reamed with scar tissue, was free of blemish. She rolled up her sleeves; the sensitive patches inside her elbows were similarly smooth. For a moment she scratched with a fingernail until the skin broke down and she drew blood, but the fiery irritation was absent. There had been a happy time long ago when her skin was clear; Tessa struggled to remember what had occupied her then. She drew a blank, except for a vague remembrance that she had been rested and content and capable of doing what was expected of her. Maybe her body’s new quiescence was telling her the same thing. Whatever demands Andrew sought to place on her, she could face them. He needed her, not simply as a public face and witness to his eminent respectability; he needed her to guarantee that respectability, by
being
the wife, not just pretending. Once that would have seemed worse than martyrdom. Now it felt like a role for life. She wriggled her shoulders experimentally and made herself think of the soreness between her legs. There was no pain, no flare-up. She looked at herself anew in the hall mirror, pushed back her dull hair from her face, trying different styles. Then she shrugged and half smiled, and went into the kitchen.

Barney was seated at the kitchen table, toying with a piece of bread and jam. Eight years old, he still had the earnest solemnity that had so enchanted Elaine Stalker in the Strangers’ Cafeteria.

‘May I ask you something, Mummy?’

Tessa turned around, surprised. ‘Certainly, darling.’

‘What are all those people doing outside? Is it because Daddy has a girlfriend?’

The child was looking at her steadily, but his eyes were brimming with tears. The au pair tactfully made herself scarce, leaving mother and son together. Tessa noted that he was not as tidy and clean as usual, as if he had been fighting in the playground. She considered denial, but the child’s fearful expression demanded the truth.

‘Wh … what do you know about that, Barney?’

‘Simpson brought a newspaper into school. I tore it up, but it was all pictures of Daddy, wasn’t it? Are you and Daddy going to get divorced?’

‘No.’ She brought to it all the firmness at her command, but the child was still waiting.

So many children at that private school came from divorced families: there must be times when Barney felt the odd one out. Tessa sighed, and sat down next to the boy, her arm around his shoulders, stroking his hair. For her it was an unusually affectionate gesture: the pain of the eczema and an innate fear that it might be contagious had long limited her physical contact with her son.