A Parliamentary Affair (75 page)

She turned almost by instinct, to find his hand on her arm.

‘Will you be in your room in a few minutes?’

She nodded. Nobody in the moving crowd had heard his question. She hurried back to her desk, opened the direct phone line, shut the door tight and pretended to be busy.

The phone rang. Just to show a modicum of independence, she let it ring four times before lifting the receiver.

‘Hi. You were looking very attractive in the Lobby tonight – that frock suits you. But your face was downcast. What’s the matter, pretty lady? Fancy a drink?’

‘Yes, I would. I was feeling a bit blue, with the election coming up. Your place or mine?’

‘Mine, of course. I have the ministerial drinks cabinet at my disposal. Wait till the coast is clear, then come on up.’

Roger’s room was on the Upper Ministerial Corridor behind the Speaker’s Chair. She paused at the door and listened. Had there been voices she would have disappeared to the ladies’ loo ten yards away and waited. In earlier years there had been no cause to worry: an MP can talk to a whip, and may have ample reason to talk to a junior minister. But Cabinet ministers were elevated creatures. Were she to be seen up here, curious questions might be asked, though she was ready with an excuse about asking Dickson to speak in her constituency.

The sound of classical music wafted through the door. She knocked softly, and was promptly invited inside.

The high-ceilinged room, painted a dingy brown and cream, showed few signs of its occupant. Ministers rarely bothered to decorate or personalise their Commons offices, for they spent most of their time in the departments which, under the guiding hand of the Private Office staff, gradually filled up with souvenirs, photographs of official events and presentation pieces. The Commons was old and dusty and almost impossible to keep clean. The room had the air of a monk’s cell, enclosed and austere. Only a framed photograph of three laughing children, on a bookcase facing the desk, and another of Caroline on a horse with a rosette, made any statement at all.

Roger rose and took her hand, leading her to a leather sofa. His jacket was over the back of a swivel chair behind the desk, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up, showing his strong forearms. Not for the first time she marvelled that the rest of his body did not fulfil that promise but was white and almost hairless, vulnerable like a child’s. There was the smell of soap about him; subject to five o’clock shadow, he must have quickly shaved before coming to vote, perhaps in the hopes of seeing her. That would be difficult with Karen at the flat. She would have to disappoint him, though the occasions when both were free were few and far between.

He poured her a malt whisky and regarded her frankly, with much appreciation. She was wearing a spring-like blue dress, gathered at the waist, which suited her and made a change from the uniform of padded-shoulder power suits.

‘So: why so sad, Patience?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Seeing Muncastle standing next to you and being consumed with envy, I guess. Most unworthy of me.’

‘Ah, yes. But you probably have as much public sway as Andrew. You’re much better known, for a start. People outside ministries think we’re all-powerful, but we aren’t. We can’t budge without public opinion behind us. And that’s where you come in, Elaine. Being on the box is just as important, in its way, as influential as having a red box.’ Her look strayed to the two open boxes on his desk and she raised a quizzical eyebrow. Their eyes met, and both laughed ruefully. He shut the lids with a flourish, as he was supposed to do if anyone else was in the room, for several of the papers were marked ‘Secret’. To Elaine the gesture emphasised her exclusion from government. But at least she now had his full attention.

She sipped her drink. ‘I think I may lose my seat, if the polls don’t pick up.’

‘What’s your majority?’

‘Four thousand-odd. Not enough.’

‘Well, it’s my job now to ensure you don’t. There’s plenty of good news in the pipeline. Is there anything in particular which might help you in Warmingshire?’

She considered. ‘We’re waiting for a decision on a new bypass. I’ve hassled the Transport Minister but it’s like talking to a brick wall. Some ministers forget who their friends are.’

Dickson scribbled himself a note. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Now then: are you going to ask me back for coffee later this evening?’

‘Can’t. Honourable apartment already occupied so honourable guest not welcome. My daughter is there for half-term. She knows about us, but I don’t think it would be wise to be bouncing around regardless when she comes home from the cinema, do you?’

Roger’s face was thoughtful. ‘I agree entirely. Are you expected anywhere else for the next ten minutes?’

‘No, I’m at your disposal, Secretary of State. How can I help?’

A veiled expression came over his face. He moved quietly towards the door, stepped into the corridor, looked both ways for a moment, stepped back, and then shut the door and turned the key in the lock. Motioning her not to speak he checked the curtains, then switched off the main lights.

The room was instantly transformed into a cosier, more intimate place. A kinder glow came from the green-shaded desk lamp on the edge of the leather-topped desk and picked up the dark red of the carpet. On the mantelpiece a wooden clock ticked quietly. Roger turned up the music slightly, until it covered the sound of their breathing. It occurred to Elaine that before her arrival he had tried the effect, and liked it.

‘I have sat in this chair long nights, Miss Patience, thinking about you. Fantasising that you might walk in, as you have just done, into my world of rustling paper and hard boxes and file covers, and turn me once more into a human being.’

There was a wistful, sad light in his eye. She raised her glass to him gravely in mock salute.

‘Had I known, I would have taken all my clothes off at the door, Secretary of State. Why have you never asked me up here before?’

‘It’s too dangerous. The bloke next door has sharp hearing and an even sharper nose for trouble. He’s in Prague tonight. But I want to have a try. With the election looming we may not get another chance. I am off on a two- day speaking tour tomorrow and I’m feeling demob-happy. You game?’

That word again. She wondered what was coming. ‘Ready for your instructions, sir.’

‘Good. Stand up. Go and stand in front of the desk, your back to me. Push the files out of the way. Don’t look around.’

A large shadowy etching of Gladstone above the mantelpiece glowered down at her. She blew the image a kiss. Behind her there was the sound of fumbling, then she understood exactly what Roger wanted. Slowly, provocatively, moving her hips, she bent over the desk, shoving pens and notepaper out of the way until she was holding on to its edges with both hands.

‘You brilliant woman,’ Roger breathed. Quickly he lifted her skirt up and over her back and pulled down her panties just enough, exploring her with his fingers, then he entered her from behind. She parted her legs for him and pressed her cheek down on to the leather, holding on for dear life, suppressing a squeal as he got her exact measure and began to thrust hard.

And suddenly the room was going round, and the smell of old stained leather was in her nostrils, and she knew his power and manhood and the humiliation of women. Her breasts flattened painfully against the desk and her nails dug into the wood, while her spirit shouted angry protest at this brief moment of snatched, urgent relief. What ought to have been a singing exultation of their love was a tawdry incident that she would only remember for its rawness and pain, and the hopelessness of it. With a yelp of frustration she swept reports and confidential documents on to the floor; one of the boxes tumbled over with a dull thud, scattering its files across the carpet. How she loved and admired this man, how she wished this had never started, how she feared its end, as he rammed into her, again and again, till with a gasp of triumph and despair he was done.

It had not taken long. They were panting and flushed, and collapsed on to the floor in front of the desk, clothes awry, conscious of their shared defiance of propriety. Half apologetically Elaine fished around and began picking up folders. Roger put a steadying hand on her arm.

‘Forgive me, Elaine, but I’ve always wanted to do that. You’ve no idea how erotic a woman is, bending over, and especially in a fusty old place like this. When I saw you wearing that full skirt in the lobby tonight I knew it was worth a try. Thank you.’

‘Made it in the minister’s office. What’s the point of having a great man for a lover if we couldn’t do that?’ They laughed and clung together. He touched her face tenderly where the embossed leather had made a mark. Yet the bleakness of the event chilled her. Here, in a Cabinet minister’s room, bent over his desk, hemmed in by all the insistent paraphernalia of his life and hers, slotted in somehow at the dog-end of the day, with no time for foreplay, unable to offer him comfort or warmth or a gentle unfolding towards climax: instead, they had coupled like animals – caged animals. Long afterwards it would be this lovemaking, scrambled together among the documents and itineraries and reports requiring his immediate signature, which remained with her, and reminded her that their affair had no place whatever in his life or future.

The phone rang and made them start guiltily, as if it had eyes. Roger climbed to his feet and pulled his clothes back into place. He picked up the handset.

‘Yes? Oh, thank you, Alec. About ten minutes. No, I will come down. Thank you.’

He bent and offered Elaine a hand, then watched admiringly and with a proprietorial air, arms folded, as she restored an element of decency to herself. She drained the whisky glass and placed it safely on the desk.

‘God, I feel mad, or drunk, or something,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I wish we were only starting instead of finishing, don’t you?’

He nodded with a wry grin. His own feelings precisely. Her next words hit him like a double punch, though she had said them many times before.

‘I love you, Roger Dickson, and I always will. Till the end of time. I mean it. Whatever happens, don’t you forget that.’

His face clouded over and his voice was husky. ‘I … I know. You’d better go, Elaine. It’s not safe here. Take care. I will ring you.’

She squared her shoulders and walked a little unsteadily to the door, and, having checked that the corridor was still empty, slipped away. Roger stood silently for a moment, then set about clearing up, picking up papers and restoring them to proper order.

The most important paper in the room was not on the floor but locked in a drawer to which only he had the key. He had meant to show it to Elaine, but the moment had never arrived. He still did not know what to do with it. It was a photocopy of a letter he had once written, long ago, to her. It had come a few days earlier with a compliments slip from a journalist on a tabloid newspaper, asking if it was genuine.

Karen Stalker pretended to be asleep, half listening to the birds of Warmingshire singing outside her window. Through the gap in the curtains floated a single strand of light in which dust motes danced lazily. Sunday morning was inviting her to get up and greet it, and gradually, as the bright sliver of spring sun widened and moved soothingly over her limbs, the excuses for staying in bed began to slide away.

Nemesis beckoned, in the form of grim red revision files piled under the bed. How she wished she had studied science or geography or a straightforward subject where the only requirement was to learn and regurgitate, instead of literature, where she was obliged to come up every week with original ideas. Much of it, like the Eliot poetry, she enjoyed but did not understand, while her nascent pleasure in Trollope was spoiled by the excessive analysis demanded of her. Nit-picking, it felt like. The French was reasonably securely embedded in her head; Camus had even been fun. It was modern history which gave her nightmares, for unpredictable questions were liable to come up. She did not mind being required to use her brain: she did that working in her mother’s office. But pleasing the examiners was not in the same league as satisfying her mother’s constituents, not by a long chalk.

Her mother had seemed troubled and preoccupied in recent weeks. National polls which indicated only a tiny government lead made uncomfortable reading in a constituency like South Warmingshire, though sweet Mrs Horrocks was reassuring. Karen realised that she now knew quite a lot about modern politics through her involvement with her mother’s work. What she had learned did not warm her towards politicians in general, though it helped her understand, even admire, her own mother.

Maintaining integrity and some semblance of good nature at Westminster was a Herculean task, yet her mother managed it, more or less. Karen could imagine no occupation she would have been less likely to choose for herself.

She folded her arms back under her head and contemplated the ceiling. The room was becoming warm under the persistent assault of the sun. Only a few weeks left: the exams would start just after her eighteenth birthday on 1 June. That meant no birthday celebration till all her friends finished. The general election date had not yet been announced but a decision would probably be taken soon. Given that unemployment was still falling, the odds on June were shortening fast. Karen was pleased to think that the first time she herself would be voting it would be for her mother. Thus parent might be celebrating at the same time as child. All being well.

A familiar face, clean and free of make-up, appeared around the door. ‘Morning, miss! It’s a beautiful day out there. Are you thinking of getting up?’

‘Thinking about it, yeah.’ Karen grinned sleepily. Elaine was attired in dark-blue tracksuit bottoms and a white T-shirt. ‘I’m going for a run over the hill. Why don’t you join me? It’ll get the brain working much better.’ Outside the window a songbird was trilling fit to burst. Karen contemplated her mother’s scrubbed shiny face for a minute. There was a great longing there; maybe Mum needed to talk. The girl threw back the bedclothes and swung her legs out.

‘Yeah, why not? Nothing too energetic, mind. I’m not as fit as you. Can I borrow some trainers?’

In a few minutes they were on their way. Outside the wind was cool and whipped through their T-shirts, until a steady stretch of wordless jogging set the pulses thumping and brought a healthy flush to their cheeks. The morning sun fell on their shoulders as the two headed away from the house, up the road, past the village shop and the church, both open for business, and turned along a footpath which led across the fields towards South Warmingshire’s largest hill, and thence down to the river. On the way they passed people in waxed jackets walking dogs or themselves, who clutched Sunday
newspapers and ruminated on the ills of the world even while soaking up the peace and lush beauty of the English countryside on a fresh spring morning.

Elaine and Karen had been running fifteen minutes, not particularly fast. From time to time they were greeted by constituents and neighbours who turned in pleasure at the sight of the two handsome women, so obviously mother and daughter, as they trotted along the path. Elaine was well liked in the vicinity and most of those who saw her that morning would vote for her. Had the constituency been entirely composed of villages there would have been no problem. The opposition lay in the small industrial towns and the suburbs. In the former, socialism had found fertile soil ever since the Independent Labour Party was established a century before, while in the latter guilty consciences and a concentration of white-collar public-sector workers guaranteed a substantial Liberal Democrat vote. The split opposition had let Elaine win comfortably with less than half the turnout. Should one of those two not stand, or her own support slip, or should the electorate discover the delights of tactical voting, she would be in trouble.

The hill was less steep than it looked from below but its gentle slope took longer than expected to cover. Getting to the top without pausing became a small personal battle for Elaine, and she grunted and dug deep, her lungs filling rhythmically with the clean sweet air. Each weekend it was like this, as if this run were an analogue of the uphill battle she faced as the election loomed. Somebody had to be winner. She was not giving up yet.

On the crest of the hill a copse of old silver-birch trees waved graceful branches in welcome. The two slowed their pace and flopped in triumph against the crusted trunks, gasping and laughing.

‘You’ll kill me doing this!’ Karen was panting hard.

‘Nonsense!’ Elaine puffed. ‘The other way round. You have longer legs, you’re half my age and you run much faster than me.’

‘Must be mad.’ The girl put her hands on her knees and bent over, trying to get her second wind. At last she stood up, hands on hips, and looked around appreciatively. ‘It’s great up here. I’ve never seen Warmingshire like this before. We are lucky living here, aren’t we?’

‘We are. I hope we can continue.’ Elaine’s tone was wistful.

‘Oh, you’ll be all right. You will win, won’t you, Mum?’

Elaine leaned back against a tree. Her body felt free, lithe, young; every artery expanded, pumping heart deeply throbbing in her chest cavity. Exercise-induced endomorphins, those natural hormones so similar in action to heroin, were taking effect and filled her with a sense of physical well-being.

‘I don’t know, to be honest. Yes, if the swing is with us. No, if it isn’t. This is a true marginal seat, and my personal efforts may make precious little difference. Last election we had a lot of help in the form of mutual aid from Roger’s constituency workers, but I don’t know if that will happen this time.’

‘They would be mad not to vote for you, Mum.’

Elaine pulled a face. ‘Thanks, but it doesn’t work like that. Plenty of people vote not for a local MP but for the government, or for a fresh government, if that’s their preference. What the Prime Minister and people like Roger get up to, that’s what counts. I mustn’t take it personally either. The day after, some biddy will come up to me in the market-place, win or lose, and tell me she didn’t vote for me even though I did a good job for South Warmingshire, and ask me to help with a problem. She’ll get quite indignant if I suggest she goes to talk to her new MP. There’s one or two I won’t mind telling to get stuffed, I can tell you.’

‘I don’t know how you put up with it at times. You could have done all sorts of things. What on earth made you go into politics?’

Elaine squatted down and picked at the grass. It would not do to spend too long chatting and getting cold, yet there were so few opportunities with her daughter away from the phone or homework
or other insidious distractions. A nagging desire to clear her lines with Karen before it was too late had driven her into her daughter’s room that morning instead of letting her slumber on as usual. She recalled out of the blue a song from years before, in which a man came from a long distance to explain himself to his son, saw the boy sleeping and left without saying a word. Paul Simon. Pop star, pop philosopher of her youth.
The nearer your destination, the more it’s slip-sliding away.
That was it. It had made her feel very sad at the time.

‘What made me do politics?’ Elaine hesitated. The question was put to her so often by interviewers, or at Women’s Institute meetings, but for Karen she tested the response slowly to see if it still worked.

‘It all started when Jake was little, but perhaps the seeds were sown long before that. I don’t like being told what to do, or what to think. I don’t want somebody else taking my hard-earned money and spending it elsewhere, at least without my agreement to what it’s being spent on. My freedom and my own judgement are very precious to me. I would be like that even if I were the only person in the whole world, but it’s such a bonus to find I’m not alone. A lot of people have the same gut reaction in this country. That’s why the British are so cussed, and why we’ve not been successfully invaded for nearly a thousand years. That’s also why, to me, it feels such a privilege to represent them, to be an MP.’

‘You would really mind, then, if you lost?’

Elaine nodded. Karen knew the answer to that one. ‘And yet … I should mind that much less if we have a good clean fight, no dirty tricks, no slurs, just a cracking good argument on the issues. If there’s a lot of unpleasantness and personal stuff I should feel that everybody had lost out. What matters in the end, Karen, is not the individual result, but that the system itself should be healthy. Democracy, I mean. That’s how I might console myself, if I have to.’

It was simple language, but the sentiments were the more powerful for their simplicity. A breeze blew her damp T-shirt against her ribs and she shivered. Karen listened carefully. It might all help for the exams. In the distance, screwing up her eyes, she could see their house in a clump with several others. The little development, outlined with fast-growing Leyland cypresses, stuck out into fields away from the village. No wonder there had been such a fuss when it was built, and why some locals said the Stalkers were demonstrating either ignorance or arrogance in choosing to live there.

‘What will you do if you lose, Mum?’

‘I don’t know.’ Elaine gazed down the valley as if the answer were written in the sprouting corn, so indifferent to her fate. ‘I shall have money for a short while, though not enough for staff. I suppose I’ll have to find a job of some kind while trying to get back in. It’s in my blood now, and I doubt if I would be truly happy doing anything else.’

‘If you win, can I come and work for you for a bit?’ Not for the first time, Elaine was startled at her daughter’s directness. ‘But what about university? You have offers for September. You’re not going to throw all that up. I won’t allow it. However dodgy my future might be, yours must be secure.’

Karen waved objections away with an airy flourish. ‘I’ve thought about it, and this morning it’s all come together nicely. If I get my A levels I will ask the university to defer entry for a year. Then I can spend my time in London, and go out with that nice docile Irishman Gerry, and look after you. The way you have been recently, Mum, so seedy, it’s clear you need somebody. Your Roger seems to have been falling down on the job. Then I’ll be readier to settle down to study, properly, next year.’

‘And if it goes against us? There may not be any cash to spare, Karen.’

‘Got that worked out too. If you’re out, I will still take a year off, and we can go into business. Style advisers, or assertiveness trainers, or – or anything. I’ll be your general dogsbody and
you can pay me peanuts. If you lose, Mum, you will
really
need taking care of. Then we can make some money, you will find another seat, and I will go to college in a Ferrari. I fancy that.’

Elaine laughed despite herself and hugged her daughter affectionately. Without another word they moved off down the narrow path, skirting the hill and heading to the right, where the snaking silver of the river was visible across the fields.

But Elaine was grateful the girl had not pressed her on Roger. There were many more questions to which she did not know the answers: whether to finish the affair, and if so when, and how: and, worst and most worrying of all, in the heightened atmosphere of the forthcoming general election, whether it could be done cleanly and in safety, before they were found out.

The House was crowded, aggressive, at its bad-mannered worst. An exasperated Miss Boothroyd had spent more time on her feet yelling than she had been seated.

Roger Dickson had realised at once that in trying to perform at First Order Questions as if nothing else was in the offing he would be on a hiding to nothing. Naturally Andrew Muncastle had leapt at the chance to answer more questions than usual. Dickson excused himself on the grounds that his national party obligations had given him too little time for homework. However, even Andrew was unprepared for the barracking and noise which greeted his every word.

Andrew wrinkled his nose in disapproval. It seemed so pointless, all this screaming. Other parliaments were more decorous. Most did not have a Question Time at all, but listened respectfully when ministers spoke, even applauded. The French National Assembly rose to its feet when the President made his infrequent visits. Elected Members around the world do not conduct themselves daily as if in a football stadium for the Cup Final or at the Roman games watching slavering lions heading for a hapless gladiator. Andrew’s alarmed expression betrayed his dislike of the role of official pugilist, making his attackers go for him even more. Even his Honourable Friends felt obliged, such was the nearness of the election, to make infuriating remarks against which his usual parade of statistics was insufficient defence. The whole process was distasteful and unpleasant. Watching him, Dickson half smiled. Somebody had to take the flak. How beautifully Muncastle managed it.

The Prime Minister was not there yet. He was cutting it fine as the clock edged towards 3.14. He had to be ready, on his feet, on the dot of 3.15. Dickson allowed a frisson of professional annoyance to cloud his serenity. What on earth was the boss playing at? This Prime Minister had once said he loved politics because it was like playing dice: you never knew what turned up next. That casual, passive insouciance irritated. Leaving it so late did not give the impression of a great passion for the fight, a determination to get on with it, which should have been the hallmark of proceedings, today in particular.