A Parliamentary Affair (77 page)

Diane snorted and handed her three fresh Pentels. ‘I am not. You can still use Commons notepaper and, more to the point, free postage, till the House is prorogued. Why do you think I stayed here all night clearing the outstanding stuff? We have to be out of here on Friday at the latest. Take the typewriter – it may be useful at home. I’ll come in and collect the mail for the duration and send you anything useful.’

‘It’ll all go to the constituency office, won’t it?’

‘Oh, no. You’d be surprised how many people and organisations think everything carries on here as normal, as if the election is happening quite outside the political system. Heavens knows how this country survives as a democracy when there are so many stupid people in it.’

‘We need some help up there. Is there any chance…?’

‘I’ll come for a weekend. We’re almost as pushed in Battersea. Why don’t you ask your friend Roger Dickson?’

Elaine bit back an answer. Too many people seemed to know about Roger and herself. The press would be sniffing around, looking for angles, watching every senior politician with prurient intensity. She bent her head and began signing, setting up a production line as Diane expertly folded and slipped letters into envelopes. Slowly the pile ready for the post began to grow and the wall behind her desk, previously obscured, reappeared a few inches at a time. But the thought of Roger stayed with her.

She could not let it run on much longer. Exposure now would be a disaster. For a scandal to break in the middle of the election campaign would probably wreck her own chances in South Warmingshire; even Roger himself, despite his more comfortable majority, could find himself in trouble, particularly as he had been spending a great deal of time away from his seat. Disclosure would put him under huge pressure to relieve the Prime Minister of the need to defend him and he would almost certainly have to resign as a Cabinet minister. His position in the party hierarchy and in the election war cabinet would have to be abandoned. It was worse than that. The whole campaign would be damaged, especially as the Prime Minister had been going hard for the family vote. In fact, if a whiff of the affair got abroad, everything both of them had fought for and believed in would be
put at terrible risk. The end result of this parliamentary affair could be to destroy the government itself.

The phone rang. It was a woman journalist inviting Elaine to model knickers for the campaign trail for a two-page spread in a tabloid newspaper. The answer was a blunt ‘No’, though Elaine was surprised to find herself even considering the request. That was what hustling in a marginal seat was doing to her. The wheedling voice pleaded for a moment, then switched tack. Would Elaine be willing to model day clothes for the campaign, chosen by their fashion editor? Nothing too way out, but smart and attractive. Elaine reflected. This was not such a silly proposition. South Warmingshire voters were still intrigued by their woman MP, and a substantial proportion were immune to political argument. It could do no harm, might be fun, and it could help. She agreed. At the other end of the phone the journalist punched the air in triumph. MPs were such easy meat. Ask them to do something outrageous and they will refuse, mostly. Soften the request, make a different, apparently more reasonable suggestion, and vanity and need would oblige them to accept. It was an ancient trick which often worked. Now for fat old Ferriman.

The phone rang again. It had been going all morning, punctuating the women’s dogged efforts with an insistent shrillness. Newspapers and radio stations and local TV, all wanting a comment or an interview, for Elaine’s seat appeared on every list of contests to watch. Constituents rang, urgently requiring her assistance in return for their vote. Some threatened to withhold support unless she was for or against the issue closest to their hearts. Elaine readily agreed with them all. The whole unreal business was acquiring a tinge of blackmail which she hated.

‘Elaine? Roger. How are you?’

His distinctive voice could be heard clearly in the small room. Diane sniffed. She had thought her employer would have been wiser than to get embroiled in the most obvious cliché of all, with a fellow MP. Especially a prominent name, and married and likely to stay that way.

‘I … I’m fine. Busy, clearing paper.’ Suddenly, for the first time ever, Elaine wanted to tell him to go away.

‘Are you free tonight at all, after the vote? I’ve something I wanted to show you. We may not get much chance from now on.’

She hesitated. Of course she wanted him; nothing had changed in that respect. And yet… Diane’s disapproving face helped make up her mind.

‘No, sorry, I can’t. I have constituents in the gallery tonight and must take them for a drink.’

It was a lie. It was not a refusal, an ending: there would be other calls and at any time she could accept and fly to him. Yet something had changed. Her miserable face told its own story. Diane half smiled and turned back to her work, satisfied.

Campaigning started in earnest. Suddenly every news bulletin began with the daily doings of the parties’ leaders and main spokespersons, however dull or predictable. Stunts and poster unveilings hogged the photo coverage, party-political broadcasts filled the airwaves. Martial music blared fitfully from loudspeakers; battle-buses were borrowed and plastered with stickers; village halls were booked and duly festooned with party colours, deposits were paid, signatures collected on nomination forms, appeal letters sent out; candidates fidgeted under last- minute haircuts and clutched lucky charms and umbrellas just in case.

At Conservative Central Office the mood swung between elation and despair, depending on the state of the polls and the points-scoring at each morning’s press conference. The initial small lead increased at once to 6 per cent in the first days of campaigning and the pace turned to frenzy. Staff found themselves covering two or three press conferences a day. Dominic d’Abo slaved at his word processor until the early hours, or coaxed the printer back into life, or fed the photocopier, and bemoaned the feeling of writing press releases and speeches in his sleep, until he checked his diary and realised that to all intents and purposes he was.

The maddest events took on huge proportions. A pot plant arrived at Central Office ostensibly from an admirer, and turned out to be hosting a family of minute baby tarantulas. The police and RSPCA were called and the entire building had to be evacuated in case the mother spider was still there, hidden under a cupboard, waiting for her opportunity. A few days later the Prime Minister found himself imitating his illustrious predecessor at an agricultural event, clutching a baby calf to his bosom to demonstrate solidarity with the nation’s beleaguered farmers. On this occasion the beast, terrified beyond endurance by flashing cameras, let loose all over the Leader’s best trousers. The farmers predictably thought this a splendid political comment, and nodded silent appreciation to the owner of the calf who had fed it thoroughly half an hour before the Prime Minister’s arrival.

‘How’re you getting on, Jim?’

Betts raised the glass of red wine to his lips and leaned back on the propped-up pillows. Room service in British hotels was improving, even if West Country accents left him none the wiser.

‘It’s hair-raising down here, Nick. Not a Labour voter in sight but the government’s running scared. They think they’re going to lose a batch of prize seats to the Ashdown mob.’

‘And are they?’

‘God knows. You know what happens in a general election – at the last minute people turn tail and head back to safety. The polls suggest the government’s in trouble, though.’

‘Right. That early lead is slipping. Tomorrow’s rush results suggest a gap in the government’s favour of only 2 per cent – well within the margin of error. Careful how much weight you place on them, though, Jim. It’s not over yet.’

Betts allowed himself a moment’s thoughtful silence.

‘Jim? You still there? What’s on your mind?’

‘I was thinking – I may have something that will put the kibosh on the whole government, if you’re minded to use it.’

A decision of that magnitude would not be up to Thwaite, but he was not about to tell a subordinate that. ‘Spill,’ he commanded.

Betts invested his voice with all the portentous significance he could muster. ‘Got something on a Cabinet minister –
another
Cabinet Minister.’

Thwaite sucked his teeth. Betts’s boasting was not always to be trusted. ‘Have you, indeed. You ready to tell me the details?’

‘Not yet. I may get a full confession out of him, which would be terrific. I think I’ll confront him with what I’ve got – I’m in his area next week. Leave him to me for the minute.’

‘Am I allowed to know who?’

Betts hesitated, then realised a marker might come in useful. He would then be sure to get the credit. ‘Yeah – Roger Dickson.’

In Milton and Hambridge a nervous Fred Laidlaw was attempting to pick up the pieces after the misery of the by-election defeat. With Mr Bulstrode and Mrs Farebrother comfortingly at his side, and active if erratic support from his faithful Young Conservatives, the assault on the 5,000 majority had an uncertain if enthusiastic tone. There was every chance of winning the seat back, since jibes about a ‘local’ candidate could easily be met, but it felt like heaving the proverbial boulder up a mountain.

Fred had his traumas at the hustings, but his obvious youth and engaging friendliness slowly won supporters from among those who had recorded their protest at the by-election and now regretted being over-hasty. Some of the long terraced streets were a fruitful source of reconverts. He was, however, completely floored by one reluctant elderly female voter, who wanted to know whether he was in favour of joining the Common Market.

Fred, who was still in nappies when the Treaty of Rome was signed, was nonplussed. ‘But we have joined the Common Market. A long time back. Over twenty years ago, in fact.’

The elderly woman eyed him with a pitying air. ‘Nonsense,’ she replied scornfully, ‘you should get your facts right, young man. That was when we joined the Commonwealth.’

‘Er, yes,’ said Fred doubtfully. ‘Anyway, I’m all in favour.’

That was clearly a mistake. ‘Well, I’m not,’ snapped the woman. ‘So I shall be voting Liberal.’

In vain did Fred attempt to convince the voter that his opponent’s party was vastly more
pro-European
than his own. He gave up and trudged with heavy heart to the next street.

He shared the story over a pub lunch with a sympathetic Mr Bulstrode, who reminded him with a kindly pat on the shoulder that, while people outside politics thought electioneering was fun or exciting, to participants it was simply bloody hard work, with an unpredictable outcome.

Tom Sparrow sat down wearily and tried to work it out. This would be his fifth general election, with countless council and local elections thrown in. His fourth with Roger as candidate: all the more reason to hope for victory. He was unsure whether this one was proving unusually arduous, or if it was simply that his age was beginning, at last, to tell.

He would be sixty next year. Not officially his retirement date, but he could go then, if he wanted to. His plans had been to carry on for a while yet, maybe even see out the next Euro-elections in 1999. That date had an air of finality about it: end of the millennium, dawn of a new age.

He was startled at his own reverie. Never mind the next century – how well he remembered halfway through this one: the Festival of Britain in 1951 which he had visited with his father, the ending of the Attlee government when his mother had cried for joy to see Churchill once more Prime
Minister. The coronation and all its pageantry, when he was already sixteen and in his first job. He could dimly recall events even before that – the Communist revolution in China, which had proved so much more durable than its counterparts elsewhere, then later the Mau Mau in Kenya, and Jomo Kenyatta languishing in a British jail. To so many people, including his own bright-eyed young helpers, those vivid dramas were dusty history. They became quickly bored if he tried to describe what happened and why it mattered. He felt out of time, disjointed.

Sparrow checked his list of reminders for the morrow. It would be a relatively quiet moment as Roger was campaigning up north. The following day, Thursday, would be busy, for there was a big rally in the nearby town, where Roger would be one of the stars.

Tom Sparrow made a decision, there and then. He would see this election through and Dickson safely returned; and then he would start making practical plans for his own retirement, and never fight another.

For Elaine the campaigning had hardly ceased since the previous election which had started her parliamentary career. Much of the intervening period had been spent worrying where the next vote would come from. Her monthly diary had never faltered in its endless visits to schools, nurseries, factories, workshops, old people’s homes, sheltered housing, working men’s clubs, leisure centres and anywhere else the punters might be gathered in a sufficiently friendly mood to welcome her intrusion. Once the election was under way the whole business took on more focus and urgency. The change was not always for the better.

Canvassing was turning into a nightmare. Whatever unemployment figures might say, the bulk of the British electorate were out at work at every reasonable hour of the day, or even evening. Most women had part-time jobs. In Elaine’s constituency and many others women now outnumbered men in the regular workforce. With a resigned sigh she realised that door-knocking on the two remaining Sundays would be essential, for no one was at home in daytime the rest of the week except elderly and housebound people who were less likely to vote, and the unemployed, who were best left undisturbed.

An opinion poll was published in
The Globe
covering thirty seats which must change hands if the government was to be defeated. Elaine was becoming accustomed to running her eyes down such lists to check where South Warmingshire was placed on each occasion. Even she, however, swallowed hard at the indication that she was 17 points adrift. Her own returns suggested that she and her main opponent were neck and neck. But supposing the research was accurate?

The phone rang; a reporter from a sympathetic local newspaper asked her views on the poll’s findings. Elaine crisply informed him that only one poll counted and that was still a fortnight off, but that this one was a load of codswallop. He replied helpfully that the interviews were done to his knowledge in only one place in her constituency, in the market square of the main industrial town one Wednesday morning. The bias introduced by speaking only to the carless and workless seeking the cheapest shopping must have been obvious even to amateurs.
The Globe
reported it gleefully as gospel truth.

The doorsteps told a more cheerful tale. It was a cold damp evening when Elaine knocked on one door and found herself the object of a long harangue from a middle-aged man in a singlet, still grubby from work, who leaned forward aggressively, raised arm on the door-jamb, taking her to task for all the ills of the nation. At the end of the tirade he declared himself firmly a supporter of the other side.

Dispirited, Elaine tried to establish which, if any, of her opponent’s policies particularly appealed to the householder, only to find herself interrupted by his diminutive curly-haired wife who popped her head under his arm.

‘Mrs Stalker, is it? Good. Don’t you worry about ’im, love. You’ll not change ’is mind. But the rest of us in this ’ouse are with you. Come election day, we’ll lock the old bugger in the pantry. You leave it to us.’

Jim Betts was enjoying himself. This was the easiest kind of journalism, buzzing around the country at his own pace, driving an expensive car, eating fine food and wine at others’ expense, dictating pieces down the phone after lunch and leaving to the office the tedious tasks of inputting, spell-checking, word-counts and sub-editing. As long as he produced a thousand punchy words every day he was more than doing his job. What it was all doing to his constitution he would worry about later.

Now he was seated in the warmth of early evening in the cool lounge of a four-star hotel in Warwickshire, close to the constituency of Roger Dickson, Cabinet minister and high dignitary in the Tories’ faltering campaign. The evening paper showed that their original tiny lead had disappeared; the race was now too close to call. The Home Secretary was planning to join Dickson on the platform tonight at a big supporters’ rally in the hotel. On the table before him Betts already had the main speeches, or at least published extracts, handed to him by a pimply boy from Central Office who looked like he needed a good meal and a sleep. Betts had been pleasant to the boy: might be useful for later, to find out what the atmosphere at headquarters was really like.

Betts was not a Labour supporter. He was not a supporter of any party and could readily turn his knife in any direction. If challenged he would have claimed to know too much about all of them to wish to vote for any. In truth, since he was on the road on election day, he probably would not be voting at all. What interested Betts was not who won but hard news or a good story. The consequences were of no concern to him, even though they might have a profound effect on the country. Arguments about policies left him cold. If taxes were increased, he would step up his efforts to avoid paying any. If they were reduced, he would be grateful, but not sufficiently so to cast his vote in that direction. Since much of the time he lived on expenses he was inured to the possible dangers of inflation. Politicians were all liars anyway, so what was the point?

On his lap lay a dossier on Dickson, filled with old press cuttings and an analysis from
The Globe
’s somewhat limited library. There was still an hour before the great men arrived. Betts considered, frowning, then reached in his wallet and retrieved what had been lurking there for the past month.

A letter. The letter. Enough to destroy a man, and his career; and his girlfriend’s too, but she did not matter. And lose him his friends, in all probability. It would be a scandal to rival the Boswood business. The trick tonight would be to get his victim to admit his deceit, in public. Perhaps with a bit of violence thrown in – Betts was half expecting Dickson or a crony to take a swing at him, when the insistent query was put about how well he knew Elaine Stalker. A photographer was all laid on.

Betts’s stomach rumbled. He was hungry and would need to eat before the meeting. There was only one way to find out if the two were still playing around, and that was to confront the man directly. Not before the big speeches; instinct told Betts that afterwards, when everyone was more relaxed and guards were temporarily down, might be better. It occurred to him that he should have taken a second photocopy, but that could wait. He folded the letter carefully and put it in the pocket of his mackintosh with a handkerchief, cigarettes and matches. Producing it with a flourish under his victim’s nose would create a wonderfully dramatic effect.