A Parliamentary Affair (46 page)

It was awful, the notion that Mum had stopped loving Dad. She must have done, to start this game with Roger Dickson. Maybe Mum didn’t love her either, not any more. Maybe it was her fault that her mother had somehow lost emotional contact with the family, got bored, looked for excitement elsewhere. Her parents had always loved Jake best, spent so much precious time with him, exulted at his tiniest gain, been broken when at last he slipped away. Her mother had cried inconsolably for days, a heart-breaking grief, a sound which Karen would never forget. She was only four then. Though the small girl had tried so hard to make it up to them, she had never been able to fill that gap. Karen lowered her head. She could not talk to her mother. Not yet.

‘It’s been a tough term, Mum. I wasn’t too well at the end of it. They expect such a lot.’

Her mother was puzzled at the child’s unhappy tone. What on earth was eating at her? Maybe Roger would have some ideas. She would be seeing him this week, back at the flat for the last few days of term. A feeling of inadequacy nagged Elaine. Bringing up a teenager was tricky: at times like these, when the girl was so confusing, so impenetrable, being a mother was by far the hardest thing
she had ever attempted. Other mothers had time to talk to each other and share tips and commiseration, but not she. Not knowing many other parents in the same boat sufficiently intimately to share her worries, Elaine did not realise how frequently others felt exactly the same bewilderment. She pressed her daughter’s hand. Once more the demands of her job were in conflict with her family. She and Karen had not sat side by side in the same room for ages. ‘You having boy trouble?’ she enquired gently, ‘is anyone at school getting at you?’

The hollowness of Karen’s laugh startled her. ‘Boy trouble? You must be joking. Not in that place.’

‘I’m serious, Karen. Don’t laugh at me. Are you being bullied or teased at all because of me?’

How like her mother to think of herself first. Karen felt bitter. She had not picked up her mother’s more subtle concern, that her public life might be hurting her child.

Karen rose. She was so tall now. ‘I am not being bullied, Mum. I’m going to work hard this holiday. That’s why I can’t come to your office this time. I will get my head down, I promise. Will you please stop worrying?’

‘Naturally I worry. Are you sure you’re happy at that school?’

‘Well…’ Karen hesitated.

‘Go on.’

‘You and Dad won’t agree.’

‘Try us.’ Elaine was feeling impatient. Playing new games with her daughter left her at a distinct disadvantage. Only one person in the room knew the rules and it wasn’t her.

Karen’s voice took on a wheedling tone. ‘Could I leave school after GCSEs and do my A levels at college?’

Her mother’s reaction was hostile, as anticipated. ‘And where would you live? You can’t stay here on your own. I know you’ll be sixteen by then, but that’s much too young. That’s the whole idea of boarding school, Karen, sweetheart. Somebody looks after you while we’re away. It stops us worrying.’

‘It’d be cheaper: college is free,’ Karen offered hopefully.

‘That’s not the point and you know it, Karen.’ Her mother allowed a touch of severity to enter her voice, ‘if you want to convince me that school is not the right place for you next year, you’ll have to come clean and tell me why. I’m not going to call you a liar, Karen. If you tell me nothing is going on, I must believe you. So why do you want to leave school? Poor reports are not enough, you know. You can’t blackmail us into getting your own way like that. So I will ask you one more time – is this bad report due to something that has happened at school?’

The girl swallowed hard. The word ‘blackmail’ cut her to the quick. Karen knew all about blackmail. More than her mother did, by a long chalk. Wanting to leave school was simply an attempt to enter into the adult world, not be regarded any longer as a child. To hide her pain she swiftly turned away. Her tone hardened. ‘No, Mum. It’s nothing to do with school.’

Elaine reached out and held her arm. ‘You sure?’

Karen almost shouted, ‘I told you! Stop nagging, will you! It’s nothing to do with school. I want to leave, that’s all.’

‘Tell me. I’m on your side.’

‘Oh, yeah. And I’m on yours, Mum. More than you realise.’

The two women stared each other down in mutual incomprehension. The moment for intimacy had passed, yet Karen realised with shame that her mother had tried hard, had given her every opportunity. The girl relented, stepped back, bent her head, kissed her mother on the cheek. Then she stood up.

‘I guess I’m just having to do some fast growing up. Not easy.’

‘It never was. Just remember I’ve been through it all, sweetheart. Your mother’s not a complete innocent.’

‘I know that.’ Under her breath, so that her mother could not hear.

Speedily Karen was out of the door. Her backward glance was full of sadness, but she gave her mother a half wave.

The kitchen went quiet. Elaine sighed and wished Roger would phone, to cheer her up. She reached for her address book and the pile of Christmas cards.

For several days more, Karen Stalker brooded until her head ached. Her hurt was settling into depression; she was listless, tired, yet could not sleep. She had not yet developed an adult’s capacity for reticence. Boarding school is not a place for secrets. The shared intimacy of sleeping in the same room, of bathtimes and showers, of girls learning about development and menstruation and sex all at the same time, precluded privacy. The group had a rhythm and synergy of its own. If one had flu, they all caught it. Only on home matters was silence acceptable. Many of the girls came from broken homes – nearly half, in Karen’s class. Packed off to boarding school like so much baggage. Shuffled around at holiday time, meeting parents’ new partners, weighing in the balance and being weighed, found wanting, in an atmosphere rigid with resentment. Most covered up, lying a bit, showing off expensive presents acquired instead of affection, and bitterly played off one parent against another.

Until now Karen had despised them, pretending like that. On her more reflective days she felt pity for these innocent victims of divorce. If the affair continued, if her mother was found out, there could be a divorce in her own family.

The person who would be most hurt would be her father. Maybe he would go and punch this Dickson. It would serve the man right. Karen’s imagination, brutally enlarged by events of recent weeks, had no trouble following the scenario further. Supposing her father were arrested and ended in court charged with assault? The newspapers would have a field day. Her father would lose his job. Roger Dickson and her mother might both lie through their teeth about the whole sorry business, but nobody would ever quite believe them again. Least of all their own children.

It dawned on her slowly that she could do something, without hurting anybody’s feelings, provided she were clever about how she went about it. The world she knew was becoming disjointed, joyless, its old reference points irrelevant. She had to talk with somebody. But not with her mother. One other person knew all about this: at least, not the part involving herself. The part involving Roger.

Roger Dickson did.

It was his fault. It must be. He must have seduced Mum, dazzled her with his clever talk and flattery, or entrapped her somehow. He had a hold over Mum which only he could break. Why else would a happily married woman take up with another man? On television he was charming, attractive and accomplished. Vaguely there stirred an appreciation of what her mother might see in him. But her father was like that too. The only difference, from what she could tell, was that one was totally devoted to politics and the other wasn’t. A mark in her father’s favour, in her view, as it used to be in her mother’s. Dad was a real person.

That half-term week spent working in Mum’s office, for all its terrible outcome, had been useful. Karen knew how to go to a library, look Roger up in
Who’s Who
and find his constituency office in the phone book. Luckily, North-West Warwickshire wasn’t far away. Should she ring first? She hesitated, thought hard for a moment. On the phone there could be an interrogation from a stranger, demanding to know why she wanted to see him. It might be easier simply to turn up. Late on a quiet afternoon before Christmas, Roger Dickson himself might just be there.

Tom Sparrow totalled the column again, compared it to the one on another page, and grimaced. It had not been a good year financially, despite the slow recovery in the economy. Subscriptions were modestly up but company donations were disastrous. There had been no compelling reasons to squeeze more money out of reluctant local donors – there would be no general election, thank goodness, only the Euro-elections. The overdraft from those would probably hang around for years.

The knock on his office door was a welcome distraction.

A tall young woman – no, a girl; she could not have been more than seventeen – clad in funereal black from head to toe as was their wont these days, stood before him, hand on the
door-knob
, her manner hesitant and anxious.

‘Er – I’m sorry. I was looking for Mr Dickson, the MP. I would like a word with him, if possible, please.’

Sparrow frowned and pulled a newspaper over the accounts. ‘How did you get in? Wasn’t the front door locked? There’s an intercom.’

Karen looked puzzled. ‘I just opened it. Did I do wrong?’

‘No, no.’ Sparrow recovered himself and smiled. The clerical help was forever forgetting to lock the door on leaving. Of course there had never been an incident round here, not even a brick through the window at the height of the poll tax debacle. But it was distressing that office staff were so casual about safety. He would tick them off in the morning.

‘I’m afraid Mr Dickson is not here right now. My name is Tom Sparrow. I’m his agent. Could I help you perhaps?’

‘No, no. But I would like to see him. Could I make an appointment?’

Tom reached for the diary, trying to sum the young woman up. Not old enough to vote, at a guess. Student? A grant problem? Parent trouble, maybe. People asked MPs about the oddest things. One chap wanted to discuss his son’s divorce settlement. You never turned anyone away. Not a punter. A kindly word might be worth a vital vote or two in an election. Anyway, serving the public was all part of the job.

‘Mr Dickson is not holding any advice bureaux now till after Christmas. Nobody comes – they’re all too busy shopping. However, he is around, so if you wanted to I could slot in a time. Tomorrow morning, maybe? Perhaps I could have your name?’

‘I’m…’ Karen stopped. Her original plan was to give a false name. Yet she wanted to be certain that Dickson would see her, not fob her off. She looked Sparrow straight in the eye. ‘I’m Karen Stalker.’

Sparrow began to write it down, then looked up quickly. ‘Could you spell that please?’

She did so, slowly, as he wrote. Sparrow put his pen down, clasped his hands together, examined his fingernails and then looked at her quizzically.

‘Would that be Stalker as in Mrs Stalker the MP?’

The atmosphere suddenly went very cold. Karen turned white.
This man knew
. She had made a terrible mistake.

There was no going back now. Insolently she stared back at Mr Sparrow, her face grim.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you by any chance a relation?’

‘I am her daughter. And I need to see Mr Dickson, please, as soon as possible.’

‘Does your mother know you are here, Miss Stalker?’

The girl laughed bitterly. ‘No fear.’

Sparrow motioned her to a chair. Karen subsided into it unwillingly, knowing she was trapped. Calmly, precisely, the agent went into the outer office and put the latch up on the main door, switched the phone on to automatic answering, then returned to the inner office and closed the door. He sat down behind his desk, crossed one leg over the other and leaned back, watching the girl.

How like her mother she was. Dark-haired, but the same wide-awake eyes. Extraordinarily pretty. Not quite Elaine’s sharp intelligence, at a guess. Or maybe she was only a bit young, yet. Like some of the young lads under his command in Kenya – not much more than children, but uppity if patronised. Must choose his words carefully. He spoke very slowly.

‘If you have a problem, Miss Stalker, you really ought to talk to your mother. She is also your MP, which Mr Dickson isn’t.’

The girl was silent, hostile. In normal circumstances Sparrow would have made excuses and turned her away. Not this time.

‘Or is the problem something to do with your mother? Is that it?’ His words hung in the air. He faced Karen squarely.

She tried to return his look but her gaze wobbled. Slowly tears welled up in her eyes. Defiance turned into dejection. Her young body sagged, a picture of abject misery.

Sparrow was not an unkind man. Devoted to politics and with firm views on loyalty, his main task was to get Roger re-elected. If not Roger, another MP from the party which paid his wages. Loose cannon like Miss Stalker had to be tied down as swiftly as possible. A candidate holed below the waterline would sink without trace, dragging all on board with him. How much did she know? How ready was she to tell?

‘I think, Miss Stalker, you had better tell me all about it. Then if Roger can help at all I’ll make sure he finds time to see you. How does that sound?’

Karen was well aware that she could have insisted on saying nothing, seeing Dickson in private. Yet it was clear, the moment she mentioned it, that this man knew the name was special. An agent would not breathe a word, certainly not one who had been around a long time, who would live and die for the party, as before in his life he had pledged to die for Queen and country. Her mother had been heard to envy this constituency its greatly respected central guardian. He was a man you could lean on for advice. You could rely on a trained professional like Mr Sparrow.

Karen took a deep breath and leaned forward. It all came in an anguished rush. ‘I believe my mother and Mr Dickson are having an affair. They are both married and it’s all wrong. I wanted to ask Mr Dickson to stop.’