A Parliamentary Affair (78 page)

First there was the question of food. He sauntered over to the reception counter. A plump young woman in hotel uniform with tumbling brown hair and a petulant expression was pushing buttons on a computer. A name badge announced ‘Tracey’. She looked up.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ The accent was false and irritating.

‘What time does the restaurant open?’

‘Not till seven-thirty, sir. Would you like me to make you a reservation?’

‘No – no. I wanted to eat now. What can you do for me?’ Tracey looked unsure.

‘Chef’s not in till seven, sir. We could maybe get you a sandwich…’

‘Blast, I really wanted something hot.’

The receptionist made up her mind about him. He wasn’t so bad, better than most of the loud-mouthed louts who caused trouble here every Saturday night. She leaned confidentially over the counter, and dropping the smart accent suggested that he head for Maggie’s over the road, where if he was nippy, the proprietress, who happened to be her auntie, would do him a banger and chips, double quick, and cheap at the price.

Ten minutes later Betts was seated at a plastic-covered table in the sticky fug of the smoky cafe, the last customer of the night, being catered for by Tracey’s Aunt Maggie, a large, dumpy woman who seemed happy to have this young chap to fuss over, sent by her niece: maybe somebody special. The place was not very clean, but that did not bother him. Nostalgia took over as he remembered the down-at-heel cafés of his youth. The chips were undercooked and greasy, the sausages tough, but the fried eggs were runny and just as he liked them. A mug of fresh sweet tea and thick white bread and butter revived his spirits and prepared him for a long evening.

Tom Sparrow slowed the car on the main road, a hundred yards before the hotel, and turned to his passenger.

‘It isn’t going very well, Roger, and for all the reasons we have discussed. We seem to have upset too many of our own people – all the vested interests, solicitors, doctors, shareholders, pensioners, businessmen. All that stuff about “protecting the most vulnerable members of society”… In reality some of the most vulnerable were our own traditional supporters. We’re meeting real resistance on the doorsteps, I can tell you.’

Roger patted his agent on the arm. ‘After all this time in power, as the Opposition keeps reminding everybody, there can be hardly anyone we haven’t offended at some stage. That’s what government is all about – taking difficult decisions without flinching. Look – the polls may have slipped a bit but they’ll be up again, you’ll see. It’ll be all right on the night, Tom. It always is; it was last time.’ Sparrow was not mollified by being offered the same pep talk as every other worried supporter. He flashed his MP a sardonic look. ‘I hope we’re not expecting any more banana skins, that’s all.’

‘Such as?’ Dickson allowed himself to sound cross. He expected reassurance from his agent, not criticism.

‘You know precisely what I mean. I hear you on the phone. It really isn’t on, Roger. You’re putting everything at terrible risk. Don’t you realise? It only needs one of those idiots to hear’ – he gestured at the pressmen lounging in front of the hotel portico, awaiting their arrival –’and we might as well all pack up and go home.’

‘She’s all right,’ Roger said defensively, staring ahead.

‘
She
may be. What you are both up to is not, emphatically, and you know it.’

Dickson was silent for a moment, then spoke quietly, slowly. ‘She gives me – oh – a view of the world, and a way of thinking, that I can get from nobody else. I owe her my self-confidence, my ability to face all that rabble and everything they can throw at me. I know the dangers – better than
you, at a guess. I am not going to stop, and you are not going to interfere, Tom. This is private business. Do I make myself clear?’

Dickson turned to face his friend, wearing his most stony expression. Tom Sparrow dropped his eyes. Wordlessly he opened his door and got out.

As they emerged from the Underground Karen slipped her arm through Gerry Keown’s and smiled up at him. The evening was humid, with thunder in the air. In the distance came the sound of wailing sirens, then a police car surged past, blue light flashing, heading up Victoria Street.

‘London!’ Karen laughed uneasily. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to live here all the time. I don’t know how people put up with it.’

‘Some of us don’t have much choice.’

His responses were always dulled by being obvious and Karen wondered why she didn’t become more quickly bored in Keown’s company. Perhaps because he was older than the lanky boys at college and was thereby harder, more mature. He was never aggressive or overweaning, and never forced his attentions on her. That alone was a blessing. His manner was always pleasant, but reticent, giving a sense of considerable self-discipline beneath the surface. Karen wondered whether, if she treated him sweetly, he might eventually fall for her and lose that self- control. But in all the time she had known Gerry – three years in the autumn – that had never happened. Perhaps they were just good friends, or he was like a big brother. For the moment, walking away from the bright lights with Gerry tall at her side, she was grateful for the sense of security he gave her.

It had been quite an achievement to persuade him to try the theatre instead of his predilection for American cinema, as an early celebration of her birthday. A day and a half in London had been wheedled from her mother as a refreshing break from studying, though she had grimly kept a couple of books with her. Karen had responded to Elaine’s hints about being surrounded by the world’s greatest live performances in the English language and booked two tickets for
Return to the Forbidden Planet,
now in its seventh year. The more intellectual references of this noisy re-creation of Shakespeare’s
The Tempest
had meant little, but the rock music, and the exuberance of a highly talented cast, had carried both away for an enjoyable couple of hours.

‘Do you like working at the Commons, Gerry?’ she asked, more by way of conversation.

He shrugged. ‘It’s better than parading the wards at the mental hospital, for sure.’ He had not lost the soft Irish accent. ‘Though the joke, of course, is that there is not much difference.’

Karen giggled. ‘What do you think of the MPs – really, I mean? You see them every day. Do they impress you?’

Gerry shrugged. ‘One or two. But the whole thing seems a sham, at times. Full of hollow men.’

‘Really? “We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Headpiece filled with straw.’” Karen danced away from him, chanting. ‘It’s my A levels. Poetry. Fits, doesn’t it? Especially when you think of those chaps in the Lords with their silly wigs. Heads stuffed with straw about sums it up.’

Gerry stopped, shaking his head, a half-smile hovering around his mouth, watching her. ‘I never stayed at school long enough to take exams. Do you have to learn all that?’

‘Oh yes. Great chunks of it. You know when the Speaker says, “The Ayes have it”? Try this: “The eyes are not here /There are no eyes here/In this valley of dying stars/In this hollow valley /This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.”’

It was sinister. This was almost exactly how he saw the brittle emptiness of his workplace. How others would see it, if those controlling his actions had their way. It would not be long now.

‘Lost kingdoms? There were kingdoms in Ireland, once, too, you know,’ he mused. ‘All lost, but the legends live on.’

‘Do you know all about Irish history?’ Perhaps she could get him talking about something else which took his interest.

‘A fair bit. Enough to make me…’ He stopped. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say, ‘hate the English’. At home it was a standard response, almost casual. The tension was getting to him. ‘… quite happy to be Irish,’ he finished lamely.

He turned to her. ‘Come on, I’ll see you safely home. And before you leave, Karen, let me know. Don’t just disappear, will you?’

At the door he shook hands formally and it was left to the girl to peck him on the cheek. Gerry seemed preoccupied. There had been modest clinches with him on the doorstep in the past, but he had always made excuses about coming in. Given her experiences last time a man had trotted up the stairs behind her, perhaps it was just as well.

‘We have made
great
strides in law and order. The rise in the crime rate which
bedevilled
us for years in the 1980s has been brought
firmly
under control…’

Seated on an uncomfortable folding chair in the front row, Jim Betts ought to have been scribbling. The thoughts running through his mind should have been cynical and witty, along the lines of wondering who precisely had been in charge of the nation’s well-being in the eighties. To hear the Home Secretary talk, it must have been a bunch of Martians. Any hint that those now so proudly disporting themselves on the platform might have been responsible, were in fact in office at the time, seemed wholly missing.

But the lines on his notepad were swimming in and out of focus and the pen was slithering uncontrollably all over the page. The room was unbearably hot and he loosened his tie. A sweat broke out on his face. He reached in his pocket to pull out his handkerchief and mop his brow, but no sooner was it done than he was sweating profusely again. With an effort he concentrated, screwing up his eyes against the television lights. He felt awful. At last the drone from the platform subsided and was replaced by solid if unenthusiastic applause from the large, well-dressed audience seated behind.

Now it was Dickson’s turn. A prize specimen these days, Betts reflected, charming, smooth, pleasant-looking but without the oleaginous film-star veneer of a Parkinson in his prime. His trademark appeared to be his friendly, open smile which engaged the entire audience in personal contact, so that they warmed to him even though harbouring doubts.

Betts twisted around gingerly to look at the audience. It was not that the faithful gathered here were hostile: on the contrary, they wanted to believe Dickson’s assertions that the election would certainly be won provided vigorous renewed efforts were made in the few days remaining, and were grateful for the sincerity with which he said it. In their heart of hearts, they hoped it was true.

He tried to concentrate his mind on the tall figure on the platform but a wave of nausea hit him. What on earth…? He must have caught a bug, summer flu or something. What a bloody nuisance. It was not, however, going to stop him crowning his career on
The Globe
with the scalp of yet another Cabinet minister. Dickson had only another half-hour of innocent freedom. Then he, Jim Betts, would confront him with the evidence of his long and no doubt passionate affair with Elaine Stalker. How the fur would fly. The headlines were forming in his imagination already. He licked his lips in anticipation.

Then the pain hit, as if a knife had been plunged into his guts, deep in, starting at his solar plexus, then twisting down, until with a strangled gasp he doubled up. The pen and notepad fell on the floor, but all eyes were loyally on the platform and nobody noticed. Again he reached for his handkerchief, but in wiping his face of its reamed sweat the smell of old cigarettes clinging to its grubby cotton made him feel suddenly terribly ill. He looked round wildly, struggling to regain
control. The nearest
EXIT
sign was to his left, but over on the far side was a gents’ toilet. He decided to make a run for the latter and rose unsteadily to his feet.

Halfway across the room, clutching his gut, he realised that he was about to be sick. A burst of applause gave him cover. With a wail of anguish he redoubled his efforts and pushed his protesting legs as fast as they would carry him, hoping to behave with more dignity once the door closed on him. But Jim Betts did not quite make it. No sooner did the door shut than he was on all fours on the tiled floor, vomiting copiously, a great yellow stream forming a growing puddle around him. He steadied himself as the first spasm passed, shaking off the lumps of gristle and half-digested chips deposited on his outstretched hands. Then his system shook and he retched again and again and again, until miserably he wondered if his very guts would come spewing out in their turn. Not until his body stilled did he react to the puddles messing his trousers. Then he had only a moment to struggle to his feet, reaching in his pocket once more for his handkerchief, before another seizure lower down in his abdomen threatened to tear him apart.

The meeting was drifting away. A large florid man came into the gents’ talking busily to a companion. Their noses wrinkled in distaste at the appalling smell and they picked their feet carefully over the mess on the floor, heading for the urinals on the far side. Not until their own need was relieved did they turn and spot the prostrate body of Jim Betts, reporter
extraordinaire
of
The Globe
, sprawled on the floor, his stained backside exposed to the air.

Being men of generally seemly if not abstemious habit themselves, naturally their first thought was that the chap was blind drunk, and should be left to sleep it off in his own filth. But there was no whiff of alcohol in all the pungent room. Consideration for others then took hold. For a moment they debated calling for hotel staff to clean up and have the man removed by the police. At last Betts’s strange colour and spasmodic twitching alerted the kindlier sides of their natures. While one stayed behind, making soothing noises and ineffectually trying to bathe Betts’s face, the other headed quickly for the foyer. This was not a joke nor a drunk. It was time to call an ambulance.

Twenty minutes later, as interest in the collapsed journalist waned, a curious observer might have heard Tracey the receptionist cursing in a most unladylike fashion as she took off her uniform jacket, rolled up her sleeves, pinned an ‘Out of Order’ note on the toilet door, filled a bucket and set to work clearing up. She had thought he was a better sort than this and had even considered giving him her phone number. He must have been drinking heavily on the side. It couldn’t be anything to do with her aunt’s cooking; nobody had ever complained before.