A Woman's Place (46 page)

‘You won't have me because you don't love me, I can see that,' Fred muttered gruffly. He pulled his hand away from hers and shoved it deep into his pocket. ‘And you're probably right – I'm not up to much. But I love you, Karen, I really do. I've thought about it a lot. I was going to ask you anyway, but this awful business of Anthony's death has brought it to a head.'

He turned to her, his face creased with anxiety. ‘Please don't say no. Please, just think about it. If you prefer I won't mention it again. But the proposal is there. Whenever you want.'

He jumped up to bring the dreadful exchange to an end. ‘I have to get back. Are you coming this way? Of course not – LSE is further down. God, I'm so stupid.'

Reluctantly Karen rose at his side. Her heart was in as much turmoil as his, but for different reasons. She did not trust herself to speak but kissed him softly on the cheek. That made things worse: awkwardly he tried to put his arms round her, but she slid away, and set off rapidly towards the Strand.

The man who had walked across the bridge had witnessed the parting of the young couple, who appeared to have had some kind of tiff. The girl looked vaguely familiar. He realised after some thought that she attended his Tai-kwondo class on Tuesday nights. Perhaps he would mention to her next time that he was sorry she had had a row with her boyfriend. Not that he was interested in her himself, of course. His lady love was closer to his own age, and much more beautiful. 

She must not visit him in that horrible hostel. For the moment it was both convenient and convincing; but as soon as he was in his own place he would invite her. She might need a little persuasion, but given time she would come round. Then the happy times could commence. He had waited long enough.

He stopped at the empty bench and ran his fingers over the seat where the warm bodies had raised the temperature of the stone. How strange the traces that human beings leave behind. An
infra-red
picture would show for at least another half-hour, even in chilly weather, that people had sat here. He smiled to himself. He never felt the cold.

Many changes were coming. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the bottle of tablets. For a moment he turned the bottle over and read the label carefully, his lips moving with the words. He no longer needed them. With a flourish he tossed the bottle in the bin, and walked calmly away.

Ted Bampton sat on the edge of his bed in his underpants and muttered grumpily to himself. In his state of undress the ravages of the years were all too apparent. Rolls of white flesh engulfed his middle, sparsely covered by chest hair like grey sheep's wool. The brown-mottled shins, the spindly, under-muscled limbs and the pendulous near-breasts bore witness to days spent behind a desk and evenings cradling a pint or attending political dinners. As she examined him covertly from the bathroom his wife Jean was troubled. It was not true that only women aged badly. In unfavourable circumstances men did too – faster, and worse.

‘Where are my clean socks? I thought I put 'em out last night and now I can't find 'em.'

Jean came into the bedroom wiping her face on a towel. She nodded at the bed. ‘You're sitting on them.'

Bampton grunted, shifted, found the socks and pulled them on. Wordlessly his wife pointed around the room at the fresh shirt, the brushed suit, the tie and braces, hung up ready. As he groped for a handkerchief and hunted for his keys she moved quietly to help with his tie. ‘Something's eating you, Ted. What is it?'

‘That bloody referendum. I think we're going to lose it.'

She stood back in shock. ‘Surely not. The Prime Minister wouldn't have called one if he thought he'd lose.'

‘You have more faith than I, sweetheart. Or more sense than any of us. Winter's a stupid time to have a vote, anyhow. We called it to unite the party and we've failed catastrophically – they're all over the place. And, as de Gaulle complained when he lost his last one in 1969, the electors appear to be voting on a question which is not on the ballot paper.'

The tie was straight. Jean patted her husband's shoulders as she might a lump of warm dough destined for the oven. ‘I don't follow you.'

Bampton checked his wallet and pulled on his jacket. ‘We thought the issue was whether the United Kingdom should join the single currency. You know my views on that – I hate the whole idea, but if it's there we must join. Can't get left behind. But the nation is busy weighing up the government and finds us wanting. I feel like a gladiator in a Roman arena waiting for the thumbs-down. Any minute.'

As he kissed his wife on the cheek she smiled wanly. ‘I don't pretend to understand, Ted, but if you tell me I should vote for it I will.'

‘Good girl. We could do with a few more like you,' Bampton grunted approvingly. It was not his way to express affection to his wife, even when they were alone: except in bed, and then not often. Their loyalty was solid enough not to require constant reinforcement. Yet this morning felt different.

The doorbell rang – his Ministry driver, as ever on time. Ted picked up his red boxes, his back hunched and tired. ‘The aggro is coming from women voters. I wish they were more of your mind, Jean. You're a good woman, you know that? You don't argue with me and mess me about, not when it comes to my job, and I don't interfere with you. You know your place – running things here in the home, bringing up the girls, and not bothering yourself with silliness outside. Why can't the rest be like that? Makes life much easier.'

Jean laughed, a slow reassuring chuckle. ‘Because women don't know their place any more, and many wouldn't be content to live the way we do. More fool them, I suppose. But it suits me.'

At the door he turned. ‘I suppose we're a bit old fashioned, the pair of us.'

‘So what? We're more typical of couples in this country than the feminists would believe. And the happier for it.'

‘Thank God for that.'

‘Off you go, Ted. Will you be late home tonight?'

Jim Betts had to confess that he would be heartily glad when the European referendum was over and done. He could arouse not a scrap of enthusiasm for either side. Both lots seemed crackpots with an element of the sinister. The desire of the antis to remain big fish in a small pond was natural: tiddlers in a puddle, more like it. But they seemed to think all the advantages of the Common Market would continue regardless, including the attraction of Britain for Japanese money, even if the country pulled out. On anybody's guess that was unrealistic. On the other hand, Heath and his acolytes hoped to be more than mere minnows in a Brussels fish-tank. Most politicians lived to tell other people what to do, whatever their cant about individual freedom. Power-mad, the lot of them.

It was much easier to write about their personal lives. Jim Betts was well aware that he had made his reputation with ripe prose and riper situations, for some of which he took credit for setting up in the first place. His conscience did not cost him a wink of sleep. What if a sharp eye and a quiet word in the right place led to the rental of an empty basement in a Minister's home by a convicted prostitute? The fool should have kept his house to himself and not been so greedy. And how about the arrangement with a foreign polo club owner to photograph Prince Charles in the shower room? But a bloke who waltzed naked in front of hotel windows shouldn't get too upset to find himself full frontal in the newspapers. Pity only the Germans had published the royal flush. It might have done wonders for the Prince's popularity.

The era of exotic living seemed to have waned among MPs. These days they got involved not in toe-sucking sessions with out-of-work actresses but in altercations with anti-motorway demonstrators, after which they resigned with alacrity. One or two had even started to resign over issues of principle, an alarming development. The latest scandal involved payment to peers to ask questions, though why anybody should bother was beyond the wit of man.

Maybe that relentless scrutiny really had driven the Members into good behaviour, or at least to greater caution. Maybe they were so poverty-stricken that their entire free time was taken up earning an honest copper writing novels. Or perhaps they were just smarter at covering their tracks. The political world would be a dismal place if that were so, and he might have to work a lot harder.

What of the chap at the top – how vulnerable was he? Betts brooded, chin on hands. The fact was, Roger Dickson was a stupendous liar, cheat and hypocrite. He might appear to be the devoted family man, but in a previous incarnation, not that long before, he had had a lover, and one not so far from home. In the House of Commons, in fact. She was a Minister herself now, which made her trebly interesting, though it seemed likely that the affair was finished. Only he, Betts, knew about it. But he could not see how to prove it.

Yet did that matter? If he spread a little pitch, would it not stick? He chewed his moustache. His scruples suggested he must be getting old himself. Once he would not have hesitated – the details would have been all over the front pages before you could say ‘Scoop!' But that was before the deputy news editorship, the large car and the comfortable expense account. A place on the board was hinted at, as soon as Thwaite retired. To publish a story he could not substantiate would lead straight to a libel case – Dickson would not hesitate. The
Globe
's owner, in pursuit of respectability, had become a member of the Press Complaints Commission. Betts would be out on his ear sharpish.

He sighed, then brightened. There was always entertainment to be had. Reflections on both Anthony York and Dickson's erstwhile paramour nudged his thoughts in a single direction. He pulled out a small black book and began to flick through its pages.

In the few moments before the debate began, Elaine seated herself on the dark green leather to the left of the dispatch box, tidied her skirt over her knees, adjusted her earrings and reminded herself to smile, but not too much. The black-eyed remote cameras opposite, slung beneath the public gallery, were on watch. The rules covering Commons broadcasts gave editors nightmares. Obliged to provide
a mere record of events and to discourage demonstrations, controllers were not allowed to cut away to Members who were not speaking or to perform a quick swivel to an interesting noise in the gallery. Nevertheless Ministers and front-benchers were always on show. Should she grimace or wriggle or scratch her head, a million people would see.

Both floor and benches were littered with crumpled papers from the previous business. Beside her the whip rose, bobbed to the Deputy Speaker and murmured the time-honoured formula: ‘I beg to move, that this House do now adjourn.'

With a buzz of relief Members sauntered out and headed for bars or clubs or home. There would be no more votes. Only fanatics would stay behind for a debate on the most insignificant issue of all to the Commons: the provision of child care for Members and their staff.

Derek Harrison slid along the second bench and bent low behind Elaine. His presence startled her and she caught her breath.

‘You answering this, Mrs Stalker?' he whispered in her ear.

‘Not exactly. No Minister needs to respond – it's the House's business, not the government's. But I'll listen and intervene if necessary.'

‘Personal interest, then? Not planning any more children, are you?'

Elaine twisted round to find Harrison's face only a few inches from her own. His skin was slightly oily and smelled of that morning's aftershave, mixed with cigarettes and, faintly, whisky. A tuft of hair in his ear was black and springy. She recrossed her legs and smoothed her hands over her thighs.

‘Why, Derek – is that an offer?'

He snorted and moved away. For a brief moment Elaine reflected wistfully how pleasant it would have been to work in an organisation where intimidation and bullying were frowned upon and perpetrators got the sack. She longed to develop a sense of humour about it, or a capacity to turn the other cheek. At Westminster the only way to respond to people like Harrison was as she had just done, which for her was an effort and out of character. Yet to her disgust he had been triumphantly voted on to the executive of the '22 Committee, the return of the prodigal, as if its politicians wished to celebrate in public the values so many held dear in private.

Alan Beith, MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed for over twenty years and chairman of the House of Commons Commission, gazed ruefully as the audience dwindled. Short, verging on the tubby, cheery, the very essence of the Methodist lay preacher and former politics lecturer, he knew his task was to persuade the House not to vote for child care but merely to think about it.

‘The usual way in which new or extended services are provided to the House…' he intoned.

Elaine counted heads. Apart from the Deputy Speaker and Harrison, Beith was the only other man in the Chamber; ten women Members, mostly Labour, had settled down in isolated clumps to listen. She wondered what had happened to the younger male MPs who had small children. Gone home to help bath them and put them to bed? Fat chance, in most cases.

A Labour woman MP, smartly dressed, neatly coiffed and ambitious, was on her feet. ‘We have come a long way since October 1979 when Mr Patrick Jenkin, then Secretary of State, said on BBC television, “If the good Lord had intended us to have equal rights at work He wouldn't have created man and woman.”'

‘I wouldn't be so sure,' came a deep growl behind Elaine. Harrison had clearly decided to stay and make trouble.

Next it was the turn of a Conservative. The floor was taken by an older distinguished MP, Member for a Midlands urban seat for thirty years. Dame Mathilda Matthews was no friend to the reformers; on the contrary.

‘There are at least five reasons why I am against this proposition,' she began alarmingly. Elaine observed the stolid body in its expensive but cosy knitted suit, the gaudy jewellery, the
over-heavy
make-up. When the dame had entered the House it was a huge achievement for a woman. All the more disappointing that she appeared so unwilling to help others.

‘Our workload gets inexorably heavier and most Members need more space than ever before for their filing cabinets, computers and papers. It is extraordinary to suggest that there is some
wide-open
space that could be used for a crèche. We are here to work.'

Elaine listened unhappily. Dame Mathilda was in full flow, her ample form quivering with righteous indignation. ‘Babies and toddlers would be noisy and costly!' she cried. ‘We would need a permanent crèche all year round. We could have a thousand children, babies and toddlers in this place!'

‘Might talk more sense than you!' came the cat-calls, followed by hoots of derision from Opposition benches.

Baffled and heaving, the dame eventually gave up. Elaine suddenly realised why it was so hard to make progress. There would always be Dame Mathildas who would support the enemy's case and in so doing give credence to the male presumption that the dear ladies were unsuited to rational argument.

Another Labour speech came and went. At last it was Harrison's turn. He rose and elaborately adjusted his cuffs as if the entire discussion was a joke. His voice floated silkily.

‘What I principally object to is the collectivisation of child care around the place of work. It is an Orwellian picture. I say to the proposal, “No, no, no.”'

As Elaine fumed silently, the whip nearby sighed, checked the clock and opened his blue folder. Without bothering to hide it from the Minister he wrote, ‘Harrison – calm, convincing.' Then with a crisp movement the file was snapped shut and replaced on the bench. The business of the day was over.

As the Rover slid away from New Palace Yard, Elaine kicked off her shoes and lifted her legs up on to the seat. In front she caught the eye of Sheila, reflected in the mirror.

‘It's my own fault. I shouldn't allow the Neanderthals to get under my skin like that.' Elaine had been describing her encounter with Harrison. Her accurate imitations of both him and Dame Mathilda had made her driver laugh out loud.

‘It's harder in some ways for women today,' Sheila mused. At the entrance gate to Parliament Square the vehicle waited until a police officer stopped the traffic. ‘When I was young a mother only worked if she had to, and there was more sympathy.'