Sussex Drive: A Novel (28 page)
Greg’s hands landed heavily on her shoulders. She was mini-Raptured out of her chair and suddenly found herself at Carla Bruni’s table soiree. The talk was of electrolysis and Rouen. Greg stood guard.
Just behind them, Michelle Obama ostriched over the CBA and extended her black hand. “Jane!” she boomed, shaking the author’s lily-white paw. “Pardon me, but I’ve just got to tell you how much my kids LOVE
Warlock
. Barack and I take turns reading, and the girls made me promise to have you sign their copies.”
The CBA was diverted, at last.
Sarah Brown appeared by Becky’s side and announced that they would all receive personally signed editions of the CBA’s celebrated books, which would then be retrieved from the First Ladies and donated, in their country names, to an auction for British charity. “Isn’t that brilliant?”
Mrs. MI6 approached Greg and leaned in. “Your art is your
wife
, sir.”
Greg didn’t get this but Becky thought that she did.
After the Barack Hussein Obamas had piled into their armoured Beast, the press exhaled. The rest of the ruling
classes toddled, all hail-fellow-well-met, into their limos and crept back into the dankish London dark, avoiding the “kettled” rioters in the City.
In their car, Becky and Greg were, as usual, absolutely silent. She could discern that he was in a horrible mood. Rudd the Radical always got under his skin, Sarkozy was a mosquito, Berlusconi a putz, and the orgasmic cacophony about the U.S. president was hard for any Conservative prime minister to take.
Becky’s near slip hadn’t helped.
In the few months since Becky’s family room prorogation deal, much had changed: Chief was gone (and she’d had nothing to do with that,
nothing
), Doc was Chief, while Clark the Privy Clerk, like that kitchen slated for renovation but in desperate daily use, remained.
However, sitting three feet away from the PM tonight in this low-tech armoured car, in a domestic Iceland, the CBA’s assessment of her husband and his policies rang true-
ish
to her. For the first time.
He was on the BlackBerry, previewing a new ad campaign to brutally erode the reputation of the new Leader of the Opposition; suppressing late-breaking fallout from the RCMP drug ring scandal in Kandahar (which had gained traction); deflecting blistering orders from Obama’s own Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel (a.k.a. “Orahma”). Yet she didn’t feel a shred of empathy for his mini-concerns.
Her isolation had pushed Becky to reach out to old friends back in her Whitehorse home, and this new Internet
necklace of past acquaintances, the “How’s so-and-so?” or “Whatever happened to?” had led to fastening the clasp on the location of Nina Madrigal, Greg’s ex. She was living in Gatineau, Quebec—could you believe it? right across the river from them in Ottawa—and had lived there since splitting up with Greg and shedding the Yukon. She could probably have peeked in their bedroom window if she was so kinkily inclined and owned binoculars.
She’d agreed to meet Becky back in Canada. Was it right? Was it wrong? Becky didn’t know. She could no longer live with the silence, the mystery or the potentially outright lies he’d fed her. She’d put the Privy Council member’s revelations out of her head during the prorogation—for the party, for the majority, for Greg—but afterwards, with the unrelenting chill emanating from him and then her children, she’d thought of nothing but Nanton’s details and Greg’s tearful description of his breakup with Nina right before Becky made love with him in the front seat of his car.
Nina had nixed the secret service. It had to be private. Becky had to be alone. And no recording devices.
Greg and Becky arrived at Clarence House, passing the topiary pigs, big as army tanks, spotlit on the Mall. “Art” cultivated and curated by the Green King.
“Hogwash.” Greg picked imaginary and real lint off his lapel. The King Mother had insisted they stay with her at Clarence during the G20, if they could ignore the solar panels her progressive idiot son had installed on her roof.
The limo stopped.
“Get your act together,” Greg said, then hoofed it into the House.
When she caught up, Lawrence Apoonatuk, the new Canadian ambassador to France, even though his French was pretty
pauvre
, was attached to Greg’s ear in the foyer. Apoonatuk gave Becky a contemptuous pro forma bow, then followed Greg into a suite of offices with the Canadian delegation for the midnight briefing.
Chest-shaven Doc, now the new Chief—she called him Choc—closed the door in her face.
Choc off
.
Greg hadn’t said a word about Becky’s loveliness. She’d been draped tit to toe in skin-tight, cumulus-white Absolution couture with a peekaboo chiffon midriff. Her auburn tresses had been teased and glossed. He hadn’t even fucking once slipped a casual arm around her silk waist.
It was enough to make her fantasize south of the forty-ninth.
Before Becky could remove herself to their suite, the Clarence House steward, the night version, appeared. “Madame, I hope you had a good evening.”
“Yes,” Becky said. “Brilliant.”
“Your daughter has retired.”
Martha was with Becky and Greg in London. Becky believed Greg had invited her on a multi-tactical whim—as a human interest buffer, teen mascot, a curiosity for the Canadian media tagging along. Citizens would love to see
Canadian “royalty” hook up with one of the princes. Fortunately, from Becky’s POV, Prince Harry was in Helmand, calling in bombs on the Taliban insurgents and Pashtun-speaking newlyweds.
“Thank you,” Becky said to the steward. She stepped back outside for a breath of air. She was in the private garden, a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace, spectacular until the King shut down the lights at eleven to conserve energy. Behind the high walls, there was the rumble of London traffic and the peculiar
eeyore, eeyore
sirens of the police cars. Big Ben struck.
Becky phoned her mom. She was staying with the boys at 24 Sussex.
On the first ring, “What’s he like?”
Of course, Obama.
“I’m just watching CTV and it looks as though you and Greg arrived at Docklands right behind him and Michelle.”
“We met,” Becky said. “How are the boys? Is Peter taking his pills?”
“And she just looked so elegant. She’s tall, isn’t she? I just caught a glimpse of you in that silly hat beside her.”
“Mom, is Peter taking his—”
“Yes, Becky, yes, everything’s fine. Peter’s missing his big sister and Pablo’s missing you. The boys—they’re saying the author of the
Warlock
series was at the dinner too—”
“Yes.”
“Well, the boys want books autographed.”
“Right.”
“Being married to the PM of Canada is one thing, Becky, but when you’re breaking bread with President Obama! Be still my heart, and he and that Michelle have such chemistry! The way he folds his arms around her waist, and how they look at each other, and how he took her hand when they were waiting to meet King Charles and he whispered in her ear and made her laugh. So natural. So in synch.”
“Put Dad on,” Becky said.
She’d studied the White House website herself and the official photographer’s thousands of shots. The one she came back to was taken in a service elevator between inaugural balls, with Barack and Michelle’s hands on each other’s shoulders, foreheads locked, eyes open and steady, and his jacket draped over her Canadian designer gown to ward off any chill. PR had nothing to do with
that
.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Glenn said.
“Dad.”
“How’s my Second Lady?” he said. Her mother’s giggle echoed in one of the vast chambers of drafty, gloomy Gorff.
“Super,” she said, exhausted. Becky did find it odd that she spent more time talking to Glenn lately. In fact,
she
mostly called
him
. At Christmas, when she’d taken the children back to Whitehorse without Greg, she’d played long chess matches with Glenn; she’d snowshoed by his side for kilometres on the golf course.
“Hang in, princess,” he said. Her dad had unloaded his Hummer, joined a men’s group, was stoked about balance and sobriety. He laughed more, with big bursts from his
belly. That explained her mother’s giddiness, her chirps about the Obama intimacy, as if she’d been relocated at Viagra Falls.
Oh my God, Martha, in her nightgown, was walking out the main entrance of Clarence House.
“Mom?” Martha peered into the darkness. Her hair was nun short and she was Communion wafer thin, as if erasing her body or acting as surrogate dieter for the father who couldn’t stop stuffing his face.
“I’m here,” Becky called to her. “Coming.” She yelped, “Later,” into the phone. She was at Martha’s side before security could mobilize. “What is it, honeybee?”
“Taylor.”
“What about him?” Becky was so ready for Martha’s vulnerability.
“He called.”
Becky put a firm hand on her daughter’s back and steered her into Clarence House, past the curious servants and up the elevator to their third-floor quarters. The virgin Diana Spencer had stayed here before her marriage to the then ring-a-ding-ding prince, but best not to dwell on that. Once Becky had the door secured, she guided Martha to a settee.
“What did he want?”
“To talk. To you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“About?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Where is he?” But Becky already knew that he was in Resolute, Nunavut, about as far north and as far away as he could be within the realm, held in the grip of the North until his appearance before the Military Police Commission next week. Martha wasn’t supposed to know about the reprehensible Kandahar business.
“Nunavut.”
“He’s blocked on your phone.”
Martha averted her gaze.
“Is he blocked on your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Then how could he get through?”
“He called from a different number.” She reached up for a half inch of hair and pulled it. “To call from.”
“Have you been talking to him? Honeybee?”
“Yes.”
Becky realized she wasn’t surprised. Where would a young woman put the trauma? Becky had pretended to herself that Martha was unscarred, that the medical abortion was less mentally and physically arduous than the old-fashioned primitive route. She even remembered saying to her daughter that the procedure would be like an unusually heavy menstrual period. At night in bed, she’d told herself that Martha’s youth had protected her from the crushing guilt still affecting Becky’s oldest girlfriends, now mothers, who ticked off phantom birthdays every year with unbearable melancholy.
And where would a sweet girl like Martha bury her love for a decent crippled war hero, with mutton chops and
puppy dog cheeks, who’d been put on a pedestal by her father the Prime Minister?
“You miss him,” Becky said. “Don’t you?”
Martha closed her eyes. “Yes.”
“Does he talk about your decision?”
“He just says he understands. That it was my choice.” Martha folded over into Becky’s lap. “I’d be in the third trimester, Mom.”
Becky held her. The pattern of the candelabra imprinted on her daughter’s cotton nightgown.
“Do you know why I liked him so much?” Martha raised herself on an arm.
“Why, honey?”
“He was so gentle. He wasn’t angry, you know? So different from Dad.”
Becky took that in. “That’s important,” she said.
“It is,” Martha said. “Isn’t it?” She was quiet. “Night, Mom.”
“T
AYLOR.”
“Mrs. Leggatt, thank you for calling me back.”
“You’re in a lot of trouble, Taylor,” Becky said.
There was an oil portrait of the older, well-seasoned Princess Di in the sunroom. Her blue eyes egged Becky on as she paced with her cell.
“Mrs. Legg—Becky.”
“
Numero uno
, you are not to contact my daughter using any form of communication on earth, be it phone, mail, carrier pigeon, text, telepathy, prayer, nothing. It constitutes harassment and there are charges for that.
Numero dos
, if I were you, I’d be focusing upon that appearance next week in Ottawa, where you’ve become the star of an international disgrace for Canada and
NATO
, jeopardizing security and the sacrifices made by your fallen brothers and sisters in uniform. Impugning your superiors. Exploiting the young women—”
“That is what I want to talk to you about, Becky.”
“There is nothing under the sun or moon or stars you could possibly want to talk to me about. Unless you want to discuss your betrayal of our trust, the national trust, regarding your intimate relationship with my daughter. How did you think it would look—running a drug and prostitution ring with the Afghans and then ruining the Prime Minister’s daughter? My own girl! Do you have a clue?”
“That is what I want to talk to you about.”
“Talk!” Becky surged. “Now.”
“I have had a lot of time to think, Mrs. Leggatt. Since the IED fourteen months ago—”
“I don’t want to get into—”
“Pardon me, but you don’t know the whole story.”
“I do.”
“With respect, you do not. They have only my testimonies with redactions—”