This Honourable House (9 page)

There had been evenings when they had curled up together in their nightclothes, not bothering to try. Benedict slept better like that than after a session of sexual struggle, when he would moan in restless slumber and wake drenched in sweat. They had learned to cuddle like children: she would lie away from him on her side, her knees tucked into her abdomen, hugging herself, and he would be curled prone behind her, his hands over hers, his shins pressed neatly against her legs, their private parts not touching.

He had not lied to her. He had never had full sex with a woman. He had told her that frankly, and she had found the knowledge intriguing, that she would be the only one. He was not entirely a beginner either, he had led her to believe, but those early experiences had been mere fumblings and had brought no understanding or joy. Indeed, he had been so young they had amounted to abuse, though he did not retain any lasting ill memories or bitterness. Only a yearning for true, unselfish love. When asked who it had been, the answer was a shrug and ‘Someone older.’

When she reran the fractured conversations through her mind, she realised with a start that she had assumed that this older person was female. It stood to reason: Benedict was an attractive man, which must have been manifest throughout his youth. She had wondered, but without asking him, whether it might have been one of his mother’s friends. Ultra-respectable though Maddie Ashworth herself might be, Christine could imagine no end of fevered matrons scheming to lay their middle-aged paws on the youngster. It was said that nice Mr Major had sown his wild oats with a thirty-three-year-old divorcee, a neighbour, much to the chagrin of his family. The plot of
The Graduate
was not entirely fanciful.

But if that were the case – if Benedict’s initiation, however limited, had been with an older woman – that still left a mystery. He could manage everything except penetration, it seemed, but
that
was the object of the exercise. Without it they were, as a married couple, going nowhere. Had Christine been a virgin on her wedding day, she would still be a virgin now.

She shook her head as if to escape these dismal reflections. Determined to get a grip, she
removed two of the pictures from the wall and examined them. Both were of college days, ranks of men and a few girls in formal dress posing for an official record. The frame was simple, black and gold, the lettering ornate and filigreed: the name of the university, a coat-of-arms, the faculty and the year. In the middle of the front row, smug in his billowing gown, mortar-board in his lap, sat Andrew Marquand, the youngest head of department that the ancient seat of learning had appointed for a century. When he resigned to stand for Parliament his colleagues had been scandalised. ‘You could be Provost one day,’ they had told him.

‘That’s why I’m leaving,’ was the reply, which none of them understood.

The back of one picture was loose. Christine poked at it curiously. Something moved beneath her fingers. A piece of paper or thin card had been inserted between the picture and the backing. Using her nails Christine managed to catch hold of it, and pulled it out.

It was another photo, in black and white, far less formal than those that had graced the wall a minute ago. This one showed three men, their chests bared, on a sunny beach. Their arms were flung intimately about each other’s shoulders, their hair was ruffled by the breeze. The man to the left of the picture was gawky and unfamiliar; Christine ignored him. In the trio’s centre was Marquand, his dark hair wet and tousled and an extraordinary grin on his face. He was being kissed on the cheek by the third young man, clearly for the benefit of the camera.

That third man was Benedict, who looked fresh and innocent, yet knowing at the same time. And, it had to be confessed, utterly relaxed and very happy.

With a small cry Christine dropped the frame and its contents. It fell awkwardly on to the rug and broke apart at the corners, the black and gold edges flying away from each other. The photographs fluttered and lay still, picture side up. The kiss and the leer on Marquand’s lips were there for anyone to see.

‘What’s the matter, darling?’ Benedict emerged from the study, stretching stiffly, Lawrence behind him.

His eyes went at once to the broken frame, then to the empty space on the wall, then to his wife’s shocked face. He strode across and picked up the pictures without a word. He made as if to calm her, then seemed to think better of it as she shrank away.

‘We’ll be another half-hour,’ he said, in a low voice, as he ushered Lawrence back into the smaller room. ‘Why don’t you go over to the House and get something to eat?’

But Christine had already grabbed her coat, and was gone.

Frank Bridges gazed at his wife’s new hat and sighed. ‘You’ll definitely get noticed in that,’ he said, and tried to make his tone complimentary.

Hazel removed the pink silk topper with its oversized silk roses and veil. Balancing it on one finger she twirled it around. ‘That’s the whole idea,’ she announced, with spirit. ‘It’s rather fetching, don’t you think? It’ll be in all the papers tomorrow.’

‘Yes, but what is
supposed
to be on the front pages, next to the Queen radiant in the Crown Jewels as she emerges from her sodding gold coach, is the PM and his wife. Wreathed in smiles. Her with her enormous pregnant bump. If his luck holds she’ll deliver the blinkin’ baby right there, in front of everybody. They’re the ones who are supposed to look fetching, not us.’

‘Oh, come on.’ Hazel fitted the hat roguishly on her head and began to pirouette. ‘You’re taking loyalty a bit far. It’ll be a big plus for the government if other members of it beside the Boss and his sprouting spouse are in the height of fashion. What would you prefer – a cloth cap?’

‘It might be cheaper,’ Frank muttered. He was unsure how much the milliner had charged and did not dare ask.

‘Darling Frank.’ She sidled up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, the blue eyes wide. ‘This little titfer will do you no harm, I promise you. It’ll draw attention to your wonderful Transport Bill and how vitally important you are to the party. I’ll be up in the gallery and I’ll be so proud of you.’

‘That’s something.’ Frank was mollified. His former wife had never wanted to attend the great occasions and had had to be bullied to make any kind of public appearance. In contrast Hazel practised the wifely duties with gusto. If sometimes she went over the top – and he feared the hat was one such example – he was torn. At least it meant, as she had implied, that the Bridges would be in the papers, when colleagues as worthy were forgotten.

He wished, however, that she was not quite so demanding. It was only the start of the parliamentary season and he was already exhausted. Hazel seemed to have no understanding that a man of his age needed his sleep. The frolics the night before had not been the finest preparation for a day in the spotlight. And he had felt such a fool.

‘Heavens, you’re so old-fashioned.’ Hazel had hitched up the yellow and black silk basque and patted the creamy bosom that billowed out over the top. Her curvaceous thighs seemed to form a heart shape, the knees deliciously rounded. ‘You fancy me in this get-up, don’t you?’

Frank had seized the opportunity to sit up on the edge of the bed. Not for the first time he had blenched at the shaggy grey of his chest hair. He could barely see his thighs for his podgy belly. The naked legs were spindlier than he would have liked. A varicose vein bulged on his calf. He had gazed at Hazel out of slightly bloodshot eyes. ‘Darling, you know I adore it,’ he said weakly. ‘Agent Provocateur has done you proud. How much did you say it cost?’

‘Never you worry.’ Hazel had giggled. ‘A bob or two. Wait, I need to adjust the suspender. It’s got twisted.’ She rolled over on her back on the vast expanse of white linen.

Frank told himself for the umpteenth time that he ought to be counting his blessings, not feeling ungrateful. It was fortunate that the Secretary of State’s official London residence was large enough to take the king-size bed Hazel had requested as a wedding present, the better, she said, to please him in. He was happy with the bed, he was thrilled with the outrageous outfit, he was sated with pleasure. Mostly.

He gritted his teeth. He did not want to risk losing Hazel’s affections; any further adverse publicity about his love-life was taboo. What he was unhappy about was being asked to do too much. And, worse, being ordered to do what he regarded as utterly unnatural. Not any strange acts, Hazel’s tastes did not run that far – or, at least not at present. It was what she wanted him to shout out loud
that seared him.

His gorgeous spouse flexed a shapely leg in the air and began to unfasten the sliver of black velvet that passed for a suspender from the lacy top of the seamed stocking. It was a precursor, he knew, to the moment when he could unhook the basque and get his hands on the majestic untrammelled flesh. She wriggled her toes. ‘Oooh, that’s better,’ she crooned. Then she sat up and prodded her husband’s back. ‘Come on, darling, for your baby,’ she wheedled. ‘It’s not much to ask. But when you say it, it really turns me on. Makes me go wild with desire. Please? Pretty please?’

There would be no rest till he gave in. A heavy day on the morrow notwithstanding, Frank had neither inclination nor energy to fight his wife. He had, after all, married her with precisely such nights of passion in mind. It was not fair to feel resentful that the pressures of his post and the ravages of middle age threatened to defeat him in mid-exercise. Had he wanted an easy life he could have stayed with Gail. With Hazel he had obligations.

He got down on the floor with a world-weary sigh. ‘Okay, sweetheart, whatever you want.’

Hazel knelt at the end of the bed, clutching the edge and leaning forward so that her fabulous bosom almost leaped out of its corset. Frank swallowed: such a sight usually brought on a powerful erection immediately. With Hazel, potency was no problem. It was what she urged him to do next that went against the grain. A man, a real man, should not have to grovel. A man was meant to be in charge.

He was on all fours, the broad back swaying, white buttocks prominent. ‘
Darling
’ he hissed between his teeth, ‘Darling, I am your servant. Your complete and abject slave. You are my master. Please, master, you are in charge. You are the boss. I am but the dirt beneath your fingernails. Humiliate me, do what you want with me …’

Frank groaned at the memory and shuddered. Hazel was giving him strange glances, as if she guessed what was running through his head. She was entwining herself around his arm and threatening to deposit beige Pan Stik on his lapel. Her perfume – Oscar de la Renta, wasn’t it? – would cling to his jacket if he wasn’t careful. Colleagues would sniff at him and tease. Quickly he kissed her mouth. ‘You’ll be terrific, sweetheart, and everyone will envy me. But don’t chatter when the PM’s on his feet, will you? And wherever you are, even in the loo, keep smiling. Ears and eyes everywhere. This’ll be a great day for us, and don’t you forget it.’

‘Sure,’ said Hazel, and danced lightly away from him, the shimmering pink hat in hand.

The Serjeant-at-Arms peered over the top of his half-moon spectacles. In a previous incarnation Major-General Sellers had commanded troops in Northern Ireland, in the South Atlantic, in Bosnia and Belize. This was supposed to be a retirement job, but at times he wished the distinguished appointment board had preferred one of the other candidates. Facing the Argies on a windswept hill or flushing out Serbs from Muslim villages was kinder to the blood pressure than coping with the myriad fatuous demands made on him at the State Opening of Parliament.

Her Majesty, thank heavens, had come and gone without mishap. That had been the main priority. She had managed to stay sufficiently ahead of her son and his partner to outwit every cameraman who had tried to capture the Queen and Camilla together. Not that it mattered: their picture desks would create a photo-montage anyway.

Her Majesty had indeed remained with her peers. She had spent her entire time in the Lords, and Sellers had not seen her in the flesh.

Their lordships’ House was the fiefdom of Black Rod, his opposite number, a retired admiral of impeccable aristocratic lineage. It was Black Rod, not himself, who greeted the Queen on her throne, Black Rod who marched in black stockings and silver-buckled shoes down the short corridor, across Central Lobby, past Churchill’s and Lloyd George’s statues to the entrance of the Commons. The lintel had been badly damaged during the war when the chamber had been destroyed; on
Churchill’s instruction the broken arch had been left intact, as a memorial and reminder. The shoe of the great man’s bronze statue was shiny with the fingers of those who had touched it for luck, but Black Rod would not have been in their number. For then the carved wooden door was slammed in his face.

Every step was redolent of history. The whole charade commemorated an incident central to western democracy. Three hundred and fifty years before, the Queen’s ancestor, Charles I, had reputedly ridden into the Commons chamber on a white horse and tried to arrest five MPs who had opposed him. Furious, he had turfed the Speaker out of his chair and demanded that the recalcitrants be identified and brought to him. Speaker Lenthall had knelt before the King. ‘Sire, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, except as this House doth command me.’ The fugitives had been spirited away to the river. The King, no fool, remarked drily, ‘I see my birds have flown,’ turned on his heel and left the chamber. No monarch had ever been permitted to enter it since.

It might have been wise, Sellers reflected, had the King left it there. Instead armies were raised, cuirasses and helmets polished and Englishmen went to battle for the first and only time with each other. The outcome was commemorated in the brass plaque on the steps of Westminster Hall where the King stood after a show trial, condemned to death. And outside postured the grim statue of the victor, Oliver Cromwell: a tyrant to many, but to parliamentarians the Lord Protector of parliamentary rights against tyranny, and thus a hero on a day such as this.

For Black Rod, the Queen’s Messenger, had the door closed to him, and had to bang hard on it three times, and wait as it was flung open. The Members inside would shuffle and titter and sit up straight. During tours by constituents they would tap the mark on the door where the battering was done, and recount the remarkable story to gum-chewing children and footsore pensioners. Black Rod, the ebony wand of office on his shoulder, would advance several paces. He would bow to the Speaker, who gathered up her robes. And in a stentorian voice, refined by a cultured accent, would intone, ‘The Queen commands this Honourable House,’ – he bowed once again to the Speaker, once left to the government benches, then right to the opposition, who would bow back, and try not to giggle ‘to attend upon Her Majesty in the House of Peers.’ Then, like Charles I before him, the messenger would turn smartly and exit, but at a measured pace, his expression solemn, his mouth twitching, and be followed by a gaggle of frontbenchers falling in hurriedly, two by two, trying to catch the focus of the television cameras, and then by a horde of backbenchers anxious to do the same.

Once the Queen had made her speech outlining the government’s forthcoming programme, had handed it back with a barely suppressed sniff to the Lord Great Chamberlain, and had processed out the way she had come, with her relatives at a respectful distance, a sense of anticlimax prevailed. Peers and peeresses in scarlet robes tipped with ermine strolled aimlessly in their end of the Palace and queued for taxis to go to lunch. Backbenchers collected spouses, or trotted off to the television studios to analyse the speech, denouncing or praising its contents with fervour. And those who had left it a bit late to get tickets for the afternoon’s debate would hasten to the Serjeant’s office and badger him mercilessly, as if the gallery’s capacity could be trebled at a snap of his fingers.

The young man before him exuded an intensity the Major-General had observed before in raw recruits who had not seen blood or savoured the realities of a battlefield. Yet he was no teenager, but wore a smart suit and had a decent haircut. There was something familiar about the eyes, but in the rush Sellers was unable to pinpoint it. Was he supposed to recognise this man? Was he a relative of a Member? Sellers shook his head and indicated his list. ‘Ms Clark hasn’t arranged any tickets, I’m afraid. Perhaps she intended to, but she isn’t the best organised lady.’

The man cleared his throat nervously. ‘I’m sure Diane wouldn’t forget.’

‘You’d be surprised.’ The Serjeant-at-Arms adjusted his spectacles. ‘You a constituent?’

‘No. I’ve come to work in her office.’

‘Ah, have you indeed? Lucky chap.’ Sellers gave him a swift glance. Ms Clark’s tastes had not altered with her accession to office. Lamb to the slaughter.

Another Member burst in, envelope in hand. ‘Can’t stop. Taking my mother to lunch in the Members’ Dining-Room,’ he announced, to nobody in particular. ‘But she wants to catch the three o’clock back to Scunthorpe so I’ve a spare ticket. Anyone want it?’

The Serjeant smiled, letting his teeth show, and whipped the cream envelope out of the man’s fingers. Then he peered once more over his spectacles at the anxious young supplicant. ‘Tell Ms Clark that next time I won’t be so indulgent. I do have a waiting list, you know. Enjoy the show.’

The hat had become a liability, Hazel decided, but she was unsure whether it would be safe left in the scruffy cupboard in the Family Room. What a dusty, horrid place that was, with its nasty chintz and worn carpet and indescribable pictures. A few Russell Flints of half-naked ladies would do the place a world of good. And they ought to go shopping in Ikea like everyone else. So, the hat: two hundred and fifty quid’s worth of silk and tulle, the most expensive single accessory she had ever bought. A ridiculous extravagance, but what else would Frank spend his salary on if not her? And, if the flashing cameras outside were any guide, it had been worth every penny. The afternoon editions had featured it and it would take pride of place on tomorrow’s front pages. The front pages, no less, as if the new Mrs Bridges were the standard-setter for the whole government. Whatever Frank might say, he was partial to seeing his wife trumpeted by the tabloids as a style icon. Better than that old frump he had discarded.

Though one unfortunate effect might be that Gail would be stung into another slanging match. Why couldn’t she see that the game was over? The stupid cow had
lost
. Lost him, lost her position in the world, lost every vestige of respect. Why couldn’t she simply retire from the scene and go to sleep on a bench somewhere? Or volunteer for a charity, maybe, if she wanted to shine in the public eye. Anything rather than be a nuisance.