Anyway, he made us some really nice strong espresso in this Italian pot he’s got, and we spent another busy day going round everywhere we could think of and showing people the photo of Nas. I asked Richard whether he didn’t have other things he needed to be doing, at the House, but he said this was more important, and I really appreciated that. He even used his high-level contacts to get us an appointment at the Albanian embassy. Not that any of it did any good, but at least we tried. Richard said he wanted to be back in Ipswich tonight, so he came back on the train with me, and walked me back to Cora’s. When I walked into the kitchen there was a dreadful fug, and none too pleasant a smell. She was boiling up yarrow and elderflower in the deep-fat fryer, apparently with the intention of putting the resultant virulent-looking green gloop in her bath ‘to stimulate the system’. I’m not quite sure whether she meant her own system, or if its invigorating properties are directed at the waste water pipes.
I was just going to go and get out my bike to go to Pat and Pat’s for the WITCH meeting when the doorbell rang and it was Richard again, asking if he could give me a lift, so of course I said why didn’t he come along to help me tell everyone about our search for Nasreen. So he did – and he even dropped me off home afterwards. Cora came out to the door when I was saying goodbye, I guess she had heard the car, and she asked Richard in politely for a cup of tea, but it didn’t seem a very good idea. She looked anxious. Even under the orange of the street lights I could see that her skin had gone a slightly greenish colour, and there was a faint aroma of the compost heap rising from underneath her dressing gown. I thought I’d better get her inside and sort her out.
But how is Frankie? Have you engaged in any expansion coupling yet? Has he let you tinker with his ballcock and free his hopper head, or given your downpipes a good rodding? In fact, just help yourself from the whole rich panoply of plumbing pantagruelism.
Love,
Margaret xxx
From: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent: 2/6/05 23:33
To: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Hi Margaret! I’m sorry you’ve drawn a blank on finding Nasreen. But what is going on with you and Richard? Sniffing his bedclothes, picturing him without his tie? I think you may have been out of the market for so long that you’ve forgotten how to recognise the symptoms. All right, so your mind has been on other things, and I know he’s old enough . . . well, old enough to be your MP, but really, chuck, wake up and smell the rich roast Italian espresso!
As for Frankie, well, he’s certainly very handy with his toolbox. I might even consider letting him connect up my ring-seal, and that’s not normally something I enjoy. ‘Pantagruelism’ is worth a 7.5.
Hugs,
Becs xxx
From: Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent: 3/6/05 22:41
To: Michael Carragan [[email protected]]
Hi Mike,
I took her back to Ipswich last night for her meeting, even went along to the coven with her to hold her hand (though sadly only figuratively). They were surprisingly warm and welcoming, or perhaps merely distracted from their man-eating habits by concern for the missing member of the pack. If things turned nasty I was planning to whip out the talisman of my recent achievement in feminist policy reform, but in the end it wasn’t necessary, nor did it seem quite appropriate. I drove her home, leaving her in the hands of her landlady, whose skin tones resemble those of Morticia Addams. (I wonder if she has some rare disease.)
I picked her up first thing this morning, and we resumed our quest. I had borrowed the photo of Nasreen overnight and run off some copies of a ‘Missing’ poster on my printer at the Ipswich flat, and today we went back to a lot of the same places as yesterday, putting up the posters, and talking to people again. We even had lunch à deux in a little Albanian restaurant in Soho, rendered ever so slightly less intime by Margaret cross-examining all the waitresses over the bean soup and fërgesë me piperka. When it got to about six o’clock, just when I was hoping she might stay over with me again, she suddenly announced that she was going to see her grandmother in Hampshire, and would I drop her at the station. It turned out that the voluminous rucksack she had been lugging about all day (resolutely refusing my chivalrous offers of assistance) contained a large number of paperback novels, and whole set of clean sheets as well as a sleeping bag. I wondered whether they don’t have their own bedding in Hampshire, or whether her grandmother lives some kind of spartan nomadic existence, without such fripperies, but thought it unwise to inquire too closely. I took her to Waterloo, gave her a peck on the cheek, and trudged off home.
I am a very bad person, though, Michael, because I found myself wishing that Nasreen would stay missing, so that I could spend every day just like today, walking around London, or sitting on the bus or Tube, with Margaret by my side, walking with her purposeful step, or gazing out with the crusading gleam in her eyes, engaged in our common undertaking. But she has a grandmother to visit, and school starts again on Monday, so of course it is all nonsense. So I am just going to drink the rest of this bottle of Laphroaig and replay this one day over again, except this time I will hold her hand while we walk along, and at the Waterloo ticket barrier it won’t be her cheek I am kissing.
Richard.
From: Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent: 6/6/05 16:27
To: Michael Carragan [[email protected]]
Hi Michael,
Sorry about the slightly drunken and maundering e-mail on Friday night. Everything seems shinier and leafier and generally more birdsong-filled today. Because you are looking at (well, you will be, when I buy you a beer tonight) the brand-newest Assistant Under-Secretary in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport! OK, I know what you are going to say about me and culture – probably some ‘out of my element’ gag involving cats and synchronised swimming, or maybe something tried and trusted, about distinguishing my arts from my elbow, ha ha. But you can’t deny my appreciation of media and sport. I combine them regularly, in fact, in the form of the football pages of the Ipswich Town Crier. And I don’t care anyway, Mike – it’s a job! At last, a little piece of recognition for all my horny-handed toil, my first small step towards high office. And indeed, it seems that it’s going to be a very high office – a sort of glorified attic boxroom on the ninth floor of that ministerial concrete block in Cockspur Street, commanding a vertiginous view of the DTI car park.
The Rottweiler phoned me just after eleven this morning, and said would I come down to the Lobby. I duly went down and stood about hopefully. At length I was summoned into The Presence by a tap on the shoulder from an unelected 25-year-old henchperson in a sharp suit, who led me into a convenient alcove to receive the good news. When I’d imagined this moment, I suppose I’d always pictured a call to No. 10, so it was a little disconcerting just to be pulled behind the nearest pillar. It made me feel a bit like a cheap hooker – except that their paymasters are probably not accompanied throughout by a gaggle of special advisers talking in a stentorian manner into their mobiles.
It seems that word of my part in the change in asylum rules reached the prime ministerial ear, and that it proved timely in a number of respects. It won him favour with the women’s lobby, and with the Asian women’s lobby. It pleased the new President of the European Commission, who is hot on human trafficking issues, and to whom it has been sold as a blow against sexual enslavement worldwide. And at the same time it gave him the distance he happened to be looking for between HM Government and certain British Islamic groups, who regard the new rules as an unwarranted attack upon Muslim cultural practices. Apparently it has got right up the noses of a couple of West Midlands imams whom the Rottweiler was particularly hoping to annoy. All of which concatenation of circumstances adds up to the Iraq vote being quite forgotten, and me putting in an order for some new calling cards. (Funny how in the end it wasn’t one of the hand-picked issues that did the t
rick, but something you could never have predicted at all.)
I’d really like to share my good fortune with Margaret, but with Nasreen still missing, I don’t know . . . I don’t want it to look as though I am contentedly enjoying the political side-benefits of the situation that led to her friend’s misery. Even though, of course, that is exactly what I am doing! Oh, dear.
Richard.
PS. Do books count as culture? I read books.
Richard Slater (Labour)
Member of Parliament for Ipswich
From: Michael Carragan
[[email protected]]
Sent: 6/6/05 16:58
To: Richard Slater [[email protected]]
I see my advice goes unheeded, as usual. Call me about that beer.
Michael.
Michael Carragan (Labour),
Member of Parliament for West Bromwich West.
ST EDITH’S PRIMARY SCHOOL
St Edith’s Lane, Ipswich IP3 5BJ
7 June 2005
Summer Term Newsletter
Hello everyone, and welcome back from half term, as we enter the final straight of this school year. I hope that you and your families managed to take advantage safely of the beautiful weather last week.
Sun Precautions
This brings me on to the first important notice of this newsletter. With warmer weather on the way, will parents please note that ALL children must be provided with a sun hat, a small water bottle (named, please!) and a tube of sunblock cream of at least factor 40. I am afraid that any children not suitably equipped will not be allowed outside at playtime if there is less than 85 per cent cloud cover.
Sports Day
Sports day will be held on Monday 11July. Please ensure that your child has a sun hat, sunblock cream and plenty of water (see above). I am sorry to have to tell you that there will be no parents’ race this year; following last year’s unfortunate incident, the school’s insurers have informed us that they can no longer undertake to cover the risks involved. Apologies to those mums who I know have been in training for this event since Easter.
Visit by M.P.
Ipswich’s Member of Parliament Mr Richard Slater, who has just this week been appointed to a ministerial position in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, is to visit the school and meet Year 3 pupils on Wednesday 15 June. We are grateful to Miss Hayton for fixing up this prestigious visit.
Suffolk Book Day
To celebrate Suffolk Book Day on Friday 24 June, pupils are invited, as last year, to come to school dressed as a favourite character from a book. Parents are asked for a voluntary contribution (we suggest that a minimum of 50p would be appropriate) towards the purchase of books, half for our own school library and half for our twin school in Kenya. Please encourage your children to use their imagination. Last year we had eighty-two Harry Potters.
Forthcoming Trips
We are pleased to say that British Sugar have kindly agreed to arrange for pupils from Years 5 and 6 to tour the factory again, to learn about the amazing journey of the sugar-beet as it is transformed into the sugar on your table. The infants, as last year, will be visiting the Lower Maysley Maize Maze. Please could parents equip their children with a brightly coloured (named) hat, and notify the class teacher in advance of any allergies to cereal crops.
End of Term Disco
This will be held on Thursday 21 July. Would parents, especially of Year 5 and 6 girls, please ensure that their children are appropriately dressed. Underwear and body glitter are not an acceptable alternative to clothing.
Mrs E. Martin
Deputy Head
From: Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent: 10/6/05 22:23
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Dear Becs,
I had another day tramping round London last Friday, putting up ‘Missing’ posters that Richard had made. He came everywhere with me, took all day off to help, and he even took me to Waterloo to get the train to Gran’s. At the barrier he started trying to apologise for the fact that we had discovered nothing, as if it was his fault, so I cut him off, maybe a bit abruptly, because he went quiet and was sort of staring at me, and then he leaned forward and brushed his lips on my cheek, all dry and soft. And I know it’s stupid of me, Becs, but I couldn’t help wishing that he would kiss me properly. Maybe it was something to do with him finally not wearing a tie. But mainly, I suppose, it’s been so long since Mark, and a girl likes to feel . . . Well, if it goes on too long I always start to think that it’s me. At home, I always put it down to the vicar’s daughter thing: it took me until I was fifteen to even get properly groped in a pub car park! But I’ve never mentioned Dad to Richard, so he can’t know, can he? I mean, you can’t tell, can you? It’s not like there’s the faint aroma of ecclesiasticism hanging about me, or something? Or maybe it’s because I’m a Margaret and Margarets are fundamentally unsnoggable.
Gran was cheerful, but I can tell her ankle is worse than she’s letting on. She was in the sitting room and she’d built a kind of nest around herself, with heaps of books and magazines, and the TV listings by her elbow, and I don’t think she moves from there all day. Cora had made me some gunge to take Gran out of Lord knows what agglomeration of garden greenery – she is really taking this herbalism thing seriously – and I offered to rub some on her ankle for her, but she just told me to leave it on the table. Wise woman. I did get her up and walking around a bit on Sunday, and I helped her with her physio exercises, but I don’t think she bothers with them much by herself – the leaflet was right at the bottom of a pile of library books. I’d really like to speak to Kirsty about getting Gran moving a bit, but I hate to talk about her behind her back, as if she’s a child.
We had a tremendous staff meeting on Tuesday, Becs, you’d have treasured it. Planning for the school trips. We took Years 3 and 4 round a rare breeds farm back in October, so we have nothing on this term for our lot, but the older juniors are going to tour the sugar works, which in this part of the world is referred to in hushed tones, much in the manner in which pilgrims might speak of the shrine at Walsingham. There is a certain amount of tasting of the product, in its various syrupy and solid states, permitted by the factory management, and the main topic of debate was how to set precise limits upon this aspect of the visit. By all accounts, last year’s party behaved like so many Augustus Gloops. The infants are going round a maize maze. With no money, apparently, in actually growing useful things to eat (I have never been able to fathom the parallel economic universe which is agricultural subsidy), there is one of these approximately every five miles up the A12 and A140 during the summer months. There was a very long and serious discussion about how to prevent the little loves from getting lost (which I have to say did strike me somewhat as losing sight of the object of the exercise). It seems that one girl in Reception got separated from the herd last year, and only emerged, weeping in the consoling arms of the staff search party, at 5.15 p.m. when all her companions were back on the coach and into the fifteenth verse of ‘One Man Went to Mow’. Her name, by divine coincidence, was Ruth. I don’t know why it should have been this which did it, but suddenly I could no longer restrain the giggles that had been threatening to break loose from the off – but by the bemused looks I received, none of the rest of the St Edith’s staff can have been nourished upon biblical texts with their porridge like I was at the vicarage.
Last night the WITCH crew all decamped to the pub after the meeting, and I discovered that Alison’s husband has moved out. By mutual agreement, she said – though I wonder if that can ever be really true. Is the end of a relationship really something about which there can ever be a meeting of minds, when the loss of that common ground is usually part of the problem? All I know is that I’d be a wreck if I were Alison, left on her own with three boys, including Edward who is autistic and quite a handful, by all accounts. But she actually said it is a relief. She realises that she has be
en protecting her husband from the worst of Edward’s behaviour, and at the same time trying to shield the boys from her husband’s frequent over-reactions, and she is fed up with being caught in the middle. Her only worry seemed to be how she will manage the mortgage by herself.
More Than Love Letters Page 14