In that moment, Tom forgave her everything.
An icy calm had descended upon Alice. She felt cool, detached and quite, quite numb; she had decided that, until after the election, there would be no showdowns, no fights, no possibility of her being accused of wrecking his chances any further. She would go into battle afterwards, knowing no remorse, no guilt even, knowing she had done her best for him. It was surprisingly easy.
Now – what should she wear? She tried not to think of Diana Southcott’s beautiful, elegant clothes. It was pointless – she couldn’t compete – but she needed to go home and sort some clothes out. She might, if she hurried, be able to go to Freeman Hardy and Willis and buy the navy court shoes she had admired in Woman’s Own that week. All her shoes were scuffed and down at heel, she couldn’t go on stage as a political wife wearing those. And they would go with her pleated Terylene skirt, and perhaps that blue angora jumper she’d never worn – never an occasion more worthy of it.
‘Friend Tom? Hello, darling. It’s me, Diana.’
‘What are you doing ringing me here?’ Tom hissed into the telephone someone had just handed him. ‘How did you get this number?’
‘Well, that’s not a very nice greeting. Really, Tom, I never know where I am with you. I got it from your office. And I only wanted to wish you luck for tomorrow. I do hope you get in.’
‘Not very likely, I’m afraid,’ said Tom, ‘but thanks anyway. Alice is coming down in the morning, might help a bit.’
‘Well, not if they know it was her idea to take your son to—’
‘Diana, please. But thank you again for that –’ he realised someone was hovering, threatening to take the phone from his hand – ‘that information you gave me on Saturday night. It was extremely helpful.’
‘OK, OK, I get the picture. I’ll go. By the way, I might be moving to New York for a bit. Anyway, I’ll let you go, you’ve got an election to win. Good luck, Friend Tom. I won’t leave for New York without saying goodbye.’
‘Bye. Thanks again.’
Tom rang off and then went outside and stared down Purbridge’s main street. Against all odds, all the danger Diana represented, he didn’t want her to go to New York, didn’t like the prospect of a life quite without her. Perversely, she was one of the few people he actually trusted and how he would have got by that weekend without her, he could not imagine …
It was a long, hard day; Alice’s new shoes had had a bad time of it.
Tom met her off the train, started her on a crash course of polling-day behaviour even before they had left the station.
‘It will be like the by-election, only tougher. We’re going to polling stations, all day long. The main thing is to smile. Smile at the voters, smile at the tellers, smile at the cameras. The local press will be about, may want an interview with you. Smile at them, smile at the party workers, smile at the press, smile at hostility, smile at compliments.’
‘I think I get the idea. Smile.’
They had reached Labour Party HQ by now: Colin Davidson greeted her enthusiastically.
‘My goodness, you do look smart. How’s the little fellow? Must have been dreadful for you. But you being here today should make a big difference. You’re a very popular lady down here, you know; we call you our secret weapon. Now, have a cup of tea, give you strength for the day ahead. And how about a buttered scone? Made by my wife.’
Had he not said that, Alice would have refused the scone, but she feared that would be taken as a slur on his wife’s cooking. It proved to be both delicious and nourishing.
Her face ached from smiling by lunchtime, her feet ached from her new shoes well before that; there was no place for an aching heart as well. They progressed from polling station to polling station, both large and small; at one of the major ones, the Purbridge Gazette asked Alice for an interview.
The reporter was handsome, very young, a bit cocky, but polite. He asked Alice how she would feel about living in Purbridge if Tom won and she told him she couldn’t wait. ‘I especially love Sandbanks, of course, it’s so beautiful, and we had a week’s holiday there in a caravan.’
‘Good. Of course, Sandbanks is the posh end of town.’
‘Yes, but I like Purbridge itself too, and everyone’s been so welcoming and kind, it feels like home already. And my little boy loves the quay.’
‘Would that be the little boy who’s been ill and in hospital? How is he now?’
‘Much better, thank you. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here?’
‘How was it you and your husband took him to a private hospital, Mrs Knelston? I’d have thought Mr Knelston, with his devotion to Aneurin Bevan, would have chosen the National Health Service?’
‘Ideally, we both would,’ said Alice, without a breath of hesitation, ‘but it was literally a crisis. Kit’s life was in danger. We were lucky that we have a friend who is a paediatric surgeon, and he took Kit into his hospital and he was in the operating theatre in a couple of hours.’
‘I see. And – don’t you think a casualty department would have responded as quickly?’
‘We would have hoped so, but we couldn’t be sure, and believe me, if your child is that ill, you want certainties.’
‘Of course. Lucky you to be able to afford such a certainty.’
‘Well, it did take all our—’ She was going to say, ‘savings’, but he had folded his notebook shut.
‘Well, thanks for finding the time to talk to me, Mrs Knelston, and good luck with the vote.’
She was afraid she hadn’t done very well. It must have shown in her face, for a woman came out of the small crowd which had gathered to watch the interview and the photographs being taken, and said, ‘Don’t you upset yourself, dear. We’d all do the same, if we could. He’s too young to understand. You don’t take risks with your child’s life. Is he still in hospital?’
‘My mother’s looking after him today,’ said Alice, half truthfully, ‘and the other children too.’
‘Yes, you’ve not long had a baby, have you? How’s he doing?’
‘Oh – fine, yes.’ (When he’s next door, she thought.)
‘Well, I think it’s very brave of you to come here today. Good luck with the vote. We’re voting for Mr Knelston; we like the way he’s been down so often, taken a real interest in the town. The other one,’ she said darkly, ‘we don’t see his face from one month to the next. Great fat toff. Not that we’d vote Tory anyway. Oh, now look, your husband’s coming over for you. Bye-bye, dear. Very nice to talk to you.’
‘Very nice to talk to you,’ said Alice. And she meant it.
They stopped at a pub for lunch, then whirled on. Alice was so exhausted she began to feel she was hallucinating.
Tom looked at her. ‘Want a break?’
‘No, of course not. Do I really have to go on drinking tea, though?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry.’
‘I never want to see a teapot again.’
The next polling station was a school; shabbily cheerful, with peeling paint and threadbare lino, but dozens of children’s paintings and poems, carefully written out, were pinned on the wall. Alice stopped to admire them. The headmaster was there: he came over to them.
‘We’re looking to you to help us if you get in,’ he said to Tom. ‘Even with enough money for a few cans of paint.’
‘We’ll certainly try,’ Tom said. ‘Increasing the education budget is right at the top of our manifesto, and that would include maintenance of the buildings themselves, obviously.’
He and the headmaster moved on; Colin grinned at Alice.
‘He’s talking through his hat,’ he said. ‘It’s the council who allot spending, what goes on what and where. Still, does no harm to make them think we can help.’
At six, they went back to HQ, and Alice phoned the hospital; her mother was still with Kit.
‘He’s absolutely fine, dear, very happy. He’s been up for most of the day, far too long I’d have said for a child who’s had major surgery less than a w
eek ago, but I suppose they know best.’
Her tone implied that the hospital knew nothing of the sort.
‘I’ll just wait till he’s asleep and then I’ll head over to Acton. Mrs Hartley not being on the telephone is very inconvenient, I must say. She’s a curious woman. I popped in to introduce myself on the way in to town – pleasant enough, I suppose, but she has a very odd attitude to Charlie, almost as if she was his grandmother, not me. Still, it’s only for one night.’
The count was in the town hall, a huge Victorian building; they stayed at the last polling station they had visited until it closed, and then waited while the boxes were sealed and carried out to waiting cars. It was a very emotional moment. Alice looked at them, thinking, in those boxes lies my future and the future of my family. Whichever way it goes. Possibly even of my marriage.
She looked at her watch: four hours at the very least to wait. It seemed a very long time.
They didn’t win, of course. It was close, but not as close as the by-election. The nationwide swing was too big; there were no Labour gains at all and twenty-three losses. Tom looked calmly cheerful and made a short, simple speech, knowing he could never recapture the drama of the last time. He thanked all the workers, particularly Colin, ‘And of course my wife, who has supported me throughout, and enjoyed today so much she says she’s thinking of entering parliament herself.’
‘Tom,’ said Alice suddenly as they drove home through the darkness, ‘pull over, would you? I want to talk to you about something.’
‘Can’t it wait till we’re home?’ He sounded defensive.
‘No. No, it can’t.’
‘Right. Well, let me find somewhere safer than this.’
They reached a bus stop; he pulled in.
‘This sounds serious. Should I be nervous?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you should.’
She felt no nerves, just a cold confidence in herself which echoed in her voice.
‘Tom,’ she said, ‘have you been having an affair with Diana Southcott?’
And without hesitation, although in a less steady voice, he said, ‘Yes. I’m afraid I have. But it’s over.’
‘Oh, really. And why should I believe that? When all those evenings you told me you were at meetings and rallies and making speeches, you were in her bed?’
‘I – don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you should believe it.’
‘Well, no. When you seem to be one of the most practised, skilful liars – probably the most – I have ever met.’
‘But it is true. You must trust me on that, at least.’
‘Trust you?’ she said, and her voice was so filled with scorn that she saw him physically wince. ‘Trust you? When you took advantage of me, when I was at my lowest ebb – pregnant, sick, exhausted, hideous—’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not hideous. I never, ever found you that.’
‘Tom, please don’t lie. It’s disgusting. Hideous – and completely unable to fight back. How could you do that, Tom, how could you? It makes a travesty of our marriage, of our family, of everything I thought we had. Tell me how it happened and I’ll feel just a little less – shocked.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know. I suppose because I’m a complete shit. Simple as that. It certainly had nothing to do with any – any comparison between you and her.’
‘It must have had. Unless you just needed some sex – I admit there wasn’t a lot on offer – but a prostitute could have done that for you.’
‘Alice …’
‘Come on, what was it? The fact that she’s so beautiful? Which she certainly is. Famous? Does it tickle your vanity in some strange way, to have got your cock into some world-famous model?’
‘Alice! I hate it when you talk like that.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Not as much as I hate it when you act like that. Answer me, Tom, I need to know.’
‘Well,’ he said, after a long silence, ‘and this reflects appallingly on me. It’s what she could offer, that wasn’t sex. Like a house that wasn’t overrun with toys, a conversation peppered with other things than babies, a feeling that for a few hours I was free.’
‘You are DISGUSTING.’ It was a roar of pain and rage, that of a trapped animal. ‘I hate you, I truly do hate you, loathe you for that. How could you throw that at me, the very things you had done to me?’
‘Alice, Alice, you were extremely keen to have babies, you made not the slightest effort, as far as I could see, to offer me anything more.’
‘I was TOO TIRED!’ She was shouting now, beyond outrage.
‘I know. And I’m sorry for that. But there was nothing else there for me. And, at the same time, you had the audacity to cling to this obsession about Laura. I couldn’t stand it any longer, Alice. It was as simple as that. I’m sorry.’
‘Laura!’ she said, her voice heavy with despair. ‘Yes, another rival for your affections. Or rather your love. I think, in a way, I still mind more about her. The way you keep her hidden, close to yourself, won’t share that part of your life with me. Your whole life, for as many years as we’ve been together, was about Laura.’
‘And what’s so wrong with that? That’s nothing to do with you. She was my past, incredibly precious to me.’
‘Well, exactly,’ she cried out, her voice cracking. ‘But that’s what stands between us, don’t you see? She’s so shadowy I feel I’ve only ever seen her outline. The basic facts, that she was twenty-nine years old, a teacher, a member of the bloody Labour Party, that she had curly hair and a nice smile, and I only know that because I found that picture of her that you keep in a drawer. I have no idea if she was good-or bad-tempered, clever or stupid, generous or mean, whether she could cook or sew. I have to fill in all those things for myself, imagining her. And of course I see someone absolutely perfect, who I can’t possibly measure up to. I have longed – longed for you to say just once, “Would you like to go to West Hilton and to the churchyard where Laura is buried?” It makes me feel you don’t want me there, you don’t trust me with her. Trust is everything in a marriage, Tom, and I don’t feel I can trust you. Less than ever now, of course, a hundred times less – but oh, this is unbearable. Let’s go home, I’ve had enough.’
He remembered sharply the conversation with Diana, talking of this very thing, trust: and of how Alice had destroyed his in her, that dreadful day of Kit’s surgery. And he felt a flare of anger that Alice was so blind to her own iniquities.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not yet. I have things to say too, Alice. About the almost unbearable pain you inflicted on me, telling me that she and Hope might still have been alive without my obstinacy about the hospital. How do you think that makes me feel, Alice and—’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That!’
‘Yes, that, that revelation making me feel a murderer. How dared you do that? To leave me feeling for the rest of my life that Laura and Hope died because of me? The rest of it, the danger you put me in professionally, that was nothing, of course Kit should have come first – I feel ashamed even to have hesitated. But you did something else, that day – you stamped all over my most deeply held and precious convictions, without so much as a thought, a pause, simply to speak to me, however briefly, to tell me what you wanted to do. They mattered to me so much, those convictions, Alice, as dearly held as any religious ones – foolish as they may seem to you, they mattered desperately. I don’t even mind that they seemed foolish to you, but I mind very deeply that you could swat them aside like some irritating fly. I find that very hard to bear.’
There was a long silence; then she said in quite a different voice, ‘I’ m – I’m sorry, Tom. Mostly for telling you about the harm you could have done to Laura, but the other too. It was – it was very wrong of me.’
‘Well,’ he said soberly, ‘it seems to me we have done one another considerable wrong, almost unforgivable wrong. But I think, for what it is worth, and that may not be much, we should try to forgive them. For whatever you may thin
k, Alice, I do love you very much. I would be lost without you, quite lost; you and the children. You are my life – not Laura, not Diana – and I would like you to allow me to spend the rest of my allotted span proving it. But it may be too much to ask; and I can see why.’
She sat there, considering all that he had said, all that he had done; and she knew that she must at least try. But could she? Was the gulf between them too huge, the rage too violent, the hurt too deep? Could she really behave as if it was some mild misdemeanour that had taken place between them, some trifling quarrel, when each of them had taken hold of their marriage and wrenched it so ruthlessly apart? It looked almost impossible, sitting there in the darkness; but as they drove on and she thought of the alternative, thought too of what they had had, it seemed worth at least an attempt. It would take a long time, it could not be accomplished in a day, or probably even a year, and indeed it would never be the same in a lifetime; but they had achieved much in this marriage of theirs, too much to abandon it without fighting for it first. And at least they would be on the same side.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not too much to ask. I’m sorry, so sorry, for what I did. I love you too, Tom.’ And then added, with a rather lopsided shadow of a smile, ‘Although I can’t for the life of me think why.’
Chapter 64
‘Well, that’s all splendid, Mr Welles. We shall be delighted to have you on board. We’re short on paediatric skills at the moment; Lionel Mainwaring has retired early, due to ill health, poor fellow, just as his research programme on childhood leukaemia was launched. But I believe that is one of your spheres of clinical interest.’
A Question of Trust Page 59