‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know what I am at all. I often wonder. Do you think you can tell me?’
‘I can try.’ He maintained his stream of eloquence while pulling on his socks. ‘You want the best of every possible world. You want to congratulate yourself on being a Socialist. An unselfish friend of the poor. And the oppressed. And the bloody skint. You want to stand up for workers’ rights without being a worker at all. And you’re all for high taxes while you don’t have to pay them. So you can feel proud of your unselfish, noble, Socialist fight at the barricades, just so long as there aren’t any barricades to fight at.’ He had the frilled shirt on now and was pressing in the black studs. ‘You want all the excitement and noble feeling of being a left-wing heroine without having to get yourself elected and get into power and actually do anything. And above all, my darling – now he was climbing into his trousers – ‘you want to patronize those of us who have to compromise and manœuvre and even perhaps lie a little to get to where we can change things, can make them better. And then you want to lie back on the pillows and light another fag and call us corrupt shits for not carrying out the high-minded, glorious, unworkable ideals you find so bloody comforting!’
‘Is that what I am?’ She seemed to be considering what he said carefully.
‘Don’t you think so?’
‘I think,’ she told him, ‘that’s probably the best political speech you ever made.’
‘Patronizing!’ he almost shouted. ‘You’re patronizing me again!’
‘No, I wasn’t. That time I was telling you the truth.’
‘The truth. Yes. But you’ll never realize it. You’ll condescend to fuck me and then lie back and blame me for not being Keir Hardie or Nye Bevan or any of the other heroes who you don’t have to meet or go to bed with.’ He was moving towards the door.
‘Where’re you going?’ She tried to keep the panic out of her voice.
‘I’m going home. To change and bath. Then I’m going to work. To try and make this a better country. You wouldn’t get your hands dirty doing that, would you? You’d rather read about it in the books you keep on your second-hand shelf. You can dream yourself into Utopia! Well, I’m not in Utopia. I’m in the Home Office trying to cope with drugs and violence and noisy neighbours. And I can tell you, it’s bloody hard work!’
‘Terry …’ she said, but the door had closed behind him and he had gone. She stubbed out her cigarette and sat, her hands on her thighs, staring disconsolately into what had suddenly become an empty future.
Terry’s anger kept him going until he reached London and then evaporated. He had said what he’d wanted to say, and that was over. Agnes would think about it. She’d said it was the best speech he’d ever made, and he felt proud of it. Perhaps she’d learn from it. She’d come to respect the work he was doing, encourage him, appreciate him. Life would go on, perhaps even better than before.
When he got out of the car he was surprised to see lights on in his flat. He climbed the stairs and was about to put the key in the door when it opened and Kate, in her long, tree-decorated T-shirt, stood in front of him. He smiled engagingly and said, ‘Hullo, darling.’
‘Where have you been?’ She didn’t smile.
‘I told you. The dinner and then I slept at Penry’s house.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I told you …’
‘I rang Penry. You weren’t there. Someone telephoned to tell me who you went home with.’
‘Someone?’
‘You’re not answering questions in Parliament now so you needn’t lie. You slept with Agnes, didn’t you?’
The neat pattern he had hoped to contrive for his life was broken. The kaleidoscope had been shaken again, and the pieces were in chaos.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘She’s old. How could you?’
‘She’s fifty.’
‘Like having sex with your mother!’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Not at all impossible. She’d have been seventeen. How could you do it? It’s disgusting!’
They were in the kitchen. He said he was going to make tea, and he hoped that, after a rough passage, normal life would be resumed as soon as possible. Kate stood in her T-shirt, glowing with youth as he brought out the teapot and mugs, a cornered man in a dinner-jacket. She asked him again, ‘Don’t you see how disgusting it is?’
‘Not really.’
‘Why did you do it? Why?’
Since she had accused him of being a lying politician he decided to try the attractions of honesty. Looking puzzled, as he poured tea he said, ‘I don’t know. Quite honestly I can’t understand it. She was different.’
‘Was?’
‘Well, of course, it’s over now.’
‘Because I found out?’
‘Because we quarrelled.’
‘What?’
‘She and I quarrelled.’
‘You never quarrelled with me!’ She said it as an accusation, but it was true, they never had.
‘No.’
‘So I wasn’t important enough? I wasn’t a grand passion? I didn’t even matter enough to quarrel with?’
‘It’s not that.’ He drank tea. ‘But you’ve got to admit, Kate, we get on well.’
‘Until I find out about you fucking an old woman. Having a passionate, interesting affair. With quarrels. Go on, then. Tell me. What did you quarrel about?’
‘Politics.’
‘I knew it! That air of quiet superiority. She’s a Conservative at heart.’
‘No. She’s a Socialist at heart.’
‘Is that what you quarrelled about?’
‘Partly.’
‘Oh? What was the other part then? Did she want you to leave me? What does she want? A nice safe marriage, for her twilight years?’
‘Kate. We weren’t talking about you.’
‘Oh, of course not! I forgot! I’m not really important enough for the grown-ups to quarrel about, am I?’
‘She just couldn’t understand the way I had to do my job. She wants the world changed tomorrow. She’s intolerably patronizing.’
‘Oh, poor you! Poor Terry. Patronized by Mum. So he comes running home to Kate.’
‘I’ll always want to come home to Kate.’ Terry looked at her and meant it.
‘I’m not sure I’ll be here for you to come home to.’
‘Kate!’ He moved towards her, put out a hand to touch her, and she turned away.
‘If I could only understand why you’d ever do such a thing. If you could tell me why.’
‘I told you, she was different.’
‘You mean old?’
‘All right. She came from a different generation. I mean, she’s unexpected, strange, a bit mad sometimes.’
‘Makes jokes in bed?’
‘Well, yes,’ Terry had to admit. ‘That too.’
‘Hilarious!’
‘Not necessarily very good jokes. But jokes all the same.’
‘And a bit dotty, you say?
‘Sometimes.’
‘No wonder you find her irresistibly attractive.’ Kate enjoyed a rare moment of irony.
‘No longer.’
‘What?’
‘I told you. It’s all over.’
‘Not for me it isn’t. For me it’s just begun. I’ve only just found out.’
‘Kate. I’m sorry.’
It was no use. She looked at him as though he were a stranger, an alien being whom she could no longer pretend to understand. ‘What you did,’ she said, ‘it’s not normal. You’d better change out of those silly clothes and get off to work.’
‘And you?’
‘Me? I’ll have to try and think about it. Won’t I?’ Still looking young and beautiful she went back to bed and Terry sat alone for a long while nursing his mug of tea. Then he had a shower and changed back into the regulation blue suit and long striped tie of a Junior Minister.
When he got to the Home Office Kenny Iremon
ger called from the B.B.C. He would be on ‘Confrontations’ next week. A Conservative opponent had been chosen, but it was Kenny’s policy to keep names a secret from the other participants and press until the actual night. ‘That way it’s spontaneous, and I’m sure you’ll spark each other off wonderfully. We’ll just meet for half an hour in Hospitality to talk it through. I’ll fax through the details to your office. Your programme will attract a lot of attention. Help make you a public figure, if you’re not one already.’
A public figure. How much did that compensate, Terry wondered, for being a private figure lost to two women? He thought about it and decided that it did. A bit.
June and her boyfriend Garth Inwood were walking by the river, his lurcher bounding ahead and barking ferociously at the ducks. It was a Sunday afternoon with the leaves turning, blue sky and scudding clouds, and June hung on to Garth’s arm with all the pride of possession. Pud had rung her that morning, full of apologies. Sadly Peters Johnson had told him that his son had no wish to divulge his present address and, in any event, had no memory at all of having helped tidy up after Mr Millichip’s death. Pud was sorry he couldn’t help his ambitious daughter, but she had comforted him and told him that the story was dead as far as she was concerned. As dead, in fact, as the late M.P. She told her dad to start writing his memoirs, something he had been threatening to do for the last twenty-five years, and as she hugged Garth’s arm he offered her another story.
‘Human interest,’ he told her. ‘And you’ve got a chance of getting in before anyone else.’
‘Is it political?’
‘In a way. It’ll be quite useful to us in the long run.’
‘Who put you on to it?’ June was always interested in sources.
‘As a matter of fact, “he” did.’ They were crossing the narrow walkway over the weir. There were white railings, and underneath the planks the water, tinged with yellow, roared and bubbled towards the green depths. They had to walk closely together, and he had his arm round her.
‘He?’ she asked, unnecessarily, because she knew that when he used the word with such respectful emphasis he could only mean Lord Titmuss.
Later June telephoned Kate, who was alone in Tufnell Park. She told her she was writing a piece in depth about Terry and would love to talk to her, off the record of course, about her husband’s brilliant career. Could they meet soon, as it was all rather urgent, and she suggested lunch at the Caprice. There was a long silence during which June wondered if Mrs Flitton had left the telephone, but then her voice returned, strangely hard and determined, saying, ‘Yes. I’ll do it.’
June put the phone down, triumphant. Her expenses would not, in the normal course of events, stretch to the Caprice, but extra funding, for this special occasion, was coming from her boyfriend Garth.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Terry got out of a taxi in front of Broadcasting House feeling as Slippy Johnson once felt when let out of custody for a day’s gardening. At home Kate hardly spoke; she had moved into the spare bedroom and behaved, consistently, as though he weren’t there at all. But he was more totally, constantly aware of her than he had ever been. Before she had found him out she had been a reliable asset, a comfort always and a beauty regularly available, which he had become so used to that he could forget her for long stretches of time. But now she was always at work when he hoped against hope that she might, when he got home, be there in a forgiving mood. When they met she seemed to look through him, refused to answer his questions, went out and never told him where she was going or when she’d be back. It was as though, because of the inexplicable thing he had done, he had become invisible. It made no difference if he got in early and tried to talk to her, or left for the Home Office at dawn and stayed in the House until after midnight. It was unreasonable, he knew, and unjust, that falling in love with Agnes, however briefly, should have caused him to vanish off the face of the earth so far as his wife was concerned. So he looked forward to this evening, when he could disclose a glowing future to the nation and flicker into a million homes, as a welcome holiday and blessed relief.
He gave his name in at reception, and after a telephone call and a long wait a small, bright-eyed girl in jeans arrived and said, ‘I’m Sarah and I’ve come to take you to “Confrontations”.’ In the lift she said, ‘Did you have far to come?’ and, ‘You ever been on telly before?’ When he said, ‘Not on the B.B.C.,’ she smiled enigmatically, and no more was said until she led him into Hospitality, a bleak and colourless room with a plastic-covered settee, a low table on which uneaten sandwiches curled and a drinks cabinet before which Kenny Iremonger was crouching, unlocking the supply of courtesy beer and wine. ‘Thank God you’re here.’ Kenny rose to his full height. ‘What will you have to drink? Oh, and by the way, I want you to meet your opponent.’
The tall, balding man in the corner of the room had been engaging a puzzled sound engineer in a one-sided conversation on the subject of European Monetary Union. Lord Titmuss turned and greeted Terry like a long-lost friend.
‘My dear chap! I’m so glad. No one from the Party Opposite I’d rather talk to. I’d recommend the beer. The white wine tastes like tepid lighter-fuel.’ At which he grabbed Terry’s arm above the elbow and steered him to the plastic sofa where they could sit side by side.
‘Perhaps we could just go through the shape of your conversation. I’ve got a few subjects to suggest.’ Kenny Iremonger came up like an ingratiating waiter telling them about that night’s specials.
‘You can trust us,’ Titmuss told him. ‘We’re old friends. We’ll find plenty to talk about.’
‘Then if I could just ask you to go to Make-Up.’
‘You could certainly ask, but I’ve got no intention of lying back in a barber’s chair while some overenthusiastic girl in a plastic overall paints me bright orange. It’d bring me out in a rash. And if I know my old friend Terry Flitton, who has the bloom of youth about him anyway, I would say he’s equally allergic to cosmetics.’
‘You don’t want to come to Make-Up, Mr Flitton?’ Kenny sounded deeply disappointed.
‘No, he doesn’t. Now why don’t you leave us alone until you’ve got your cameras ready?’ And Titmuss turned to Terry as though they were alone in the room together. ‘Tell me honestly, Terry. What do you think of the Opposition?’
‘Quite honestly’ – Terry tried to sound judicial – ‘I don’t think they’re terribly effective.’
‘Not effective?’ Titmuss’s laughter was like the clatter of ice cubes in an empty glass. ‘If they got together as one man they’d have trouble blowing the seeds off a dandelion! You remember the games we used to play when we were children. He loves me … He loves me not … He loves me … Well, so far as the British public is concerned, it loves them not.’
‘Lord Titmuss. Mr Flitton.’ Sarah had been sent over by a defeated Kenny to tell them it was time for them to go into the studio. ‘Take no notice’ – Titmuss again gripped Terry’s arm, this time to prevent him rising – ‘they’ll be fiddling with their damned gadgets for hours yet.’
There was, indeed, a great deal of fiddling with gadgets as Titmuss and Terry sat under merciless light in a set which looked like the corner of an airport lounge and Kenny listened anxiously to the instructions in his ear-piece. Terry, watching their images on a monitor, thought Titmuss looked as composed and comfortable as if he were reclining on his sofa in Rapstone Manor, whereas he looked like the nervous applicant for a job he didn’t expect to get. He took ten deep breaths, sat back in his seat and did his best to smile. A girl came up and powdered his forehead. He noticed she didn’t dare to approach Titmuss. Someone shouted, ‘We’re running!’, a clock on the monitor ticked backwards from ten. Then there was music, the title ‘Confrontations’ over caricatures of politicians as boxers fighting each other, and then Kenny, beaming with simulated cheeriness, filled the screen, saying, ‘Welcome to “Confrontations”, the programme in which politicians are encouraged to go a few gruelling rounds wit
h a challenger. Tonight we have, in the red corner, Terry Flitton, the rising young Junior Minister who grabbed the headlines when he won a safe Tory seat and who is tipped for stardom in the present government. And in the blue corner, none other than the voice of the Monetarist Right, the unforgettable, unforgotten, Lord Titmuss of Skurfield!’
After the introduction the studio audience, seated in serried ranks and eager to co-operate, applauded loudly in obedience to the raised hand of the floor manager, who made a cutting gesture to still the clapping as Kenny turned to Titmuss. ‘I believe you took the unusual step for a Tory of endorsing Terry Flitton’s campaign. Why was that exactly?’
‘Well, you see, Kenny …’ Titmuss’s usual manner with television inquisitors was amused contempt. Now he twinkled, in what seemed to Terry an alarmingly friendly fashion. ‘… I was convinced that my Party needed a time in Opposition to find its heart again. After a period of what I can only describe as betrayal. And this young man was bright enough to allow me to run his campaign for him.’
Whether or not Kenny Iremonger knew what was coming, he managed a look of amazement. ‘That’s an extraordinary suggestion. Terry Flitton, was Lord Titmuss running your campaign, when you won Hartscombe?’
‘Of course not!’ Terry’s outrage was genuine. ‘I was running my own campaign on behalf of the Labour Party.’
‘Come off it, Terry.’ Titmuss was smiling broadly. ‘I know memories are short in politics, but as my staff well remember, you were round at my house constantly for advice, which I was delighted to give you.’
What was going on? Terry had a terrible suspicion that Mrs Ragg was about to be called as a witness. Kenny said, ‘What sort of advice do you say you gave the Labour candidate, Lord Titmuss?’
‘Basically I advised him to behave like a Tory, which he was only too willing to do.’
Laughter from the surrounding darkness was the first hint that the audience was enjoying the performance.
The Sound of Trumpets Page 23