Mind Games and Ministers

by Chris Longden

“And here’s me thinking that the hardcore Marxist sorts had died out with the dinosaurs. But, of course. That explains it.”

  “What?”

  “His other prehistoric beliefs. Referring to the woman he presumably picked up last night as his ‘piece of arse’. Very enlightened, I must say.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “He’s gay, Michael! Jake’s gay. And his humour is very tongue in cheek!”

  Michael huffed, and I couldn’t resist adding, “But at last, I’ve met someone with an even more defective gaydar than mine.”

  Now it was time to get Miss Simpson packing. I asked Michael to manoeuvre the old lady out of the chair, while I sorted out an overnight bag for her, embarking upon the Hunt for Great and Greying Knickers in her faded and filthy bedroom. After locating various items of clothing (hoping to God that those were HP sauce stains) I squirreled them into a couple of carrier bags. Michael had – rather impressively – managed to get Miss Simpson down the stairs and out of her house, and a few minutes later, a New Banks-dispatched electrician arrived and was making the place safe. As we were busily evicting the evil cat, an inquisitive neighbour from a few doors down pitched up. Michael persuaded her to feed the thing for the next few days, promising the woman, “I can assure you that the state will remunerate you for any feline expenses incurred.” The neighbour’s eyes lit up. I envisaged that a few receipts for fresh salmon and perhaps even lobster would be dropped off next week at Michael’s constituency office in Stalybridge.

  We locked up Miss Simpson’s flat and I went to check on Mr Bridges and the twins. The latter were squeezing sponges into pans and debating whether Mr Bridges would end up committing suicide over his recent misfortune, with Tia murmuring,

  “Hey, Ty – if you drowned yourself in a pan of water, would it be better, d’ya think? Than slashin’ your wrists? Hurt less, I mean.”

  “Dunno. Worst thing would be having to saw your own head off or something like in that film we were watching the other night.”

  Mr Bridges’ daughter arrived now, courtesy of the 346 bus from Droylsden to rescue her father from his aquatic disaster. Michael moved Miss Simpson over to a low garden wall and settled her onto it. The sun was still blazing fiercely, but she had insisted that he tie a rain-mac headscarf over her head – “just in case”. Michael turned to me.

  “Right. Next move. Cars. Yours? Mine? I don’t think that Miss S would bear up well on the back of my motorbike.”

  His words took me aback. A very generous offer, of course. But completely out of the question.

  “I don’t think so. Surely it wouldn’t be … professional. For you. It’s a bit … well, it’s a bit ‘involved’, isn’t it?”

  He pulled a face. “Christ! She’s a neighbour!”

  “Yeah. And one that you didn’t know existed until an hour or so ago.”

  “Admittedly. Point taken. But I’m a great believer in practising what one preaches. I’m forever making speeches about neighbourliness and responsibility. I’m the Minister for Communities and despite all that, it’s rare that I get the chance to —”

  “Engage in a bit of cheap voyeurism,” I finished his sentence for him.

  He folded his arms and stared at me.

  “Very funny. Look. I’ll go and get my car.”

  “Michael – please don’t think that I’m being awkward about all of this. But this place. This area that I’m taking her to – where the hostel is. Well, it’s a bit rough. Inner-city Manchester. It won't be like when you normally get to visit housing estates and they wheel out cute face-painted kids for the minister and expect you to get all giddy about the new shitty rabbit hutches that pass for social housing these days. And. Well. Your car. What is it that you drive?”

  “My own car? A Prius. Toyota Prius.”

  “Quite. A Prius. A Prius that wouldn’t last two minutes there.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “I do get what you’re saying, Rachael. But very little fazes me, you know. You obviously don’t know about my previous career. The military. Before I went into politics. Lots of action. Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia. All over the place, really. So, if any of the civvies start getting rough with me, I can easily take them out. With a John Prescott!” He pretended to punch the gable end of the garden wall.

  “Very macho,” I sighed, thinking to myself that the likes of Michael Chiswick would hardly be some kind of Squaddie, now, would he? More like a Sandhurst officer.

  I was glad that he wasn’t aware of my previous CND affiliations. Although my membership had lapsed a couple of years ago, it wasn’t really the time or the place to start debating just war and pacifism. But Michael was determined.

  “So, yah-boos to your scare-mongering. I’m off to get my car. And,” he added, more quietly, “I do realise that Miss S is a bit … pongy, but never fear. We can always open the windows.”

  “Michael,” I shook my head again, “if we had to use either of our cars, it would be mine. Because it already smells of wee. Although that's because of my youngest child, not because of me – I hasten to add. But it won’t be your car. Or mine. Because – look. We’re pretty much jumping here.”

  “I’m sorry?” he stopped in his tracks, looking baffled. “We’re jumping?”

  “Fleas,” I hissed. “Her whole flat is infested. That bloody cat. The dirt. Lots of little visitors that neither of us would want in our cars. Laying eggs. New Wanks – I mean Banks – will have to fumigate her flat. And both of us will need to de-louse before we get home.”

  “Oh. I didn’t see anything. I haven’t been bitten. I don’t think …” he murmured. He started to peer closely at his T-shirt. It made him go slightly cross-eyed. In a rather fetching way. Then he involuntarily started scratching the back of his neck, realised what he was doing, and started to laugh.

  “So. Leave me with sorting her out,” I told him. “I’ll get a taxi to take us. It’ll cost a bob or two, but the council will pay it back.”

  “Right; well.” Hands on hips, he pondered his response. Then came to a conclusion.

  “OK. You’re probably right. I guess I’ll just go on home now and have a good scrub with the old loofah. Leave you to it, then.” He shrugged. Then turned to go.

  Tiny pinpricks of sweat had formed above my top lip. I tasted the salt with the tip of my tongue and then wiped the moisture away with the back of my hand. As I did so a soft September breeze brushed itself across my face. That was something to be grateful for at least, on such a muggy afternoon.

  “Bye,” I called out. “And thanks for all of your help.” Disappointment expertly disguised, I crouched down to retrieve Miss Simpson’s slippers. She had kicked them off onto the pavement.

  Bloody politicians. Full of the talk. Let everyone else do the dirty work. I’d worked with them for long enough to know what a bunch of self-obsessed, egotistical …

  But now, here came his voice again. Close by.

  “Er. Hello. Rachael?”

  I was squatting on my haunches with the slippers. Wincing up at the sun and trying to fix them onto her feet. Michael must have turned back round again, quickly. He had stooped down next to me. His face only inches away from mine.

  “I was … you know. Joking.” He moved to take one of the scruffy slippers from me. His fingers delayed (deliberately?) against mine. Crouching at Miss Simpson’s calloused and mottled feet, I was doing my best not to look at her curling yellow toenails. So I was forced to look right into his eyes. That almost transparent – translucent – glassy grey.

  “I was joking,” he repeated.

  “Were you?” I grumbled. “I really couldn’t tell. Maybe you and the rest of the Cabinet need some extra training sessions. A short course on ‘How to be really witty’ …”

  He prodded me in the stomach with his forefinger. Unprepared, I toppled over, landing in an undignified sprawl on the pavement.

  “Hey! You rotten sod!” Appalled at the frivolity of his action.

  I brushed dow
n my cut-off jeans as he fastened Miss Simpson’s slippers onto her feet, “Ah, if you can’t take it, Ms Russell, don’t dole it out, I say. And by the way, you’ve got very weak ankles. They’d never let you in the army with your lack of balance.”

  “Huh. I’m too mentally well-balanced to be allowed to serve in the armed forces actually. But I still think that you’re just nosey … that you want to witness the misery of the Great Unwashed.”

  Michael muttered under his breath and I caught the phrase “leftie reactionary feminist”, which instantly cheered me up. At least he had grasped my own politics quite quickly.

  But then he held the phone out to me. “So call the damned taxi,” he commanded. “And I’m coming too. Whether you like it or not.”

  Michael went to say goodbye to Mr Bridges and his daughter, while I listened to Miss Simpson warbling ‘Sloop John B’ for a few minutes and then he returned, “Bit of another crisis now. Poor chap very nearly had a heart attack when his daughter asked him if he’d remembered to renew the household insurance cover. Apparently ‘the wife did all that’.”

  “Oh, God. Did he? Remember to renew it, I mean?”

  “They’re not sure. Going to look for the paperwork.” He dropped his voice now, so that Miss Simpson couldn’t hear. “I did suggest to Mr Bridges’ daughter that if her father wasn’t covered, perhaps they could think about the small claims court. But then she launched into a diatribe about ‘my’ government preventing ordinary people like her family from accessing Legal Aid.”

  “Hah! She’s a sharp one. So she recognised you, then?”

  “Seems so. But honestly. Talk about silliness. Forgetting to renew something as important as your insurance. I mean …”

  (Ah, yes. What kind of a silly person would do that kind of thing? The sort with different priorities from the rest of us. Who is too busy. Or distracted. The kind of silly person who doesn’t really contemplate the future or mortality …

  I mean, fucking hell, Adam. How hard was it for you to have done the odd bit of paperwork from time to time? Why did the boring stuff, the admin stuff, always have to fall to me?

  (But no. Enough of that. Enough anger at Adam.)

  The pip-pip of a car horn heralded the arrival of Top Car Taxis. Tyler and Tia had reached their boredom threshold in terms of helping Mr Bridges and had already mounted their bikes, heading back to their own New-Wanks-owned home. A couple of minutes later, Mr Bridges’ daughter emerged from the maisonette and held out Tyler’s phone to me. He had left it behind in the living room. I tucked it into my bra for safe-keeping, planning to deliver it to him later on when I collected my car from Michael’s.

  Michael steered Miss Simpson into the front seat. She smiled, chirruping “Oh, look! A sheep!” every few seconds in between her strange bursts of musical regalia. We wound our way past the fields and farms that made up a sizeable chunk of Michael’s constituency, speeding through the prettier parts of the Pennines and into the more urban areas. And then further on, towards inner-city fallout. Fairly soon I could see the four dreary tower blocks marking the boundary of the Brindleford estate. Brindleford always reminded me of those early, heady days in housing. When the adrenaline side of working on the estates could become addictive.

  As could some of your colleagues.

  My right breast suddenly vibrated and burst forth with some crappy pop-music ringtone.

  “Damn!” I muttered, as I swatted my bra – trying to shut it up. “Don’t let me forget later – to find out where Tyler lives and to drop it off.”

  “Oh, I can do that,” said Michael, breezily.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you. You saw what Tyler was like. Imagine the headline. ‘Minister Nicks My Mobile Phone’.”

  “Christ, yes. And ‘the bastard also promised to pay me a tenner and then forgot!’”

  Chapter 3

  ERIS AND ARES – GOING AT IT

  The taxi driver told us that his name was Ali. He was the chatty but wary sort. His shift-wearied eyes glanced at us through the rear-view mirror as he raced his vehicle across red-bricked backstreets, swinging around corners to avoid imaginary queues of traffic. When I asked him to take us to Brindleford, he had replied:

  “You sure you vannago right there? I mean, right into the estate? It’s not a nice place, that one.”

  “Please. I know Brindleford well. I used to manage the estate for Manchester council. A few years ago now.”

  “Aah – you listen to Ali, now!” the taxi driver said, shaking his head. “It’s ten times vorse on there than it vas, even two year ago! Me brother-in-law got knifed on there last year. He were just doin’ a Saturday night pick-up. And this guy called him a filthy Paki. Just ’cause he vouldn’t have none of the bloke’s ‘Oh sorry mate ah’m three pound short, innit’. So it all kicked off big time. Ended up gettin’ stabbed, innit!”

  From the front seat, Miss Simpson stopped her ditty for a minute and chipped in with, “Scurrilous peasants! The lot of them!”

  “Well, I’ve never heard of the place,” Michael whispered across to me. “And all right, my constituency doesn’t extend into the Manchester boundary per se. But we’re only a few miles off. And I am the Minister for Communities, after all. It can’t really be all that bad, can it? If I’ve never heard of it. And I don’t live so far away myself.”

  I snorted in a most unladylike manner. “’Fraid so. Brindleford might never have had a riot, or a government inquiry. But surely your civil servants have briefed you on your deprivation indices and your super output areas? Brindleford ranks as god-awful in terms of poverty and crime.”

  “Well, yes; of course. But I simply don’t recall the name ever cropping up.”

  “Interesting. Well, when I was managing the Brindleford estate, the police always said that it was a hell of a lot more violent … harder to police, than nearby Moss Side. Which no doubt, you’ll have heard of.”

  I paused. Receiving a piercing gaze from him. Perhaps he was trying to fathom out whether I was an undercover member of the opposition or not. But he sighed.

  “I’m sorry to say, Rachael, that if it’s not actually in my constituency, or on the national map with some kind of a big news hoo-ha, I probably wouldn’t know about it. It’s a funny old life, being an MP. Being a minister. Especially if your patch is in the North. You’re in London during the week, doing the Commons stuff, and then you’re racing to and from the constituency. Or stuck on the West Coast line while engineers fiddle with the signals. At the weekends I’m at the mercy of Graham the Griper and his like at the constituency office in Stalybridge …” He shook his head. “I should have pushed harder for one of the south-east constituencies. I really should have.”

  My hackles rose. “Well, look on the bright side. Maybe at the next general election they’ll find you some pretty, leafy suburb in the depths of the south where the nearest troubled council estate or whatever is some fifty miles away. And where the biggest social issue that the local MP has to face is whether any of the villages qualify for Britain’s Best Hanging Basket of the Year.”

  He held his hands up.

  “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to come across as so self-pitying. In comparison to a lot of people and their jobs, I’ve probably got very little to complain about. And I’m always eager to learn more about people and places that I’m unfamiliar with. Which is why I wanted to tag along with you to see what happens with Miss Simpson. Call it middle-class voyeurism if you will. As you did before.”

  “I used the term ‘cheap voyeurism’, if I remember correctly. And anyway, never mind the ABs. When it comes to your own particular social strata, I reckon that the phrase ‘upper-class voyeurism’ might be more accurate.”

  Again, I wondered if I had overstepped the mark, as a slight pause lingered in the air. But then he did that public-schoolboy guffaw thing. Meaning that perhaps he wasn’t the sort to take himself too seriously, after all. Good. I couldn’t bring myself to play the brown-nosing ministers game these days. So maybe I c
ould semi-forgive him for chortling along like Boris Johnson.

  “Fine! Fine! Whatever. I know that you think I’m oh so green. That I’ve never lived life on the edge. But don’t judge a book by its cover. I’ve seen a bit of action in my time, you know.”

  “So you said,” I conceded. “But let’s not go trying to compare action in Afghanistan with murder in Manchester.”

  Miss Simpson broke into a rendition of ‘Frankie and Johnny’.

  Two minutes later we arrived in Brindleford. There were hardly any cars driving around the estate. Perhaps because of the sweltering heat of the day. Perhaps not. Ali bipped his horn at two youths who deliberately stopped in the middle of the road when they saw the taxi approaching. He had to swerve to avoid them, gesticulating at the pair (“You’re crazy!”) They mouthed the standard ‘eff-off' response. The roads on Brindleford were littered with bricks, and although Ali had his air con cranked up high, a shimmering heat haze hung over the tarmac. The road glittered with glass, pockmarked by beer cans. Graffiti adorned fences, gable ends and even lamp posts. Ali slowed down now, avoiding the more obvious piles of broken glass. Michael perused the graffiti as we passed it.

  “This Kiera sounds like a popular girl.” Several different tags claimed carnal knowledge of her.

  “Must run in the family,” I added, because the next fence panel noted that Kiera wasn’t as talented as her mother. We both erupted into childish sniggers as the taxi reached the end of the road and the final panel culminated in an accusation against Kiera’s dad and the family dog.

  I shook my head, attempting sobriety. “You know. We’re both sitting here, laughing, but people living here can get stabbed over much less than this kind of thing. I once had to transfer an entire family – seven people – from Brindleford over to council properties in Sheffield. The result of a dispute over parking. Thanks to the attitude of their next door neighbours. A family called the Murrays – or the Mad Murrays. The Murrays always went the extra-mile on anti-social behaviour. They liked their vendettas. They were more of a gang really. And what they did to their next door neighbour’s teenage lad … a Murray classic. Broke three of the kid’s fingers by holding him down and hammering them with a mallet. Just because he parked his car in ‘the wrong place’. Not that the police could ever prove it …”