Mrs Harris, MP

by Paul Gallico

  Her many chins quivering, her eyes filling up constantly with tears of worry, Mrs Butterfield bustled about her kitchen preparing that which she must bring with her on her next assignment, so that she would be able to spend at least the last half-hour or so at the bedside of her stricken friend.

  However, she was not yet done with her apportionment of mysteries and shocks for the day. For when, her chores completed, she ran next door again to see how Mrs Harris was getting on, she was no longer there. Fortunately there was a note propped up on the mantel:

  ‘Not to worry. Am gone to Parliament. Thanks for everything, love. Ada.’

  The Speaker of the House of Commons was a cultured, kindly man and an able politician, but he was also one of the busiest. Until Parliament settled down, he was inundated with a mass of paper work, requests, reports, etc., and spent every moment he could in his office not only before and after sessions, but during as well whenever he could be spared from the floor and the Deputy Speaker could take over.

  Now, in the late afternoon, with the House enjoying a temporary adjournment, he was hard at work when his secretary appeared at the door of his inner sanctum and said, ‘There’s a Mrs Ada Harris would like to have a word with you, if she might, sir.’

  ‘Ada Harris, Ada Harris? Do I know her?’

  ‘I think she’s one of the new Members, sir.’

  ‘Put her off until another time, can you?’

  ‘Very well, sir.’ The secretary, however, was a young man whose heart had not yet begun to shrivel. He paused at the door. ‘If you could just manage to see her for a moment, sir. I think – she seems …’

  The Speaker looked up from the problem that had his brow knotted, saw the expression of concern on his secretary’s face and his own cleared. He smiled and said, ‘All right, Carson. Show her in.’

  There were few things that Ada Harris had been able to make head or tail out of the proceedings in Parliament in which she had been floundering like a non-swimmer in a whirlpool, but one fact she had gathered was that the man addressed as ‘Mr Speaker’ was the most powerful in the assemblage. He was bowed to upon entering the chamber, kow-towed to apparently at all times, the catching of his eye was of paramount importance. He could help or hinder Members. He was a kind of colossal coachman holding the reins of some six hundred and thirty skittish individuals.

  What had come surging through to her to dispel even so severe a shock as she had endured was the knowledge that there had been a wrong perpetrated. It must be set right immediately and she was the only person who could do so. The Speaker, then, was the man she must see.

  This dignitary now thrust his papers aside, pushed his spectacles up on to the top of his head and said, ‘Oh yes, won’t you sit down, Mrs – Mrs –’

  ‘ ’Arris. Ada ’Arris.’

  The Speaker scrutinized the woman perched on the edge of her seat, took in the neatness of her clothes, the careful gloves, then the incongruous and obviously cockney voice and face, the round apple cheeks now bereft of colour and what would ordinarily have been impudence and some naughtiness in the eyes diluted by nervousness. These features, this person he had seen before and very often, and recently. But where?

  Then it came to him. ‘But of course,’ he said, ‘you’re the …’ He caught himself in time before he finished the sentence, but the word ‘char’ hung quivering in the air between them.

  Then he added, ‘I remember now. You had quite a …’ he hesitated, ‘shall we say, distinctive campaign. You’re to be congratulated. What is it I may do for you?’

  Now that the moment had come, the last of her old and dependable fund of assurance seemed to have been drained away and Mrs Harris’s lips quivered slightly as she said, ‘Sir, I’d like to resign. But I don’t know what to do, or how to go about it, or I shouldn’t be here bothering you. And you such a busy man.’

  Mr Speaker was genuinely astonished. Parliament was no more than three weeks old and a Member who had come in on a rousing majority after, it is true, a somewhat unorthodox election campaign, was already speaking of opting out?

  ‘Why is it you wish to resign?’ he asked.

  Mrs Harris blinked once or twice and replied, ‘Personal reasons, sir.’ It was a phrase he had often read in the newspapers. Directors of companies, actors, heads of firms, clergymen when quitting their jobs, usually just before their jobs quit them, always did so for ‘personal reasons’.

  The Speaker said, ‘You’re not in ill health, are you?’

  ‘Oh no, sir. Never better.’

  But looking at her closely, he saw that this was not actually so, and that his visitor was under great emotional and mental stress. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘once you’ve been elected you cannot resign from Parliament.’

  ‘Oh, Lor’, sir!’ breathed Mrs Harris. ‘Oh, Lor’, what am I going to do?’ and she turned her head away from him so that he would not see the tears of shame and terror which she could no longer keep from her eyes.

  And the experienced man, in one of those flashes of intuition and understanding that often had been of service in raising him to the eminence of his position, suddenly began remembering and piecing together fragments and snatches he had heard bandied about in the lobby; a snigger, a laugh, a bit of the story, not an edifying one. There had been a piece of political trimming, not entirely unusual, which had gone wrong and had turned into rather a scandalous joke.

  And here before him sat the victim thereof, trapped by circumstances and not the first person of ambition limited both by judgement and capability, who had found him or herself out of depth in the club known as the House of Commons. But whatever had happened, the Speaker concluded his summing up, here was a woman who seemed essentially good and sincere. She had become enmeshed by circumstances beyond her control.

  ‘We could make you a Life Peeress,’ he said with the strangest kind of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  Mrs Harris stared at him aghast.

  The Speaker recovered immediately and looked shocked himself. ‘Excuse me,’ he apologized, ‘I meant to be neither rude nor facetious. I was thinking only of the devious chicanery of politics. Well then, there is another way. You could apply for the Chiltern Hundreds.’

  ‘The what children?’ asked Mrs Harris, startled.

  ‘Chil-tern,’ repeated the Speaker, ‘the Chiltern Hundreds.’

  Mrs Harris was staring at him incomprehending.

  He said, ‘We are a strange people and even a stranger body politic. We legislate to the effect that no elected Member of Parliament may be permitted to resign his seat and then, as solemnly, arrange for a loop-hole, big enough to drive a caravan through, so that he can. You see, no Member may accept any office of profit under the Crown and at the same time retain his seat in the House. The Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, that is to say, Bailiff of Her Majesty’s three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham, is such an office. Purely technical of course. The “Hundreds” is an archaic political district division of which only a few have survived.’

  He paused to see if there was any glimmer of understanding of a subject which even to him did not appear to be entirely clear. ‘Well, at any rate, you may apply for such a Stewardship and the granting of it automatically vacates your seat in the House.’

  Fly paper, that’s what politics was, Mrs Harris thought. You’d hardly got one foot clear when the other one was stuck. ‘ ’Ow would I go about doing that, sir?’

  ‘You apply, I believe – let me see – to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Yes, that’s it.’

  Both feet were now firmly glued and Mrs Harris had barely a struggle left. ‘Oh, Lor’,’ she groaned, ‘the Chancellor of the Exchequer!’ He might just as well have said the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chief Justice, or the Queen herself.

  The Speaker reflected, understood her problem and then said, ‘Look here, I think we may be able to help you on this. At any rate we can try.’

  He reached for the telephone and said, �
�See if the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in his office, by any chance.’

  A moment later, when the phone buzzed and he picked it up, he nodded in the direction of Mrs Harris and said, ‘We’re in luck’, and then into the telephone, ‘Hello, Chancellor. The Speaker here. I wonder if you could help me. I have a Member with me who for pressing personal reasons wishes to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds, and she is somewhat shy and inexperienced in such matters … Yes, a lady. Can you grant her the Stewardship? May we handle it from this office, straight through to you? … I see. I see. Yes, yes. That’s very kind of you. I’m very much obliged, Ron. Goodbye, Chancellor.’

  He hung up. ‘All done and arranged for,’ he said. ‘Stop at the desk of my secretary on your way out and Carson will type out a proper application for you to sign. We’ll send it over to the Chancellor’s office. The Stewardship will be granted and that will be that.’ Then he added, ‘And I may add, Mrs Harris, that I’m very sorry.’

  She caught his motion of rising and herself leapt up quickly to speak her thanks and make her escape. She was halfway to the door when something impelled her to turn and, as he looked up from the desk, say, ‘You’ve been so very kind, sir. Dare I ask one thing more?’

  Mr Speaker said, ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘Might I speak just once? I mean, say a word. Not long, I mean, I wouldn’t take up much time. But just to say goodbye tonight, since I shall be leaving.’

  The Speaker thought he understood too, the craving for something to take away, perhaps if only the memory of a maiden speech made during probably one of the shortest tenures of a seat in the history of the Commons. But above all he admired tenacity and courage. This woman was no quitter. She was only doing what she had felt was right. He smiled and said, ‘I think perhaps that might be arranged, if there’s not too much business towards the end of the session. If you will stand up and remain standing, I probably shall be able to see you.’

  15

  The gulf between cherished dream, fantasy and reality was perhaps never wider than at the moment of the maiden as well as, simultaneously, farewell speech of the Hon. Member for East Battersea.

  In the dream, always, she rose to address a packed House on the shortcomings of the Government, holding it spellbound with the simplicity and common sense of her remarks and the proposals she put forth to cure the ills of the country. As she gave them ‘what for’ she looked down into the awed faces of the Members, saw them nod their heads in agreement, or shake them in amazement. She heard the murmurs of ‘Hear, hear!’ and ‘How true!’ and ‘Why didn’t we ever think of this before?’ When she had finished all Parties joined in ringing cheers and a vote of thanks was moved and passed unanimously.

  The reality was that Ada Harris made her speech to a House that was almost empty, except for the quorum of stragglers that remained to vote an early adjournment and who were busy rattling their papers, sorting them out, stuffing them into their briefcases and whispering with their neighbours. There was one, lone reporter left in the press enclosure and no one in the spectators’, or Strangers’, Gallery, for it had been a particularly tiresome and uninteresting session which was going to wind up its business much earlier than usual.

  Mrs Harris might never have got to make her speech at all, had not the Speaker come into the House shortly before nine o’clock to have a word with his Deputy and, seeing her standing there, remembered the incident of the late afternoon.

  His practised eye, fortunately, casting about the House, saw the small figure standing up. She had been on her feet for the better part of an hour. He went to the throne and whispered a few words to the Deputy, who nodded.

  When the dull drone of the Member speaking had died away, he glanced upwards to the isolated figure on the back bench and called: ‘The Honourable Member for East Battersea.’

  He had to repeat it a second time, for Mrs Harris had been deep in the rehearsing of the speech she had memorized. Now that the time had come it caught her unawares, flustered her and drove every last word of it out of her mind. Hence she was compelled to speak from her heart instead of her head.

  With a frightened little gesture of her hand, she began, ‘Oh dear – That’s me, isn’t it? That’s very kind. I don’t want to take up anybody’s time because I know you’re all so busy. I just thought I ought to be saying goodbye as I won’t be coming here any more after tonight.’ The reporter, who had been half dozing, snapped awake at the sound of such unorthodox words and looked about to fix upon who had spoken them. He sat up and reached for his notebook and pencil when he saw.

  ‘It’s all been a kind of mistake for which I’m sorry,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘And I oughtn’t never to have been ’ere. I’m told there’ll be a by-election now and the right person will get in. I’ve asked for and been given the Chiltern ’Undreds. I don’t know exactly what they are, but now that I’ve got ’em, I’ll probably be expected to clean ’em. That’s my real job, keeping things tidy and goodness knows, that’s a day’s work. I suppose I ought to have stuck to it. There’s a lot of difference between ’aving ideas rattling around in your ’ead and thinking you can run things better than others, and getting down to it when the time comes.’

  ‘Why, it’s the charwoman!’ mumbled the reporter and began to fill his notebook rapidly with shorthand pothooks.

  Some of the paper rattling stopped and a few of the Members turned around and stared.

  ‘That’s why I’m leaving,’ Mrs Harris continued. ‘It takes more than wanting to ’elp people, don’t it? You got to know ’ow. I thought maybe I could, because where I live we see a lot of things and hear a lot, too; things that ain’t right or fair and it makes you want to do something about it. Even keeps you lying awake nights sometimes, wishing. I thought I could speak for a lot of us who ’ad nobody else to speak for them, but when the time came it seemed like I couldn’t and maybe nobody can. I oughtn’t to be taking the place of someone that knows more than I do. And that’s why I know that I shouldn’t be here, but only thought I would like to say goodbye and let you get on with it. I’m sorry if I caused anyone any inconvenience, and – and …’

  It seemed as though suddenly she heard her own voice ringing through the almost emptied chamber and the sound of it terrified her as it had so many a beginning speaker in the years gone by. She concluded hastily – ‘… and I thank you for your kind attention.’ She sat down to silence which grew heavier as the Speaker waited for the traditional rise of a Member to congratulate a maiden speaker upon his or her effort.

  Finally another back bencher arose and was recognized. He said in a dry-as-dust voice, ‘The Honourable Member for East Battersea is to be felicitated not only upon the expediency but also the brevity of her speech.’ And then he could not deny himself a quip: ‘I imagine the Chiltern Hundreds won’t be any the worse for a bit of a brush up.’

  But no one laughed. There was no longer a quorum and, with business concluded, adjournment became automatic and the Speaker pronounced it. Members drifted away in twos and threes. All of them somehow managed to avoid looking at, or being caught by the eye of, the late Member for East Battersea, who came down, straightbacked, head up, from the embankment of the highest backbench area and walked through them and out of the House and out of their lives.

  But she had succeeded in arousing a feeling of discomfort and in several of them a lingering nostalgia, as it were, for a Utopia lost.

  She had managed to recall something of her weird campaign, but chiefly her slogan of ‘Live and Let Live’ and it seemed to them as though she was being whipped from a lost battlefield, leaving her tattered banner behind her.

  What upset them, and kept them from wishing to witness her departure, was that she had forced some of them to a sudden glimpse of their own, long dormant and encrusted, early ideals and enthusiasms with which they had come to the House. These they had, in one way or another, long since forgotten or bargained away, so that they had to pretend heartlessly and cynically not to listen to a human being wh
o having come with equal sincerity had had the courage to acknowledge failure and go. A duly elected Member, she could have remained on the public pay-roll, part of a piece of modern, political machinery that ground on, wanting not fresh ideas or speeches but votes, upon issues largely decided for it beforehand. She had called her presence ‘a mistake’ and had been too proud to settle for it. They hoped they would forget her quickly.

  The Deputy Speaker said, ‘Wasn’t that the charwoman about whom there was such a hubbub in the papers?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Speaker, ‘it was,’ and gathered up his own documents. He was wishing that she had not gone and that from time to time she might have managed somehow to raise her voice for those for whom nobody in that day and age spoke, or very much cared about.

  But the reporter was already telephoning his story in and, on the late bulletin of the BBC Home Service, the news was broadcast that Mrs Ada Harris, charwoman from East Battersea who had conducted a sensational campaign to be elected to Parliament, had asked for and been granted the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, thereby vacating her seat.

  One of the listeners to this piece of intelligence was Mr John Bayswater, who had been about to retire. At its conclusion he had turned quite pale and, clicking off the wireless set, he went to the window and looked out unseeing upon the empty street.

  He stood there for a long time, coping with an inner struggle aroused by feelings he had not known himself capable of entertaining. Occasionally they compelled him to swallow hard and shake his head, as he reviewed his own life and then reflected once more upon what he had heard.

  At last he came to a decision and, moving like one held back by the lassitude sometimes encountered in a dream, began a series of operations which anyone watching him could only have judged as preparations for imminent flight.

  He went below first, to his garage and checked the Rolls, the petrol-tank, radiator, battery, tyres. He knew they were all in tip-top travel shape, but he never set out upon any kind of a journey without this last-minute inspection.