A Serving of Scandal

by Prue Leith

  ‘Indeed. I’m afraid that incident was even more stupid. On a diplomatic trip to the Yemen, my wife was given a necklace by the president. He fastened it round Ruth’s neck himself. I assume – it was some months ago, and I genuinely cannot remember – that we went back to the hotel with Ruth still wearing it.’

  ‘According to the reports, it is a priceless antique piece.’

  ‘This is what’s so shaming. We thought it was, well, if not exactly a cheap trinket, certainly a modern necklace of no value. I do remember Ruth and I discussed it that evening in the hotel and we agreed we’d seen necklaces very like it in the street markets. I suppose it was a traditional design. And to make matters worse, we now can’t find it.’

  ‘You’ve lost it?’

  ‘It looks like that. My wife has never worn it since that evening, and has no idea where it is. We have, as you can imagine, turned the house upside down.’

  ‘So what happens now? Will they let you off?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think anyone, except perhaps the donor, could put a price on it, but I’m told it could be worth a lot of money. Certainly I’m unable to compensate the government for it.’

  ‘Will the government pursue a claim against you for the value?’

  ‘I don’t know. Of course I hope not.’

  ‘What a sorry tale. One more question, if I may?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Who shopped you, Mr Stapler?’

  Oliver laughed. ‘I’ve no idea. Someone looking for mud to sling at the government, I suppose. It must have taken a while to go through the cumbersome business of getting at the records under the Freedom of Information Act, claiming public interest, etc. But they struck lucky. The gift was recorded as received in a Foreign Office note on the dinner, but there is no Treasury record of receipt of the necklace. The first I knew of it was when the Ethics Committee called me to account. They had been alerted by the enquirer, I guess.’

  ‘So, what happens now? Is the necklace insured?’

  ‘No, sadly. As I say, we didn’t know its worth, and if we had we’d have handed it in, not kept it and insured it.’

  The conversation then turned to Oliver’s resolve to revert to the back benches.

  ‘To spend more time with your family, or more with your golf clubs?’

  ‘Certainly the former, but not the latter. I’m still an MP, so I hope to spend more time in my constituency.’

  As Oliver crept from the studio, ushered out by an assistant signalling silence so as not to spoil the sports report, he wondered if he really wanted to spend more time with the family. And more to the point, did they want to spend more time with him? The girls became more distant every day, and he wasn’t sure he even wanted to see more of Ruth …

  He stepped out of Television Centre and looked round for Debbie and his car. Then he remembered that he didn’t have a ministerial car any more, and presumably Debbie was already working for someone else.

  As he climbed into the minicab hired by the BBC, he thought, well, at least it’s not the bus.

  He did not go straight home. He had intended to return to Lambeth, spend an hour in his study, then catch a train for Birmingham to join the family for the weekend. But as the car turned into Piccadilly he suddenly said to the driver, ‘Stop anywhere here, I want to walk a bit.’

  He stood on the pavement, feeling distinctly odd. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had nothing to do. It made him faintly anxious. Parliament had already broken for the summer recess so he couldn’t even sit on the back benches or gossip in the Commons bar. Should he cross the road and have a stroll in Green Park? Or wander down to Hatchards and browse around the bookshelves? Or see what was on at the Royal Academy? He had done none of these things for years.

  In the end he walked back to Hyde Park Corner and took the tunnel that led to the centre of the circus. It was only nine o’clock but the sun was bright and warm and Oliver took his jacket off, hooked a finger through the loop at the neck and slung it over his shoulder. The gesture, such a time-honoured young-man-in-a-movie gesture, immediately lightened his mood. There was a forgotten pleasure in walking about a public place without a fixed purpose and, most of all, without any officials or minders, without being recognised (only tourists here) and without feeling he was on parade.

  He approached the newest of the sculptures that occupied the patch of grass around which ceaseless traffic stop-started. He had often wondered, as he sped up Piccadilly in his ministerial limo, what the new brutal sculpture of several girder-like posts planted in the grass, was all about. It looked, he thought, like the remains of a shipwreck sticking crookedly above the water.

  He soon found it was a New Zealand War Memorial with shallow reliefs on each post – rugger ball, kiwi, Maori inscriptions, etc. But he was unmoved by it. He preferred the Victorian grandeur of the quadriga on top of Wellington Arch, or the romanticism of the naked David, his idealised bronze back and bum facing Park Lane. But the sculpture that drew him up short, that made him stand immobile, was the massive work by Jagger of young soldiers round a First World War howitzer and the bier of a fallen comrade. He could not take his eyes from the exhausted face of a standing soldier, so young, so lost, so stoical, his world so utterly bleak.

  Against that generation’s shattered dreams, Oliver thought, what exactly do I have to complain of?

  He walked slowly back down Piccadilly, cheered by the thought that he had spent his first hour of real freedom from government discovering something new. He settled his mind to be positive: he would mend relations with Ruth and the girls; spend a lot more time in the constituency; be a better local MP.

  He stopped at the restaurant in St James’s Park for breakfast. It struck him as unusual to be in a roomful of people who didn’t know, or care, who he was. They consulted their guides and maps, ate their croissants, drank their lattes and cappuccinos, without so much as a glance at him. He ordered eggs Benedict and enjoyed them, feeling happily anonymous and confident that the famous Westminster ‘Post Power Depression’ would not get him.

  Oliver’s optimistic mood lasted while he caught a bus to Lambeth, collected his briefcase and set off by taxi for Euston. He now had an almost euphoric sense of freedom. Not to have a detective in tow, not to have to chat, or at least be civil to, his PPS and his driver, felt like an unimaginable luxury.

  But on the train he felt strangely tired, and arrived home to find Ruth grumpy and out of sorts.

  ‘Why didn’t you ring me?’ she said, barely looking up from her desk. ‘I’d have fetched you from the station. We can’t afford taxis all the time now, you know.’

  ‘It was only ten pounds. And I knew you’d be busy.’

  ‘And why are you so late? I thought you were coming down straight after the broadcast?’

  ‘I said I’d be home for lunch. Which I am. Actually, Ruth, I had an hour in the middle of Hyde Park Corner, and I …’

  ‘You what?’

  Oliver tried to describe the Jagger sculpture, but Ruth wasn’t listening. Annoyed by her lack of interest, he asked her the question he suspected she would not like answering.

  ‘Darling, did you listen to the programme?’

  ‘No. I knew what you were going to say, and you know I don’t think you should have resigned.’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t come to the House yesterday, either?’

  ‘Of course. What is the point of sitting in the gallery to hear you say something I don’t think you should be saying and then have to listen to everyone telling you – or worse, telling me – how noble and principled you are.’ She assumed a pompous voice. ‘Not since Carrington resigned over the Falklands have we seen such self sacrifice …’

  Oliver frowned. Why was she being so vitriolic? He really did not want to have the resignation conversation again. He remembered his resolution to build bridges with his family, and decided to overlook her outburst. He said mildly, ‘Well, it’s done now. And do you know, I feel rather good about
it. It’s a horrible time to be in government. Everyone thinks you’re a crook, bumping up expenses … and useless to boot.’

  ‘You’re still an MP, still a politician. You’ll still be tarred with the expenses brush.’ To Oliver she seemed to say this with a kind of relish, but maybe she didn’t mean to.

  ‘At least we didn’t submit any dodgy claims,’ he said. ‘Not that it makes any odds. In the eyes of the press and public there’s no difference between what we did ten years ago with a set of china plates and falsely claiming for hundreds of thousands.’

  She didn’t answer and Oliver, anxious to placate her, was grateful.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I walked down Piccadilly and had breakfast at Inn the Park. It was really nice. Just so good having nothing to do. It must be twenty years since—’

  Ruth interrupted. ‘Oliver, I’m sure it’s very nice to be free as air, but you will forgive me if I don’t share your delight. We’ve still got school fees to pay, and if you think my father will just stump up …’

  He sighed. Was there no subject they could discuss peaceably? He knew he was being baited, but he couldn’t stop his temper rising. ‘Ruth, you know as well as I do that the school fees were taken care of with an insurance plan we bought years ago.‘

  ‘Oliver, your salary as Foreign Secretary is – was – a hundred and twenty thousand on top of your MP’s salary. Now we are to sacrifice that and live on sixty-four grand, all because you lacked the balls to weather the storm.’

  Oliver felt his anger turn to icy calm. ‘Ruth, you are obviously highly dissatisfied with me. Is it permanent, do you think? Or is it worth our trying to be civil to each other in the hope of avoiding more damage?’

  Ruth stood up and faced him, her expression hard and set.

  ‘I don’t know. You asked me a while back if I loved you and I said I wasn’t sure. Well, I am now. I don’t. But lots of marriages survive without love. The problem for me is that I’m so angry with you, Oliver. Not just because you have resigned over nothing, but because of that bloody cook! And because—’

  ‘But you know the truth.’

  ‘I know you spent a lot of time with her, yes, and it got us into hell fire. But if you want to know what has really made me angry, apart from the mess you are making of your career, is your decision to dish out Scandal Sheet’s money to a music charity! Why could you not give it to my Pony Trust? Didn’t it even occur to you to consult me? Don’t you think you owe me anything for standing there like an abused little wife and backing up your pious denials? I work my guts off for that charity, for free, and have for years. I raise just about every penny we spend. And you get a bloody great windfall and casually dish it out to a charity you hardly know.’

  Oliver listened to her in dismay. He tried to stop her a couple of times, but she was not to be brooked. She went on and on, about his absence of loyalty, the way he took her for granted, his lack of interest in his daughters. She fired any arrows she had to hand.

  When she stopped, Oliver turned and left the room. His face burned hot and he did not trust himself to speak. The long and the short of it was that, as usual, Ruth was fed up with him, and her reasons were many and various.

  He walked out into the stable yard, through the home paddock, and fast up the hill. It was still clear and hot with only the slightest of breezes: a rare perfect English summer’s day. As his body warmed with sun and exertion, his anger dissipated. When he got to the top of the path, he sat down on a grassy patch and looked back down the valley. It was laid out like a map. Pretty stone house, bright lawn and garden to the left, and to the right Ruth’s meticulously kept yard, with loose-boxes, feed and tack rooms to one side and riding school shed to the other. He could see Ben the saddler sitting on the step of the old hay barn he rented from them, and behind the yard ponies grazing in one paddock and brightly coloured show-jumps in another. The trailer and the great horsebox were neatly parked behind the shed, the muck heaps carefully piled and the surrounding concrete scrubbed clean.

  Random thoughts came and went in his head. Ruth ran a tight ship, no doubt of that. But if it wasn’t for her father subsidising her, she would have realised years ago that horses don’t pay.

  I really don’t like the brutes, he thought. They look good, but they’re dangerous, demanding and expensive. He thought about the things Ruth had said. Maybe he should have discussed the charity money with her. If he were honest, he had briefly considered Ruth’s pony rescue charity but had seen at once that giving her the money would look like nepotism. He’d named Musical Instruments for Kids because he’d been impressed with what they’d done for local schools and he knew no one would grudge them the money.

  That she had not come to hear his resignation speech in the Commons yesterday – she was in London and could easily have done so – or listened to the Today programme this morning was insulting, an indication of how little he interested her. But he found he didn’t really care. He had no desire now to go back and heal any rifts. He lay down in the warm grass and closed his eyes.

  Maybe this is it, he thought. She doesn’t love me, she’s quite clear about that. Do I love her? God knows … But I think not.

  On Monday, after an uneasy ceasefire and a calmer discussion, Oliver rang an estate agent friend and asked her to find him a cottage or a flat nearby.

  They had agreed on a trial separation. Oliver had winced at the time-worn, mealy-mouthed phrase. But Ruth wanted him out of the house and he wanted to be near his daughters.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  In the end, leaving Toby in Arizona had been much easier than Kate feared. He was in seventh heaven, excited at seeing his cousins, sleeping with them in a tent on the lawn, and being spoilt and fussed over by everyone. Far from him weeping and wailing at her departure, he’d hardly seemed to care. She’d felt a little tearful on the flight home, but she was exhausted too, and soon fell asleep.

  She did miss him, and counted the days to his return like a schoolgirl. Meanwhile she tried to pretend she was fine. ‘I’m fine’ had become a sort of mantra, something she was saying all the time: to her mother on the telephone from Arizona; to suppliers worrying about the woman upon whom their payment depended; to the dwindling band of customers who’d read the gossip columns and wanted confirmation she’d manage their order; to Amal and Talika who knew what she was going through. But mostly she lectured herself: I’m fine, just fine; I’m fine about leaving my darling son thousands of miles away to be monopolised by my mother; I’m fine that he’s so happy that he’s not giving me a thought. I’m fine: I’m not going bankrupt; I can sort out my ex trying to muscle in on the family; I’m not in love with Oliver Stapler; I’m not lonely. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.

  But she wasn’t sleeping well. Knowing there’d be no sleeping boy beside her, she dreaded waking without his merry eyes willing hers to open. She avoided going to bed, and worked until her brain went on strike and she could not do the simplest sums. Then she crawled into bed, slept soundly for a couple of hours, fitfully for a couple more, then took a Valium which kept her under until six a.m. or so. At six-thirty she rose, groggy and sad, and doggedly started the new day.

  One morning she found an email from Jarvis Stanley, and opened it. Normally she deleted his emails unread, as she did all messages from journalists and radio or TV stations.

  She knew very well it was Stanley who’d started the hare which had pretty well ruined her life, but Kate also recognised that he was a cut above the rest of the rat pack. He would never have held her by the hair to let a colleague get a picture of her; he would not have broken into her study; he didn’t climb ladders to peer into her windows. And on the few occasions when he had got her on the telephone, he had been decently spoken and respectful. He never called her ‘Darlin’.’

  For all these reasons, or for none of them, maybe just on a whim, Kate opened the email:

  Kate, I really think we should meet. You have a great story to tell, and it should be told. You are th
e victim in all this and yet you are the one person who has behaved well. Besides (I hope this is not impertinent) couldn’t you do with a few grand? We pay well and we would not stitch you up, I promise. We would agree the shape of the story with you in advance. I’m on your side, Kate.

  PS, If you agree, or even want to discuss it, you should get someone to represent you. Max Clifford is the best. But Rake Jones is good too. www.rakejones.com You need someone to negotiate with my bosses, and to do any media deals you will need someone to advise you.

  Kate pressed the delete button. But even as she switched off the computer she thought, well, if I need the website I can always get it out of the deleted folder.

  She went back to the kitchen where she was in the middle of a massive clear-out, embarked on in an attempt to banish the blues.

  One of the enormous fibreglass wheeled bins she used for chilling wine at parties was already full of black bags of rubbish. She’d enjoyed cleaning out the equipment cupboards and throwing away redundant attachments for long-dead machines like a cumbersome yogurt maker which did nothing that a bowl and spoon would not do; or old ice-cube trays and useless gadgets she was never going to use. She’d also successfully thrown out past-their-sell-by-date spices and condiments, and cleaned her storage jars, shelves and drawers.

  But finally, she had to tackle the freezer. Kate found throwing away perfectly good food impossible and small packages of leftovers tended to collect in the domestic freezer. She always told herself that one day she’d use up the cake, raw pastry, mashed potato, icing, pea purée, risotto or whatever.

  But somehow, if she and Toby didn’t eat these things before they got to the freezer, they seldom got eaten. She’d sooner make a quick stir-fry or an omelette than defrost anything. So today she was determined to do something about the overstuffed freezer and steel herself to junk her carefully labelled packets and tubs.

  She took everything out of the freezer and piled it on the table, with a couple of thick towels over the top to slow thawing. She knew most of it should go in the bin and she should get on with sorting good from bad, but she must defrost the encrusted freezer first. She switched it off and busied herself putting roasting pans of boiling water on each shelf. She had just shut the door on them when Talika arrived.