Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (13 page)

One consolation was that the
Telegraph Magazine
wasn’t like newspapers, the article wouldn’t appear for weeks and weeks. Perhaps not even until she and Jims were in the Maldives. And perhaps it wasn’t too late to stop it—if she dared ask Malina to intervene on her behalf. That would take some thinking about. She didn’t say a word to Jims about it when he came home. That wasn’t until 1 A.M., anyway. He’d been in the Commons chamber, but after the seven o’clock vote he’d slipped out and walked a hundred yards along Millbank where he’d taken a cab to visit his new friend in Chelsea.

Zillah was beginning to see that getting oneself into the newspaper might not be all fun and glamour. These journalists were cleverer than she’d expected. Jims could be left out of it for now, but she had to talk to someone. She phoned Malina and the PR woman came round. “I thought maybe you could call the
Telegraph Magazine
and say I didn’t mean that about libel and I’m sorry I shouted at her.”

Malina was appalled but didn’t show it. “That would be inappropriate, don’t you think? I would have put in a presence if I’d only been notified. But you did give the interview of your own free will, Zillah. No one brought any pressure to bear.”

“I was hoping you could stop it altogether. Suggest I gave her another interview. I’d be more careful next time.”

“No next time would be the preferred option, Zillah.” Malina seemed to have changed her mind about all publicity being good. “But I suppose it’s too late for that.”

“You could call the other papers and just say I don’t want to.”

“They’ll want a reason.”

“Say I’m ill. Say I’ve got—gastroenteritis.”

“They’ll think you’re pregnant. You’re not, are you?”

“Of course I’m not,” Zillah snapped.

“Shame. That would be the answer to all our prayers.”

But Malina canceled three of the projected interviews and would have canceled the fourth, scheduled for the next day, but the journalist she was trying to reach wasn’t answering his mobile, ignored her e-mail and fax, and responded to none of the messages she left. In spite of not liking her, Zillah had such confidence in Malina that she didn’t bother to dress up when the visit from the next broadsheet was due. Malina would have canceled it. When the doorbell rang she thought, Suppose it’s Jerry? She ran to answer it without, for once, bothering to look in the mirror first.

Charles Challis was the sort of man Zillah would in other circumstances have described as “dishy.” But the circumstances were all wrong because she hadn’t been expecting anyone, particularly a man, and she looked a mess. “You weren’t supposed to come,” she said. “We canceled you.”

“Not to my knowledge. Is the photographer here yet?”

Then Zillah did look in the mirror, at her unmade-up face, unwashed hair, and sweater that was a souvenir of six years in Long Fredington and had originally come from the British Home Stores. Numbly she led Charles Challis into the living room. He asked her nothing about Jims’s reputed gayness nor what she did for a living and made no comment on her appearance. He was nice. Zillah decided it wasn’t journalists she disliked but women journalists. She asked the photographer if it would be all right for her to put on some makeup. When she came back Charles, as he’d asked her to call him, edged his questioning on to politics.

This was a subject of which Zillah admitted to herself she knew little. She knew who the prime minister was and she said she thought him “dishy,” but she couldn’t remember the name of the leader of the Opposition. The journalist put to her the burning question of the hour. What was her opinion on Section 28?

She looked blank. Charles explained. Section 28 forbade local authorities to promote homosexuality; the provision proposed in the local government bill was to repeal it. Their contention was that, due to the section, children uncertain of their orientation were confused and made the victims of bullying. What did Zillah think about it?

Zillah didn’t want to get into any more trouble. Recalling what the Reckman woman had implied about homosexuals and heterosexuals being equal with no moral difference between them, she said hotly that Section 28 was obviously wrong. It should be got rid of and quickly. Charles wrote it all down and tested his recorder to check that Zillah’s voice was coming across clearly. How about trial by jury? Was Zillah in favor of shortening court proceedings and thereby saving the taxpayer’s money? The night before, Jims had been complaining at length about the income tax he paid, so Zillah said she was all for economy and people on juries weren’t lawyers, were they, so what did they know?

She felt quite pleased with herself. The photographs wouldn’t be too bad. She often thought the casual look suited her better than formality. Malina phoned after they’d gone and said she’d managed to cancel everything but Charles Challis. How had the interview gone?

“It was marvelous. He was so
nice.
”

“Good. Well done, you.” Malina didn’t say that the journalist in question was known in the Groucho Club as Poisoned Chalice.

Zillah put the phone down and looked out of the window. Jerry was standing at the entrance to the underground car park. She rushed out of the flat and down in the lift but when she came out into Great College Street he’d gone. He must have put his car into the car park. She ran down the slope and into the depths. There was no sign of him and no dark blue BMW. Perhaps he’d been on foot because of the difficulties of parking. He could have got on a bus or walked to the tube while she was leaving the flat. What did he want? He could be thinking of blackmailing her.
Five hundred a month or I tell all.
But as far as she knew Jerry had never descended to blackmail in the past and wouldn’t begin with her. She went back across the road and, because she’d forgotten her key, had to get the porters to let her in.

The interviews over or canceled, it was time to fetch the children. Jims and Zillah drove down to Bournemouth on Saturday. It was a pleasant drive, for once the roads not congested and it wasn’t raining. They stopped for lunch at a smart new restaurant in Casterbridge, down by the river and the millrace, because Jims didn’t want to stay long enough to sample her mother’s cooking. Neither Eugenie nor Jordan seemed pleased to see them.

“Want to stay with Nanna,” said Jordan.

His sister patted him on the head. “We like the seaside. Children need fresh air, you know, not traffic plumes.” She meant “fumes” but no one corrected her.

“I suppose there’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay a bit longer,” said Jims hopefully.

“I’m afraid there is, James.” Nora Watling was never afraid to speak her mind. “I’m tired. I need some peace. I’ve raised one family and I’m not in the business of raising another at my age.”

“No one wants us,” said Eugenie cheerfully. “It’s not very nice to be an unwanted child, is it, Jordan?”

Jordan didn’t understand but burst into howls just the same. When Jims looked at his watch at three-thirty and said they might as well be going, Nora was deeply offended. The children had had their lunch but she insisted on stuffing them with crisps, ice cream, and Black Forest cake before they left. On the way back to London, Jordan was sick all over Jims’s gray leather upholstery.

But once they were home, Eugenie had started at her new school, and a place in a fashionable “progressive” nursery been found for Jordan, peace reigned. It was possible to leave Abbey Gardens Mansions very discreetly by taking the lift down to the basement car park and driving out by the exit into a turning off Great Peter Street. A journalist would have had to be very vigilant and an early riser to spot Zillah taking the children to school at nine in the morning, the silver Mercedes slipping out by the back way. But there were no journalists. The media seemed to have lost interest. A couple of weeks went by and the newspapers ignored young Mr. and Mrs. Melcombe-Smith. Zillah had expected to be pleased about that if it happened, but now she began wondering what had become of the piece that nice Charles Challis was writing. She and Jims were going on their honeymoon on Easter Saturday. It would be just her luck to be away when it appeared.

“What do you mean, just your luck?” Jims had been unreasonably irritable lately. “I’d say you’ve been pretty lucky up till now.”

“It was just a figure of speech,” said Zillah pacifically.

“A highly inappropriate one, if I may say so. Have you arranged with Mrs. Peacock yet?”

“I’ll do it now.”

But Mrs. Peacock wasn’t able to stay at Abbey Gardens Mansions for the ten days Jims and Zillah would be in the Maldives, or indeed for any part of that time. Zillah, she said, had left it too late. Only the day before she’d fixed up to go on a coach tour of Bruges, Utrecht, and Amsterdam.

“I hope she freezes to death,” said Zillah. “I hope she poisons herself on tulip bulbs.”

“Tulip bulbs aren’t poisonous,” said Jims coldly. “Squirrels prefer them to nuts. Have you never noticed?”

She had to ask her mother. Nora Watling exploded. The children had been in London less than three weeks and now she was expected to have them back again. Hadn’t Zillah understood what she’d said about not wanting to raise a second family?

“You and Daddy could come here. The children are at school all day. You could do some sightseeing, go on the Millennium Wheel.”

“We haven’t been on the wheel,” said Eugenie. “We haven’t even been to the Dome.”

“Nanna will take you,” said Zillah, covering up the mouthpiece. “Nanna will take you anywhere you want to go.”

Of course Nora Watling agreed to come. She could hardly do otherwise. Having remarked scathingly that some people would put their children in a kennel or a cattery if they had the chance, she said she and Zillah’s father would arrive on Good Friday.

“I wish you wouldn’t teach them to call their grandmother Nanna,” said Jims. “It’s highly inappropriate for the stepchild of a Conservative MP.”

“Not a stepchild, not a stepchild,” screamed Jordan. “Want to be a real child.”

On Monday morning, a week later than expected, the Challis interview with Zillah appeared. Or something appeared. There was no photograph and the piece devoted to Zillah was about two inches long. It was part of a two-page feature on MPs’ wives, their views and occupations, and it was written in a breezy, satirical style. She was made to look a combination of feather-headed butterfly and ignoramus.

Zillah, new bride of James Melcombe-Smith, shares her husband’s interest in politics if not his persuasion. Not for her the retention of Section 28 or that ancient bastion of the law, trial by jury. Sweep them away, is her policy. Where have we heard that before? Why, from none other than the Labour Party. “People on juries aren’t lawyers,” she told me, tossing back a lock of raven hair. (Mrs. Melcombe-Smith looks a lot like Catherine Zeta-Jones.) “My husband would like to see an end to this waste of the taxpayers’ money.” He, of course, is the Conservative member for South Wessex, known to his constituents and other pals as “Jims.” They will be fascinated by his wife’s views.

Jims was less angry about this than might have been expected. He muttered a bit and predicted he’d shortly be due for an unpleasant interview with the chief whip. But these were not the sort of slips and revelations he feared, and he doubted whether more than a handful of the landowners and (in his own phrase) peasants read “that rag.” Zillah said she was sorry but she didn’t know anything about politics. Was there a book she could read?

Later that day she saw Jerry again. She was in the car, fetching the children from school, and had just turned out of Millbank when she spotted him outside the Atrium. Her first thought was for the children and the trouble that would ensue if they saw him. But both were looking in the other direction, admiring two orange-colored dogs with curly tails like pigs.

“Can I have a dog, Mummy?” asked Eugenie.

“Only if you look after it yourself.” Zillah’s mother had said the same thing to her when she asked that same question twenty-two years before. She had got the dog and looked after it for three days. Remembering, she went on, “No, of course you can’t have a dog. A dog in a flat?”