‘It was very kind of you.’ She felt disproportionately touched; her life had not contained a great deal of kindness lately.
‘Well, I’m quite a kindly chap. On the whole. I don’t
really like upsetting people.’
‘Actually,’ she said, after a long pause, ‘it wasn’t only you
that upset me. I’d had a hard week.’
‘And what constitutes a hard week to you? Don’t look at
me like that, I really want to know. Too many lunches?
Too few grateful clients? Bad traffic on the M4?’
The treacherous tears stung at Octavia’s eyes again; she
blinked furiously, stirred some sugar into her tea.
‘Mummy! Minty’s nearly swimming.’ Poppy stood in
front of them, beaming, breathing heavily. ‘On her tummy,
properly, arms and legs together. Caroline said she’d been
teaching her.’
‘Who’s Caroline?’
‘Our nanny. She’s very nice. You might have met her,
but she’s gone away this weekend. Gideon, stop that. Stop
it!’ Poppy ran off.
‘Ah, another hardship,’ said Gabriel Bingham lightly, ‘no
staff.’
‘Oh, shut up!’ said Octavia. Her voice shook. ‘What
have I done to you, why do you have to be so — so snide all
the time?’
‘Look.’ He put his hand on her arm. She pulled it away.
‘Don’t! Don’t touch me.’
‘I’ve done it again, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘Oh, dear. I was
only teasing you. Again. How very sensitive you are, Mrs
Fleming.’
‘And don’t call me Mrs Fleming!’
‘I thought you didn’t like me calling you Octavia?’
‘I don’t care what you call me,’ she said, and burst into
tears.
He was very nice, very calm. He moved into the chair
next to her, gave her a handkerchief, poured her another
cup of tea, added two spoons of sugar.
‘Here,’ he said gently, ‘drink this.’
‘I don’t want it,’ she said, blowing her nose furiously.
‘It will do you good. My nanny always said sweet tea cured what ailed you. There, I’ve done it now. Telling you
I had a nanny. Does that make you feel better, knowing
what a hypocrite I am?’
‘A bit,’ she said, smiling reluctantly through her tears.
‘I’d rather it didn’t get all over the House. Don’t tell your
husband.’
‘I don’t tell him anything at all,’ she said, ‘at the
moment.’ And then froze, staring at him in alarm. ‘I
shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, his untidy face very gentle. ‘If you
don’t tell about my nanny, I won’t tell about your husband.
Promise. Bad patch? No, sorry, shouldn’t have asked.
Ignore the question.’
‘No, it’s all right. And you could say that, yes.’
‘Marriage, as far as I can see, consists of one large bad
patch, interspersed by a few very small good ones. Would
you care to comment on that, Mrs Fleming?’
‘Is that why you’re not married?’ she said.
‘Partly. Probably more because no one would marry me.’
‘So you don’t have a fiancee? Putative or otherwise?’
‘No, I don’t. She’s just given me my marching orders,
wants to marry someone else, much nicer and more
convenient than I am. Doesn’t keep rushing off to London
every five minutes.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, it’s all right. I think we both knew it was
over months ago. Just jogging along, for the sake of convenience.’
‘Specially
for you,’ she said briskly.
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, I mean, you need to have someone, don’t you? In
your business? Otherwise people think you’re …’
‘Gay? That wasn’t why I went out with her,’ he said
slowly, and his face was less friendly now. ‘You seem to
view me as a bigtime hypocrite, which is rather a shame. I
felt we were becoming friends. I’m not sure that’s going to
be the case after all.’
‘Mr Bingham — Gabriel — I really didn’t mean …” She
felt panicky suddenly, and cold. It had been a foul and
insensitive thing to say to someone who had gone out of his
way to be kind and friendly to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said,
rather helplessly. ‘It was tactless of me.’
‘Yes, it was,’ he said, standing up, smiling down at her
rather coolly. ‘Anyway, I must go. It’s been a very pleasant
afternoon. Goodbye, Mrs Fleming.’
‘Are you going?’ said Gideon, running over to them.
‘That’s a shame — I wanted to ask you about my bowling.’
‘Sorry. Work to do. Nice to meet you, Gideon, I’m sure
you’ll make a fine batsman. For Winchester or wherever
else you go. ‘Bye, Poppy.’
And he was gone, striding across the lawn towards the
gate and his rather battered old Golf, parked just outside it.
Octavia watched him go, feeling very sick.
‘He’s really nice,’ said Poppy.
‘Yes,’ Octavia said, and heard her own voice, rather sad,
‘yes, I think he is really nice.’
‘Louise, are you sure you shouldn’t see the doctor?’
It was early on Monday morning; Louise had gone into
the lavatory to be sick three times already, had crawled back
into bed and lain there shivering, resisting any attempt to be
comforted.
Every time Sandy looked at Louise, he felt more afraid: a
deep gnawing fear that logic tried desperately to deny. She
looked like this, was ill like this, only when she was
pregnant; but pregnancy, he had been assured, was a total
impossibility. He had had the vasectomy over two years
ago; he had had tests done, his sperm count, the doctor had
cheerfully assured him, was zilch. He had been unsure
about having it done, had thought in those first few months
that perhaps one day Louise might feel strong enough to
have another child. But he had done it for her because he
loved her so much, loved her in spite of her dark moods,
her impatience with him, the fear that she no longer loved
him at all …
She looked at him now, her head turned to him on the
pillows, her great blue eyes dark and shadowed with misery,
and seemed genuinely puzzled at the question.
‘Why should I see a doctor?’
‘Darling, you keep being sick, you’ve lost weight, you’re
not sleeping, it can’t be - I mean, surely it can’t …’
‘Can’t be what?’ she said sharply, and afraid of confronting
her, confronting himself with the awful words, he said
feebly, ‘Can’t be all grief.’
‘Of course it’s grief, Sandy,’ she said and started to cry
again, fierce angry tears. ‘Of course it is. I’ve lost my
mother. She’s died. She’s dead, gone. I shall never see her
again. How can you be so insensitive as to think that isn’t
enough to make me ill, how can you?’
Sandy got up in silence, dressed and walked out of the
room and out of the house. It was exactly like the time after
Juliet had died, when Louise wouldn’t let him near her,
physically or emotionally, warded him away from her by
the sheer force of her pain; there was nothing he could do
but keep away from her. And try not to feel so wretchedly
afraid.
‘Thanks a lot!’ Tom’s voice was shaking with rage.
‘What?’
‘Telling Lauren Bartlett I wasn’t around on Sunday.
When you knew she had a contact for me, when you know
how desperate we are. Jesus, Octavia. You, I, the children,
we’ll all suffer if Fleming Cotterill go down. We’re on a
fucking knife edge, don’t you understand?’
‘Tom, if I might interrupt this torrent of abuse just for a
moment,’ said Octavia, ‘I did try to get hold of you on
Friday. Actually. To tell you about the lunch at the
Bartletts’, to tell you Lauren had a contact for you. I was
quite prepared to go. And where were you? Not with Bob
Macintosh in Birmingham, as Barbara Dawson informed
me, but on some mysterious assignation which nobody
knew about. Presumably with your mistress. With whom, it
seems, you’re still involved. Well, you know, it’s funny, Tom, but after that I didn’t feel able to continue with arranging networking opportunities for you. So sorry.’
Octavia stood in the vast space of the Central Lobby at the
House of Commons, feeling absurdly nervous. It was
crowded with a huge assortment of people: parties of
tourists and rather weary-looking people wearing identity
badges, clearly part of the workforce, scurrying through,
holding sheaves of paper and files; rather less weary-looking
people, walking more slowly, often in twos or threes, heads
together, the members of parliament themselves - she
recognised several of them, Austin Mitchell, Harriet Harman,
Virginia Bottomley, and the Earl of Longford, looking
too old to be alive at all, standing courteously back to allow
a group of schoolchildren through; and the elaborately
dressed doorkeepers, in their white tie and tails uniform.
The noise level in the great echoing space - the hum of
voices, the occasional announcement (totally unintelligible)
over a loudspeaker, the calls of greeting - was extremely
high. The whole place wore an air of total disorder, she
thought, more reminiscent of some huge marketplace or
money-changers’ temple than the seat of government of
one of the leading countries in the world.
Julie Springer had been in a meeting all morning; when she
got back to her office, her voice mail told her to ring the features department at the Independent. Good. It would be that nice Diana Davenport again, probably phoning to
check some details.
‘Hi,’ she said to the person who answered the phone,
‘this is Julie Springer. Could I speak to Diana Davenport?’
‘No Diana Davenport here,’ said the voice.
‘Oh. Well, maybe she’s freelance. Could I speak to
someone else, then? I did have a message to call you.’
‘Who is it?’ said the voice, slightly impatiently.
‘Julie Springer. From Fleming Cotterill.’
‘Just a minute. Hold on.’
A long silence. Then, ‘Yes, apparently it’s about your
letter. To this Davenport person. Look, I’m sorry, but we’ve never heard of her. Probably a freelance trying to
pull one on you. They do it all the time. We have no
feature planned about lobby shops, sorry. Shall I send the
list back or what?’
‘Oh, no, don’t,’ said Julie. The oldest trick in the book
for freelancers getting information, and she hadn’t spotted
it. Now she looked a fool to the Indie, and if they found out
at Fleming Cotterill — well, there was no reason why they
should. ‘No, just bin it.’
‘Peace offering,’ said Octavia. She held out a long narrow
box. ‘It’s not vintage, but it is—’
‘Let me guess. Bollinger. Mrs Fleming! How very kind.
And to take time out of your extremely busy schedule.’ The
voice had an edge to it, but the eyes, moving over her face
slowly, were soft, thoughtful.
‘I felt I owed it to you,’ she said quickly, feeling the
wretched easy flush rising from her neck. ‘I am so sorry
about the other day. What I said.’ She realised the
messenger at the desk was watching her with some
amusement; Gabriel Bingham realised it too.
‘About my being gay, you mean?’ he said loudly. The
messenger glanced at him involuntarily, then returned to a
intense study of his telephone directory. ‘Honestly, I didn’t
mind. I’ve come to terms with it now. It’s fine. If you can
live with it, so can I.’
Oh—’ She turned away, crossly, half hurt still.
He caught her by the shoulder, pulled her round to him,
smiled down at her. ‘Don’t be silly. I really do appreciate
your coming. Look, are you free for lunch? Or does a table
full of power-dressed women await your arrival at the
Ritz?’
‘I never lunch at the Ritz,’ she said, and then realised
how absurd that sounded and smiled reluctantly.
‘Well, are you awaited anywhere else?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Then have lunch with me? We can go up to the press dining room, I have a pass. The only thing is I must be in the chamber by three.’
‘No, really, I have to get back to my office. I’ve a
meeting at two thirty.’
‘It’s only a quarter to one. Where’s your office?’
‘South Ken,’ she said, realising too late how predictable
that must sound too.
He grinned at her. ‘Of course. Well, what about a drink?
On our famous terrace? Go on, Mrs Fleming, you can’t
come all this way and not let me give you at least something
to wash down the humble pie. Just a small glass of mineral
water. That’s what you ladies who lunch drink, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not a lady who lunches,’ she said irritably.
‘I’m sorry. I thought you were. Well, anyway, you must
allow the occasional drop of something to pass your lips.
Clearly nothing solid, you are so admirably slim. Come on.
Just a quiet one, as they say.’
She hesitated, then, ‘Yes, all right. That would be very
nice.’
‘Marvellous. And we can discuss my sexual predilections
further there.’
She smiled with pleasure as they came on to the famously
lovely terrace, the river flowing surprisingly far beneath
them, Westminster Bridge arching to their left.
‘There’s a table there, look. Grab it quickly. Busy day
today.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said irritably. ‘Debate about taxation,
isn’t there? And the IMF. That’s why I came today. I