High society

by Ben Elton

  ‘Now that’s not, strictly speaking, true,’ Parkinson protested. ‘We all remember the tragedy of poor Leah Belts. But I’m sure you’re aware, Peter, that deaths from ecstasy are doubling on a yearly basis. Forty people died in 2001 alone. Can you name them, Peter? I can’t.’

  ‘You’re right, Michael, and I’m sorry, it was a foolish thing to say. But you say forty people died in a year having taken ecstasy; next year perhaps there’ll be eighty. But I tell you that six thousand people a year die directly from alcohol misuse! Six thousand! I don’t know their names either. Nearly ninety thousand NHS hospital admissions a year result from mental or behavioural problems caused by alcohol.’

  ‘Good lord.’

  ‘At peak times eight out of ten casualty admissions are alcohol related. One in seven people killed on the road are killed because of alcohol.’

  ‘Extraordinary.’

  ‘And yet, as I said, deaths from E continue to make the headlines.’

  ‘But nonetheless they’re doubling annually. Surely that’s a cause for concern?’

  ‘Of course it is, Michael, but I put it to you that they may well be doubling because E is illegal.’

  ‘Because of it?’

  ‘Yes. If ecstasy were produced legally under licence it would be less toxic, purer. Kids could be sure of what they were taking and they would have directions for use.’

  ‘I must say, it’s a compelling argument, and there’s no doubt that you’ve caught the imagination of the country with your views, Peter. Yet it’s only weeks since you were being vilified in the press.’

  ‘Mine is an idea whose time has come. I even have hopes that the major parties will remove the whip and allow their people a free vote when my Private Member’s Bill comes before the house.’

  ‘So, Peter, I have to ask you this, you know that. I know you’ve spoken on this issue before, but I’d like to ask you again. Do you take any drugs yourself?’

  ‘Yes, I drink, and if it turns out that I’ve been unlucky in my encounter with Robert I shall be taking a cocktail of highly expensive and dangerous drugs until the day I die.’

  ‘I mean illegal drugs.’

  ‘No. None whatsoever. Absolutely not, and nor would I if they were legal. But you don’t need to take drugs to be affected by our drug laws and drug-raddled society. We’re all affected.’

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly made me think. You’ve made us all think. Peter, you’re a very good and a very brave man. Ladies and gentlemen, Peter Paget!’

  The applause was loud and genuinely warm.

  ‘And now somebody who is himself no stranger to drugs, having fought many a widely publicized battle with their insidious influence on his life. Joining us tonight before starting a massive national tour tomorrow, a tour that has already sold out, breaking all previous records…Tommy Hanson!’

  Tommy appeared at the top of Michael’s stairway striking poses that managed to be simultaneously both pure pomp-rock posturing and an indulgently amused, ironic take on pure pomp rock posturing. Tommy always had his cake and ate it.

  ‘You all right! OK! Sound. Yeah!’ he shouted, arms outstretched.

  He trotted down the stairs doing an impressive scissor-kick off the last four while swinging his arm in a superb moment of air guitar exuberance. He answered the huge cheer that this provoked with a face and hand gesture that said, ‘Yeah, I know I’m a wanker, but it’s a laugh, in’t it,’ at which the audience laughed warmly.

  Tommy crossed the studio floor, hugged Parky, shook hands with Peter Paget, and nestled down in the chair recently vacated by Peter, who had now moved himself one seat along as instructed by the floor manager.

  ‘All right, Parky? Thanks for ‘avin’ me on an’ all. All right, Peter? Top chat that, big time.’

  After a few moments of bonhomie Parky brought up the subject that was on everybody’s mind. ‘Tommy. Last night. In jail? Am I right?’

  ‘Sadly, yeah, Parky. I were a right tosser…Can I say ‘tosser’ on telly? I don’t want to get into any more trouble.’

  ‘Yes, that’s fine. We’re all grown-ups here.’

  ‘What I did was dead stupid and I reckon the police handled the whole thing brilliantly, ‘cos kids could ‘a been hurt, so big up t’the Met. As for me, I were a twat…Can I say ‘twat’? Oh well, I ‘ave now anyways. But I were. I were a right twat. I deserved to get banged up and I was. So fair play to the coppers, no complaints there at all.’

  ‘Crowd-surfing? Down Oxford Street?’

  Tommy’s sheepish grin was enough to provoke laughter and cheers from the studio audience. Yes, he had been very, very naughty, but what a lad! What a boy!

  ‘It were mental, Parky, dead mental. You should try it, man. Wind in your hair, bunch o’ birds reaching up and grabbin’ at you. I reckon I was moving quicker than the traffic does these days…‘ Tommy turned to Peter. ‘Maybe you lot up at Parliament should think about that in terms of transport policy.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, Tommy.’

  ‘Can I just say, Parky, can I just say that I think Peter here is right? He’s an amazing bloke and just absolutely top ‘bout the things he’s sayin’. ‘Cos too many kids are dyin’ out there, right? And summat’s got t’be done.’

  Peter smiled broadly. ‘Tommy and I are old pals, Michael. We hooked up at the Brit Awards to discuss how to get young people involved in my campaign.’ That’s right, because I reckon what Peter’s saying is top.’ Once more Tommy’s open charm carried all before it. Peter Paget almost found himself believing that he and Tommy Hanson really had become co-campaigners at the Brits.

  SAMANTHA’S FLAT, ISLINGTON

  You don’t have to use a condom, Peter. I don’t mind. I want to share everything with you. You know that. Even your fate.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Sammy.’

  She was wearing the lingerie he had bought her at the beginning. His first present. That seemed rather a long time ago to Peter now.

  ‘What is so silly about being prepared to die with someone?’

  ‘It’s silly if it’s entirely unnecessary. Besides, this is just a precaution. It’s been nearly six weeks now and Robert Nunn is still testing clean, as am I. My chances improve on each day of negative testing. You know that the doctor said she has every reason to hope that I’ll soon be in the clear.’

  ‘I hardly know what the doctor says, seeing as I’m excluded from her interviews.’

  ‘Come on, Sam. You know that there’s no way I could explain to Angela why I’d think it necessary for my parliamentary assistant to attend intimate medical interviews.’

  ‘Yes, there is. Of course there is.’

  ‘Perhaps you could explain it to me.’

  Samantha knelt up in the bed, looking as gorgeous as she had ever done, her skin taut, her breasts youthful and proud, and yet Peter could feel his passion ebbing away as she spoke.

  ‘You could tell her that you’re in love with me and I’m in love with you and that we make love every chance we get and that if you ever did love her, which I doubt, she has forfeited any claim to that love or any place in your life at all by failing to satisfy and maintain your love.’

  Peter drew breath and looked Samantha in the eye with what he hoped was a look of fraternal affection tinged with a little romantic anguish. He had been waiting for this moment for weeks, the moment when he must somehow find a way gently to begin the process of disengagement. He wished that she were not nearly naked. ‘Sammy, please…We have to talk.’

  ‘Isn’t this talking?’

  ‘We have to talk about…well, we have to be practical. Our affair…’

  ‘Affair? Is that what you call it?’

  ‘Well…I suppose…’

  ‘Is that what we’re doing now? Having an affair?’

  ‘Well…yes, of course…A love affair. A wonderful love affair. But it’s only been going a few months, and you’re very, very young. We don’t want to rush things, do we?’

  ‘You didn’t min
d rushing things that first time in your office! You just about tore my knickers off.’

  As Peter remembered it they had torn them off together, but he knew better than to argue the point. Samantha was being much more confrontational than he had expected. ‘I know I did, Sammy, and it was the most beautiful and passionate thing — ’

  ‘So it was all right to rush into having sex, then?’

  ‘Well, it was, it was…something that happened, wasn’t it? Something wonderful.’

  ‘Fine, OK. So what is it that we mustn’t rush into?’

  ‘Um…I think what I mean is — ’

  ‘Mustn’t rush into me being anything more to you than a convenient screw? Is that what you don’t want to rush into, Peter?’

  He had not expected the conversation to be easy. That at least he had got right. ‘Sammy! Please. You’re not letting me finish — ’

  ‘Well, go on, then. Finish. Take your time. We wouldn’t want to rush anything, would we?’

  ‘Look, Samantha, you’re taking this all wrong. Of course I don’t see our relationship as just convenient sex. My God, it’s scarcely convenient, is it? And I’m very fond of you, as you know. Very, very fond.’

  ‘Fond? What a small word.’

  ‘What’s small about fond? I’m fond of my children, I’m fond of my parents.’

  ‘Fond of your wife?’

  ‘Of course I am, Sammy. Would you respect me if I wasn’t?’

  ‘What’s respect got to do with anything? I’m in love with you.’

  ‘You think you are, Sammy, and that’s so very wonderful, but you’re young, you have so much love to — ’

  ‘Don’t you love me, then?’

  ‘Of course I love you, of course. But love is, well, love is lots of things, isn’t it? And our love is…our love is, well, it’s very new and — ’

  ‘This ‘affair’ we’re having, Peter. Where d’you think it’s going?’

  ‘Well, I…Sammy, you’re in politics as much as I am. You know that we can’t always have everything we want — ’

  ‘Where d’you think it’s going?’

  ‘As I’m trying to explain — ’

  ‘So you think it’s going nowhere?’

  Peter knew that he must tread carefully. There was to be no easy exit. However he disengaged himself, it would take time and great tact. He had not lied when he had said that he was fond of Samantha. He was, and it pained him to see her so hurt.

  ‘Of course it’s going somewhere, Sammy. I love you, I’ve told you that…but we have an important job to do and we can’t afford to let it be derailed by silly scandal. I’m winning at the moment, Sam. We’re both winning, you and I. I mean really winning.’

  ‘You mean your career is going well.’

  ‘That’s not fair! I mean the issue we both care about. The nation’s mindset is changing. Even the Cabinet is wavering. I’m not saying that the PM’s going to suddenly turn round and start supporting full legalization, but at least they’re finally having to talk about it. They don’t know what to think any more. We’ve opened people’s minds. You and I, together.’

  Samantha’s eyes were far away. Something inside her had changed. It had happened in an instant, one sudden, heartbreaking, revelatory moment. Just as Angela Paget had come to know of her husband’s affair by a simple and sudden instinct, so did Samantha realize that Peter Paget was going to put his career before her.

  He was never going to leave his wife. Of course she should have known from the beginning. How silly she had been.

  ‘Fond?’ she murmured.

  ‘Oh, please, Samantha. It’s a perfectly reasonable word. It means love. I love you.’

  ‘ ‘Fond of you. People who are in love are not ‘fond’ of each other.’

  ‘Yes, they are! Or in my case they are. Look, I take the word back, I — ’

  ‘ ‘Fond’ is what he said.’

  ‘What who said?’

  ‘ ‘I’m very, very fond of you,’ he said. We were in bed at the time, just as you and I are now. Funny, that.’

  ‘Who? Who said that he was very fond of you?’

  ‘The man I told you about, at Cambridge, the lecturer, Politics and Modern History, you remember.’

  ‘Oh yes. You had a fling with him.’

  ‘Is that what we’re having, then? A fling?’

  ‘No! For heaven’s sake, Samantha. Suddenly you’re picking up on my every word. Don’t twist things. It’s just that you said — ’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I said. I was in love with him.’

  ‘You told me you only made love twice.’

  ‘Is sex so central to your existence? Is that the only benchmark to measure the depth of a relationship? How many times you do it? I was in love with him before ever I let him at me, just as I was in love with you before we did it!’

  ‘ ‘Let him at me’? ‘Before we did it’? If we’re dwelling on choice of language I might well ask if that’s how you care to describe your sex life? You make it sound like a duty.’

  ‘Well, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, Peter, do try for a moment to think of someone other than yourself. Imagine what it’s like for me. I finally meet a man I can love. A man I can look up to, who I worship, who can teach me, be my guide. And all the time all he wants to do is paw me and invade me like some horny schoolboy.’

  Peter was taken aback. He had thought himself in control of the conversation. It wasn’t easy, but at least he’d felt in charge, in as much as at least he felt that he understood Samantha’s feelings better than she understood his. Now he was not sure at all. ‘Sammy, do you mean me? Do you mean us?’

  ‘Of course. How many men do you think I’ve been worshipping lately? Hundreds? I love you. You know that. I’m not fucking ‘fond’ of you. I love you.’

  Samantha very rarely swore.

  ‘But, what’s all this about horny schoolboys? You said you loved our sex. You said that I understood a woman’s body.’

  ‘Can’t you recognize a line when you hear one? I thought you were a politician.’

  ‘A line?’

  ‘Yes, a line to flatter you. To please you.’

  ‘Please me!’

  ‘I don’t like sex, Peter, I never have. It’s better with E, but basically I don’t like it. Men are pathetic the way they obsess about it. Pathetic. My father wasn’t pathetic.’

  ‘What’s your bloody father got to do with it?’

  ‘According to my therapist, everything.’

  ‘Your therapist!’

  ‘Yes, my therapist. He says I’m in love with my father. He says that you’re just a replacement figure.’

  ‘You’ve told your therapist about us!’

  ‘Don’t worry about your precious career. He’s not allowed to say anything. Professional confidence.’

  Peter sat naked on the bed, trying to assimilate the sudden and complete fracturing of his happy lovenest. He knew very well that unless carefully handled, the consequences of this conversation for his life and his career would be very serious indeed. Samantha was not the steady, confident girl he had imagined her to be at all. She was an emotional flake. A dangerous woman. He had suspected it since even before his accident, since first she had mentioned burning poems at specific times of the day. Now he knew for sure. She was an emotional loose cannon and he would have to disengage from her with the utmost delicacy or she would turn into what he had heard called a bunny-boiler. It was Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction who had first put the fear of God into adulterous men, and if Samantha really had been lying about sex all this time then she was probably mad enough to cook the odd pet.

  ‘What about the orgasms?’ Peter asked, and despite his general fears there was a tone of wounded male pride in the inquiry. ‘You said I made you have wonderful orgasms.’

  ‘Faked.’

  ‘Faked!’

  ‘Every single one.’

  ‘But…Why?’

  ‘I’ve told you. To
please you. It was what you wanted to hear, so I let you hear it. Sex is the price I pay for everything else I have with you.’

  Seldom had conversational goalposts moved so quickly. Peter was truly shocked. ‘Well…Well, I don’t know what to say. I suppose I shan’t be needing this, then.’ He removed the condom, which had been slipping off anyway and was scarcely an inspiring sight. Then suddenly Samantha’s expression changed completely. The hard, almost spiteful look she had assumed almost from the beginning of the conversation disappeared. In an instant there were tears pouring down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, Peter, please…I didn’t mean it! Really, I didn’t. I was just trying to hurt you, that’s all. I love you, Peter, and I love to make love to you. Screw me now, come on, please, I want it, I really do.’

  And just as surely as she had been seeming to distance herself from him, Samantha fell upon Peter, pulling his face towards her, thrusting her body against his.

  ‘You were lying? About the orgasms?’ Peter asked through the rich, fat kisses that she was working into his mouth.

  ‘Yes, yes! You make me come like a freight train! Like fireworks, bombs! I was lying. You make my whole body melt. Let me show you.’

  It was all too much for Peter. He succumbed almost immediately. She was so firm, so young, so very, very sexy, and if she was faking her lust she was a very good actress…But then again she was in politics.

  Afterwards Peter remembered that he had not used his condom and a sick feeling gripped his stomach. Supposing he was infected and he had infected her, then their affair really must become public…On the other hand, if he were infected with Aids, would he care? Peter fought down the rising fear just as he had done many times over the previous weeks. He would be all right.

  He was not infected.

  He could handle Samantha.

  He would gently disengage from her while retaining her loyalty, and he would continue with his newly splendid career. Who knew? Perhaps they could even retain an occasional sexual side to their relationship. That would be nice.

  Samantha was also in a reflective mood. ‘That college professor,’ she mused quietly. ‘You know, the one I was telling you about? He ended up having to move from the university to the local technical college. But he didn’t love me, you see, and it isn’t so easy these days for deceitful old men to toy with young women’s emotions.’