by Joan Smith
PRESENTER: In that case, it seems slightly odd that you were offered to us for this interview as soon as we contacted Central Office.
SPOKESMAN: If you’d just let me finish, I was explaining that I haven’t had a chance yet to ask Stephen whether he’s been quoted correctly at what was, I’m told, a private meeting with sixth-formers from a neighbouring MP’s constituency.
PRESENTER: At which at least one reporter was present. Most people wouldn’t consider that private.
SPOKESMAN: That’s something we’re still trying to establish. All this has been blown up quite out of proportion after a Sunday newspaper, which certainly wasn’t invited to the meeting in question, picked up a piece of gossip from a local freesheet. The point I’m making, which is more important than some piece of mischievous tittle-tattle, is that since I joined the Opposition front bench three months ago, I have met ordinary party members up and down the country and been hugely impressed by the enthusiasm and dedic —
PRESENTER: Once again, with respect, that isn’t the point. What has happened is that one of your own MPs has broken ranks and admitted with quite extraordinary candour that the Party is a busted flush. And if someone as highly regarded in the Party as Stephen Massinger has no faith in you, aren’t you a dead duck electorally?
SPOKESMAN: You say highly regarded, which was certainly true until Stephen began having, um, personal problems.
PRESENTER: I have to ask you, in that case, when these ‘personal problems’ began to manifest themselves.
SPOKESMAN: Colleagues I’ve spoken to who were present at the meeting have expressed concern about his — his emotional state.
PRESENTER: Hang on, these are very serious allegations. Mr Massinger is not just a senior Opposition backbencher — his wife Carolina happens to be the daughter of Lord Restorick, a former Party treasurer. And the new Leader of the Opposition had sufficient confidence in Mr Massinger to offer him a job in the Shadow Cabinet after the general election — which he refused. That was only three months ago, as you’ve just reminded us —
SPOKESMAN: Look, Stephen has for some time been regarded as at best a semi-detached —
PRESENTER: This is starting to sound like classic smear tactics of a kind we were told your leader would not toler —
SPOKESMAN: I am now terminating this interview. (Thump. Noise of chair scraping across floor.)
PRESENTER: As we are on air, I should just explain to listeners that the Right Honourable Gentleman has left the studio...
Carolina Massinger was sitting at the kitchen table, turning the pages of a glossy magazine. The kitchen was long and narrow, fitted with cupboards of limed oak and blue ceramic tiles. To her left, on the end wall, a notice-board recorded the minutiae of her life: the flower rota for St Michael and All the Angels, a picture from the local newspaper in which she was posing with Stephen at a bring-and-buy sale, telephone numbers for the Neighbourhood Watch scheme, a list of dates when Stephen would be abroad with the Foreign Affairs Committee, the next three meetings of Family Concern, a letter from Nicky’s head teacher about after-school activities and the mobile phone number of Carolina’s hairdresser. There was also a menu from a new Thai restaurant, pinned up by one of the boys, and a couple of photos, one of a family picnic — Francis was standing up, pretending to eat a whole pork pie — and another of her leaving the flat in Charles Street with Stephen for a Buckingham Palace garden party. In the latter picture, Carolina was wearing a summer suit and an off-white hat with a wide brim, trimmed in pale green tulle; she glanced up from an article on fashion mistakes and saw it with new eyes, taking little comfort from the fact that, according to the journalist who had written the piece, even Princess Diana occasionally got it wrong. Carolina sighed and fiddled with the buttons on her shirt, which kept coming out of her waistband. She had caught Stephen giving her an appraising look when she was dressing that morning, and he’d asked her why she wasn’t having breakfast — as if anyone would have much of an appetite in present circumstances.
The phone was on the table, next to a pile of newspapers tied with string. Carolina reached for it, stopped in mid-air and rested her hand on the bundle instead. She had reminded Nicky to collect them the night before and she saw now that the string was stretched across a picture of that poor woman, Aisha Lincoln, who had been killed somewhere in the Middle East. It was a fashion shot, showing Aisha turning towards the camera, shoulders bare and her head thrown back, in a midnight-blue fish-tailed dress. She looked so vivacious, Carolina thought sadly, remembering that Aisha had two sons a bit older than Nicky and Francis. How must they feel, she wondered, and then she remembered a conversation with Stephen the previous week, not long after she heard about Aisha Lincoln’s terrible accident on the radio. Naturally she asked if he’d heard the news — they were in her car at the time, on their way to dinner at her brother Georgie’s — and Stephen had given her the blankest of looks. She sometimes thought he was so bound up with Westminster that he barely noticed what was happening elsewhere, and she’d had to remind him of the occasion a year or so ago when he had invited Aisha to the Commons, causing a mild sensation in the tea room. ‘Those poor boys,’ she said, slowing down for the level crossing near Georgie and Henrietta’s house. ‘Maybe I should write to their father,’ she said as an afterthought, determined to be generous in spite of her regret that Aisha had not, as Carolina had secretly hoped, become a friend. ‘You barely know her,’ Stephen snapped, then laid his hand on her arm, apologising and saying something about problems at the office.
He hadn’t elaborated but it occurred to Carolina that the conversation must have taken place shortly before the farcical meeting at the House with those kids from Val Greenhalgh’s constituency. What on earth had got into him? Carolina hadn’t known a thing about it until Saturday evening, when the early edition of the Observer went on sale and reporters called from other rags, trying to get a quote. Carefully averting her gaze from Aisha Lincoln’s picture, she picked up the newspapers and carried them out to the porch, where the previous week’s bundle was waiting for recycling. Returning to the kitchen, she filled the kettle, still lost in thought, and almost jumped out of her skin when the phone rang.
‘Not again.’ Carolina turned her head and listened as the wife of another MP, whom she hardly knew, left a bracing message. ‘The BBC’s got it in for us, we all know that. Bloody Trots — don’t let the bastards grind you down.’
Carolina raised her eyebrows and poured boiling water on to crushed camomile flowers, stirring it until the liquid turned pale yellow. She hadn’t felt like lunch so she added sweetener from a plastic dispenser and carried the cup to the table where, with a sense of foreboding, she dialled a number she knew by heart. The phone was answered on the third ring and she managed to get out only her sister’s name before Mercedes was in full flow.
‘Where have you been, Carolina? I’ve been trying you all day. Are you listening to Radio 4? The Today programme was bad enough, and did you hear that awful man from The World At One?’
‘Mercedes —’
‘Is Stephen there? I’ve tried his mobile but it’s turned off. My God, what Daddy will have to say —’
‘Daddy’s out of the country.’
‘He’s in Canada, for God’s sake, not the Hindu Kush. I’m amazed no one’s told him. It was all over yesterday’s papers.’
‘Not all over. I know the Observer had a big piece —’
‘And the rest picked it up. Did you see the Sunday Times? As for this morning —’
‘Sadie, at times like this I don’t —’
‘Darling, it’s no good hiding your head in the sand. Hang on, someone’s at the door. I’ll call you back.’ She cut the connection.
Carolina’s shoulders sagged. She turned her head and experienced the same jolt she’d felt daily since the new conservatory was fitted, obscuring what had been a sweeping view of the valley — the sloping lawn had appeared to merge with the woods beyond — from the open back door. The buildi
ng work had been completed during the general election campaign, when Stephen was trying to drum up support for friends in marginal seats, and the family had not yet got into the habit of using it. Now Carolina saw the striped garden chairs she had ordered from Peter Jones, looking just as they did when she had ripped off the clear plastic covering; their only regular occupant was the family’s elderly cat, Ziggy, who left a grey fuzz on each seat in turn. Lifting her head, she could just see his ears, visible above the arm of a chair, and remembered that he was due to see the vet for his annual vaccinations — another chore she would have to fit in.
Carolina closed her eyes for a few seconds, bracing herself for Mercedes’s return call. She pictured her sister at home in Berkshire, striding up and down her drawing room in slacks and a navy blazer, wearing the single string of pearls — an engagement present from her husband Adrian — which was the only jewellery she wore these days. Mercedes had been very pretty when she was younger, prettier than Carolina, but she had thin skin and it had gone into a mass of fine lines around her eyes; their Spanish great-grandmother, whose striking face, just too long for beauty, gazed sternly from a portrait in Restorick House, had quickly been bred out of the line, as Adrian had tactlessly remarked on more, than one occasion. Mercedes still drew glances, from a distance, but she had cut her hair short and had all but given up wearing skirts. ‘We’re middle-aged, let’s face it,’ she said when Carolina remarked on her new hairstyle. Stephen liked long hair, Carolina protested, immediately on the defensive, although if she was honest it was quite a long time since he had said anything about her appearance — apart from remarking on how thin she was, circling one of her wrists with his thumb and forefinger.
The phone rang again. With a feeling of resignation, Carolina picked it up.
‘Lina?’
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘Look, Stephen’s thrown the Party into turmoil. The very least he can do is put out a statement saying it was all a terrible mistake.’
‘A mistake?’
‘He can cite personal reasons, a — what do they call it? A midlife crisis. Frankly, darling, he can say he’s been experimented on by aliens, as long as he takes back these perfectly ridiculous —’
‘Mercedes, please, I can’t get through to him either. I’ve been fending reporters off all morning.’
‘Surely you’re used to that by now? You’ve been an MP’s wife for long enough.’
Carolina tried to contain her irritation. After the third or fourth call — ‘Sorry to trouble you at home, Mrs Massinger, but I really do need to speak to your husband’ — she had talked to Stephen’s researcher, Sunil, who sounded excited and said Stephen was on his way to a lunch in the City. Sunil blurted out that Stephen’s remarks were ‘brilliant’, a wake-up call to the Party, and Carolina thought about Mercedes’s views on young men with first-class degrees and no experience of the ‘real world’, as she and Georgie always referred to it. Especially if, as Stephen had seemed to imply in a recent conversation, the boy in question was gay.
‘So where is he? You must have some idea.’
‘Stephen?’
‘Of course I mean Stephen.’
‘I know he had a lunch —’
‘When’s he coming back?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Lina!’
‘We had words this morning, before he left, if you must know. I asked if he was going to be home tonight, the Andersons are coming to supper and Jenny Bowman is bringing a friend of hers from Abu Dhabi.’
‘Abu Dhabi? What’s that got to do with it? You do say the strangest things, Carolina.’
She gripped the handset. ‘It’s a business thing, apparently this chap owns hospitals out there and Jenny’s keen for him to meet Ralph Anderson. Ralph’s been working on this new... I’m not sure what it is exactly, but it’s something to do with a new way of doing a heart bypass. The NHS isn’t interested, Ralph says they’re completely risk-averse, and he’s been looking for somewhere to do it abroad.’
‘You mean he’s looking for guinea-pigs?’ Without a pause, Mercedes picked up on something else Carolina had said: ‘Words? You mean a row?’
‘I reminded him about the Andersons and he claimed to have forgotten all about it. He said there’s a reception at the American embassy tonight, but I don’t see why he has to go.’
‘If he’s got any sense he’ll come home and talk it through with you. I must say it’s hardly fair, leaving you under all this pressure.’
The sympathy was so unexpected that it silenced Carolina for a moment.
Mercedes persisted: ‘Darling, didn’t he say anything over the weekend? Something must have happened to make him behave quite so stupidly. We’ve had our disagreements; you know I think he should have taken the Northern Ireland job and so does Daddy. But Stephen’s no fool. What’s got into him?’
Carolina put her shoulders back and made herself sit up straighter. ‘To be honest, he hasn’t been home much. He had a surgery on Saturday and a meeting about the new school — you know how these things drag on. Yesterday we had to go for drinks with the Simons, then I’d promised to take Nicky to that new rainforest centre near Leatherhead. Stephen was going to come but he had calls to make —’
‘I’ll bet he did.’
Carolina rolled her eyes. Then she happened to glance at the wall clock. ‘Oh God,’ she exclaimed gratefully, ‘is that the time? I have to pick Nicky up from school.’ She stood, her chair sliding on the polished tiles.
‘Hasn’t he broken up? I know these state schools have longer terms, but it’s almost the end of July.’
‘End of this week. It’s winding down but he’s got a meeting of the —’ She tried to remember and had to make a guess. ‘The drama society.’
‘Surely he can make his own way home? I thought that was the point of taking him out of boarding school, give him a sense of responsibility.’
‘You know how unhappy he was, Sadie. He’s been so much brighter —’
‘Good God, Carolina, this is hardly the moment to start discussing the merits of comprehensive education. What about Francis? Is he still away?’
‘Till Thursday, yes.’
‘Thank God for small mercies. You don’t want him being teased.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘By other boys. He’s not exactly robust. You spoil that boy, Lina.’
‘I don’t —’
‘Are you quite sure you don’t want me to come over? I could be there in an hour.’
Panic gripped Carolina and she heard herself use a favourite phrase of their mother’s: ‘No. I mean, thanks, Sadie, but Stephen and I need to sort this out on our own.’
‘Fat chance of that, with all these people expecting to be fed. Is Mrs Kelly coming in?’
‘Yes, she’ll be here at five. She’s bringing a beef Wellington.’
‘Bit heavy for a summer evening, surely? Have you spoken to Mummy?’
‘Mummy?’
‘I didn’t think so. I have to say she’s been — whenever I ring her lately, the roof’s spraying tiles everywhere or she’s trying to get hold of the vet. Those damned dogs, there’s always something wrong with them.’
When her husband left her for a younger woman, Lady Restorick filed for divorce and bought a draughty Elizabethan farmhouse in a remote part of Wales, where she threw herself into breeding a rare type of Hungarian gun dog. To her ex-husband’s irritation, she also made friends with the local MP, who represented Plaid Cymru, and had recently announced that she was learning Welsh. Carolina’s father, meanwhile, was endlessly taking holidays with his second wife or rescuing her elder daughter, a sullen fifteen-year-old who had been arrested several times for shoplifting, from trouble with the police.
‘OK, best leave Mummy out of it. You’ll let me know the moment you hear from Stephen?’
‘Of course.’ It was always easier to give in to Mercedes. ‘I must go, Sadie. I don’t want to leave Nicky standing at the school gate.�
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‘Oh, all right.’ At the other end of the line, Carolina heard a sigh, followed by a pause. ‘Chin up, darling.’
Carolina finished her camomile tea and tried to remember where she had left her car keys. Just as she found them, under her handbag in the hall, the phone rang again. She let the answering machine take the call, then hurried back to the kitchen when she heard Stephen’s voice.
‘Stephen? I’m just going to get Nicky. Are you — is everything all right?’
‘Fine. Look, I’m sorry about this morning, I’ve told the embassy I’m double-booked. What time are these people coming? I should be home by seven.’
Carolina’s spirits lifted. ‘Oh — shall I pick you up?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get a taxi from the station.’
‘Stephen — are you sure you’re not in trouble? Sadie says—’
‘God, don’t take any notice of your sister. Listen, according to the Standard, someone’s got hold of an old photo of a junior minister and a bag of white powder, which will knock my little problem right off the front pages. You worry too much. Bye darling.’
Feeling slightly dazed, Carolina gazed round the kitchen, returned to the hall and let herself out of the front door to fetch Nicky.
Ingrid Hansson Producer, Researcher, Author
Hello Amanda,
Thank you for your fax. I am sorry for the delay, my fax machine was not working for two days. Yes, if you come to Lebanon, I will be able to help you — what is it you wish to do? Of course in Beirut many people speak English, also in Damascus, but travelling is not so easy if you do not know Arabic. I can go with you to Damascus — it is not a long way, but you must get a visa before you leave London. We can come back through the Bekaa valley and look at the place of the accident, although an American journalist told me the south was closed again last week. (Don’t worry, she was trying to get to the refugee camp at Ein el-Helweh, nothing to do with your Aisha!)
As you know, if the army will let us through, there are unfortunately many landmines — every day almost someone is killed or hurt, and that is why people here are not so shocked by the deaths of these foreigners. They are not hard-hearted, but you will find it is not a big story, although they are very interested in Lady Diana and her Egyptian lover. Will your Queen really allow her to marry a Muslim?
