What Will Survive

by Joan Smith

  ‘I suppose so.’ Stephen got up, did nothing for a moment and then pulled her into his arms. ‘I’m sorry about —’

  She placed her hands flat against his chest. ‘It’s OK. These things happen.’ Realising what she’d just said, she pulled a face. ‘Or not — wrong phase of the moon or something.’

  He frowned. ‘You don’t believe that.’

  ‘Of course I don’t. That call, was it important?’

  Stephen released her. ‘Could be anything, from wanting a favour to a ticking off.’

  ‘A ticking off?’

  ‘Speech I made at the weekend. I cleared it with the whips but you never know. The PM’s not as Europhobic as some but he’s got some strange ideas about England. Comes of growing up in Brixton, I expect. Bikes, maiden aunts, village greens — I’m sure Orwell wrote an essay about it if I could be bothered to look it up.’

  Aisha fastened her skirt, now fully dressed. ‘I thought that was what your party stands for.’

  He said testily: ‘It’s not my party, not with this lot in charge.’

  Aisha waited by the door while he buttoned his shirt. ‘I don’t get it. You don’t seem to like your own government and you’re incredibly rude about ministers. Except your friend — what’s his name?’

  ‘Marcus.’

  ‘I remember. The arts minister.’ At first Aisha had assumed Marcus was a buffoon but then she caught a shrewd, calculating expression in his eyes as he looked from her to Stephen. ‘But that other guy, the one with the very posh accent —’ Another, more senior minister had stopped at their table and Stephen was friendly enough, introducing him to Aisha and reminding the man that he’d already met Carolina. But as soon as he moved away, Stephen told a story about his business dealings which Aisha had found quite shocking.

  ‘My point exactly. Ever heard of cash for questions? That’s not the half of it. If the PM wasn’t so busy watching his back, he might have the guts to do something about it.’

  ‘Why are you an MP, if that’s how you feel about it?’

  Stephen stopped in the middle of buckling his belt and gave her a wry glance. ‘I’ve been in Parliament too long to do anything else. I haven’t got the talent, or the CV.’

  ‘You can’t mean that.’

  ‘Why not? I try not to think about it too much. Politics is — well, it’s like managing a small business.’ He picked up his tie and flung it round his neck. ‘Or being a master in a minor public school, which is probably what I’d have to do if I stepped down. This pays better.’ He slipped an arm round her shoulders as they left the bedroom together. ‘It’s probably all a terrible mistake, an adolescent rebellion that’s gone on much too long.’

  At the bottom of the stairs, Aisha looked up at him and said, ‘Now you’ve lost me.’

  ‘Come in here a minute.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’ve got plenty of time.’

  She followed him into the living room and perched on the edge of a flowered sofa as Stephen went to a walnut escritoire. ‘My father was an armchair Leftie,’ he said over his shoulder, beginning to sort through a pile of papers. ‘Sorry, Aisha, I’m looking for a letter... Thing about Dad, he always had the same answer for everything — it was all the capitalists’ fault. I suppose I decided at some point if these capitalists were running the country, I’d better be one.’ He glanced in her direction. ‘He hated Carolina’s parents on sight, you can imagine. Ah, got it.’ He carried an envelope over to his briefcase, which he’d left in the middle of the floor.

  ‘So why do you bother going to places like Colombia? It sounded horrendous.’ Over lunch, Stephen had told her about a trip to Bogotá and Medellin, where members of the FAC delegation had been accompanied everywhere by armed bodyguards.

  He snapped the briefcase shut. ‘I happen to think people have the right to get on with their lives without being held to ransom by drug barons or Marxist guerrillas. That’s a principle, insofar as I have such a thing. I also think we should be protected from interference by the State, in our private lives and at work, so that’s another.’ He grinned at her: ‘Now you know all my secrets.’

  ‘Why aren’t you a minister?’

  ‘Aisha! I’m a PPS, which is the nearest I’ve ever got to real power — apart from my father-in-law, that is. Anyway, to answer your question, I’m too much of a loose canon. Mind you, it may all change when we get stuffed at the next election.’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘You see?’ He looked almost boyish. ‘Even you’re shocked. There’s no political debate in this country. Stating the obvious has become thinking the unthinkable.’

  Aisha hid what she was thinking by opening her bag and peering inside. Without looking up, she said lightly: ‘Will I be able to get a cab downstairs?’

  Stephen hesitated. ‘Of course. I’ll come down with you.’

  She closed the bag. ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘There are votes later, I’ve got to get back to the House.’

  Stephen lifted his jacket from the back of a chair and shrugged it on. He felt something in his trouser pocket and thrust his hand inside, his fingers closing over a condom packet. Disappointment almost overwhelmed him as he remembered how well the afternoon had started: a late lunch with Aisha in Shepherd’s Market which allowed him to escape from sandwiches at the office of a new think tank, Right Thinking; his apparently casual invitation to come back to the flat in Charles Street; the ease with which she had leaned against him when he padded up behind her and encircled her waist with his hands.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Uh — nothing.’ He took his hand out of his pocket, where he had been unconsciously fingering the condom packet. ‘Could we — I mean, would you —’

  Aisha started to say: ‘I’ll be in London—’ The William Tell Overture erupted again.

  She rolled her eyes: ‘You’d better answer it.’

  Stephen stepped towards her, speaking into his mobile at the same time. ‘Hello, yes, speaking. He did? It’s good of you to let me know —’

  Aisha mouthed: ‘Thanks for lunch. I’ll let myself out.’ She touched her hand to her lips, blowing him a kiss as she backed out of the room.

  ‘Aisha! Wait. Sorry, yes, I’m here.’ Barely able to contain his frustration, Stephen listened as an aide passed on the PM’s mostly favourable comments on his speech, making monosyllabic responses when they seemed to be required. Finally the woman paused for breath and asked whether Stephen was free to come to a breakfast meeting with the new Spanish Prime Minister the following week. On the half-landing below, Stephen heard the front door open and close.

  ‘What? When?’

  The aide asked him to hold for a moment, spoke at length to a colleague who was just out of Stephen’s hearing, then returned with some inconsequential information about the breakfast. ‘We’ll see you next week,’ she said, and ended the call.

  Too late: Aisha was probably in a taxi by now. Stephen sat down heavily in an armchair, not quite sure whether he was imagining that he could still smell her perfume. He thought about her breasts, the small waist that flared out into full hips, the line of down on her belly, even more exciting in the flesh than his imagination had allowed him to anticipate; he berated himself, scarcely able to believe that the faint stirring of an ambition he thought he had long suppressed had wrecked everything. She would probably never want to see him again, and who could blame her? And for what? Coffee and croissants with that smirking little man who’d just won an election in Madrid. Stephen leaned back and closed his eyes, overcome by a sensation of weariness and self-disgust.

  ‘Pompous git. What’s so special about his job? It’s just gambling with a posh name.’ Tim buckled his seatbelt with an angry click, mimicking the voice of the man he had argued with during dinner: ‘Buy dollars. Get out of yen.’ At one point, he had become so worked up that he knocked over a wine glass — an empty one, fortunately, as the tablecloth was white. Aisha quickly turned, interrupting the conversation about holidays she was ha
ving with a surgeon who had a weekend cottage in a nearby village, and asked Tim if he could remember the name of the village in Portugal where they had once rented a house. He’d forgotten, as she expected, but her intervention diverted him long enough for the argument to subside. Not long after, Aisha had risen to leave, deftly extracting Tim, who had been sitting in sullen silence since his flare-up.

  Now he said, ‘He’ll be out of a job when the single currency comes along.’

  Aisha frowned in the dark interior of the Golf. ‘I don’t think it works like that.’ She drove in silence past a farmhouse and a cluster of barns, lit by an almost full moon. It was a warm night and she pressed the button to wind down the windows, dispelling the stale air inside the car. A couple of minutes later they arrived at a junction which was awkwardly situated on a bend, and Aisha leaned forward, her view blocked by Tim.

  ‘What are you waiting for? It’s perfectly clear.’

  Without responding, she pulled out.

  He closed his window, saying, ‘Do we really need a gale? I don’t know why we go to these bloody dinner parties. Did you notice they were all wearing ties — on a Saturday? There’s Rob going on about his four-wheel drive, Sylvia eyeing up all the blokes, and the wine’s supermarket plonk. That’s why they decant it.’

  ‘It seemed fine to me.’

  ‘Aisha, what you know about wine could be written on a postcard. A postage stamp, I should say.’

  ‘The food’s always good.’

  ‘Ha! You don’t think our Sylv cooks it herself?’

  Aisha dipped the headlights for an oncoming car. They were going downhill and mature trees loomed over the road, lacing their branches overhead. She eased her foot off the accelerator, becoming aware that Tim was watching her profile in the darkness. Aisha tried to recall what he had asked her.

  ‘Well, she’s hardly the type to slave over a hot stove,’ he went on, answering his own question. ‘I’m sorry, I should say a stainless-steel range they had to import specially from France. What do you think that kitchen cost?’

  ‘Tim, you know I’m not interested in kitchens.’

  ‘I bet you anything she gets in a catering company. Guinea fowl wrapped in Parma ham with kiwi fruit? It’s so bloody pretentious.’

  ‘Jonathan said they were organic.’

  ‘Organic? Of course they were organic. Have you ever heard of factory-farmed guinea fowl?’ He thought about this for a moment. ‘Anyway, they’re all at it, you know.’

  ‘At what?’ They rounded a bend and Aisha was blinded by lights. She pulled the steering wheel to the left to avoid a low-slung yellow car, which roared past in the middle of the road. ‘God, what was he doing?’

  ‘Saturday night in rural England, darling, they’re all pissed. Want me to take over?’

  ‘No. I’m fine.’ Tim got drunk very quickly these days and Aisha was certain he was over the limit. She switched the headlights back to full beam, relaxing her grip on the steering wheel as the adrenalin drained away.

  ‘Bloody Porsche. Another dealer, I expect.’

  Hiding her irritation, Aisha said, ‘What sort of dealer?’

  ‘Money, drugs, how am I supposed to know?’ Tim opened the glove compartment and rummaged inside. ‘As I was saying, they’re all at it — wife swapping. Swinging, I expect they call it. Nothing else to do round here.’

  ‘I don’t really think —’

  ‘You wouldn’t, Aisha. I bet you didn’t even notice Ben trying to fix up a quiet little lunch à deux with Sylvia.’

  Aisha wasn’t surprised. Ben Langley had been on her other side at dinner and his hand brushed her arm a couple of times when they first took their seats. When she didn’t respond, he quickly turned his attention to Sylvia Kerr, who was wearing a dress Aisha tried to look at as little as possible. Most of the women had turned up in outfits which would have been more suitable for a party, exchanging exasperated looks when Aisha arrived in a simple dress and embroidered shawl, although Tim’s jeans went unremarked. Once, at a school event, the mother of one of Ricky’s friends had observed, not realising that Aisha was standing just behind her, that there wasn’t much point in being ‘in fashion’ if you couldn’t be bothered to make an effort for your own kids. Driving home, Aisha had asked Ricky if she should dress more like the other mothers and he had made a show of gagging and clutching his stomach.

  What Aisha didn’t understand was why Tim, who was privately scathing about three-quarters of the local people they knew, insisted on accepting so many supper invitations from them. She sometimes wondered if it made him feel superior — tonight’s scene wasn’t exactly unusual — and he wasn’t expected to go to all the trouble of making arrangements for a return fixture.

  ‘Why do you keep all this junk in here?’ he grumbled, snapping shut the glove compartment. His head dropped back and sideways, and a moment or two later Aisha heard a couple of grunting snores.

  She drove through another village, past an eighteenth-century stone mansion which fronted the road and a pub that served Thai food — precooked and microwaved, according to Tim, who had once taken a client there, or so he claimed. It was around the time he had started behaving as though he had something to hide, finishing phone calls the moment Aisha walked into a room, announcing business trips at short notice and displaying bursts of high spirits that drew surprised looks even from the boys. Aisha had found herself staring at the couples they socialised with, experiencing a hollow feeling in her chest and wondering if one of the women was behaving differently towards him — with secret knowledge or intimate gestures. Apart from a brief episode before they got married, she had never had any reason to doubt Tim, and it was always possible that a site meeting was taking longer than he anticipated or he had stayed on for supper with a potential client. Aisha tried to ignore her suspicions, resisting the temptation to behave like a spy, but one afternoon it all became too much and she burst into tears on the phone to Iris Benjamin.

  ‘Aish, are you all right? What on earth’s happened?’

  Shocked by her tears, Aisha tried to explain on the phone, then gave in to Iris’s suggestion that she should drive over to the cottage. Iris heard the car and was waiting for Aisha at the front door as she parked behind her friend’s old Peugeot.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ she said, giving Aisha a hug. ‘You go and sit down and I’ll bring you a nice cup of mint tea.’

  Iris went into the kitchen and Aisha turned into an L-shaped room with a sofa, armchairs and dining table. There was clutter everywhere. Iris collected things: strange little paintings, an ostrich fan, a silver and coral necklace which she had draped over a vase on the mantelpiece. To the right of the fireplace, balanced on one leg like a dancer, was a life-size metal sculpture of a woman, a collection of amber bracelets on her raised arm. Aisha lowered herself on to the sofa, put a cushion behind her head and shook off her white loafers. She was wearing capri pants and she curled her feet next to her body, absent-mindedly fingering the lilac polish on her toenails. A moment later, Iris returned with two mugs which she set down on the floor.

  ‘OK,’ she said, taking one of the chairs. Behind her dark hair, amber glowed in the soft afternoon light. ‘What’s up? You look terrible. For you, I mean.’

  Aisha reached for her mug. ‘I feel such a fool — I may be imagining the whole thing.’

  Iris looked at her compassionately. ‘That’s not like you. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what you say here. Go on.’

  The tea was made from fresh mint and had crushed leaves floating in it. Aisha took a couple of sips. ‘It’s Tim — well, I told you on the phone. I think he’s having an affair.’

  A breeze brought in sweet scents from the garden, where jasmine and honeysuckle were in flower over the open French windows. When she lifted her head, Iris was immobile, her hands on her denim skirt, reminding Aisha of her mother. Zulaykha had practised at home, like Iris, and Aisha and her sister sometimes used to creep past her room, hoping to get a glimpse of her at work, before run
ning up to the top floor to play at being their mother and one of her clients. They had very little idea what went on in these mysterious sessions, until they were much older, but they argued over whose turn it was to impersonate Zulaykha and the nervous strangers who came to the house on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays: ‘How are you today?’ May would ask Aisha solemnly, hands clasped in her lap. ‘What did you have for breakfast? What would you like for tea?’

  ‘This isn’t a consultation,’ Aisha said hurriedly.

  ‘Sorry — habit.’ Iris unclasped her hands and shifted in her chair, crossing her brown legs. ‘How long has it been going on, this affair?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, he’s been behaving oddly for weeks.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Aisha shrugged. ‘Going to meetings, conferences — you know how he hates all that. I was about to say being nice to me and the boys, but that’s unfair. He doesn’t — he lives in his own world. It’s just his way.’

  Iris waited.

  ‘I mean, I could be completely wrong. Just because he’s more — outgoing. I can’t think of the right word. I shouldn’t be complaining, should I? I’ve always wanted him to take more interest in, you know, everyday things. Except that — it feels as though he’s being nice to me because his mind’s elsewhere.’ She pulled a face. ‘Don’t, for God’s sake, say anything about an early midlife crisis!’

  Iris allowed herself a brief smile. ‘I wasn’t going to. What you’ve talked about is your feelings, and I’m wondering if you can give me any examples. What’s made you think like this.’

  Instead of answering directly, Aisha blurted out: ‘We’ve been together more than twenty years. Nothing like this has ever happened, apart from that time just before we got married.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that. What did happen?’

  ‘Oh, it’s ancient history. There’s been nothing like that since.’ She added fiercely: ‘No, really, I would have known. Just because it’s not as passionate as it was — well, it’s not passionate at all, if you really want to know, but that’s true of any long relationship. Isn’t it?’