What Will Survive

by Joan Smith

  ‘Leave it with me, OK?’ Stephen stood up, the interview clearly over.

  ‘I’m incredibly grateful to you for seeing me,’ Amanda said, also getting to her feet.

  ‘No, you did the —’ He made an effort to pull himself together. ‘Thanks for coming in.’

  ‘If I find out any more, I’ll give you a ring.’

  Stephen mumbled something and she sidled out of the room, throwing her jacket over her shoulders. Til be in touch.’

  Amanda closed the door and started along the corridor towards the lifts. She felt a little guilty, thinking how badly Stephen had taken it, but what else could she do? The paper would have to listen, if Stephen got the Shadow Foreign Secretary involved...

  The lift doors opened and a man stepped out, his face so well-known that even Amanda recognised him as a backbench MP and minor TV personality. His hair was too long and his skin as worn as old leather but she gave him a huge smile as they passed each other. In the lift, she pulled out her mobile, eager to let Ingrid know how well her meeting with Stephen had gone.

  The MP turned the corner and walked down the corridor she had just left, congratulating himself: he’d just turned sixty-four and he was still able to impress a pretty women. He stopped at Stephen’s door and knocked loudly, cocking his head when he heard faint noises inside. Nothing happened and he rapped again, calling Stephen’s name. Next he tried the handle, rattling it impatiently when he found it locked. What the hell was Massinger playing at? Of course there had been rumours about his marriage... The MP remembered the pretty girl and wondered whether she’d just come out of Stephen’s office. Lucky devil, he thought, shaking his head in envy. His mobile rang and he answered it, his good humour restored as someone from the Today programme asked if he would be available to come on at twenty past seven the following morning.

  Amanda wrote Patrick’s name and address on an envelope, stuck a stamp in the corner and sat back in her desk chair. Two or three months ago, she would never have believed she’d be so glad to have the flat — and a rather alarming mortgage — solely in her name, but now it felt like a rite of passage. She took the envelope into the hall and put it in her bag, one end sticking out as a reminder to post it next morning. In her office she heard the fax machine, went to see what was arriving and found a drawing from Samih, a sketch of the view from his first-floor flat in Beirut. Underneath was a couple of lines of writing in Arabic, another instalment of a poem he was working on and could not translate into English, he said teasingly, until it was complete. She grinned, tore the fax from the machine and pinned it on the wall with a couple of others, then turned off her computer and printer for the night.

  The air was slightly chilly, promising the imminent arrival of colder weather, and she pulled down the blind. There was a movie on TV she wanted to see and she went into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of wine and took it into the living room. She closed the curtains and curled up on the sofa, tucking her bare legs under her skirt. Then she picked up the remote control, trying to remember whether the film was on BBC One or Channel Four.

  Her mobile rang. The film was just starting and she decided to let the caller go to voicemail. The phone beeped a moment later, telling her that someone had left a message, and soon after that a text arrived. Amanda looked at her phone and saw it was from Sabri, who was up in Blackpool this weekend at a party conference. ‘Call me. Urgent,’ it said. She frowned, muted the sound of the TV and called his mobile number.

  ‘Did you get my message?’

  ‘No, sorry, I’m watching an Almodóvar film on TV. What’s up?’

  ‘Your friend Stephen Massinger — he’s totally blown it.’

  ‘What? I know he got into a bit of trouble on Friday...’

  ‘Now he’s made it a lot worse. Look, Amanda, I know you were counting on him for help —’ Alarmed, she said, ‘What’s he done?’ ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with the guy, it’s like he’s got a death wish. Hang on, Amanda.’ She heard him talking to someone. When he came back, he lowered his voice: ‘I can’t talk now, I’m at a fringe meeting. I’ve written a piece for tomorrow — give me your fax number and I’ll get one of the subs to send you my copy.’

  She gave him the number, her neck and shoulders already tight with apprehension. She finished her wine, poured another glass and waited impatiently for the fax line to ring. When the paper started churning through the machine, she was already bending over it, trying to read Sabri’s words upside down. The story was short and she ripped it from the machine, holding it in both hands. She read:

  MP Refuses to Back Down in Diana ‘Hysteria’ Storm

  by Sabri Yusuf in Blackpool

  Stephen Massinger, the MP whose remarks about the late Diana, Princess of Wales, caused a storm after they were published in a gossip column, remained defiant yesterday after having the whip withdrawn at a crisis meeting at the party conference in Blackpool. Mr Massinger left for London after a ‘tense’ meeting with the Deputy Leader and Chairman, who told him to apologise or lose the whip. The MP refused to back down, saying he regretted the fact that private remarks had been reported but defending ‘this country’s long tradition of free speech’. He has been summoned to an emergency meeting of his constituency association on Friday. In the article, which appeared three days ago, Mr Massinger was quoted as dismissing the scenes of mourning after the Princess’s sudden death in August as an outbreak of ‘mass hysteria’.

  Fragile

  He is said to have been overheard on his mobile phone, telling a friend he felt sorry for Diana but describing her as ‘fragile, unstable and manipulative’. But it was the MP’s description of tributes to the late Princess as ‘floral fascism’ that caused most offence. Mr Massinger received a dressing-down for his indiscreet remarks to a group of sixth-formers in July, after he appeared to suggest that his party would be out of office for a decade. As he boarded a train to London yesterday, he refused to talk to journalists about his next move. The MP has connections with a radical right-wing think tank and there are rumours that he is writing a book about his dissatisfaction with the leadership.

  Truth

  Party managers are said to be privately furious about Mr Massinger’s behaviour, which has overshadowed what already promises to be a difficult conference for the Opposition following their massive election defeat in May. He has one of the safest seats in the country, but colleagues did not hide their anger in the bar of the main conference hotel yesterday evening. ‘Stephen’s had it,’ said one MP who did not want to be named. Another hinted at problems in Mr Massinger’s marriage, pointing out that he has been spending more time in London recently than in his constituency, where his wife and two sons live. The Government has stayed out of the affair, enjoying the Opposition’s disarray, but one minister observed last night that Mr Massinger’s sin was in saying what many MPs on both sides of the House feel in private. ‘He’s right about Princess Di and right about his party,’ the minister said. ‘But we can’t have politicians going round telling the truth all the time. It’s embarrassing for the rest of us. He’ll have to go.’

  Amanda finished reading and threw down the fax. She started for the door, turned back and put her hands up to her face: ‘How could he be so stupid?’ She picked up the fax and read it again, her head turning as she heard her mobile ring in the next room.

  ‘Amanda? It’s Sabri, the meeting was boring so I left. Did the subs fax you my story?’

  ‘Yes, and I can’t believe...’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know how much work you’ve put into this. He’s finished, I don’t see any way back from this.’

  ‘It’s not just that.’ She walked up and down the small room, speaking half to herself: ‘People should know what’s going on, it’s too late for Aisha, but what about the next person... And Marwan, I’ve talked to so many people I feel like I know him. I showed you pictures of that place, he’s already been there three months.’

  ‘You could talk to an NGO, get them to take it up.’


  ‘Do you know how many press releases I’ve read about Al-Khiam? They’ve been complaining about it for years.’

  ‘If I can think of anything, maybe another MP...’

  ‘I don’t think — sorry, Sabri, I shouldn’t go on at you.’

  ‘Drink when I’m back in London? Thursday night maybe?’

  ‘Mmm? Yes, sure.’

  She curled up on the sofa, her head supported by her hand. She thought about ringing Ingrid, Samih or even Séverine Boisseau, but she didn’t think she could bear the weight of their disappointment on top of her own. On TV, the Almodóvar movie was still playing, and Amanda stared at it silently. Suddenly she jumped up, rushed into her office and started turning pages in her notebook, frantically looking for telephone numbers. She found what she wanted and stabbed the first one into her landline, exclaiming angrily when she got a recorded message. The second number she tried, which she had been told to use only if her call was urgent, rang half a dozen times and Amanda was about to give up when a man’s voice answered, sounding groggy.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Is — is that Stephen Massinger? This is Amanda Harrison.’ She paused, not sure what to say. ‘I came to see you about Aisha Lincoln, remember?’

  She heard him clear his throat. ‘No — no comment.’

  ‘What? I’m not ringing for—’

  ‘I don’t — I haven’t got anything to say.’

  He was slurring his words and she wondered if he had been drinking. ‘This isn’t on the record. I just want to know — Mr Massinger? Are you still there?’

  She listened intently, thinking he might have put the phone down. Her eyes flicked up to the wall, where she had pinned a photograph of Aisha Lincoln, head thrown back, smiling into Fabio’s lens. There was a noise at the other end of the line, someone saying something but the words were unintelligible. Amanda strained to make them out, slowly realising that what she could hear was the sound of a man weeping.

  To Denis

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London

  WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © Joan Smith 2007

  The extract from the poem ‘Adonis’ is taken from Modern Poetry of the Arab World, translated

  and edited by Abdullah al-Udhari, Penguin 1986.

  The moral right of author has been asserted

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  ISBN: 9781448208135

  eISBN: 9781448207893

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