Sheer Abandon

by Penny Vincenzi

  “Won’t that be awfully expensive?” said Clio, while thinking that it would be one huge anxiety out of the way.

  “No way,” said Jocasta airily. “This is fake stuff, cheap as anything. She’s doing one for Beatrice as well, so it can all go on the same bill and we can sort it out later.”

  Clio tried very hard to believe her.

  Chad Lawrence was going, of course. The entire Centre Forward Party—or at least its major players—had been invited.

  He wasn’t exactly looking forward to it; he seemed to have survived the Farjon scandal by way of an apology to the House for his lack of care, and assurance that the money had already been repaid—thanks to Gideon Keeble. But he was aware that his glossily successful image had been badly dulled. It had been his first serious bit of wrong-footing, and he didn’t like it. And his constituency party had not been impressed.

  Jack Kirkland, who hated parties, called Martha Hartley to see if she would like to go with him. His irritation when she said she couldn’t go, that she was away that weekend, was profound.

  “Martha,” he said, “you are not away that weekend. You are going to the party. Gideon Keeble has just given us another million pounds to bale us out of the Farjon debacle. This is a three-line whip. You are going. We are all going. Now do you want to come with me, or would you like to bring someone else?”

  Martha, sounding rather shaken, said she would very much like to go with him.

  Bob Frean was dreading the party. He could cope with Janet’s political career, her ferocious ambition, and her absences from home—just. What he objected to was being dragged into it. He did it occasionally—when he had to. But this was different; this was social. The kind of thing he most loathed.

  She was in a dangerous mood at the moment: half excited, half withdrawn. It was one he knew well and dreaded. And she had developed one of her obsessions against someone. There was always someone; usually some rival in the party. It was generally another woman; she had hated that extremely nice woman, Amanda Platell, who had masterminded publicity for Hague’s last campaign, and Theresa May because of her shoe obsession. Just now it was this new girl, Martha Hartley, who was getting so much attention from everyone. She could hardly bring herself to utter her name.

  Fergus Trehearn was euphoric at being invited. It was exactly the sort of occasion he loved best: glamorous, fun, high profile, and crawling with media. He would have a wonderful night. He also adored dancing, loved dressing up, and was never happier than when watching pretty women partying.

  Fionnuala Keeble, with wisdom beyond her years, refused the invitation. She did it by way of a text message to her father, which made him smile.

  A large Irish contingent was expected, many of them Gideon’s relatives.

  “It’ll be great for them to meet you at last,” said Gideon, smiling at Jocasta. She smiled back and thought how sweet it was that his accent always intensified when he was even talking about Ireland.

  Josh was longing for the party; he and Beatrice had agreed that, for the time being, they would stay at home, working things out, spending weekends almost entirely with the children, and refusing all but work-based invitations. Of course it was worth it, but the thought of a night of social excitement was extremely welcome. And Beatrice had thrown herself into it, suggested they go as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and had even hired a (fake) Bugatti for them to arrive in. He’d have fun: only of course he’d be very sensible and careful. The two were not incompatible after all.

  Ronald Forbes, after carefully considering the invitation to his only daughter’s wedding party, sent a note accepting, telling her he hoped she and Gideon would be very happy and enclosing a very large cheque by way of a wedding present. He knew it was a meaningless gesture: as meaningless, indeed, as his acceptance, which he had absolutely no intention of honouring. Nevertheless Jocasta was disproportionately pleased.

  “I never thought he’d come, I really never did.”

  “Well, there you are,” said Gideon, giving her a kiss.

  Several days after the mass of invitations had been sent out, Jocasta had the idea.

  “I’m going to ask Kate Tarrant,” she said to Gideon.

  “What on earth for?”

  “Because she’d love it. It would be the hugest treat for her. And it would sort of make up for all the trouble I’ve caused her. I’ll tell her to bring her boyfriend and maybe a couple of friends. Actually, I’ll ask her parents as well, I think; that’ll reassure them. Oh, and her grandmother.”

  “Her grandmother! Jocasta, what on earth are you doing inviting grandmothers to your parties? Unless it’s to make me feel young.”

  “Gideon, I swear you could fancy Kate’s grandmother. She’s really glamorous. You’ll probably spend most of the night dancing with her.”

  “I doubt it. And what about Carla? Do you think they should come face-to-face?”

  “Carla’s not coming. She’s staying with her mother in Milan. Honestly, Gideon, it’d be fun. And I’d love you to meet Kate. Do you really think it’s a bad idea?”

  “I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Gideon.

  “But why? What harm could it do?”

  “Quite a lot, I’d say,” said Gideon. “But I can see you’re going to do it anyway. Just don’t blame me if the boyfriend’s sick all over the speakeasy.”

  “If that’s the worst thing you can think of,” said Jocasta, “it isn’t very serious.”

  Chapter 29

  Janet had got Martha a ticket to hear Chad speak.

  “On Thursday afternoon. About foxhunting. It’s an important subject to us, because the rural vote is up for grabs. You really ought to be here, if you can possibly get away. Why don’t you come and hear him, then we’ll go out after that?”

  “Oh—OK.” Martha was flattered. “I’d like that. Thank you.”

  She liked Janet very much: she was so supportive and always friendly, and an evening at her house in the company of a lot of other MPs, not talking about politics at all, had really made her feel much nearer to belonging.

  She managed to get away for the debate, slipped into the public gallery, and sat there, enjoying the unfailing sense of excitement that sitting in the Chamber gave her, remembering what had ensnared her in the first place.

  Chad spoke witheringly of the “Islington government” and its lack of grasp of what foxhunting meant to the rural communities; said how many jobs would be lost, and how his party and his party alone seemed to understand that. There was a lot of shouting and booing. “Take all your toffs over to China, teach them about hunting!” shouted some wit. Chad seemed unmoved. “They’d probably enjoy it, they haven’t heard of class envy over there,” he shouted back.

  There was a lot more; afterwards they met him in the Strangers’ Bar for a drink.

  “I don’t know how you can bear it,” said Martha. “All that abuse. I know I never could.”

  “My darling, you could and you will,” said Chad. He was high on adrenaline. “It’s rather fun, once you get going. I’m afraid we’ll never win this one, though. No hope. The pressure to come in behind Tony will be incredible.”

  “I don’t really understand all that,” said Martha. “How does it work?”

  “Bargaining. The whips go round the night before a big division, wheeling and dealing. They know everyone personally; they know what they all want. You give us your vote, they say, and we’ll see your bill gets a third reading. You give us your vote and you’ll get funding for your bypass. You give us your vote, tell your old lady the knighthood’s on its way. It’s shameless.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Martha.

  “That’s politics. Oh, hi, Jack. Were you in the Chamber just now?”

  “No,” said Jack Kirkland. He looked grim. “I was at HQ. Hideous results from that focus group research are in. We’ve lost about ten percent of our potential vote. Just over the last two months. I don’t need to tell you why.” He glared at Chad. “Mercifully, it was somethin
g I commissioned privately. We come in a good fourth. I’d hoped to publish it, if it was good news. As it is, I’m keeping it quiet. It’s a rolling disaster, this sort of thing. People see you sinking, wonder what was so wonderful about you in the first place, switch back to something safer.”

  “Oh God,” said Janet, “I’m so sorry, Jack. I suppose saying it’s midterm won’t help?”

  “Of course not. We should be in our heyday still. Shiny new. We look old and sleazy already. Bloody shame. And it’s hard on the party workers, this sort of thing. It sends morale right down, makes their job twice as difficult.”

  “Could I see the research? Maybe it isn’t as bad as you think.”

  “Janet, it’s appalling. But, yes, if you like. Keep it confidential, for Christ’s sake. You’d better take a look as well, Chad. See what you’ve done. God, it’s depressing.”

  “I think it’ll be all right,” said Janet to Martha later. They were eating in Shepherd’s in Marsham Street. “We’ve just had a run of bad luck, that’s all. People’s memories are very short. A bit more idiocy from Iain Duncan Smith, another gaffe from Mandy and we’ll be up there again, flying high, promising the world to the voters. A good conference—not that we can afford one—and we’ll be back.”

  “I was reading about the Social Democratic Party,” said Martha, after Jack and Chad had left. “They had their first conference on a train. Took the party to the voters. I thought that was brilliant.”

  Janet looked at her thoughtfully. Then she said, “Yes, but we can’t copy them. People would say that we had no original ideas.”

  “I see,” said Martha humbly.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to crush you. I worry about you, you know. You’ve got a lot on your plate. Your job, which is terribly demanding, and your constituency duties every weekend. I would imagine those legal clinics you do are a lot of work. And no one to confide in, to talk to. Or have you?”

  “Well…not in the way you mean,” said Martha carefully.

  “I know about pressure. And it’s very tough, especially for a woman. This place is hard for us. It’s such a male club. So any problems you do have, that you need a sympathetic ear for, you know you can always bring them to me. I’ve been round the block a few times. And you’ll find you do need a confidant—someone who knows what the pressures are.”

  “Thank you,” said Martha, slightly awkwardly.

  “Don’t thank me. It’s lovely to have an ally, a female ally. Potentially, anyway. We have to stick together.”

  First thing the next morning, Janet went to Jack’s office to see the research. It was very depressing. She saw what he meant.

  “I feel we’ve squandered everything. Bloody Chad.”

  “It’s not all his fault,” she said.

  “God. What are we going to do?”

  “Just keep trucking,” she said. “Now look, I’ve been thinking: we ought to have a conference.”

  “I know that. But we can’t afford one.”

  “Not the standard kind, no. But remember what the old SDP did?”

  “Of course. The train.”

  “It was a brilliant idea, a PR coup in itself. I really think we might do something similar.”

  “It was brilliant,” he said, “but Janet, there are enough jibes about copying them already.”

  “I realise that. But we could make a virtue of it. Come out with our hands up, saying yes, we know it’s not our idea, but we’re big enough to say so. It would be affordable, it would be brilliant publicity, and it is exactly what we could afford. Think about it, anyway.”

  “I will,” he said slowly. “And this research—it never happened.”

  “It never did.”

  He smiled at her rather wearily. “At least I can trust you, Janet.”

  “You can indeed,” she said.

  Jocasta was waiting at Heathrow for Gideon to arrive back from Washington. He had been there for a week, and she had missed him horribly. She had wanted to go with him, but with the party two days off now, with marquees and fountains and flowers and table plans to attend to, even she could see it wasn’t possible.

  Her father had sent a fax that day, telling her that after all he was unable to come to the party. She had been horribly hurt: it had surprised her how much.

  “I should have known better by now,” she wailed on the phone to Josh. He tried, helplessly, to comfort her, saying he knew how busy their father was, how he knew he had been looking forward to the party. She was not in the least comforted.

  “He went to your wedding,” she said bitterly. “I don’t think he’d even bother going to my funeral.”

  “With a bit of luck,” said Josh, “he won’t be around.”

  “I bet he will.”

  She had been at the airport half an hour already and the plane wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes. This must be love, she thought smiling to herself, being at arrivals for an hour longer than you needed to be.

  Nick Marshall would often walk from Hampstead at least as far as St. John’s Wood before getting on the tube. Or get off the tube at Baker Street and walk the rest of the way to the House. It was the best way to see London, and you saw things that you’d never see from a taxi, let alone the tube. Like that Friday, walking down towards Carlos Place from Grosvenor Square, at about three o’clock, when he saw Janet Frean coming out of the Connaught and getting into one taxi, and shortly after her, Michael Fitzroy, Tory MP for West Birmingham, getting into another. Well. Who’d have thought that? She was a dark horse. All that stuff about the importance of the family and her superwoman image, and she was having it away with someone in an expensive hotel at lunchtime. Not quite as straightforward as she seemed then. He might tease her about it, if he got really bored. He felt bored quite a lot these days. Bored and lonely.

  Nick was right that Janet was a dark horse, but wrong about the manner of it. As for Michael Fitzroy, as soon as he got back to the House, he called the political editor of the Daily News and told him he had an interesting story. When could they meet? It was about the Centre Forward Party and some research.

  Nothing had happened, no reporter had arrived on her doorstep, no accusing voice had come on the phone, no angry child had come into her life. It was going to be all right: she allowed herself to think that now. It had died down, as she had told herself it would. Everything was safely and neatly parcelled up again; the past in the past, the present in the present.

  But there was one thing straddling the two—and that was Ed.

  He simply wouldn’t go away. He called her and texted her endlessly. He had been in reception at Wesley her first day back. He was patient, reasonable, not aggressive, not difficult; he said he wasn’t into stalking her or pestering her, he just wanted to know she was all right.

  A pattern had developed: he would call her every other day or so on her mobile and as many times at home; he sounded surprisingly cheerful, absolutely calm, asking how she was. And she would tell him she was fine, that there was nothing wrong, that he had to forget about her, and he would say it was impossible, until he knew why he should. He would ask her what she was doing, and she would reply that she was working or going to Binsmow, and after a few more pleasantries, he would tell her that he would call her again soon and hang up. It was all very agreeable really: only it hurt more than she would have believed.

  She missed him—horribly.

  But she was surviving. Everything did seem perfectly all right. And a blank, bland, sexless life seemed a small price to pay for that.

  “I’m fine, Ed,” she said, picking up the phone now, slightly reluctantly, “really fine. Thank you.”

  “Good. And are you going to this bash tonight?”

  “What bash?” she said carefully.

  “The big party that Gideon Keeble and his girlfriend are giving. To celebrate their wedding. I read about it in the Mail, about how you have to have a security number to give the guy at the gate so you can get in.”

  “No,” she said firmly
. “Why should I be going to that?”

  “It said the whole of the Centre Forward Party was going. I assume that includes you.”

  “No, Ed, it doesn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said. “I shall call tomorrow and see how you enjoyed it.”

  She knew whatever she said, he would. “Bye, Ed,” she said firmly.

  “What do you think then?”

  Kate walked into the sitting room, where Nat was waiting for her. She was wearing an extremely short silver-sequinned shift dress, almost backless, with a silver chiffon sash round the dropped waist. Her long legs were encased in white tights, and her shoes were silver also, high-heeled with a bar across the instep. Her hair was in a long, loose plait, draped across her right shoulder; she wore a silver band on her forehead, dangly, glittery earrings, and a slave bangle in the shape of a snake coiled round her upper arm. Her huge dark eyes were heavily made up, with long, overtly fake eyelashes, and her mouth was a slash of red against her white skin. She carried a vast white fur stole draped over one arm. There was a silence. Then he said, “You look pretty—cool.”

  “Nat! I’ve been three hours getting like this. You have to do better than that.”

  “Oh, OK then. You look great.”

  “That’s better. You don’t look so bad yourself.”

  “This OK, is it?” he said anxiously. “I don’t look like a tosser?”

  “Not a bit. Did you have that suit before?”

  “Course not. I bought it, didn’t I? What’d I want with a dinner suit?” She considered his life and saw his point.

  “Well, it suits you. You look really, really sexy.”

  “Yeah?” He studied himself closely in the small oval mirror over the fireplace. “So where’d you get that dress, Kate, it’s well nice.”

  “A fancy dress place Fergus took me to.”

  “Oh yeah?” Nat scowled. He wasn’t keen on Fergus; he thought Kate took too much notice of him.