Diary of an Unsmug Married

by Polly James

  Mind you, it is nice to be the centre of someone’s attention for a change, instead of just a wife, mother and – worst of all – a very poor substitute for an MP.

  I rather like that last phrase. It’s open to a number of different interpretations, which suggests I’ve learned more from my years at the dull end of politics than I’d previously thought.

  Robin could learn a lot, if he stopped chanting and preparing Mum for death, and started listening to me instead.

  FRIDAY, 9 JULY

  Oh, for goodness’ sake. I thought conspiracy theorists were supposed to be based outside Parliament, not be members of it. Now The Boss thinks the phones are bugged.

  As if banning me and Greg from talking to Party staff, and making us attend Friday briefings separately and on alternate weeks, wasn’t barking mad enough, now he’s become obsessed with listening devices, too.

  Why does he think anyone cares what he says or does? He’s still only a backbencher, and has no hope of ever getting promoted, even if he didn’t have the recently added handicap of being a member of a party that’s in opposition.

  Today, whenever one of the phones rings, he makes a dive to answer it himself, then takes the caller’s number and insists on phoning them back on his mobile – from the archive cupboard. God knows how expensive his mobile bill will be, but I don’t think the office budget is going to cope.

  ‘Ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money,’ says Greg, who doesn’t seem to be having any trouble with his personal budget. I’m sure that’s an Armani tie he’s wearing, but what the hell is that about? I thought we were supposed to look accessible, not overdressed, for work – not that there’s much choice on my budget, anyway.

  Compared to Greg’s sartorial splendour, I feel like a hobo – to borrow one of Josh’s many offensive expressions. And I’m pretty sure that this feeling will be a hundred times worse when – I mean, if – I ever meet up with Johnny International Director Hunter.

  It’d probably be better never to meet him. Then his memories of me could stay intact, unspoiled by any present-day reality checks. Those are thoroughly overrated, as today’s surgery only serves to prove.

  First, there are several very-disabled people worrying about what’s going to happen to their benefits when the rules are changed.

  The Boss provides no real reassurance, as he can’t resist the temptation to cast the Coalition in the most terrifying light possible – so the constituents aren’t any happier by the time their appointment’s over.

  ‘Molly will accompany you down to the ground floor in the lift,’ says Andrew, much to my horror. ‘In case it breaks down again.’

  It doesn’t, thank God, but I don’t know what help Andrew thinks I’d have been, if it had, seeing as I’d have been the first to lose the plot. I hate lifts. They make me feel trapped and panicky – just like when Max and I sometimes seem to have so little to talk about.

  Anyway, by the time I’ve made my way back up the stairs, Andrew’s already putting the fear of God into a group of public sector workers who are fretting about possible redundancies. They’re accompanied by someone from their union, who talks tough and meets with The Boss’ wholehearted approval. The word ‘strike’ crops up any number of times.

  I hope my union will be just as aggressive in my defence if I lose my job to ensure the survival of Carlotta’s. We’re really pissed off with her today, since she phoned Greg to say that The Boss has asked her to write an article in his name for some publication or other, and that she can keep the five-hundred-pound fee!

  ‘English isn’t even her first language,’ says Greg, sounding oddly like Mr Beales.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ I say, because it isn’t. The real issue is that it’s me who spends my whole life writing creatively and affixing Andrew’s signature to the fruits of my labours – but I am doomed to be forever in the shadows, my light firmly embedded in a bag-carrying bushel. (I can do metaphors as well as the next Spanish person, though if I’m to seriously compete with Carlotta, I probably need to grow longer legs.)

  I walk home rather slowly on my short ones, to find Max proudly brandishing an airline ticket and travel itinerary.

  I don’t know why he’s so taken with the latter, seeing as it looks just like any other itinerary – i.e. one that a reasonably competent person could have knocked up on a home computer in five minutes flat. (Ellen, for example. She can type.)

  I make a non-committal grunt, learned from The Boss, and then Max makes a great show of writing the name of his hotel in the diary. I’m not sure what reaction this is designed to provoke, but it irritates the hell out of me – as well as making me even more suspicious. Not all conspiracy theories are imaginary, after all, though I’m damned if I’m going to tell Andrew that.

  SATURDAY, 10 JULY

  Greg’s finally taking his turn at doing supermarket surgery today, and I’m looking forward to a very long lie-in – so, of course, he makes sure that that doesn’t happen.

  I awake to a barrage of texts in which he uses every bit of punctuation available on his mobile to denote various agonised faces. He doesn’t add any actual words.

  At 09:45am I give up the attempt to sleep and get out of bed.

  In retrospect, this is probably a good thing as – about an hour later – Sam turns up. To stay the night, much to my surprise, though apparently not to Max’s.

  ‘Thanks for the phone call last night, mate,’ Sam says, slapping Max on the back, as usual. ‘Always good to get an invitation.’

  Max looks puzzled, as if he has no idea what Sam’s talking about, but I’m positive he did suggest Sam visited – probably to avoid any arguments this weekend. I stare at Max quizzically, which he pretends to be too busy cooking brunch to notice.

  While we eat, Sam updates us on his love-life, or the recent lack of it. Apparently, he was ‘forced to dump’ the Tall Enigma, after she ‘deliberately humiliated’ him. ‘Drank him under the table’ might have been a more accurate description.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he says, when I mention it, ‘she did drink more than me, but I wouldn’t have minded if she hadn’t then decided I was far too drunk to walk. I’m the only member of the team whose girlfriend’s ever given them a fireman’s lift out of the rugby club. I’ll never live it down.’

  Now Sam’s back on the hunt for the love of his life – via the Internet, as usual. He says that the last woman to contact him sounded perfect and so, after a series of increasingly flirtatious and innuendo-laden texts and phone calls, he arranged to meet her in a National Park somewhere in the back of beyond. (The location alone would have given me pause for thought, but then I’m constitutionally mistrustful. It’s one of the few perks of the job.)

  So, anyway, Sam says he drove up to the parking spot and saw what looked to be a very butch Park Ranger, standing near a picnic table.

  ‘It must have been her,’ he says. ‘There wasn’t anyone else around, so I panicked, reversed out and drove straight off again. It’s a good job she didn’t spot me, seeing as she’d have made a convincing prop forward.’

  Now he’s blocked her calls, and changed his email address. For about the fifth time this year.

  Honestly, God knows what Sam expects when he will keep insisting that any prospective girlfriend shares his interests. I seriously doubt Kate Moss plays rugby in her leisure time.

  I’ve just finished pointing this out, when The Boss phones me on my mobile. ‘Molly,’ he shouts, as if he’s forgotten that phones only require a normal speaking voice. ‘I’ll drop off my notes from today’s surgery at your house tomorrow. All right?’

  ‘Um, why?’ I say. ‘No’ would have been a better choice.

  ‘So you can get on with dealing with them – straight away,’ says Andrew, as if that should have been obvious.

  Tomorrow is Sunday, for God’s sake! There’s no point mentioning that, though, so instead I try to find a subtle way to explain that Andrew’s so-called notes will be worse than useless, and that Greg will hav
e taken his own, far more coherent versions – but all to no effect. The thing about The Boss is that he never, ever, takes a hint.

  In the end, I have to resort to telling him that Max and I are going out for the day tomorrow, and that it would be far too hazardous to leave the notes with Josh or Connie, as they cannot be trusted with sensitive information.

  They both look at me reproachfully as I say this, but luckily don’t start moaning until after I have hung up. (If I’ve learned one thing about handling The Boss, it’s never to agree to do anything he claims will be a one-off, unless it’s a genuine emergency – otherwise it will immediately become a regular fixture.)

  ‘He’ll still turn up tomorrow,’ says Max. ‘You do know that, don’t you, Mol?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’ll just have to hide from him. Talking of hiding, where is Sam?’

  ‘Gone to the off-licence,’ says Max. ‘He wants you and me to help him choose the next potential girlfriend. Says having a few drinks usually helps him narrow the field of candidates.’

  That’s arguable, but Sam’s brief absence does give Max and I the chance to discuss what we’d have looked for in a husband or wife, if we’d ever had to advertise for one.

  Max says he would have sought someone who loved cooking and travel, whereas I would have looked for a partner who enjoyed foreign-language films and reading books. Instead, Max got a travel-phobic who can’t competently boil an egg, and I got a dyslexic who can’t follow subtitles.

  Both of us therefore question the need for a woman to share Sam’s interests quite as fully as he seems to think necessary, and we feel oddly bonded by the time he returns. Then we spend the rest of the evening exchanging smug, affectionate glances – while Sam explains that all he wants is to be ‘as happy as you guys are’. I don’t mention Johnny Hunter, and Max doesn’t mention the business trips – or his soft spot for Annoying Ellen.

  By the time we’ve polished off three bottles of wine between the three of us, Max and I are madly in lust. By the time he and Sam have drunk another bottle, he is fast asleep. The gold stars remain firmly in the drawer.

  SUNDAY, 11 JULY

  God, it’s hot. And why on earth did I tell The Boss we were going out for the day?

  Sam thinks I am a madwoman when I insist that we keep the curtains in the front room closed, and that Max moves the car from its usual parking spot – just in case Andrew decides to cruise by ‘on the off chance’. (It has been known.)

  It must be at least 95 degrees, without the windows open, but at least sitting in a darkened room means that Max and Sam can now remove their stupid sunglasses. They both claim that hangovers have nothing to do with their sensitive eyes, but there’s a lot of groaning and excessive ibuprofen consumption before they’re worth even attempting to have a conversation with.

  Max probably shouldn’t have driven the car round the corner, either, now I come to think of it. I bet he was still over the limit, though he says he’s perfectly sober and that he’s only groaning because he may have pulled his back by sleeping on the couch all night.

  He groans again after he says this, louder this time – and looks at me hopefully as he does so.

  I look away, as I have no sympathy whatsoever, and am still sulking about his failure to follow through on last night’s brief lust-filled moment. Fancy being rejected in favour of another bottle of Australian Shiraz!

  I can’t get over that, though Max seems not to notice my bad mood. Sam does, though, or at least, I think he does – as he changes his mind about staying for another night, drinks five more cups of strong coffee, then leaves for home.

  It’s late afternoon by then, so I consider doing the parental phone calls, but quickly conclude that I’m still far too grumpy to avoid having an argument with one or other of them; and, anyway, we’ve got Connie’s boyfriend coming for dinner in a couple of hours.

  We’ve been putting this off, as Russ doesn’t seem the easiest person to talk to – but Connie’s getting upset by our delaying tactics now. She keeps pointing out that Josh has had Holly here for a meal on numerous occasions, whereas we haven’t invited Russ at all – so there’s no option but to redress the balance tonight, though none of us are really looking forward to it.

  For no good reason, as things turn out. How wrong about someone can you be? The evening’s miles more fun than we’d expected, though Connie may well beg to differ.

  Max cooks a Thai meal, and Russ has never tried Thai food.

  ‘It’s chilli-hot,’ says Max, by way of introduction. You’d think this was an innocuous comment, but the mention of chillies turns Russ from a monosyllabic introvert into a gushing fool.

  For almost two hours, he tells story after story – all of them about hazardous past encounters with chillies. These were all apparently entirely self-inflicted, and carried out as tests of manhood.

  Each story is identical to the last, except for the number of chillies consumed, which increases with every version. So too does the number of pints of water that had to be drunk as a result. Max and I can’t even look at each other, and Connie is squirming. She already thinks we can’t stand Russ.

  I dread to think how long the whole thing would have gone on had Josh not completely lost the plot. He interrupts Russ firmly, saying, ‘I once ate a chilli the size of my head.’

  Russ looks nonplussed, and Josh continues, ‘And I had to drink thirty-seven litres of water before I could talk, or even swallow. Was wild, man – know what I mean?’

  Russ nods, lost in admiration – but Connie’s had enough of this now. ‘It’s getting late, Russ,’ she says. ‘I think you’d better be going, as we’ve all got to work in the morning.’

  She glares at us behind Russ’ back, as she leads him out of the dining room and towards the front door.

  When she comes back, Josh says, ‘Wow, Con – where’ve you been hiding him? I love Russ. Love him. Almost as much as he loves his chillies.’ He raises his hand, in an attempt to high-five her.

  ‘F*ck you,’ says Connie, and flounces off to bed.

  Not for the first time this weekend, Max and I congratulate ourselves on our extraordinary good fortune in having married each other. Imagine only having the interests of a chilli fetishist to share!

  MONDAY, 12 JULY

  I arrive at the office this morning to find that The Boss has been in over the weekend and has left Saturday’s surgery ‘notes’ on my desk. (It also looks as if he’s searched all the drawers, but that’s another story.)

  I wish he’d told me he was going to do this, as at least then I wouldn’t have had to spend Sunday boiling to death at home, with all the windows and curtains closed. I overheated so much I might as well have eaten one of Josh’s imaginary giant chillies.

  Andrew’s left the notes on my desk, but I pass them straight to Greg, as it’ll be his job to do the follow-up letters, seeing as he went to this week’s supermarket surgery. For a change.

  Greg looks at the notes, then up at me. I think incredulous may be the word. ‘These notes aren’t from Saturday’s surgery,’ he says.

  ‘How can you tell?’ I say. There hasn’t been enough time for anyone to have deciphered Andrew’s handwriting yet.

  ‘They say, “Asda” at the top,’ says Greg. ‘We were at f*cking Tesco, for God’s sake.’

  I can’t really be bothered with Greg making a fuss about nothing, as I am ploughing through the weekend’s emails, and still have the crazed answer-phone messages to tackle after that.

  ‘Oh, wait,’ he says, looking again. ‘Yeah, I do recognise some of the names – but look at these!’ He shoves a handful of A5 sheets of paper at me. All bear the House of Commons crest, and all are covered in hieroglyphics. ‘What the f*ck?’ says Greg, swearing even more than usual.

  I can see why, once I get round to taking a look. The Boss has obviously lost his mind.

  He’s decided to draft the letters himself, presumably because he has forgotten our long-standing, and very necessary, agreement that only G
reg or I write letters. Never Andrew.

  When the drafts don’t make him appear semi-literate, they make it obvious that he had absolutely no idea what any of the constituents were talking about. This impression is further emphasised by the fact that what he says about each constituent’s case bears virtually no relation to the comprehensive notes Greg took at the time.

  ‘Just ignore Andrew’s versions, and write your own,’ I say. ‘It is our duty to stop him making an idiot of himself.’

  I refrain from mentioning that I will still have to check Greg’s letters before they are posted. Honestly, I might as well do everything myself!

  The Boss phones shortly afterwards to check that we’ve received his notes. I’ve no idea why he would think we hadn’t, seeing as he’d left them right on top of my keyboard, but I humour him, anyway. You have to take pity on those who lack even the most basic of skills.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Got the draft letters, too?’ Andrew is clearly bursting with pride at his achievement. ‘Cases were so straightforward, I thought I’d help you guys out a bit.’

  This is hardly an accurate reflection of the truth, but I let it pass.

  ‘Hear about that new MP?’ he continues. ‘Got so pissed in the Commons bar, he couldn’t manage to vote, then tried to blame it on the heat, the f*cking idiot.’ The Boss can hardly contain his delight. ‘Typical bloody Tory. Lightweights, all of ’em. I can manage it, no matter how much booze I’ve had.’

  ‘Yes, Andrew,’ I say, ‘but you have occasionally forgotten which way you intended to vote. Much to the Whips’ disgust.’

  ‘Not because I was drunk!’ he says. ‘Those bastards change the wording of bills, and add amendments to catch you out. I can’t always be expected to notice those.’

  ‘Well, the media don’t appear to have any trouble keeping up,’ I say, ‘and, talking of the press, I am really, really hoping that it wasn’t you the Daily Mail quoted this morning, bragging about “old-timers being able to handle their drink”?’

  ‘Anything else you need me for?’ says Andrew, in a slightly less cheerful tone than before. ‘No? Got to go then. My mobile will be off for a bit.’