‘Not that Daddy’s ordinary, of course,’ Camilla rattled on.
‘No, darling,’ Susan murmured vaguely. ‘Of course not.’
‘And he
is
a minister. Which isn’t at all ordinary, is it?’
‘A
government
minister, Camilla,’ she said briskly. ‘If you say minister people will think he’s a parson.’
Camilla burst out laughing. ‘Daddy a parson! What a thought!’
Susan didn’t reply. She was thinking ahead to the night of the concert and the moment when she would face Nick again. She would dress very carefully. None of the staid government wife look, yet nothing too glitzy either. A designer dress, very simple, very dramatic. Very expensive. She would buy it first and argue with Tony later.
‘Will you have lots of meetings beforehand?’ Camilla asked. ‘If so, can I be your assistant? Notebook in hand.’
Susan hadn’t thought of meetings, but of course there would have to be several, maybe as many as three or four. Perhaps one with Nick himself. In which case she might well take Camilla along. But not the entire committee; they didn’t deserve it. Though they were far, far too well bred to say so, they hadn’t really believed she could pull this thing off. She would enjoy announcing her coup at the next meeting.
Pointing Camilla in the direction of the sink and the unwashed spaghetti pan, Susan hurried upstairs to unpack. Only a few hours before, everything about her clothes had disheartened her: frumpy, frowsy, second-rate. Now she sang as she hung them up. Pausing in front of a mirror, she cast a critical eye at her reflection, pushing her chin forward, turning to half profile to find her best angle. Not bad, really. She had good bones, and bones always stood the test of time. She didn’t look forty-something, more like thirty-five. There were laugh-lines around her eyes, of course, and the eyelids were going a bit crêpy, but what could you expect. The hair needed attention though. The style, layered but long, like a shaggy lion, really didn’t suit her. Too middle-class. Too middle-aged. She would go for something sleeker, simpler, more classical.
Normally she made it a rule never to unpack for Tony, just as she made it a rule never to wash and iron his shirts – laundries were the best people to field complaints about creases and late deliveries – but after this news she was feeling light-hearted and decidedly generous. Tony had to work hard in this new job of his; the three-day conference in Paris had been preceded by two days in Strasbourg and, before that, a hectic week in Parliament dispelling fears about contaminated water in Lancashire.
His case contained a pile of dirty shirts, socks and underclothes. There were an enormous number of them; he must have changed shirts at least twice a day. She bundled them into the laundry basket, hung his spare suit in the wardrobe and placed his unused clean shirts neatly on a shelf. In the bottom of the case were a few loose papers – brochures and circulars – and these she placed on his bedside table.
His sponge bag she put beside the basin in the bathroom, then, feeling really noble, opened it and hung out his flannel. She noticed his toothpaste was nearly finished and made a mental note to buy him some more.
She glanced at the brochure on top of the pile. A five-star converted château somewhere in France, complete with moat and drawbridge. Tony must have stayed there on his way from Strasbourg to Paris, before she flew out to join him. It looked gorgeous. How strange that he had said nothing about it. She opened the brochure out. Lying inside it was a slip, the sort they hand you with your key, confirming the room rate. At the top in French script was written:
Mme. Smith
, and a room number.
Susan sat down on the bed. It was several minutes before she moved. Then she got up and, going to the wardrobe, systematically went through the pockets of Tony’s suits. Running quickly downstairs, she searched his overcoats hanging in the hall. Returning to the bedroom, she sat on the bed again for quite a time before going into the bathroom and staring at herself in the mirror.
This would take some thinking about.
As she turned to leave, something made her pause and look at the sponge bag again. At first she wasn’t sure what it was that had caught her eye. Then she identified it. Just beyond the toothpaste, peeping out from a side pocket, was the corner of a small carton. Even as she stared at it, even as she reached to draw it slowly out, she knew exactly what it was, although that did nothing to prevent the rush of shock and anger.
The brand name was from the let’s-make-condoms-jolly school. The packaging was bright and simple, as brash and innocent as a packet of sweets, designed to go with the bright young things’ Porsches and post-modernist life-plans. Wishful thinking on Tony’s part, perhaps. A middle-aged man’s lustful little daydreams. Slowly she opened the packet. Her hand was shaking slightly. Out of a packet of three, there was only one left. No daydream, then.
Christ
.
Was she a bright young thing, this woman Tony was screwing? Had she been in Strasbourg with him as well as the château? Or even Paris? If Paris, she’d have had to be quick; Tony had been there barely twenty-four hours before Susan herself arrived.
Was it a long-standing affair? Did they meet regularly? Was she young and pretty?
God – was it a friend of hers? Worst of all, was it someone Tony actually cared for?
Mrs Smith. She might have been more original. Such a shabby little name.
As far as Susan knew none of her female friends or acquaintances had been at either the Strasbourg or Paris conferences, nor had any of the female research assistants or secretaries from Tony’s office. Unlikely, then, to be anyone she knew. In which case Tony couldn’t possibly see the woman with any regularity. He was too busy, his movements too well accounted for.
But someone he cared about all the same? Surely not. There would have been signs: he would have been tense, or particularly attentive or unaccountably excited. She cast her mind back, but for as long as she could remember Tony had been nothing but his normal plodding reasonably affectionate self.
She relaxed a little. This couldn’t be anything too serious. In which case, did she really need or even want to know more? She was surprised to find that, mixed with her shock and anger, was genuine amazement that bordered on admiration. The cunning devil. Who would have believed it? For years their love-life had been so-so, very so-so in fact. She had put this down to the channelling of Tony’s energies into politics and his impossibly long working hours. But now she realized that she had been rather naive to think this state of affairs could continue unnoticed and unheeded, at least on his part. In the final analysis, no man could resist all the little extras that power brought with it. Weren’t people always saying – and with monotonous regularity – that power was the greatest aphrodisiac of all?
She replaced the carton carefully in the side pocket, along with the damp flannel she had recently hung out, and carefully zipped the bag up again.
‘Mummy, I quite forgot – ’
Susan gave a great start and clamped a hand to her chest. Camilla was peering in from the bedroom. Susan shook with rage. ‘Never do that again! Never!’
Camilla put on her sulkiest expression, the sort children keep exclusively for their parents. ‘Sorry. I only wanted to show you the paper. There’s something about Daddy in it.’ She gave a resentful shrug and tossed the newspaper onto the floor. ‘Excuse me for trying to help,’ she added with unnecessary sarcasm, and flounced out.
Angry with Camilla, angry with herself for having reacted so sharply, still catching her breath from the surprise, Susan reached for the paper. It was
The Times
. It took her a moment to find the item, tucked away in a political diary column.
Were they serious? Quick wit. Talent with the media. Susan reread it with bemusement. It was hard to believe they were talking about Tony. His jokes were museum-pieces, his wit schoolboyish. As for the media, she had to brace herself to watch him on television. His desire to impress was so transparent, his concern so palpably laid on, that she felt sure everyone must see through him at any moment.
‘Unbelievable,’ she said aloud.
She was still murmuring her disbelief when she dressed for dinner that evening. She wore her favourite black suit with a tailored jacket and a skirt of decorous length that came to just above the knee: shorter skirts, though fashionable, had been forbidden. Tony said they looked tarty. He was a fine one to talk, Susan decided, when he had a tart of his own tucked away somewhere.
She’d a good mind to embarrass him in the restaurant, to drop a hint over the soup. That would serve him damn well right. At the same time, now that she had got over her shock and was feeling an almost perverse satisfaction in having caught the silly fool out, her more cautious instincts told her to do nothing of the sort. Like something let loose from its bottle, a revelation, once made, might expand and take on all sorts of ugly shapes. Besides, they were going to the Caprice, and she didn’t want to spoil her meal.
The doorbell rang just before seven thirty. She opened the door to a uniformed chauffeur who tipped his hat to her. Behind him was a Rolls, the large-bodied type of thirty years ago that sat high above the road and was usually packed with Arabs on their way to Harrods. She sank into the dark recesses of the interior, feeling suitably indulged, and thought: Bully for Mr What’s-his-name. Directed to the reading light by the chauffeur she checked her pocket diary for the name of their host for the evening. R.B. Schenker, chief executive, Morton-Kreiger International, Agrochemical Division. Morton-Kreiger was one of those vast corporations that made chemicals and pharmaceuticals, that she knew, but Mr Schenker she had never met, not so far as she could remember anyway.
Tony had told her the man’s first name on the way back from Paris but she couldn’t remember that either. R.B. – Robert? Richard? But certainly not Bob or Dick. These corporate men didn’t like abbreviations: it invited people to take them less than seriously. Robert or Bob or whatever it was would be a bore, there was no getting away from that, and she would have to survive the evening as best she might.
His name, as it turned out, was Ronald. He was a slight man in his early forties, with dark hair which he brushed over to one side to cover his sharply receding hairline. He had a narrow high-boned face, a pointed chin and very white skin. His eyes, which were quick and dark, were set close together and stared at you with great intensity, as if he was watching for your every move. He was attentive and courteous, but without charm, as if he had taken a half-day course in etiquette and had forgotten the lesson about looking as though you were enjoying it. His manner first embarrassed then irritated Susan. Mr Schenker had obviously read in some how-to-succeed book that, on the path to influence, no stone was to be left unturned.
Most of the time Tony and he talked politics, or rather, Tony talked and Ronald Schenker listened. Mr Schenker, it appeared, was not married – at least he hadn’t brought a wife with him – so that Susan often found herself left out of the conversation. She used the time to think about Nick Mackenzie and her husband, though not simultaneously. Her mind flittered schizophrenically between euphoria, biting uncertainties over the concert and wonder at the sight of her cheating husband, butter incapable of melting in any part of his anatomy.
As usual in company, Tony was animated, very – what was that awful word? – forceful. It was all laid on, of course, all part of his political persona. Away from the limelight he was quite a subdued person. At least, with her he was.
Susan had always regarded him as safe and sturdy, the sort of quietly successful, middle-of-the-road Englishman who never let you down – but didn’t give you too many surprises either. The success of his political career had been a little unexpected, to put it mildly, but then the most unlikely people often make it in politics. She was constantly struck by the number of dull, narrow-minded bores she met in the Commons.
Until today she’d always believed that Tony’s staunch Thatcherite qualities extended to their relationship. Never, during the nineteen years they had been together, had it ever occurred to her that Tony would rock the boat. Even after what she’d discovered today, she couldn’t imagine that anything would ever seriously undermine their marriage.
But that, of course, was precisely what all unsuspecting wives thought, right until the moment their husbands walked out of the door. She would have to watch her step.
Tony caught her stare, and gave her a perfunctory grin. She tried to decide whether he could possibly appear good-looking to other women. He was very ordinary, so very ordinary that she sometimes wondered if he hadn’t come out of a mould marked standard middle-aged mark-one Englishman. He had always had a tendency to put on weight, a battle that had ebbed and flowed through their marriage, but which, with the frequent lunches and dinners, was finally being lost. He had thinning hair of a nondescript colour, large rimless glasses, rather pudgy cheeks and a neck that was beginning to squeeze out over the edge of his collar.
Yet he must have something special, something that gave him the edge on the political platform and, so it would appear, with this woman in France.
Perhaps Susan was missing something, perhaps she had missed it right from the beginning. Perhaps Tony had charisma, that much overused word which always sounded to Susan like an unpleasant socially transmitted disease. But it was a hard idea to swallow. Charisma depended on sex appeal and Tony lacked the edge of danger that is the essential ingredient of sex appeal. Tony had always been unutterably safe.