The Meddlers (23 page)

“And your … coterie?”

“Nay, lad,” Davidson had laughed with fat complacency. “You’ve been listenin’ to too much lobby gossip. I’m not that strong! I’ve me friends, I don’t deny, and they credit me wi’ some sense and take some guidance from me long experience. But they’re not in m’ pocket, you know. Minds of their own, the lads ’ave.” And he’d gone lumbering out of the bar, leaving Gurney seething with impotent rage.

Like hell they aren’t in his pocket! he thought now as he walked quickly up Whitehall. If he stands up in debate and comes out against me, more than half the northern members will march right after him into the noes’ lobby. And if they go, what hope of hanging on to the support I’ve already got? It was too chancy. Davidson had him in a cleft stick and knew it.

Davidson hadn’t liked Gurney from the start. He had too many important ears in the House, and it had been an error of judgment on Gurney’s part to go against him on that bloody cotton mill issue in his first year. Well, he’d paid for that. Two possible plums had been lost to him because of that—the place on the Education Bill Committee, the undersecretaryship Davidson had grabbed for his own protégés—but he’d swallowed that, and over the past few months had built some sort of relationship with the man. Not much of a one, but enough, he’d thought, to risk canvassing his support for his bill. And he’d been wrong again. Or had he?

He reached Trafalgar Square and stood on the edge of the pavement, thinking, letting the crowds surge around him. Or had he? Davidson hadn’t said he’d fight him. Yet. He’d shown there was a way to get his support, and with it that of his tribe of camp followers. Find facts that prove Briant is financially unreliable, and you’re on your way, he told himself. Dig out some facts. Now, that shouldn’t be too difficult. Should it?

He was still thinking about ways and means when he reached the restaurant. He could see Cora’s back against the glass and felt a
sudden surge of anger. Bloody woman! What the hell was the point of using such a dismal place to meet if it weren’t that they were safe from possible observation? She knew that and yet plumped herself at a table in the window for all the world to see her. No doubt about it, she was showing too many signs of getting above herself and she would have to be dealt with rather sooner than he had intended.

She looked up at him with the irritatingly familiar expression of knowingness on her face as he stopped beside the table in the window.

“I’d prefer one of the tables at the back, Cora. Shall we?” And without waiting for an answer, he led the way through the narrow aisle between the red-checked tables to the far corner and stood holding his own chair—the one that ensured he had his back to the room—as she went past him and settled herself.

“Well,” he said and reached for the menu, “what shall we have? The cannelloni, perhaps.”

“You hardly have to read that with such ostentation, Ken. You must know it by heart by now. Or is it that it’s easier to look at than I am?”

There was an edge to her husky voice, and he looked up at her for a moment before letting his eyes slide away again. Oh, God damn it all to hell! She was all set for another of her probing sessions, quite obviously. The sooner the better, undoubtedly, he thought. No real reason to put it off much longer anyway.

“Are we going to eat dinner, Cora, in some semblance of peace and amity, or are you going to start the argument now? Because if that’s what you’re planning, I tell you right now I’m not in the mood for it. I’ve told you before, great involved discussion of the state of the parties gives me indigestion.”

“Oh, we’ll have dinner! I might as well get that much! I’ll have an avocado—
with
prawns and an escalope Marsala and a green salad. And a full bottle of decent wine too. Not a half-carafe of plonk. If you can afford it, that is.”

“If that’s what you want.”

He ordered their meal, making a point of selecting the cheapest pasta for himself, and refusing a first course. He’d lunched well,
anyway, with a PRO anxious enough to get something out of him to have fed him at the Savoy. A light meal now wouldn’t hurt him.

She ate very little of the food when it came, looking at him under her lashes as she left the greater part of each dish untasted on her plate. Bitch! he thought savagely. But if she thinks she can get at me this way, she’s got another think coming.

But she could get at him that way and knew it, for by the time she had ordered a zabaglione, eaten barely two spoonfuls of it, and then demanded brandy with her coffee, he was in a flaming temper. And as his own anger rose, so her own edginess seemed to diminish. He paid the bill—half as much again as he usually had to shell out—and after a moment’s hesitation, scooped all the change from the saucerful of silver the waiter brought.

“What, no tip?” she said softly as she pulled on her gloves. “As bad as that, is it?”

“Since we won’t be coming back here—ever—there seems no reason,” he said savagely and immediately felt better. A statement of intent, that was what he had made, and it had struck home. He knew that because of the sudden stillness he felt in her, and the way she got up to leave without another word when he pushed his chair back.

They walked along Charlotte Street toward the underground station in total silence. They sat side by side in the almost empty train as it bucketed its way to Belsize Park, and the climbed the hill to the flat, still without speaking a word.

She dropped her coat and bag and gloves on the elegant velvetcovered sofa and turned to look at him as he followed her into the living room. She spoke lightly. “We might almost be married, mightn’t we? I used to know a man who told me you could always spot married couples anywhere—they were the ones who never talked to each other.”

“But we’re not.” His own voice was harsh.

“No. We’re not.”

There was a long silence, and then she said softly, “Nor ever going to be, are we, Ken? That is it, isn’t it? All this time, all this talk, it’s all been pie in the sky, hasn’t it?”

Almost without realizing it, he slid into the familiar pattern. “Cora, for God’s sake! I’ve told you why, time and again—when I can—”

“Yes, I know. When you can afford to be married, then you will. A man on his way up can’t afford to start on the wrong foot. Marriage too soon is asking for trouble. I’ve heard it all before. And me—” She laughed suddenly. “I’ve believed you! Isn’t that funny? I really believed you. I really thought you meant you’d marry
me
when you could afford it. What I didn’t understand was that what you meant was that marriage would come when you found a
woman
who could afford it, not when you had enough money yourself. Isn’t that funny? You must agree it’s very amusing, Ken! Here I am, a woman who uses words every day of the week as part of her stock in trade, who’s been selling everything from corsets to loo paper by giving words dozens of different meanings, and I couldn’t see what it was you were doing! You were telling me no more than the truth, but I heard what I wanted to hear! Oh, it’s hilarious.”

“Cora, you really—”

“Oh, no! Let me finish! I might as well, since there’s no point any more in biting my lips, is there? Because I’m not going to get a tip either, am I? You’re leaving me behind too, aren’t you? Like the others?”

“What others?” He spoke carefully. “What others, Cora? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you? Don’t you really? Oh, come on, Ken! How much longer can you keep up the fiction? I’ve known for, oh, weeks. What’s happening to me has happened time and again before. I tried to persuade myself it would be different this time, that I really meant something to you. But I’m like the others. Useful for a while, but not as useful as I was. It’s been quite interesting, really, seeing where I fitted into your pattern.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come
on
! I’m an intelligent woman, you know—more than just someone to provide a sex life on the cheap and somewhere to hang up your hat! The first one or two may have been on the dim side, but I’m bright, you know that? I can see the pattern very
clearly. You’ve always been good at trading up, haven’t you? What was the first one? A shop girl? Then a typist, perhaps, or did you make the leap to a full-blown secretary? Each one a bit better-looking, a bit brighter, and certainly better off. I must have seemed quite a plum when you started with me. A professional type, with a really good job, and money to match. A comfortable flat, a good address. Oh, you must have been pleased with yourself!”

He said nothing, standing staring at her with his face carefully guarded. She stood up and began to prowl restlessly about the room, touching the ornaments on the room divider, running her fingers along the books on the shelves that flanked the fireplace.

“And what will the next address be?” she said, not looking at him. “Belgravia, this time? Or merely swinging Chelsea? Hampstead was quite a step up from Kilburn. That was where the one before lived, wasn’t it? I remember, you got letters redirected from there. You’ve been cleverer this time, of course, never had letters sent here. So my successor won’t know, will she? Will she give you a free home as well as the other half of her bed? I suppose so. You’d never make the change otherwise, would you?”

“Is that what’s really getting you, Cora? Money?” He spoke softly, watching her every movement. “I never imagined you as a grasping type.”

“Grasping? Me? Oh, my God!” She began to laugh then, savagely. “Grasping? Christ, but you really are—I’ve got to admire you, you know. It’s a gift, a real gift, do you know that? You can take your own motives and swing them so far they land fair and square on me. Grasping, me? What does that make you? You may have forgotten, my dear, but I haven’t yet had that birthday present you promised me. And the way you’ve timed this—and it is you that’s timed it, not me—you’re leaving me just in time to avoid having to pay for a Christmas present too. Did you work out the odds? I bet you did. I bet you assessed the sort of present I’d be likely to give you and then decided it wouldn’t be big enough to compensate for having to come across with something for me. I mean, you’ve already had the gold cigarette case, and the links, and the watch. The most you could hope for this time was a bottle of after-shave, wasn’t that it? And your new one—whoever she is—
she ought to be good for something really lush. First Christmas together and all that—brings out the best in a woman, doesn’t it? Yes, I’ve noticed. I’ve had to. I’ve paid every bloody bill for you for over six months. And even on an MP’s salary you could have managed something better than a weekly dinner at that tuppenny-ha’penny place you call ‘ours.’ Ours! It was ours because it was the cheapest you could find, that’s all. There’s nothing more sentimental about it than that.”

“Are you telling me to leave, Cora? Is that it? Throwing me out?” He kept his voice as level as he could, trying to keep the elation out. It was marvelous, it really was, the way she was doing it all for him. He’d thought it would be a more complicated change, this one, but in the event …

“No, I’m not. I’m just accepting a fact, that’s all. You’re going anyway. You’ve been working up to it for weeks. I told you, you’ve traded up to a bright one this time. So I’ve known from the moment you first began to plan it.”

He moved then, walking quietly toward the bedroom door. “There’s no point in my saying anything. There isn’t a word of truth in a single thing you’ve said this evening, but I’m not going to waste my breath in arguing with you. I’ll go. Now. But remember, it’s your doing not mine.”

“No, Ken, don’t waste your breath. Don’t waste a thing. You never have, so why start now? But, tell me something before you go.”

He turned and looked at her, his hand on the doorknob.

“Is she expecting you tonight? Or are you going to have to actually spend money on an hotel?”

He smiled then, a slow gentle smile. “I find hotels less than comfortable, Cora, you know that. I imagine I can stay with friends, for a while.”

“Christ, but you— Oh, one of these days you’ll fall over yourself, you’ve got to. One of these days you’ll reach for the main chance and it’ll be just out of your reach. And when you try to pull back and catch hold of what you were leaving behind, it won’t be there. One of these days …”

“Perhaps,” he said softly and went into the bedroom to pack his
cases with his usual calm methodical order. It was almost ten now. He could stay at one of the cheaper hotels near the House for tonight. And tomorrow, before taking himself to the Sillick to see Kegan, he would phone Judith Wallace. He’d meant to hold her off for at least another month, but she was ready; and a show of eagerness on his part wouldn’t be a bad thing. Not at all a bad thing.

  Kegan was feeling better than he had for a long time. It was high time someone took him seriously, recognized just how much effect he had had on the thing. It had hurt, the way he had been ignored, as though he were of no greater importance than some clerk or other. Because that was how it had seemed ever since the thing had become public property.

“It’s not that I wanted to be thanked or anything of that sort!” he said now. “Far from it. The help I gave Dr. Briant over this past two years, the support I gave him, I did it because I believed in the value of what he was trying to do. But what happened? In all the newspaper coverage, all those television programs, has anyone asked
me
? They put on newspaper reporters, and paid them handsomely for saying what they thought about it, put on members of Parliament—not that I don’t think you did an excellent job, because of course you did—but here I sit, knowing more about the matter than anyone else, and who takes a moment’s interest? I can’t deny I’m hurt—well, not hurt as much as distressed that the public shouldn’t be given the opportunity of hearing the facts I have at my disposal. Not that I didn’t offer my services to J. J. Gerrard. At the time of that program I told him I would be willing to cooperate with him, and what happened? Nothing! There’re people who know nothing about it appearing on programs week after week, producing their opinions on it, and I’ve got facts— facts, not opinion! To be honest with you, Mr. Gurney, I’ve wondered whether Briant himself had put a spoke in. He and I—well, despite all my efforts on his behalf, he’s a difficult man to get on with.”