A Woman's Place (2 page)

Boswood sighed. There were far too many around like that for his taste, youngsters with no experience whatever who lived and died within the political process alone. Never been anywhere or done anything. Never held a proper job, never run a company, never had to struggle, not really. Not travelled much, except with student railcards across Europe; for this was the new generation which casually saw Berlin or Budapest or Prague as extensions of home and had no idea of the price paid in blood to make those places free, let alone accessible.

‘Ah, young Laidlaw! How pleasant to see you. Enjoyed it today?'

‘Sir Nigel … I mean, Lord Boswood…' Fred stammered. Another complicated encounter, his third of the day.

‘Nigel,' said Boswood firmly. He put a hand on Fred's elbow. ‘Now, as I didn't know I would see you, I have committed the cardinal error of not having booked a table for lunch. But I can offer you hospitality in the Peers' bar, and then I will take you, if you are not otherwise engaged and will
permit, to the secret place where we'll find the best cuisine in the entire Palace of Westminster.'

‘Oh – right.' Fred pricked up his ears. ‘That sounds like an excellent idea. Where is it?'

‘Not the Peers' guest room. That's still too full of terrible old English cooking – spotted dick and wet cabbage. Most of their lordships, for all we've forty years of life peerages behind us, are still hereditary: so nursery food predominates. No, we'll go to the Lords' staff dining room. They're the real aristocrats around here; they don't stint themselves.'

Up in the press gallery James Betts tapped out the last lines of his sketch for the
Globe
and finished off a cigarette.

Vitriol laced with sugar for the State Opening, naturally. Readers would recognise the description of the Prince of Wales as morose and bitter; should his mother live as long as
her
mother, His Royal Highness would be in his seventies before he came to the throne. Freedom from family ties had certainly increased the Prince's productivity as far as public engagements were concerned: now he had over 500 a year to his credit. That's what we pay them for, grunted Betts to the computer screen.

Pity Diana hadn't attended, though. Since her announced retirement from public life, her face had been seen peeking wistfully round comers at airports and ski resorts throughout the world. Betts would lay money that she'd be in the pages of
Hello!
again before the year was out, as her sister-
in-law
had before her, showing off once more why her husband was daft to prefer anyone else. Then there was that gorgeous designer wardrobe, the constant renewal of which demanded the oxygen of publicity. Why on earth would any company offer their beautiful clothes or the latest jewellery, or sell them to her at sharp discounts, if no new photographs were available for the cover of
Paris-Match
?

Betts bent to his task and added a few words about the more recognisable characters of the Commons, including the ‘naughty boys', Mellor, Yeo and Hughes, confined to the back benches after losing the battle against the public pillory. Mellor at least had expected to be returned to office after the election, but his former friendship with the Prime Minister was far too distant. A twinge of cramp, which still came and went, reminded Betts of another miscreant, Roger Dickson. It had been moments before the planned confrontation of the man with a question about his own misbehaviour that Betts had collapsed with the stomach infection which would make him tremble whenever he saw eggs for the rest of his life. The question could yet be asked, any time. What was missing and had never resurfaced was the hard evidence, that letter written by Dickson to his girlfriend; without it, the man could deny the story for ever – and probably would. Some lucky beggars would always get away with it.

On the other hand, there was the lady herself. Betts sucked his teeth. Touching forty, certainly, but footloose and fancy free. Her husband had done a bunk with another dame – one could hardly blame him. And that daughter, Karen. Must be around eighteen now, a real looker. Two women, both with a taste for the trousers, he was certain. Both worth watching, carefully.

George Horrocks turned away from the television, put down his sherry and gratefully accepted a canapé from his sister-in-law. The smell of roast pork wafted tantalisingly from the kitchen. This was infinitely better than dull meals in his club surrounded by old bores; Betty was an excellent hostess and a civilised and intelligent person, more like an older sister.

Horrocks pushed his hair off his brow in an unconsciously boyish gesture. It was many years since he had left the army; although the wrong side of fifty he had kept himself fit. Tall and lanky, he could be taken for a much younger man, especially since he still had most of his hair, apart from a slowly increasing bald spot, luckily hidden from the mirror, at the back of his head. He did not mind that its fairness was sprinkled generously with silver. For George was no ladies' man, and was uncomfortable when a woman who spotted his qualities would try to flirt with him. All that, he felt,
had been left behind long ago when Margaret had walked out on him. It was fortunate there had been no children.

‘I confess I find it very watchable, Betty.'

Betty Horrocks bustled into the kitchen to serve the roast potatoes. ‘It is grand, isn't it? Of course you could get more involved, George, if you wanted, when your year of office as Deputy Lord Lieutenant's over.'

George's expression was thoughtful. ‘I might just do that.'

‘And should you be in the least interested I could find you a job, one job in particular.'

Horrocks finished his sherry. ‘Plotting again, Betty? What have you in mind?'

Betty Horrocks stood up, a dish of steaming peas in one hand and a bottle of 1990 Beaujolais Villages in the other. Smartly dressed and verging on the stout, she had been left prosperous in her widowhood. She motioned George to the dinner table. Since her husband had died, it gave her pleasure to look after his younger brother from time to time, especially when his burgeoning interest in the political world was available to be exploited.

‘I wanted to talk to you about that. Our MP, Elaine Stalker, is a lovely person, an excellent constituency Member and a good woman. At least that's my point of view and as her Conservative Association chairman I know her better than most. What she lacks is a decent social life and nobody should be without that. I was wondering, if I were to introduce the pair of you properly, whether you wouldn't see your way…' Her voice tailed away as her courage failed her.

George was silent, his lips pursed. He did not like anybody to organise his life, as his
sister-in
-law was aware. But his eyes were not hostile. It dawned on Betty Horrocks that the same thought might already have occurred to him. She swallowed and tried again.

‘…to maybe asking her out?'

‘Oh, Jayanti darling, it makes me want to cry.'

‘It is indeed a beautiful ceremony. We are very privileged to be able to watch it,' Jayanti Bhadeshia agreed cautiously. His wife's predilection for the Queen was a family joke. He was not, however, about to argue with her.

Pramila Bhadeshia was eating brightly coloured Indian sweets. She licked her fingers like a child before reaching for a linen napkin. ‘The High Commissioner was there – did you see him? What's he done to deserve that, I'd like to know. Wriggled his way to it, that's what, giving money to the President's campaign. Here am I with royal blood in my veins and I cannot be there. It isn't right!'

Her husband sighed. His wife's conviction that she was descended from a nineteenth-century maharaja was subject to some dispute by the present incumbent's family. The increased dowry her father was obliged to give for her in order to support the claim, however, had been more than acceptable. ‘If it upsets you, don't watch.'

‘No, it does not upset me. It's that every Asian man present is a visitor. Nobody attends by right.'

‘That is simply not possible at the moment. There are no Conservative Asian members of the House of Lords – only Shreela Flather, I was forgetting her. There's that fool from the LSE – Desai, isn't it? – but he's Labour; and one from the Chinese community – Baroness Lydia Dunn from Hong Kong. Maybe it's acceptable if they're female. Better chance for you, my dear; than for me, perhaps.'

Bhadeshia was trying to tease his wife but she would have none of it. An audible sniff came also from a tiny figure in a dark blue sari huddled in an armchair in the corner – her mother. With a sinking feeling he recognised the emergence of a hobby horse and prayed silently that this one would be short-lived.

His wife was a strong-minded character, one of the features he secretly liked best about her; he recognised that much of the driving force of their household, of its financial success and standing,
came from her. It made her a superb businesswoman too. Had he married a quieter, more complaisant woman, he would have still been the owner of only one or two shops instead of a whole chain. The Bhadeshia name was becoming better known commercially back in East Africa too, which felt like sweet revenge. Certainly he would never have had thirty million pounds in shares and on deposit at the bank. That much of it had disappeared in the demise of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International rankled deeply but he was nevertheless a man of substance. Yet that conferred obligations, of which fact his wife was never slow to remind him.

But when she developed an obsession nothing would calm her until her objective had either been achieved or been shown to be completely impossible, usually after the expenditure of large sums of hard-earned money. Take their house, with its swimming pool and lawns, its live-in maid and gardener. Pramila had decided she wanted to live near the huge Lakeside shopping complex, the biggest shopping mall in the country. ‘It reminds me so much of New York,' she would say wistfully. Hendon was no longer grand enough; the Brent Cross shopping centre ‘too poky'. A house in Essex big enough for themselves, their four growing children and Pramila's mother and sister was a thoroughly expensive proposition.

The business was not a bottomless treasure chest. On the contrary: the international side devoured cash, though the outlook this year was more promising. He had had to dip into the money put aside for the sister's dowry to keep the mortgage within reasonable limits. Discussion of Lakshmi's wedding had been postponed for a year or two yet, until depleted funds had been replaced. Then there were his own two daughters, Priya and Sabita, still in their teens. A wedding for one cost over £100,000 these days, while dowries didn't bear thinking about. And the boys – Amit was on the way to becoming a doctor, which meant years of college fees, and Varan wanted to go into business like his father. Not for him a cold Cash and Carry at all hours: he'd expect a handsome start in life. Bhadeshia groaned inwardly.

‘You are not listening to me, Jayanti,' Pramila accused him with awesome accuracy.

‘I hear you, my sweet. You are right, the British system is riddled with prejudice. But what am I, a simple Hindu businessman, able to do? We should be thankful we were allowed to come here in safety as children. Had we stayed in Uganda we would have been mincemeat for Amin's dogs. It is enough to live in peace unmolested.'

‘That is a long time ago. Now we are British, and we are part of Britain.' An ominous note had entered her lilting voice.

Jayanti wondered gloomily what was to come next.

‘There should be recognition. The moment has arrived.'

Pramila sat up straight and twitched her red sari with the
aanchal
draping her head, as if she were about to make an announcement. She waited till her husband was gazing at her expectantly.

‘I am now listening, my dear. What have you in mind?'

‘First answer me this. Aren't you the most respected Asian businessman in London and one of the most successful? Aren't you a donor to charities of every kind? Aren't you an active supporter of the Conservative Party, which has just won another election? Wasn't Margaret Thatcher a great admirer of yours? Didn't she once say she wished more English-born businessmen were like you?'

‘Ye … yes.'

Pramila rose and went to the wall next to the mantelpiece. Despite the warmth of the day a coal-effect gas fire burned in the grate; the women of his family felt the cold in England. She pointed to a framed photograph showing herself and her husband, one on each side of the former Prime Minister, all in sparkling evening dress and smiling broadly.

‘She would have looked after you, Jayanti. I know it. Now she cannot do it, you must push yourself.'

‘Doing what?'

‘You should be a member of the House of Lords – yes, you. You should be Lord Bhadeshia, and take your seat like Lord Young and Lord Jakobovitz and the other Jewish lords, whose high position in British society is guaranteed. My bones demand it. You would be brilliant, my darling, I know it.'

Bhadeshia felt weak. In the corner the eyes of his mother-in-law glittered, though the diminutive body had not budged.

‘And you…?'

Pramila bent her head modestly, then smiled. ‘I would be Lady Bhadeshia. At last.'

Once the House was adjourned Elaine had no more to do and felt flat. It was without question marvellous to be part of all this. Yet how weird the ceremony was, and how incongruous. How deceitful: a ruler who is not a ruler, in an imperial crown without an empire, in evening dress in broad daylight, reads a speech which is not a speech to Lords who cannot lord it and Commons who strongly believe themselves to be very uncommon indeed. The gold glisters, but real wealth and control lay neither in the wool of the medieval Woolsack nor in the jewels on Her Majesty's head but on computer screens recording foreign exchange and stock markets in Singapore and Tokyo, Frankfurt and Sydney. Down in Canary Wharf young dealers in red braces switched their attention back to the purchase and sale of Deutschmarks, dollars and yen, marking shares up and down in a dozen languages, thus deciding who would live in style this year and who pay more taxes, casually exercising power vastly greater than any wielded with such meticulous ceremony by either the feudal monarch and her doddering peers or by Members of her Parliament.