Party Games (28 page)

            Anthea was already there, waiting for him in anticipation as Big Ben struck 9.45 pm.  She wore the maroon coat Tristan loved, her arms folded as she tried to stay warm in the late evening autumnal breeze.  The first hints of winter had begun to chill the skin as the oranges and reds of the trees turned cold and barren and leaves turned to slush under trampling feet.  A week may have been a long time in politics but nature’s own cycle meant that almost nothing felt the same for Tristan.  Seven days ago he had been sitting in his car outside Anthea’s apartment, wondering whether to pluck up the courage to approach her for comfort, now he was about to end something which had become surprisingly special in such a short time.

            Her face lit up through the darkness when she saw him striding towards her across the damp grass. Little did he know that Anthea had decided upon one more night together before she was to confront him about the plotting rumours.

            “Hello, you.”  Anthea purred.  He didn’t reply, but that seem to hardly matter as she reached around his neck and pulled him into an embrace, their hot breath mingling in the coolness of the strengthening wind. For a long moment Tristan gave in to the temptation of her as the Thames lapped gently below them.

            “We had unfinished business this morning.  You left so early, and so quickly.” Anthea whispered, running her gloved fingers up the back of his neck.  “I tried to get back to sleep but couldn’t; your scent was on the pillow so I hugged that instead…”

            “Anthea,” Tristan said seriously, grasping her fingers and lowering her hand.  Anthea’s comforting smile faded when he refused to meet her wide gaze.  He closed his eyes; Anthea’s face was making it far too difficult.

            “I’m so sorry, Anthea, but…I don’t think it’s working.” 

            Anthea searched his face for clarification.  “W…what’s not working?” 

            “Us.  It’s not going anywhere, it
can’t
go anywhere, we both know it.”  Tristan’s voice was hard and final. 

Anthea frowned, taking a step away.  “But...you just kissed me! I thought we had something special, that we connected, but now you’re dumping me?”

“We did have something special, but I can’t be in a relationship with you right now.  Please don’t call it ‘dumping’ you, it sounds so crude.”  Tristan felt utterly sick.  In that moment he hated Colin Scott with a passion and loved Anthea with the same intensity.

“But that’s what it is, Tristan!  You can dress it up how you like, but you’re dumping me with some pathetic excuse!”  The tears sprang to Anthea’s green eyes and Tristan’s heart ached to see it.  Her voice became angrier and he couldn’t blame her; he hoped she would shout just so he could yell back, hurt her enough so she wouldn’t try to continue to love him after this awful business.

“Please don’t make this any harder than it is.”

“Harder for
you,
you mean?  How could you do this to me, let me fall in love with you, allow you to share my thoughts, my bed, my
body
!  Then turn round and tell me we’re through?”  Anthea continued to back away as the moisture escaped from her eyes. “I thought...stupidly I thought you were developing feelings for me.  For God’s sake, Tristan, I was beginning to think this was the real thing, and now this!”  Tristan looked on, helpless to prevent the well of fury as it exploded from her.  It was time for him to get tough.

“No, it’s not the real thing, I’m sorry! I won’t deny the sex was great, but I don’t love you.  We get on well, I respect you, but I’m sorry Anthea, that’s as far as it goes.”

“Respect?  How could you
respect
me if you just string me along, use me for sex and no doubt getting information about Rodney..!”

“Oh, I was waiting for you to bring
him
into it!”  Tristan snorted.  But mention of Richmond gave him another excuse, to get at deep feelings through confession brought on in the heat of a row.

“Well it’s true, isn’t it?”  Anthea threw her arms open and rolled her streaming eyes in exasperation.  Only a few minutes remained before a vote was imminent and the moment, and their relationship, would be lost for good.  “You thought ‘I know, I’ll shag Anthea and then she’ll tell me all about what Rodney
really
thinks about everything,’ is that right? How could you be so cold and calculated?” 

“Ok, I’m not going to say that it didn’t cross my mind!  I wanted comfort, yes, but if we continue to see each other then I’ll never get a Cabinet post if we win next time and it could damage you.  Rodney won’t stand for it.  I’m sorry, I don’t feel strongly enough about you - the relationship isn’t worth the risk.”

“
Not worth the risk?
  I know you have a City background, Tristan, but to make us sound like some stock market floatation is just bloody crass!  I feel like I’m on autopilot these days when I say to people that
I
do not have feelings for Rodney Richmond
!”  Anthea said the words slowly, deliberately.  Almost, Tristan thought cynically, as if she believed them.

“Oh come on, Anthea, who the hell are you kidding, eh?”  Tristan felt the controlled emotion gripping his chest and rising up, frantic and confused.  Part of it wasn’t real, getting her to hate him, while the other part meant every word.  “You know exactly what I mean!  Now the rumours have started I’ll look a fool, messing round with the woman the leader is so desperate for; we both know it’s true!”

“I love
you
for Christ’s sake!”  Anthea caught Tristan’s gaze for the first time but he pulled away, their brief romance fading.  “Let them bloody talk, I
don’t care
!  They’ll all get bored in the end, move on to someone else, they always do!”

“It doesn’t matter, don’t you see?  It’s not about the media; if this gets back to Rodney - and no doubt it already has thanks to Fryer ruining my life at every turn - then who knows what he might say or do.  We were seen leaving the Savoy now the bastard’s telling everyone who will listen!”

“Rodney knows he can’t have me the way he wants, why would he make me unhappy if he loves me like you say he does?  Do you really see him as that much of a monster?”  Anthea pleaded.

“Where you are concerned, Anthea – you’re capable of driving any man to madness.”  Tristan’s voice was suddenly low, but he kept his expression inscrutable. 

Anthea studied him.  “What are you not telling me, about yourself, about your ambition?  I’ve heard other rumours; that you’re plotting with Colin.”  She said dangerously quietly, but when his response faltered she began to yell.  “You owe me the truth, for Christ’s sake, Tristan!  I’m sick of rumour!”

Tristan suddenly felt cornered.  His pretence was slipping and he could feel her soaking into him, as if she were reaching in and pulling his true feelings to the fore. He knew he couldn’t hold it for long.  He found his resolve.

“I’m not…all you need to know if that I don’t want the leadership, and I never will, but Colin does – and soon - and will do anything to get it.  Take that back to the leader, I know you’re now desperate to run to him and tell him all about me and what a bastard I am!”

“I’m so fucking stupid!”  Their BlackBerrys sounded.  A division was imminent, a three line whip.  “First Ben, now you, although I thought you were different!  Maybe I would be better off with Rodney after all, at least he treats me with some respect!”

“Like he did over Jack Fisher, you mean?”

Suddenly Anthea showed Tristan what a wonderfully forceful arm she had as her hand caught him clean across the face.  He reeled, his cheek stung, a mixed feeling of satisfaction that his cutting remarks had had the desired effect and total devastation he had managed to break her heart. He wanted more than anything to hold her and tell her he was forever hers, but the bell was sounding and they had minutes to get to the lobby.  Turning on her heel, her head held high, Anthea walked away.

On reaching home Tristan went straight to his weights and his running machine; his mental energy was such his body couldn’t relax so he felt the need for a good work-out, but no matter what he did he couldn’t get Anthea out of his head.  The clear memory of her face, streaked with furious tears, tore at his heart until he stopped running and collapsed onto the floor, holding his head in his hands.  He gulped down a pint of water.
What had he done?
  Ruined any chance of happiness – and his sex life.  Why strive to be a success, dream of reaching the Cabinet, when his mistakes in life had taught him there was far more to fulfilment than a stack of red boxes?

  The Party Chairman’s office had called him to schedule in a “quiet drink” the following evening, but it was more than obvious he was being summoned by the Powers That Be, thinly disguised as a casual pint down the local.  Jeremy had simply beaten him to it.  It was perfect timing. 

*****

Pulling his tie from around his neck, Colin flicked on the lights of his dark kitchen.  It was stark and far too large for one man living on his own.  He enjoyed cooking but never got much time to do it, and with nobody to share his cuisine with it all made it seem rather pointless anyway.  It occurred to him that was the second thing he shared in common with Richmond.  Loneliness.  The first, of course, had been the indefatigable Rosie.

He felt empty, both emotionally and physically, his stomach grumbling.  He slung some bread into the toaster and fished out a jar of jam before lighting a belated post-coital smoke.  A post-coital, post-bad news smoke. 

Colin watched the toaster thoughtfully.  A third similarity to Richmond might have been his desire to lead his party to victory at the next election, but the Deputy considered that their motives were really quite different.  He felt Richmond simply wanted the best prize of all without even knowing why; if the man had any convictions at all he kept them to himself.  Colin had many convictions, but none of them included giving opportunists like Richmond the benefit of the doubt.   His leadership style contained all the passion and fire of an atheist praying to the very God in which he did not believe, in the hopes he could convince himself of his existence.  He momentarily amused himself by wondering whether Jeremy’s faith was a comfort to him when under strain.  He could imagine him every night, in sensible cotton pyjamas, praying next to his bed for Richmond’s salvation before climbing under a thick duvet and performing his husbandly duty with Linda, the lights off and his eyes firmly shut.  Colin chuckled, but as he chewed his toast he brought his thoughts back to his original contemplation, those bewildering and inconvenient feelings he was experiencing in the car as he drove home. 

As he lay down for fitful sleep, alone in a cold bed, Colin’s thoughts were very much back in Kathryn’s bedroom, but not, for once, for private gratification.  She had reluctantly taken his money and relaxed him in the usual way, her hands drifting expertly about his body, all his worries melting pleasurably away.  His day had been most trying and he hadn’t gone to her for more agro in his life.  She existed merely to make it simpler, not more complicated. But then, moments after their frantic love-making, and with tears swimming in her wide eyes, she had told him the most unfortunate news.  She was sure it was his; the condom must have split, that was the only explanation.  Colin had replied sharply that perhaps she was lying, she had drunkenly shagged some fellow Tory student and now she was just trying to trap him, and why the fuck wasn’t she on the pill like he assumed?  She cried heartily, pleading with him - it was his, she hasn’t slept with anyone else.  To his desperate annoyance, he could see in her face that she was telling the truth.

That was all he needed; this girl, who thought she knew it all, who thought playing student politics would get her the career she said she dreamed of, was now claiming she was pregnant with the child of the Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party.  The timing, as sod’s law would dictate, was impeccable.  It would need dealing with quickly.  He couldn’t go into a leadership contest with the threat of exposure over his head, and although he could never be one hundred percent certain the baby was his, it was worth keeping her quiet. She would know only too well that she could get a hell of a lot of cash for her story, far more than Colin could pay to shut her up.

For the first time, Kathryn had appeared scared of him.  The anger in his voice, the clenching of his fists only served to back her into a corner and eye him with disappointment and hurt.  Ignoring this attempt at emotional blackmail, he had instructed her to book into the best private clinic she could, under a false name, and he would pay the costs.  He wanted to see an invoice as proof and wouldn’t pay a penny more than it asked for.  Then he had softened his approach, taking her hands and kissing her fingers, muttering that it wasn’t her fault, that it was best if she kept quiet, for both their sakes.  He had worried that she would start mentioning feelings again, but before she could, his lips moved to hers, not wishing to hear about her love for him, or how they could be together.  They couldn’t.  It was that simple.

They had talked as he began to dress, her inquisitive eyes watching him closely while her naked form remained wrapped in the duvet.  She had turned the subject away from babies, mentioning seeing him on the news, sat on the bench next to Rodney Richmond and looking very much the Honourable Gentleman in a blue pastel tie, a shade which in her opinion suited him so well.  With a melancholy laugh she told him what an odd feeling it was, watching him in his other world, the public face which hid his little vice so well.  On occasion Colin had been sure she had wanted to ask why it was that such a prominent politician couldn’t get himself a good, respectable wife to sleep with rather than paying someone less than half his age, but she probably thought it facetious.  

“I may not be able to visit you for a while.”  Colin had warned her, fastening his belt.  Her disappointment had been palpable so he had sat next to her on the bed, running his fingers affectionately along her cheek and across her shoulder.  She took his hand and nuzzled his palm, her soft breathing ticking his skin.  “Nothing to do with…well, your
situation
, it’s just I have an awful lot on at the moment.  Just let me have the invoice for...the clinic.”  He said softly.