The Image in the Water (16 page)

The television moved away from announcing results to a discussion between experts. She saw a chance. ‘David,' she said. ‘Come here.' To her great relief he left the pundits and lay beside her slipping his hand under her shoulder. She raised herself from the pillow. He began to undo the large buttons at the back of her suit.

‘Tangier?' she said, half in question.

‘Tangier,' he said, in affirmation.

She undressed slowly. David was patient now. He let Julia take control. It was the only act of power on her side of their relationship. In all other matters he dominated, even bullied, her in a way to which she could not get accustomed. But in these rare moments it was she who guided and David who submitted, until she had brought their bodies together and he lay exhausted beside her. For a fleeting moment they were both happy, and he looked about fifteen.

The telephone rang. There was no extension in the bedroom. David swore, pulled on his dressing-gown and hurried down the steep straight stairs. She could hear him pick up the receiver in the sitting room. He said nothing for a while, then, ‘Ah. That's very sad. I'm sorry.' A pause while his calculating mind resumed control. ‘You've told Mr Freetown … What do you mean you can't find him? I see, I see. Yes. No, I've no idea
where he can have gone.' Then, very firmly, ‘Look, Doctor, I have some experience with the press and handling these matters. It is essential that
no one
gives this sad news to the media before you have found Mr Freetown. If he finds out from radio or television there will be great pain for him and embarrassment to you. Obviously you will go on looking for him. Meanwhile, I strongly advise you to keep silent. Please ring me if you have any difficulty.'

David climbed into bed, expressionless. He still wore his dressing-gown. There would be no more lovemaking that night.

‘Joan is dead?' asked Julia. She had nothing in common with Joan, but remembered her kindness at the time of Simon Russell's death.

‘Yes.'

‘Sad. You are sad. You were really fond of her.'

‘Yes, Julia, I was.' He turned away his face. She kissed his shoulder. ‘I said goodbye. And the world must go on.'

‘Will you now become leader of the Conservative Party?'

Roger Courtauld had just returned from his count in South Northamptonshire. This year Hélène had declined to accompany him. In recompense she had prepared a late-night supper of pâté, herb omelette and goat's cheese with a Chablis at the right degree of chill. She had characteristically and accurately assumed that nothing Roger might have been offered when outside her jurisdiction had been worth eating. She had turned off the television and lit the fire. The two of them sat, as they had so often sat before, in armchairs at either side of the flickering logs, a picture of married harmony. Yet her question showed how far apart they were.

‘What do you mean, lead the Party?'

‘It is logical. You withdrew from that contest two years ago because of the stupid photograph, which no one now remembers. Peter Makewell was the winner, but he was never intelligent and has now lost the election. So there will be a new leader. No one is better placed than you.' She refilled his glass, and for the first time he noticed she was wearing a smart jacket of brown Indian silk over cream linen trousers.

‘The thought is absurd, Hélène. Indeed, it horrifies me.' He spoke more sharply than he intended.

‘Why absurd? Why horrific?'

How could he explain, weary, in need of a bath, disappointed by his own sharply reduced majority? They had so few conversations of any substance, he and Hélène, that each seemed to become more difficult than the last.

He put aside his tray, and softened his voice. But he knew he would never be a diplomat.

‘Look,
ma petite
. I will try to explain. First, I could not become leader. Not because of the photograph. That is not forgotten, but lingers below the surface. There are wider reasons. Time has moved on. I have deliberately stayed out of the public gaze. That has helped us as a family. Which is why I did it. But it means I am no longer in the first rank. Our friends in Daventry were talking about it even during the count. Chattering away – there was nothing else to do tonight. Either Makewell will stay for a bit, or David Alcester will take his place – that was their thought. They discussed it quite happily in front of me. No one supposed for a moment that I might again be a candidate. People like John Wilson and Eileen Hodge from the town branch. As you know, no one likes me more than those two.'

Hélène leaned forward to put a log on the fire. ‘If you knew all this already, why in heaven did you stand again?'

Roger hesitated. He knew he could not explain this to her convincingly. He had lost all appetite for the political battle, and in particular for the media-ridden noise of the House of Commons. In his day he had enjoyed it all, and jousted as sturdily as any. But that day had passed; now he wanted to plan the evening. He wanted his horizons to narrow slowly and happily, so that there was more time for the boys and Felicity, for the garden, for village interests and the village church, for the committees and causes of Northamptonshire. All that was compatible with four or five years as the backbench Member of Parliament for South Northamptonshire. He would be diligent at his surgeries. He would unveil plaques at the opening of hospital wards and school computer centres. He would become less of a partisan figure, more of an elderly uncle to all his constituents. In opposition the whipping should be quite relaxed; in any case he was senior enough to ignore summonses to Westminster that did not suit him. The party whip had no more hold over him. He enjoyed the feeling that a pleasant corner of England belonged to him, that in every village street or shopping precinct he knew someone or could remember some anecdote from its past.

But he saw suddenly that none of this was for Hélène. It was incomprehensible to her. Hélène's idea of politics was strictly centralised, as became a Frenchwoman. The local constituency for her was simply a necessary condition of power at Westminster. He had somehow supposed that when the time came she would acquiesce in his plan for their gradual retirement. Because he was now a coward in their joint relationship he had also supposed that the practical questions would be
more easily resolved if he did not discuss them with her in advance. He began to realise his mistake. But he could not summon up the energy needed to convince her. A part of him, he was surprised to find, did not really want to try.

So he simply said, lamely, ‘I stood again because that fits into our life down here.'

‘Your life, Roger, your life. Not mine. Not mine any more.' Hélène went to the table in half-darkness at the end of the sitting room and poured herself a whisky. This was unusual. ‘Listen, Roger. This poor little French girl was not interested in politics when you found her. She did not ask you to bury yourself in that dirty ridiculous career. But when you decided, I decided also – to help you, to push, to entertain, to organise on your behalf. But it is still a man's world. My contribution in your eyes was as nothing. So, gradually, I did less. It did not matter to you. Perhaps you did not notice. At the time of the photograph affair I was already apathetic, as you remember. Since then, even more so. But today I decided that if you wanted to make one more political effort, once again I would be at your side.'

She paused, and he understood the elegant supper, the exceptional wine, the Indian tunic. But this conversation had come at least three months too late.

Hélène went on, ‘What I cannot accept is a rural prison down here. Mud and puddles for nine months of the year, dull people for twelve. It suits you as you grow old, lazy, sentimental. The ambition has left you. It suits the boys because you have taught them it is better to shoot rabbits than to go to the theatre. But for Felicity and myself, it is nothing. The house is cold, the garden a burden. You cannot expect us to make our lives a void simply to please your English rusticity.'

Once again he summoned his troops to turn her round. Once again they failed to appear. ‘What do you propose?' he asked, after a pause.

‘It is simple. Felicity and I will stay in the flat in London. That will be our home while she is still at the Lycée. You will make this house your base. I will not come here. The boys will come to me for part of the holidays in order to become civilised, and for the rest they will come here to shoot more rabbits. When Felicity leaves the Lycée she and I will return to Normandy.'

‘You've certainly thought it through.'

‘Of course. What else was I supposed to think about during these last weeks, months, years?'

‘You actually wanted it that way? It sounds like it.'

‘No, Roger, no. This is, as you say, my plan B. My plan A would have made you Prime Minister, or at least now Leader of the Party.'

‘That is impossible.'

‘So you tell me.'

His marriage was slipping away, and still he could not stir himself to save it. He sat in his chair, no longer sipping the Chablis, inert, tired, unsure.

Her mood changed again as she came back to the fireside and touched his cheek with a hand cold from the whisky glass. ‘Roger, you are preparing to be miserable. I can read your face. That is the English way. Perhaps you will telephone tomorrow for some social worker with untidy hair and big breasts to come and counsel you.'

‘Don't laugh at me.'

‘It is too late for tears, at least for us. We French regard these things less tragically, perhaps because we are at heart
more serious. Reflect a little, my dear. Behind your pretences you know that my plan B will suit you quite well.'

There was truth in this, thought Roger, as he climbed the stairs to bed. He would sleep apart in his dressing room without drama. He hated to feel that he was losing something happy from the past. But when he thought of the future, the Northamptonshire future, perhaps it would be better for him to live without Hélène, and better for Hélène to divide herself between Notting Hill and Normandy. He knew enough about his children to understand that the key for them was not where they lived but how their parents treated each other.

‘We will be friends,' he said to Hélène through the door, as he undressed. She already lay in the four-poster bed, which was rather too large for the long narrow bedroom. It was half a question.

‘Good friends, better friends,' came the answer.

As so often, what happened when David Alcester was around differed from the expected. Julia drove him to the Market Square in Newbury the day after the election. She expected a sedate gathering of Conservative supporters from the constituency. David would thank them for their efforts. He would argue despite the disappointing figures that it had been a triumph to hold back the enemy assault on the South Berkshire constituency. He would encourage them to continue loyal and energetic support for the Conservative Party, by which he and they meant himself.

There indeed they were, about sixty of them, the nicest people on earth. Julia knew most of them by now. She suspected that some of the women and perhaps one or two lads of his local Young England Movement were drawn to David by
his fleshy good looks and that helpless lock of fair hair. She often found it difficult to join in the chorus of praise that they heaped on him for integrity, courage and straightforward patriotism, but she had learned by now to keep her mouth shut. She looked back persistently on her loud, colourful teenage views, which had embarrassed her father, the Prime Minister. Her views now were not so colourful, and she reserved them for David and occasionally for her mother.

The local supporters deserved this half-hour of thanks, and Julia did not grudge it. This group, to their surprise, were being kept out of the Corn Exchange where they had expected the party to be held. It was sunny at last, but not all of them had come dressed to cope with the chill wind that was tossing the daffodils deployed in rectangular terracotta containers round a dais erected outside the main door. Something else was afoot; they did not have to wait long to discover it. Julia could hear coaches driving into the bus station between the square and the river beyond, then the noise of ragged cheering as they discharged the passengers. A procession of contingents entered the square, each comprising three or four dozen men and women of all shapes and ages, some carrying banners of the red and white cross of St George, others the name of their city or county. Carlisle, Newcastle, Berwick, Lancaster, Manchester. The Leeds contingent included a brass band, which stationed itself behind the South Berkshire supporters in the centre of the square. There was nothing military about the occasion, and no attempt to march in step.

David and Julia stood concealed at the entrance to a newsagent's shop until the square was almost full. Then David led her forward towards the daffodils. The couple were recognised with a cheer that gained strength as it travelled round
the square. They climbed on to the dais. Julia noticed that the constituency agent had distributed St George's flags to the somewhat baffled local supporters. Three television vans had positioned themselves to the side of the dais. David, without a coat, looking ten years younger than his age, waited for the remaining busloads. Bradford, Liverpool, Halifax – the square was almost full. To her surprise his expression was solemn. He was doing nothing to milk the crowd. She found herself composing her own features accordingly. The band was still silent.

So David had put together a national rally as a gesture of defiance, snatching a personal success out of the Party's defeat. They must have started from Carlisle round about dawn. But Julia could see he had something else in store.

David lifted his hand until the square fell silent. The click of press camera shutters became the loudest sound. ‘Thank you, my friends, for being with me here in my home town this morning. We have things to say to each other. But first I have news for you. Sad news. Joan Freetown died in hospital last night.'