He came out to her. “I love you.”
“I love you too, darling,” she said. “Nothing makes any difference to that.”
“Thanks,” said Jims, “that’s very kind of you.”
He’d been astonished when Eugenie brought him a cup of coffee in bed. It wasn’t very good, being made from less-than-boiling water, instant coffee, and dried milk. Nevertheless he was touched and vague thoughts fluttered through his mind of how, had things turned out differently, he and his stepdaughter might one day have become friends. At least, unlike her mother, she had a brain.
“She’s gone to do some interview,” said Eugenie.
“So what’s new?”
Eugenie laughed and then, to his surprise, so did he. And there he’d been thinking he’d never smile again. So Zillah had gone out-no doubt to bad-mouth him-leaving him to look after her kids without first asking him. And he’d do it. He hadn’t much choice. It would be the last time.
He heard her come back. Because he’d known her so long, he could tell from the way she shut the front door and walked across the hall what kind of a mood she was in. A desperate one, by the sound of it. He lay in bed for a further half-hour, then got up and had a bath, a long, hot soak. Where she was going with the kids this time he neither knew nor cared, but he waited until the door had closed and he heard the lift move before emerging into the living room. He had dressed with care, but then he always did. What sort of a mess had he got himself into that he was being driven out of his own home by that woman?
He walked for a while. It was a beautiful day now, the rain clouds swept away by a high wind, which had since dropped, and the sun had come out. He found himself in South Kensington outside the Launceston Place restaurant where they were happy to let him lunch, though he hadn’t booked. His thoughts drifted from Zillah to Sir Ronald Grasmere and the terms they had agreed on for Willow Cottage, then to Leonardo. Jims hoped he’d been unable to get a taxi and been forced to walk to Casterbridge, that the train had been canceled or that weekend works on the line had necessitated part of the journey being made by bus.
A cab took him back and Big Ben showed twenty minutes past two as he went into the Commons by way of Westminster Hall.
Two messages awaited him. The one from the leader of the Opposition was peremptory and cold. No messing, thought Jims. He’d see him at three sharp. It was a command. The chief whip’s message was couched in rather more wistful terms. Would Jims like to come and “meet with him”-why did even his own party use this awful language?-in his office for a predinner drink and review of “the situation”? Jims threw both into a wastepaper bin and, drawing in his breath, remembering how he’d confronted the press on Saturday morning, he strolled into the Commons Chamber.
All eyes were immediately on him. He had known it would be so and was careful to meet no one’s gaze. Two members sat near where he always sat, on the second from the back of the back benches. With assumed nonchalance, though his heart was pounding, he moved to sit between them. One ignored him. The other, whom Jims of course knew but whom he’d never thought of with anything like friendship, leaned across and gave him a small fatherly pat on the knee. It was so unexpected and so bloody kind that Jims, grinning at him and saying, “Thanks,” felt something happen that hadn’t occurred for twenty years. Tears came into his eyes.
They never fell. Jims didn’t give them the chance. He remained in the Chamber for twenty minutes, apparently listening but in fact hearing nothing, and then he rose to his feet, looked one by one at such members as were present, then at the Speaker (“We who are about to die salute you!”), and walked toward the door. There he paused and looked back. He would never see this sight again. It was already receding into his past, like the fading memory of a dream.
The central lobby was almost empty. Yesterday he had sent his resignation to the chairman of the parliamentary Conservative party and his relinquishment of the whip to the chief whip. There was nothing to stay for except one small consultation. A member who’d been in here for forty years and who knew all about procedure was expecting him in his office with helpful hints on ceasing to be a member. It couldn’t be done as easily as leaving the party.
“The Chiltern Hundreds,” said Jims.
“Pity about that, old man, but it’s taken. You remember-well, a little contretemps in the matter of the former member for…”
“Oh, yes,” Jims cut in. “Pederasty, wasn’t it?”
“Possibly. I try to put a distance between myself and that kind of thing.”
“There must be other offices of profit under the crown. What about the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports?”
“I’m afraid His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has that.”
“Of course.”
A ledger was consulted. “There’s the stewardship of the Tolpuddle Marshes. It carries a nominal annual stipend of fifty-two pence and acceptance of it would of course disqualify you from membership of the House of Commons.”
“Sounds perfect,” said Jims. “I’ve always wanted to have my say in the fate of the Tolpuddle Marshes. Where exactly are they? Wales, isn’t it?”
“No, actually it’s Dorset.”
The aged member afterward remarked to a crony of his that Melcombe-Smith had laughed so much he was quite concerned, supposing that the shock of the wretched man’s recent experiences was bringing on some kind of breakdown.
Jims wasn’t going to hang around for any scoldings, reproaches, or impertinent inquiries. He walked out into New Palace Yard as Big Ben struck twice for three-thirty, an awesome sound to which, for the first time in years, he gave his full attention. The afternoon was beautiful-sunny and hot. What should he do now?
The child psychiatrist told Zillah he was also a doctor of medicine. She didn’t know why he bothered, she hadn’t brought Jordan all the way to Wimpole Street because he had a sore throat. Jordan hadn’t stopped crying since they got into the taxi. Just before they left he’d been sick. It wasn’t surprising, she thought and told the psychiatrist, that a child who was always crying should also be frequently vomiting. Eugenie, who had to come because there was no one to look after her at home, sat on a chair in the consulting room, wearing the wry and cynical expression of a disillusioned woman six times her age.
When he’d talked to Jordan, or tried to, the psychiatrist said he’d like to give him a perfunctory physical examination. Zillah, who was nothing if not a child of her times and was in a nervous state anyway, immediately envisaged sexual abuse, but she nodded miserably. Jordan was stripped and examined.
It took two minutes for the psychiatrist to sit him up, give him a pat on the shoulder, and covering him with a blanket, say to Zillah, “This child has a hernia. Of course you must have a second opinion but I’d be very surprised if that’s not what’s wrong with him. And another may be forming on the other side.” He gave her what she interpreted as a nasty look. “If he’s been crying and vomiting he’s had it for a long time. Pain doesn’t start until the hernia’s reached a critical stage. It may even be strangulated.”
In newspapers a tremendous story is always followed by a period of anticlimax. The tension cannot be sustained. Some cataclysmic revelation has burst upon the world and there can be follow-ups, but sometimes these are unusable, due to the principal being dead or due to appear in court or missing. But something must be found to fill the gap between the shock and triumph and the next amazing journalistic coup. Natalie had outed Jims and ruptured his discretion, but was chary of writing much more about him while he seemed to be suspected of Jeff Leach’s murder. The time had come to produce a history of Jeff’s life, a catalogue of his women. So far only his wife and the woman he was living with had been publicly named. A stunning move might be to acknowledge that she herself had been among his lovers. She had no inhibitions at all about doing this, and her boyfriend was as hardheaded about things as she. But who else should feature in her story?