The train snaked away, gathering pace for the journey to London. She peered through the window from her seat in a Standard Class compartment.
Fengrove Central had a dingy waiting room, miserable shop and a café that closed at the unconscionable time of 6pm.
The memory of two excruciating hours on its platform, battling elements and constituents with Health Secretary, Ainsley Beadle, still rankled although that was eight years ago and Mrs Beadle had long since repaired to the Lords.
Ainsley Beadle unanimously regarded as a ‘safe pair of hands’ was enjoying the final Cabinet posting of a distinguished career.
She had held three of the Great Offices of State and a leadership challenge in the early nineties had garnered support from all sections of the Party. Hers was an influential voice in many Ministerial appointments; it was a real coup to have attracted her to open the new Foundation Hospital.
This achievement was not appreciated by the Fengrove Constituency Party and she had accompanied the Secretary of State to greet the Head of Clinical Practice at the new hospital only to be faced with the Party Chair, heading a demonstration and wielding a placard.
A horrendous turn of events was not lost upon the journalist from The Fengrove Gazette who tapped Edgar Smith for a ready stream of bile directed at the NHS reforms; the Runcible Government and a local MP who was an out and out class traitor. Mrs Beadle then remembered an urgent appointment in Whitehall and after an excruciating hour of a severely truncated visit, they returned to the station to find that the café had closed, the toilet was out of order and the train had been ‘indefinitely delayed’.
Ainsley Beadle – one of the Government’s more recognisable figures, was then duly recognised and lambasted by complete strangers for the inadequacies of the transport system, the collapse of the economy and the overall relegation of the nation to Third World status.
Her own flickering hopes of a Ministerial career departed with Mrs Beadle, two hours later.
As the train passed the halfway point between Fengrove and London she reflected, (whilst scraping some chewing gum from the seat of her skirt), that her former constituents were quite right about the rail service.
It was rotten from top to toe – from the price of the tickets to the behaviour of officials who fawned over First Class passengers whilst treating the unfortunates in Standard with a casual contempt bordering upon insolence.
Of course, she had formerly been of the elite, nibbling complimentary shortcake, sipping a chilled glass of chardonnay and luxuriating on a capacious cushioned seat – courtesy of a free return rail warrant from Westminster to Fengrove.
Today, she had forked out eighty pounds for the pleasure of being squashed between the window and a woman who was chewing something stinking of onions, with nowhere to place her bag or her paper because the table was strewn with plastic bottles and cardboard cartons.
And then in London, she would have to use a crowded Tube at exactly the wrong time of day - because she couldn’t afford a taxi to whisk her to a restaurant to meet people she didn’t want to see for a lunch she didn’t want to eat.
It was all quite loathsome.
Her week had got off to a poor start with bad news from the estate agent.
An ‘opening gambit’ from a potential buyer had turned out to be a ‘take it or leave it’ final offer. She left it and was now back to square one.
Then Vanessa had driven up in her new Mini Cooper en route to Beldringham where she was designing sets at The Exchange Theatre for the Orton Festival.
Maybe it was the weather – maybe it was the prospect of a month spent Entertaining Mr Sloane – but she was positively taciturn and every conversational opening led to an inexorable dead end.
Until she announced, before opening the car door and screeching off at top speed, that she had been invited to attend the reading of Paul’s Will at the end of the month…….
This revelation had poisoned the day and was now permeating the entire week. As Paul always did - despite the fact that he would, in reality, be gently decomposing in his burial plot next to the fence in St Saviour’s churchyard.
She had felt unable to discuss him with Vanessa – and was no nearer an understanding of either her singular behaviour at the sickbed; or determination (seemingly fuelled by aggression towards herself) to attend this ghoulish assemblage of Paul’s nearest and dearest.
The trouble with the past was that it was not a foreign country and that the things they did there were purposefully designed to destroy the present.
Such as today’s gathering.
The Fifth Column was neither restaurant nor club; it was a slightly unpleasant hybrid and an inappropriate venue for what was bound to be an awkward lunch.
As she opened a door upon the warren of rooms leading from reception, she could not imagine what had possessed her to choose such a place.
Habit.
At a safe remove from Westminster, The Fifth Column was an established hideaway for politicians engaged in traitorous briefings with journalists and a top choice for couples indulging in illicit liaisons.
The fact that it was a by-word for such practices should have made it completely off limits for individuals wishing to retain any semblance of anonymity – but it also carried a certain social cachet.
If you were going to be caught in a honey trap by a tabloid; or snorting cocaine in a toilet – or at the centre of a drunken debauch – then it had better be in The Fifth Column. A certain type of person did that there and then continued as normal.
Such behaviour anywhere else would consign the perpetrator to social and career annihilation.
She had arrived early to bone up on the papers; an essential of the First Class compartment experience – but completely impossible in Standard where the rudimentary twitch of an arm or leg required Olympian endeavour.
As usual, she had bought The Sentinel and The Crier and turned immediately
to The Crier for a salacious hit to accompany her vodka and tonic.
It did not disappoint.
Ponia Tindall led from the front with a full page spectacular entitled
Snuffed Out
This noxious piece detailed the spectacular fall from grace of her old Westminster friend, Gissy Wicks and the likely replacement of the latter by Party stooge Valerie Pringle at the forthcoming General Election.
Gissy was facing a constituency vote of confidence, following a sensational altercation in the back room of The Jolly Roger; the regular haunt of her local Party. During the course of a tempestuous evening, her police officer lover was removed from the site by a posse from the local constabulary, following a frenzied attack upon Constituency Secretary, Niall Bluestone whom he had handcuffed using implements from the Westminster Estate.
Questions were asked when police officer Pete accompanied Gissy to the monthly meeting. He was not a Party member and the fact that he was at least twenty years her junior had been the subject of ribald commentary in national newspapers as well as the main thrust of a programme entitled The Modern Gigolo in Radio 4’s series Women Today.
Gissy had arrived to find colleagues studying specially collated packs containing every item of adverse journalism concerning her that had ever reached the public domain.
These aide memoirs came courtesy of Secretary Bluestone, who opened proceedings with an emergency topic: Conduct in public life in place of Gissy’s Westminster Report.
Pete caught a mention of old slapper; raced to the front, applied the handcuffs and knocked Bluestone from his stool, before crashing into a full drinks table.
Ensuing mayhem was exacerbated by shattering glass, spilled drinks and a bellowing Bluestone. The landlord was left with no choice but to summon the police.
As a consequence, Pete was charged with assault; the Party was permanently barred from The Jolly Roger and Gissy was to face a vote of confidence for bringing the Party into disrepute.
The outcome was likely to be the long-overdue de-selection of a thoroughly disreputable MP and her replacement as the Party’s candidate by Valerie Pringle, a popular and clean living local councillor.
The article then concluded with 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Gissy Wicks
including the fact that she had topped a National Opinion Poll in the categories of
MP you would most like to visit your dying grandmother
and
MP you would most like to join you on a drinking binge in Ayia Napa.
She had also frolicked naked in a mud bath with Tory grandee
Sir Romilly Peabody during a Foreign Affairs Select Committee trip to Turkey.
It was a nasty piece and Ponia Tindall was a contemptible cow, but Gissy’s demeanour at last week’s lunch indicated that there must be some truth in it.
Page ten of The Sentinel settled the question. Police had turned up at The Jolly Roger after an anonymous complaint, but had taken no further action. Gissy was due to face questions at a de-selection conference and her demand for the suspension of the local Party had been rejected. There was no mention of Pete.
She was in the process of texting Gissy when she observed Ponia Tindall and Jessica Trotter easing themselves into seats at a window table just as Lynne and Sandra advanced towards her from reception.
It was now essential that the lunch would be short and she hoped (eyeing Tindall and Trotter) that the fall-out would be neither nasty nor brutish.
She hailed a waiter and negotiated a change from their original table (behind Tindall and Trotter) to one in a corner, obscured by a decorative pillar.
She sat down and poured a glass of water.
Lynne emerged, practically leading Sandra by the hand. She was in a foul mood.
The traffic was appalling and The Fifth Column was a seedy dump. The fact that they had been assigned such an inferior table was proof positive.
When she had worked at the Department, they had avoided the place because the food was, frankly, second rate and if you were a woman over thirty, you’d get better service in a pizza parlour.
It was simply outrageous that highly qualified, professional women who just happened to be of mature years had been stuck in a corner behind a pillar and would have to stand up and do a striptease to catch a waiter’s eye – when those two tarts who were wearing no clothes as far as she could see and were twenty six at most were queening it by the window; the best spot in the restaurant.
In fact, there was a perfectly acceptable table right behind them …..
Only a lie about the inferior quality of reception for mobile phones at window tables stopped Lynne in her tracks and a waiter appeared with some menus.
A glimpse of their group reflection in a wall mirror was not salutary.
From a side angle, she had a definite turkey neck and how could she have thought that those wispy gray strands resembled intricate highlights?
She was thinner – but if the only benefit was a smoother fit to the navy suit with white piping, then bring on the trifle!
The 1970s air-hostess look might have suited the 1970s – but not The Fifth Column in 2011, where Ponia and Jessica posed in leather dresses and fur trimmed jeans.
Lynne, neat in beige linen trousers, resembled the headmistress of an exclusive girl’s school.
Sandra looked awful.
Over the years she had disregarded physical changes in Lynne because they met up relatively regularly.
Sightings of Sandra had been infrequent.
At Dorlich, she had favoured a brown needle cord skirt, cinched at the waist and flared from knee to toe, teamed with an off white cheesecloth shirt.
For parties, she looped her light brown hair into an up do, with corkscrew side curls and dangly hoop ear rings. Her halter-neck Laura Ashley sprigged maxi dress was backless. She didn’t wear a bra; didn’t need to…..
White patent sling backed platforms finished the look which was really rather funky.
They next met by chance at the 1985 Chilton Conference Weekend
She was the Gridchester North delegate. The Miners’ Strike had collapsed and the Conference theme was Energy Post-Coal.
It was her first weekend away since Richard’s birth and she had felt as giddy as a kid at Christmas - without Santa unfortunately, because the mood was funereal. Delegates had supported the miners and resented a sell-out by the national leadership.
She had anticipated a stimulating Solar Energy workshop featuring the Deputy Leader, but he had cancelled and her second preference was situated out of town at the Winthrop Hotel.
It was too far to walk, so her goal was a free drink at the nearest venue.
Refreshments at the Fuel for the Future forum were excellent, but the meeting itself was atrocious.
The key speaker was Bill Cornish, a reticent MP from the 1983 intake, who had stepped in at the eleventh hour after Shadow Energy Minister, Del Kemp had cried off with mumps. Bill lacked Kemp’s charisma and was hampered by low grade heckling and deplorable acoustics.
A lack-lustre speech brought polite applause and a standing ovation from a woman at the front – his wife, Sandra Milford.
When she had recovered from a disconcerting sensation that 1970s Dorlich had risen from the grave, she realised that of course it had not.
Apart from the Marty Feldman eyes, there was little of Sandra Milford circa ‘76 in the new Mrs Cornish.
In physical terms…
Bill was not Prince Charles, but Sandra could have deputised for Diana in her penny loafers, pleated skirt, Peter Pan collar and feathered hair.
But her personality was unchanged and she pounced on the opportunity of gloating to an old friend.
Sandra had married the boss – her supervisor in Quality Testing to be precise.
His election to Parliament was a conduit to greatness and there were echoes of Potts idolatry as every sentence in the space of five minutes contained the phrase Bill says.
Since then Mrs Cornish had been a political wife par excellence. Peter Pan collars and shoulder pads were followed by the skirt suit, the coat suit and now…
The ditched doormat look.
There was no other way of putting it.
Earlier that month she had glowed whilst pruning buddleia in the photo shoot accompanying
At Home with Sandra Cornish by Jessica Trotter
But now, like the Cheshire cat, little remained except poached egg eyes and a hand that grasped a glass so tightly that the veins seemed ready to burst from the skin.
They ordered Waldorf salads and filet mignon, but food was a backdrop for a woman who had abandoned the last vestige of decorum.
A waiter asked if everything was quite in order when Sandra lurched towards the toilet, spilling a carafe of wine en route.
I think she’s gone to throw up hissed Lynne.
This was a ridiculous idea! We could have contained her in Surrey!
Now she’s going mad in the middle of Soho; anybody could come in from the Department and how the hell would I explain it?
She did not mention the fact that two of the nastiest journalists in the country were dining in the same place and thanked God for the pillar as Sandra returned with a second bottle of Muscadet.
Sandra claimed that Cliff Morledge (who had worked in Lynne’s Department before his posting with Bill), had a lapsed conviction for cottaging and had devised the entire blackmail trap in order to steal her husband and destroy the marriage.
It was a ridiculous delusion.
Clifford Morledge was a practising Quaker. There was no reason to suppose that he had even pilfered a sweet.
Sandra wanted Lynne to infiltrate Personnel and appropriate the Morledge file so that the depraved monster could be publicly exposed.
Morledge was a dirty beast, a pervert, he ought to be locked up; he ought to be killed.
What if they had done it in the house when the children were there?
And how had they done it?
Like dogs?
Lynne shook Sandra’s shoulders.
You can’t say those things, Sandra. You just can’t! Pull yourself together!
Sandra was half crying, half laughing and tapping the table.
Was it her fault? Did she bring it out in them? Did she turn men gay? Look at Leslie Potts! On the sofa! With Derek Kingsmill!
Unlikely, but terrible coincidence notwithstanding, Sandra was probably the type of woman to attract a man of indefinite sexuality...
She was emaciated now but had never been voluptuous.
Would she be sexually assertive? And the lack of interest in anyone but herself – the inability to even see anybody else – except in terms of her own self-importance…..
It was obvious.
She would not see the signs because she was incapable of seeing them.
Hence the hounding of Leslie Potts in the bars and parties of Dorlich – even though he had told her that it was over – and why it was over.
Belinda Briscoe’s comment about Dr Mengele in the Sentinel was cruel – but there was something inhuman about a person who refused to recognise others for what they were - and not only refused to accept them but tried to force them to change……
If only Bill would come back, I could help him! In the States they have cures! A woman was interviewed on television and she holds aversion classes in Bambrook! I could take him! We could go together!
It was a chilling resurgence of the offer to accompany Leslie Potts to the Student Medical Centre and she shrank as Sandra clutched her sleeve, pleading for contacts in the press.
Quite apart from the sheer stupidity, she was enraged by the selfishness of Sandra.
Paul had absconded two weeks after her own election to Parliament. What help had she received from Sandra Milford?
None
Sandra had spread spiteful gossip about drinking and wild sex with men at Conferences when we were students.
Lynne paid the bill.
She looked at Sandra who was crying, slumped at the table on her own.
She was a miserable mess.
The fact that she was unhappy did not make her a nice person.
Walking towards the door, she glanced at the window and the upturned face of Ponia Tindall.
The sky was grey and it was raining. Time to go home. Wherever.
The train snaked away, gathering pace for the journey to London. She peered through the window from her seat in a Standard Class compartment.
Fengrove Central had a dingy waiting room, miserable shop and a café that closed at the unconscionable time of 6pm.
The memory of two excruciating hours on its platform, battling elements and constituents with Health Secretary, Ainsley Beadle, still rankled although that was eight years ago and Mrs Beadle had long since repaired to the Lords.
Ainsley Beadle unanimously regarded as a ‘safe pair of hands’ was enjoying the final Cabinet posting of a distinguished career.
She had held three of the Great Offices of State and a leadership challenge in the early nineties had garnered support from all sections of the Party. Hers was an influential voice in many Ministerial appointments; it was a real coup to have attracted her to open the new Foundation Hospital.
This achievement was not appreciated by the Fengrove Constituency Party and she had accompanied the Secretary of State to greet the Head of Clinical Practice at the new hospital only to be faced with the Party Chair, heading a demonstration and wielding a placard.
A horrendous turn of events was not lost upon the journalist from The Fengrove Gazette who tapped Edgar Smith for a ready stream of bile directed at the NHS reforms; the Runcible Government and a local MP who was an out and out class traitor. Mrs Beadle then remembered an urgent appointment in Whitehall and after an excruciating hour of a severely truncated visit, they returned to the station to find that the café had closed, the toilet was out of order and the train had been ‘indefinitely delayed’.
Ainsley Beadle – one of the Government’s more recognisable figures, was then duly recognised and lambasted by complete strangers for the inadequacies of the transport system, the collapse of the economy and the overall relegation of the nation to Third World status.
Her own flickering hopes of a Ministerial career departed with Mrs Beadle, two hours later.
As the train passed the halfway point between Fengrove and London she reflected, (whilst scraping some chewing gum from the seat of her skirt), that her former constituents were quite right about the rail service.
It was rotten from top to toe – from the price of the tickets to the behaviour of officials who fawned over First Class passengers whilst treating the unfortunates in Standard with a casual contempt bordering upon insolence.
Of course, she had formerly been of the elite, nibbling complimentary shortcake, sipping a chilled glass of chardonnay and luxuriating on a capacious cushioned seat – courtesy of a free return rail warrant from Westminster to Fengrove.
Today, she had forked out eighty pounds for the pleasure of being squashed between the window and a woman who was chewing something stinking of onions, with nowhere to place her bag or her paper because the table was strewn with plastic bottles and cardboard cartons.
And then in London, she would have to use a crowded Tube at exactly the wrong time of day - because she couldn’t afford a taxi to whisk her to a restaurant to meet people she didn’t want to see for a lunch she didn’t want to eat.
It was all quite loathsome.
Her week had got off to a poor start with bad news from the estate agent.
An ‘opening gambit’ from a potential buyer had turned out to be a ‘take it or leave it’ final offer. She left it and was now back to square one.
Then Vanessa had driven up in her new Mini Cooper en route to Beldringham where she was designing sets at The Exchange Theatre for the Orton Festival.
Maybe it was the weather – maybe it was the prospect of a month spent Entertaining Mr Sloane – but she was positively taciturn and every conversational opening led to an inexorable dead end.
Until she announced, before opening the car door and screeching off at top speed, that she had been invited to attend the reading of Paul’s Will at the end of the month…….
This revelation had poisoned the day and was now permeating the entire week. As Paul always did - despite the fact that he would, in reality, be gently decomposing in his burial plot next to the fence in St Saviour’s churchyard.
She had felt unable to discuss him with Vanessa – and was no nearer an understanding of either her singular behaviour at the sickbed; or determination (seemingly fuelled by aggression towards herself) to attend this ghoulish assemblage of Paul’s nearest and dearest.
The trouble with the past was that it was not a foreign country and that the things they did there were purposefully designed to destroy the present.
Such as today’s gathering.
The Fifth Column was neither restaurant nor club; it was a slightly unpleasant hybrid and an inappropriate venue for what was bound to be an awkward lunch.
As she opened a door upon the warren of rooms leading from reception, she could not imagine what had possessed her to choose such a place.
Habit.
At a safe remove from Westminster, The Fifth Column was an established hideaway for politicians engaged in traitorous briefings with journalists and a top choice for couples indulging in illicit liaisons.
The fact that it was a by-word for such practices should have made it completely off limits for individuals wishing to retain any semblance of anonymity – but it also carried a certain social cachet.
If you were going to be caught in a honey trap by a tabloid; or snorting cocaine in a toilet – or at the centre of a drunken debauch – then it had better be in The Fifth Column. A certain type of person did that there and then continued as normal.
Such behaviour anywhere else would consign the perpetrator to social and career annihilation.
She had arrived early to bone up on the papers; an essential of the First Class compartment experience – but completely impossible in Standard where the rudimentary twitch of an arm or leg required Olympian endeavour.
As usual, she had bought The Sentinel and The Crier and turned immediately
to The Crier for a salacious hit to accompany her vodka and tonic.
It did not disappoint.
Ponia Tindall led from the front with a full page spectacular entitled
Snuffed Out
This noxious piece detailed the spectacular fall from grace of her old Westminster friend, Gissy Wicks and the likely replacement of the latter by Party stooge Valerie Pringle at the forthcoming General Election.
Gissy was facing a constituency vote of confidence, following a sensational altercation in the back room of The Jolly Roger; the regular haunt of her local Party. During the course of a tempestuous evening, her police officer lover was removed from the site by a posse from the local constabulary, following a frenzied attack upon Constituency Secretary, Niall Bluestone whom he had handcuffed using implements from the Westminster Estate.
Questions were asked when police officer Pete accompanied Gissy to the monthly meeting. He was not a Party member and the fact that he was at least twenty years her junior had been the subject of ribald commentary in national newspapers as well as the main thrust of a programme entitled The Modern Gigolo in Radio 4’s series Women Today.
Gissy had arrived to find colleagues studying specially collated packs containing every item of adverse journalism concerning her that had ever reached the public domain.
These aide memoirs came courtesy of Secretary Bluestone, who opened proceedings with an emergency topic: Conduct in public life in place of Gissy’s Westminster Report.
Pete caught a mention of old slapper; raced to the front, applied the handcuffs and knocked Bluestone from his stool, before crashing into a full drinks table.
Ensuing mayhem was exacerbated by shattering glass, spilled drinks and a bellowing Bluestone. The landlord was left with no choice but to summon the police.
As a consequence, Pete was charged with assault; the Party was permanently barred from The Jolly Roger and Gissy was to face a vote of confidence for bringing the Party into disrepute.
The outcome was likely to be the long-overdue de-selection of a thoroughly disreputable MP and her replacement as the Party’s candidate by Valerie Pringle, a popular and clean living local councillor.
The article then concluded with 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Gissy Wicks
including the fact that she had topped a National Opinion Poll in the categories of
MP you would most like to visit your dying grandmother
and
MP you would most like to join you on a drinking binge in Ayia Napa.
She had also frolicked naked in a mud bath with Tory grandee
Sir Romilly Peabody during a Foreign Affairs Select Committee trip to Turkey.
It was a nasty piece and Ponia Tindall was a contemptible cow, but Gissy’s demeanour at last week’s lunch indicated that there must be some truth in it.
Page ten of The Sentinel settled the question. Police had turned up at The Jolly Roger after an anonymous complaint, but had taken no further action. Gissy was due to face questions at a de-selection conference and her demand for the suspension of the local Party had been rejected. There was no mention of Pete.
She was in the process of texting Gissy when she observed Ponia Tindall and Jessica Trotter easing themselves into seats at a window table just as Lynne and Sandra advanced towards her from reception.
It was now essential that the lunch would be short and she hoped (eyeing Tindall and Trotter) that the fall-out would be neither nasty nor brutish.
She hailed a waiter and negotiated a change from their original table (behind Tindall and Trotter) to one in a corner, obscured by a decorative pillar.
She sat down and poured a glass of water.
Lynne emerged, practically leading Sandra by the hand. She was in a foul mood.
The traffic was appalling and The Fifth Column was a seedy dump. The fact that they had been assigned such an inferior table was proof positive.
When she had worked at the Department, they had avoided the place because the food was, frankly, second rate and if you were a woman over thirty, you’d get better service in a pizza parlour.
It was simply outrageous that highly qualified, professional women who just happened to be of mature years had been stuck in a corner behind a pillar and would have to stand up and do a striptease to catch a waiter’s eye – when those two tarts who were wearing no clothes as far as she could see and were twenty six at most were queening it by the window; the best spot in the restaurant.
In fact, there was a perfectly acceptable table right behind them …..
Only a lie about the inferior quality of reception for mobile phones at window tables stopped Lynne in her tracks and a waiter appeared with some menus.
A glimpse of their group reflection in a wall mirror was not salutary.
From a side angle, she had a definite turkey neck and how could she have thought that those wispy gray strands resembled intricate highlights?
She was thinner – but if the only benefit was a smoother fit to the navy suit with white piping, then bring on the trifle!
The 1970s air-hostess look might have suited the 1970s – but not The Fifth Column in 2011, where Ponia and Jessica posed in leather dresses and fur trimmed jeans.
Lynne, neat in beige linen trousers, resembled the headmistress of an exclusive girl’s school.
Sandra looked awful.
Over the years she had disregarded physical changes in Lynne because they met up relatively regularly.
Sightings of Sandra had been infrequent.
At Dorlich, she had favoured a brown needle cord skirt, cinched at the waist and flared from knee to toe, teamed with an off white cheesecloth shirt.
For parties, she looped her light brown hair into an up do, with corkscrew side curls and dangly hoop ear rings. Her halter-neck Laura Ashley sprigged maxi dress was backless. She didn’t wear a bra; didn’t need to…..
White patent sling backed platforms finished the look which was really rather funky.
They next met by chance at the 1985 Chilton Conference Weekend
She was the Gridchester North delegate. The Miners’ Strike had collapsed and the Conference theme was Energy Post-Coal.
It was her first weekend away since Richard’s birth and she had felt as giddy as a kid at Christmas - without Santa unfortunately, because the mood was funereal. Delegates had supported the miners and resented a sell-out by the national leadership.
She had anticipated a stimulating Solar Energy workshop featuring the Deputy Leader, but he had cancelled and her second preference was situated out of town at the Winthrop Hotel.
It was too far to walk, so her goal was a free drink at the nearest venue.
Refreshments at the Fuel for the Future forum were excellent, but the meeting itself was atrocious.
The key speaker was Bill Cornish, a reticent MP from the 1983 intake, who had stepped in at the eleventh hour after Shadow Energy Minister, Del Kemp had cried off with mumps. Bill lacked Kemp’s charisma and was hampered by low grade heckling and deplorable acoustics.
A lack-lustre speech brought polite applause and a standing ovation from a woman at the front – his wife, Sandra Milford.
When she had recovered from a disconcerting sensation that 1970s Dorlich had risen from the grave, she realised that of course it had not.
Apart from the Marty Feldman eyes, there was little of Sandra Milford circa ‘76 in the new Mrs Cornish.
In physical terms…
Bill was not Prince Charles, but Sandra could have deputised for Diana in her penny loafers, pleated skirt, Peter Pan collar and feathered hair.
But her personality was unchanged and she pounced on the opportunity of gloating to an old friend.
Sandra had married the boss – her supervisor in Quality Testing to be precise.
His election to Parliament was a conduit to greatness and there were echoes of Potts idolatry as every sentence in the space of five minutes contained the phrase Bill says.
Since then Mrs Cornish had been a political wife par excellence. Peter Pan collars and shoulder pads were followed by the skirt suit, the coat suit and now…
The ditched doormat look.
There was no other way of putting it.
Earlier that month she had glowed whilst pruning buddleia in the photo shoot accompanying
At Home with Sandra Cornish by Jessica Trotter
But now, like the Cheshire cat, little remained except poached egg eyes and a hand that grasped a glass so tightly that the veins seemed ready to burst from the skin.
They ordered Waldorf salads and filet mignon, but food was a backdrop for a woman who had abandoned the last vestige of decorum.
A waiter asked if everything was quite in order when Sandra lurched towards the toilet, spilling a carafe of wine en route.
I think she’s gone to throw up hissed Lynne.
This was a ridiculous idea! We could have contained her in Surrey!
Now she’s going mad in the middle of Soho; anybody could come in from the Department and how the hell would I explain it?
She did not mention the fact that two of the nastiest journalists in the country were dining in the same place and thanked God for the pillar as Sandra returned with a second bottle of Muscadet.
Sandra claimed that Cliff Morledge (who had worked in Lynne’s Department before his posting with Bill), had a lapsed conviction for cottaging and had devised the entire blackmail trap in order to steal her husband and destroy the marriage.
It was a ridiculous delusion.
Clifford Morledge was a practising Quaker. There was no reason to suppose that he had even pilfered a sweet.
Sandra wanted Lynne to infiltrate Personnel and appropriate the Morledge file so that the depraved monster could be publicly exposed.
Morledge was a dirty beast, a pervert, he ought to be locked up; he ought to be killed.
What if they had done it in the house when the children were there?
And how had they done it?
Like dogs?
Lynne shook Sandra’s shoulders.
You can’t say those things, Sandra. You just can’t! Pull yourself together!
Sandra was half crying, half laughing and tapping the table.
Was it her fault? Did she bring it out in them? Did she turn men gay? Look at Leslie Potts! On the sofa! With Derek Kingsmill!
Unlikely, but terrible coincidence notwithstanding, Sandra was probably the type of woman to attract a man of indefinite sexuality...
She was emaciated now but had never been voluptuous.
Would she be sexually assertive? And the lack of interest in anyone but herself – the inability to even see anybody else – except in terms of her own self-importance…..
It was obvious.
She would not see the signs because she was incapable of seeing them.
Hence the hounding of Leslie Potts in the bars and parties of Dorlich – even though he had told her that it was over – and why it was over.
Belinda Briscoe’s comment about Dr Mengele in the Sentinel was cruel – but there was something inhuman about a person who refused to recognise others for what they were - and not only refused to accept them but tried to force them to change……
If only Bill would come back, I could help him! In the States they have cures! A woman was interviewed on television and she holds aversion classes in Bambrook! I could take him! We could go together!
It was a chilling resurgence of the offer to accompany Leslie Potts to the Student Medical Centre and she shrank as Sandra clutched her sleeve, pleading for contacts in the press.
Quite apart from the sheer stupidity, she was enraged by the selfishness of Sandra.
Paul had absconded two weeks after her own election to Parliament. What help had she received from Sandra Milford?
None
Sandra had spread spiteful gossip about drinking and wild sex with men at Conferences when we were students.
Lynne paid the bill.
She looked at Sandra who was crying, slumped at the table on her own.
She was a miserable mess.
The fact that she was unhappy did not make her a nice person.
Walking towards the door, she glanced at the window and the upturned face of Ponia Tindall.
The sky was grey and it was raining. Time to go home. Wherever.
1 comment:
Totally loving this. More please!
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