‘But the real point is that Churchill then struggled to the dispatch box and spoke again. He is so old, and so small – I swear he’s shrunk – but his voice – oh, Alice, not so strong, but still as wonderful. He revealed that he had wanted to call a meeting with Eisenhower and Malenkov, the new Russian in power, but that – and this is the first anyone had known of it – he suffered a stroke. Then he apologised to Bevan for what he called the “exceptional intervention into his speech”, bowed to all sides of the House and sat down again. It was so marvellous, Alice, to be there, and you know, people are saying probably the last time he would speak in a major debate in the House. I saw history this afternoon, and it was wonderful.’
‘It must have been,’ said Alice, and for the first time in months she felt she had Tom back, the Tom she had fallen in love with, the passionate enthusiast, the irrepressibly ambitious man.
‘It’s so dreary, so much of politics, so many boring events and tedious meetings, so hard to hang on to what it’s all about, and then something like that happens and you remember: the power of it all, and the ability to change people’s lives and indeed the world. Now –’ and he seemed to remember properly where he was – ‘I expect you’d like a cup of tea. I would. I’ll make it. And I will do the nappies and the story, but then, I’m afraid, I have to go and meet Donald. He thinks not only was it a momentous occasion, but there’s bound to be an election pretty soon. I’m sorry, Alice.’
‘That’s perfectly all right,’ said Alice, as graciously as she could. Which under the circumstances, was really very gracious indeed.
It had been an extremely difficult, if not unhappy, few months, since the dreadful day of her father’s phone call. Gradually, uneasily, Alice and Tom had worked their way back into some semblance of a working relationship; his hostility underlying it, her remorse and resentment, in equal measures, half helping, half hindering the process.
She struggled to be cheerful, more efficient, not so much for Tom’s sake but for their marriage. Which clearly had to continue somehow. When she had had this baby – and early April was not an age away – she would feel well and strong again, and she even made an effort to be at least a little more active in bed, but except for very rare occasions, like Christmas, he seemed totally disinterested. At the moment the very thought of sex made her feel sick – but a new emotion had entered her, one that crept into her head and her heart and that try as she would, she could not quite dispel. It was fear: fear that he had found someone else, someone free and young and sexy, who had time and energy for him, who could give him what she was failing so miserably to provide. She tried, tried so hard to crush the fears, and for the most part she succeeded, but sometimes, when she was alone, or worse, in the early mornings as she sat feeding Lucy, it would enter the silent house and her heart, the awful fear, and she would wonder what she could do about it, and then face the fact that there was nothing at all, and that confronting him with some nameless creature would make him as angry as when she railed against Laura. And so she struggled on, and struggle it was.
Tom was out a lot, often at the weekends. She hated the weekends in many ways. All her friends were with their husbands, and she couldn’t go to her parents any more, the rift between them was far too wide. If her father had apologised to Tom, then bridges might have been built. Jillie was available at the weekends sometimes, and loved to come and see her and the children, although she was also being rather odd, Alice thought. She seemed to have something on her mind and was very erratic in her moods, flying quite high one day, and quietly subdued the next. She had a new job that she loved, obstetric registrar at quite a small hospital in Hackney, working for a woman who was just as brilliant as Miss Moran but a great deal more compassionate, and Alice envied her that more than anything, having a place and a purpose in the outside world. More and more she resolved that when the children were old enough she would go back to work, whether Tom agreed to it or not. Raising a family was not enough on its own to be the only purpose for living.
Meanwhile, she had no option but to see it that way. She had more than once dragged her vast bulk – and it did seem particularly vast this time – to Purbridge if there was some dinner or ceremony to which wives were invited. But she had an uneasy feeling that Tom found her size and condition almost embarrassing, and the complexity of the arrangements for the children, now that she could no longer ask her mother, tedious. In the end, he announced he was grateful for her efforts to be supportive, but perhaps they should now be put on hold until after the baby was born.
Tom was meanwhile in a different kind of limbo – or was it more like hell? Of raging guilt, a realisation of the puny power of his own will, joined by a kind of self-justification that something had to make his life worth living; that he was doing all he could for Alice, and that his visits to Diana Southcott represented almost the only pleasures in his life.
For he had not been able to give her up, of course. Those forays into a wild, joyful, multicoloured country, from one that was otherwise strictly monochrome, were absolutely irresistible as were the evenings that contained them; the beautifully furnished, orderly house, into which he was welcomed with delight, where he was plied with delicious food – prepared by Diana’s housekeeper, whose other function, for which he thanked her silently every time, was to wash up in the morning. It was shocking, disgraceful, inexcusable, he knew that, and God only knew what risks he ran. He trembled sometimes to think of what Donald Herbert would have had to say to him, had he known.
Every time he left his beautiful mistress in her equally beautiful surroundings he vowed this would be the last time. And like all adulterers, he found himself drawn back again and again for just one more time, one last glorious gratification. He was bewitched not just by her but by all that she gave him, and life without her now, in all its drabness, had become quite simply unthinkable.
‘Well, young Tom,’ Donald Herbert said as they sat in the Savoy bar, and raised their glasses to what seemed a now inevitable election. ‘Cometh the hour cometh the man. I hope you’re ready for this.’
‘Of course I am,’ said Tom.
‘Good. Because if you think you’ve been nursing your constituents before this, you’re about to discover what that really means. Every hour God sends, you have to be there, once the gun has been fired. Of course you know the form, you’ve done it already at the by-election, but this time you’re going to win, I’m absolutely confident. I hope you feel the same way.’
‘I think so,’ said Tom. Confidence was not quite flowing in his veins.
‘Well, you must tell yourself you do. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will. Now then: the word is May, with a small minority mooting July.’
‘Will Attlee lead the party?’
‘Unfortunately, yes. I would rather Gaitskell. No Tom, not Nye, he’d be a disastrous leader, charismatic as he is. Everyone knows the party is riven at the moment and Attlee at least spells unity. They have Eden, attractive figure, well known enough by now; perhaps a bit too much of a Tory stereotype – but that could play into our hands.’