For the gist of what Donald had said was that the prospects of the party winning any new seats in the election, even one as promising as Purbridge, were remote, and that Tom stood almost no chance of getting in.
‘The party want you there on the back benches, and the National Agents told me they’re proposing to drop you into a dead cert. Trimworth South, up near Leeds, Labour majority last time twenty-two thousand. Chap there desperate to retire and you’d stroll in, your profile being what it is now, and some other young hopeful can take over Purbridge.’
‘But—’
‘Tom, don’t turn this down. You need to get in, or it’s God knows how many more years in the wilderness. It means a bit of extra work of course, by-election almost straight away, new people to impress, but we’ve still got six weeks, it’ll be a doddle. No offence, old chap, but they’d vote Labour if the candidate was a donkey.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Now don’t get aerated, Tom. Just take the chance and be grateful. You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
Tom looked at him; thinking of all the friends he had made in Purbridge – his agent, all the local Labour councillors. All right, not exactly friends perhaps, but warm acquaintances, most of them. He thought how welcoming the people had always been, how he had come to know the head of the boys’ grammar school quite well, how he’d promised the staff of the secondary modern that he would work tirelessly to get it improved so that a place there would be an opportunity, not a mark of failure. And Alice, hoping to move there, spend the summers on the golden beach at Sandbanks, how she too had made a few friends, even in the short time she had spent there, including the matron of the local hospital. They trusted him, these people, trusted him to improve things for them, take up their causes, be on their side. Now they were to have some stranger dumped upon them, who they might like less, and find less hard working.
‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he said to Herbert.
‘You’re allowed twenty-four hours. If you decide against this proposal, you’re a bigger fool than I ever expected. You finished with Diana Southcott yet?’
This came out so suddenly, so shockingly, that it was impossible to do anything but answer.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And no.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean, for Christ’s sake?’
He had to tell him; he’d find out soon enough. ‘She – she said if I stayed away from her, she’d come and see Alice, tell her all about it. And that she’d go to the press.’
‘Christ Almighty. That’s all we need just now. You’re a bloody idiot. You should have listened to me the first time I warned you about her.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I thought the only thing was to keep seeing her. She – she said once a fortnight would do.’
Donald Herbert laughed loudly.
‘She really has got you by the short and curlies, hasn’t she? Some woman, that one. Brains and beauty. You must have some pretty special qualities, Tom, I’ll give you that. Not much use in this situation, though. You’d better agree to my other proposal, or I really will give up on you.’
He walked out of the bar. Tom watched him, feeling, as he did most of the time these days, extremely sick.
It was Sunday again; they seemed to come round with gratifying speed, too fast really, Jillie thought, given their absolutely finite lifespan. They had taken the Morris out in the Sussex direction, along the Hog’s Back; had a sandwich at a pub, chatting about the rally the following week as they got into the Morris again.
‘What I loved best about the Old Crocks Day when I was a little girl,’ said Jillie, switching on her engine, ‘were all the people on the way watching by the road, waving and cheering. I used to pretend I was the Queen. Oh, I really am so excited!’
She looked at him and smiled, and he smiled his slow, careful smile back; and then, quite without warning, he said, ‘You are so very sweet, Jillie, I do love being with you,’ and he leaned forward and kissed her. On the mouth. And it started safely and innocently, and then it became dangerous, hugely so. She felt herself responding, fought against it, couldn’t, just couldn’t, kissed him on and on, hungry, greedy, unable to believe what was happening to her, to both of them. It was like an electric shock, her whole being was jolted by it; and then he drew back and said, ‘Oh, dear.’
No more was said by either of them, but she put her foot down and drove home as fast as she could, parked outside the house without even turning the engine off; and waited for him to get out. But he put his hand out onto hers and said, ‘That was my fault – incredibly stupid of me. I do hope you’ll forgive me.’
She said, her voice cool as she could manage, ‘I think it was both our faults, and I actually don’t think there’s anything to forgive. Goodbye, Julius. I hope you enjoy next Sunday.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, and there was clearly no question of his arguing about it, for which at least she was grateful.
She went indoors, and ran up to her room, and shut the door and cried. The pain was awful, dreadful, but even in the midst of it, she knew it was not as bad as it might have been, had they progressed further. There was no harm done, Nell had no idea, nobody knew. Really, she was lucky, it had just been fun, lovely charming fun, like Julius himself indeed, and now it was over.
What was the matter with her, she thought, starting on a new hanky, that she couldn’t find an ordinary, nice, unattached, attractive man who was attracted to her, a man who was free to love and to love her; did she have an unhappiness wish, as some people had a death wish? Whatever the reason, it was over; she must not, could not even consider, seeing Julius again. He was barred from her: as he should have been from the beginning, and for that she told herself, in a fresh wave of misery, drenching the clean handkerchief, she had only herself to blame.
She managed to arrange to be on duty the next Sunday, and was lucky to find herself extremely busy: three C-sections, a breech birth, and a hysterical midwife who had missed a clear case of pre-eclampsia, which Jillie spotted just in time. When she got home that night, weeping with exhaustion rather than sadness, her mother, having comforted her with the unbeatable combination of nursery food (fish pie) and a couple of glasses of rather grown-up wine, said, ‘Oh, your friend Julius Noble telephoned you. He asked if you could ring him back. At home.’
She nodded and said all she wanted to do was have a bath and she would ring him next day; which, exerting enormous self-control, she did.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Jillie.’
‘How was yesterday?’
‘I didn’t go.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’