The bell-ringing had recommenced; and going to the top of the stairs, he saw a note being pushed through the letterbox. He went down, picked it off the mat; it was scrawled on a page of a reporters’ notebook.
Dear Mr Knelston, it said. Sorry about this. Given that you’re going to have to talk to one of us, can I introduce myself? Fiona Jenkins, Dispatch, and may I suggest you talk to me exclusively? In return, the newspaper will make a generous donation to your favourite charity, and I’ll try to persuade the others to go away.
Tom, thinking things could hardly be worse, went down to open the door. More flashbulbs. God, it was relentless.
Fiona Jenkins – or so he presumed – was standing at the front nearest the door; she smiled at him, a rather irritating, self-satisfied smile.
‘Come in. Quickly,’ said Tom. He slammed the door shut again behind her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and her voice was surprisingly posh. She was quite attractive altogether, he noticed now, mid-thirties, nice figure, dark red hair, good legs, wearing a fairly short skirt and tight sweater. It was obviously a uniform carefully designed for getting into people’s homes; men’s homes, anyway.
‘Coffee?’ said Tom. He wouldn’t have offered it, but he was desperate for one himself.
‘Yes, thanks. Black, please, plenty of sugar.’
‘OK,’ said Tom shortly, ‘let’s get this over. What sort of money are we talking about for charity, by the way?’
‘Fifty pounds,’ said Fiona Jenkins coolly.
Tom had expected something far less. But, ‘Make it sixty,’ he said. ‘Pay it to the Great Ormond Street Hospital, and I’ll answer your questions. Most of them, anyway.’
‘Done,’ she said, opening her notebook. ‘First of all, how is your little boy?’
‘Better. Thank you. At least, he was last night, I haven’t had a chance to ring this morning.’
‘And your wife’s with him? Staying at the hospital.’
‘Yes,’ said Tom, ignoring the implied criticism. ‘Now, just let me explain how he happens to be in a private hospital and then you can go.’
‘Fine. Only I think your constituents will most want to know why you said it was nothing to do with them. I’d have thought everything an MP does was his constituents’ business. I don’t suppose many of them could afford a private hospital.’
‘Listen,’ said Tom, ‘that was taken out of context. I was trying to explain to the reporter how it had happened. Kit was desperately ill. The GP was out on his rounds. He’d seen Kit before and diagnosed a grumbling appendix. My wife is a nurse and she wasn’t satisfied. His temperature was almost a hundred and two and he was in dreadful pain, screaming and writhing about on the floor. She spoke to a family friend, a paediatric surgeon, who agreed to see him at once, and then, having seen him he diagnosed a problem with the gut, very rare, called intussusception. He said immediate surgery was essential or Kit could die, and he could operate that afternoon. What would you have done?’
‘What you did, obviously,’ said Fiona Jenkins.
‘Exactly. My remark about the constituents was taken completely out of context. I was trying to make the point that this was a private, family matter. Although I admit it does sounds harsh. Lucy, not now, darling –’
The little girl was enthusiastically trying to show the reporter her treasured doll.
‘She’s all right. I like that doll’s dress, Lucy, very pretty. Now, look, let me make us another coffee, I’ve just a couple more questions and then I’ll be away.’
She sent the other reporters packing, got a message to the Hartleys, helped get Lucy dressed, and then left, having given Tom her card, with her direct line on it, so he could chase up the sixty pounds if necessary.
In another life, Tom thought, he would have married her.
Mr and Mrs Hartley had rather enjoyed the drama of the morning, particularly Fiona Jenkins’s visit.
‘Pretty girl,’ Mr Hartley said, ‘and well mannered too, you wouldn’t think that was her job.’
‘Well, and nor would we have thought Mr Knelston was a Labour politician,’ said Mrs Hartley. ‘Both so nicely spoken, specially Alice. I’d have put them down as Conservatives, both of them. Just goes to show.’
Mr Hartley agreed that it did, and drew her attention to the article in the Dispatch, delivered first thing by a now overexcited paper boy, telling anyone who cared to listen that the Hartleys had a great crowd of reporters on their doorstep.
Mr and Mrs Hartley read the article, which, as lifelong Tories themselves, they usually took as gospel.
‘Well, I think that’s most unpleasant of the paper, calling him a hypocrite,’ said Mrs Hartley. ‘I’d like to give them a piece of my mind. It seems to me the reporters didn’t bother to check their facts.’
Mr Hartley said they never did, far as he could make out, otherwise how come all the papers always had different versions of the same stories.
‘Yes, but if they had, they’d have known Kit was dangerously ill, poor little scrap. I blame that Dr Redmond, not knowing what he was doing. Remember when he said my friend Iris had bronchitis and it turned out to be pneumonia, and she ended up in hospital for weeks?’
Mr Hartley said he did.
‘Yes, well, Alice being a nurse clearly knows better than him. And seeing she knew this Mr Welles, who’s a specialist in kiddies’ illnesses, of course she’d take a child to him – wouldn’t you, if he was as ill as Kit – not mess about with any more GPs or even casualty, all that waiting, over two hours sometimes these days. I mean, little Kit could have died, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Anyway, I’m going to pop next door, get Charlie and the little girl too, so poor Mr Knelston can do whatever he needs to do to put this rubbish straight. Fancy us living next door to a famous politician.’
Mr Hartley said Tom wasn’t a politician, not yet, and he wasn’t really famous either, but he always had a smile and a ‘Good evening’, which was good enough for him.
Colin Davidson, being Tom’s political agent, was in despair; he sat at the breakfast table in Purbridge, staring at the papers, his jaw slack with disbelief. How in the name of heaven could Tom have been so stupid, so blind? Of all the idiotic things that he might have done, why choose the very one that went against all that he stood for? Well, it was the end of any hope of success for Tom, and the end of him, too, as an agent. Who would want such incompetence working for the party?
He knew he must go down to the office, try to put some positive interpretation on the whole miserable business; but it was with very low expectations that he drove there.
The last thing he expected to find when he got to the Labour Party office, actually sitting at his desk, was Tom Knelston.