‘Really?’ said Alice.
‘My word, yes. Reporters on the doorstep, one of them tried to interview me, I told him to mind his own business. The nerve! And half a dozen back in the morning. Mr Knelston dealt with them very well, they were all gone by ten. And then that very smart lady, arriving in a taxi, Saturday afternoon . . .’
‘What smart lady was that?’ said Alice, her voice determinedly steady.
‘Well, might have been one of the reporters, but she didn’t look like them. And she came on her own. I thought perhaps it was your mother at first, but I could see she was much younger when I got a better look at her,’ she added hastily.
Alice felt as if she was falling into a deep abyss.
‘It might have been Jillie,’ she said. ‘You know, the one who took us off to hospital on Friday morning.’
Mrs Hartley shook her head. ‘No, this lady was very dark. Gorgeous dress, my goodness, bright red, and what looked like real diamond earrings, and the heels! I don’t know how people walk in those heels, I really don’t.’
Alice agreed that neither did she, and wondered how closely she could question Mrs Hartley without making her suspicious. Although suspicious of what? She felt breathless, disorientated, as if she was coming up for air from some deep, muddy water.
‘Well, I can’t think then,’ she said brightly. ‘Did she stay long?’
‘Oh, over an hour at least. Mr Knelston brought Lucy in just after this lady arrived, asked me to look after her for a short while. And when she left – I heard the taxi arriving for her, you can’t mistake that noise, can you, of a taxi – well, Mr Knelston came back for Lucy. He did seem very upset but I didn’t like to ask –’
‘No, of course not.’
Alice decided it was time to call a halt to her enquiries, and suggested they went to find the children.
She managed to banish all thoughts of the very smart lady for the rest of the day, but that night in bed the demons arrived in force. She had had this nightmare so often, about Tom and a mistress; had this been her, arriving at his house when they both knew she was out, Lucy banished – why, why else? – the description of her, dark, beautiful, clearly glamorous, in her high heels and red dress. Alice’s mind raked over possibilities of who she could be – not many Labour Party workers wore high heels and diamonds. Or even travelled about in taxis.
She began to cry, with shock and despair; she fell asleep, and then woke up abruptly with the memory of Friday evening with Ned in the hospital absolutely fresh in her mind, when that woman had appeared, with her clearly expensive clothes, and just slightly condescending manner. ‘She’s a famous model,’ Ned had said, apologising for her. ‘Hide like a rhinoceros.’
Alice remembered her name now – ‘I’m Diana Southcott,’ she had said, and the whole thing fell into place: Diana Southcott, who had been photographed at Battersea Pleasure Gardens with Tom, long, long ago, the day that Tom had proposed. Now there was an irony; maybe her latest appearance in Alice’s life might be followed by a divorce. He had obviously continued to see her; and while she had been obsessing with jealousy over Laura, it was Diana Southcott she should have been worrying about, watching for.
Bastard! Bastard, in bed with this appalling – and glamorous, and rich – woman when she had thought him trying to alleviate the plight of the working classes. It would have been almost funny, if it hadn’t been so horribly sad and ugly. And bitch, knowing as she must have done, that Alice could hardly fight back, exhausted, permanently pregnant, tied to the home. God, she could have killed the pair of them, strung Tom up by his balls, stuffed Diana Southcott’s diamond earrings down her throat until she choked. How was she going to bear this new awful pain? How could their marriage continue now?
By Wednesday afternoon, Tom was exhausted and so sick of it all that he scarcely knew what he was doing. Sick of shaking hands, of smiling at people who didn’t smile back, of hearing complaints about things over which he had no control: not just the high rates, the lack of housing, the overcrowded schools, the uncleared bombsites, the neglected parks, the state of the roads – those were things which could, given that Purbridge had a Labour council, be laid at least partially at its door. But people also complained about their dripping taps, their neighbours’ smelly dustbins, the noise their neighbours made, the Teddy Boys smoking and wolf-whistling on street corners. On and on it went, a non-stop, tedious, exhausting tirade. Some people, but fewer than he had feared, called him a bloody hypocrite for taking Kit to a private hospital; some (a very few) said they’d have done the same if they’d had the means; most either hadn’t taken in the report or didn’t want to talk about it.
Tom was relieved by this, but at the same time, perversely disappointed that, for most people, all that mattered in a politician was that he provided higher wages, lower unemployment and better housing. The country at large was predisposed to approve of the Conservatives, who had delivered the end of food rationing, economic growth and a younger leader.
Tom’s more thoughtful voters asked him what was going to happen about the H-bomb and why they couldn’t have a younger leader too.
‘Seventy-two, Attlee is,’ said one man. ‘Stands to reason he can’t have that much energy – at least the old bulldog had the sense to stand down.’
He then went on to say that Eden was a bit of a toff, that his wife was pretty, and that he was impressed by his going on the television so much. ‘I mean, it can’t be easy, can it, not at first anyway, all those cameras poking in your face.’
After twenty minutes of politely and patiently listening to this, Tom said he really must get on, whereupon the man said yes, well, some people had work to do, and that he wasn’t sure he was going to bother voting at all, but if he did he thought he might give the Liberals a go.
Tom decided he needed a break and made his way back to Labour Party HQ, where he was told there was a message from his wife.
‘She said to ring her soon as you could.’
Fearing Kit had had a relapse, Tom dialled the hospital number; the relief of its being answered by a clearly enunciating, courteous voice, asking how its owner could help him, was enough for a moment to make him vote Tory.