His conversation at the Labour Christmas party with the local journalist had turned into a full-scale interview complete with photograph in the Islington News and had caught the attention of several people in the party. He found himself being wheeled on at more and more meetings and press conferences; the crowning glory was being quoted very briefly in the Daily Mirror as a ‘young man with a burning desire to go places, preferably in the footsteps of his idol, Aneurin Bevan’.
The article also mentioned a new Tory candidate, a young woman called Margaret Roberts, dismissing her roundly, claiming contemptuously she was one hundred per cent out of the ‘Tory top drawer mould, an Oxford graduate’, while failing to mention that her father ran a grocer’s shop and she had won a scholarship to grammar school. Tom felt mildly interested in her and resolved to follow her progress.
When a safe Tory seat became vacant, in the heart of middle England, Donald Herbert insisted he at least had a stab at becoming the Labour candidate and he spent a miserable three weeks addressing either contemptuous local meetings or the half-amused selection committee who cut him off mid-presentation and told him he was wasting his time. When the day for selection came, he trailed home last of all the candidates, wishing he had never agreed to so ritualistic a humiliation.
None of which mattered in the least, Donald Herbert said, over a consoling beer at the pub.
‘It’s just to give you a feel for it, no more. Think of it as practising scales or something. Ever learn the piano?’
Tom said, no, never, ‘but my late wife used that analogy occasionally’. A sudden vivid picture of Laura at the piano at various school functions, her brown eyes, brilliant with a mixture of anxiety and pleasure, darting endlessly from her music to the performers and back. It hurt; he cleared his throat.
Donald Herbert looked at him thoughtfully, then stood up and said he had to be getting home. ‘I haven’t been home for days; my wife’s pretty long suffering but she has her breaking point. Night, Tom.’
‘Goodnight, Mr Herbert,’ said Tom, and watched him walking out of the pub, envying him that he had a wife to get back to rather than a painfully empty sitting room, a half-made bed, an unused stove, and a silence that was almost a noise.
Loneliness had become the heart of his life; weekends were the worst, when he sat reading, listening to the wireless, trying to force himself to concentrate on the political news, making a contribution to a pamphlet or newsletter, or going out for walks in Highbury Fields and watching families, and struggling not to think of Hope, no longer a baby but a small child, a two-year-old ghost, tottering across the grass, laughing, picking flowers, falling over, being lifted up and comforted. There were couples talking, joking, holding hands, but he walked alone, an outcast from it all, isolated from togetherness, from sharing, wondering, albeit absurdly, if they were all looking at him, pitying his alone-ness, pondering at the reason for it. He longed, even more absurdly, to go up to them and to disabuse them of their sympathy and puzzlement. To say yes, I am alone, but once I was together, together with the woman I loved beyond anything, and our unborn child. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, he would go home, and lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling and raging at the cruelty of whatever malign force had condemned him to this awful, endless pain . . .
He would weep sometimes. He had an old sweater of Laura’s that he kept lovingly folded in a drawer and when he felt especially bad he would get it out, and hold it as once he had held her, gently at first, then frantically, clutching it to him, burying his head in it, crushing it, tears drenching it. Catharsis achieved, he would very gently shake it out and hang it over the foot of the bedstead to dry, and lie staring at it and wondering for a while whatever was to become of him. Then he would take a deep breath and stand up, pull on his coat, and go out to buy a Sunday newspaper or perhaps a copy of the New Statesman and lie on the bed reading. Gradually the pain would fade as his mind became reabsorbed in the present and the other things he managed against all odds to care about, and he could lay Laura once again to rest.
‘Darling, this is rather thrilling. You didn’t tell me about this.’
‘What?’ said Diana casually, although she had been waiting all morning for someone to spot the picture in the Sunday News fashion pages, of her and a handful of other models, most of them much more famous than she was. The picture had been taken by John French, one of the greatest fashion photographers of the day, working with the fashion editor, Camilla Jessop.
He had dressed them all in black and white, each by a different designer, and photographed them on a staircase specially built in French’s studio. The caption was The Faces of the Fifties, and the picture went right across the entire page. Diana had been very lucky to be chosen – it was a huge accolade after such a short time of work, half of which had not even appeared.
Her first session with Blanche had been the most wonderful and extraordinary experience. Wonderful in that it had been such fun, such heady glorious fun. Diana insisted she could do her own make-up, but she could see very swiftly it was completely beyond her, as Blanche’s assistant Lorelei produced a box of theatrical-looking make-up, with a dozen lipsticks and shaders and at least six brushes. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll quite enjoy it and it’s not very difficult, you’ll pick it up in no time. And I can see René’s done a super cut on your hair so we won’t need to do much with that.’
And sitting in the studio dressing room, draped in a large cape and listening to a lot of extremely scurrilous gossip, a discussion as to whether this photographer and that designer (both fairies) were having an affair, how pathetic various other fashion editors’ pages had been recently and how when Lady Mary Someone had come into the studio to be photographed in her wedding dress, she’d spent the whole time flirting with the photographer and Lorelei had heard them arrange to meet at the Connaught later that evening. Then they all piled into an enormous six-seater Riley, its huge boot filled with clothes, more of which were piled on top of her and Lorelei, and drove up to Hampstead Heath where Blanche and Kirill were waiting impatiently, parked near the Ponds.
‘What have you been doing, for heaven’s sake? Diana, let’s have a look at you, yes, that hair’s definitely an improvement. Lorelei, too much lipstick, but otherwise not bad. OK, now I want to do the Worth suit first, so if you could just get into that.’