3

A Mother Returns

Sara and Tully sat at either end of their polished mahogany table. The new maid, Nawal, brought in veal escalopes, mashed potatoes, carrots and peas. She was a plump and pretty girl from Iran. The Agency had relented and allowed Sara one more chance. Ayla had left, gone to kinder, steadier employers, claimed the Agency; further justification, if any were ever needed, of her employee’s delinquency. Nawal’s fingers on the vegetable bowl had left a grubby mark behind. Sara said nothing. Tully sniffed at the claret before pouring the wine from the full bottle into their bleakly sparkling glasses.

‘You don’t think she’s watered it?’ asked Sara, almost eagerly.

‘How could she?’ said Tully. ‘It’s full.’

‘She could have drunk some and then watered it,’ observed Sara. ‘If all the Cabinet are as trusting as you, Tully, I’m not surprised we’ve turned into a nation of scroungers. I suppose you do have to open it beforehand and then leave it? It always seems so unwise.’

‘It’s expensive wine,’ said Tully. ‘It has to air.’

They were neither of them in a good mood. Wendy’s death had made Tully surprisingly sad. He had lost an enemy, and that can be hard.

‘I was born in that house,’ said Sara. ‘Now it goes to a stranger.’ She bent over her escalope, forcing knife and fork into rubbery toughness; tears fell on to the hard coating of crumbs. Tully noticed.

‘You won’t need salt,’ he said tenderly. ‘That’s something.’

‘Wendy was the only family I had,’ said Sara. ‘Now I’ve got no one. I never even had a mother.’

‘You have me,’ said Tully, hurt.

‘I know, darling,’ she said. ‘We found each other.’

He moved from the far end of the table, taking knife, fork and plate with him, and sat close to his wife. Their knees touched.

‘We shouldn’t have waited for them to die,’ said Sara. ‘We should have moved into Lodestar and nursed them. I would have done it. There were enough rooms there for everyone, but so dark and closed up it never occurred to me. I always imagined if I opened the wrong door bats would fly out and get into my hair.’

‘There are doors in the House of Commons like that,’ said Tully, darkly. ‘So many corridors, none of them understood: the same men scurrying down them through the centuries. Who’s dead, Tweedledums, who’s alive, Tweedledees, it’s hard to tell. Men with tight waistcoats.’ He tapped his own full belly affectionately. Sometimes they spoke like this: not often.

‘But nothing would do for you or me,’ said Sara, ‘but we pull the place down, start over, and make a fortune. And now we’re thwarted. It isn’t fair, but perhaps we deserve it.’

Sara gave up the struggle with the escalope. She had served her husband the better, more tender piece. Tully appreciated her gesture. With his superior skill, his greater dexterity, he cut up the meat on her plate as if she were a child. She ate, gratefully.

A blast of cold air filled the room and made the heavy, boring curtains shudder. Tully looked alarmed.

‘It’s only the front door opening,’ said Sara.

‘I didn’t hear the bell ring,’ said Tully.

‘Perhaps it’s the new girl letting in the burglars,’ said Sara, but they both just sat and waited, leaning into one another, overwhelmed by emotions which came strangely to them, and when Una strode into the room, that was how she saw them.

‘Well, well!’ said Una. ‘That’s better than I would ever have expected back then when you were five. You actually found a man who likes you, Sara.’

‘Mother!’ cried Sara.