they are anonymous. We legislators, on the other hand, are subjected to relentless public scrutiny and criticism. Some of it is justified, I acknowledge, but much of it is simply the reflex antipathy created by our adversarial system, its fires stoked by the media who line up on either side of the ongoing war.
These days there’s no escape in the public domain. Everything we do is scrutinised, and nothing we do is ever one hundred per cent right. We cannot leave our offices without being photographed, often in the least flattering light. This is particularly true for women, fly-away dresses on a windy day being especially popular with the tabloid snappers, and making the wise among us wear trouser suits or tight skirts all the time. The photo libraries have alternative images for us all; the nice ones for a good-news day, the off-guard for the opposite, or all the time, if the newspaper involved is rabidly against the victim’s party.
That’s the kitchen in which we have to work, and as Harry S. Truman advised, those who can’t stand the heat should know what to do about it. Sensitive souls need not apply: nor the paranoid either, for there are physical dangers, make no mistake about it. Those at the very top of the political tree have round-the-clock police protection, but the rest of us are vulnerable, and round the world, many tragedies have happened.
The one place we’re entitled to feel safe and relaxed is at home. That’s why Bob’s explosion was so shocking to me. Yes, I know that I had a history of opposing a unified police force, but I am also a pragmatist, and as such, I’m open to persuasion. . unlike my husband. Considerations can change, and if I find that cons have become pros on cost grounds, I’m capable of changing with them.
It seems that Bob Skinner isn’t like that. I thought I’d married a reasonable man, but I’ve discovered that his equanimity only applies when he knows he’s going to win at the end of the day. When he doesn’t, he’s blinkered, he’s stubborn, he’s obdurate, he’s implacable, he’s unyielding and he’s every other adjective meaning that when he takes a position and refuses to listen to even the most reasonable counter-arguments he is quite unshakeable.
When I told him that I’d been persuaded to back the Nationalist administration’s bill to unify the police service in Scotland, not by Clive Graham but by the cost arguments in favour of the proposal, I was prepared for him to be disappointed, but I expected him to listen to my rationale and to be persuaded by it. So when he turned on me in fury and the shouting match began, it wasn’t just his attitude that set me off, it was the fact that my sanctuary had been invaded. I wasn’t in the debating chamber; it was my home.
Well, ‘Bugger that for a game of soldiers!’ as my constituency agent is fond of saying. I’ve cared for that man. I’ve been there for him when he’s been down, I’ve been his confessor, I’ve become a mother to his. . another woman’s. . over-indulged kids even though maternity has never been one of my life goals, I’ve massaged his prodigious ego and I’ve fed his sexual appetite, which is not inconsiderable either.
The least I expected was to be treated with respect when I took a position at odds with his own, and for him to make some effort to understand how I had reached it. But no, he turned on me and I saw him at his most intransigent.
Until I met Bob, I had no great history of long-term relationships, nor much time for them, if truth be told, but whenever I was involved with someone I had a rule: never let the sun set on an argument. I didn’t have a chance to follow it that night. Our blazing row was interrupted by a phone call. He took it, muttered something about having to go to Edinburgh, and headed for the door. When I went to bed I expected him to join me eventually, but he didn’t. I don’t know where he slept, but he was in the kitchen when I came down next morning, sweating like a horse in his running gear and guzzling a litre of orange juice straight from the carton.
‘Want some breakfast?’ I asked.
He crushed the empty carton in his fist, and tossed it into the waste bin. ‘That was it,’ he replied. ‘I’m off for a shower.’ He turned and walked out. I looked at his retreating form, and imagined a hand thrust out, keeping me at bay. I’d never felt isolated from him before, and never ever imagined that I could be but. .
A political commentator, no friend of mine either, once described me as ‘an irresistible force’. I was in motion and on a collision course, it seemed, with the immovable object that is my husband. ‘Sod him,’ I murmured, as I picked up my car keys. ‘We’ll see who can’t be moved.’
Parliament was in recess, but that didn’t mean that the place was deserted when I got to my office. Being a party leader is a year-round job and six days a week at that, although reaction to a Sunday newspaper splash often eats up much of the seventh as well. In opposition, it’s worse than being First Minister; the workload isn’t much less, but you don’t have the civil service support.
I was halfway though a substantial mail-tray. . yes, some people still communicate on paper. . when my phone rang. As I picked it up I guessed who it might be, and I was on the mark. ‘Ms de Marco,’ Russell Moore, the First Minister’s principal private secretary, purred in my ear, ‘Mr Graham wonders if you could spare him a few minutes. He’s in his parliamentary office.’
‘Sure,’ I sighed. Best get it over with. I finished the letter I’d been reading, a request for a questionnaire contribution to a postgrad’s PhD research, and walked the short distance to the room that had been mine until a year earlier, when I’d sacked my coalition partners and left the Nationalists to form a minority administration, in the hope that they’d shoot themselves in both feet.
It was beginning to look as if I’d miscalculated; we were only a point or two ahead in the most recent polls, with an election less than a year away, and I’d been told that there were mutterings on my own back benches. I wasn’t worried about the security of my position, as the only people I judge capable of unseating me as leader are too smart to want the job in the circumstances, but on the other hand it didn’t please me. It was one reason why I’d done the deal with Clive Graham over support for the unified police force, and the early legislation that he wanted; if I had to fight internal battles I didn’t want to be in bitter warfare with the Nationalists at the same time.
The PPS was going to show me into the presence, but I wasn’t having that. I told Mr Moore, fairly curtly, that I knew the way and marched in with the briefest of knocks. Clive swung his chair, my old chair, round to face the door as I entered, but he didn’t even make a show of standing.
‘Don’t get up,’ I told him, regardless, thinking
He smiled, and nodded. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he laughed. And then I saw that we weren’t alone. There was a figure in one of the visitor chairs with her back to me. I could see a tuft of brown hair with just a hint of purple about it, and I knew whose it was. It’s impossible to be a member of the Scottish parliament for a Glasgow constituency without bumping into the Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police.
He followed my eyes. ‘Toni’s dropped in for a chat,’ he said, his voice tentative as if he wasn’t sure whether I would turn on my heel and walk right back out of there. Neither was I, for a moment. Twentyfour hours earlier I would have, for sure; but that was before everything changed between Bob and me, so I stayed there and eased myself into the other seat, nodding to Chief Constable Field as I did. She was in her uniform too, all black, tunic and skirt, a tight-packed little woman, with bulging calves and the same brown skin tone as Trish, our Bajan child carer, but with none of her gentleness.
She nodded back, with just a little deference, not because of who my husband was, I knew, but in spite of it, since there was a fair chance that a year down the road I’d be sitting on the other side of the First Minister’s desk.
‘Bollocks,’ I barked.
Clive pushed backwards in ‘our’ chair. ‘Aileen,’ he exclaimed, his tone a little pained.
‘Toni’s no more dropped in for a chat than I have,’ I continued. ‘I know full well why she’s here; she’s reporting back to you on yesterday’s ACPOS meeting, the one you set up to rubber-stamp the police unification process. I even know what she’s told you, that my husband squeaked a negative vote through, courtesy of his best pal being in the chair, but not to worry, that she’ll see him off next time.’ I looked at her, sideways. ‘Am I correct, Chief Constable?’
She smiled, a condescending little smirk that enraged me, but she didn’t reply. I wanted to tell her that she’d made two mistakes in as many days, first underestimating Bob, second, pissing me off, but I decided that could keep, that I’d choose the moment when she found that out for herself, the little mass of political correctness.
She’s so much modern cop that she even has her own Twitter account. A few evenings before Bob had ranted about her, and it, after dinner. ‘She posts everything on it, Andy told me,’ he’d bleated. ‘Her diary for the coming week; she’s even listed our bloody ACPOS meeting on Thursday. What next? Her bowel movements?’
I couldn’t quite share his outrage. The Labour Party press office publishes my engagements too, every day.
