the wives and kids.’
The look that Mackenzie shot me didn’t have a trace of smooth David; it was pure Bandit.
Aileen de Marco
‘Bob, can we talk?’
Unlike my husband, I have no previous experience of being married. So I didn’t really know what to do when you’ve had a real up-and-downer, the kind that leaves a chill in the air even after the combatants have quietened down, and when the concept of not letting the sun set on an argument has gone for a burton. But one thing was for sure; I didn’t reckon it was up to me to make the first move. Bob was the one who’d blown up, who’d refused to listen to a single word I’d said, or to consider the logic of what the government was proposing and what I felt it was my duty to back.
I waited all day for him to phone; waited in vain. When I got back to my office from Clive’s, I hoped there would be a message from him, but there wasn’t. With nothing else to do that my stubborn gene would permit, like ringing him myself, I called my stepdaughter. I don’t like disturbing Alex at work, because her time is valuable and she has to account for every minute of it, but I felt that I had to do it; she’s her father’s vicar on earth.
‘Have you heard from your dad today?’ I asked her, once I’d persuaded her secretary that it was important, and been put through.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Was he supposed to call me?’
‘No, no.’ I felt stupid; I had no idea what I was going to say next.
She helped me. ‘What’s up, Aileen?’
‘Oh, I thought he might have, to sound off.’
‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘You’ve had an argument.’
I sighed. ‘Have we ever. I’ve never seen him like that.’ I explained what had happened, and why. ‘Alex, I really need your help.’
‘I see,’ she murmured, when I’d finished. ‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You and the First Minister are ganging up to threaten my father’s career.’
I’m not easily rattled, but the sudden, unexpected chill in her voice shook me up. ‘No,’ I protested, ‘that’s not how it is. We’re going to advance it, if anything. He’ll be the only serious candidate to head the unified police service.’
‘In which he doesn’t believe. I know he doesn’t; he’s told me, and he’s passionate about it. You must have known that.’
‘Maybe,’ I conceded, ‘but his opinion’s irrelevant at the end of the day. It isn’t his decision. It’s a matter of public policy.’
‘What’s that got to do with it? If this creature is introduced in the face of his protest and counter-arguments, he’s supposed to live with it? That’s your position, is it?’
‘Yes. He’ll have to live with it,’ I insisted.
‘But he doesn’t have to be a part of it,’ she snapped. ‘My old man has principles. Do you expect him to betray them?’
‘I have principles too.’
She laughed scornfully. ‘No, you don’t, you’re a politician. Your principles change with the tide, they’re based on expediency, yet you expect my father to put his own aside and yield to them.’ She paused. ‘Why did you marry him, Aileen?’ she asked me.
‘Because I love him,’ I said, quietly.
‘So you say,’ she retorted, ‘but you know what? I don’t actually believe that. I think you married him mainly because you saw it as a formidable alliance, one with a man who’s a constant, a far bigger figure than any of your crew, but one you thought you had wrapped around your pinkie. Now you find that you don’t and you’re furious.’
She was right there; I was, with the whole bloody Skinner family, and especially with her, at that moment. Before I could tell her as much, she went on.
‘Well,’ she declared, ‘don’t look to me for help to persuade him to see it your way. As it happens, I don’t agree with what you and your pal are up to, but even if I did, I’d never lean on him like that. I’ll say to you what I said to Sarah when she came back: don’t hurt my dad. But with her I didn’t really need to: she wouldn’t, because it would hurt the kids,’ she paused for a second, ‘and also, by the way, because she still loves him, although she might not even know it.’ That was a possibility I hadn’t considered, not for a second.
‘I do need to spell it out to you, though,’ she said. ‘Don’t! Hurt! Him!’ She spat the words out. ‘You do that and you’ll have made a lifetime supply of enemies, with me at the head of the queue. I was content, you know, Aileen, not because I like you all that much, which I don’t, but because I saw my father settled and happy with you. Now you’ve gone and screwed that up.’ The line went dead, as she hung up.
I hadn’t realised until that moment how like Bob his daughter is, and the sudden recognition left me shaking, literally. When she’d let go at me, she’d sounded almost exactly like him, but not quite, for there had been even more venom in her. That crack about Sarah; Jesus, that was brutal. I know the woman can’t stand me, but no, it hadn’t occurred to me that she had any feelings left for Bob. Yet it didn’t occur to me either that Alex might have made that up; there had been a certainty in her voice.
Had she been right about me also? Had I seen my husband as a good strategic match? Well, yes, I had. However, that’s not to say that I don’t love him; I wanted him from the moment I saw him, and I didn’t let his rocky marriage stand in my way. Then again, neither did he. ‘Scotland’s couple of the year’, a Sunday newspaper had christened us. It was beginning to sound like football’s ‘Manager of the Month’ accolade, or its near relative, the chairman’s vote of confidence.
Normally, I am a clear and decisive thinker. As I sat there, I realised that I didn’t know what to do, and that scared me. So I picked up the phone again, and did what I’d been determined not to: I called my husband, on his mobile.
‘Can we talk?’ he repeated. ‘Sure we can. Will either of us listen? For my part I will, I promise. Will either of us budge an inch? What do you think?’ I had no answer to that but silence. ‘Come on,’ he continued, after a while, ‘admit it. That story of yours about being persuaded by the cost argument: that was bullshit, wasn’t it? You believe in a unified force for its own sake.’
‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry, but I do.’
‘Aileen,’ he said, heavily. I had a sense of alienation; he never calls me by my given name. Once I asked him why; he replied that he didn’t need to, that he talked to me in a different way than to anyone else. ‘Don’t apologise, please,’ he said, ‘that’s demeaning. It’s what you believe, and I’ll respect you for it. I’m sorry I roared at you last night; that was demeaning too. I was angry that you’re prepared to shaft my career, and I let it get the better of me.’
‘It’s not a matter of shafting your career. .’
‘It is from where I’m standing,’ he declared. ‘Tell me something. Have you and Toni Field had your heads together over this?’
‘What?’ I hadn’t intended to snap at him, but he’d set me off again. ‘Do you think I’d plot against you with that bloody woman?’
‘No,’ he replied, calmly. ‘Of course I don’t, not as such. But the two of you are in the same camp.’
‘For entirely different reasons.’ Change of subject called for, urgently. ‘Bob, Clive Graham’s given me a couple of tickets for a charity gig in Glasgow tomorrow evening. It’s a classical pianist called Theo Fabrizzi. Let’s go to it, eh?’
‘Will Clive be there?’
‘He’s the guest of honour.’
‘And Toni Field?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Doesn’t matter, I’m best avoiding Mr Graham for a while. Sorry, love, but he can stick his tickets up his arse,
