A Parliamentary Affair by Edwina Currie Page A

and let’s get going.’
    Dickson half rose, but she planted a quick kiss on his cheek and the children did likewise. Only the little one, his adored Clarissa, she of the dark hair and big sparkling eyes, scrambled on to his lap and gave him a proper hug. In a second the door had banged and the kitchen was quiet.
    He poured another coffee and attempted to read the newspaper but was not concentrating. The unaccustomed conversation in the cramped townhouse kitchen had disturbed his equilibrium. Some political families were a partnership of intensely like-minded people, who shared ambition and helped each other. Though tempting, having a wife in the Commons gallery taking notes would not have suited him and he would have disliked coming home to a post-mortem on every speech. And it was not her style. As a wife Caroline was supportive, certainly. No complaints on that score. Nor did she interfere. She kept her views to herself, if she had any, and had never been other than tactful and considerate to constituents. His passion for politics was tolerated with an amused, almost condescending good humour. But if one day he came home to tell her it was all over and he wished to return to banking she would have smiled and simply accepted his decision. Yet, he knew, she would have been secretly pleased.
    The main whips’ meeting was at ten; getting in early would do no harm. Caroline had taken the car so he would walk. It was pleasantly sunny out and the Commons was not far.
    Early summer was the best time in London. All the plane trees were in full leaf, their green freshness waving over his head. He could almost smell the additional oxygen they had been pumping into the air all night. An early shower had left the streets newly clean. More people seemed to be walking; traffic was light.
    His mind ranged over the discussion. Was Caroline right – was his enthusiasm waning? No, that wasn’t it. It was in part the feeling that his own progress was taking so long which bothered him. Already there were two members of the new Cabinet younger than he. Several had entered Parliament after him. Years stretched ahead as a junior and middle-rank minister before he could expect preferment; without special talent or luck, making the jump to Cabinet was by no means guaranteed. At the end he might be eased out, still largely unknown. A knighthood at best. Sir Roger Dickson. Caroline would become Lady Dickson, but so what?
    Long ago as a small boy he had walked these streets near Parliament and wanted to touch the very stones. There had been no chance whatever of becoming an MP then. His family background was not exactly poor, but nobody in his household, in his street, stayed on at school or contemplated college.
    But the leap had been made from that life of narrow horizons. Luck had played its part, certainly; and crucial support from wise old Lord Tarrant and his horsey daughter. Dickson had first understood himself to be ambitious when he was a boy on this pavement. For that reason he had rejected going into a factory and applied for a job at the head office of a small bank. The second whiff of it had come much later, in Tarrants Bank, when the boss’s daughter had taken a fancy to him. A sense of shock had accompanied the realisation that he was capable of going about his wooing quite coolly. Tarrants had long since become part of an international banking conglomerate, but its office in the Strand still stood proudly and it had kept its name. It had also retained its reputation for quiet, responsible service. Rather like his wife.
    He loved Caroline. Of course he did. That was not in question; that was not the problem. Perhaps it was, in a way. He did not feel passionately about her; the marriage still had an air of a satisfactory arrangement. That passion was part of his nature he doubted, although when he contemplated his children, particularly the youngest, and the flicker of pain they generated in him, he knew that whereas he could survive