Chapter III Richard #2
‘You’re the one who has made the inference that I am mocking some particular race,’ he said, warming to an argument he now decided he believed in. ‘In fact, I was doing an impression of … of … a family member.’
‘Who?’
‘Who?’ he repeated.
‘Yes. Which family member?’
‘My grandmother.’ He didn’t know why he said it. He could only blame the four glasses of Prosecco he’d drunk on an empty stomach. ‘May God rest her soul.’
‘Really.’ Hannah crossed her arms. ‘What was her name?’
‘Phyllis.’
There was a sharp, barking sound. He realised, when he looked up from his shoes, that Hannah was laughing.
A year later they were married, in the village church near his parents’.
Hannah wore a voluminous dress that surprised him with its convention.
They’d had a reception in a marquee in his childhood garden.
His best man had made a terrible speech referencing acts performed with dead sheep.
Their first dance was to something by Robbie Williams. All very conventional.
All very middle class, middle England, middle-aged.
They’d continued in this vein for the first few years – moving to Pimlico, Waitrose red wine with dinner, the odd night at the theatre, a twice-yearly minibreak in a country house hotel with spa – and it had been comfortable and easy.
Or so Richard had thought. They’d never had children, that was a sadness, but Hannah faced infertility in the same brisk, straightforward way she dealt with everything else: she simply steamrolled through, shoulders back, head held high, a ‘let’s get on with it then’ attitude that was always what he thought of when he spoke mistily in political speeches of ‘the very backbone of Britain’.
Were they in love? Well, to paraphrase King Charles, what did that really mean?
It was the right time for both of them to settle down.
He was in awe of Hannah and she was amused by him.
It seemed to work. She was a workaholic and was made partner at her Magic Circle law firm well before she turned forty.
She didn’t mind his long hours or the midnight votes.
Her fat salary subsidised his politician’s wages.
His MP contacts and political gloss were helpful to her clients. They rubbed along nicely.
The sex was fantastic. For Richard, at least. He never stopped finding his wife a bit terrifying, which brought him to orgasm with chaotic rapidity.
As a boy, he’d had a newspaper photograph of Margaret Thatcher Blu-Tacked on his bedroom wall and the sexual frisson he enjoyed with Hannah was not unconnected.
But over the years, Hannah’s interest in sex had diminished and Richard could never bring himself to ask why.
On the rare occasions he could persuade her into bed, Hannah would lie back with her eyes squeezed shut.
‘Oh do get on with it,’ she had said the other month, just as he was about to come.
What was a man supposed to do if his wife no longer showed any sexual interest in him?
He had no answers and nowhere to turn to ask the question.
His father, a Mancunian accountant, remained both emotionally and geographically removed.
Richard’s friends tended to talk exclusively about rugby, cars, kids and encroaching physical ailments.
His closest ally in Parliament, Ben Fitzmaurice, might have been able to help, but Richard was too intimidated by Ben’s poshness and governmental seniority.
They were part of the same intake but whereas Richard had languished in mediocrity, Ben had been parachuted into a safe seat by Edward Buller and speedily made Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero by his former university chum.
Now that Buller was rumoured to be stepping down, Ben was being talked of as a frontrunner to be his replacement.
He had the backing of his former parliamentary colleague, Andrew Jarvis, who ran a hedge fund and was a prominent Conservative Party donor.
Richard had met Jarvis once in the Strangers’ Bar and been struck by both his girth and his vacant, assessing stare – a bit like Henry VIII without any of the charm.
Richard felt no bitterness at Ben’s seemingly frictionless ascent.
It was simply the way things were, the way things had always been.
Ben was upper class; Richard distinctly middle.
No matter how hard he worked, the chasm between them would remain.
This, in spite of the fact that he’d been an assiduous student at his grammar school: one of the only sixth formers to work his way through the entire history A-level reading list.
‘But it was only suggested reading,’ his teacher had said accusingly, when Richard asked for more material to prepare for his Oxford interview (he didn’t get in and went to Durham instead, where his abiding memory was of the dark).
He approached PornHub with the same conscientiousness, first watching videos with higher percentage ratings from other users, then, when that didn’t fully align with his tastes, going through each alphabetical category one by one.
Pornography seemed a more moral choice than having an affair.
Besides, it was so easy these days – a swift click on incognito mode, a shortcut to PornHub, and there you had it – thousands upon thousands of free videos.
Fake taxis. Nubile. Orgy. Squirting. Stepfamilies.
He hadn’t meant to become addicted, but there was just too much of it to watch and he was a completist. So, in the absence of anyone to turn to over his marital anxieties, Richard had taken matters into his own hands. Literally.
On the night that had marked his political and personal nadir, his drunkenness had made him less cautious than usual.
The browser hadn’t been in incognito mode after all.
The CCTV camera had been pointed almost directly at his desk.
His penis had to be pixelated when the footage was replayed on the evening news, with what had felt like an unnecessary trigger warning from the anchorwoman that ‘some viewers may find this distressing’.
The Sun had a high old time coming up with puns.
‘Dick Take Out After Taking Dick Out’ was a particular low point.
Hannah had packed her bags the same night. She came home from work early, something she had never before seen fit to do, not even when their whippet had died the previous year.
‘I can explain, Hannah,’ he had said, addressing her back as she removed swathes of black from their wardrobe – black dresses, black jackets, black trousers, each one as formless as the last.
‘No need,’ she had replied. There were no histrionics – that wasn’t her style – but there seemed to be no emotion either. Not even anger, which surprised him.
‘It was a moment of weakness, a lapse in judgement.’
‘Please. Save your resignation speech clichés.’
‘I didn’t mean it … I …’
She stopped then, turning to look at him while holding a pair of black shoes in one hand.
It had been raining and her hair had become frizzy at the roots.
A vertical frown line ran deep between her eyes.
She was getting a double chin. And yet he felt hopelessly in love with her still. He was about to tell her so, when—
‘I’m not in love with you, Richard.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘I haven’t been for a while. I don’t mean to upset you, but I’m not sure we ever really were. In love, I mean.’
His insides folded.
‘It was convenient and … nice for a while,’ Hannah said, zipping up the matching cases, lifting them off the bed with one strong arm and tipping them neatly onto their wheels. ‘But I think we both know it wasn’t going anywhere.’
She would get a colleague to deal with the divorce, she said, going to the bathroom and making an efficient sweep of her toiletries and toothbrush. She even remembered to take her disposable razor, left on the side of the bath.
Within the hour, she had marched decisively out of their Pimlico house and into a waiting taxi (of course she had a cab waiting, and he would mull over this detail for days – had it been booked with premeditation or ordered on her phone while they’d been talking?).
All that was left of her were the framed photos, a half-eaten jar of crunchy peanut butter and an imprinted grey wave of leg stubble ringing the bath.
He had turned the photos to face away from him.
It seemed silly, now, how much he had believed in their false advertising.
On the Political Chatter podcast, the former Prisons Minister is now talking about his new book: ‘… it details the terrible situation our democracy finds itself in and posits some possible solutions. You can pre-order it now and you’ll automatically be entered into a competition to win a Political Chatter mindfulness journal.
’ He stops listening in disgust. Fucking mindfulness, he thinks.
A well-dressed elderly woman looks at him in horror and he realises he’s muttered it out loud.
‘You’re Richard Take,’ she says in a plummy voice.
‘I am. I – gosh – I’m so sorry …’
She looks at his crotch with rheumy blue eyes.
‘Why couldn’t you keep it in your trousers?’
For a moment he thinks she might be about to spit at him, but then she turns on her heel and stalks off. He sighs.
The neo-Gothic stalactites of the Houses of Parliament rise before him.
Big Ben, shiny and spruced up after a refurbishment that had cost many millions of taxpayers’ money, smugly informed him it was ten minutes to three.
His colleagues have, like Hannah, deserted him in their droves, with a few notable exceptions.
The MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, Claire Killarney, who organised the yearly parliamentary ski trip, had called him.
Ben had sent a nice text. A couple of Lib Dems had reached out, but everybody knew Lib Dems didn’t count.