The President’s Child

The President’s Child
Fay Weldon

A chilling tale that interweaves the post-Watergate world of American politics and the way in which our past indiscretions inevitably catch up with us.Isabel Acre’s journey through life has taken her from the Australian outback via the beds and alleys of Fleet Street and the seamier side of Washington high life to a comfortable home in London, a reputation as a serious journalist, and a husband in the new chore-sharing, child-rearing mould. Suddenly, however, the past which Isabel had thought safely behind her becomes the source of actual physical danger. With frightening ease, the worlds of political intrigue and murderous conspiracy intrude into the cosiness of her domestic life. Whom can she trust? Man? When she reveals to her husband that she long ago had an affair with a young American senator, a man who is now challenging for the Presidential nomination itself, and that her son is the love-child of that affair, even she cannot foresee the consequences. Love got her into the predicament in which she finds herself; but can love now get her out of it?

THE PRESIDENT’S CHILD

FAY WELDON

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On Sunday afternoons, when the world pauses and waits for the next great event, when the streets are empty and unnaturally still and the weight of obligation hangs over the land, the residents of Wincaster Row come calling on me. They come out of kindness because I am blind; and out of kindness to them, in the desolation of Sunday afternoon, I gather past and present together and tell them stories.

Today I tell them about Isabel, who fell in love, and in so doing made the whole world falter and take a different turning.

Pit-pat, spitter-spat. Listen! How the rain blows against the window-pane. Easy to feel, on such a day and in such a place, that great events are nothing to do with us, that we are cut off from sources of worldly energy, that people and politics are entirely separate; that the mainstream of life is, in fact, a long way off.