The President’s Child

‘Good,’ said Isabel.

‘Then turn round and kiss me.’

‘No. I can’t. I don’t know why.’

‘You see,’ said Homer, ‘it wasn’t only that he bit the usherette and there was this fuss, but afterwards he denied it. He really honestly didn’t seem to remember it. That was what really got me. I don’t think the other kids noticed much. It was the bit when Superman throws the villain into the Coca-Cola sign. It was actually a shockingly violent film – not at all like Superman I, which was innocent.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Isabel, ‘I get the feeling we’re all being softened up for something, children and all.’

‘If we are,’ said Homer, ‘there’s nothing we can do about it, except look after our own.’

Isabel went to sleep and dreamed about the end of the world. Missiles flashed to and fro above her head, phallic every one. In the end, all was rubble.

She moaned and again Homer tried to take her in his arms and again she refused. Had that ever happened before? She could not remember but she did not think so. She did not want his flesh in hers. It was too dangerous: an opening she could not control. She was half asleep.

Upstairs Jason, as if responding to the tumult and upset of the night, woke and started to cry. Isabel, glad for once to be called fully into consciousness, got out of bed and went upstairs to see what was the matter. Jason was wide awake.

‘I had a nasty dream,’ he said.

‘What about?’

‘Bombs.’

‘You shouldn’t be so naughty through the day,’ said Isabel. ‘Then you wouldn’t punish yourself at night. It’s your dream, you know. You own it.’

She didn’t think he would understand, but he seemed to. He was open and receptive; a midnight child.

‘I wasn’t very naughty.’

‘Biting is naughty.’

‘It was my birthday. Bobby took my present.’

‘No. At the cinema. You bit there. A grown-up, too.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Daddy said you did.’

‘I didn’t.’

She didn’t pursue the matter. His blue eyes were wide and clear. They followed her as she moved about the room. So Dandy’s eyes had followed her. Every day, she thought, he grows more like Dandy. I never thought of that. I thought if the child took after anyone he would take after me. I thought that somehow you snatched a child from a man and that was that. I thought, moreover, that I would have a girl. That I would have a boy, and carry the father with me for ever and ever, was something I never envisaged.

She kissed him goodnight, settled him for sleep, and went back to bed.

‘Everything all right?’ asked Homer.

‘Fine,’ said Isabel.

3 (#ulink_da806467-b0cc-52f3-aebb-57d6f0735468)

Now. Washington’s clocks are five hours behind those of London. It was seven o’clock in the evening when, on the thirty-fifth floor of the Evans building, which towers over the rushing and romantic waters of the Potomac river and houses the overflow from the Russell Senate office building, Joe (Hot Potato) Murphy and Pete (Kitten) Sikorski resolved to work late on something that had just turned up on the print-out.

Joe and Pete had semi-official access to the big CIA computer along the river. Both were ex-Company men. Now they were part of the big new up-and-coming Ivel-for-President campaign team. Their days of Dirty Tricks were past. Joe and Pete worked tirelessly and logically for the IFPC and, so far, within the law. If both kept firearms in their office drawers, and bedroom shelves, and gun holsters beneath their left arms, both were licensed and entitled so to do. They were allies; kingmakers. They were devoted and loyal. Hot Potato and Kitten! Joe and Pete made more of their nicknames than did their familiars and friends, perhaps feeling the need for sympathetic magic to make themselves ordinary and kind, and more like other men.

‘Praise be,’ said Joe Hot Potato Murphy, staring at the coded print-out. He liked to emphasise his Irish origins. He cultivated the twinkle in his eye and the roguish charm of his manner. They disarmed the unwary.

‘Here’s the Australian bitch again. She’s moved up a notch to the Pay Good Attention file. What are our options here, Pete?’

Pete proposed and Joe disposed. Pete had one degree in economics and another one in law, and burn marks on his upper arms, to mark the spots where he had practised steeling himself against pain.

‘We disclose nothing,’ said Pete, ‘in case we blow something. This is a very sensitive area.’

‘It might be more sensitive than we can legitimately handle,’ said Joe.

‘Hell no,’ said Pete. ‘She’s just a woman like any other.’ Pete’s wife was a tall, pretty blonde who sprayed herself all over with deodorants four times a day, so as not to cause offence. If she stood still, which she seldom did, so busy was she in the pursuit of hygiene and physical perfection, that she appeared like a painting against the drawing-room wall, framed by drapes. Then the sound of her husband’s voice would activate her again, and her pretty hands would start patting and folding and tidying and replacing, and her long legs would scissor to and fro, and her manicured feet in their shiny shoes go clip-clip-clop on the tiled kitchen floor.

‘A feminist and a radical,’ warned Joe. ‘And her father’s a communist, now resident in Saigon. That doesn’t make her a woman like any other. Her show goes out live and she’s got a six-million audience hanging on her every word. And that doesn’t make her like just plain folks, either.’

‘We can take care of the talk show,’ said Pete.

‘We should have taken care of her,’ said Joe, ‘a long time ago.’

‘Joe,’ said Pete, ‘quit living in the past. She’s a wife and mother. We don’t wage war on women.’

‘It is an insult to the sweet name of womanhood,’ said Joe, ‘to call her a woman at all. A feminist and a radical! A wife, you say! Is a woman who makes her husband wash the dishes worthy of the name of wife? What sort of mother is it who makes her man change the baby’s nappy? We have some problem with definitions here!’

‘I hear you, Joe, I hear you.’

They talked like this for a while longer, using words as cloaks of darkness, the better to build the trivial into the significant; the easier to justify ill temper, neurosis and spite, and thus keep their good opinion of themselves. Now they made decisions. They would take appropriate precautionary measures, intensify the security ring around her, and wait and see how the cookie crumbled.

‘There are more ways than one,’ said Joe, ‘of crumbling cookies.’

And they both went home to their wives, comforted by the thought of their many options, first double-locking and otherwise securing their offices, which bristled with anti-bugging devices of one kind or another.

4 (#ulink_317ee2d3-1216-512b-b5d0-32ba9ec9862c)

Buzz-buzz! Listen to the bees! A fuchsia hedge runs along the bottom of Wincaster Row, all the way from No. 1 to No. 31. There can’t be another fuchsia like it in all London. Six foot high, five foot broad, and a mass of scarlet flowers for most of the summer. What trick of soil and weather and intent produced it, I do not know.

I cannot see it now but I can hear it. The bees suck the flowers all summer long, humming and buzzing, quite overwhelmed by their discovery of such an extensive treat. I am sure they come from as far afield as Enfield, and Richmond, and Epping and Dulwich: from the green outer suburbs. For surely bees live in hives, and where in the crowded inner city is there room or time for anyone to keep beehives? Neighbours would complain.

Hilary suggested to the garden committee that the hedge be removed: she thought the bees were dangerous: she thought they might sting her little girl, Lucy. The garden committee looked at her in amazement, and explained that bees were good, and necessary to man’s survival.

‘What about woman?’ asked Hilary, triumphant.

That was when she was pregnant for the second time, having lapsed briefly into heterosexuality with a man who could be guaranteed to treat her badly and abandon her; which indeed he did, in the sixth month of her pregnancy.

Hilary then worried, throughout the seventh and eighth months, in case the baby turned out to be male, and as such designated as enemy and rejected by the lesbian friends on whom she now depended for help and support, and who gave it gladly but not unconditionally. Hilary could not bear the thought of handing a male baby out for adoption – a Caucasian male infant, a prize in the world of baby-bargaining would be handed out to the straightest of straight middle-class couples. And then she, Hilary, would be responsible for bringing into the world she was trying to reform the worst form of male oppressor. Nor could she damage little Lucy by exposing her to the brutality and aggression of a male brother. In the ninth month the only solution seemed to be to put down the baby at birth, if it should be male. She wept and writhed and told Jennifer, and Jennifer refused to speak to her any more.