Funeral Note

Aileen de Marco Skinner

I know a few people who claim they went into politics for the excitement of the life. Every one of them is a fool. Today in our nation there are two professions whose members are excoriated by the masses, and held in universal scorn. You know who I mean: bankers and politicians.

I’m one of the latter, and while I am shamed and outraged by those of my colleagues who’ve betrayed the public trust, on balance I’m proud of my job. I’d rather have it than be one of the other lot, and that’s for sure. I don’t say this in the debating chamber or in my constituency newsletters but I sympathise with most bankers. We’ve seen the big headlines, but usually, the bonuses for which they take such stick are contractual, and performance-related. They’re not the fault of the individual, but of a lousy regulatory system set up by my lot, a fact forgotten by too many of us.

The one advantage that bankers have over me and mine is that, with the exception of the few at the top of the tree who are hauled regularly before self-righteous Commons Select Committees with their caps in their hands, they are anonymous. We legislators, on the other hand, are subjected to relentless public scrutiny and criticism. Some of it is justified, I acknowledge, but much of it is simply the reflex antipathy created by our adversarial system, its fires stoked by the media who line up on either side of the ongoing war.

These days there’s no escape in the public domain. Everything we do is scrutinised, and nothing we do is ever one hundred per cent right. We cannot leave our offices without being photographed, often in the least flattering light. This is particularly true for women, fly-away dresses on a windy day being especially popular with the tabloid snappers, and making the wise among us wear trouser suits or tight skirts all the time. The photo libraries have alternative images for us all; the nice ones for a good-news day, the off-guard for the opposite, or all the time, if the newspaper involved is rabidly against the victim’s party.

That’s the kitchen in which we have to work, and as Harry S. Truman advised, those who can’t stand the heat should know what to do about it. Sensitive souls need not apply: nor the paranoid either, for there are physical dangers, make no mistake about it. Those at the very top of the political tree have round-the-clock police protection, but the rest of us are vulnerable, and round the world, many tragedies have happened.

The one place we’re entitled to feel safe and relaxed is at home. That’s why Bob’s explosion was so shocking to me. Yes, I know that I had a history of opposing a unified police force, but I am also a pragmatist, and as such, I’m open to persuasion. . unlike my husband. Considerations can change, and if I find that cons have become pros on cost grounds, I’m capable of changing with them.

It seems that Bob Skinner isn’t like that. I thought I’d married a reasonable man, but I’ve discovered that his equanimity only applies when he knows he’s going to win at the end of the day. When he doesn’t, he’s blinkered, he’s stubborn, he’s obdurate, he’s implacable, he’s unyielding and he’s every other adjective meaning that when he takes a position and refuses to listen to even the most reasonable counter-arguments he is quite unshakeable.

When I told him that I’d been persuaded to back the Nationalist administration’s bill to unify the police service in Scotland, not by Clive Graham but by the cost arguments in favour of the proposal, I was prepared for him to be disappointed, but I expected him to listen to my rationale and to be persuaded by it. So when he turned on me in fury and the shouting match began, it wasn’t just his attitude that set me off, it was the fact that my sanctuary had been invaded. I wasn’t in the debating chamber; it was my home.

Well, ‘Bugger that for a game of soldiers!’ as my constituency agent is fond of saying. I’ve cared for that man. I’ve been there for him when he’s been down, I’ve been his confessor, I’ve become a mother to his. . another woman’s. . over-indulged kids even though maternity has never been one of my life goals, I’ve massaged his prodigious ego and I’ve fed his sexual appetite, which is not inconsiderable either.

The least I expected was to be treated with respect when I took a position at odds with his own, and for him to make some effort to understand how I had reached it. But no, he turned on me and I saw him at his most intransigent.

Until I met Bob, I had no great history of long-term relationships, nor much time for them, if truth be told, but whenever I was involved with someone I had a rule: never let the sun set on an argument. I didn’t have a chance to follow it that night. Our blazing row was interrupted by a phone call. He took it, muttered something about having to go to Edinburgh, and headed for the door. When I went to bed I expected him to join me eventually, but he didn’t. I don’t know where he slept, but he was in the kitchen when I came down next morning, sweating like a horse in his running gear and guzzling a litre of orange juice straight from the carton.

‘Want some breakfast?’ I asked.

He crushed the empty carton in his fist, and tossed it into the waste bin. ‘That was it,’ he replied. ‘I’m off for a shower.’ He turned and walked out. I looked at his retreating form, and imagined a hand thrust out, keeping me at bay. I’d never felt isolated from him before, and never ever imagined that I could be but. .

A political commentator, no friend of mine either, once described me as ‘an irresistible force’. I was in motion and on a collision course, it seemed, with the immovable object that is my husband. ‘Sod him,’ I murmured, as I picked up my car keys. ‘We’ll see who can’t be moved.’

Parliament was in recess, but that didn’t mean that the place was deserted when I got to my office. Being a party leader is a year-round job and six days a week at that, although reaction to a Sunday newspaper splash often eats up much of the seventh as well. In opposition, it’s worse than being First Minister; the workload isn’t much less, but you don’t have the civil service support.

I was halfway though a substantial mail-tray. . yes, some people still communicate on paper. . when my phone rang. As I picked it up I guessed who it might be, and I was on the mark. ‘Ms de Marco,’ Russell Moore, the First Minister’s principal private secretary, purred in my ear, ‘Mr Graham wonders if you could spare him a few minutes. He’s in his parliamentary office.’

‘Sure,’ I sighed. Best get it over with. I finished the letter I’d been reading, a request for a questionnaire contribution to a postgrad’s PhD research, and walked the short distance to the room that had been mine until a year earlier, when I’d sacked my coalition partners and left the Nationalists to form a minority administration, in the hope that they’d shoot themselves in both feet.

It was beginning to look as if I’d miscalculated; we were only a point or two ahead in the most recent polls, with an election less than a year away, and I’d been told that there were mutterings on my own back benches. I wasn’t worried about the security of my position, as the only people I judge capable of unseating me as leader are too smart to want the job in the circumstances, but on the other hand it didn’t please me. It was one reason why I’d done the deal with Clive Graham over support for the unified police force, and the early legislation that he wanted; if I had to fight internal battles I didn’t want to be in bitter warfare with the Nationalists at the same time.

The PPS was going to show me into the presence, but I wasn’t having that. I told Mr Moore, fairly curtly, that I knew the way and marched in with the briefest of knocks. Clive swung his chair, my old chair, round to face the door as I entered, but he didn’t even make a show of standing.

‘Don’t get up,’ I told him, regardless, thinking My God, as I saw that he was wearing that fucking tartan waistcoat. I’d assumed that it was the affectation of a professional Jock, purely for the cameras, but no, there he was in his private office, in shirtsleeves, and still wearing the thing, in high summer.

He smiled, and nodded. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he laughed. And then I saw that we weren’t alone. There was a figure in one of the visitor chairs with her back to me. I could see a tuft of brown hair with just a hint of purple about it, and I knew whose it was. It’s impossible to be a member of the Scottish parliament for a Glasgow constituency without bumping into the Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police.

He followed my eyes. ‘Toni’s dropped in for a chat,’ he said, his voice tentative as if he wasn’t sure whether I would turn on my heel and walk right back out of there. Neither was I, for a moment. Twentyfour hours earlier I would have, for sure; but that was before everything changed between Bob and me, so I stayed there and eased myself into the other seat, nodding to Chief Constable Field as I did. She was in her uniform too, all black, tunic and skirt, a tight-packed little woman, with bulging calves and the same brown skin tone as Trish, our Bajan child carer, but with none of her gentleness.

She nodded back, with just a little deference, not because of who my husband was, I knew, but in spite of it, since there was a fair chance that a year down the road I’d be sitting on the other side of the First Minister’s desk.

‘Bollocks,’ I barked.

Clive pushed backwards in ‘our’ chair. ‘Aileen,’ he exclaimed, his tone a little pained.

‘Toni’s no more dropped in for a chat than I have,’ I continued. ‘I know full well why she’s here; she’s reporting back to you on yesterday’s ACPOS meeting, the one you set up to rubber-stamp the police unification process. I even know what she’s told you, that my husband squeaked a negative vote through, courtesy of his best pal being in the chair, but not to worry, that she’ll see him off next time.’ I looked at her, sideways. ‘Am I correct, Chief Constable?’

She smiled, a condescending little smirk that enraged me, but she didn’t reply. I wanted to tell her that she’d made two mistakes in as many days, first underestimating Bob, second, pissing me off, but I decided that could keep, that I’d choose the moment when she found that out for herself, the little mass of political correctness.

She’s so much modern cop that she even has her own Twitter account. A few evenings before Bob had ranted about her, and it, after dinner. ‘She posts everything on it, Andy told me,’ he’d bleated. ‘Her diary for the coming week; she’s even listed our bloody ACPOS meeting on Thursday. What next? Her bowel movements?’

I couldn’t quite share his outrage. The Labour Party press office publishes my engagements too, every day.

‘Let’s take that as read,’ I said to Clive. ‘Now go ahead, First Minister. Since you’re not going to offer me tea, coffee or Irn Bru, you’d better ask me the question you invited me here to answer.’

Unlike Field’s superficial smile, his was open and genuine. In truth, Clive Graham is one of those colleagues that I regard as a friend, all politics set aside. Sometimes I regret that we aren’t in the same party, but no way am I going to join his, and he left mine twenty-five years ago. ‘Okay, Aileen,’ he chuckled. ‘Did you talk to him?’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘At least that’s how it started. But I am not going into detail, not even with you, Clive, and certainly not with a third party who doesn’t seem to have any regard for my husband, or any idea of what makes him tick.’

‘And you do, Ms de Marco?’ Field murmured.

Second time around I didn’t even bother to look at her. ‘Oh yes, dear. Be sure I do.’ I focused on the First Minister. ‘Well?’ I challenged.

He nodded. ‘Do we have a problem with him?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ I replied. ‘We certainly do. And if the chief constable here thinks she can sweep him aside in ACPOS, she really doesn’t have a bloody clue who she’s dealing with.’ I held his gaze. ‘I’d like her to leave now,’ I said.

He shifted in his chair, awkwardly, as if his nuts needed rearranging, but Field removed his problem. She stood. ‘As it happens,’ she drawled, ‘I must go anyway. I’ll leave you to your plotting. I find politics so intriguing,’ she added. ‘All that stuff behind the Speaker’s Chair, when we all know how it’s going to finish, even you, Ms de Marco. Your husband is a dinosaur, and their time is long past.’

I couldn’t hold back any longer. ‘And what are you?’ I snapped. ‘The fucking meteor that wiped them out? Alongside him, you’re a pebble.’

I watched her, every step of the way to the door. ‘God, Aileen,’ Clive Graham gasped as it closed, ‘you don’t mind who you cross, do you? That woman is powerful. If she tries to influence her force and their families against you. .’

‘What’s she going to do? Book me for parking every time I step out of my car?’

‘She has ten thousand people under her command,’ he pointed out. ‘If she spread the word that you were to be opposed at the next election. .’

‘I’d find out about it the day it happened.’ I glared at him. ‘Clive, I am up to here with being underestimated. Don’t you bloody start or. .’

‘Or what?’ he chuckled. ‘You’ll wind up the Lib Dems and the Tories to back you in a no-confidence vote? You know that neither of us want that.’ He frowned. ‘So, things did not go well, I gather, when you had your discussion with Bob?’

‘It wasn’t as calm as that,’ I told him.

‘Do you want to back off from public support for the bill?’ he asked.

‘Hell no! The day I vote according to the whim or instruction of Bob Skinner, you’ll know I’m finished in politics.’

‘Fine, but if you want to take a step back when the bill is published, I’ll understand. I appreciate that you’re in a very difficult situation, domestically.’

‘I’m not the one who’s making it difficult,’ I snapped, ‘so I’ll cope.’

‘What’s he saying? Can I ask that? Not to leave this room, of course.’

I looked him in the eye. ‘Can I trust you on that?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, because I know you’ll kill me if I break my word.’

‘True; keep that thought in your mind because it’s apposite. Bob is saying, “Over your dead body,” almost as directly as that. He’s said that he will oppose an all-force merger publicly, and that if he loses and it happens it’ll be a resignation issue for him.’

‘You’ve pointed out to him that the police are meant to keep out of politics?’

‘Of course I have,’ I sighed. ‘You can tell him yourself if you want. He’ll assume that we’re having this conversation, so if you call him in here and warn him off, it won’t make it any worse between us.’

‘Would it work, do you think?’

‘Hah!’ I laughed. ‘No chance. You make your speech, and issue as formal a warning as you like; he’ll point out to you that “politician” and “policeman” both have the same root and mean essentially the same thing, interpreted in different ways. That’s one of his dinner table favourites when he’s among my colleagues. Some of them call him Bob the Greek.’

‘And would it matter,’ he wondered, ‘if I told him he was wrong, that while the two English words are similar, “police” flows from the ancient Greek “polissoos”, meaning city guard, while the derivation of “politics” is the word “politika”, and that comes from Aristotle?’

‘I’d like to be there when you tell him,’ I said, ‘if only to mop you up. You might want to change the waistcoat for a tartan with a bit more red in it.’

He winced. ‘Do think Toni Field can swing ACPOS behind her?’

‘Bob does,’ I conceded. ‘I’m not so sure. When he goes to the next meeting, or even gets on the phone before it happens, and tells them that the main parties are ganging up to force their will on the police service, he may well pull some waverers behind him. And now that I’ve seen how presumptuously fucking arrogant the woman is. .’

‘Damn,’ the First Minister muttered. ‘I’d hoped to avoid this. I like Bob; I don’t want a confrontation.’

‘Then don’t have one,’ I advised. ‘Ignore him.’

‘I don’t know if I can do that,’ he replied. ‘If he really cranks up his public opposition, I may have to do something about it. I hate to think of suspension, but. .’

My mouth fell open. ‘Are you crazy?’ I gasped. ‘You suspend him, and you will have one of the smartest young solicitors in the country briefing the best QC in the country, to take you to court. You’ll have made this into an election issue, when that’s exactly what we want to avoid. If that happens my party might well reconsider its support for the bill.’

‘How would you feel about that? Are you one hundred per cent behind it?’

‘Yes, I am,’ I admitted, ‘and not just on cost grounds. But I don’t want to have to tell Bob that. Christ, we’re shaky enough.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Clive said, and I could see that he was.

‘Let it lie,’ I urged him again. ‘Bob won’t keep quiet about the bill, but he won’t lead protest marches either. He’ll use what media contacts he has, the likes of June Crampsey in the Saltire, but he has no power base in our world. Live with it; we have the numbers, and we will win.’

‘But how will you come out of it? Your marriage? What if he does resign, and blames you?’

I shrugged. ‘There’s another side to that coin. Suppose he does kick up a big enough media storm to swing my lot against the bill, with me on record as supporting? I’d have to quit if that happened. Either way, one of us is going to wind up blaming the other. Will we survive that as a couple? To be honest, Clive, I don’t know.’

‘My sympathies, Aileen,’ he said. ‘I’m truly sorry I got you into this.’

‘You didn’t,’ I retorted. ‘He did, by being the most intractable son-of-a-bitch on the face of the earth.’

He reached into the drawer to his right, the one where I’d kept my personal stuff, and took something out. ‘In the spirit of amity,’ he murmured as he pushed an envelope across to me. ‘There’s an event in the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow tomorrow evening, a concert in aid of a range of charities including police, and one that supports battlefield casualties and the families of the dead. I’m the guest of honour: they’ve sent me four tickets. I had thought to take my private secretary and his wife, but his boss has vetoed it on some spurious ground of official impropriety. If you’d like to come, I’d be very pleased; and if you could talk your husband into escorting you, it might cool things down a little.’

I picked up the tickets. ‘Thanks, Clive, I’ll try to persuade him. If he won’t I’ll come anyway. My stepdaughter might join me, if it’s her scene. Who’s performing anyway?’

‘A classical pianist that I’ve never heard of; I’m more of a jazz man, myself. His name’s Theo Fabrizzi. Quite a star, apparently.’

‘Theo Fabrizzi?’ I repeated. ‘I didn’t know Italy had any pianists. I thought they specialised in tenors.’

‘He isn’t Italian, although most people assume it. They sent me his bio. Yes, his great-grandfather was an Italian prime minister, back in the very old days. He was a socialist, so it got very uncomfortable when Mussolini came to power. He left the country in a hurry and settled his family in Beirut. That’s where Fabrizzi lives.’

‘So he’s actually Lebanese?’

‘By nationality, yes.’ I stood to leave. ‘Would you like to be collected?’ he asked. ‘I can arrange for a government car.’

I smiled. ‘No thank you, Clive. We’re still political opponents, remember. I expect to have access to those in my own right before too long. Until then, I’ll make my own way.’

Mutual interest is one thing, I thought as I left him, but fraternising with the enemy is quite another. But then I wondered, after the set-to of the previous evening, should I regard my husband as the enemy?

If that was the way he wanted it, yes.