Chapter I Election Night

 

 

  The Returning Officer adjusted her bifocals and finished her final announcement of the night, “…and I hereby declare that Peter Robert Axtell, Meena Chakravatty and Melanie Aneta Sheldrake have been duly elected as Councillors to serve the Corindale Ward in the London Borough of Framden.”

  Yum, yum!

  I was bursting with delight and pride. “Yum, yum” is what I felt but I was determined not to show it. Stay cool, Peter, I said to myself.  

   Indeed, my own joy was drowned in an almighty cheer. I glanced around me. Everyone seemed to be jumping up and down, hugging and lifting up their arms in triumph. Meena and her mother were dancing with joy. Now Meena was about to leap at me and embrace me. I did condescend to give Meena a bear-like, almost fatherly embrace, and I allowed the faintest smile to appear for a moment on my lips. Just for a moment, mind. A little hug, a little pat on the back. That will do for now. Especially as her mother launched herself at me too.

 It was all getting to be a bit of whirl. One of the failed opposition candidates, an elderly gent, proffered me his hand with great dignity. I took it calmly and (I thought) nobly, and patted him too on the shoulder patronisingly. The third party candidates also got their required handshake. Others from my side rushed up exultantly and I met their gush of exaltation with the dignified air of a reluctant victor, thanking them profusely but calmly for their efforts. I sought to trade their hubris for my seeming humility. What a strange thing to think at such a moment, I thought. I obviously do not do spontaneous joy very well.

  The Stevens couple came up sorrowfully too, crushed in their despair at failing to win a seat and yet big-hearted enough to congratulate me. I comforted them both more warmly than the others. I suggested “a next time”, convincingly I think, to which poor Fred Stevens could only shake his head in sullen disbelief. Actually, he was probably right. His chances of returning to the Council would now be slim. After all, Fred was now in his upper 60s. The next council elections would be in four years’ time. Would we be selecting a 70-year-old for this seat?

  Yet inside, Fred or no Fred, I was gloating unashamedly in joy and triumph. For the hubris had not really been traded in for anything. No way. It had merely been digested into the deepest recesses of my soul where it howled like an untamed poltergeist as it ripped through every fibre of my being. It was a silent but shuddering joy. Victory at last! After a 4 year break, I was here! Back on the Council! The words of the Returning Officer were the final confirmation that I had made my comeback.

  Not just mine, of course. Our ward, Corindale, had been the last to have its count declared because of the closeness of the vote and the subsequent recounts. We knew now that our party had retained its control of the Council and increased its majority there from 5 to 7 votes. Not a dramatic result to an outsider perhaps, but both the local paper and the London press had predicted a hung council, or even a defeat for us. The relief and joy of my colleagues at this narrow victory came largely as a result of the tension of the last 6 hours as the votes were counted and recounted in the main hall of the Civic Centre.

  I had known the result some 5 minutes earlier. The Returning Officer had briefly shown the candidates the final results and checked some late voting papers which had seemed ambiguous. After the first recount I had deliberately retired to the Council coffee bar listening good-naturedly as my colleagues would run up to me and brief me on the latest results in the other wards, and on the knife edge result in our own. All the other candidates and monitors had paced back and forth over those recounted votes and crowded around the counting tables as they watched the votes mount and the election boxes move from one of the end of the room to the other, disgorging their precious cargo of voting papers on the way. I continued to sit calmly in an armchair, coffee in hand, making small talk with whoever felt relaxed enough to speak to me. I made it appear that I could not care a flying fart as to who won the vote and that I was oblivious to the tension and drama surrounding me; like Sir Francis Drake playing bowls as the Armada proceeded up the Channel. Or like my favourite role model – Phileas Fogg from “Around the World in 80 Days”. After all, what could I change at that late stage in the game?

  That was my brain talking. Or rather the PR man locked into my brain. He had been placed there by my ambition and my warped habit of displaying delayed emotions. In truth, I was a quivering jelly surrounding a beating heart that kept repeating “You must win! No more a nonentity! No more the horrors of being entombed in obscurity!”

  That close count in turn was the culmination of a year of campaigning, the last 3 weeks of which had been particularly intense. There had been plenty of hard foot-slogging and emotional stress before, of course. All through an unusually cold and rainy April we had conducted door to door visits, pestering reluctant and dazed householders, leafleting around the whole ward once a week, each time with a new leaflet. Twice a week we took a trip to the Party office in Framden town centre to telephone our voters, electoral register in hand, marking off the polite and the terse, the indifferent and the belligerent, supporters, opponents, don’t knows, maybes, don’t cares and downright liars, who will lead you astray whatever you ask. We had canvassed voters, door to door, in the key areas. I had personally taught Meena the tricks of the trade and she had upped the stakes like an old trouper broaching her meet and greet campaign with even greater enthusiasm than me.

  Then there had been the weekend campaign stalls, occasionally in the High Street, occasionally at the Corindale Sports Centre. We accosted shoppers and visitors in the streets, sticking leaflets in outstretched hands or inside shopping bags, dishing out badges and balloons to children. Then there was that awkward day when we chatted up the primary school mums waiting for their kids outside the gates of St Edmunds School. Some of the saucy young mums were a sheer delight as I traded electoral promises for kisses and cheeky banter, but others were downright grumpy. And then there was the day we leafleted the commuters at North Framden Station. We were campaigning for a passenger lift because of the inadequate escalator service. It was a sheer joy as every passenger, whether our supporter or not, overcame their curiosity and took our leaflets on the lift service. Wearing party badges and rosettes can transform you from a normal diffident citizen minding his or her own business into a licensed intruder forcing his attentions and his “How are you, luv?” incantations onto a reluctant but resigned general public. 

  Was it enjoyable? Hardly, at the time. Was it endurable? That was a better question. Often, yes. Was it exhilarating? Not when you first start, by approaching a group of indifferent potential voters with their minds on their daily chores; but “yes” when you eventually run across supporters, and definitely “yes” when you looked back at it afterwards. Anything that helped you flirt with pretty women, young and not so young, was always fun. If you wore a party rosette you could actually accost women in the street, and nobody thought of calling the police. Now that, surely, was a bonus.

  After a round of drinks at the Civic Centre makeshift bar with my ward supporters and with other successful candidates from our party in the neighbouring wards, I had telephoned my mother to tell her I had been successful. Despite the lateness of the hour (as it was well past midnight), I had also telephoned my senior partner, Roger Clarkson, to tell him I would not be coming to work for a couple of days. I worked as a quantity surveyor, a dispiriting exercise. I explained that I needed to sort out where I stood in the Council and take my oath of office the following morning. With those necessary duties performed, I could afford to let my hair down a bit. I could live my dream as a Councillor once more.

 

    I felt so proud and pleased with myself as I walked down through the entrance hall to the steps of the palatial Civic Centre building. It was cold outside as winter still refused to let go of its earthly shackles, despite the fact that it was now the first Thursday in May and spring would normally be preparing the scene for summer by this time. At least it was not raining any more.

  I looked up at the tall comforting familiar tower of the municipal pile that we call the Framden Civic Centre, illuminated by floodlights. Every day, while I had been outside the Council, I could see this tower hovering over the surroundings blocks, sometimes at least a mile away, as when seen from Daffodil Hill. It is red-bricked, but with a Renaissance style loggia at the top. It was my symbol of longing, of the order and power in which I was not sharing. It was my lighthouse symbolizing the kingdom I was being denied and the stage on which I could not act. Now I was underneath the welcoming tower again, a true member of the select brotherhood responsible for running the Borough. I was a Councillor again.

    Jim, the Council bus driver, was standing chatting with the night porters. He seemed to share my view. “Good to have you back at last, Sir!” he yelled across the crowded entrance hall towards me. Perhaps, I reflected, he says the same thing to anyone who wins.

  The entrance was crowded with other winners from my side, still wearing their multi-coloured rosettes. They chatted and backslapped and hugged each other surrounded by their families and their supporters. The Council leader, Ted Grayson, and the two local MPs were there amongst them congratulating each in turn. They were intoxicated. This was partly because of the election result, and partly because of the alcohol freely flowing in Framden Civic Centre that night. Here and there opposition party workers and candidates could be seen slinking out, their dark rosettes now a tarnished symbol of defeat.

  We were jubilant. Now we felt doubly vindicated. We watched, tired and admiring, as one of our two Framden MPs, Owen Draycott, preached patronisingly to a TV camera. Then we jeered unsportingly as the local opposition agent tried to justify his party’s defeat in Framden.

   Grayson saw me and thrust me towards the TV journalist. “Here’s the real victor tonight,” he yelled at him excitedly. “This is Peter Axtell. He’s one of the two candidates who won at Corindale Ward. Take a comment from him.” The journalist politely shook his head. “I’ve got what I need, thank you, Councillor Grayson.” he said without even looking at me. “It’s a wrap.” I was disappointed, even hurt, but only for a fleeting moment. Then I reflected that I had nothing concrete to say at this moment anyway. Plenty of time for the publicity later, I thought. In the meantime, I thanked Ted Grayson for trying to push me forward. He seemed to recognize the measure of our achievement in my ward.

  May I explain? My ward, Corindale, was a marginal, switching regularly between the two main parties, depending to a certain extent on the political mood of the country at the time of the election. Like all London wards it had three councillors and so in a close result the ward could be split between two or more parties. Only a few hundred votes ever separated the two main parties from each other. This time the margin of difference was less than thirty votes. Hence the recounts. Sometimes Council policies and administrative errors could change a small proportion of that vote; sometimes it was personal with voters. Your name or your face might just not fit. Or you were not quite the right race or religion. Hindus might not vote for Muslims; Sikhs for Jamaicans; and vice versa. Or you had become a hate figure over a specific blunder. Perhaps you had upset people for supporting the erection of a new block of flats to which the remaining residents on that road objected. When the results are that close that could be enough to scupper your chances. On the whole though, as I have said already, election results reflected the national mood of the country.

  I know about the face not fitting though. Four years ago that had happened to me. The issue had been a proposal to build houses on some undeveloped open space. The plan had not gone down well in one of the neighbourhoods I represented. Even though these fields had been fenced off and were inaccessible to the public and unusable. They had been part of the sports grounds belonging to Wilkinson Meadow, a private school situated in a different borough, which was anxious to capitalize on the sale of that land to a London Docklands developer. A number of residents, most of whom had never been able to access the field, but who were used to the sight of green grass behind the fencing (even if it was overgrown and a dumping site for unsolicited waste), had complained bitterly to the local Framden Journal. They organized a petition against the housing project and even ran a fete to raise money for their campaign. Unfortunately, the fete had been patronized by the opposition.

   In fact, the feisty young veterinary surgeon who had led the campaign, Melanie Sheldrake, now showed her true colours by becoming an opposition candidate in the election that followed. I had managed to provide a compromise plan which allowed the Council to give permission for a small pleasant housing estate, while retaining a large well landscaped green area with access for the local residents. Unfortunately, the scheme was approved too late to save our bacon. All the locals knew was that despite their strong objections, we had supported it. Our 3 candidates went down, guns blazing, in the Council election 4 years ago, with the name Wilkinson Meadow School Playing Fields seemingly engraved on our political tombstones. And that bitch of a vet managed to get onto the Council in my place.

 Now, four years later, events took a different turn. The estate had been built; the green landscaped surroundings were popular with locals as a place to walk their dogs and as a kick-about area for the local kids. There was even a small organized playing area and a hut for toddlers. In our election literature our three candidates stressed that this was our achievement. Also, the mood in the country was more sympathetic to our party and so we managed to scrape through.

 Correction: only two of us managed to scrape through, namely, Meena Chakravatty and myself. Our third candidate, Fred Stevens failed. Perhaps because he looked elderly on the campaign picture. Perhaps because his name came lower down in the alphabet, and therefore at the bottom of the ballot paper. Yes, even small details like that seem to count with voters. So poor old Fred got pipped at the post.

  Who got in to that third place? That bitch of a vet, Melanie Sheldrake, that’s who! She beat poor Fred by only 6 votes. There were 2 recounts called by our anxious election agent. Poor Fred was nearly in tears. He had served on the Council for many years and lost his seat in Corindale Ward along with me four year ago. At least I was relatively young (I was 35 then) and had only served one term. If I had failed to recapture the ward this time I could have tried elsewhere, but for Fred this was probably an ignominious end to many years of sterling service to the party and the community.

  His wife, Lesley, was also devastated. She had been the election organizer for the ward. She and her husband had been the mainstay of the party organization and social life in Corindale for nearly 30 years. Now she was bitter with Meena for being a newcomer to the area. In fact, Meena had been parachuted in by the Framden party leadership to ensure that there was a woman candidate in every ward, and one from an ethnic minority. Many of the older party hands resented this.

  However, most of Lesley’s bitterness was directed at the sultry vet, who had retained her popularity in the area as a campaigner and robbed her precious husband of his council seat. I certainly shared her anger. I noted in the immediate aftermath of the count that Sheldrake the vet seemed, just accidentally, to have ignored me as I approached her with the conventional cross party congratulations.

 

  Emil Kapacek caught me as I was descending the Civic Centre steps. Emil was a fellow Councillor from another marginal ward who had not lost his seat four years ago and now managed to retain his seat again with a vastly increased majority, despite the adverse media hullabaloo. “Congratulations, Councillor Axtell, again!” he grinned at me, stressing the magic title: “Councillor”.

 “Why, thank you, Councillor Kapacek, you bouncing Czech,” I grinned back. Emil was popular on the Council, a bit of a wag really, full of jokes and passionate speeches. Apparently, his parents had settled in London after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. Emil was also popular with his electorate. In fact, he had received a huge personal vote over and above his party label, which must have given him great satisfaction, as it increased his standing within the party group on Council. He would almost certainly now be eligible for a Council cabinet seat of his choosing, probably Housing. Also, we were close personal friends and he was genuinely glad to see me back. So now he was in a particularly good mood as he came over to me.

 “Where to, Councillor Axtell?” he asked half mockingly, still emphasizing my newly recovered title. “Back home to mummy?”

 “No,” I explained. “I’ve already told her the results and she’s gone back to bed. She’s getting old now; she doesn’t need too much excitement. Four years ago, she came to the count and left bitterly disappointed. This year she didn’t want to risk having a new disappointment like last time. So I’ve told her the good news over the phone and she’s happy as a sand boy. So, I do have some time to kill, even though I’m bushed.”

 “So do I,” said Emil. “Sharon’s gone home in our car to relieve the child-minder. Yet I still feel like celebrating. Pubs are shut now. What do we do, Peter?”

  Of course, he knew my answer as well as I did. There was only one place we could go at such a time. “Pinks”. This was the murky gentleman’s club with the lap dancers and other vivacious ladies. It was a place we frequented occasionally when the hour was late, and a heavy task had been accomplished. Then we would all feel light-headed and ready to run any risk, including the fleshpots of “Pinks”. Provided of course that we could avoid journalists and the do-gooders in our own party.

  I was about to say “Pinks” out loud when by some chance my eyes were drawn up to a commotion at the top of the stairs. It was only some rowdy but happy Indian colleagues of mine crowing over their victory. Yet though it was they who caused the commotion they were not the reason that I paused in my reply. Standing slightly to the right of them I espied a lonely motionless figure. She was glaring at me. It was the bitch! The vet from Hell! Melanie Sheldrake! And her look was menacing.  It certainly would not do to state our destination as “Pinks” in her presence.

  Slowly, cat-like, she stepped down towards the bottom of the stairs. Probably she would have preferred to avoid Emil and me altogether, but we stood our ground. Hey, this was our Civic Centre after all! She was from the minority party now. Why should we skulk away to one side for her? So we just stood and watched her.

  “Hi there, Melanie,” I ventured as she reached our level. I had never called her by her first name before. She had never encouraged anyone to be too forward and many of our earlier meetings had been confrontational, full of mutual anger and sarcasm. 

  “Congratulations on your result. Perhaps we can work together for Corindale now,” I suggested meekly, perhaps too meekly.  

  “I wouldn’t cooperate with you for all the tea in China.” She spat out. “Just keep out of my way! You got in by a fluke. I’ll make sure you’re out again next time round. You and your lot!”

  I looked at her in astonishment. My proffered hand hung limply in mid-air. I knew she carried a lot of bile but I thought that she would at least attempt to disguise it in the formal surroundings of a public Council event. “Please yourself,” I said feigning indifference.

  “Good night, Councillor Kapacek,” she said icily to Emil as she swept off.

  “Miaou!” Emil whispered in my ear. Probably even he did not have the courage to say anything else in her presence. He nudged me knowingly. “Welcome back to Framden Council, Brother! It’s a real snake pit!”

  We both watched her storm off to the car park and shook our heads. I don’t know what went through Emil’s head, but I noticed to my surprise that she actually had an athletic slim body, the contours of which were just visible through her spring jacket. With a frisson I noted that she had a curved protruding posterior only partly concealed by that jacket. In fact the bottom of the jacket was resting on those rounded globes. I could not believe it. I was actually admiring her appearance, when I should be seething at her rudeness. Still, her face always seemed stressed and angry and mostly with a lady it is the face that I get drawn to.

  “Remember, Peter,” said Emil, “the most venomous snakes have the most exquisite exterior!” 

  I guess he had seen the same Melanie Sheldrake that I had just seen.