Chapter XIV In the Mayoral Chair

 

 

I watched Susan Sweetman as she continued typing on the laptop. I had not paid her much attention until now. Certainly, she had not been around when I was last a Councillor. In fact, she looked quite young. Twenty-two? Twenty-five at most? She had an attractive face and was a smart dresser and was wearing a light blue embroidered kaftan. I could spot the long legs emerging from under her skirt adorned at the end with a red pair of high heeled leather shoes, and I could see the pronounced shoulders and rounded breasts visible under her blouse. There I go again. I should be concentrating on her role, not her shape. Emil had moved very close to her and peered over her left shoulder, apparently at the screen lid of the laptop, while she continued to type seemingly oblivious to his brooding presence. The real object of his gaze was probably something quite different, I reassured myself.

Meena sat down on the other side of Susan, though it was not clear whether this was because she wanted to get an early sight of the Council press release, or whether she wanted to give Susan sisterly support against Emil’s visual assault.

“Got the keys to the wine cupboard?” I asked Emil.

He threw me the whole key ring which the Mayor had given him. I fumbled with the keys and eventually found the one which fitted the cupboard.

“Ok, Meena, what’s your poison?”

Although it was still barely time for lunch, Meena asked for a glass of red wine. Emil suggested a whisky. It sounded like a good idea and I took out an opened bottle of Teachers which was nearly full along with a couple of glasses. I asked the Press Officer and she asked for red wine as well. I poured each of us a generous portion of whatever they had ordered and sat down.

After a few minutes of this I got a little bored, opened the connecting door from the Mayor’s Parlour to the Council Chamber and wandered in glass in hand. The chamber was empty of course. The main access to the chamber and to the viewing gallery was locked from the outside and the door to the Mayor’s Parlour was the only other access. I wandered around listlessly and eventually sat down in the huge Mayoral chair. Slowly I must have dozed off. Hardly surprising considering my experiences the previous night.

It must have been about 10 minutes later that I was woken by the sound of Meena in the next room calling out my name. I chose not to reply. I was half asleep; eventually she popped her head round the door looking for me. She called my name again.

“Peter, the text is ready. Do you want to read it?”

As she was behind the massive mayoral chair with its high wooden back she could not see me.

“I wonder where he’s got to?” I heard her say. She sounded quite puzzled. I could hear the muffled sound of her scampering back onto the carpeted floor of the Parlour.

Reluctantly I got up and came into the Parlour myself. Susan was about to read out the text. “So there you are, Peter,” said Emil. “Now listen to this.”

Susan was a true professional. She had summarized the main points raised at our meeting including the date, but not the venue of the public meeting.

“Who signs this, then?” I asked.

“I don’t think it needs a signature as in essence it is simply a routine announcement of a Council meeting.” Susan proposed. “However, what it does need is the name of one or two contacts to whom interested parties, including journalists, can turn. We need a mobile phone number and an e-mail address. Also, a one sentence quotation about the need to give the development proper consideration following adequate consultation. Councillor Kapacek?”

“Don’t look at me. Peter, you’re the main man. I will chair the public meeting and the committee meeting, but you will be putting the Council case.”

I agreed readily enough and gave a quotation for Susan to include as well as my e-mail details. Yet I remained surprised at how reluctant Emil and Ted were in fronting support for this project despite their pressure behind the scenes for a positive and prompt decision on the development. I also noted the keen interest earlier of our MP in this development and I wondered if this had anything to do with the Department of Trade and Industry, where he was the PPS. Was this project part of some larger trade deal involving ministers at the highest echelons? Subconsciously I was feeling unease, especially as the Russian girls had already hinted that there was a connection between Sheremovsky and various Council officials.

Susan proceeded to e-mail the text straight to the usual press outlets programmed on her computer. Seeing that our task was near its end I asked the others if they wanted another drink. Emil quickly said yes and, as I was no longer in a hurry, I poured us both another generous portion of whisky. Meena asked for more red wine. I refilled her cup to the brim. She took a big gulp. All on a near empty stomach, I recalled. Susan had not yet finished her earlier glass, but she asked for a top up all the same as she worked away at sending her statement out to other e-mail addresses.

All this time I was watching Meena approvingly. What a change from the young politician I met two years ago, I thought.

I should add that I was a little taken aback initially when Meena was first introduced to the Corindale branch party and selected as a candidate. She was small with a somewhat awkward high-pitched voice and she wore glasses. She was obviously bright and physically attractive, but somewhat prissy and lacking in human warmth. Her views were often strident. Not really my cup of tea at all.

Of course, she realized that she had to contend with the male prejudices of the some of the older branch members and in particular the downright hostility of some of the older Indians. She had chaired an Indian women’s voluntary organization that had founded a home for Indian wives and daughters maltreated in their own families. This was a great achievement for such a young person. It was also a taboo subject in the traditional Indian household and many of the older party stalwarts considered her a hectoring troublemaker; worse, a home wrecker, seeking to undermine the authority of the male in a traditional Indian family home. She responded to this hostility with icy haughtiness. She expressed disgust with any raunchy jokes and was quick to criticize any comments that strayed from the orthodoxy of political correctness. She used that hectoring tone not just with males but with older women too, like Mrs Stevens, the branch secretary, who liked a little salty language herself, especially in the pub after a few pints.

However, I found Meena industrious and dedicated to the task of winning the election and she was willing to open up to anyone who shared her ambition and her determination to win. As Fred Stevens was somewhat older than us and his reserves of energy were no match for Meena and me, the two of us did a lot of canvassing and leafleting together on our own last year. After a dark April evening in some depressing housing estate, or following a frustrating session of ringing up party members encouraging them to help on election day, Meena and I would drown our sorrows in a pub. Here she relaxed, drank red wine, laughed, talked about herself, and about her main passions: cooking and romantic films. She would be amused rather than offended by my risqué jokes and would even respond encouragingly to my pretences at making a pass at her, such as by brushing against her knee with my knee, massaging her shoulders and her head and kissing her on the cheek and even her mouth whenever we met.

At the election count itself we were particularly friendly, but in fact her mother’s presence there made us more self-conscious. Her parent openly alluded as to what a fine pair we would make, though the sincerity of her comments shone through her jokiness.

This innocent relationship was quite surprising for a person like me who prefers his chances in bedding any woman he can, with as little commitment as possible. It is just that I do not always have the luck. Compared to my normal record, my behaviour towards Meena was like an awkward version of calf-love. It reflected her obvious admiration of my apparent political skills and her occasional mooning stare in my direction. Certainly, neither of us was in love. Or was I speaking just for myself? I took it to be just a closer political friendship laced perhaps with a little latent lust. Friendship with the promise of benefits, sometime in the future.

 I was sure a time would come when that lust would become a little less latent.

 “So where were you when I went looking for you in the Council chamber?” asked Meena, pretending to be annoyed.

“Guess?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t guess.”

“In that case wait here for a minute and then come and look for me,” I suggested mischievously.

“Sounds like a fun game,” suggested Susan, looking up from her laptop. “I still have to finish despatching these e-mails. You go ahead, Meena.”

I went back to the Council chamber and sat again in the high-backed Mayoral Chair. Meena came in hesitantly with a third wine glass in her hand. She waited a few seconds and then looked up at the public gallery as if assuming I was hiding there. She walked forward towards the chair still looking up at the gallery. As she passed the chair, I stretched out my hand and smacked her on the rump.

“Oy! Stop it!” she laughed. “You are such a chauvinist pig. I could have spilt my drink. I should have guessed you were skulking in the mayor’s seat.”

“Yes, you should have,” I concurred. Still sitting in the chair, I drew her closer to me by her waist. “Not very observant of you, Councillor Chakravatty. I need to sharpen your wits a little.”

I drew her even closer to me and placed her on my lap. Her body relaxed as she allowed herself to be dragged over. “No, you shouldn’t, Peter. Not here.” But it was only a half-hearted protest. She did not struggle to get up off my lap. Instead she put one arm round my neck to steady herself, while holding the wine glass aloft with the other. I realized that this was the red wine talking but I was happy to encourage this dialogue, even if it was to be between her wine and my whisky.

Now for the first time that lust had opportunistically emerged from its lair. We appeared to be alone. We assumed Emil and the Press Officer had left, as all was quiet from the Mayor’s Parlour. She was sitting in my lap with a wine glass in her hand, just slightly tipsy, in a historic XIXth century comfortable upholstered piece of furniture that had supported the bums of more than 120 Framden worthies elected annually as Mayor since 1857.  I alluded to those many bums in my conversation in the hope that it could turn her on even more.

“Yes, you’re right,” she commented with bitterness. “They were the bums of colonialists, pederasts, misogynists, exploiting landlords, grasping merchants. All hypocrites exploiting women, the poor and the people of India and Africa.”

“On them was built the wealth and civic prowess of Framden,” I said ironically, anxious not to let this seeming gallery of rogues depress her libido and kicking myself for having raised this subject. She looked at me contemptuously, but she remained sitting on my lap. She even sipped more wine. That was good.

“Not to mention our workhouses, our old factories, sweatshops and industrial laundries,” I continued the litany with obvious irony. “And the tawdry old Victorian town hall they pulled down for the private gain of some of our councillors, including several mayors, in the fifties. Still, that did give us this Civic Centre. That was a national disgrace when it emerged several years later. A couple of the guys that sat here ended up in prison.”

She listened to this historical discourse dispassionately. From the way she continued sitting on my lap swinging her legs it was obviously amusing her. Yet I did not want to bore her. I thought a sharper comment was necessary.

“Yes, I bet their bums were put to better use in prison, than they were sitting here.”

She laughed at this sudden crude picture. She decided to put the correct political perspective on it. 

“I bet they were the ones doing the shafting, Peter.”

“No change there then,” I snapped back.

She placed her wine glass on the mayor’s desk. She took off her glasses.

“Excuse me,” she said with uncharacteristic lewdness, “You weren’t planning a little shafting of your own, were you?” She put both her arms around my neck and brought her face close to mine. Those lips looked decidedly pursed.

I censored any further conversation with a full deep kiss on her lips, to which she responded avidly. While one of my hands continued to support her back, the other wandered mischievously towards the nearest erogenous zone it could find, one of her breasts. I rubbed that breast under her blouse until her nipple perked up. Opportunistically I aimed for the second breast half-hidden against my body. Where is this going to end? I thought to myself. The only sex I could associate in my mind with Meena was vanilla sex. At least in this grand setting it could be a vanilla sundae. But it would take time. What if we were discovered?

I decided to carry on pushing the boat as far as it would go. I was already in deep water. My hand found the tucked in second breast a little awkward to reach, so it returned back to the more exposed one again, where the nipple could be felt quite distinctly.  However, her reverse thrusters were beginning to operate now. Her hand displaced itself from around my neck and placed a barrier between my hand and her breast. Now her other hand had moved and was innocently caressing the back of my head and then for some reason, my ear. For a second, she removed her mouth from mine and whispered, “I like ears.” Then we kissed silently for some moments but without further exploratory hand movements. I felt the moment was still intense but was about to pass.

Indeed, it was. The silence was suddenly broken by the sound of a crude guffaw and a bout of slow clapping. We both got the shock of our lives as we stared around the seemingly empty Council chamber. Sure enough, on the far left of the chamber, unbeknown to us, sat Emil Kapacek with a large grin on his face. Closer inspection showed he was not alone. A head emerged suddenly from the middle of his body. The Press Officer, still dressed in her blue kaftan, was obviously signing off her press release with a well-played bout of fellatio. 

Meena was speechless with rage at this interruption. She jumped off my lap, straightened her skirt, gathered up the rest of her dignity and stomped out of Council chamber into the Mayor’s Parlour.

I shook my head at Emil’s lack of delicacy. I knew him and liked him well enough not to say very much at this other than “You stupid bastard” or some such similar expression of endearment. Then I dried my wet lips with a spare page of the last Council’s agenda and walked off after Meena.