The Candidate's Husband

The leisure centre's function room holds a hundred and twenty and the agent said to expect thirty. There were ninety-four. I counted. Counting was something to do. My wife, Ines, was at the table at the front with the other four candidates and a jug of water nobody would touch. I was at the back, row nine, by the fire exit, where the agent had put me. "You sit there," she'd said, "you clap when everyone claps, and you do not make a face." I have a face. It is a known thing about me. Ines has spent fourteen years telling me my face is talking when my mouth is shut. I want to say what it's like. She'd never done this. She's a physiotherapist. She's a person who, for the whole of our marriage, has come home and complained about the bus route and the pothole on Fenner Street and the fact that the library's hours got cut, and one night in January she said, "I'm going to stand," and I said, "Stand where," and she said, "For the ward," and that was that. Now there are leaflets in the hall with her face on and a rosette on the coat hook and a man called Tom who rings at nine every night and is, apparently, her agent. The hustings had a chair, a woman from the residents' association with a bell. Each candidate got two minutes to open. The sitting councillor went first and did the thing where you list what you've done, and it was a fair list, and he'd been doing it eleven years and knew how to stand. The second was a man who was mostly against things. The third was a young lad from one of the smaller parties who was better than everyone expected and knew it, which spoiled it a bit. Ines was fourth. She stood up and I watched her hands, because that's where she keeps it, and they were steady on the table, and she said, "I'm a physio. I've spent twenty years listening to people tell me where it hurts. That's the job. I'm standing because I think it's the same job," and then she talked about the bus for a minute and forty seconds and sat down, and I clapped when everyone clapped, and my face, I'm told, was fine.

Questions from the floor. A man wanted to know about bins. Every hustings in the country, I'm now sure, has a man who wants to know about bins. A woman asked about the library. A man in a good coat asked a long question about the budget that was really a speech, and the chair rang the bell, and he kept going, and she rang it again. Then a woman near the front, sixties, cardigan, stood up and asked all five of them what they'd actually do about Fenner Street, and the sitting councillor said it was a highways matter, and the man who was against things said he was against the pothole, and the young lad had a policy, and then Ines said, "I fell in it. In November. Off my bike. I've got the x-ray." And the room laughed, and she said, "I'm not joking," and the room stopped laughing and listened, and she told them what the council's own repair schedule said and why it was wrong, and I sat at the back by the fire exit and did not make a face and it was the hardest thing I've done in years. Afterwards there was tea from an urn. People came up to her. Not many. Seven, eight. The cardigan woman held her hand a long time. The sitting councillor came over and shook her hand and said, "You did well," in the voice of a man who's been here before and will be again, and he was probably right, and I didn't like him for it, and I went and stood by the urn. On the walk to the car she didn't say anything. Then in the car, with the engine off, she said, "How was I." "You were good." "Don't." "You were. The x-ray was good." "I've actually got the x-ray." "I know you have." She put her head back on the seat. "Three weeks." "Three weeks." "I'm probably not going to win." "Probably not." "Tom says fourteen per cent, maybe." "Tom rings at nine every night. Tom can say what he likes." She laughed at that. Then she said, "Was my face all right," and I said her face was fine, and she said, "Yours wasn't," and started the car.