Chapter 10: Out on the town
The Songlebridge South Conservative and Unionist Party were holding their AGM in the main meeting room at the Songlebridge Golf Club, a cosy venue they had used for many years, especially in light of the ever dwindling numbers of members in recent years. Although from the general volume of the hubbub from the assembled local notables, there was a larger than average turnout tonight. The majority of the members had clearly filed through the bar on the way to the meeting and predominantly pink gins and margaritas seemed to be in evidence everywhere one looked.
The Chairperson, Cynthia Ponsonbody-Jones, was a rather portly woman in her late seventies but still quite active and smart in appearance. Her husband had been a Brigadier who had served in the Falklands many years ago and died a rather disappointed old man who could never quite get that same excitement in his life that anywhere near matched his experience in war. By the time the Kuwait War and Afghanistan came along he was too old and failing in both body and mind to take any part at all and after that he went down fast, leaving Cynthia well provided for financially but emotionally poor. Widowed in her late forties and with no children or grandchildren of her own, she threw herself into local politics as a parish councillor for the village in which she settled late in life and she had served as the Election Agent for Monty Smythe, then a Queen's Councillor from Kent who wanted to embark on a political career and was chosen to stand for the safe Tory seat after the previous MP had been caught out in a scandal involving one of the aides at Westminster. Monty was apparently regarded as an upright citizen who could be relied upon to play a straight bat.
Cynthia soon realised that Monty was rather pompous and extremely lazy but, having got to know him over twenty-five years, realised that under the blustering exterior, Monty did care for his community and, when he did take up a case he considered worthy of his attention, he was resolute in seeking and reaching a satisfactory conclusion. But the rest of the committee work at Westminster clearly bored him and he tried to avoid active participation to get away with minimal effort into his elected role.
Cynthia had also got to know Monty's wife too. He was married to the former Mabel Robertson, whose family owned virtually all the undeveloped land in the surrounding countryside, much of which was being earmarked for future housing development and she was therefore wealthy enough, and willing, to pay for the regular General Election campaigns so that the lack of local party members' subscriptions hardly affected the string of successful campaigns Monty enjoyed at all.
Cynthia had become fond of Monty as a friend and colleague over the years, with mutual respect on both sides but their relationship was never any more than that. The Constituency was therefore well run with little apparent friction. Cynthia had learned from her late husband how to keep a Brigade and HQ running smoothly, despite lack of resources, and she had personally taken measures to step into the breach to cover for Monty, while demonstrating that Monty was actively working on constituents' behalf, on those occasions when he failed to show up. Monty preferred to stay in his comfortable Bexhill on Sea home close to London rather than travel all the way up to Northamptonshire to attend his weekly Friday surgery and staying in the depressing old cottage that Mabel had bought for them so that he could pretend to have a local address on the election leaflets.
Fortunately, as a local councillor and knowing that most of the issues raised at MP's surgery were more to do with local issues that could be dealt with by the Parish, Borough or County councils rather than by Westminster, so answering the public's queries and requests in the surgeries was well within Cynthia's depth of knowledge without bothering to involve the often absent MP.
Now that the Songlebridge Branch AGM was about to start and there was no sign of Monty, nor had Cynthia had any response to her email reminding him of the date, time and location of the meeting, she was worried.
She needs Monty here tonight because one of the major items on the Agenda was that a reassurance by the sitting member that he was willing to stand for another term of office for the next General Election was necessary. After all, that next General Election could be called at any time, especially with the present government in such disarray and the party's support by the country as a whole was in deep decline, and certainly the election would have to be called within the next two years. So all the MPs around the country had to declare their intentions before the 5th of December and it was expected that the sitting member should at least give the local party executive a heads-up either way.
Cynthia noticed that Monty's wife Mabel was standing at the far end of the hall, drinking and laughing with her locally based friends, the ones that she was particularly known to be in league with and often plotting some mischief or other.
Cynthia recognised Evelyn Mason, the magistrate and Claire Jessop the manager of that awful care home and retirement development in the village, the construction of which had been rather suspiciously forced through the planning department of the Greater Songlebridge Borough Council on unusually creaking planning wheels that appeared to have been greased sufficiently to pass through with barely a squeak. That large and expensive project was to the benefit of the Songlebridge Village Development Corporation plc, led by the Robertson family which had Mabel's brother at the head as SEO.
That corporation had the most money to make from the development, which made use of prime farming land which was cheaper and much more profitable to develop than the possibly contaminated ex-industrial land, classed as brownfield sites, that were closer to the areas of most population and therefore much better suited as a site for older people who needed public transport to enable them to get out and about and still play an active role in the local community. The only 'public' transport that Cynthia had seen in the village was the care home's very own beaten up old bus, which only did short runs to the post office, library, local convenience shops, garden centres for morning coffee or afternoon teas, and the odd bingo night somewhere in the locality.
"I better ask Mabel if she knows where her husband has got to," Cynthia told her branch vice-chairman and the secretary who were sitting either side of her at the top table, "we are already five minutes late in starting the meeting, but if we know that Monty is on his way, maybe we could stall for a few more minutes before starting the official AGM."
Cynthia got up stiffly and walked purposefully across the room towards the three ladies who were her objectives, with everyone in between wisely giving her a wide berth.
Now, Claire Jessop was someone Cynthia knew from various charity events that raised money for the care home, a charity that seemed to be a suspiciously deep sink hole for charity funds but Cynthia had never really got a handle on community benefits were being produced by those charity funds and Claire tended to keep her in the dark, recognising Cynthia's suspicions.
Claire's husband was both the secretary of the local allotment society and very active in the Rotary Club as well as the playing captain of the Songlebridge Cricket Club. Cynthia was a member of the Cricket Club Board, having followed her husband's interest in the game, and thought that Tom Jessop was a good sort; while she would not have said that Claire had any good intentions in her at all.
