Full Stop by Joan Smith

Paris and her friends’ older siblings went by coach to London to take part in demonstrations against the Vietnam war. She wondered what had prompted this
volte face;
surely not the reflected glory of having been at Oxford at the same time as the President?
    â€˜Wait a minute, John,’ she said, ‘I’m not being deliberately obtuse, I just don’t see why you feel this ... this personal attachment to Bill Clinton. What about Whitewater? Are you saying there’s nothing in it?’
    Tracey made a dismissive sound. ‘Whitewater, smoking bimbos, Vince Foster — what’s it actually amount to? What you have to appreciate, Loretta, is that the Right in this country aren’t used to being out of office. They’ll do
anything
to get back. This is not about some piddling little loan company in Arkansas, it’s about the elections in October. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Republicans take the Senate and then Clinton’s really fucked. Health care, you can forget it.’
    Loretta waited but he didn’t add anything. ‘So why don’t you ring up the foreign desk and tell them that’s the story?’
    As though she had said something incredibly naive, Tracey said: ‘Times have changed, Loretta, this new foreign editor’s not interested in what his reporters think. He gives you a story and you’re supposed to go out and stand it up. It doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you don’t invade Princess Di’s precious bloody privacy.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜The Princess of Wales’s private life, it’s the one thing nobody on the
Herald’s
allowed to touch. It’s ludicrous, given what everyone else writes about her, but it’s the one absolute no-no, even if I find out she’s been bonking Clinton. Which she hasn’t, as far as I know. Dirt on Bill’s what he wants, and I’m here to get it. Or Hillary, of course — he doesn’t care which.’
    He fell silent after this not altogether lucid speech, picking up his fork and chasing a cold sauté potato round his plate. Loretta watched, eyes narrowed, wondering how best to penetrate his mood of volatile introspection. ‘John,’ she said finally, ‘there’s something I –’
    â€˜What’s the line on Hillary, by the way?’
    â€˜The line?’
    â€˜The sisters. What’s the feminist line on Hillary?’
    Loretta made a little gesture of annoyance. ‘I don’t know there is a line. If you want my personal opinion, she seems very capable but I’m not comfortable with women who derive their power... whose power is contingent on someone else. And it’s not as if he gave her Defence, is it? Health’s traditionally a women’s issue.’
    She watched him fumble in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes, take one out and light it without going through the usual ritual of asking her if she minded — not that it usually made much difference. He showed no sign of having heard what she’d just said, indeed he had behaved throughout the meal so far as if he was only intermittently aware of her presence.
    The evening had got off to an umpromising start, with Loretta arriving at the restaurant a few minutes late to find Tracey hunched lugubriously over a whisky at the bar. She kissed his cheek, apologised for being late and tried to lighten the atmosphere with a remark about the painting behind the bar. It was a pastiche Tuscan landscape with a foreground of noses, each of them allegedly belonging to a celebrity — painters, actors, writers.
    â€˜I can never remember what Pascal said about Cleopatra,’ she observed to a blank look from Tracey, who obviously hadn’t theleast idea what she was talking about. ‘You know, about the history of the world being different if her nose had been shorter — or was it longer?’
    His response was a rather ungracious demand to know why