The Republic of China, or Taiwan, was a country worth cultivating if and when the Labour party came to power. The Taiwanese would have to do business with the government, and Trevor Brenson, M.P., thought it might as well be with him. Besides, there was no more excitement in living with his wife. He’d grown tired of her — she spent all her time at women’s rights rallies, so much so that Brenson wondered whether she was married to the feminist movement instead of him. And when they did get to be together in bed she began telling him what to do—”this way, not that way”— “you’re too rough”—”harder”—”slower.” After a while it felt as if he were learning to drive and she was the instructor. More and more he just wanted to swerve off the bloody road.
Lin Meiling, however, was different, and she offered him a way out. Like his wife she was outspoken, too, but she had the Oriental sense of place — which in bed was to do what the man wanted, anything to please. Besides, at their rendezvous in a Hampstead flat, she never rushed it or talked politics, and when she’d finished with him he felt so deliciously drained, so completely relaxed, that he’d already missed one shadow cabinet meeting because Lin Meiling had literally squeezed then sucked him dry, and as he told her later, he must have slept right through his alarm. In fact Lin Meiling had turned off the alarm, giving her ample time to go through his briefcase after they made love.
So far she’d found nothing of note, only some dry skulduggery against a conservative M.P. for having had personal use of government aircraft — taking his family on a hop across to France. They all did it, of course, and Brenson had absolutely no doubt that he’d be doing it when he got into power, but he wouldn’t be as damned silly as the Tory.
And when he got to power he wouldn’t tell Lin Meiling any more than he did now, which was naught. She could be a spy for either the ROC or the PRC. Whatever — she could detect his mood the moment he walked into the flat, and all she had to do was let him talk about the idiots and various assholes who were trying to run the government, and how he could do it so much better.
Here and there he’d unconsciously drop a hint about what was going on, but she never seemed interested. The trick, as Lin Meiling knew, was patience and knowing that it was better sometimes to know someone in the shadow cabinet man the real cabinet itself, for in order for the shadow cabinet to operate they had to know exactly what the government was up to. There was some brouhaha at the moment— something about the Americans — exactly what she didn’t know. But she remained patient, knowing that in two or three days Brenson would be so horny again that he’d want her desperately. It would give her another opportunity to flick through his files and/or listen to his self-pitying frustrations about what a thankless job it was being a member of the queen’s loyal opposition.