And now they were looking towards her. Hey Josh, look whos here. Your favourite Irish aunt.
Hi Maggie.
Hi Joshie. Hows your new school?
SOK. I play baseball, which is cool.
That is cool. Maggie was beaming. Josh Baker was a contender for Americas cutest boy and having first met him nearly two years ago she felt as if she had almost seen him grow up.
That first encounter had come on a summer Saturday in Iowa, at the State Fair in Des Moines. Stephen Baker had been there with his family Josh, then aged six, kept nagging to ride on the bumper cars as the candidate tried to endear himself to the ever-discerning, and crucial, people of Iowa. Baker was then the rank outsider in the Democratic field, the little-known governor of Washington State. His name recognition was zero, he had no national experience and carried no regional advantage: historically, Democrats liked governors from the South who might deliver a chunk of votes that would otherwise be hard to reach. Washington State? In a presidential primary, that counted as a disability.
Still, Rob Maggies old pal from her Africa days, who had ended up in the State Department and had just dealt the death-blow to her nascent career had been insistent. Just meet him, he had said. Youll know right away.
Maggie had stonewalled, resisting, refusing to be swayed by the barrage of calls, emails and texts that followed. Maggie Costello? Working for a politician? The idea was ridiculous. She had ideals, for Gods sake, and ideals had no place in the snakepit of modern politics. The young Maggie Costello had had nothing but contempt for politicians. Shed seen what they and other power-seekers had done to godforsaken bits of Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, first as an aid-worker, latterly as a behind-the-scenes diplomat. It sounded corny, but as far as she was concerned there was only one mission that mattered: trying to make the world a better place, especially for those on the sharp end of war, disease and poverty. The way she saw it, politicians tended, at best, to get in the way of that process; at worst to profit by others disadvantage.
Besides, shed argued to Rob, the election was more than a year away; Bakers candidacy was just a few months old and the Beltway wisdom had already written him off as an also-ran. They suspected he was running as a future vice president, trying to get himself noticed. The only poll she had seen gave him a score of negligible, too small to measure. And anyway, what did she know about US presi dential politics?
It doesnt matter, Rob had insisted. You know foreign policy. Hes governor of Nowheresville: the closest he gets to foreign policy is having lunch at the International House of Pancakes. Just go, just meet him and youll see what I mean. Hes different: hes something special.
So, sighing inwardly, she had gone to the Iowa State Fair and watched Baker mingling with the hog-farmers, eventually crowning a giant pig the winner of the hotly-fought Big Boar Contest. Hes bigger than I am, hes better looking why isnt he running for president? Baker had said to delighted cheers. She waited before introducing herself. She wanted to see him in action.
It didnt take long to see he was a natural. His manner was easy, his interest in people shone through as genuine, not the synthetic sincerity of the blow-dried, bleached-teeth politicians usually deemed presidential material. Unlike most candidates, he knew there was a difference between listening and staying silent while you wait to speak again. He actually listened. And whatever quality it was that had won over her cynical friend, Rob, it seemed to be working on the usually wary folk of Des Moines people who had grown sceptical of the procession of suitors who invaded their state every four years smiling brightly with their faces aimed towards the television cameras, making promises they never kept. Baker, on the other hand, had the crowd in his thrall: they watched him eagerly, mirroring his expressions, grinning when he grinned, reflecting back the warmth they felt from him. And unlike other candidates, who seemed to have been parachuted into such events from another planet, he genuinely seemed to be enjoying himself, making real human contact with the people around him, rather than using them as props for a photo opportunity.
Finally she stepped up to say hello.
So youre the woman who brought peace to the Holy Land, he had said, wiping an oily hand on his apron as he paused from flipping chops on the outdoor grill beside the Iowa Pork Producers tent. Its a pleasure to meet you.
Nearly, she had replied. Nearly brought peace.
Well, nearlys a hell of a lot further than anyone ever got before.
They snatched moments of conversation as he shook more hands, posed for camera-phone snaps or exchanged banter with a local reporter. He would break off to admire a life-sized cow made entirely of butter or to have a bumper car ride with Josh then pick up exactly where they had left off.
Eventually he asked her to hop in the car that would take them to his next event, an evening speech in Cedar Rapids. Kimberley and the kids would be in the back; she could ride with him up front. When she looked puzzled as to how there would be room, he smiled. I have the most crucial job on the Baker for President campaign: Im the driver.
They talked for the entire two-hour journey, until the three Bakers in the back were fast asleep, the childrens heads resting on their mothers shoulders. He listened as much as he talked. He wanted to know how she had started, asking her more about the work she had done as a volun teer in Africa, straight after graduation, than about the high-level shuttle diplomacy that had made her name in Jerusalem. You dont want to know this, she had said eventually, with an embarrassed wave of the hand.
No, I really do. Heres why. You know who Im going to be in this campaign? Im going to be the hick. The loggers son from Aberdeen, Washington.
But thats one of your great strengths. Youre the American Dream.
Yeah, yeah. The folks like that. But Im running against Doctor Anthony Adams, PhD of New York. Im the boy from the sticks. Ive got to convince Georgetown and The New York Times and the Council on Foreign Relations all that crowd that Im not too provincial to be President.
I thought you wanted to be the outsider: Mr Smith goes to Washington and all that.
No, Maggie. I want to win.
Soon he was telling her how, once hed got a scholarship to Harvard, hed met people who spent the vacations in Paris or London or jetted off for weekends in the Caribbean. He, meanwhile, had to go back to Aberdeen and work shifts in the lumber yard or at the frozen fish processing plant: his father had emphysema and there was no other way to pay the bills.
Eventually I got away. My first trip out of the country. And I went to Africa. Just like you.
He looked away from the road long enough for them to smile at each other.
I was in Congo, Zaire as it was then. Jeez, I saw some terrible things. Just terrible. And its still going on, if not there, then somewhere else. Its like theyre taking turns: Rwanda, then Sierra Leone, then Darfur. The burning villages, the rapes, the children orphaned. Or worse. He glanced at her again. I know youve seen some real horror yourself, Maggie.
She nodded.
Well, its a long time ago now. He paused for a long minute until she wondered if she was meant to say something. Then he spoke. I believe I can win this thing, Maggie. And if I do, I want to do something that only an American president can do. I want to dedicate some of the enormous resources of this country to stopping all this killing.
She frowned.
Im not talking about sending our army to invade places. We tried that already. It didnt work out so well. Now it was her turn to smile. We need to think of other ways to do it. Thats why I need you. He let that sentence hang in the air while she stared at him in disbelief.
Something tells me that you never forgot what you saw when you were twenty-one, Maggie. You never forgot it. Its what makes you work so hard, even now, all these years later. Am I right?
Maggie looked out of the car window, picturing the position papers, conferences and endless meetings of which her life now consisted. Each day she felt she got further away from that angry twenty-one-year-old woman she had once been. But he was right. What fuelled her still was the fury she had felt then about all the violence and injustice all the sorrow in the world and the determination to do something about it. These days, her ideals seemed to have slipped so far into the distance, it was a struggle to glimpse them. But Stephen Baker had just reminded her that they were still there. She turned back to him and nodded.
And thats how I am, too. I never forgot what I saw out there. And about eighteen months from now, Im going to have a chance to do something about it. Something big. He shifted the car down a gear. Will you be with me, Maggie Costello?
Now, nearly two years later, the President was reaching for a red plastic lunch box with one hand and opening the fridge with the other. So whats it to be, junior? Apple or pear?
Cant I have candy?
No, young man, you cannot. Apple or pear?
Apple.
Stephen Baker wheeled around, an expression of deep seriousness on his face. Thats not so you can use it to play baseball, is it?
The boy smiled. No, Dad.
Josh.
I promise.
The President put the fruit into the box, clipped the top shut then placed it in his boys hand. Then he bent to kiss his son on the top of his head. Maggie noticed that he shut his eyes as he did it, as if in a moment of grateful prayer. Or just to savour the smell of Joshs hair.
OK, young man, scram.
Just then, Kimberley Baker came in, clutching a bag bulging with gym gear. Blonde and pretty as a peach in her college days, she was now usually described as rounded or, by the less kind, plump. Magazines had obsessed about her weight when her husband first announced, the celebrity press zooming in on cellulite patches or a close-up of her rear-end in an ill-advised trouser-suit. She had gone on daytime TV, told how she had gained weight when Katie was born and how she had tried multiple diets including all the nutty ones! to take the pounds off, but failed each time. Now, she said, she was comfortable with who she was and had decided to devote her energies to something more worthwhile than her waist size. The women in the audience had stood and cheered their approval, the host had hugged her and, within a day or two, she was declared a role model for female empowerment.