by Kathy Lette
Scroope went pale. When he finally spoke, it was in a monotone. ‘I am sixty-four. I suppose retirement is not out of the question.’
Perdita fired off a round of explosive expletives. Probably because she knew she’d have to change her sloganed herbal-tea mug, from Best Teacher, to Scheming, Lying, Treacherous Amoral Teacher Who Does It 50 Times After Class With The Headmaster Who Makes Me Do It Till I Get It Right! And all, as it turned out, for nothing.
I don’t know if ‘gloat’ is the right word, but a definite feeling of warmth spread through my body.
‘Oh, and by the way.’ I paused at the door, ‘Re. your rather obvious marital problems, Mr Scroope . . . Maybe therapy would rekindle a sense of wonder and mystery. I do have the number of an excellent marriage therapist – Bianca’s her name. I’ll email her details to you, shall I? Oh, and Happy Christmas to the both of you. Looks like they’ve all come at once!’ It was an obvious pun, but oh, the pleasure it gave me.
As if Life couldn’t get any better, the next cab off the Happiness rank involved Rory.
It was Christmas Eve. The kids were tucked up in bed and I was wrapping their presents under the tree, when the key turned in the lock and there he was, zigzagging towards me, weaving and tacking around the furniture, tilting dangerously to starboard.
‘I’m soooo ssssorry,’ he said blearily. You could have used his breath to clean my oven.
‘Rory, did you drive here? You’re completely smashed.’
‘Naw, I walked. I was fiddling around with the camcorder today . . .’
I groaned and flinched, dreading that he might tell me why. Bianca had cast him in her sex video, I recalled. ‘Yes?’ I said.
‘And anyway,’ he hiccoughed, ‘unbeknownst to me, Jenny video-ed the r-r-r-race.’
‘The what?’
‘The Mothers’ Race. At her S-s-s-sports Day. It was bumpy and there was a lot of footage. Really. I mean, she shot half an hour of her foot. But Bianca did push you. I’ve replayed it twenty times. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.’
When he bundled me up in his arms, I felt hidden, sheltered. From within the deep, crinkly folds of his cuddle I thought I heard him ask me to take him back.
‘What?’ I pulled away to look at him. It was a change of direction which could give a girl whiplash.
It was then my husband got down on a penitential knee and made a cursory stab at reconciliation. ‘Please take me back. I don’t know what came over me. I must have been having a midlife crisis.’
‘Um . . . How can you have a midlife crisis when you’ve never left puberty?’
‘I feel so guilty. Believe me, if I were one of my own dogs, I’d have myself put down. It’s the only humane thing to do. I should never have abandoned you for that woman.’
‘Where is Bianca, by the way?’ In a helicopter flying too low towards an electric cable, one could only hope.
‘What I’ve realized is that Bianca . . . well, she’s only in love with herself.’
‘She’ll have no competition there.’
Most love affairs, when stripped to their bare essentials, are as ridiculous as people stripped to their underwear. And my husband’s was no exception.
‘She needs a humility transplant.’ He hiccoughed again.
‘Well, you aren’t qualified to be the donor, Rory, take it from me.’
Rory laughed. ‘You see how clever you are?’ His smile was like an embrace. My heart beat insubordinately. For a moment, it seemed that he really could metamorphose back into the man with whom I had fallen in love.
‘I’ve changed, Cass, I really have.’ He took me in his arms once more.
Looking up at his face, I studied him. Can men change? I asked myself. Gear – yes. Tyres – yes. Underpants – occasionally. But their behaviour? Never. A new invention was required. The monogamous husband. Patent Pending.
‘The only thing you’ve changed is that you’ve grown longer nose hair,’ I told him.
For a moment he looked thrown, then rallied. ‘Lemme guess. You’re still carrying a little residual anger over the whole YOU SLEPT WITH ANOTHER WOMAN thing. If only you’d never taken me to those bloody classes, Cassie!’
‘Hey, I did not make a fool of you, Rory. You did that all by yourself. We went to the classes because we were unhappy. You left me. And you know what I realized? That I don’t need you. I was doing everything on my own anyway. Actually there’s much less work to do without you. Women don’t need husbands any more. If Jane Austen were alive today, she’d be writing about a Mr Bennet, arranging to marry off his four sad sons.’
Rory, whom I’d always thought would only ever cry if the local football stadium got washed away in a global-warming-related freak wave accident, sniffed back a tear.
‘Just because I don’t always express my feelings, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’
I attempted a sympathetic smile, but it was too tiring. ‘I’d like to feel sad for you, I really would, but I’m all depressed out. I just don’t have any depression left in me.’
‘Don’t you . . . Don’t you love me any more?’
It was a painful question. His mouth stiffened to meet the blow.
‘I just don’t need you any more.’ It was breaking what was left of my heart, but for the first time in my life, I was independent. And the way I saw it, if I was standing on my own two feet, then he could never again walk all over me.
‘But . . . but . . . I . . . can’t survive without you.’
‘Oh, you’ll survive. You’ll bivouac and build a campfire by rubbing two twigs together and slay an elk or whatever it is you men do.’
And then he enveloped me, hands everywhere. ‘Take me back.’ It was like being at the mercy of an octopus.
‘Get off me, Rory. See? You haven’t changed. You still think sex is the solution to everything.’
‘But how else can I prove my love for you?’
‘Gee, I dunno. In a court of law perhaps?’ I suggested, showing him the door.
The next day he rang ten times asking if he could take the kids and me out for Christmas dinner. A guilt-edged invitation. But we were celebrating Christmas with my parents, who had reconciled and were about to use the fire insurance money for the shed and its contents to take a Mediterranean cruise. I texted Rory back. Very sorry. Can’t come. Lie follows by email.
Was it a mean thing to do? I don’t know. All I do know is that being abandoned by your husband for your therapist tends to recalibrate one’s view of what constitutes good manners.
In a letter to the North Primrose Primary School parents which arrived around New Year’s Day, the Chairman of Governors wrote: It is with regret that I am writing to inform you of the resignation, with immediate effect, of Claude Scroope from the Headship of North Primrose Primary for personal reasons. We would like to thank him for his outstanding service . . .
Oh, if only they knew just how out and standing his service had actually been.
It went on to say how well the school had performed in the national league tables last year.
That wasn’t the only area in which he’d performed well, I thought, mischievously.
It concluded with The Acting Head, and a position we hope to make permanent in the near future, is now Ms Cassandra O’Carroll.
Was getting the Head position by blackmail an underhand thing to do? Probably. But life had taught me a lesson on maths, not covered in teacher’s training college: when the odds are against you, get even.
PART FIVE
25. Where There’s a Will, I Wanna Be In It
The telephone bell cleaves my cranium like an axe. I fumble for the receiver and croak into it.
It is Quincy Joy, Jasmine’s solicitor. ‘What day is it?’ I say blearily. Through the window, grey clouds slosh across the January sky. In the web of tree branches, wisps of morning mist are snared here and there like hair.
‘Monday. Jasmine’s bail hearing’s been scheduled for this afternoon.’
Bloody hell. Rea
lize I’ve been scribbling this account on and off for a week. ‘It’s all written up for you.’ Yawning, I gather the scattered pages from the floor beside the bed. ‘The way I remember it.’
‘Meet me at Holloway. I’ll have to sign you in as my clerk. Bring your passport for ID.’
Now that I’m Acting Head, I make an implausible excuse to myself about why I won’t be going into school today, totally believe it, and hurry to the prison.
When Quincy strides into the Stalinesque prison waiting rooms (actually, even Stalin would have found this architecture too brutal), I ask her right away how Jazz’s case is looking. Her muddy eyes, deeply set in her serious face, darken. ‘Not that good. The Prosecution have evidence from one Billy Boston that she attempted to hire him as a hitman to bump off her husband.’ She stubs out her cigarette with a grind of her boot heel to comply with the No Smoking rule. ‘He’s on bail for welfare fraud, so the creep is no doubt offering a plea-bargain.’ She swigs at a Starbucks double espresso.
‘Reliable? Boston? First off, he’s a convicted murderer and second, he’s a playwright. Playwrights make a living out of lying!’
Quincy shrugs. ‘What’s a girl to do when there’s someone in her life she would really rather were out of it? She chooses what might seem the most sensible route for any respectable middle-class woman: she pays a man to do it.’ She pauses to cough up half a lung while moaning how badly she needs another cigarette. ‘Most murderers are traced through a direct grievance, so a killing by someone unknown to the victim is more difficult to solve. A lover fits the bill nicely. This is the picture the Prosecution will paint. And they will not want her out on bail, interfering with their witness. Can you stump up twenty thousand pounds, in the slim chance that she does get bail? It’s a guarantee that Jasmine turns up for trial.’
‘Christ! I can’t. I’m a single mother. My self-esteem may be bouncing back, but, hey, so are my cheques. Still, I know someone who can . . .’
When we’re admitted into the Holloway jail interview room to see Jazz, her voice is plaintive with defeat. ‘They’re gonna nail me, aren’t they? I’m going down.’
It hasn’t taken her long to pick up the criminal vernacular. The look in her eyes is reminiscent of the glassy orbs of the taxidermied creatures I’ve seen with Hannah on sale at Christies. The frightened sound in her voice doesn’t match the media’s soubriquet for her as ‘The Merry Widow’. The papers are now running reports about how the wife of David Studlands, past President of the Royal College of Surgeons and distinguished World Health Organisation expert, has been arrested in London and charged with his murder.
‘The prosecutor served me with his notice of additional evidence and he’s building up quite a case against you, Jasmine,’ Quincy elaborates, sitting side-saddle on the chair. ‘So don’t get your hopes up too high.’
‘Case? What case? There is no case.’
‘Apparently you told your hairdresser that there is an afterlife – after your husband dies. And did you or did you not often say that there are only two days when a husband is great fun to be around? The day you marry him. . .and the day you bury him?”
‘Well, that’s right. And “where there’s a will, I want to be in it”. Yes, yes, it’s called wifely humour. I was being facetious. Who are all these witnesses knifing me in the front?’
‘Oh, don’t worry. There’s evidence about that too. Apparently your husband complained to friends that you attacked him with a carving knife.’
‘Listen, I’m a chef,’ Jazz responds. ‘If I had wanted to kill David I would have administered drugs by stages and disguised the bitter taste in spicy foods, such as curry.’
Jazz’s solicitor gags and her espresso snorts out of her nostrils. ‘We’ll just keep that little gem to ourselves, shall we? And did you or did you not tell Billy Boston that the good thing about having an ex-con as a lover was his advance weapons training?’
Jazz goes pale. ‘Yes, but . . .’
‘Boston maintains that you plotted with him to have your husband murdered, in order to cash in on his life insurance as your savings had dwindled, partly because of your profligate spending on toy boys.’
‘No! Because David mortgaged our house without my knowing!’
‘To do his good works in Africa. I don’t think there’ll be much of a sympathy vote there, Jasmine, somehow.’
‘Sympathy? And will there be no sympathy for me, for trying to save my bloody marriage after everything he’d done to me? Good God! Do you have any idea what courage that took? Just before Christmas, David said that he wanted to put all his infidelities and betrayals behind us and get on with our life together. At first I didn’t think I could work through the cycle of grief and anger. But eventually, I had to admit that there must have been reasons David had the affairs. Right? I mean obviously, the marriage wasn’t giving him something he needed. I realised that how a couple resolves the trauma of infidelity depends on how much you loved each other in the beginning and how much you both value your shared past. David is the only man I have ever truly loved. He’s the father of my only child, for God’s sake. We needed to get Josh out of an unhealthy relationship he was having . . .’ (she doesn’t use Hannah’s name, I note) ‘. . . so we planned a family holiday to Australia. And what I found was that my new emotional realism actually benefited our relationship. It really did. It helped restore my dignity and peace of mind. And David was genuinely contrite. He’d been under so much pressure. A business venture he was bank rolling in Africa was going wrong. I was resentful. Oh, all the terrible things we said to each other,’ she shuddered. ‘Well, we put it all behind us. We were so looking forward to a reinvigorated next thirty years. And now, if he’s gone . . .’ Her voice catches in her throat. ‘How will I ever find a sense of purpose if David is dead? But I have to be strong to help Josh through this. My feelings are so raw. The pain will never go away. How can it? Every day it just gets harder, but we have to live in hope that David will walk through the door. If I fear the worst, then there’s no hope left. And I do have this hope, in a tiny corner of my heart, that he’s going to call and I’ll hear him saying “Hi, darling. I’m in Darfur,” on some medical mission he forgot to tell me about, or . . .’ She drops her head into her hands.
Jasmine’s solicitor puts a consoling arm around her client’s shoulder. ‘Look, you’re not on trial yet. We just have to convince the judge that you won’t flee the country, commit a similar offence or interfere with a witness.’
As Quincy prepares to leave, Jazz cadges a cigarette.
‘The chaplain here suggested I give thanks for what I’ve got in life.’ Despite the No Smoking rule, the match flares and Jazz puffs manically. ‘But what have I got, Cassie? Imprisonment for something I didn’t do, debts up the wazoo, a lesbian cellmate . . .’ Quincy is sucking the liquid centre from a sweet with a wet slurping sound which makes Jasmine shudder. ‘The whole country thinks of me as a murderess and I’m supposed to be burying my husband, a feat made more difficult by the fact that he may still be alive somewhere. Oh yes, I’m feeling fantastically fucking thankful at this point.’
In the hours I have left before the bail hearing this afternoon, I vow to do my best to help my oldest friend. And there is only one person I can think of to turn to . . .
The anticipation and dread I feel at seeing his indolent smile makes my heart race. We agree to meet in the Boom Boom bar. Walking from the tube cold gusts of air sweep like a searchlight back and forth across my face, and I interrogate myself about my real motive for being here.
When I tell Trueheart of Jasmine’s plight, he erupts into an insolent laugh. ‘So, lemme get this straight. You want me to testify that Billy Boston’s lyin’? Grassing up a mate is a serious crime in my world, babe. So,’ there’s a halfsmile on his face, ‘what exactly would be in it for me?’
As he unscrews the cap on his Coke bottle the muscles of his forearm twitch and fan out across his skin in a most unsettling way.
‘You don’t s
eem to be taking this conversation seriously,’ I reprimand him. ‘Her bail appeal hearing is this afternoon.’
‘Oh, but I am,’ he replies flippantly, before leaning over and, with cocky insouciance, unbuttoning the top of my blouse. Breezy and off-hand, he is full of overmedicated mischief. ‘Real serious like.’
‘Actually, I’m hopeless at sin. I’m much better at syntax. Maybe I could just tweak your dangling participle or something?’
‘Think about it, babe,’ he suggests as I leave for court.
And I do think about it, striding past St Paul’s, towards the Old Bailey, heart galloping. What is holding me back? I am a single woman now. And Trueheart could audition for Denzel Washington’s body double. Perhaps getting him into my bed would get Rory out of my head, and me into an orgasmic spasm?
In the area around Fleet Street and St Paul’s Cathedral, the streets are full of mottled buildings of diseased appearance. The Old Bailey, with its clean, cold stone and imperious fluted columns is the ominous exception. Sleek sharks, otherwise known as reporters, circle outside, skittish, lunging, irascible. Solicitors and lawyers deal out business cards like a hand of poker. As a high-profile prisoner approaches under police escort, a fusillade of paparazzi shots explode.
Sick with nerves I wait in the crowded Old Bailey canteen and watch the older women, moulting magnificently from coats and craniums like ailing eagles. Slurping scalding tea and reapplying lipstick, I imagine they are the matriarchs of East End crime families. Then there are their younger counterparts – interchangeable blondes, their short, flimsy frocks held together by face cream. They swear loudly and whine about not being able to smoke, their bare legs impervious to the cold.
Quincy taps me on the shoulder and I trudge, heart in mouth, into the ornate courtroom with its great blaze of chandeliers and lights and sit with her legal team, just as the charges are being read out.
‘. . . The 1861 Offences Against the Person Act gives jurisdiction to the courts of this country to try an English subject for the murder abroad of another English subject. We have other evidence obtained from the police of South Australia, my lord.’
