by Caro Fraser
He took a reflective sip of his wine, and there was a long silence. Then he said, ‘I go to see a friend. His name is Francis.’ He did not look at her, and she knew suddenly that he detested this, that he wanted to get it over as briskly and in as businesslike a fashion as possible.
Rachel took a deep breath. ‘Is he your lover?’ she asked. She knew the answer, had known all this for months, but when it came, the truth was still unbearable.
‘Yes.’ He looked up at her at last. ‘Yes.’ He tapped the table lightly with his fingers, apparently in irritation, but she knew him, knew that this was a sign of embarrassment. Suddenly he shook his head. ‘It is incredible. I used to come home in the evening the next day, and you’d be there, feeding Oliver, or getting supper ready, whatever, and I would think, “She has to ask me this time.”’ He paused and gave a smile that was not really a smile. ‘You never did.’
‘Why didn’t you say something – ask me?’
‘What – why you never said anything? I didn’t care, frankly.’
The words numbed her. That he should not care was the possibility that terrified her most. ‘About me?’ Her voice was almost a whisper.
He looked across at her. When she was like this – apprehensive, dark eyes wide – her loveliness always moved him. There was something fascinating and fragile about her that almost pushed him to hurt her. ‘Of course I cared – care – about you. I mean, I didn’t care that you didn’t ask. It seemed better, easier.’
‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,’ she said, shaking her head slightly. ‘We have been married for a matter of months, and you’re telling me that you have had a lover all along. A man. And you say that you care about me.’
Leo crumpled up his napkin in exasperation. ‘Rachel, you must have formed your own conclusions about where I was. The fact that you never asked me shows that. You knew when you married me how it might be. I’m too old to change. I make no apologies for that. And,’ he added, ‘I’m too tired for any rows.’
She looked down at the tablecloth. ‘I don’t want to row, Leo. I want to understand.’ She pressed her fingers against her forehead. ‘I want to know why – if you need to do this, if you need to lead this kind of other life – why did you marry me?’ She looked up, the puzzlement on her face quite genuine.
He paused, then drew a small leather case from his pocket and took out a slender cigar. ‘Because you were pregnant.’
‘You tried to persuade me to have an abortion.’
She watched as he lit the cigar carefully, tilting one of the candles on their table towards him. ‘But I changed my mind.’ He looked at her levelly. ‘And I loved you.’ He did not add that he had, at that time, badly needed something to give his life an aura of respectability, something to remove the taint of rumour regarding sexual scandals in his past life which had threatened to prevent him being made a QC. A wife had been just the thing. And there had been Rachel, beautiful, intelligent, and conveniently willing.
‘Loved?’
‘I still love you.’ Her eyes met his, and she wanted to believe him with every fibre of her being. ‘It’s just,’ he added softly, drawing on his cigar, ‘that I need more.’
There was a long silence, while she considered all of this, feeling slightly dazed. She could make nothing of it. ‘What am I meant to do?’ she asked at last, looking up at him.
‘Do?’ He smiled, then shrugged. ‘Whatever you want to do. There are no rules.’
She met his gaze, and the expression in his eyes seemed fathomless. As so often before, she felt there was no way in which she could reach him. It was a situation in which she felt completely helpless. She could not make threats or issue ultimatums – it would get her nowhere. What he had just said was true. For Leo, there were no rules. He might say he loved her, but he loved no one enough to allow them to dictate his life. That she knew. Any other woman would probably leave a husband who was behaving as Leo was. But she was too much in love with him for that. Before she had met him she had not thought herself capable of feeling anything for any man. It was Leo who had taught her not to be afraid. He had rescued her from many things. Maybe it was because he was so amoral that he could understand men and women so completely, and betray their trust utterly. No, she knew she could not go – but what kind of life were they to lead together if she stayed?
‘I think I’d like to go home now,’ she said quietly.
‘Very well,’ said Leo. He glanced at her curiously as he signalled for the bill. He had wondered how she would react when all this was out in the open, and he was still not sure what she was thinking. He knew that the answer would come in the next few hours.
When he came into the bedroom, loosening his tie, Rachel was lying against the pillows, feeding Oliver. Her eyes were closed, and her nightdress was opened to the waist. Oliver lay at her breast, lightly and rhythmically stroking her skin with a tiny fat hand as he sucked. Leo watched them. He always found the sight vaguely erotic, her body open to the child; the blissful mutual absorption of mother and baby made him feel excluded, tantalised him.
He took off his tie and threw it over a chair, unbuttoning his shirt. Then he lay down next to Rachel. Oliver, sated, eyes still closed, moved his head away slightly from her breast, exhaling a little bubble of milk. Rachel opened her eyes and looked at Leo. He gazed at her and traced her lips with his finger, then slid his hand down to caress her. This was the moment. If she was going to say, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t ever come near me again,’ she would say it now. But she said nothing.
‘Put him in his cot,’ murmured Leo. Wordlessly, she picked Oliver up and went through to the nursery. Then she came back and lay back down next to Leo, and let him kiss and draw her body against his, enveloped by a sense of passion that nothing could extinguish, not even the worst of his actions.
Two hours later, while Leo slept beside her, Rachel still lay awake, staring into the half-darkness. With an odd sense of detachment, she wondered why the events of the evening had not made her weep, why the pillow was not wet from her sobbing. Wasn’t that the natural reaction? But crying was easy. It was for small griefs, not for something as shattering as this.
It was clear to her that she must do something. If this was to be her life – with Leo or without him – then she could not allow herself to depend on him any longer. The last few months had been an illusion. She had even thought, in a blind and stupid way, that they might have another baby. At the thought of this she tried to laugh, but it sounded only as a whimper of pain. Life would not be the safe and certain thing she had once hoped for. The first thing to do was to regain something of herself, her old life, and prepare herself for eventualities. She would go back to work. Nichols & Co were holding her job open for her for her period of maternity leave, and that expired in a fortnight’s time, when Oliver would be six months old. In that instant she made her decision. Tomorrow morning she would ring her senior partner and tell him. She would have no compunction about spending as much of Leo’s money as might be necessary to find the best nanny possible. Then, when she had recovered something of her independence, she might feel strong enough to make whatever decisions had to be made about the future.
She turned and glanced at the outline of Leo’s sleeping face. How could he be so at peace with himself, so untroubled by his actions? What was it like to live inside his mind? And why did all that he had told her this evening not make her hate him? If anything, the realisation of how tenuous her position was made her love him all the more helplessly. At that moment Oliver’s thin waking cry broke the silence. Rachel sighed and pushed back the bedclothes. Before she got up to go to the baby, she leant over and kissed Leo lightly on the side of his head, without knowing why, and felt, for the first time, like weeping.
CHAPTER THREE
Anthony arrived in chambers on Monday morning to discover that he had been loaned the services of Camilla, the pupil of one of his colleagues, Jeremy Vane, while Jeremy was on holiday. They were services which
he felt he could happily have dispensed with. Camilla was fresh from Bar School, and had struck Anthony from the first as being a typical bluestocking. She was quite pretty, with reddish chestnut hair that was constantly falling in her eyes, but she was astonishingly untidy, wearing baggy black suits and crumpled white blouses, and heavy black shoes. Most women at the Bar managed to make the regulation black and white outfit into something passingly feminine, but not Camilla. She blushed a lot and always seemed to be bumping into people and things, but she made up for all of this by being supernaturally bright. She had been Jeremy’s pupil for three months now, and the other members of chambers were rather impressed by the fact that, as the first female barrister ever to be admitted to the hallowed precincts of 5 Caper Court, she was managing to handle its most arrogant and work-driven member pretty adequately. Jeremy was famous for his vanity, his loquaciousness and his unpopularity with judges, but it had to be admitted that he was very able, and seemed set to become the chambers’ youngest QC next year, when he would be just thirty-seven. He expected Camilla to work as hard as he did, but she was robust and energetic and stood the pace.
‘Only Jeremy thought that I should keep busy while he’s away, you know,’ said Camilla, smiling radiantly at Anthony and following him into his room. It was common knowledge in chambers that Camilla was hopelessly in love with Anthony. Even Anthony was aware of this, and he returned her shining gaze with a rather dismal smile as he unwound his scarf and dumped his papers on his desk. Camilla stood before him, hands clasped behind her back, ready to do his bidding. It was rather like having an eager puppy waiting for one to throw a ball, reflected Anthony. He looked around at the mess of documents, and then glanced at her thoughtfully. Actually, maybe she could be quite useful. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a hearing in the House of Lords on Wednesday. You can help with that.’
She nodded. ‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s this Lloyd’s Names case I’ve been involved in for a few months now. Do you know anything about it?’
‘Not really.’
‘Right,’ said Anthony, sitting down and feeling quite magisterial as he recounted the facts of the case to Camilla. ‘Our clients are all members of the Capstall syndicate, which unfortunately is one of the long-tail syndicates at Lloyd’s. Do you know what one of those is?’
Camilla, with her double first from Oxford, didn’t like to profess ignorance in any area, but here she was forced to. ‘No,’ she admitted.
‘Well, a syndicate is a group of Lloyd’s investors, and a long-tail syndicate is one specialising in insuring long-term risks, like latent disease and pollution, which might result in claims years after the insurance was written. Now, Lloyd’s syndicates operate a three-year accounting period, and when a syndicate’s accounts are closed at the end of that three-year period, one of the decisions which the underwriter has to make is the amount of internal reinsurance to close. It’s called an RITC. It’s the amount required to reinsure any outstanding risks, and it’s the amount the Names on one year pay to the Names on the next year to take over liabilities. Sort of selling the risks on, if you like.’
‘But if you have a syndicate specialising in latent disease claims, like Capstall’s, how can you assess the amount of reinsurance to close? I mean, how can you possibly know the extent of future claims?’
Very quick on the uptake, thought Anthony, with a flicker of admiration. ‘Precisely. On long-tail syndicates, like Capstall’s, the amount of RITC has to be judged very finely by the underwriter, because the Names on the new year may be different from those on the old years. So if the RITC is too low, the Names inheriting the risks lose out, because the premium’s too low to pay the claims, but if it’s too high, the old Names lose out by having paid too much. Now, run-off contracts, which are what Capstall was writing, are similar to RITCs, but whereas RITC is an internal syndicate transaction, a run-off is an arm’s-length policy written by another reinsurer. Our fellow Capstall wrote a load of run-off policies in the eighties, as a result of which the Names were exposed to massive claims arising out of asbestos and pollution actions, mainly in the States. And the Names’ argument is that Capstall was negligent when he wrote all those run-off contracts, because he completely failed to make adequate provision for the latent disease claims which were looming, particularly asbestosis. Which is why they’re trying to recover some of their losses by suing him.’
‘But I don’t understand how he could write those run-offs. It must have been obvious to anyone the kind of risks he was running. Why did he do it?’
‘A variety of reasons. Premiums were high and potential profits must have appeared good. Plus, he probably took the view that such claims as might be made would only arise over a very long period, and in the meantime profit would pile up on the investment income. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way.’
‘But as an underwriter surely he had a duty to investigate the risks he was assuming on behalf of the Names?’
‘You would have thought so, given the amount of concern there was in the market at that time about asbestosis, but he seems to have been too lazy, or too arrogant. Or both. When you get a reputation as a high-flier, a risk-taker, you tend to live by that code. He’s a character – flamboyant, daring, all that stuff. Not exactly a man of prudence and caution. Anyway, you know the motto of Lloyd’s – Uberrima Fides. The utmost good faith. That seems to have been conspicuously lacking here. Now,’ sighed Anthony, ‘the asbestos and pollution claims are literally piling up in the American courts, and the courts are using any device they can to get at the insurers. Our Names are the poor suckers who have underwritten those risks. They’ve already paid out a small fortune in claims, and God knows how many more demands will be made on them. Most of them hadn’t a clue what kind of risks Capstall was underwriting.’
‘If you’re a Lloyd’s Name, your liability is unlimited, isn’t it?’ said Camilla.
‘Quite. Most people didn’t appreciate the dire implications of that, even though they were told it when they became members. The fact is,’ sighed Anthony, ‘a lot of our Names were suckered into joining Lloyd’s. I feel a bit sorry for most of them. They had no business becoming Names. But they’d heard that there was nice easy money to be made, and decided they’d like some of it.’
Camilla was thrilled to be having her most sustained conversation with Anthony so far. She was happy just to sit and listen to him, to watch him. She found something romantic in the fact that Anthony didn’t come from the same background as the other people in chambers – people like Roderick Hayter, Cameron Renshaw, and Jeremy, who had all been to public school and Oxbridge – but had struggled to become the excellent barrister he now was, with a brilliant career ahead of him. She had heard that his mother was a primary school teacher, and that he’d only just managed to get by on scholarships and handouts when he’d first started. As Anthony swivelled around in his chair, talking about run-offs and under-reserved risks, Camilla gazed at his lean, tall figure, at his expensively cut suit and silk tie, and marvelled.
‘What’s the hearing on Wednesday about?’ she asked, forcing herself to concentrate on the case in hand and trying not to gaze too fixedly into Anthony’s wonderful brown eyes.
‘It’s a preliminary point, but pretty much a vital one. Capstall’s lawyers are saying that there’s no duty of care owed by Capstall to the Names. We say there is, and that there’s also a parallel duty in tort. We won at first instance in front of the blessed Sir Basil, but lost in the Court of Appeal.’
‘Do you think you’ll win in the House of Lords?’
Anthony grimaced. ‘God, I hope so. Because if we don’t, our claim is finished before it even gets off the ground. At any rate, Godfrey Ellwood – he’s our leader in the case – seems fairly sanguine. But you can never be sure about these things.’
‘So what can I do?’ asked Camilla, preparing to throw herself into the task of learning everything there was to learn about reinsurance and the complexities o
f Lloyd’s underwriting. She wanted very much to demonstrate to Anthony how able she was.
Anthony smiled. She really was rather sweet. ‘Well, you can start by putting all those files in date order, and then you can photocopy these three bundles. Not very exciting I know, but very useful.’
She nodded, gazing apprehensively at the heaps of documents which lay stacked around Anthony’s desk. Oh, well, at least she was doing it for Anthony, which made it worthwhile. And maybe he would let her come to the hearing. She could sit in the House of Lords in her wig and gown – she didn’t think the thrilling novelty of appearing robed in court was ever going to wear off.
‘How’d it go?’ asked Felicity two days later, as Camilla puffed into chambers behind Anthony, bearing bundles of documents, her cheeks red from the cold air and the excitement of having been in the House of Lords. She had sat next to Anthony, feeling pretty important, even though she’d had nothing to do except carry things in and take notes. Anthony hadn’t had much to do either, since the leader, Godfrey Ellwood QC, had done all the talking, but she could see from the way that Ellwood spoke to him, asked his advice in an undertone while the other side’s counsel was on his feet, that Ellwood respected his views and regarded Anthony as important to the case. For Camilla, it had been bliss just to be so near to him, to smell the wondrous faint scent of his aftershave, to watch the way he held his pen, crossed his legs, yawned … all for two whole hours.
Felicity was able to gather this much just by glancing at Camilla’s face, and added, ‘The hearing, I mean.’ Felicity had already been the recipient of Camilla’s shy coffee-break confidences regarding her hero.
‘Oh, fine! Ellwood is really brilliant. We’re bound to win.’
‘I’m delighted that you think so,’ remarked Anthony, flicking through his mail and handing a couple of things to Felicity. ‘If you’re right, I’ll buy you a drink to celebrate as soon as we get the judgment.’ He strolled off to his room, and Felicity grinned and arched her eyebrows meaningfully at Camilla.
