The Caverel Claim

by Peter Rawlinson

  ‘They’ll have forgotten him now.’

  ‘No, there were reporters at the Scrubs and TV.’

  The waiter brought the cereal and the boiled egg. Willoughby started on the cereal. ‘You had long hair then,’ he said to Dukie with his mouth full. Dukie did not reply. After two more spoonfuls Willoughby pushed aside the bowl, and began to crack the egg. ‘How much do you expect, Stevens?’

  ‘Whatever it’s worth.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Willoughby asked Dukie.

  ‘A lot,’ Dukie replied, not looking at Willoughby. ‘I want a lot.’

  ‘I expect you do.’ Willoughby dipped twice into the egg and pushed the egg-cup away. He turned to the waiter. ‘I’ll have the champagne and orange juice now.’ Then to Dukie. ‘Pity about the hair.’

  ‘Do you think you can do something?’ said Stevens.

  ‘If I can’t, no one can.’ He finished his drink and took his cigar-case from his pocket. Slowly he cut the cigar and lit it. ‘But you, my lad,’ he said to Dukie, ‘you’ll have to be a damn sight more communicative than you have been this morning. I’ll want details. How they found you in Rio and the woman you were shacked up with. Only a synopsis. The hacks’ll fill it in. Or make it up.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ll call you, Stevens. Usual terms. Forty per cent.’ He looked again at Dukie. ‘You’ll need a manager. I might be interested. We’ll see.’

  And he walked away.

  ‘Bastard,’ said Dukie. ‘Sodding bastard.’

  ‘He’s the best,’ Stevens said.

  3

  Greg Rutherford looked at his watch as the train drew into Green Park station. It had been a rough evening the night before, a birthday party followed by a session in his flat. He was due at the office at nine and he was late. He galloped up the escalator and kept at a gallop as he threaded his way through the pedestrians in Berkeley Street and up the east side of the Square. He turned right into Bruton Street and half-way down pushed through a pair of inner swing-doors and stood in the foyer mopping his brow, watched with amusement by the two girls behind the front desk in reception.

  He was a square-shouldered, athletic young man of twenty-five, with brown curly hair above brown eyes, the glow of an Australian complexion, and a marked dimple in the centre of his jaw.

  ‘Has he left?’ he said in his Australian twang.

  ‘He’s in the car and –’

  ‘Christ! I’ll get a taxi.’

  ‘He said you weren’t to bother,’ the blonde receptionist said. ‘He’ll see you here when he gets back.’

  ‘What a cock-up. Is he mad?’

  ‘He’s not very pleased.’

  Greg Rutherford wasn’t a member of the firm. He wasn’t really anything, except, as he told his mates, ‘a bloody bag-carrier for a pompous old prick’.

  ‘The old prick’ was his uncle, Jason West, senior partner of Lesley and Payne, solicitors, specialists in European law and commercial international contracts.

  After graduating from Sydney University and before joining the family business in Sydney where his father, Randolph Rutherford, was the founder and chairman of one of the great corporations of Australia, Greg Rutherford had been sent to Europe to visit what his mother, who had been born in Surrey, called ‘the Old Country’. After only a week in London, Greg had gone with a party of friends to Zermatt for Christmas. He had not returned to London but had remained all winter in Switzerland skiing, and in the spring and early summer he had wandered around the south of France, ending up sharing rooms with three university friends in an apartment on the left bank in Paris. Reports of the goings on there filtered back home to Sydney, mainly from the European executives of the Rutherford Corporation. Randolph was not amused.

  ‘That boy of yours,’ he began one morning, ‘he’s making a bloody fool of himself. Twice he’s been in trouble with the Paris police.’

  ‘Our boy,’ his wife corrected him in her Home Counties English. ‘Yours and mine.’

  It was she who had insisted their only son should spend a year or so in Europe, acquiring, she said, the graces. It would give him exposure to European culture and society before being thrown into the rough world of business deals and Australian politics. But through her own social grapevine she too had heard the rumours.

  ‘It’s time that young man was given something to do,’ her husband growled, ‘instead of idling about in cafés and nightclubs. I don’t know what culture he’s meant to be picking up there.’

  ‘Then send him to London. Tell Jason to keep an eye on him. Let him work with Jason.’

  So Randolph arranged with his brother-in-law, portly and punctilious, to take on his nephew as an assistant in order to keep the young man occupied and give him some introduction to the world of international business. Jason had been reluctant, but as Randolph gave his firm much important and lucrative work, he had no choice. So a month before, Greg, resentful but mollified a little by the provision of a flat in Fulham and a second-hand BMW, had started as Jason’s ‘bag-carrier’.

  He was meant to accompany Jason to conferences, when he was on time. He was meant to attend Jason’s meetings in the office unless they were very confidential, and take notes. He was meant to come to the office every day if Jason was there, which he did, although he often slipped away early; and he was meant to study the forms of negotiation and the contracts in which the firm specialised. He had been given a small room and the services of a part-time secretary, Helen, a spinster in her late forties who lived with her mother. After the first week she told her mother, with pursed lips, that she found Mr West’s nephew’s habits and manner ‘very Antipodean’. But after a month she began to dream about him.

  The receptionists liked him, because of his looks and casual manners, and were happy to field his messages, usually dates to play squash or cricket; and, very soon, dates with girls. But the members of the firm were not so taken with Mr West’s nephew. On his first visit to the partners’ lunch room, Greg had given them the benefit of his views on the English class system, English manners, English habits, and the English weather. He had not disguised his radical and republican politics. Jason had squirmed. ‘You are a visitor to this country, Gregory,’ he later admonished him. ‘You must be more tactful, more sensitive. You are only here because of the connection this firm has with your father.’

  Greg made little secret to his Australian friends of his opinion of his Pommy mother’s relations and country. ‘A bunch of stuffed shirts,’ he said over the cans of Fosters. But he knew that after Paris, he could not afford to make too much of a mess of his time in London.

  Greg was in his room, reading the sports page in the newspaper, when the telephone rang.

  ‘A Mr Henry Proctor is on the line for you.’

  Henry was a fellow Australian, an actor who picked up a little TV work as an extra in commercials.

  ‘We missed you last night, Henry,’ Greg said. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Up north.’

  ‘A good part?’

  ‘No, I’ve been resting, selling water-softeners. But I’ve a job in Milan and I’m on the way to the airport. I called, because I’ve given your name to a friend, a girl I met during a shoot in Paris.’

  ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘Very. We were in an advert together.’

  ‘What kind of an advert?’

  ‘Some kind of drink. She was one of a bunch of girls on a beach. She’s come to London and for some reason she needs an English lawyer. I told her you worked with lawyers and you’d find her one. Her name’s Wilson, Sarah Wilson. She’s going to call you. Now I’ve got to run.’

  And he was gone.

  That afternoon the receptionist telephoned again. ‘There’s a young lady here to see you.’

  ‘But I’m not expecting anyone.’

  ‘She said someone called Henry fixed it. Her name’s Wilson.’

  Henry’s friend! Here! He’d assumed Henry had given her his home address, not the office.

  ‘I think you’d
better come down,’ the receptionist said, ‘and pretty quick.’

  Both the receptionists had been on the telephone when Greg’s visitor had come through the swing-doors. The blonde had looked up into a pair of hazel eyes below dark, glossy hair drawn back and fastened at the back of the neck. The mouth was bright red with lipstick, vivid against the dark, chocolate skin. The features were regular but surprisingly small. Now this apparition was sitting in the waiting area, long slim legs crossed beneath a white mini-skirt below a pink, almost see-through blouse.

  As Greg came from the lift he saw her, and, startled, his eye fell at once on the curve of her breasts in the light, flimsy blouse and her long, slim legs jutting out from the minute mini-skirt. I must get her out of here, he thought.

  As he approached she stood up.

  ‘I’m Greg Rutherford.’ He held out his hand. She took it and held it. ‘Henry called me about you,’ he went on, his hand still in hers. ‘Shall we go out for a cup of coffee and you can –’

  She interrupted. ‘This is an attorneys’ office, isn’t it?’ she asked, her accent American but not pronounced.

  ‘It is but –’

  ‘Henry said you could find me an attorney.’

  Greg was conscious that the receptionists were watching and listening. He got his hand free. ‘If we slipped out,’ he said, ‘and went to the café at the corner –’

  ‘No. What I have to say is private. Haven’t you an office?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Show me.’

  Outside his room Margaret, Jason’s secretary, was talking to Helen. The two women watched as Greg ushered in his visitor. Once the door was shut the visitor began. ‘Henry said you’re not an attorney yourself.’

  ‘No, I’m just working here for a few months before –’

  ‘Henry said you’d find me one. I don’t have much money but I need an attorney. Is there one here who’d do?’

  Greg thought of Jason. He certainly wouldn’t do. ‘It depends what it’s about. The man I work with and the others here do commercial work, international business contracts and so on and –’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it. Then you can tell me who to see.’

  ‘I haven’t much time this afternoon. Wouldn’t it be better if we met this evening at my flat, Miss Wilson and –’

  ‘Wilson’s not my real name.’ She leaned forward so that her elbows were on his desk and she knew he could see the tops of her breasts. ‘My real name’s Caverel.’

  She paused as though she expected some reaction. ‘Fleur Caverel,’ she repeated. She seemed surprised when he only stared blankly at her. ‘They’re a very important English family,’ she went on. ‘Haven’t you heard of them?’

  ‘No, I’m a foreigner here and –’

  ‘Well, they are, they’re very important.’ She leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs, her hazel eyes on his. ‘I’ve come to London to get what’s due to me – my inheritance.’

  ‘I see,’ he said weakly. She was gazing at him with such intensity that he dropped his eyes and fixed them on her lips bright red with lipstick. He wasn’t often thrown by women.

  ‘A month back I learnt that the ma in South Carolina I thought my real ma was my foster ma. She’d just died, and I was given a letter from my real ma. My foster ma couldn’t read or write but my real ma could and she gave the letter to my foster ma to give to me when I was grown. But I’d run off.’

  From the moment she’d met him in reception, save for the walk to the lift and then to his room, she hadn’t taken her eyes off him.

  ‘My dad, you see, was English. He left my ma before she had me and my ma died soon after I was born so I never knew either of them. In my ma’s letter she’d written there’s plenty of money.’

  ‘Why should she think that?’

  ‘Because my dad’s a lord.’

  ‘A lord?’

  ‘Yes, well, not then he wasn’t, not when he married my ma. But when someone died, he would be. Now I want my dad’s share.’

  The telephone rang. It was Helen. ‘Can you come out for a minute? It’s urgent.’

  He replaced the receiver. His visitor was going on. ‘It’s an important name, Caverel. Lord Caverel.’

  ‘Will you excuse me a moment?’ he said.

  Margaret was with Helen. ‘Jason called from the car. He’s on his way,’ Margaret said. ‘What does that woman want?’

  ‘She wants a lawyer to ask about an inheritance,’ he said. ‘Something about a lord.’

  ‘What lord?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Caverel.’

  Helen handed him a Who’s Who. ‘It’ll be in here. Look it up,’ she said.

  ‘Who is there in the office who could help?’ he asked.

  ‘We don’t do that kind of work in this firm, and certainly not for someone like her,’ Margaret said primly.

  Greg went back to his room. ‘I’m sorry for keeping you. This book has all the names of the important English people.’

  ‘My dad’s name was Julian, Julian Caverel,’ she said.

  He leafed through the pages. ‘Caverel,’ he read out. ‘There is a Caverel. Caverel of Ravenscourt in Wiltshire. Francis, 17th Baron Caverel, son of the 16th baron, Robin, who died last year.’ He looked up. ‘But he’s a child, just turned four, and his father was Robin and his mother is called Andrea, maiden name Aberdower. No mention of anyone called Julian.’

  She sat very still, gazing at him. ‘No Julian?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  There was a pause. He closed the book. Then she said, ‘You’re not a lawyer. Isn’t there anyone here who could help?’

  ‘Not that I know of at the moment, but I’ll find out and let you know.’

  She stood up. ‘I don’t think you want to help.’

  ‘Of course I do. I’ll find out who’s the best for you to see. Tell me where you are staying and I’ll get back to you.’

  ‘No, I’ll find someone myself. Henry shouldn’t have sent me. He’s a fool.’

  He’s a bastard, Greg thought, sending her here and not to the flat. She walked to the door and he opened it for her. As they went to the lift, they passed Helen and Margaret. The lift was small and they had to stand close to each other. All the time she looked up at him. He followed her out into reception. By the glass swing-doors she stopped and turned. ‘You’ve been no bloody help,’ she said, ‘but you’re kind of cute.’ She stretched up and kissed him on the lips.

  At that moment the rotund, red-faced figure of Jason West bustled through the door. When she turned away from Greg, she and Jason stood face to face. Then Jason stood aside as she swept out, swinging her hips and the bag in her hand.

  ‘Who the devil was that?’ Jason asked.

  ‘Someone a friend sent to see me.’

  ‘To see you, Gregory? To see you here, in office hours?’

  ‘She wanted a lawyer and he asked me to find her one.’

  ‘She doesn’t look the type we deal with. What did she want a lawyer for?’

  Greg walked beside Jason to the lift, wiping the lipstick off his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘She says her dead mother wrote in a letter that her father Julian was connected with someone called Lord Caverel but I looked him up and Lord Caverel is a child and his father was called Robin. Then she left. I’d never seen her before.’

  Jason pressed the button to the second floor. ‘You’ve never seen her before and she embraced you in the hall, in public, in front of the receptionists! What extraordinary behaviour!’

  * * *

  At home that night, before he went to sleep, Greg lay thinking of his visitor. Later he dreamt about her. It was the kind of dream that Helen, his spinster secretary, dreamt about him.

  4

  After leaving the office in Bruton Street, Greg’s visitor paid off the taxi at a shabby hotel near Paddington station.

  A large, fat man was sitting in a corner in the small foyer. He rose when she entered.

  ‘A waste
of time,’ she said to him in French.

  He put his finger to his lips. ‘We shall go out. Then you can tell me.’

  The sour-looking woman at the desk called out, ‘Leave your key, please, Mr Valerian.’

  He went to the desk and handed over the key with a bow.

  ‘If anyone should ask for me,’ he said in heavily accented English, ‘I shall be at the Polish Club in Queen’s Gate.’

  At the club he steered her to a corner table and lumbered back from the bar with a brandy-and-soda and a large glass of red wine. ‘Drink, it will make you feel better. I do not like you to get over-excited. You must stay calm.’

  ‘I am not over-excited and I am calm.’

  He took her hand. ‘When you have had a sip of wine, you can tell me about it.’

  ‘The actor’s a fool. He said his friend would find a lawyer but he didn’t want to. All he did was to look it up in a book.’

  ‘Look up what in a book?’

  ‘The family. He said there was no Julian.’

  ‘Nothing more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Young, good-looking…’

  He smiled and patted her hand. ‘Then that at least was agreeable. But it was worth trying. We’ll find a lawyer ourselves. And from now on, you and I must speak only in English. And you, remember, you are Fleur. Only Fleur. I, too, must remember.’

  He lit a Gauloise and drank some of the brandy. ‘But when we do find a lawyer, he may not be young and good-looking.’

  ‘I’m very tired,’ she said.

  ‘I know. Tomorrow you must rest. Leave the search to me.’

  But she did not rest longer than the morning. She talked to the woman at the desk who made a telephone call and in the afternoon she took a taxi to an address in Chepstow Villas. Half an hour later she was back in the street. It had been a waste of time, like the visit to Henry’s friend. Except that she’d liked the young man. She’d liked the dimple in his chin and the way his hair curled and fell on his forehead when he’d been reading from the book. The woman in the house in Chepstow Villas had been younger than most, with dyed black hair bound by a scarf; the room, as was usual, almost in darkness. It was all shoddy and cheap and after five minutes Fleur had pushed back her chair, put a ten-pound note on the table and left. The woman had looked angry.