An Eligible Man

by Rosemary Friedman

  He glanced at The Times Law Reports and the current Law Society Gazette for a possible mention of his name. Finding that he was not really paying them a great deal of attention, he hoped that it was not a sign of age. Despite Plato’s contention that a good judge must not be a young man but an old one, Topher had no intention of staying on the Bench until he was as senile as some he could mention, who should long ago have accepted their pensions and been put out to grass.

  He opened the cupboard in which he kept his robes and stood before the long mirror inside the door. “Years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.” Horace, as usual, had put his finger on it. Topher’s hair, retreating only a little from his high forehead, was still only lightly, and not unattractively, feathered with grey. The dimple in his chin which had, on Caroline’s own admission, been her undoing, was still in evidence. He stood over six feet in his socks and carried no superfluous weight. A cursory glance, in not too strong a light, could he supposed have placed him at the tail end of the fifties instead of at the very beginning of the sixties. Sally Maddox… No he must definitely not. He removed his jacket, put it on the hanger provided by Mrs Sweetlove, and took off his tie. With the disappearance of suitable laundries he had been reduced to paper collars. Madge had undertaken the starching of his white bands. Pulling in his stomach he noticed, for the first time, the tell-tale bags of misery beneath his eyes. He shrugged on the black gown of his office, tied the purple sash, and set what according to Penge was the symbol of legal pomposity, his horse-hair wig, firmly on his head.

  On the stroke of ten Mrs Sweetlove knocked on the door to enquire if he was ready.

  Following her figure, neat as usual, from the curls the colour of autumn leaves to the high-heeled black sandals (on what must once have been elegant but were now somewhat varicosed legs), Topher felt the customary surge of adrenalin as she opened the door that led to the dais.

  He had never got used to it. Not even after twenty years. The deferential silence. The sight of counsel prostrating themselves. The rising of the court, which then waited until it pleased him to be seated. The high and indisputable drama of the moment was, he imagined, shared only by the conductor mounting his podium, Her Majesty the throne. It was the daily fix which liberated an exquisite energy, sharpened the faculties, focused the mind and, for the time being at any rate, banished Sally Maddox with her brown eyes and her brown dress, from Topher’s thoughts.

  The first case, a possession order, was brought by counsel whose frizzy hair erupted haphazardly from beneath her wig and was only partially restrained by a tired black ribbon. Sloppy demeanour in court, whether of barristers or solicitors, vexed Topher more than did incompetence. The girl reminded him of Penge. There was absolutely no reason why Penge should not have followed some proper profession, instead of messing around with the stage and ending up in a Hackney commune. The only acting part she ever seemed to land was that of an old peasant, on a proscenium empty except for a table holding three earthenware jugs, in an auditorium strewn with dirty washing. What dreams he had had for his daughters, who had both been seduced by the curious restlessness endemic to the age.

  Chelsea, unable to face three years at Cambridge (having almost bust a gut to get herself accepted) had bummed around the world for two years with a monosyllabic pop star with designer stubble and cowboy boots. Topher had to take her word for the fact that beneath his shoulder-length hair lay a scintillating brain. The pop singer’s parting gift to Chelsea when they “split” had been an introduction to the inner echelons of the BBC. There, on the rebound, she had fallen hopelessly for the producer of This Week’s News who had been her lover – although Topher was not at all certain he was the only one – ever since. When she had brought David Cornish home, Caroline was so impressed with him that she had immediately begun to make plans for the wedding. It was as much a shock to Chelsea as it was to her mother to discover that there was a mentally unstable wife (as well as two children) whom her paramour could not leave. It was difficult to say who was more disappointed. Even Topher, who privately considered no prospective son-in-law adequate, had been able to find no fault with David. With the one proviso, he made Chelsea very happy. The arrangement was neither neat nor tidy but it was the best they could all do.

  Penge, since her performance as a Flowerpot Man in the kindergarten play at the age of five, had always wanted to be an actress. With the success of her dramatic rendering of How Horatius Held the Bridge, wearing a frilly pink party dress, her fate had been sealed. She had finished school, torn up her UCCA forms and applied to RADA. Unable to dissuade her, Topher had reluctantly agreed to pay for her training. Since her graduation, and the acquisition of her Equity card, Penge’s life had been a series of theatrical ups and downs matched only by her affairs of the heart. Before the minor poet there had been a zoo keeper, a hospital porter (Penge had had her appendix removed) and a trombone player. There had been others who either had not lasted sufficiently long, or had been too disreputable to bring home. The minor poet was harmless. Which was about the most charitable thing one could say about him.

  Topher looked into the blue eyes of the tadpole of a barrister who stood before him. She belonged to a generation which not only addressed its superiors by their Christian names, but came to work looking as if it had just rolled out of bed. She was representing a landlord, Mr Biswas, who was trying to evict his tenant, one Mr Archibald. Topher waited patiently as Mr Biswas, clutching the Koran like a terrified rabbit, stumbled through the oath. His counsel rifled frantically through her brief in the manner which Topher had learned to associate with the fact that she had never clapped eyes on it before. She addressed her client.

  “Are you the er owner of er…number…39 Clarendon Road, N18?”

  While Mr Biswas considered his answer Topher leaned over the Bench to address the clerk of the court.

  “May we know counsel’s name?”

  “Miss Devanney, Your Honour.”

  Mr Biswas’ reply to Topher’s question was inaudible. He held a hand to his ear in the manner which Caroline always said made him look like a very old man.

  “Kindly address your replies to His Honour,” Miss Devanney said, indicating the Bench.

  Mr Biswas blinked through his pebble glasses and nodded uncomprehendingly.

  “Face in this direction, speak up, and address your remarks to me,” Topher said loudly.

  “Are you the owner of number 39 Clarendon Road, N18?” Miss Devanney was more sure of herself this time.

  Mr Biswas smiled at Topher.

  “Please?”

  Topher sighed. It was going to be one of those mornings. These days it didn’t take much to provoke him. He had a mild headache with which he had woken, due he supposed to the excesses of the previous night. The boring sensation above his right eye was exacerbated by the pressure of his wig. He listened, making notes as he did so, while the grizzled-haired Mr Archibald (in the two mismatched halves of his suit) related, with eye-rolling histrionics, how he had been minding his own business in the privacy of his room when he had been summoned by his landlady, Mrs Biswas, to her parlour. On entering he had to his amazement been served not with the nice cup of tea he had anticipated, but with a “notice to quit”.

  Poor Mr Archibald had nowhere else to live. All he asked for was time to find another place. Granted all the time in the world, Topher knew, given Mr Archibald’s age and his lack of employment, it would not be easy. But Mr Biswas wanted him out. He had served him with the proper notice. Topher gave Mr Archibald two weeks to find alternative accommodation. Mr Archibald looked crestfallen, Mr Biswas unbearably smug. Miss Devanney gathered up her papers, which were as messy and all over the place as she was herself, and bowed to Topher. Acknowledging her, he drew a line beneath Biswas and Archibald and noticed, to his horror, that he had written Sally Maddox in the margin of his red notebook.

  The next case was an application by the local authority for possession of a flat unlawfully occupied by two sixtee
n-year-olds, Sarah Scott and Sandra Bishop, one with green hair and the other with pink. Aware that but for the grace of God it could have been his own daughters who stood before him, Topher disabused the girls of their right to occupy the premises. When he gave them an opportunity to speak, Sarah Scott pointed out that she didn’t see why the council couldn’t give them a flat when it was dishing out homes “right, left and centre to the Pakis”, and Sandra Bishop added that they had come down to London from Newcastle and had nowhere else to live. Topher told them that much as he appreciated their situation, homeless people could simply not be allowed to move into, and retain, other people’s property. The law of the land must be upheld. He explained that he was not a housing officer and that he had no control over lettings (which were a matter for the council) and advised them as a last resort to apply to their local Citizen’s Advice Bureau. His suggestion, intended to be helpful, was received with derision.

  The morning stretched before him. He listened to the petitions of authority against those who defied it. To accounts of breaches of contract and domestic violence. Although conscious that the scales of justice were often weighted in favour of the few against the many, he did his very best to adjudicate fairly between those in power and those who felt themselves to be exploited. Despite himself, he found that he snapped at counsel for feeding him piecemeal with scraps of paper instead of providing him with a proper bundle of documents, chastised the clerk of the court for not obeying his instructions sufficiently smartly, and rebuked a surprised solicitor who was wandering around the court whilst the oath was being taken. When Mrs Sweetlove smiled sympathetically at him as she handed up a bulging folder he glared at her too. He didn’t want her sympathy. Nor Sally Maddox’s. Nor that of any other bloody woman. He wanted Caroline. Sometimes he pretended that she was not dead and almost managed to convince himself.

  When the court rose for lunch, Mrs Sweetlove led him into his room where, as if it were to be a five-course banquet, she set the table for his tub of cottage cheese.

  “I’ve had the vehicle removed, Your Honour.” She smoothed the creases from the tablecloth.

  “The vehicle?”

  “From your parking space.”

  Topher had quite forgotten about the van. He wished that Mrs Sweetlove would end her messing about and be gone.

  “A bit better today,” she said, fetching what she referred to as “the cruet” from the cupboard.

  When Topher didn’t answer she said equably: “The weather.”

  Mrs Sweetlove was not averse to carrying on conversations with herself.

  She stood back to survey her handiwork. To see if there was anything she had forgotten.

  “I remember this time last year…”

  “That will be all, Mrs Sweetlove.” Topher hung up his robes and buttoned a navy-blue cardigan over his shirt. “I can manage very nicely now.”

  “Very well, Your Honour. I’ll leave you in peace and quiet.”

  Topher doubted if his usher knew the meaning of the phrase or if, when Sweetlove had been alive, there had been much peace and quiet in the Sweetlove household.

  Over lunch he read the papers for a breach of contract case which he was to hear in the afternoon. At four o’clock he went home, which was of course a euphemism suggesting the fixed residence of a family or household, the place of one’s dwelling and nurturing. He made his way, more precisely, to his house, which over the past months had taken an oath of silence.

  Opening the front door on to the forsaken hall, the table piled with junk mail but innocent of the seasonal flowers (cultivated or wild) which had always greeted him when Caroline was alive, he was glad to hear the ring of the telephone. He took the call in his study, sure that it must be Chelsea or Penge.

  It was Sally Maddox.

  Six

  Rural England had given way to cabbage-filled allotments at the back of houses all seemingly fashioned from the same drab plasticine. In another five minutes the train was due in Bradford. Preparations for arrival were already being made. Opposite Topher the rubber limbs of Darren were being inserted by his mother into a yellow snow-suit. From the monologue which accompanied this feat (which clearly required both skill and dexterity) he deduced that the child, having bidden farewell to one set of grandparents at King’s Cross, was being taken to see their northern counterparts. Each time the child’s arm was directed to the sleeve of the garment – survivor by all appearances of a million drubbings in the washing machine – he made a grab for the empty crisp packet on the table. Darren’s mother smiled conspiratorially at Topher. Topher, as if having in mind the acquisition of one of the grim properties that lined the railway track, looked pointedly out of the window.

  The last person he had expected to telephone him was Sally Maddox. He couldn’t think how she would have the gall. But there she was. As if less than twenty-four hours previously she had not laid her hand upon the most intimate part of his anatomy.

  “Christopher?”

  It was a lifetime since anyone had called him that. Topher recognised her voice at once.

  “Isn’t it a lovely day?”

  Shades of Mrs Sweetlove.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve even noticed. What are you doing on Saturday?”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer.

  “I’d like you to come for tea.”

  It was not a question.

  “I live in Kentish Town.”

  He had no intention of accepting the invitation. He could not imagine why he had written down the address on the back of Counsel.

  Apart from April’s dinner party, Topher hadn’t been anywhere socially since his bereavement. Not even to close friends. He had certainly no intention of visiting Sally Maddox in Kentish Town where – if past form was anything to go by – he might not only be given tea but violated.

  He had discussed Sally’s behaviour with Marcus, who clearly believed that Topher’s mind, affected as he himself suggested by either the Lamberhurst or the passing of his wife, had been playing tricks on him.

  “I assure you,” Topher said, casting his mind back both to the incident and his reaction to it, “that I did not imagine it.”

  April was unable to shed much light on the situation. Sally Maddox was an old school friend. She had, until recently, lived in the country.

  “She has been married and she was hopeless at hockey. We re-met at Swiss Cottage Library. Apart from having read her books I know very little about her.”

  “What does she write?” Topher suspected that beneath the deceptive brown exterior beat a Mills and Boon heart.

  “Novels,” April said. “Of great sensitivity and imagination. You must have dreamed the whole thing. Perhaps it was the yellow peppers.”

  He did not go to tea with Sally Maddox. She telephoned every few days to renew the invitation. She also wrote to him. On postcards from the Tate Gallery (Woman in a Tub, which was, Topher suspected, a reasonable facsimile of herself in the nude) and the Rijksmuseum.

  The fact that he was beginning to look forward to Sally’s calls troubled him. He confessed as much to Marcus.

  “One part of the mind frequently judges the behaviour of another.” Marcus said. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

  But Topher did worry. And decided to get out of London for a few days. He contacted his twin sister in Bingley, and as soon as court rose for the Easter vacation made his preparations.

  The suitcases were in the attic among memorabilia of his married life. Skis, and dusty picnic baskets taking him back to outings when it seemed always to have been raining; a carriage pram which Caroline had, with her usual optimism, saved for her grandchildren (it would create a mild sensation in Wapping); surplus gifts from Caroline’s bazaars and jumble sales; warped tennis racquets of the out-dated wooden variety; lamps without shades and shades without lamps; a lacrosse boot; skates; grocery boxes of files – “O” level and “A” levels – which the girls had abandoned but must not be destroyed.

  Penge had come
round when, with his open suitcases, he was standing bemused before his wardrobe. She had slung a few shirts and ties and pullovers into the case he had brought down. On top of them she put his shoes. She did not take after her mother in attention to detail.

  “It will do you good,” she said, referring to his proposed trip. Topher realised that what his younger daughter meant was that it would do her good. That she would not have to worry about him. With Caroline’s death he had become a liability.

  Penge was dressed in black – trousers, oversize shirt, black kerchief over her hair and down to her forehead – which emphasised her fragile beauty. They were not mourning clothes. She wandered round the bedroom lightly touching the things that were her mother’s. Her collection of paper-weights, her Indian pin-cushion, her bird-watching diary. Penge’s eyes met Topher’s wondering how long everything was to remain just as Caroline had left it. Penge picked up a postcard – an El Greco from the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest – of the Holy Family with Saint Elisabeth in which Mary offered a luminous breast to the Christ Child. On it, Sally Maddox had written enigmatically, “Our father’s house really does have many mansions.”

  “Who’s this from?”

  “A friend.”

  There was an alabaster statuette – a little girl holding a teddy bear – on the window-sill, an artefact of the twenties. It had belonged to Lady Eskdale, who had died before Penge was born. Penge held it out, an unspoken comment on the postcard.

  “May I have this?”

  “Of course.”

  Penge, as the youngest, had been closest to her mother. Topher put his arm round her.

  “Are you all right, Daddy?”

  “As well as can be expected. You?”

  “The same.”