A Special Relationship

by Douglas Kennedy

  ‘But that was just one up-her-ass Limey bimbo. Surely there are some excellent divorce lawyers in London.’

  ‘Yeah, but I can’t afford one now. And you’re right – it’s my own damn fault for turning down Tony’s money. But the thing is: for the first time since this extended bad dream started, I’ve actually won an argument. And that’s due to my very peculiar solicitor. So why turn my back on a guy who’s trumped Tony?’

  Still, Sandy was right about one point: dealing with Nigel Clapp was like dealing with the number zero. It was impossible to fathom him, or to work out his legal methodology. After his success on the mortgage front, he vanished for seven days. Then, out of nowhere, he made contact with me again.

  ‘Uhm … ,’ he said after I answered the phone.

  ‘Mr Clapp?’

  ‘I’d like to speak with Ms Goodchild.’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure of that, yeah.’

  ‘Oh, right. Well … uhm … names.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Yes, names.’

  ‘I really don’t follow you.’

  ‘I need the name of everyone who’s dealt with you from the social services.’

  He paused – as if the effort of getting that one sentence out without an uhm had been overwhelming. Then he continued. ‘I also need the names of any nannies or nurses whom you might have used.’

  ‘Fine, no problem. Shall I email you them today?’

  ‘Yes, uhm, email is all right.’

  ‘You know that my first lawyer took witness statements from just about everybody – with the exception of my Health Visitor who was in Canada at the time.’

  ‘Yes. I know that. Because I have the statements.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Uhm, yes.’

  ‘How’d you get them?’

  ‘I obtained copies of all court documents.’

  ‘Sure, sure. But if you’ve got all the witness statements, why do you need the names of everyone again?’

  ‘Because, uhm … well, I would just like to speak with them all again.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Is that necessary?’

  ‘Well … uhm … yes, in fact.’

  Later that day, while reporting this conversation to Julia over coffee in her kitchen, I said, ‘You know, I think that was the first assertive thing he’s ever said to me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t worry about him so much. He seems to know what he’s doing.’

  Four days later, I was woken up by a phone call around one in the morning. At that hour, the sound of a phone ringing can only mean two things – (1) a drunken wrong number, or (2) very bad news. In this case, however, it was a youngish sounding woman with a London accent who – judging from the static on the line – was calling from far away.

  ‘Hello, Ms Goodchild … Sally?’

  ‘Who’s this?’ I asked, half-awake.

  ‘Jane Sanjay.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your Health Visitor, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. Hello, Jane. Aren’t you supposed to be out of the country?’

  ‘I am out of the country’ she said. ‘In Canada. Ever heard of Jasper National Park? Way up in Alberta. Amazing place – and a long way from South London. But listen, your solicitor, Mr Clapp, tracked me down.’

  ‘Mr Clapp found you?’

  ‘That’s right. And he explained what you’ve been going through – and asked me if I’d be prepared to testify on your behalf. Which, of course, I’m most willing to do, especially as I’ll be back working for Wandsworth Council in just over two months’ time. But the reason I’m calling – and I can’t talk for much longer, as my phone card’s about to run out – is just to tell you that I am so shocked that they took Jack away from you. From what he explained to me, they’ve done a complete stitch-up job on you. He also told me about the postnatal depression – which, in itself, should have got you off the hook. I mean, so what if you said something threatening when you were exhausted and suffering from a clinical condition? So what if you accidentally breast-fed your son while taking sleeping pills? We’ve had far worse cases in the Borough – and I’m talking about genuine child abuse, where the mother still didn’t have the child taken away from her. So as far as I’m concerned, this is outrageous. And I just wanted to let you know that I’m completely behind you, and will help in any way I can …’

  I was so pleasantly stunned – and touched – by this out-of-nowhere transatlantic call that I mumbled a huge thank you, and asked her to come over for lunch as soon as she was back. Then I called Sandy in Boston and told her the news.

  ‘That is amazing,’ she said, genuinely excited. ‘I mean, the fact that she saw you at home with Jack is going to count for an enormous amount. And since it is her job to see how mothers are coping with their newborns, her opinion is going to carry a lot of professional weight. By the way, how did it go with Jack yesterday?’

  Leave it to my sister to remember exactly when I had my supervised visit with Jack.

  ‘He seems to recognize me now,’ I said. ‘Or maybe I’m deluding myself.’

  ‘No – babies do get a sense of who’s around them.’

  ‘Which means that Jack most certainly thinks of that woman as his mom.’

  ‘He’s only a few months old,’ Sandy said. ‘He doesn’t know who’s who yet.’

  ‘You’re trying to humour me.’

  ‘Yes. I am,’ she said. ‘But the fact that he seems to know who you are … well, isn’t that a great sign that you’re bonding … ?’

  Bonding. That word again.

  ‘Yes, we’re bonding all right … considering that we only have an hour a week to bond. Still Clarice – the woman who supervises the visits – seems pleased. So does Jessica Law – who’s doing …’

  ‘I know: the CAFCASS report for the court …’

  ‘You do impress me.’

  ‘Hey, I hang on to every detail you give me. But here’s a question you should ask Ms Law the next time you see her: why hasn’t Tony once contacted you?’

  ‘That’s a simple one,’ I said. ‘Because he’s a total coward.’

  ‘Without question. But why you should ask Ms Law about it is because, as she’s interviewing both parties in this case, she’s probably in pretty regular contact with Tony. And if you sense she thinks you’re all right … well, why not tell her that you’re a little surprised not to have received any sort of communication from your husband? In the future you will have to be in close consultation about Jack’s upbringing, no matter which one of you ends up getting residence. You see what I’m getting at here?’

  I did – and so did Nigel Clapp. Without prompting from me, he raised exactly the same point the next day when I called him to congratulate him on tracking down Jane Sanjay.

  ‘Oh, right,’ he said.

  ‘But you must have spent so much time trying to figure out where she was. I mean, the legal assistant at Lawrence and Lambert didn’t seem to have any luck whatsoever, since Jane was moving around Canada all the time.’

  ‘Moving around? Really?’ He sounded even more bemused. ‘Because what she told me was that she had been working at the Jasper Park Lodge for the past four months. And, uhm, finding her was … well, it took two phone calls. The first to the Council. I explained who I was, and why I needed to speak with her. And although they didn’t know where to find her, they said they’d call her mother on my behalf— since mothers usually know where to find their daughters. Which, uhm, turned out to be the case here. The Council gave Mrs Sanjay my number. She called me. We talked. She gave me her daughter’s number in Canada. I called her. We talked. And she agreed to be a witness on your behalf at the Final Hearing. Oh, and … uhm … just in case she gets delayed in Canada or can’t make it to the hearing on the day in question, I contacted the Law Society of Canada, and found the name of a solicitor in the town of Jasper, and spoke with him yesterday. He’ll be taking a sworn affidavit from
Ms Sanjay later in the week – which he’ll also have notarized, to make certain it’s admissible in an English court of law. But that’s just a precautionary measure on my part.’

  Then, with what almost seemed like a slight laugh, he said, ‘I am just a bit on the cautious side.’

  He also informed me that almost all the other people I had listed in my email had been interviewed by Mrs Keating.

  ‘Who’s Mrs Keating?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, you don’t know Mrs Keating?’

  ‘Uh, no …,’ I said, stopping myself from adding: ‘surely if I knew her, I wouldn’t be asking you.’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t introduce you?’

  ‘But where would I have met her?’

  ‘At my office. You were here how many times?’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Rose Keating is my secretary.’

  Well, that took some effort to get out of him.

  ‘And she interviewed all the social services people?’

  ‘Uh, yes. She’s very good at that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’m sure she is,’ I said. ‘Are you happy with the new statements?’

  ‘Happy?’ he asked, as if he didn’t understand the meaning of the word. ‘I think they’re fine, yes. But happy … ?’

  There was a long existential pause on the telephone line as he pondered the semantic implications of ‘happy’. God, this man was work. From our brief association to date, I could see that I would probably never understand him, let alone get to know him. After our initial meeting, all business was conducted by phone – and on the one or two occasions when I suggested I stop by and see him for a chat, he sounded almost horrified, telling me, ‘No need to trouble yourself coming all the way to Balham.’ I sensed he was very aware of his profound social awkwardness, his verbal hesitancy, his almost autistic inability to make even the most minor emotional connection with a client. But I now knew that he was very good at what he did – exceptionally thorough and considered. I was certain that, behind all the awkwardness, there was a private man of some emotional complexity and feeling – he did have a wife and kids, after all. But he would never let me (or probably any other client) be privy to that side of him. It wasn’t as if he was one of those much doted-upon English eccentrics who played to the gallery when it came to their idiosyncrasies. No, Nigel Clapp wasn’t quaint or quirky – he was downright strange. Unnervingly so … given that he was my one hope out of this nightmare.

  And yet, little by little, I was beginning to trust him.

  ‘Mr Clapp, are you still there?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘So there was something else to discuss, wasn’t there?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Clapp,’ I said respectfully. ‘You called me.’

  ‘That’s right, I did. Now ... uhm ... I think you should write a letter. You don’t mind me saying that, do you?’

  ‘No, if it is your professional opinion that I should write a letter that would be beneficial to my case, I’ll write the letter. I just need to know to whom I should write the letter.’

  ‘To your husband. I’d like to establish … uhm … that you want contact with him as regards your son’s well-being in his new home ... as regards how this Ms Dexter is treating him, and what his plans are for the future. I’d also like to suggest that you propose a face-to-face meeting … just the two of you ... to discuss Jack’s future.’

  ‘But I really don’t want to meet him right now, Mr Clapp. I don’t think I could face him.’

  ‘I can appreciate that. But … uhm … unless I am mistaken ... and I could be mistaken, I have been mistaken in the past, I do make mistakes ... uhm ... I don’t think he’ll want to see you. Guilt, you see. He’ll feel guilty. Unless I am wrong …’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you’re wrong. In fact, my sister had a similar idea.’

  ‘About what?’ he asked. And I dropped the subject before things got more confused.

  But that evening I did write the letter.

  Dear Tony

  I cannot begin to articulate the grief you have caused me. Nor can I fathom how you could have betrayed me and your son in such a ferocious, self-serving way. You used my illness – a temporary clinical condition, from which I am now largely recovered – as a means by which to snatch my son from me, and reinvent your life with a woman whom you were obviously seeing while I was pregnant with your son. The fact that you then manipulated the facts of my post-partum depression to claim that I was a danger to Jack is unspeakable both in its cunning and its cruelty.

  But it is another, more pressing matter that compels me to write you. I am troubled by the fact that, as Jack’s mother, I have been deliberately kept in the dark as to who is looking after him, whether he is being properly cared for, and if he is getting the proper maternal attention that an infant needs.

  There are also questions about his upbringing – no matter what the final custody arrangements turn out to be – which we must decide together.

  That is what I want to most emphasize now – the fact that, despite the desperate anguish I feel by being unfairly separated from my son, and despite my anger at your terrible betrayal – my primary concern is Jack’s welfare and his future happiness. For this reason, I am willing to put aside my anguish to sit down with you for the first of what must be an ongoing series of conversations about our son and his future. For his sake, we should put all our animosities to one side and talk.

  I look forward to hearing from you shortly, proposing a time and place when we should meet.

  Yours

  ‘My, you are clever,’ Julia said after I showed her the final draft.

  ‘You can thank Mr Clapp for that. He made me write three different drafts before he was happy with the letter.’

  ‘Are you serious? Mr Clapp – the original Mr Tentative – actually edited you?’

  ‘Not only that – but he kept emailing me back with assorted suggestions as to how we could push the knife in deeper … though, of course, he would never be so crude as to suggest that we were attempting to trip up my estranged husband, even though that was precisely the object of this exercise.’

  ‘Well, I must say that it is a most cunning letter. Because it points up your victimization without falling into self-pity. At the same time, it sticks it to him about two-timing you, and also raises all sorts of questions about his real motivations behind all this. And you then show tremendous graciousness about putting your anger to one side in order to do what’s best for your son …’

  Three days later, I received a letter from Tony.

  Dear Sally

  Considering the threats you made against the life of our son – and considering your complete lack of maternal interest in him following his birth – I find it rather extraordinary that you write me now, speaking about how I betrayed you. Especially when it is you who so betrayed an innocent baby.

  As to your accusation that I was betraying you while pregnant, you should know that Diane Dexter has been a close friend of mine for years. And I turned to her as a friend for support when your mental health began to decline during your pregnancy. Our friendship only turned into something else after your breakdown and your irresponsible, endangering behaviour against our son.

  She could not be a better surrogate mother to my son – and has provided Jack the safe, calm environment he needs in these early days of his life. I am most certainly aware of the fact that you – as Jack’s mother – should have an important input into decisions about his future. But until I am certain that you are no longer a danger to him, I cannot sit down with you to ‘talk things out’. I do hope that you are on the road to mental recovery – and have begun to face up to your injurious behaviour against our son. Do understand: I hold no grudge against you whatsoever. And I only wish you the best for the future.

  Yours sincerely

  Tony

  c.c. Jessica Law, Wandsworth DHSS.

  T
he letter shook in my hands as I read it. I immediately faxed a copy to Nigel Clapp, and then knocked on Julia’s door. She offered coffee and commiseration.

  ‘You know a lawyer worked with him on this,’ she said.

  ‘Just like my letter.’

  ‘Only yours was, at least, in your own voice. This missive … it sounds downright Victorian in places. ”Your injurious behaviour against our son.” Who uses language like that nowadays?’

  ‘It’s certainly not Tony’s prose style – which is tight and clipped. And he never goes in for touchy-feely stuff, like: ”I hold no ill will against you whatsoever. And I only wish you the best for the future.” He holds complete ill will against me, and hopes I’ll walk under a bus at the earliest possible convenience.’

  ‘It’s a divorce. And in a divorce, it always turns ugly. Especially when the stakes are so high.’

  Late that afternoon, Mr Clapp rang me.

  ‘Uhm … about your husband’s letter …’

  ‘It has me worried,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Because it’s allowed that bastard to refute everything I said in the first letter. And because it also allowed him to put on the record his contention that she “saved” my son … which besides being a total lie is also totally offensive.’

  ‘I could see how … uhm … you might be upset by such a comment. But as regards the damage the letter might do … it’s what I expected.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Oh yes, I am being quite serious. It’s what I expected and wanted.’

  ‘You wanted this sort of reply?’

  ‘Uh, yes.’

  Then there was another of his signature pauses, hinting that he wanted to move on to another topic of conversation.

  ‘May I ask you if you’ve had any further success finding work?’

  ‘I’ve been trying, but I just don’t seem to be having much luck.’

  ‘I spoke with Dr Rodale, your … uhm …’

  He cleared his throat, obviously not wanting to say the embarrassing word. So I helped him out.

  ‘Psychiatrist.’