by Caro Fraser
‘How do Herne Hill Comprehensive and Bristol University sound?’ he said. His brown eyes still held a faint expression of arrogance.
‘You do astonish me,’ said Rachel coolly, then added, ‘I’ll bet you got a first.’
Anthony drained his glass. ‘You’re right.’ He nodded. ‘I did get a first.’ And he grinned at her. This time, when she smiled back, it was a soft, curving smile, not like the brief, reserved smiles of before. God, she was lovely, he thought. He felt a surge of excitement and pleasure at the thought that, because of this case, he would be seeing more of her, regularly. Why should he be so pleased? After all, he’d only spent ten minutes talking to her, and pretty banal stuff it had been. Perhaps it was simply that she was so good to look at – beautiful in a remote, hands-off way which he had never encountered before. That was it. It was the pleasure of melting that chilly reserve. Yet each time he did it, he felt the frost creeping quickly back over the surface. Even now, her smile had faded and she was studying her wine glass seriously.
‘Do you want to know what I imagined you would look like from hearing your voice on the phone?’ he asked her. His voice was lazily intimate.
She looked up swiftly. ‘No, I don’t think I do,’ she replied, giving him a brief, polite smile. ‘I think we should talk about the Valeo Dawn. It’s a good deal more important.’
Anthony was a little taken aback. He was accustomed to making easy headway with women. He had forgotten that she must regard him as no more than counsel whom she had happened to instruct in a case. She was looking at him as though he were no more than that. And he wasn’t anything more than that, when he came to think of it. He felt a bit of a berk.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Absolutely right.’ And so they talked about the case for a while, Anthony doing his best to forget about the way she looked and treat her as he would any other lawyer. Rachel felt better, relieved that he had eased up on the intent, admiring glances. It was those that made her stiffen up, that ravelled up her insides into a little ball of anxiety. As her attention wandered from what he was saying, she glanced round and saw someone coming over to them. It was Roger Williams. Her heart sank.
Anthony looked up at the heavy, slightly red-faced man who had joined them.
‘Hello there, Rachel,’ said Roger. ‘Thought it was you. Haven’t seen you in here before, have we?’ He laid a hand on her back and slid it round to her shoulder as he stood next to her, surveying Anthony. ‘You and your – ah – friend care to join us over there?’ Roger gave Anthony a boozy smile and held out his free hand. ‘Roger Williams,’ he said.
Anthony shook his hand. ‘Anthony Cross.’ He looked back at Rachel, disturbed by her face, which was frozen into an expression – not of distaste, but almost of contained panic. The muscles of her back and shoulders seemed to have gone rigid, and he could tell that she was steeling herself not to draw away from Roger’s hand. Anthony was suddenly aware of an instinct of protectiveness. He looked up quickly at Roger and said, ‘Actually, we’re just off. Thanks, anyway.’
‘What – not going to finish this off?’ Roger indicated the half-full bottle of wine. ‘Still,’ he added, grinning at them and sliding his hand away from Rachel’s shoulder, ‘if you’ve got better things to do …’
Anthony gave him a tight smile and got up. Rachel rose, too, and Anthony helped her on with her coat. Roger had drunk too much wine to be aware of any undercurrent of tension. As she buttoned her coat, Rachel turned and said clearly, ‘Goodnight, Roger.’ Anthony was surprised at the sudden change in her, from rigid fearfulness to calm carelessness.
‘’Night,’ said Roger. And he nodded a farewell to Anthony before making his way back to his colleagues to regale them with information about Anthony, who he had decided must be Rachel’s bloke.
As they walked back out of the market, Anthony remarked, ‘You didn’t seem to like him very much.’
Rachel glanced up at him. ‘No, not much,’ she replied. ‘Actually, I don’t really know him very well yet. I’ve only been with the firm six weeks, you know.’
They came out into Gracechurch Street and stopped on the pavement. ‘Well,’ said Anthony; he turned to look at her. She was staring straight ahead, clearly thinking about something which had nothing to do with him. He was not accustomed to feeling so shut out from any woman’s attention. He was uncertain what to do or say.
After a pause, he said, ‘Which way do you go? London Bridge?’ He rather hoped he could walk a while with her, try to melt this cold, aloof exterior. The slight warmth of their conversation in the wine bar seemed to have faded entirely.
She shook her head. ‘My car is parked near the office. Anyway’ – she held out her hand – ‘that was a very pleasant start to our case. Thank you.’ Her voice held just the correct blend of informality and politeness. She wasn’t the least bit interested in him, he thought. She might as well be looking right through him. Well, why should she be interested in him? This was purely a professional relationship. It was his habit, he knew, always to reduce encounters with women to sexual terms, and it was a ridiculous, adolescent habit, he told himself. Anyway, she was obviously a few years older than he was. He shook her hand, and her fingers felt slender and cold.
He said goodnight, and walked down towards the Monument and London Bridge, conscious of a sense of flatness. She was obviously a bit of a cold fish, and yet he couldn’t help feeling his heart lift slightly at the thought that he was bound to see her again before long.
As she drove home, Rachel tried to steel her mind to concentrate on the books programme on Radio 4. But her thoughts kept drifting back to Anthony, to his face and his dark eyes. So sure of himself. She gripped the wheel tightly. She had not wanted this. She had not wanted to meet anyone to whom she felt in any way attracted. Why? She sighed as she slowed down at a red light. She knew why. To be so afraid of men, of all men, was absurd. No one was likely to harm her, or hurt her as she had been hurt before. Each time she met someone she liked, she told herself that it would be all right, that this time she would be able to make some return of their interest and affection. But each time she was wrong. Nothing changed. Not the rigidity of fear at the warmth of an interested smile, an intent gaze, nor the clammy coldness of her limbs if anyone tried to touch her.
She changed gear and moved forward as the lights turned to green. It amounted to nothing but pain, over and over again. Yet he had been so nice, so charming and boyish and handsome. And so innocent. What right had she to have anything to do with innocence? Put him out of your mind, she thought. There was nothing for her in any relationship with any man. There was nowhere for it to go. She could not give anything back.
She turned the corner in to the terrace where she lived and stopped the car. She sat there for a moment, thinking, maybe it doesn’t matter. Perhaps I am being entirely foolish. I’ve only just met him and he can’t be interested in me. You’re paranoid – and conceited, she told herself. But she knew it was not that. She remembered the way he had looked at her, the compelling gaze of his brown eyes. He was too young to conceal much. Rachel suddenly wished with all her heart that she had never sent Anthony Cross the instructions on the Valeo Dawn.
CHAPTER FIVE
Over the days that followed, Anthony found himself thinking a good deal about Rachel. He spent idle moments – and others not so idle – conjuring up her image, dwelling on the recollection of her face. Sometimes he succeeded in bringing that soft, illuminating smile vividly to mind, but at other times her image would elude him entirely, irritating him. He even found himself, during an application for an interlocutory injunction, so lost in contemplation of when he might see her again that the judge had to ask him the same question twice.
Something about all of this troubled him. He was accustomed to the occasional infatuation, to meeting some unusually attractive girl at a party or a friend’s house, and wanting to see her again. But then the attraction was invariably mutual, and he was able to build his romantic fancies upon the probabilit
y that his interest was reciprocated. Such relationships normally followed a pattern, one in which he would take the girl out several times, then eventually to bed, and all the while the enchantment of the initial infatuation would be fading, until at last he got bored and let it drift off into nowhere. That had happened with Lizzie. The insubstantiality of these relationships did not trouble him unduly. In a way, he was relieved each time when the thing petered out. He had no real wish, since his love affair with Julia two years ago, to become involved with anyone. He had been painfully and deeply in love with Julia – lovely, amoral, hedonistic Julia – over a period of several months. He had landed himself in debt in an attempt to keep up with her expensive habits and friends, to the point where Leo had had to bail him out, and ultimately she had deserted him for someone else.
And there had been the business with Leo, too, and all the emotional confusion which that had engendered. No, he was happy to keep his relationships with women on an easy, physical level. He didn’t mind falling in love, as long as it didn’t last.
He supposed that the amount of time he spent thinking about Rachel could be put down to plain physical attraction. The problem was, his instinct told him that she hadn’t felt the same way. Still, he told himself, he could probably remedy that. Anthony had few doubts about himself. He had changed more than a little since the days when he had been Michael Gibbon’s gauche, nervous pupil, living at home with his brother and schoolteacher mother, scraping coins together for bus fares and sandwiches, dogged by self-doubt in all aspects of his life. Then he had had only his good looks and intellectual brilliance to keep him afloat. These days, those were merely the basic qualities upon which he capitalised. He felt that he could, if he wanted, turn his strictly professional relationship with Rachel into something infinitely more interesting.
But once he had sent back his initial opinion on the Valeo Dawn, he realised that he was unlikely to see her again for some time. There was no need. The case could hang fire for months, and he could do nothing but wait.
The potency of her image began to fade, and he had almost decided to dismiss her from his life, for the time being at least, when he met her by chance in Middle Temple.
He was passing through Fountain Court on his way to Hare Buildings when he saw her coming up the steps from Temple Place. She was wearing a dark suit and a striped shirt, the severity of their cut emphasising her femininity. She wore her silky black hair loose, and her face was preoccupied. She would have passed straight by him if he had not stopped her.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, her smile uncertain as she returned his greeting. They were standing under the trees, close to the fountain.
‘So,’ he said, searching for something to say, something with which to detain her, ‘any more news on the Valeo Dawn?’
‘No, not much,’ replied Rachel. ‘Well, that is, the other side seem to be sticking to their line that the explosion was caused by some defect in the auxiliary engine.’
‘How do they arrive at that conclusion?’ Anthony’s mind was not even on his words. The attentive expression on his face had nothing to do with his question, and everything to do with the fact that he was trying to absorb every detail of her features, quite lost in her loveliness. The reality of it made his imperfect recollection of the past weeks seem quite threadbare. His eyes traced the line of her cheekbones, the movement of her mouth, the slight frown in her eyes as she spoke.
‘Well, we haven’t seen their survey report, of course. But they seem to be suggesting that either there was something wrong with the oiler cap on the tank, or else it was the auxiliary engine itself which ignited.’
Anthony managed to skim the surface of this to come up with a coherent response. ‘But what evidence could they possibly have to support that?’
‘I don’t know.’ A brisk October breeze swept the court, scuttering dead leaves across the surface of the fountain, whipping shining strands of Rachel’s hair across her face. She raised a hand to brush them back, away from her mouth, as she spoke; Anthony noticed that her cuffs were fastened with men’s cufflinks, enhancing the slenderness of her wrists. He wondered to what man the cufflinks belonged. ‘There’s a possibility I may have to go out to look at the ship. The master’s going to be in Bombay for the next few weeks, helping with the investigation. I need to take a statement from him.’
Anthony nodded. ‘I see.’ The breeze persisted, and Rachel pulled her jacket around her and shivered. Anthony wanted more than anything he could think of to put his arms around her and make her warm. He smiled at the absurdity of the thought.
‘Well,’ she said, and hesitated. He had run out of things to say, and she was about to go. In a minute she would have said goodbye and be walking away from him. He put a sudden detaining hand on her arm.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I really enjoyed our drink together a couple of weeks ago. Could we do it again? I mean, some evening when you’re free.’
Rachel shivered again. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, glancing away. Don’t do it, she told herself. Don’t be unfair to him.
Oh, please, he thought. Please. The sound of the water splashing in the fountain seemed suddenly loud, insistent.
‘It just seems like a good idea,’ he found himself saying. What the hell did that mean? He was making a mess of this. Normally the girl in question was only too happy to say yes. Having to handle reluctance was a novelty. ‘Don’t you think?’ he added feebly.
‘I suppose so.’ She looked up at him hesitantly. ‘I’m not sure if it’s strictly professional, though.’ And she smiled. Why not? It wouldn’t matter, just an hour or two.
Thank you, he thought. Thank you. He adored moments of capitulation, even on this most prosaic level, and could not help betraying this. His smile in reply was radiant, so that Rachel was quite touched by his pleasure.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Excellent. Why don’t I meet you somewhere after work? Tonight?’
Rachel was a little startled. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. That’s rather short notice. Perhaps Friday would be better.’
‘All right. Do you know Gregory’s? Just off Chancery Lane? About seven?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. All right. I’ll see you then.’ And she raised a hand and carried on across Fountain Court, while Anthony stood for a moment under the trees. Then he laughed to himself and went cheerfully into Hare Buildings.
Leo, standing by the postbox in Middle Temple Lane, looked at the girl as she walked past him, then glanced at Anthony walking off from under the trees. She was very beautiful, thought Leo. He wondered if this was some new woman in Anthony’s life. He was aware, with irritation, of a faint flicker of jealousy. Everything was going well for Anthony. He was young, his work was good, he was liked in chambers, he was earning decent money, and beautiful women stopped to talk and smile. And the smiles stayed on their faces even after they had left him, reflected Leo, as he watched Rachel’s figure disappear through the archway into Pump Court.
He stood there for a moment in the chilly air, watching the barristers and clerks going up and down the lane, suddenly visited by one of those occasional flashes of alienation, a feeling that he stood in the middle of a world which was entirely foreign to him. He did not understand why these moments should occur. He was one of them, was he not? Good God, he had even come down to the postbox to post his application for silk. Of course he was part of it. He had lived and worked in the Temple for twenty-three years. The patterns of the flagstones, the shadows of the trees in summer, the scent of polish in the libraries, the hush of the courtyards and the echoes of the cloisters – all these things were dear and familiar in his life. And yet there were days when he felt as though he were looking at it all from a distance, with the eyes of a stranger.
I have learnt to speak their language, he thought, I know all the correct moves to make, I perform my work as though it were second nature. Second to what – what other nature? They know nothing of me. What would they say, what would my worthy fellow members of chambers say if th
ey knew about my life away from here? Perhaps they would say nothing. Perhaps their own lives possess equally absurd moral dichotomies. Perhaps morality has nothing to do with it. What do I know of their minds? What do they know of mine? Only Anthony has glimpsed it, but even he knows nothing of the truth. I may inhabit their world, thought Leo, I may have assumed the appearance and habits of the type, but I am not really of their kind.
As he toyed with his thoughts, Leo watched a car come slowly up the lane, watched the porter raise the barrier and salute the occupant of the car as it turned slowly into Crown Office Row. Leo smiled to himself. Now there was someone who possessed no doubts about himself, who was as sure of his own importance in the scheme of things as he was that God had placed the mighty machinery of the English legal system, full-scale and in working order, on earth on the very first day of creation. The Right Honourable Sir Mungo Stephenson, TC, KCVD, FSA, CBE, QC, Lord Justice of Appeal, had been brought up from his earliest days, his father having been a judge before him, to believe in the greatness of his country’s institutions, and in the pre-eminence of the judicial system as the shining star in Great Britain’s crown of constitutional perfection. He had unshakeable faith in the law and its traditions, he thought it right and proper that the Inns of Court should be impregnable bastions of male dominance, self-regulating, their affairs ordered by men of the right type and background. Men who instinctively knew one another. Men such as himself. Leo knew all this about Sir Mungo Stephenson, and knew, too, that the views of such a man might be influential in deciding whether or not Leo would be allowed to take silk.
Musing on this, Leo turned to walk back to chambers. He wondered what Sir Mungo would make of his other world, of the pretty boys and occasional strange young women, of the gay bars and clubs, of weekends and evenings spent in ways which Sir Mungo could not begin to imagine. A cold hand laid itself momentarily on Leo’s heart, and he stopped to look up at the overcast sky. What if some of it, the merest trace of it, had found its way into the Lord Chancellor’s confidential file, that file marked ‘Leo Davies’, which had been carefully built up over the years since Leo’s very first beginnings at the Bar? But he shook the hand away. The same fears had occurred to him often over the past few weeks, as he had been preparing his application. No one knew how much hearsay, how many trivial reported incidents and chance mistakes were filed away in those reports. No one ever saw them. They belonged to the quiet world of judicial secrecy which even the officious statutes of the Data Protection Act were not allowed to penetrate.
