by Caro Fraser
No, he told himself, it was all very unlikely. He had been utterly circumspect over the years, even to the point of duplicity. The closest he had come to committing any act of folly had been in the matter of Anthony. Leo stopped again, this time beneath the archway of Caper Court, as he thought of Anthony. But then he had lost his heart, ridiculously, humiliatingly, and nothing like that would ever be permitted to happen in his life again. That could have destroyed everything, if he had let it – or if Anthony had not got his tenancy.
Leo sighed and walked on into chambers, trying to shake his black mood from him. But he knew that this anxiety would be hanging over him for the next few months, until Easter, until it had all been decided.
Back in his room, he decided to take stock of things. He should take soundings, have a chat with those judges with whom he was friendly, those who knew him well on a personal level. Winding a length of pink ribbon round his fingers, Leo leant back in his chair, a frown sharpening the angles of his handsome, gaunt face as he drew up a mental list.
There was Sir Mungo, of course; they’d always got on well enough. He abhorred Sir Mungo’s chauvinistic bombast, but he had always smiled in his company, never betrayed his feelings. He would simply have to trust to luck there. Anyway, Sir Mungo was a great one for sheer proficiency and ability, and on that level he should score well.
Then there was Michael Winstanley. He knew he could count on him. They were sufficiently good friends for Leo to know that there was no need even to canvass him.
Then there was Frank Chamberlin – he was a good old boy, definitely someone whose backing he could expect. He had known Frank for years, had been led by him in countless cases before he was made a judge, and now appeared regularly before him. He knew Frank liked him and always sought him out at legal gatherings, preferring Leo’s amusing conversation to the dry murmurings of his own contemporaries. Frank would be a useful fellow to speak to, someone honest enough to tell him how the land lay, and what was going on in the minds of the likes of Sir Mungo and Sir Mostyn Smith. Two diehards, two reactionaries who, if even the faintest shadows of scandal were found to darken the pages of his file, might hum and haw and make difficulties over his appointment. Yes, he would sound out Frank. Who else was there? John Rushworth – he was a decent enough fellow, and Leo often appeared before him, but he didn’t really know him well. He was a relatively new judge and came from an admiralty background. Nothing to be guessed at there.
Lionel Rawden – he might be worth having a word with. And Alan Still. That left Roger Ware, the Honourable Sir. Leo grimaced as he unwound the ribbon from his fingers and leant forward thoughtfully. Well, he certainly knew Roger well enough to take him out for a drink and do a little lobbying, but he wasn’t entirely sure of the man. He was always friendly enough – he was one of the younger judges, easy-going on the Bench, and he and Leo had a cordial relationship – but there was a sharpness about the Honourable Sir Roger’s glance which Leo did not find comfortable. He was not always easy in the company of those as keenly intelligent as himself. It made him feel vulnerable.
As for the appeal judges – well, they were beyond his reach. He would simply have to hope for the best there.
Leo rose and went to the window. Looking down, he saw Anthony, his bag containing his robes slung over his shoulder, on his way to court. He looked cheerful. He had that blissful, boyish expression that Leo recalled from months and months ago, when he had first taken Anthony to dinner. He wondered what it was that made Anthony’s heart sing these days. Certainly not Leo. Not any more.
Anthony ploughed impatiently through his work until Friday arrived. The morning passed quickly enough in court, but in the afternoon, as he sat trying to draft an opinion on sub-freights, time dragged interminably. The worst – but in some ways the best – hour was between six and seven. Most people had left chambers by then, so there was no impetus to work and merely time to mark. But there was also the delight of anticipation, of wondering what she would wear, what they would talk about. He had booked a table for dinner at Le Café du Jardin. He hoped she wouldn’t make some excuse after their drink at Gregory’s and just leave. There was always that possibility. They hadn’t planned anything more definite than just meeting for a drink. He wondered if his tie was all right.
At last he left chambers at ten to seven, and hurried through the darkness up Chancery Lane. She was there when he arrived, hanging her coat up, and she smiled when she saw him.
‘Hi,’ he said as he came towards her. ‘Look, shall we just have a quick drink here? I’ve booked a table for dinner.’
She looked slightly surprised. ‘Oh, fine. Yes. Yes, I’ll have a gin and tonic, thanks.’
His heart was bathed in relief as he made his way to the bar. He would have her to himself for the whole evening. He loved this feeling, loved being swept away by someone. The first evening was, in many ways, always the best. Except for the first time you took them to bed, of course. He turned to glance at Rachel as he waited for his change, and felt suddenly overwhelmed at the thought of taking her to bed, of making love to her. And then he stopped himself. Don’t be absurd, he thought. She probably doesn’t think it’s anything like that. You’re merely professional colleagues. Remember how it was last time. This is all in your own mind. Don’t get ahead of yourself.
He took the drinks back to the table and they sat for an hour or so, talking. They talked about people they both knew, about other barristers and solicitors, about the events of the day. There was nothing remotely personal in it. In fact, Anthony got the impression that she was wary of allowing the conversation to take any sort of personal turn.
The effort of keeping the conversation commonplace, however, could not last, and they lapsed into a long and oddly strained silence on the way to the restaurant. Once there, however, she began gradually to open up a little about herself.
‘No, I’m an only child,’ she said in reply to a question of Anthony’s. Then she put down her menu and rested her elbows on it, cupping her face in her hands so that her hair swung forward and the light from the candle lit her cheekbones. ‘My mother lives in Bath. She’s wonderful. She’s everything I’m not.’ She smiled.
‘And what’s that?’ said Anthony. He wanted to reach out and trace the line of her face with his finger, right down to her mouth.
‘Oh, energetic, amusing – always dashing about, seeing things and people, doing everything there is to do.’
‘Aren’t you like that?’
‘No. I’m a bit of a stay-at-home, I’m afraid. Not very good with people. Don’t have my mother’s social dynamism.’
‘We’ll order in a couple of minutes,’ said Anthony to the waiter hovering next to them. He turned back to Rachel.
‘Do you share a flat, live with friends?’ he asked.
‘No. No. I live alone,’ said Rachel. Wonderful, thought Anthony.
‘What about your father?’ He picked up a breadstick and snapped it.
Rachel sat back away from the candlelight and shadow fell upon her face. She looked down at her lap. ‘I don’t see him. That is, he and my mother split up.’
Anthony nodded and ate some of his breadstick. He sensed that she didn’t want to talk about this. The faint, cold reserve had returned. He could think of nothing to say until the waiter returned to take their order.
After two glasses of wine, the chilly edge to her manner dropped away. She even laughed so much at Anthony’s description of his father and his doings that she dropped her knife on the floor.
‘Honestly,’ said Anthony, as the waiter brought her another, ‘he’s the most incredible fraud. I mean, there’s no getting away from the fact that people buy his paintings, but I don’t believe there’s a shred of intrinsic merit in them.’
‘Your father’s behaviour may be a bit bizarre, but I don’t think his paintings are,’ replied Rachel.
‘Do you know them?’
‘Of course I do. Anyone who likes modern art has heard of Chay Cross.’
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‘Well, not vice versa, I can tell you,’ said Anthony. He was about to pour out more wine for her, but she placed a hand over her glass. He put the bottle down.
‘I saw him on a Channel Four arts programme,’ said Rachel thoughtfully, ‘the one that’s on on Friday nights. I thought he was very interesting.’ She turned her gaze to Anthony. ‘You look rather like him.’ She smiled. ‘I wonder if that’s the way you’re going to look in twenty years’ time.’
‘God, I hope not,’ murmured Anthony.
‘You’re really well on the way to being a stuffed shirt, aren’t you?’ she said teasingly. ‘And only twenty-three.’
He smiled. God, he loved it when she did that thing of dipping her head and then looking up at him. He wanted to run his hands over that long white throat and onto her shoulders, over her breasts. He wondered fleetingly what her breasts were like. Small. Small and soft. He swallowed. Think of something else.
‘I think if you’d seen my father three years ago, after he’d just been done for possession and let out on police bail, you might have thought differently. He must be the luckiest old hippy in the Western world. And I still think his paintings are a con.’
‘Well, you can take me to his new exhibition,’ Rachel said. ‘I would quite like to meet him.’ This was a mistake, she told herself. But it was too late.
His heart slipped. She wanted to see him again. No, no, she didn’t. She just wanted to meet his father. Oh, well. At least it would mean another evening in her company.
‘Yes. Yes, we’ll do that,’ he said.
It seemed to him that there were too many people around as they walked from Covent Garden down to the Strand. They walked slowly, lingeringly, and she said nothing when he slipped his hand into hers. They were quite silent as they walked. She glanced up at him, wondering what he was thinking about. It was all right. He had touched her, he was holding her hand, and she hadn’t done anything stupid. It was all right. But she was aware of a tension in her chest as they walked, a tension that made her unable to say anything.
She took her hand away as they reached the Strand. ‘I left my car at home today. I can get a bus from over there,’ she said. He stood uncertainly. He didn’t want her to go home. He didn’t want the evening to end. But he could think of nothing to do.
‘You don’t want to go on anywhere? A club, or—’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t really like clubs. And I’ve had a pretty long week. I’d better go home.’
‘All right.’ Things to say were fighting one another in his head. When can I see you again? Shall I call you next week? Are you busy tomorrow night? What’s your phone number? All of it sounded gauche. Anthony didn’t want to be gauche. He wanted to behave with casual assurance. He already suspected, since he’d discovered over dinner how old she was, that she regarded him as no more than an amusing boy. The tables were turned. For once, he wanted someone more than they wanted him. Or possibly they didn’t want him at all. He glanced up and down the street.
‘We’d better cross over,’ he said at last.
When they reached the other side, she said, ‘Thank you for a lovely evening. I did enjoy it.’
‘So did I,’ said Anthony. His glance wandered over her face, and she watched his eyes. How very, very nice he is, she thought.
The pavement was still busy with people heading for Charing Cross station. Behind them, two youngsters were bedding down in the doorway of Saxone for the night. He felt a sense of urgency and frustration. ‘You know,’ he said, and paused. ‘You know—’ And he put up a hand to touch her hair lightly. ‘I …’
‘What?’ Her face held only a blank look of curiosity; there was not a shadow of reciprocation of his own desires and feelings. He felt confused, horribly wrong-footed. He dropped his hand.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘goodnight, and thank you.’ As she walked away, she turned and gave a little wave, relief and guilt in her heart.
CHAPTER SIX
When Felicity stumbled into the office one morning two weeks later, in early November, puffing from her run from the station, she felt a small glow of triumph at having arrived on time for the fifth day running. Although there was still something of a backlog of Rachel’s work on her desk, she felt that she was getting somewhere with her resolution to prove herself capable and efficient. All she had to do now was improve her spelling and typing.
As she made her way to her desk, pulling off her woollen gloves, Felicity was aware that the Menopausals were huddled together like so many twittering birds. They drew apart at her approach, and she knew they had been talking about her. Despite a sour little sense of ostracism, she managed a cheerful smile and called ‘Good morning!’ to them.
Without even pausing for her morning coffee, Felicity set straight to work, clattering away at Rachel’s tapes, and felt by the time eleven o’clock came that she was breaking the back of it. She would just grab a sandwich at twelve and spend her lunch hour photocopying those charts on the Valeo Trader. As she worked, however, Felicity was aware of the glances of Louise and Alma straying in her direction; there was an atmosphere of secrecy and tension. When her phone rang at eleven-thirty and Mr Lamb’s voice summoned her to his office, she knew, with a sinking heart, that trouble was coming.
She took the tapes and letters she had completed to Rachel’s room. Rachel, she thought, was looking as serene and lovely as she usually did; it almost broke Felicity’s heart that someone should look as good as that. Maybe some day they could sit down, just girls together, and talk, and she could ask her how she did it. Maybe I could find out how to get my life straight, thought Felicity wistfully.
Mr Lamb had an office on the eighth floor, right at the end, in a remote corner of the accounts department. Quite what he did there all day, unless it was to shuffle round the holiday rotas and count out luncheon vouchers, no one knew. He wore a sour, officious expression as Felicity entered the room; she knew he was relishing this.
He did not ask Felicity to sit down, but let her stand. ‘I expected you to come as soon as I asked to see you,’ he said.
‘I had some letters to take to Miss Dean,’ replied Felicity. Where did he get off with all this stuff? she thought. He was only an office manager, not the senior partner. Still, let’s try to keep him sweet. ‘Sorry,’ she added, and smiled.
‘I imagine you know the reason why I asked to see you,’ said Mr Lamb. He ran a hand over his head, smoothing down the sparse black hairs on his pink, shining skull.
‘No, I don’t, as a matter of fact,’ said Felicity brightly.
‘I’ve received complaints.’
‘From Miss Dean?’ asked Felicity, lifting her chin and swallowing.
‘No, not from Miss Dean,’ said Mr Lamb. ‘It seems Miss Dean is rather stupidly good-natured where you are concerned. No, I’m afraid that your fellow secretaries are the ones who have complained.’ He clasped his hands together on the desk in front of him. They were stubby white hands, with coarse black hairs on the backs of his fingers. What a mean, horrible little man you are, thought Felicity, in your nasty little office, hating your own inadequacy, getting your own back by picking on people like me.
‘What kind of complaints?’ she asked.
‘Mainly that they are being forced to take on extra work – work that you should be doing – because you are habitually late, slow, sloppy and generally incompetent.’ Now he smiled. ‘That about sums it up. It’s really just a question of what I am to do about it. As Louise has pointed out, it’s hardly fair that they should pay the price for your inability to keep up with your work.’ He paused. ‘Is it now?’
She was forced to make some reply. ‘No,’ she said. Oh, please just make this a telling-off and get it over with. It was so unfair. She’d really been trying hard recently – none of the other girls had had to help her out with her stuff for a while now.
‘So it may be that we shall have to let you go.’
Fear rose up in Felic
ity’s throat. She stared straight at him and said, ‘You can’t sack me. It isn’t up to you.’
He smiled again and rose from his desk. ‘No, but I can have a word with those who can.’ He could, she knew; this had been her last chance.
Felicity clenched her fingers; her palms felt damp. ‘Come on, Mr Lamb, you’re not going to get me sacked just because of this?’ Maybe there was a way of talking him round. He was probably just enjoying flexing his administrative muscle here.
‘Not necessarily.’ He walked to the door and turned the key. Felicity looked at him in astonishment. He came over to her, putting his face very near hers. ‘It’s really a question of I scratch your back, you scratch mine.’
‘What?’ said Felicity.
‘I mean, before you do anything, or say anything, think very hard about the situation. You’re not likely to get another job in a hurry. We won’t give you any references. Now, I’ve an idea that your home life isn’t all that easy.’ He laid a hand on her breast, and she jumped at the touch. ‘You just give me one little kiss, Felicity, and we won’t say anything more about it.’ He was breathing quickly now, and she felt his fingers tighten on her breast. She was about to raise an arm and shake his hand off, step away from him and unlock the door, when she thought of Sandy, of the flat, of a life that was teetering on the edge of disaster. He was right. She wouldn’t get another job in a hurry. She said nothing, merely stood rigid, looking away at his desk, her eyes fixed on the sharp steel letter opener that lay there. I’d like to slide that right between your ribs, she thought. She felt his other hand on her back and then his face against hers, his lips pushing on her mouth, his tongue forcing it open. She closed her eyes in disgust, trying to squirm away, and as she opened them again she saw the black hairs in his nostrils, the suety flesh of his face close against hers. His mouth was rubbery, and the sensation of his saliva in her mouth was nauseating. His hand kneaded her left breast frantically as he kissed her, pressing his body against hers. At last she pushed him away and stood glaring at him, eyes wide, jumper disordered. He smiled, lifted his chin, straightened his tie, and looked at her. He licked his mouth as he passed a hand over his head.
