by Caro Fraser
Anthony walked to the window and looked morosely out across the courtyard at the driving rain. He had no special wish to see Rachel again; he wanted to try to forget about her, wishing the thing had never begun. Still, she had instructed him, and that meant he had to see her. Why did he have to go about starting things up with every attractive woman he met? It only complicated life.
Leo came into the clerks’ room in his shirtsleeves, his new half-moon spectacles perched at the end of his nose. He really thought they made him look rather distinguished.
‘Here you go, William,’ he said, passing some papers to Mr Slee. He glanced at Anthony. ‘Cheer up,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re worried about meeting me in court next week, eh?’
Anthony looked at him. Good God, those new glasses of Leo’s really made him look his age. Anthony was rather taken aback. ‘Don’t worry,’ he replied with a smile. ‘I happen to know we’re going to win. Lewis is bound to uphold the award.’ For the first time, he and Leo were on opposite sides in a case, and Anthony found it an enjoyable novelty. It gave them a common interest that seemed to set their relationship back on its old amiable footing.
‘Ha!’ said Leo. ‘I admire your optimism. But,’ he added ruefully, as he joined Anthony at the window to inspect the weather, ‘I rather suspect you’re right.’
There was a pause, and then Anthony said, ‘Tell me – how do you get out of a case once you’ve been instructed in it? I mean, can you?’
‘Don’t they teach you that sort of thing at Bar School?’ asked Leo. Then he added, ‘I don’t know. The situation has never arisen with me. I think the answer is – you can’t. Not unless you have some formidable, really earth-shattering excuse. Anyway, you’d make sure William got you out of it – isn’t that right, William?’ Leo turned and grinned at Mr Slee.
Mr Slee looked grimly at Anthony and sighed. ‘I don’t think it’s something we want to start thinking about,’ he said. ‘Not quite at this stage.’
‘No, I was only joking, really,’ said Anthony. ‘Just something that’s turning into a bit of a drag.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Leo. ‘How nice to feel you can pick and choose. I must go and do some work.’ He left Anthony staring out at the rain, cursing himself for the fact that, despite everything, he was very much looking forward to seeing Rachel again. Try as he might to suppress the feeling, he was now impatient for Friday to arrive.
When Mr Slee showed Rachel and Mr Nikolaos into Anthony’s room that Friday, Anthony was uncomfortably aware of his own nervousness. It seemed to him that it had been tacitly accepted, at their last meeting, that whatever he had tried to start with her had been an utter failure. As a result, he felt stiff and awkward at the prospect of meeting her. But when he saw her, saw her calm, lovely face and gentle smile as he said hello, it all receded. He was more than glad to see her, just to look at her. She was wearing a suit of pale grey, and a high-necked white shirt that made her neck look very slender. Her black hair was swept back into a knot, and she looked infinitely more elegant than he had ever seen her. But it didn’t matter what she looked like, he reminded himself – she was not for him. He only wished she didn’t have to look so bloody wonderful.
They sat down opposite Anthony’s desk, where the papers in the case were neatly arranged, Mr Nikolaos perching nervously on the edge of his chair. Anthony gave him a brief, reassuring smile as he surveyed him. He was a small, stout Greek in his mid fifties, not very well dressed, and seemingly full of pent-up agitation. Poor guy, thought Anthony, as he began to expound to Mr Nikolaos how things stood for him – Rachel had already told him about Mr Nikolaos’s other minor disasters.
‘… so the main difficulty that we face, as Miss Dean has no doubt already explained to you’ – he put this in just as an excuse to glance in her direction, let his eyes rest for a moment on her mouth, slightly pursed as she inspected some document, and on the soft darkness of her eyelashes and brow – ‘is in establishing that the vessel was not unseaworthy, but that the explosion was caused by some act or default in the navigation or management of the ship.’
Mr Nikolaos was nodding attentively, listening carefully to everything Anthony was saying.
‘Which will give us,’ continued Anthony, ‘a defence under the Hague Rules. So it really is an evidential issue.’
‘But how can they say this vessel is unseaworthy?’ demanded Mr Nikolaos. ‘You see the surveyor’s report—’ He rose and half-crouched over Anthony’s desk, grubbing the report out excitedly from among Anthony’s papers, flicking through the pages and muttering. ‘There! You see?’ He stabbed a stubby finger at the page and read aloud: ‘“The fire, which started at the aft end of the number two generator, had involved a massive release of oil. Analysis of the oil in the bilge showed that the majority of the oil there was lube-oil. In addition, the number two generator had lost three hundred litres or so of lube-oil.”’ He looked up excitedly into Anthony’s face. ‘There! You see? It must have been the mistake of someone working with the generator! Is not my vessel was unseaworthy!’ Mr Nikolaos’s breath smelt strongly of garlic, and Anthony sat back slightly.
‘Yes, but the problem, Mr Nikolaos, is in showing that it was in fact an error by one of the crew, and not, say, some defect in the filters.’
Mr Nikolaos sat back down and looked at Anthony with a mixture of hope and impatience. ‘But you will get the evidence to show this was so?’
Anthony hesitated and glanced at Rachel. ‘If it is there, then I hope we shall.’
They debated the surveyor’s preliminary findings for another twenty minutes or so, Mr Nikolaos becoming more and more agitated, until Rachel laid a hand on his arm.
‘I think you’re right, and Mr Cross thinks you’re right,’ she said, ‘but we have some further way to go before we can establish it conclusively. I’m going to Bombay to see the master shortly, and maybe we can get a clearer picture then. We have another surveyor making a more thorough examination while I’m out there, and I’m sure his report will clarify things.’
Mr Nikolaos subsided. He looked at Rachel and shook his head sadly. ‘OK.’ He glanced up at Anthony. ‘But we must prove this thing! I cannot afford to lose this! I have big problems already, Mr Cross, and I’m relying on you—’
‘I understand, Mr Nikolaos,’ interrupted Anthony. ‘I promise we shall do our best.’
When the conference ended, Rachel and Mr Nikolaos rose. As Anthony was seeing them to the door, Rachel turned to Mr Nikolaos. ‘Would you mind if I had a word with Mr Cross? Perhaps you would wait for me downstairs.’
Mr Nikolaos, preoccupied, nodded and left them. Anthony felt his heart beat a little faster as the door closed; she looked at him and said, ‘I’d like to return your kindness in taking me to your father’s exhibition last week. Would you like to come to supper tomorrow night?’
Anthony was mildly astonished. ‘Look,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘don’t you think this is best kept on a – um – professional footing? I mean, I’m clearly not your cup of tea—’ Best to come clean, he thought, though he wished he could find a more appropriate way of putting it.
‘Anthony, this is just a friendly gesture. Please.’
Anthony wasn’t quite sure he knew what this meant, but if she wanted to be with him, then …
‘Yes, all right,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’ll give you the address.’ And she wrote it down and left it on the corner of his desk. ‘There.’ She smiled at him. It was a smile of such promise that Anthony felt confused. ‘I’ll see you about eight,’ she added.
He sat back down behind his desk after she had gone. David Liphook, with whom he shared the room, came back from court a few minutes later and glanced in Anthony’s direction as he slung his bag into a corner.
‘You look a bit dazed,’ he said.
Anthony raised his eyebrows, still gazing vacantly ahead of him. ‘I am. I’m trying to work out what makes women tick.’
‘I’ve been doing that for ten years,�
�� said David, from the lofty heights of twenty-six. ‘It’s a waste of time. Come on,’ he said, ‘it’s Friday, it’s nearly five-thirty, and the weekend is full of promise. I’ll buy the first round.’
Anthony sighed and rose, wondering just how full of promise his weekend was.
That evening, Rachel stood before the mirror and stared at her reflection. She dragged one finger across her pale skin, down from her brow and past her mouth; her eyes looked blankly back. There has to come a point, she told herself, when you must make the effort to find your way back to normality. What normality? How could she possibly reach back into her life and find a place where things had been normal? It was a state belonging to others, a condition to be attained. ‘Your healing has to come from within,’ her analyst had said. What did she know? How could you heal someone who had never been well or whole to begin with? But you had to make the attempt, you had to climb up, step by step, towards the real world. Then, when you reached it, you would just have to stand teetering there for as long as you could, praying you didn’t lose your balance.
Rachel dropped her head, looked at her hands spread out upon the dressing table, then looked back up again. She did not see the fine-boned loveliness that others saw when they looked at her. It was just her face, after all. To her, it looked as it always had – hollow and lost, with fear behind the eyes. Sometimes it seemed that her reflection belonged to another person entirely.
When she lay in bed later, she slid her hand beneath her nightdress and drew it up across her stomach to her breasts. Her skin felt very soft. She thought of Anthony touching her thus, and in her imagination it was gentle and desirable, and she herself was pliant and unresisting. But that was not the truth, she knew. She drew her hand outside the covers. If I can just take a grip on these fears, she told herself, if I can edge the darkness away and remember that he is safe and kind, then it could be all right.
She recalled how she had let him kiss her, and how she had made her mind a black vacuum for the thing to be supportable. But it won’t always be like that; it must get better. She tensed the muscles of her arms, then relaxed them, trying to remember the relaxation technique she had been taught, so that her body and mind might float away into sleep. There is nothing to be afraid of, she said to herself, and squeezed her eyes tight shut.
The next day passed smoothly and brightly, with an unexpected savour of optimism. She went to Marks & Spencer in the morning and bought wine and olive bread and salad, and pasta and cheese and ham and cream. She spent most Saturday mornings shopping, but then it was rather more mundane, unless she happened to be having one of her friends from school or university round for supper, with their boyfriend or husband. Everyone seemed to have husbands or partners these days; everyone seemed to have lives that moved in shining kaleidoscopic patterns made up of weddings and houses and pregnancies and babies, while Rachel felt as though she were standing still, watching it all go by. Occasionally such threesomes would feel a little awkward, but Rachel preferred to entertain at home, instead of having to go to her friends’ dinner parties, her heart sinking with dread at the prospect of meeting the unattached male who was inevitably roped in on her behalf. No, she felt safer at home.
As she carefully mixed wine vinegar into the salad dressing that evening, Rachel thought of those unattached males. She had learnt how to deal with them, to assume the social mask of polite friendliness while turning them in her mind to wooden images, consigned to oblivion as soon as the evening was over, never to be thought of or encountered again. She had adopted a similar technique with those men who would occasionally approach her in art galleries on Sunday afternoons, friendly, hopeful, lonely. She had learnt to drift unseeingly past and away, learnt how not to look or feel threatened.
But Anthony was different. She could not look past him, or consign him to oblivion. She did not want to. She wanted to be able to keep him close. She had thought over and over about Anthony and this evening, telling herself that if she could do this, then she had taken the first step to overcoming the fears which made her shrink from all intimacy. There are good, kind men in the world, her analyst often reminded her. Not every man is a threat, not every man wants to hurt you. She knew that Anthony was one of those men; she recognised that. So it will be all right, she told herself. Take it moment by moment. But still her hands tightened spasmodically on the side of the salad bowl she was holding as she thought of his hands upon her face. She thrust the thought away.
Anthony got to Rachel’s a little after eight, bearing wine and some flowers. ‘These were a last-minute thought, I’m afraid,’ admitted Anthony, as he gave them to her. ‘The flowers, I mean. They’re from the garage down the road. You see the way they wrap them in this foil stuff to make them look more and better? Sorry.’
‘They’re very nice,’ said Rachel, ‘wherever they come from.’
He followed her through to the kitchen, glancing around with interest at the meticulous feminine order of her flat. He watched her as she reached up to a shelf to fetch a vase for the flowers. She was wearing jeans and a simple black sweater, which clung to her body. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders. Anthony had never seen her in anything but business suits, and he found the sight of her in jeans girlish and touching.
‘It’s nothing special, I’m afraid – just spaghetti,’ she said, and handed him the wine and a corkscrew. You could divide women into two types, thought Anthony: those who opened wine themselves and those who gave it to men to do.
‘I think we’d better stop apologising to each other,’ he said, smiling as he twisted in the corkscrew. ‘You like the flowers and I love spaghetti. In fact, I believe my own spaghetti bolognese is the envy of all Kensington.’
Rachel laughed; she could feel her nervousness ebbing a little. ‘Well, this is carbonara, so that lets me out of the competition.’
‘Far too sophisticated for me to attempt,’ said Anthony. He poured them each a glass of wine and they talked as she cooked. She seemed very bright and jokey, a little nervy, Anthony thought, as he leant back against the fridge and took a sip of his wine. But it was wonderful just to be with her, just to watch her and talk to her. He liked to feel that, once he had managed to bring down a little of that wary resistance of hers, a real affinity existed between them; warmth, amusement, an unspoken understanding. If only he could bring down that physical resistance, too. If everything had gone the way it should have last time, he thought, then I should be able to walk over to her and kiss her, just hug her. But watching her back as she stood at the cooker, he could almost sense how she would tense if he were to approach her. It puzzled him. There is so much affection between us, he thought, but this great physical barrier. He brushed against her shoulder with his arm as he leant across to pick up the wine and take it into the next room, and felt her jerk nervously away. Then she smiled awkwardly at him, trying to move away more naturally from him as though simply to pick up some plates. Oh Lord, he thought – so it’s still going to be like that. Irritation swept him. Very well, then – she won’t have a thing to worry about, he told himself. I won’t lay a finger on her.
Rachel watched him nervously throughout the meal, examining the lines of his face as he talked and his hands as they stroked the base of his wine glass absently. She looked for a long time at his hands, watching their movements almost with fascination. Then she looked back up at his face and smiled. She liked him so much. She wanted so much to want him that maybe, if she tried very hard, then she could do it. She could let him touch her without turning to ice. Then he would come here often, and the hours would be less lonely, and life might gradually become safe. When he had touched her in the kitchen, she simply hadn’t been expecting it, that was all. Next time she would be ready. Better.
‘I can’t believe how wonderfully tidy your flat is,’ remarked Anthony, as he finished his salad. ‘Adam and I just lurch from one scene of domestic chaos to another.’
She smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear with slender fingers, then gla
nced around. ‘I tidied up especially for you,’ she lied. ‘It doesn’t always look like this.’
‘So,’ said Anthony, leaning forward, ‘what do you usually do with your weekends?’
‘Oh, not much.’ Her voice was flat, transparent. ‘Shop. Go to a film. See friends. I like to go to art galleries. I think I might go back to look at your father’s exhibition again tomorrow afternoon, if it’s open.’
‘You’re a glutton for punishment,’ he said with a laugh. ‘But you did say you liked modern art.’
He watched her speculatively as she began to gather the plates up. He had been wondering if there had been some man – some relationship that had recently broken up. That might account for a lot. But he thought he recognised, as he looked at her, that her arid manner, her watchful aloofness, were a result of not having been in the company of any man for a long time. Not intimately.
He helped her to clear the dishes away, and was conscious, as they moved past one another in the kitchen, that she kept her body at a careful distance.
Rachel was conscious of this, too. Don’t be absurd, she told herself. You must let him touch you if he wants to. You mustn’t be afraid.
When she brought the coffee cups through and set them down on one of the little low tables, Anthony was standing flipping through one of her magazines. As she straightened up, he looked towards her, then put down the magazine. There was a pause. ‘Come here,’ he said gently, his earlier resolution quite forgotten.
His eyes were fixed on hers as she moved towards him, her limbs feeling like water, slack and without sensation. Walking into his embrace was like walking into a cage; she stiffened at the clasp of his hands upon her back, as he moved one hand up to her neck to lay her head gently upon his shoulder. He held her for a moment as though she were a child, and she stood, arms at her side, trying not to tremble. When he pulled his head back to look at her face she could feel every atom of her concentration focused upon what he would do next. It will be all right, she told herself. It happened once before, and – just let it happen again. As he put his mouth to hers she did tremble, but there was a sweet liquidity about the sensation that allowed her to put her arms around him. She felt as though she were clinging to a rock, and the kiss was like a wave which must cease, eventually, to beat against her. Remember who it is, she thought, remember you are safe.
