Judicial Whispers

by Caro Fraser

  ‘So what?’ said Leo, shrugging into his jacket. ‘El Vino’s is open. Come on. I can give you half an hour before my little rendezvous with Roger Ware, the Honourable Sir.’

  ‘Oh?’ Anthony unfastened his bands from his collar.

  ‘Just buttering the Bench up a little in preparation for their Easter cogitations. Makes them feel good. Nothing like the feel-good factor.’

  El Vino’s was almost deserted when they went in. ‘Remarkable,’ said Leo, glancing round as they sat down in a corner. ‘Not so many years ago half of Fleet Street would have been in here at this hour. Now they’re all in Wapping, dry as dust.’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ said Anthony.

  ‘Do you?’ said Leo, as a waitress came over to their table. ‘Yes, I suppose you do,’ he murmured. He glanced at the waitress, then at Anthony. ‘A bottle?’

  ‘Just a glass for me, thanks,’ replied Anthony. ‘I’ve still got some papers to look at. Got an arbitration next week.’

  Leo ordered two glasses of house white. ‘So,’ he said, fishing in his pocket for his cigars, ‘who or what is so troublesome that you’re not paying proper attention in court?’ He took out one of his little cigars and lit it, lifting his chin slightly as he did so.

  Anthony sighed and sat back, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets. In a way he was glad of the opportunity to talk about it. It wasn’t really the kind of thing he could discuss with Adam. ‘Well,’ he began, ‘I did a rather stupid thing, I suppose. I got a bit involved with this lady solicitor who instructed me in the case I told you about – the explosion in Bombay.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Leo nodded, blowing out a plume of smoke. There was something bright and attentive about his manner which struck Anthony for a second as being almost prurient. He knew that Leo loved gossip, the details of other people’s personal lives. There was almost a sort of greed about it. But Anthony felt he didn’t much mind. In a way he wanted to involve Leo; it made him feel closer to him, and that was something he wanted to recapture. Just that part of it. Just the friendship. That was all.

  ‘Anyway, I realise now that it wasn’t a very good idea, but—’

  ‘Certainly not something I would ever recommend,’ put in Leo, ‘but that’s not to say that I haven’t been tempted. Take young Jonathon Webster at Holman’s.’ He chuckled, smoothing his hand over his grey hair.

  Anthony felt slightly embarrassed at this. He didn’t really want to know about Leo’s feelings for other men. He was curiously struck by this realisation and said nothing for a moment.

  ‘Sorry – I interrupted you,’ said Leo. ‘Ah!’ The waitress set their wine down before them, and some water biscuits.

  Anthony decided to continue. ‘Well, we went out together a few times and it was all very good. You know, we got on well together. I make her laugh, she makes me laugh, all that sort of thing.’ He stopped. He suddenly felt he did not know how to say any of this, especially to Leo. He wished now he’d just gone back to chambers.

  ‘But?’ Leo sipped his wine, not looking at Anthony.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … Look, I probably don’t really want to talk about any of it. I thought I did, but – anyway, it doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about something else.’ He drained half of his glass in one swallow.

  ‘But the physical side of things is not all it should be?’ said Leo, tapping a little ash from his cigar. His voice was mild and assured.

  Anthony looked at him in surprise. Leo was wearing his best worldly-wise expression; he looked up, met Anthony’s glance and smiled. ‘Is that it? Oh, don’t look so surprised. I mean, what else could it be? It’s just what one would expect to be coming next.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anthony. ‘That’s about it. I mean, I really like her—’

  ‘You fancy her but she doesn’t fancy you. Is that it?’

  ‘Well, no,’ replied Anthony thoughtfully. ‘Not quite. If it were just that, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. Just give up and go home. No, the thing is, I think she likes me as much as I like her. I think she really wants—’ He stopped, staring at his wine. His look of boyish, wistful candour was such that Leo felt a slight rush of rekindled affection for him.

  ‘Well,’ replied Leo lightly, amused at how deeply the young could be touched by life’s trivia, ‘perhaps she’s one of those rare commodities – a blushing virgin.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Anthony, smiling a little ruefully and glancing at Leo, ‘things certainly never progressed that far. No, even on the most basic level we’re not hitting it off. At least … Well, she’s just so remote, sort of frightened. Or else it’s some awful sort of game. I mean, she asked me round to supper, just the two of us …’ He rubbed at the side of his face with his hand. ‘Oh, I know you can’t take that to mean anything, but – well, it was all set up as though something was meant to happen. As though she wanted—’ He sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, I won’t be seeing her again, I’ve decided – not in that way – so I don’t suppose it really matters.’

  ‘It sounds to me,’ said Leo with a frown, ‘as though the young lady has some sort of problem. That is, of course, a quite valueless opinion to offer, since I don’t know her. But anyone who doesn’t respond positively to your physical charms must be mad.’ He raised his eyebrows and popped a fragment of water biscuit into his mouth.

  Oh, don’t, thought Anthony. Don’t be camp. Don’t refer to us, to you and me, in that way. He felt that Leo was debasing what had happened once, trivialising it.

  Leo perceived something of this as he glanced at Anthony’s face. How serious it all is at twenty-three, he thought. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘it does sound as though you’d be taking a lot of trouble on board if you did get too involved. You’re young, the world is full of young women. Don’t get tied up in messy emotional knots, other people’s hang-ups. And if you think it’s some sort of a game, for God’s sake don’t play. It’s unhealthy. Some people get a kick out of it, but I don’t think you’re one of them. Look, it’s made you unhappy enough already.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not unhappy,’ said Anthony, as he finished his wine. ‘I just find it all a bit confusing. But, no – you’re right. You’ve just told me what I’d already told myself. Only, it seems rather a pity. You don’t often meet someone with whom you feel so – so utterly right. Still.’

  ‘I know,’ murmured Leo. ‘One generally has to settle either for good conversation or for good sex. They rarely go together.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m rather afraid Sir Roger awaits me.’ Leo picked up his matches from the table and put them in his pocket. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he added to Anthony. ‘Women, in my experience, are never worth it.’

  ‘Right. Anyway, thanks for the drink,’ said Anthony, rising. He wondered what a gay forty-four-year-old’s experience of women could amount to. You never could tell. Leo was a strange one.

  As Leo took a cab to Brooks’s and Anthony made his way back to chambers, the shades of the November evening were closing around the City. Lights twinkled in the windows of the clubs along Pall Mall and in St James’s. In the smoking room of White’s, Sir Mungo Stephenson sat nursing his whisky morosely, the glass resting on his broad stomach, his stumpy legs in their striped sponge-bag trousers stretched out before him. In the chair opposite, Sir Frank Chamberlin was toying with the Telegraph crossword, occasionally gazing into space and muttering to himself, pausing from time to time to take a sip of his drink. Sir Bernard Lightfoot sat in the armchair nearest to the fire, his eyes closed, his handsome narrow face serene and satisfied, listening to Sir Mungo carping about the new Lord Chancellor, Lord Steele of Strathbuchat. It was a cosy and reassuring sight, two judges of the Commercial Court and a Lord Justice of Appeal taking a well-earned rest after a hard day on the Bench, in the soothing, masculine surroundings of their club.

  ‘Naturally,’ muttered Sir Mungo, ‘one would expect no better from a crony of Thatcher’s.’

  ‘Wouldn’t one?’ enquired Sir Bernard without opening his eyes. He s
tirred slightly and crossed his ankles. ‘I don’t know about that. After all, I suppose he feels that, as he is now the Lord Chancellor, he has to make his presence felt. One can see that.’

  Sir Mungo snorted and took another sip of his whisky. ‘We don’t need any damn-fool Scot foisting his own ridiculous legal system upon us. Fusion of the professions, indeed!’

  ‘Oh, come,’ said Sir Bernard, opening his eyes. ‘It’s an old chestnut. Anyway, the Green Paper hardly goes that far. It merely talks about extending greater rights of audience to solicitors. Nothing horribly drastic.’ He closed his eyes again, smiling to himself in anticipation of his colleague’s deliberately provoked wrath.

  ‘Nonsense!’ growled Sir Mungo. ‘It’s the thin end of the wedge. You allow solicitors rights of audience in the High Court and the two-tier system will disintegrate.’

  Sir Frank, his eyes still fastened on his crossword, nodded. ‘Indeed. You lose the critical mass.’

  ‘Quite!’ agreed Sir Mungo, wondering where on earth Frank got these peculiar expressions from, and what this particular one meant. Still. ‘If it is to be opened up in that way,’ he continued, ‘then the Bar will eventually disappear, and we shall have a system run by a lot of grey-minded solicitors with degrees from polytechnics. Good God! The next thing you know, you’d have the likes of Carter-Ruck on the Bench!’

  ‘Well, of course,’ said Sir Bernard, uncrossing his legs and pulling himself up in his chair to ring the bell on the wall next to the fireplace, ‘there are those who would say that solicitors are perfectly well equipped to appear in the High Court on behalf of their clients. They do so quite adequately in the lower courts, after all.’ He enjoyed playing devil’s advocate to Sir Mungo, even though he agreed almost entirely with his views.

  ‘Well, anyone who thinks that is a fool,’ replied Sir Mungo. ‘Advocacy is an exceptional skill. I wouldn’t trust the senior partner of any leading City firm to defend himself on a speeding charge. They couldn’t acquit themselves with even average competence.’ He handed his glass to the steward who had appeared. ‘Another one, please, George.’

  ‘Small brandy, please, George,’ murmured Sir Bernard.

  ‘Moreover,’ went on Sir Mungo, hoisting his portly person up in his chair and fumbling in his breast pocket for a cigar, ‘in a properly regulated two-tier system—’

  ‘Thank you!’ exclaimed Sir Frank suddenly. Sir Mungo stared at him. ‘“Directed characters in a great duel”,’ said Sir Frank, looking up and smiling. ‘Nine letters. “Regulated”.’ He scribbled busily.

  Sir Mungo continued to stare at him. Where had he got to before Chamberlin had gone off at his usual ludicrous tangent? Oh, yes. ‘As I say, in a properly regulated two-tier system, the advantage of the exclusivity of the Bar is that it consists of select advocates untainted by any close client contact. Now that, I believe, is vital to our system.’

  ‘“In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt …” Thank you, George,’ murmured Sir Bernard, taking his drink from the steward’s tray.

  ‘I don’t know that one need worry unduly, you know,’ said Sir Frank, removing his spectacles and folding up his paper. ‘It will simply mean a closing of ranks. I don’t believe that Lord Steele’s proposals will amount to anything, at the end of the day.’

  ‘But just imagine what it would mean if he manages to push the thing through,’ growled Sir Mungo, snatching puffs at his cigar as he attempted to light it. ‘Of course, the Bar would not lose out at the specialist level, but in the more general areas all the junior work would go to solicitors. The specialist High Court work would go to leaders, and the rank and file of the junior Bar would vanish within a decade.’ He stared angrily at the glowing tip of his cigar.

  Sir Bernard eyed him lazily. Mungo really did enjoy having something to get worked up about. But it was all nonsense. This new Lord Chancellor would see the error of his ways. As Frank said, ranks would close. ‘Well, at least that would keep the QC cabal happy,’ he remarked, then added, before Sir Mungo could continue a fresh harangue, ‘Speaking of the QC cabal, do you see that two men in Sir Basil Bunting’s chambers are applying for silk at the same time? Bit of a surprise.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Frank Chamberlin with interest.

  ‘Yes, Leo Davies and Stephen Bishop. Odd, isn’t it? I imagine neither is aware that the other has applied. Mind you, not before time in Bishop’s case. But then he always seemed to me to be a bit of a plodder.’

  ‘I like Davies,’ remarked Sir Mungo. ‘Got a bit of dash about him. Bit of colour. The Bar needs more like him. The junior members seem to me to be a very mundane lot these days.’

  ‘Oh, he’s colourful, all right,’ said Sir Bernard with a smile, swirling his drink gently in its glass.

  ‘Exceptionally able,’ said Sir Frank. ‘Very suitable.’ He nodded vehemently as he thought of Leo; he was very fond of him.

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘How do you mean – colourful?’ asked Sir Mungo. He’d seen Bernard smiling in that particular way of his.

  Sir Bernard stretched his legs out before him, tugging down his waistcoat. ‘Oh, one hears things, you know. Rather fond of – ah – little boys, I believe.’

  ‘Davies? Good God!’ Sir Mungo stared at the fire in disbelief. ‘If anything, I would have taken him for a ladies’ man. But boys – how disgusting!’ He puffed his cigar and took another pull at his whisky.

  ‘Well, even if such a thing were true,’ said Sir Frank mildly, but leaning forward a little anxiously, ‘it’s hardly so very much out of the way, is it? I mean, we all know …’ Here tacit and well-understood reference was made to a senior figure on the Bench, infamous among his peers for his eccentric sexual proclivities.

  ‘Well, Bishop’s not a nancy boy, is he?’ demanded Sir Mungo. ‘There are standards, you know. Call me old-fashioned’ – at this, Sir Bernard smiled and murmured something inaudible – ‘but I’m sick and tired of these faggots monopolising our institutions. First the BBC, now the Bar – next thing you know, it’ll be the army! I’m afraid that, for me, these things tell against a man.’ He shook his head. ‘Leo Davies. I am very sorry to hear it.’

  ‘Not likely to go down too well with the Lord Chancellor, either,’ remarked Sir Bernard. He took a last sip of his drink. ‘Not after that debacle with the Scottish Bar, accusations of gay intrigue, blackmail and whatnot. But frankly,’ he added, glancing at his watch, ‘it’s a matter of indifference to me. And so I shall inform our new Lord Chancellor when he asks me for my view of Davies, as I am tolerably certain he will. What a chap does in his private life can’t make much difference to the way he performs his job. Anyway, I must be dashing. Wife’s having a dinner party.’

  He rose and bade them a smiling goodnight, then made his way out into St James’s to take a taxi to Camden, to the flat of a certain twenty-four-year-old girl of his intimate acquaintance.

  Sir Frank sat in his chair, staring at the fire, while Sir Mungo snarled a little more about ‘damned Scots and queers’, before stumping out. Poor Leo, thought Sir Frank. What Sir Bernard had said about the new Lord Chancellor was probably right. He sighed, put away his pen and picked up his newspaper. He would have to have a word with Leo. He did so want to see him do well. Perhaps if they had a bit of a talk, then they could straighten it all out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Two days later, Rachel lifted her phone in her office and heard Nora’s sing-song voice announcing that she had Mr Nikolaos on the line.

  ‘Put him through,’ said Rachel absently, wondering what fresh disaster had befallen him now. But fate had decided to put a decent limit on Mr Nikolaos’s current crop of problems.

  ‘Miss Dean,’ he said in important, slightly defiant tones. Rachel could tell that he had an announcement to make, that he had been chewing something over privately and now wished to share it with her. It struck her as sweet, the formality with which he still addressed her, despite their working relationship over the years.

  ‘Y
es, Mr Nikolaos. Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning to you. Miss Dean, you are going to Bombay to see the master of the Valeo Dawn, yes?’

  ‘Well, yes – I haven’t booked my flight yet. I’m still waiting for my visa. But, yes, I’ll be going out there very shortly.’

  ‘Yes. Good. What I wish is this. The young man who is our counsel in this case – it is Mr Cross, yes? I wish him to go, too.’

  Rachel’s heart sank. Oh, no – not more confrontation. Why, oh, why, had she ever instructed him? Not that he wasn’t the best company in the world – she couldn’t think of anyone she would rather travel with – but after the fiasco of Saturday night, she shrank from the prospect of everything else that his intimate companionship might entail.

  ‘Oh, Mr Nikolaos,’ she replied hurriedly, ‘do you really think that’s entirely necessary? I mean, I’m sure I can take the master’s statement without Mr Cross.’

  But Mr Nikolaos was a man who, having reached what he perceived to be a decision of consequence, would not be shaken. He was only too accustomed to feeling helpless in the hands of his lawyers, and an opportunity to move the pieces about in his own chess game made him feel that he was still of some importance.

  ‘No, Miss Dean, this I have decided. Mr Cross says that the evidence is crucial in my case, and I wish him to see it himself, to inspect the ship himself.’

  Rachel felt slightly patronised. ‘I am sure that the surveyor and I can assess the evidence quite adequately. In fact, it is the surveyor’s report which will be crucial, not what Mr Cross or I might think.’

  ‘Still, I wish him to be there.’ Rachel could tell he was not to be dissuaded. ‘He will be speaking for me in court, and he must see for himself where this explosion happen. Besides, Miss Dean,’ he added in paternal tones, ‘these ships are not always suitable places for young ladies to visit. I think a man would feel more comfortable, perhaps.’

  Rachel bridled at this – she had heard it often enough before, but never from Mr Nikolaos. Still, he was only trying to be nice about it – at least he didn’t object to having a female solicitor, unlike a few former clients whom Rachel could think of. It had been more than a small impediment to her progress in her work, encountering men who did not like their business to be handled by a woman; Rachel suspected that it was because they felt that it robbed them of their authority, rendered them impotent. She sighed. ‘Very well. But I have to warn you that Mr Cross may not be free. I’ll have to speak to his clerk.’