by Caro Fraser
‘Thank you very much, Basil,’ replied Leo. ‘I shall be delighted.’ He couldn’t have heard about Stephen’s application. Or could he? Was this simple favouritism? It was not unknown for Sir Basil’s partisanship to sway his judgment. It had almost cost Anthony his tenancy a couple of years ago, when Sir Basil had sought to give a place in chambers to his nephew, Edward, instead.
‘I like to think, Leo,’ continued Sir Basil with thoughtful self-satisfaction, ‘that you embody many of the qualities which I have striven to maintain in these chambers over the years.’ Little do you know, thought Leo, a smile flickering at the corner of his mouth; he placed his thumb and forefinger at either side of his mouth to smooth the smile away. Sir Basil placed the tips of his fingers together. ‘If I can assist your advancement in any small way, then, of course, it is all to the good. So’ – he tapped the edge of his desk lightly with the fingers of one hand – ‘I shall look forward to seeing you on December the fourteenth, at seven o’clock. You know my house, do you? No, well, you will receive a formal invitation in due course, naturally – I merely wished to indicate to you personally the interest which I take in your career.’
Leo rose and thanked Sir Basil again, bending to gather up his documents. As he opened the door, Sir Basil said, ‘Oh, and Leo—’ Leo paused in the doorway, smoothing down his bands with his free hand, glancing enquiringly at his head of chambers. ‘If there is anyone whom you would care to bring as a guest, I should be delighted to meet them.’
‘Thank you,’ said Leo and, smiling, he closed the door. He made his way slowly back down to his own room.
This was more than auspicious. Not only was it a chance, heaven-sent, to meet those very people whose acquaintance and favourable opinion would enhance his prospects of obtaining silk, it also gave him the opportunity of being seen with Rachel, beautiful, head-turning Rachel, and of creating a climate in which those rumours which had taken root in people’s minds would begin to shrivel and, ultimately, die.
So fixed in his mind was the idea that a liaison with Rachel must sweep away the only obstacle in his path that Leo felt impatient and annoyed at having to wait a few days before speaking to her. But he was, with his customary self-confidence, quite sure that when he did so, she would react with the same ardent willingness which had brought her so fortuitously to his bed last night.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Rachel stood in Marsha’s tiny kitchen on Sunday afternoon, hugging one arm with her other hand as she drank her second glass of wine. Marsha, small, blonde and pregnant with her second child, glanced at her friend as she slid the basted chicken back into the oven. Rachel, she thought, always had a defensive, held-back look, as though hugging herself away from the world.
‘You’re miles away,’ she said, straightening up and wiping her hands on her apron, running her fingers absently over the swell of her stomach.
Rachel smiled and took another sip of her wine. ‘I know. I’m trying to drink too much, in the hope that it might make me feel better.’
‘It’s worth a try,’ replied Marsha, picking up the bottle of red wine and splashing some more into Rachel’s glass. ‘You can have my share. I’m not drinking at the moment.’ She put the bottle down and folded her arms, looking squarely at Rachel. ‘But it might help to talk about it. You’ve been staring vacantly into space ever since you got here. What is it?’
‘Love, I guess,’ said Rachel.
Marsha supposed that it should have come as less of a surprise, but over the years she had not associated Rachel with affairs of the heart. Perhaps it had something to do with that awful business at university, the rapist, but Rachel always kept men at a distance, never let herself get involved with anyone. And now she was gazing wistfully out of the window and talking of love.
‘At last!’ she said sardonically. ‘Mind you, I’m surprised you actually let any man get near enough.’ Marsha did not know enough about Rachel to realise the import of her words. But Rachel simply glanced from her wine to Marsha’s face and back again.
‘Oh, he got close enough, all right,’ she sighed, and drank some more. ‘In a way, it’s quite wonderful,’ she went on, the alcohol allowing her to open up. ‘I’ve never been in love before. Unlike you,’ she added, smiling at Marsha.
Marsha rolled her eyes to the ceiling, tucking back her coarse blonde hair behind her ears.
‘Oh, heavens! I’m never out of love.’ She smiled musingly at the kitchen floor. ‘Think of all those blokes at university, one after the other …’ She glanced out of the window to where her husband, Phil, was putting together a wooden wire-and-mesh run for their five-year-old son’s rabbit, her face a little wistful. ‘Even when it was all utterly hopeless, it was still the most delectable feeling. One was simply more alive.’
‘You sound as though you miss it,’ remarked Rachel.
‘Far from it,’ laughed Marsha; she picked up a knife and began to chop the carrots. ‘There was the most divine foreign language student lodging with the Hendersons for six months recently. I fed off little fantasies about him for a while.’ She popped a piece of raw carrot into her mouth and crunched it. ‘And presently I’ve got a most satisfying crush on Mel Gibson.’
‘Oh, you can have him,’ said Rachel. ‘But not Jeremy Paxman.’
‘Jeremy Paxman?’ exclaimed Marsha, turning to look at Rachel in disbelief. ‘You must be joking!’ They both giggled for a moment. ‘So,’ went on Marsha, ‘this person you’re in love with has tiny ears and no neck?’
‘Jeremy Paxman has got a neck,’ said Rachel, and drank some more wine. She paused, staring at the sink. ‘No, Leo looks quite, quite wonderful. Even you would think so,’ she added.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, anyone whose taste runs to Mel Gibson … But Leo – I don’t believe any woman could look at him without finding him utterly desirable.’
Marsha had never heard Rachel speak about any man in these terms before; she smiled to herself, liking it.
‘It’s beyond me how he’s managed to remain single,’ added Rachel. A small question wandered across her mind as she said this, but then she thought of Leo’s mews house, its feeling of completely solitary occupancy. No, married was the last thing Leo was, or ever likely to be.
‘So, tell me about this paragon,’ said Marsha. At that moment the kitchen door banged open, letting in a gust of freezing air and a small figure in mittens, anorak and wellingtons.
‘Mum!’ he shouted. ‘Dad’s finished it! Come and see! It’s really good!’
‘Mega,’ replied Marsha, glancing at her son critically. ‘I told you to put a hat on. Here.’ She picked a woollen hat from the peg on the back door and handed it to him, and he turned to race back out again. ‘I’ll come in a minute,’ she called.
‘Mega?’ said Rachel enquiringly.
‘Very much the in word. I use it all the time. Love it. A year ago it was “wicked”. I enjoyed that, too. Anyway, about this man …’
Rachel’s smile faded, then grew again. ‘Well, he’s a barrister, he’s about – he must be about forty or so, only he looks older at first because his hair is completely grey. He’s – well, he’s wonderfully handsome, in a lean sort of way. Perhaps handsome’s not the word.’ She frowned. ‘There’s something charismatic about him. Electric.’
‘Sounds cute. Have you known him long?’
Rachel drank some more wine, threw back her head and swallowed. ‘Not very. About a couple of days.’
Marsha gave a hoot of laughter. ‘“No sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked than they loved”,’ she chanted gently, heaping the chopped carrots into a pan.
‘Something like that,’ murmured Rachel, ‘from my side, at least.’
‘Well, you say you’ve only known the poor man for two days. Give him a chance.’
‘I don’t think he wants the chance,’ replied Rachel. ‘In fact,’ she added, draining the last of her wine, ‘I know he doesn’t.’ Her voice was flat, final. Marsh
a looked at her. How could anyone lucky enough to be loved by Rachel not love her instantly back? She was so sweet, so beautiful – Marsha had long ago accepted that Phil was mad about her. What man wouldn’t be? Possibly a little on the thin side for some tastes, reflected Marsha, who herself was plumply pretty, but still beautiful. Haunting.
‘That’s a defeatist attitude,’ she replied. ‘Can you pass me that colander?’ Rachel passed it to her and surveyed her empty glass unhappily. ‘Have some more,’ said Marsha, nodding in the direction of the wine.
Rachel shook her head. ‘I’ve had too much already.’
‘Anyway,’ went on Marsha, breaking cauliflower florets into the colander, ‘what makes you so sure he’s not wild about you, too?’
Rachel sighed. ‘It’s not exactly a conventional situation, Marsha.’ She hesitated, then decided to tell her. What difference would it make? Marsha would be the last person to judge her. ‘The fact is, we met, we went to bed together the same night, and the next morning he told me that – well, that he’d had a nice time, but that that was it. End of story.’ Just saying the words ‘we went to bed together’ suddenly conjured up the recollection of his touch, his mouth against her breast as he moved inside her. A warm wave of desire welled up within her. It was wonderful, she knew, just to have been there with him, to have let someone near enough, and now to be able, like any other woman confiding in her friend, to stand in Marsha’s steamy little kitchen in Winchester recounting her humdrum tale. Whatever misery it had brought, at least she felt real, part of humanity, sharing its conventional griefs and pains.
‘Well,’ said Marsha, ‘you may think you’re in love with him, but he sounds like a complete shit to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Hopping into bed with you at the first opportunity, then just dropping you the next day. Talk about “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!”’
‘I hopped into his bed, actually,’ said Rachel, happily nursing her empty glass against her cheek.
‘Mmm, I see,’ said Marsha.
It was true, thought Rachel. She had gone to him – gone because she could not bear to let the moment pass, to have nothing more of him than those few extraordinary moments, the touch of his fingers, and the memory of his eyes afterwards, searching her face. What else could she have done, with that hunger awoken in her? Perhaps if she had not gone to his bed – perhaps it was true, all that old stuff about men losing respect for girls who were easy … But she didn’t think Leo was a man for whom respect had anything to do with sex. Anyway, it was done now. Done and gone.
‘Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t let a one-night stand affect me so badly.’
‘I can’t help it,’ replied Rachel. ‘And I can’t look at it in that way. It wasn’t like that. He – oh, it’s all too complicated to explain. Anyway, I’m rather luxuriating in the misery of unrequited love,’ she added. At least I’m human, she thought; at least I know it can happen to me. ‘What was that dreadful poem you used to recite when we were at university? – you know, whenever you were languishing with love for someone?’
‘Ah, “Give me more love or more disdain …”’
‘That’s it,’ said Rachel with a smile, as Marsha struck a declamatory pose next to the cooker.
‘… The torrid or the frozen zone
Bring equal ease unto my pain;
The temperate affords me none.’
She laughed, sighed and turned back to the cauliflower.
Rachel laughed, too. Thank God for friends, she thought. What was Leo to her compared with someone like Marsha, who had known and cared for her over the years, with whom she had giggled and wept and shared hopes, hours and ambitions? He was someone who had entered her life briefly, abruptly, and left it – but he had changed her irrevocably, and now he illuminated her life entirely. If Leo had asked her to go to him, and never see Marsha again, she would have gone in an instant, without one thought or hesitation.
On Monday morning Rachel sat in her office, gazing at the envelope that lay before her and wondering how best to approach Felicity. Her mood of melancholy euphoria had evaporated when she left Winchester yesterday afternoon; the evening spent alone, with the blank probability that she would not see Leo again, that day after day must pass until her feelings dwindled and were forgotten, had depressed her dreadfully. What was the point, she asked herself, of finding that you could give yourself to someone, blot out all the fears of several years, when that someone simply dismissed you from their life? She had woken that morning with a feeling something like happiness, and then recollection and emptiness had descended, deadening her day. In a way, she was glad that she had at that moment the minor – no, the major matter of Felicity’s boneheadedness to contend with as a diversion from her own thoughts of Leo. She sat for a moment, then got up, went to her door and called over to where the secretaries were working, ‘Felicity, may I see you for a moment?’
Felicity shuffled to her feet. Her heart dropped like a stone at the sound of Rachel’s voice. When Rachel hadn’t come in on Friday, Felicity had been consumed with guilt. She should never have given her those pills. God knows what had happened. Rachel wasn’t used to anything like that. What had she been thinking of? Now she trotted apprehensively into Rachel’s room, her steps short and hurried in her tight skirt.
‘Close the door and sit down,’ said Rachel. Felicity glanced at Rachel’s face; it was calm and lovely, but about as chilly as she had ever seen it. Something awful was coming. Perhaps she should take the initiative, get her apology in first.
‘Rachel, I think I know what this may be about—’ she began.
‘I doubt it,’ interrupted Rachel.
‘I mean, if it’s – look, I’m really sorry I gave you those pills on Thursday. I think I must have got them mixed up or something.’ She paused; Rachel was looking impassively at the desk. ‘That’s what this is about, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ said Rachel thoughtfully. ‘No, as it happens, it’s not, but now that you mention it, we might as well talk about that.’
There was a brief silence. ‘Were you all right?’ asked Felicity hesitantly.
‘No, Felicity, I wasn’t. I don’t know what I was, but I was not all right.’ She glanced up at Felicity. ‘Why do you say you got them mixed up when you know perfectly well you meant to give them to me?’
Felicity picked at her nail varnish and looked sheepish. ‘I thought it would help. Lift you a bit. Help you.’ Then she added, ‘Sorry.’
Rachel sighed. ‘In a funny way, perhaps it did help. Or possibly not. Anyway, don’t do anything so irresponsible again, right?’
‘Right,’ replied Felicity, nodding contritely.
‘There’s something a little worse than that, I’m afraid,’ continued Rachel, ‘and this makes me bloody furious.’ She picked up the buff envelope lying on her desk. ‘I’ve just received this letter from Payne Loftus today. Returning a document which was sent to them. A document sent by you.’
Felicity tried to look intelligent and concerned, but wasn’t really sure what was coming.
‘The document,’ continued Rachel, ‘is a statement taken from Mr Sukuraman in the Indo Suisse Bank fraud case. It is a statement containing evidence which is crucial to our clients’ case. You were meant to send it to our clients. You, Felicity, sent it to the other side’s solicitors. They have sent it back to me today. I shall read you their covering letter. “Dear Sirs, we have today received from your offices the enclosed document relating to the above case. We are herewith returning the document to you unread. Yours, etc, Payne Loftus.”’ Rachel laid down the letter and the envelope. There was a silence.
‘But – but they’ve said they haven’t read it,’ said Felicity hopefully. Even she appreciated the potentially damaging repercussions of what she had done.
‘Felicity,’ said Rachel, ‘they have not only read it, they have studied it sentence by sentence, they have photocopied it, and even as we speak, a copy, which will be read and then destroyed without trace
, is winging its way to their clients in Switzerland.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Felicity.
‘There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s happened. But it happened because you don’t pay attention, Felicity, because you never get any of the simplest clerical work right. Because you’re too busy gossiping with Nora or smoking in the Ladies!’ Rachel was angrier than Felicity had ever seen her. ‘Every day there is something – something that has to be retyped, or rephotocopied, or found because you’ve lost it. It’s all very irritating, and up to now I’ve tried not to mind, because there are some things you are good at. But when you start sabotaging my cases with your incompetence, then something has to be done.’
They stared at one another; it was as though the evening they had spent together had never been, all the gossip and laughter and the feeling that they were on the same level, girls together. When the chips are down, thought Felicity, none of that counts. She’s my boss, and I’m her idiot secretary.
‘Now, I don’t mean,’ said Rachel after a pause, her tone quieter, ‘that I want to see you get the sack, or anything like that. I’m just going to suggest that it might be better if you didn’t go on working in the litigation department, where little slips can cost us a lot. As in this case. This is a very large firm, and I’m sure Mr Lamb can find you a more suitable job.’ Felicity looked so miserable that Rachel felt touched, momentarily, with guilt. They’d been so friendly that Wednesday night, too. Well, that had probably been a mistake, socialising with one’s secretary, to say nothing of smoking her dope. I must have been out of my brain with tiredness and jet lag, thought Rachel, to have done such a thing. ‘I’m sorry, Felicity,’ she said gently. ‘I do like you – very much. But this has got nothing to do with liking. It has to do with efficiency and getting the job done. You do see that, don’t you?’
