by Caro Fraser
She and Beryl and Maureen had made heavy inroads into the white wine, and had now decided to swap to vodka and tonics. No sense in not getting your money’s worth, thought Felicity, as she scoffed a couple more vol-au-vents and wondered what that green stuff in the bowl with the crisps round it was. Looked like pus. She was about to dip an experimental finger into it when a voice at her ear made her jump.
‘You’re looking very sexy tonight, Felicity,’ said Mr Lamb. His sparse black hair was combed carefully over the bald part of his skull, and he was wearing so much Paco Rabanne that Felicity could taste it at the back of her throat. Maureen and Beryl had instinctively moved away at Mr Lamb’s approach, and now she was cornered. Well, at least they were in public, and he couldn’t start groping her again. Mind you, you never knew. She was just amazed that he was speaking to her after what had happened in the lift.
‘I like that dress,’ murmured Mr Lamb. Felicity looked at him, wondering whether she should tell him to piss off, or whether ‘thank you’ might be more diplomatic. She said nothing. ‘And you’ll be pleased to hear that I haven’t spoken to Mr Rothwell yet,’ he added, lowering his voice. ‘I’ve decided to give you one more chance. I thought once you’d got a little of the party spirit, we could get together later on. Somewhere a little quieter, like my room. What do you think? Just a bit of fun, Felicity – a little Christmas fun. Then you’ll have a job to come back to next year, won’t you?’ And she felt his hand slide across her bottom as he moved away, his oily smile still on his face, off to butter up the senior partners.
Felicity had listened to him impassively. She didn’t care any more whether she got the sack or not. She wanted out of this poxy place. When she had told Vince last night, he’d said she should get out – that was after he’d calmed down a bit. She hadn’t expected him to react as violently as he had done when she’d told him what Mr Lamb had been up to. He was funny like that, Vince. You never knew what would make him go berserk. Mind, she should have known that would do it. But he’d calmed down eventually. Oh, Vince … She wished she were with him right now, and not here. She wasn’t enjoying herself. Still, maybe she’d feel better if she went and had a bop.
‘Come on, Mo,’ she said, rejoining her friends. ‘Let’s go and do a bit of damage next door.’ And off they trooped to the conference room and the sounds of Prefab Sprout.
Down in reception Ted, the night porter, yawned and chucked his copy of the Evening Standard to one side. He ambled round the reception desk and stood staring out through the revolving doors into the dark, deserted street. They were all up having their party now. Probably all right to nip into the back office and have that drink with the cleaners. He checked the lights on the switchboard, then went out through the fire door to the back.
A few minutes later, a scruffy young man in a black leather bomber jacket, with shoulder-length hair and two-day-old stubble, came through the revolving doors, followed by a tall man in jeans and a camouflage jacket. They stood for a moment at the desk, wary and watchful.
‘There’s no one about,’ said Vince to his mate Benjy. ‘I thought there’d be someone here. That’s useful. Come on.’
‘Which floor is it, then?’ asked Benjy, as they got into the lift.
‘I dunno, do I?’ replied Vince, scanning the buttons. ‘We’ll just have to start at the first floor and work our way up. Right?’
Benjy nodded and Vince pressed the first of the buttons.
Four minutes later they emerged, looking very unlike typical office partygoers, at the ninth floor. The sounds of the disco and the swell of voices and laughter from the boardroom were unmistakeable. Vince stood by the lift for a moment, raising and lowering his shoulders, psyching himself up. He’d sort this bastard Lamb out. Just a question of finding him, then having him. Careful not to look too aggressive just at first. Didn’t want to be stopped before he’d even got to him.
They walked casually up the corridor towards the sound of the party. A young woman came out of the boardroom, heading for the lift. Vince thought she looked vaguely familiar, that long black hair and nice face.
‘’Scuse me,’ he said to her, his voice that of a polite child.
‘Yes?’ said Rachel, glancing at them both. Didn’t she know this man?
‘We was just looking for Mr Lamb,’ said Vince, then coughed.
They must be with the electricians who were working on the new computer terminals – that was why he was familiar. Presumably that was why they wanted Mr Lamb, though it seemed odd that they should still be working at this time in the evening.
‘Yes – he’s in there, in the far left-hand corner,’ replied Rachel with a smile. ‘At least, he was a moment ago.’
‘Thanks,’ said Vince, and gave her his best smile. Benjy muttered thanks and followed Vince towards the boardroom. Rachel walked on towards the lift.
Once inside the boardroom, Vince merely had to ask one other person to identify Mr Lamb, carefully picking someone who looked like he’d had a few and wouldn’t ask questions. He nodded and stared as Mr Lamb was pointed out to him. That bald-headed bastard, was it? Right. As he squared his shoulders and pushed his way through the crowd, Benjy in his wake, people turned to stare. As he drew nearer, Vince began to shout at Mr Lamb.
‘Oy, Mr Lamb! You Mr Lamb?’ He strode on, drawing nearer, as Mr Lamb turned to stare at him in amazement. ‘I’m gonna fuckin’ drop you, mate!’ and he grabbed the astonished Mr Lamb by his upper arms and headbutted him. Mr Lamb went down like a sack of potatoes, his drink spilling down one trouser leg, blood spurting from the bridge of his nose. Then Vince hauled him up by his necktie and struck him twice with his fist, before dropping him down and administering two heavy kicks to his stomach and ribs. ‘I’d like to tear your fuckin’ head off!’ he panted at Mr Lamb. ‘You touch my girlfriend once more, and I bloody well will!’
Then he turned and pushed his way out. While all this had been going on, Benjy had been shoving back a couple of the more daring spirits who had tried to pull Vince off – Benjy was such an intimidating prospect that, even in their numbers, none of the men felt like tackling him. The partners had already left. No one felt particularly authoritative. Anyway, whatever Lamb was getting, he probably deserved. No one liked him. So they stood there, drinks in hand, looking apprehensive and mumbling threateningly to one another as Vince and Benjy reached the door. Some of the girls were leaning over Mr Lamb and screaming.
Hearing the tumult, people began to come through from the disco room, Felicity among them. She saw Vince and Benjy, and for a second opened her mouth to say something. Then she thought better of it and melted back into the room. She heard someone murmur, ‘That guy just gave Lamb a going-over!’ Oh, Christ, thought Felicity. Oh, Vince.
Someone had the presence of mind to buzz down to the night porter before Vince and Benjy could reach the front door and make their escape. But they buzzed in vain. As Vince and Benjy legged it into the night, Ted and Sean, one of the cleaners, were discussing Millwall’s chances in the Cup in the back office.
At 5 Caper Court, the members of chambers sat around morosely in Sir Basil’s room after the ambulance had gone. Leo had slipped fifty pounds to Vi, one of the tearful group of typists, and told her to take the girls to the pub so they could drown their upset. There was no question of carrying on with the party.
Anthony sat next to Leo and poured him some more of Cameron’s Scotch. He had been moved at the sight of Leo, crouched next to Mr Slee as they waited for the ambulance, murmuring, ‘Poor old Bill. You’re going to be OK. Don’t worry,’ while everyone else paced about saying where was that bloody ambulance.
‘Thanks,’ said Leo.
‘I suppose we should just push off home,’ said Michael, who had rung Mr Slee’s wife ten minutes earlier. ‘There’s not much we can do.’
‘I have to hang around,’ said Leo. ‘I told Rachel to drop by. I’ll have to wait for her.’
As Leo knocked back his Scotch, Anthony glanced at him. Leo’s v
oice was tired; he had spoken Rachel’s name with all the familiarity of possession. Perhaps he was sincere. Perhaps Rachel had got lucky. Anyone who had Leo, thought Anthony, was lucky. Confused by his thoughts, distressed by the events of the evening, Anthony rose and said he was going. The others murmured goodnight.
As the sound of Anthony’s feet on the wooden stairs died away, Leo said to Sir Basil, ‘I’ll lock up, if you like, Basil. If you want to get off home, that is.’
Sir Basil nodded. The long, normally serene face seemed to have slackened and aged with shock and unhappiness. The ambulance men had been very concerned about William’s condition, and had rushed him off. Now Sir Basil wondered if he should have gone in the ambulance with him. William was one of his oldest friends. He had never realised that until now. How odd it was with people. One was with them so long, day in, day out, throughout the years that it never occurred to one how close they could become, how much a part of one’s life.
Sir Basil fetched his coat, said goodnight to Leo and the others, and left. The others gradually drifted off, too – Michael, Cameron and Roderick to their homes, David and William for an emergency dinner in Covent Garden with a few bottles of wine. Jeremy had left the party before any of this had happened.
Leo sat alone in the utter silence of chambers. He had often been there alone, working late, but never before had the silence closed so completely, so forcefully, around him. The settling creaks, the tiny ticks and sounds of an aged building empty of people, fell loudly upon his ears. He nursed his glass and looked around him, thinking of the history that lay within these walls, within every building in the Temple, every brick, every stairwell, every room. All the voices down the years, now silent, their words faded and forgotten; the feet upon the stairs, now silent; the names upon the board, painted out now, replaced by the lustre of fresh faces … He thought of these, and he thought of William. Poor Bill.
After a while, he heard feet upon the stairs, hesitant at first, then quicker. He knew it must be Rachel. He realised he did not want her to interrupt his meditations. He would rather have sat there alone, with the whisky and the shadows for company.
Rachel came slowly into the room. How clean and fresh and laundered she always looked, thought Leo with mild boredom.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked, eyes wide.
‘Party broke up early,’ replied Leo. He sighed and set his glass down on the table, then rose to kiss her absently. ‘Our head clerk, William, had a heart attack. They took him off to Guy’s. Everybody felt pretty awful about it, so they all went home.’
‘Oh, God. How dreadful. Is he going to be all right?’
‘I haven’t a clue. He looked pretty rough when the ambulance came. I’ll ring in an hour or so’s time.’ He paused. ‘I feel rather bad at not having gone with him. I suppose one of us should have, but …’
‘Oh. Oh, well …’ She laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
Why is she here? wondered Leo. Why on earth did I ask her to come round? Then he remembered – giving her a high profile, keeping her in full view of the crowds. Now there were just the two of them in this silent room, and he wished he could simply send her home. But that was not possible.
‘Let’s go and have dinner somewhere,’ he said and, with an effort, gave her a smile.
He lay in bed with her later, his face against the pillow, wanting only to sleep. She was still talking. She could talk for hours, it seemed, about nothing. About him. About her. About them. About nothing. All he had to do was murmur ‘Mmm’ occasionally. He heard her voice stop, felt her hand sliding round his back, grazing his stomach, moving downwards. God, he’d made love to her once – wasn’t that enough? He rolled over onto his back and found her smiling tenderly down at him as her fingers stroked, trying to arouse him.
‘Rachel,’ he said gently, lifting her hand away and kissing her fingers, ‘I’m an old man—’
‘No, you’re not,’ she said, still smiling.
‘I’m a middle-aged man who feels quite old, and who has to clear up some papers and drive all the way to Wales tomorrow, and I really think I need some sleep. Besides …’ He put a hand over his eyes and yawned hugely.
‘Besides?’
He stopped yawning, took his hand away and stared at the ceiling. ‘I’m a bit worried about William.’ He had rung Guy’s earlier and had learnt nothing, except that William was in Intensive Care. He glanced at her lovely face, which now wore an expression of compassion and concern. Like those elegant suits she has, thought Leo, she always has the correct expression for every occasion. What a sod I am, he thought a moment later. Literally and figuratively. He took her suddenly in his arms and kissed her. ‘Now go to sleep,’ he said firmly, and rolled over.
‘Think I broke his nose,’ said Vince into Felicity’s bare shoulder, grinning in the darkness.
Felicity gasped and then giggled. ‘That’s terrible! He looked dreadful when they carted him off. A right mess. Vince, you shouldn’t have, you know.’
‘Why not?’ Vince’s voice was muffled. ‘Bastard deserved it. He won’t go groping you again in a hurry.’ There was silence for a moment. ‘You should have seen Benjy. He played a stormer. Half those blokes were so shit-scared of him they couldn’t move.’
‘I’ve really had it at work now,’ sighed Felicity.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Vince. ‘You said you were fed up there, anyway. Besides, I didn’t mention any names. No one’s to know it had anything to do with you.’
‘That’s a point,’ murmured Felicity.
‘Except him,’ added Vince.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Leo’s mother, Maeve, lived in Llanryn, a small, sad town near Bangor, in North Wales. Like a fly caught in amber, thought Leo, as he arrived there on Christmas Eve. The place was still redolent of the fifties – the smokey chimneys, the rows of unpretentious grey houses, the light, high calls of children playing in the empty winter streets, the corner shops. In some ways he liked to go back, liked to visit all that he had escaped, playing that childish game of haunting himself with what might have been. In other ways he hated it, depressed by the grey hopelessness of his beginnings, the drab streets and the small minds.
On Boxing Day he left his mother’s house and walked down to the canal, taking the back route to his old school. He passed a dog, an old man, and two teenage girls who went past him in a giggling stumble on the towpath. The light in the sky was violet at the edges, as though threatening snow, and the ground was like iron. His breath billowing out in the air, Leo turned off the towpath and up across wasteground, picking his way through the gravel and weeds past dirty puddles, until he came to the street. On the other side stood his old school. He crossed over and stood at the railings for a while, remembering himself, remembering a classroom behind those tall windows, the boys, the teachers, the dense, clouded minds. Or so they had always seemed. He had known then – was it possible that he had been as young as nine when the knowledge had come to him? – that he must get away. That there was a bigger, brighter world somewhere, and that it was not Wales.
He moved away from the railing and walked in the direction of the Llanryn Arms. Was his world now so very different from the world of his childhood? The world of the City, the world of the law and the Temple. It was still a small, grey world, hemmed in, claustrophobic – and threatening, now. Yes, that was the true nature of the feeling which had been haunting him for the past months. He felt threatened by the very society in which he lived, by its tight rules and strict values, and he did not like it. It was an uncomfortable sensation, that of one’s own charmed world turning upon one. He tried to shrug off the feeling, telling himself that a few stiff drinks would help, as he pushed open the shabby little door of the pub and let its smokey, small-town warmth envelop him.
‘I met Brendan Lewis in the pub,’ he said later to his mother. She was sitting in a chair next to the fire, going through notes for the WI, of which she was the local chairwoman, while Leo made tea.
‘Brendan Lewis? I don’t remember that name …’ She looked up, a small, square-set woman with Leo’s prematurely white hair and a still-pretty face.
‘Yes, you do,’ said Leo, cutting pieces of Christmas cake and setting them tidily on a plate. ‘He was at primary school with me. Big lad. We always used to call him Dan.’
‘Oh, God, Dan Lewis! Diawl bach …’ Maeve Davies laughed and went back to sorting out her papers. She ruminated for a moment, then grimaced. ‘His brother was a bad lot. He was in prison a while back for robbery, or some such thing.’
‘Well, Dan used to make me laugh,’ said Leo, bringing the tray over and setting it on the low table in front of the fire. ‘He wasn’t afraid of any teacher. He was a funny kid.’
Leo thought of Dan supping reflectively at the drink Leo had bought him in the pub, eyeing the butter-soft leather of Leo’s expensive Italian overcoat. Leo had wished, at that moment, that he had not been wearing it. Dan, out of a job for two years now, did not seem to have much to laugh about nowadays. Leo had not stayed long in the pub.
Leo and his mother sat over their tea, chatting. At length Maeve got up, taking off her spectacles.
‘Right. I’m going down the road to Pat’s, give her these patterns. She’s got her fifth grandchild on the way now, you know.’ She could not help saying such things, despite her good intentions not to get at her son. But she longed for him to marry, so that she could have grandchildren of her own to boast about. It seemed a pointless kind of thing to her, life, if your only son was just going to let the line die out like that.
