Judicial Whispers

by Caro Fraser

  He came out into the grey streets of Westminster with elation in his heart. He felt younger than he had done for years. This was a new challenge, and a position that was not without significant honours and advantages. As he hailed a taxi, Sir Basil thought with brief regret that someone else must now become the head of chambers at 5 Caper Court. But he consoled himself with the thought that, in the seven or eight months which must elapse between now and the Michaelmas term, he could indulge in a little political intriguing to ensure that the mantle of authority passed to the successor of his choosing.

  ‘So,’ said Colin Crane to his fellow civil servant as they left the Lord Chancellor’s room, ‘that leaves room for two silks at Bunting’s chambers now. And from all I have heard, this chap Bishop is bound to be appointed.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ replied his colleague, ‘that that isn’t likely to be of much help to Leo Davies, is it? Not as things stand.’

  It took Leo the better part of an hour to reach the hospital at High Wycombe to which William had been transferred, and the official visiting hour was drawing to a close.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll only have five minutes,’ warned a plump nurse with freckled arms. But after he had exercised a modicum of his charm, she agreed to allow him fifteen extra minutes.

  When he went into the private side room, Leo was startled by the change in William’s appearance. As he approached the bed, William was lying back on his pillows with his eyes closed; Leo sat down and touched him lightly on the arm.

  ‘Hello, Bill,’ he said quietly, as William opened his eyes. William smiled and tried to sit up. Leo helped him, pulling up the pillows. God, the poor fellow looked awful, thought Leo. In just a few short weeks his stout frame seemed to have shrunk. His cheeks had lost their ruddiness and were grey and slack. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come before.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said William. ‘It’s not bad. Better than it was at first. You know. Tell me how things are going in chambers. Sir Basil’s been in, but you know how he is. Not always up on the latest news.’

  Leo told him all the news he could think of, making it as amusing as possible.

  ‘How’s Henry coping?’ asked William.

  Henry had begun to cope fairly well of late, in fact, although he was clearly in need of an assistant, but Leo merely replied, ‘Well, you know Henry. Muddling along. But we’re coping. It won’t be the same until you’re back in chambers.’

  ‘I don’t know that I will be back,’ replied William, his face despondent, his voice tired. ‘They think they can give me some sort of bypass operation, but I don’t see me coming back to work. Not any more. Not at my age. I told Sir Basil when he came last week. I’m surprised he hasn’t mentioned it to you.’

  Leo smiled. ‘I haven’t seen him for a few days. And at the moment he’s probably very preoccupied. I think he’s going to be made a High Court judge.’

  ‘Really?’ William looked a little more animated at this news. ‘Well, well.’

  ‘Nothing official, of course. But I don’t think he’ll turn it down. His practice isn’t what it was. And I think he’d be good.’ Leo gazed around at the drips, the jug of water, the flowers, the get-well cards, and felt depressed. ‘At least someone seems to be having more luck at moving onwards and upwards than I am,’ he added.

  ‘Oh?’ said William, his heart sinking as he gazed at Leo.

  ‘I get the feeling that I may not get silk this time around,’ went on Leo. ‘Possibly never. I’ve heard from Frank Chamberlin that certain rumours are going around …’ Leo paused and rubbed his hands over his face before continuing. He was glad to be able to talk about this to William. There was no one else he could tell. Apart from Anthony and Sir Basil, William was the only person in chambers who knew of his application, and since he was already aware of Leo’s hopes, he might as well be told his fears. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t always led the most blameless of lives, Bill. Committed a few indiscretions here and there, made some unfortunate acquaintances. And somehow word of it has got around.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose I was a fool to imagine that I could do as I pleased and no one would get to hear of it. But they have. Don’t ask me how or why. I’ve done what I can in the way of damage limitation, but I don’t know that it will help. You know what the judificiary are like, and the boys in the Lord Chancellor’s Office. Still,’ he added, suddenly thinking that he shouldn’t be burdening William with his worries at a time like this, ‘we shall just have to wait and see which way the wind blows. Nothing I can do now.’

  William nodded and looked away from Leo. He felt wretched in his soul. There had been no point in any of this. He had imagined that if both Leo and Stephen took silk, then Sir Basil would be squeezed out, and that people would think he, William Slee, was past it, too, and pension him off. As it was, here he was in a hospital bed, unlikely ever to work at 5 Caper Court again, while Sir Basil was headed for the glories of the High Court. Leo had never been a threat. He would have made no difference to anything. All those rumours, those little asides to fellow clerks … Why had he done it? Fear and selfishness. And now Leo was confiding in him, telling him things about himself that William had known for years, unaware that William had already used those things against him. He leant his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes, weary with self-disgust. It could not be undone now.

  ‘God, I’m sorry, Bill, going on like that,’ said Leo, glancing up. ‘No doubt the nurse thinks I’ve overstayed my welcome, anyhow. I’d best be going.’ He rose.

  William opened his eyes and looked at Leo sadly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Your application. If it doesn’t succeed, I mean …’

  ‘Good Lord, nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m sure you’ve given me all the support you could.’ He smiled at William. ‘You always did.’ He patted him on the arm and left.

  The time of reckoning had come at Nichols & Co. After taking two weeks’ extra leave to repair his injured nose and pride, Mr Lamb was back in the office. Felicity saw him striding down the street towards the office on Thursday morning as she approached from the other direction. She scuttled into a doorway and peeped out at him. His face was grim and his nose, though unbandaged, looked lumpy and odd. She watched until he had gone through the revolving doors and then scurried out, trotting in behind him.

  ‘’E’s back!’ mouthed Nora to her as she passed the reception desk. The lift doors were just closing on Mr Lamb’s stocky figure.

  ‘Yeah, and I’ve had it,’ replied Felicity, gazing after him.

  ‘Why? What’s up?’ asked Nora, avid for gossip.

  Felicity looked at her ruefully and moved her chewing gum from one side of her mouth to the other. She was trying to give up smoking. ‘Well,’ she said in a low voice, folding her arms on the counter top, ‘you remember that bloke who decked Lamb at the Christmas party?’

  ‘Yeah, don’t I just. Felt like getting in there and giving him a helping hand.’

  ‘Well, that was my boyfriend.’

  ‘No!’ Nora’s eyes were wide, her crimson mouth round with astonishment.

  Felicity nodded. Apprehensive though she was of the wrath to come, she was quite enjoying this. Nora was always a good audience. ‘Yeah, Lamb had been groping me a bit, making remarks and that. So I told Vince. He got really mad, but I never thought he’d do anything like that.’ She giggled. ‘I wish I’d seen it.’

  ‘Oh, Fliss, it was marvellous!’ Nora’s eyes rolled heavenwards at the recollection. ‘Hold on a tick.’ She flipped a switch. ‘Hello, Nichols and Co. How can I help? No, he’s not in this morning. Yes, I will. Right. Goodbye.’ She flipped the switch back and gazed expectantly at Felicity. ‘Anyway, what do you think Mr Lamb’s going to do? Does he know who it was that thumped him?’

  ‘Well, he should do,’ replied Felicity. ‘Unless he’s had his hand up everyone else’s skirt as well, that is.’ They both giggled, and the switchboard flashed again. F
elicity headed for the lift, fluttering her fingers at Nora, each mouthing ‘See you!’ conspiratorially to the other.

  Nothing happened until after lunch. By that time, Felicity had grown quite used to the idea of being sacked, and when John Parr called her to his office she felt only slight trepidation. She hoped he wouldn’t make heavy weather of it. He could be a right pompous arse at times.

  John Parr was pacing round his room when Felicity came in, mustering all his authority as second-in-command. He had been highly disturbed by what Mr Lamb had told him, but not entirely surprised. He had never had a high opinion of Felicity. She might be a bright enough girl, but her secretarial skills left much to be desired and he wasn’t sure that he found her manner sufficiently deferential to himself and the other partners.

  ‘Please take a seat, Felicity,’ he said. Felicity sat down, tugging the hem of her red skirt down on her thighs, taking a deep breath of anticipation and trying not to stick out her chest. She looked up at Mr Parr from beneath her curly fringe, watching him pace around the room.

  ‘Felicity,’ John Parr began, ‘I had Mr Lamb in my room this morning. It is his first day back in the office since he was attacked before Christmas. You remember that, I suppose?’

  Felicity nodded.

  ‘I understand from Mr Lamb that you know something about that attack, and the person who carried it out.’ Felicity dropped her eyes and said nothing. John Parr sat down. ‘Mr Lamb tells us that you’ve had some kind of grudge against him since he had occasion to warn you over the standard of your work. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘I never had any grudge against him, Mr Parr—’

  ‘But he did warn you that you might have to leave if your work didn’t improve, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And he even went to some lengths to have you transferred, without informing the partnership, so that you would still be able to carry on working here, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And yet you still, according to Mr Lamb, held such a grievance against him that you actually got a friend to come to these offices and assault him. Isn’t that so?’ Mr Parr was, by now, in an exalted state of sorrowful indignation.

  ‘I didn’t tell him to do it, Mr Parr! I simply told him about what Mr Lamb had been doing—’

  ‘So you were nursing a grudge against him?’

  Felicity was close to tears. She might not mind being sacked, but she objected to having the truth distorted in this way. Mr Parr’s censorious attitude made her feel bullied. ‘I didn’t know he would do anything like that! Honestly!’

  ‘Felicity, the facts speak for themselves. Mr Lamb, as office manager, warned you about your lack of efficiency, and that was something which you held against him. So much so that you went to this friend of yours with stories of how unfairly you had been treated by Mr Lamb – who, I might add, was actually prepared to transfer you to another department and give you another chance – with the result that Mr Lamb was seriously assaulted at a party on these very premises. By your friend.’

  ‘But Mr Lamb had been harassing me!’ exclaimed Felicity, unable to hold back the tears now.

  Mr Parr sat back in his chair with a look of cynical disappointment. ‘Felicity, I think you have been reading too many tabloid newspapers. I imagine every secretary in Britain who feels victimised through complaints regarding her own inefficiency complains of “harassment”. But I’m afraid I, for one, will not wear that kind of nonsense.’

  Felicity stared at him helplessly, her eyes blurred with tears. Her nose had begun to run and she didn’t have a tissue. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. What was the point? How could she possibly begin to catalogue the list of humiliations to which Mr Lamb had subjected her? And what difference would it make, anyway? The blokes in this office would always stick up for each other. The business with Vince was what this was all about. Parr was glad of an excuse as juicy as this to get rid of her.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Felicity,’ went on Mr Parr, clasping his hands before him on the desk, ‘this incident is something which I view most seriously. You do realise,’ he added, ‘that this could result in a police prosecution for your friend?’

  Felicity looked at him in horror. ‘Oh, no!’ she pleaded. ‘You don’t need to do that, do you?’

  Mr Parr relished the pleading tone of her voice as much as he relished the sight of her, her pretty face streaked with mascara, reduced by his authority to a state of wretchedness.

  ‘I can make no promises, Felicity. That is something which we shall leave to Mr Lamb. But you must understand that we cannot allow you to continue working for Nichols and Co after an incident such as this. It is not the kind of behaviour which we expect from our secretaries. The terms of your employment permit you four weeks’ notice. I hope you will be able to find employment elsewhere in that time. But I’m afraid I cannot give you any kind of suitable reference. Now, that is all.’

  Felicity sniffed back the last of her tears and left Mr Parr’s office without another word. There was no point in saying anything else. She’d had enough of them all. She didn’t even think she could bear another four weeks in the place, though she’d have to stick it out. She needed the money, and she needed to be able to look for another job.

  Felicity made her way to the Ladies and gazed at her reflection. What a mess. She couldn’t go and get her handbag and her make-up without attracting the attention of the Menopausals, and she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing her tear-stained face. She cleaned away the mascara streaks with soap and lavatory paper, then splashed her face with water. Leaning back against the washbasin, she wished she had a fag.

  So, what was she to do now? How was she going to get a job without a reference? Oh, well, that would take care of itself. She might as well go and tell Rachel that she was being transferred – right out of the building.

  When Felicity went into Rachel’s room, Rachel was staring at her desk calendar and going over the dates in her head. She was sure she had counted properly. She looked up distractedly at Felicity.

  ‘Can I have a word, Rachel?’

  ‘Of course. What’s up?’ Either it had been the twelfth or the fourteenth. She was sure it had been an even number. In which case, it might have been the sixteenth. Why hadn’t she written it down?

  ‘Well, actually, I’ve been given the boot. By Mr Parr. This morning. I thought I’d tell you. I’m off in four weeks.’

  Rachel sat back, forgetting her own problems for the moment. ‘But why? I thought Mr Lamb was arranging for you to go to another department?’

  ‘It’s because of Mr Lamb I’m leaving,’ replied Felicity, not without bitterness. ‘You remember someone had a go at him at the Christmas party?’

  ‘I heard about it. I’d left before it happened.’

  ‘Well, it was Vince. I’d told him that Mr Lamb had been – well, touching me up, making suggestions, and that. And he decided he was going to – sort him out. I didn’t have any idea. Anyway, Mr Lamb came back to the office today and he told Mr Parr it was my boyfriend, said I’d had some sort of grudge against him. And that was that. Out on my ear.’

  ‘But you say Mr Lamb had been molesting you?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Yeah. You know the sort of thing. Feeling me up, saying he’d have me sacked if I wasn’t – nice to him.’

  ‘But didn’t you tell Mr Parr that?’

  ‘I tried, but he wasn’t having any of it. Said I’d been reading too many newspapers, that I had a cheek to accuse Mr Lamb of harassing me.’

  Rachel was outraged. ‘They can’t sack you like that, when you’ve been sexually harassed by a senior member of staff!’ she exclaimed, reaching for her phone. ‘I’m going to have a word with John Parr.’

  Felicity stretched out a hand to stop her. ‘No, don’t. There’s no point. I should have made a fuss a long time ago. It just seemed so stupid. And I really didn’t want to lose my job. My getting sacked has nothing to do with th
at. It’s all about this thing between Vince and Mr Lamb. It doesn’t matter what you say to Mr Parr, I’ll still be given the push. They don’t want me here. They’ve been looking for an excuse for a while. I’m not the world’s most brilliant secretary, after all.’

  ‘Look, Felicity, whether you lose your job or not, I can still make things very unpleasant for Mr Lamb. He deserves it!’

  ‘Rachel,’ said Felicity wearily, ‘I couldn’t care bleeding less about him. I’ll be glad to get out of here. All I care about is getting another job. Not that I want to go on doing secretarial work. I’m so rotten at it, and I hate big offices. But it’s the only thing I’ve been trained to do. And we need the money.’

  Rachel sighed. ‘It’s your decision, of course. I still think you’re wrong not to make an issue out of it. There are too many men getting away with that kind of thing.’

  ‘The way things are in this place, who’s going to believe me? They’ll think I’m just getting back at Lamb. I know them. MCPs, the lot of them. And that’s being kind.’

  ‘Well …’ Rachel paused. ‘I’ll give you a reference, if you need one.’

  ‘Thanks. No one else will. You’ll have to bend the truth a bit, mind. I tell you,’ she added, tossing back her curly head and grinning, ‘I’m going to have a bloody good piss-up when I leave!’

  Rachel smiled. ‘Why don’t you let me buy you a drink after work, and we’ll talk about it? I’ve got a client in ten minutes.’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ said Felicity.

  ‘But don’t go slipping me anything this evening, please,’ added Rachel.

  Rachel was still pondering Felicity’s problems when she got back to her flat later that evening, but when she reached the front door they fled in an instant. The door was slightly ajar, its lock smashed, the wood frayed and cracked. Gingerly, Rachel pushed it wide open. The hall was in half-darkness, but the living room light was on. Why hadn’t she noticed that from the street? She hesitated, then stepped into the hallway, feeling for the light switch. The hall sprang into brightness, and she gasped.