by D. B. Martin
‘You seem to be remarkably unconcerned that you have potentially been involved in a sackable offence – withholding evidence from legal defence and manipulation of official records.’
Her face fell and she shook her head vigorously. The little coils of hair ringletting her face bounced jauntily.
‘No, no – oh God, we always seem to be getting at each other, don’t we? I know I was in the wrong. I promise I won’t keep anything from you in the future. Please can we put it to one side – forget it? I’m playing by the rules with you from now on.’ I was going to push her a little harder until I realised that she wasn’t being flippant. The minx of earlier was safely confined again. I relaxed a little. I could deal with her subdued – a chastened kitten instead of a playful tigress. The fingertips clutching at her coffee cup handle were pinched pink from the pressure exerted. She was nervous. Afraid even. The light-heartedness was an attempt at masking it. I leant back in my chair and scrutinised her. She caught my eye once and then looked steadfastly into the congealing top of her coffee. ‘I really am sorry,’ she added quietly.
‘I don’t understand you, Kat,’ I admitted eventually. ‘I don’t think I believe your explanation, but I can’t see why you are so anxious. I may be an ogre at times but I don’t believe that you think I would deliberately make trouble for you.’
‘I don’t. I think you’re ... No-one was supposed to know about it. It really was the back-up plan.’ She sighed. ‘Your wife was a very persuasive woman, you know.’
‘So you knew her better than you’ve been admitting?’
‘I guess I knew her well enough. At first she was just one of the patrons of some of the charities I had to make a showing at – one of the big-wigs, so I didn’t really have anything to do with her in my lowly capacity.’ She risked a quick glance at me before looking down again, cheeks flushed – that rosy brown that seeps through tawny complexion like a peach skin bruising. ‘It happened gradually, without me really remarking on it to begin with. I’d be allocated to her team on any leafleting campaigns I joined, or invited to go along to the events and dinners that she was at, and eventually developed a nodding acquaintance. Then one day I was offered a free place at a gala fund-raising event if I could fit in some paperwork errands on the charities behalf – or rather Mrs Juste’s part. Of course I agreed. It was like giving me a gold star – being noticed and invited to be involved. She talked to me then – just casually, but for a little longer the next time, then about a particular topic the next. She was nice – a gracious lady.’
I laughed. ‘Oh yes, Margaret was always a gracious lady if you were doing what she wanted you to. What was the twist in the tail then?’
‘Why should there have been one?’
‘Wasn’t there?’
‘Well, yes. After a while. She asked me about children at risk and then about adoption procedures. I suppose I got a little impassioned about it as a subject. It makes me angry.’ She stopped, as if she was about to say something she’d regret.
‘Why does it make you angry,’ I asked, curious at this unusual woman, by turns flirtatious and earnest. Her passion was evident in the sparkling eyes and set of the jaw. I hadn’t ever thought before that social workers actually believed in what they did. I was clearly mistaken.
‘Oh God, you’re going to think me such a mess.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Yes! I don’t want you of all people to think that.’ She faltered again. I waited, turning over the implication of that statement in my mind but without knowing what to do with it. ‘OK, I’m probably past the point of no-return now, I guess. I have a little brother. Not so little now, of course – he’s twenty-five – but he was always in trouble.
From about the age of eight, if it was bad news, it found Alfie. I was at college when it started – trying to get through my ‘A’ levels and on to university. I kind of opted out at the time and left it to my mum to sort out. The trouble was, she didn’t. Couldn’t really. My dad died when I was fourteen and Alfie was five. I don’t think she ever got over losing my dad, and the more trouble Alfie was in, the more she sank into depression until she committed suicide when I was in my second year at uni. By then Alfie was in trouble more than he was out of it and still only eleven or so. He was taken into care because I couldn’t take him on. He ended up in Borstal, then prison, and I hadn’t seen or heard of him in years until about two years ago. I’m ashamed of that, but I can’t change it. Margaret mentioned she’d come across someone by the same surname as me and I knew it had to be Alfie – it’s such an unusual surname, you see – like yours. Anyway, Margaret hadn’t just come across him, she’d come across him up to his old tricks. She said she’d get him fixed up with a first-class brief if I could help her out a bit too.’
‘That’s why I thought I recognised your name.’ I hadn’t realised until then why her surname had been sounding in my head like a klaxon, alongside the risk she presented. I’d thought my response was purely emotional because she made all sorts of other parts of me buzz with alarm too, but that aside, the name had special significance. ‘Heather took your brother’s case, didn’t she? Heather Trinder. She’s one of my partners in Chambers.’
‘Yes. That was when I first came across you. And she won – but I was never quite sure how. It all seemed so cut and dried against him, but Margaret was always sure he’d get off.’
‘I don’t remember the case, only the name.’ Heather hadn’t spoken about it, but I’d known from her expression and the way the pinch lines above her nose had deepened during its currency that she’d been unhappy about it. Her pre-occupation with appearance would never have allowed that unless she’d been too immersed in other anxieties to notice it. Kat gazed at me, dark eyes fixed on mine, delving and prodding like Margaret had into my past.
‘I think the way you said that means something.’
‘I think the way Heather never talked about it means more.’
‘Oh. Didn’t Margaret mention it to you?’
‘No, and that means more still.’
‘I AM worried now.’
‘I think perhaps we both ought to be worried. So what happened next?’
‘Well the start of the adoption procedure through FFF. Margaret organised it though, I just had to sanction the application and then act as go-between.’
‘Go-between who?’
‘I, I don’t really know now. Do you?’
I didn’t know either, but I was sure there was more to what I’d pieced together so far.
‘And pushing the case my way? Whose idea was that?’
‘Margaret’s. She said you were the best, but I already knew that by then.’
‘How?’
She looked embarrassed and the brash young professional became the gawky schoolgirl. ‘I’d been finding out a bit about you in the meantime.’
‘Such as?’
‘I followed some of your cases in court – in the gallery on my days off.’
‘Why?’ I knew I shouldn’t be asking just as I knew the answer was obvious in her downcast eyes and embarrassed expression. I’d never been an object of desire before. The very idea of it was intoxicating, even leaving aside the age and demeanour of my enchantee. I stirred my now cold black coffee and it reminded me of crude oil. Kat mirrored me by toying with her spoon.
‘Do you want another?’ I asked, more to give myself thinking time than anything.
‘Not really.’
‘Shall we go then?’ She nodded, and followed me to the door, although I had no idea where I was proposing we went. Outside she looked as if she was about to cry, but walked alongside me quietly for a few paces before surprising me by bursting out with, ‘I really don’t want you to think badly of me.’
‘I know. I don’t. We all do ill-advised things at times. You did whatever you did with good intentions. You were just manipulated by a smarter operator.’
‘You’re saying your wife was ...’
‘Probably a bit of a bitch at t
imes, in truth, although I’m only just realising that. I’m only just realising quite a lot of things, actually – including how bad I look after a night without sleep or shaving.’
‘I think you look good whatever,’ she ventured shyly. I couldn’t help the smug expression but shook my head deprecatingly anyway – and the crowd in me wanted more, more... She obliged. ‘No, really, I do – you’re, um, distinguished.’ She blushed again. I’d lost count of how many times she’d done that now but it must be some kind of record in such a short space of time. I considered myself objectively from the angles the papers called distinguished. Maybe I’d been overlooking something in myself until now – or Margaret had been subduing it.
‘Apparently that’s what the papers call me, but distinguished at what?’
‘Most things, I would imagine.’ Now she was flirting – I wasn’t such a witless lump that I didn’t get that. Excitement revved in my chest and I could feel my stomach muscles tighten, sending that familiar tingling into my pelvis. Unbelievably I was about to respond in kind – it seemed to come instinctively with her, whether I wanted it to or not – when the reality of the situation brought me to my senses like I stepped under a cold shower. How could I encourage this infatuation when I was the brief on her client’s case and my wife wasn’t even cold in the ground yet? I was the hoar frost, the stricture of winter. I would blight her fruitfulness before it even met the sun. Our relationship had to remain professional as I’d already said. No matter that she made my limbs tingle and my heart lurch.
Yet professional distance had already been destroyed by that non-returnable kiss. Many people worked and fucked together. It was how Margaret and I had first got together, but then look how that had worked out. No. I poured scorn on the possibility of a more personal relationship and stayed within safe bounds.
‘You don’t want to get involved with me, Kat. I’m old damaged goods.’
‘We’re all damaged goods, old or young, Lawrence,’ she reminded me, and the smile was sweeter than I’d seen in years. My resolve gave. There hadn’t been much of it to start with.
‘Kenny,’ I corrected on the spur of the moment.
‘What?’
‘Kenny. My real name is Kenny. Kenneth Lawrence Winston Juss. I dropped the Kenneth after I left the home and adjusted the surname.’ She looked mystified and I wondered why I kept feeling the urge to vomit out my life story when her trustworthiness was so in doubt after this last admission of guilt. I’d spent most of my life struggling to keep it all compacted inside me. Dissecting oneself was one thing but spreading oneself out for slaughter was quite another.
We stopped by the entrance to the park and I looked into the distance at a small figure exercising their dog to shut out those intrusive eyes. It didn’t work. I still wanted to let her in. We walked on and sat on the nearest park bench, the romping dog still enthusiastically retrieving the ball its owner was throwing. Domestic bliss didn’t seem so far out of their reach as it did mine. A pang of envy stabbed through me at their simplistic pleasure. I looked down at my feet and crumpled trousers. I could feel her thoughts winding into my brain like tendrils of a newly growing symbiant. Whichever way I looked, I couldn’t escape her. I wanted her. It was that simple.
The words spilled involuntarily from my mouth – a small history of Kenny until he’d found a new life as Lawrence. Jaggers, I glossed over, describing it merely as physical abuse. Win’s betrayal I combined with my anger at what happened to Georgie and how Win had manipulated both of us. The old judge remained unnamed but became my benefactor. I might want to spill my guts but the truth took some stomaching even for me. I doubted Kat’s more delicate appetite would still find me palatable if she knew all of it. But it was enough to establish something more than desire between us. When I ended my narrative, her arms were around me and my face was wet – and I didn’t care that we were in the middle of the park or that I looked like shit and was old, or that professional distance was non-existent. She murmured against my hair and my face was buried in the softness of her breasts, warm and musky.
‘It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right ...’
I imagined my body inside hers and her reassurance inside my head.
I’ve never been able to describe or quantify that elusive emotion the blasé Romeos and trite socialites I’ve remarked on over the years call ‘love’. Being in love, I love you – love – what is it? One of those feelings I’m supposed to have but hitherto have never found. The rest of the day passed somehow – I don’t remember how. Perhaps in love – or some other deep elusive place.
When I woke the next morning in Kat’s tiny flat to trace the downy curve of her cheek as the flush of sleep still cocooned her in paradise, I knew it wasn’t what I’d ever felt for Margaret, in my frozen, boxed way. That had been mechanical at best, business-like at worst – and always unsatisfactory. How could it be other than that? I hadn’t ever bothered to find out anything intimate about her, nor had I allowed her to know anything intimate about me. This – this was so different that the deepest part of the pit of my soul trembled. I was as afraid as the long-ago shepherds must have been looking up at Gabriel and the heavenly host, blinding them with divine intervention. Kat was my divine intervention – soft, brown, gently over-plump – and sweet. She was also inextricably linked to yet another strand of a tale that was becoming increasingly tangled; a dangerously fragile patch in my patchwork that the framework of my pattern could collapse around all too easily. The boy – and why both Margaret and Win wanted to connect him to me.
Why the hell had I slept with her? I’d managed to extricate myself from the faux pas in the interview room only to march right up to the precipice and jump over it. What a fool – letting momentary need for reassurance override control. If I said it enough it would be true: momentary need. For my own sake, I ran before I could fall any further.
Perhaps I am lucky women can be persistent – or stubborn. I was still wondering how to explain my disappearance – having had second thoughts since then – but was about to go into court when she rang. The modernistic beep sounded out of place in the lofty reception area and I hushed it to silence by turning my back on the foyer and burying it in my robes.
‘I’m about to go into court.’ It sounded too terse but I didn’t know how to soften it.
‘Oh, Lawrence, I’m sorry. I’m always getting it wrong.’ I pictured the woeful biting of her bottom lip and downcast face. My heart double-looped. The idiot took over again.
‘No, no – it’s all right – you weren’t to know.’
‘I wondered if you’d had second thoughts and that was why you left. I’d understand if you did. It was stupid – I shouldn’t have encouraged you, I just ... You’re, oh God, I don’t know what I’m doing or saying and I’m just making this worse, aren’t I?’ Self-preservation abandoned me – or maybe found me. I remained silent, neither agreeing or denying and she answered her own question. ‘But I’m being silly. I should have realised you have cases going to trial. Don’t mind me. Are we all right? As colleagues, I mean?’
‘Of course, Kat.’
‘And the rest?’
I could be off the hook – easier even than my clients with the best cut and dried case. Her hesitancy betrayed her vulnerability so clearly. I could retract, climb back up onto the ledge overlooking the precipice and reconsider the way forward – leap or back away. She’d just made either possible without disgrace. I teetered on the edge – unable to simply accept the escape route she offered. Why? The Lawrence of old would have been complacently pleased with such a satisfactory outcome – a bit of meddling followed by rejection without culpability. She was taking that all on herself, this small bruised fruit with the sweet centre and sweeter still after-taste. But I couldn’t. The thing I wanted most in the world, suddenly, was to be back in her bed and thankful I had another chance at defining that indefinable emotion I suspected it was possible to feel – even if fleetingly – the night before.
; That moment of choice remains in my memory still, like the memories of childhood – that moment of exquisite indecision. They say when you die all the most pertinent points of your life play back before you – a parade of successes and failures, belief and disbelief. I think that happens when you choose life too. I jumped, welcoming the precipice, the long fall into oblivion and fear, and Kat. There must be life at the end of death – somewhere.
‘We’re fine, Kat. We’re fine, but I shall have to go any moment.’ I left what as undefined. It would become clearer in due course no doubt, and maybe I would be lucid enough to deal with it then.
She swept on delightedly. ‘Oh, oh – that’s OK. I must just tell you though – Danny’s mother has been in touch. She says she has something to tell us, but won’t give me any clues what. She’s being very cagey. Shall I arrange a time for us to go and see her?’
‘Us?’
‘If you want me there.’ She sounded small and uncertain again. So different to Margaret, this little bird with her plush plumage that could burst into colour and then fade to dull brown at the least discouragement. Margaret was the vibrant humming bird, deafening me with her continuous stream of good works, good principles and good lies. So different, and such a relief.
‘I think that would be fine too,’ and I could feel her pleasure buzzing even through the phone. The case was called a few minutes later and I ended the call with that strange vibration still rumbling inside me.
*
Danny’s mother hardly warranted the title. Scrawny and bitch-faced, she chain-smoked through the interview and my chest felt tight and laboured when she left. We were back in the interview room at the station, fan still broken and the cigarette smoke coiling up into a heavy layer waiting above our heads to bear down on us. Kat looked strained but gave me that quick light smile of hers like the sun breaking through clouds and the humming inside me settled into a rhythm. Stupid fool, it whirred, stupid fool. Sod off, I countered.
‘Mrs Hewson, you had something to tell me that might help Danny’s case?’ She looked at me strangely and then looked out of the window and ignored me. For a moment I thought she was going to refuse to reply. Her face closed even tighter in on itself, if that was possible, but she surprised me.
