A Certain Justice (12 page)

Suddenly there were voices, loud shouting, a crash from the back door as if someone were trying to kick it in. Without a word, Ashe rushed downstairs. Octavia, in panic, grabbed the print and dropped it into the lavatory bowl. Under the Water she tore it in two, then tore again, and jerked down the handle of the flush. There was a gurgle, a thin trickle, then nothing. With a sob of desperation she jerked the handle again. After a second the water gushed and the segments with their glossy image swirled out of sight. With a gasp she ran downstairs.

In the kitchen Ashe was forcing a young boy against the wall, holding a kitchen knife to his throat. The boy’s eyes swivelled to hers in a mixture of terror and appeal.

Ashe said: “If you or your mates get over that fence again I shall know. And next time I cut. I know a place where I can bury your body and no one will ever find it. Do you understand?”

The knife moved a fraction from the throat. The boy, terrified, nodded. Ashe released him and he disappeared out of the kitchen so quickly that he skidded into the doorpost.

Ashe calmly replaced the knife in a drawer. He said: “One of the kids from the estate. They’re all barbarians.” And then he saw Octavia’s face. “God, you look terrified. Who did you think it was?”

“The police. I tore up the picture, flushed it down the loo. I was afraid they’d find it. I’m sorry.”

Suddenly she was frightened of him, of his displeasure, of his anger, but he shrugged and gave a short mirthless laugh. “It wouldn’t matter if they did see it. I could sell it to a Sunday paper and there’s nothing they could do. You can’t be tried twice for the same offence. Didn’t you know that?”

“I suppose I did know. I just didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

He came over to her and, taking her head in his hands, bent and kissed her on the lips. It was the first time. His lips were cold and surprisingly soft, but the kiss was firm, his mouth closed. She remembered other kisses and how she had hated them: the slobbery taste of beer and food, the wetness, the tongue thrusting down her throat. This kiss, she knew, was an affirmation. She had passed the test.

Then he took something from his pocket and lifted her left hand. She felt the coldness of the ring before she saw it, a heavy band of old gold with a blood-red stone encircled with clouded pearls. Octavia gazed down at it while he waited for her response, and then she shivered and caught her breath as if the air had become icy cold. Her veins and muscles tightened with fear, and she could hear the thud of her heart. Surely she had seen the ring before, on his dead aunt’s little finger. The photograph swam up again before her eyes, the gaping wounds, the slashed throat.

She knew that her voice sounded cracked. She made herself say: “It wasn’t hers, was it? She wasn’t wearing it when she died?”

But now his voice was softer, gentler than she had ever before heard it.

“Would I do that to you? She had one like, it but with a different-coloured stone. I bought this especially for you. It’s an antique ring, I thought it was one you’d like.”

She said: “I do like it.” She turned it on her finger. “It’s a little loose.”

“Wear it on the middle finger for now. We’ll get it made smaller.”

“No,” she said: “I don’t want to take it off, ever. And I won’t lose it. It’s on the right finger. It shows that we belong together.”

“Yes,” he said. “We belong together. We’re safe. Now we can go home.”

S
imon Costello knew that the purchase of the house in Pembroke Square had been a mistake within a year of his and Lois’s moving in. A possession which can only be afforded by the exercise of stringent and calculated economy is best not afforded at all. But at the time it had seemed a sensible, as well as a desirable, move. He had had a run of successful cases and the briefs were coming in with reassuring regularity. Lois had returned to her job at the advertising agency within two months of the birth of the twins, and had been given a rise which took her salary to thirty-five thousand. It was Lois who had argued the more strongly for a move, but he had put up little resistance to arguments which at the time had seemed compelling: the flat wasn’t really suitable for a family; they needed more room, a garden, separate accommodation for an au pair. All these, of course, could have been achieved in a suburb or in a less fashionable part of London than Pembroke Square, but Lois was ambitious for more than additional space. Mornington Mansions had never been an acceptable address for an up-and-coming young barrister and a successful businesswoman. She never gave it without a sense that even speaking the words subtly diminished her standing, socially and economically.

She had, he knew, a vivid mental picture of their renewed life together. There would be dinner parties — admittedly prepared by outside caterers or based on ready-cooked meals from Marks and Spencer — but elegant, carefully managed, the guests chosen to provide stimulating and amusing conversation, the whole a culinary celebration of marital harmony and professional success. It hadn’t turned out like that. Both of them were too tired by the end of the working day to face more than a quickly prepared meal eaten at the kitchen table, or sitting with a tray in front of the television. And neither of them had had any idea of the demands made by the twins as they grew out of that first swaddled, cradle-bound, milky acquiescence into rumbustious eighteen-month-olds whose claims to be fed, comforted, changed and stimulated seemed insatiable.

A succession of au pairs of varying degrees of competence dominated his and Lois’s life. It sometimes seemed to him that they were more preoccupied with the comfort and happiness of the au pair than they were with each other’s. Most of their friends were childless; the occasional warnings they had been given about the difficulty of finding reliable help had seemed more motivated by unacknowledged envy of Lois’s pregnancy than by personal experience. But they had proved only too accurate. Sometimes it seemed that the au pair, so far from lessening their responsibilities, made them greater: another person in the house to be considered, fed and propitiated.

When the girl was satisfactory they worried constantly that she would leave. Inevitably she did; Lois was an over-demanding employer. When it was necessary to get rid of an au pair they argued over who should be the one to do it and agonized about the difficulty of finding a replacement. They lay in bed constantly discussing the defects and foibles of the girl-in-post, whispering in the darkness as if they feared that the criticisms could be heard two floors above, where she slept in the room next to the nursery. Was she drinking? One could hardly mark the level of the bottles. Did she have boyfriends in during the day? Impossible to inspect the sheets. Were the children left alone? Perhaps one of them ought to come home unexpectedly from time to time to check. But which one? Simon protested that he couldn’t walk out of court. Lois couldn’t possibly take time off; the rise in salary was being dearly earned by longer hours and more responsibilities. There was a new boss whom she didn’t like. He would be only too glad to say that married women with children were unreliable.

Lois had decided that a necessary economy was for one of them to travel by public transport. Her firm was in Docklands; obviously Simon must be the one to economize. The over-crowded tube journey, started in a mood of envious resentment, had become an unproductive thirty minutes of brooding on present discontents. He would recall his grandfather’s house in Hampstead, where he had stayed as a boy, the decanter of sherry placed to hand, the smell of dinner from the kitchen, his grandmother’s insistence that the returning breadwinner, tired from his exhausting day in court, should be given peace, a little gentle cosseting and relief from every petty domestic anxiety. She had been a Chambers wife, indefatigable in legal good causes, elegantly present at all Chambers functions, apparently content with the sphere of life which she had made her own. Well, that world had passed for ever. Lois had made it plain before their marriage that her career was as important as his. It had hardly needed saying; this was, after all, a modern marriage. The job was important to her and important to them both. The house, the au pair, their whole standard of living depended on two salaries. And now what they were precariously achieving could be destroyed by that bloody self-righteous interfering bitch.

Venetia must have come straight from the Bailey to Chambers and she had been in a dangerous mood. Something or someone had upset her. But the word “upset” was too weak, too bland for the intensity of furious disgust with which she had confronted him. Someone had driven her to the limit of her endurance. He cursed himself. If he hadn’t been in his room, if he’d only left a minute earlier, the encounter wouldn’t have taken place, she would have had the night to think it over, to consider what, if anything, she ought to do. Probably nothing. The morning might have brought sense. He remembered every word of her angry accusations.

“I defended Brian Cartwright today. Successfully. He told me that when you were his counsel four years ago you knew before trial that he had suborned three of the jury. You did nothing. You went on with the case. Is that true?”

“He’s lying. It isn’t true.”

“He also said that he passed over some shares in his company to your fiancée. Also before trial. Is that true?”

“I tell you, he’s lying. None of it’s true.”

The denial had been as instinctive as an arm raised to ward off a blow and had sounded unconvincing even to his own ears. His whole action had been one of guilt. The first cold horror draining his face was succeeded by a hot flush, bringing back shameful memories of his housemaster’s study, of the terror of the inevitable beating. He had made himself look into her eyes and had seen the look of contemptuous disbelief. If only he’d had some warning. He knew now what he should have said: “Cartwright told me after the trial but I didn’t believe him. I don’t believe him now. That man will say anything to make himself important.”

But he had told a more direct, more dangerous lie, and she had known that it was a lie. Even so, why the anger, why the disgust? What was that old misdemeanour to do with her? Who had sent Venetia Aldridge to be guardian of the conscience of Chambers? Or of his, come to that? Was her own conscience so clear, her behaviour in court always so immaculate? Was she justified in destroying his career? And it would be destruction. He wasn’t sure what exactly she could do, how far she was prepared to go, but if this got about, even as a rumour, he would never take silk.

As soon as he opened his front door the bawling met him. An unknown girl was coming down the stairs holding Daisy in unpractised arms. He had an instantaneous conviction of her dangerous incompetence; the spiked red hair, the grubby jeans, the studs implanted in the side of her ear, the precarious balance of the high-heeled sandals on the uncarpeted stairs. He ran up and almost snatched the screaming Daisy from her arms.

“Who the hell are you? Where’s Estelle?”

“Her boyfriend fall off bike. She go to see him in hospital. Very bad. I look after babies till Mrs. Costello come.”

A familiar smell confirmed one cause of the crying: the child needed changing. Holding her almost at arm’s length, he carried her up to the nursery. Amy, still in her daytime dungarees, was standing in her cot, clutching at the bars and grizzling.

“Have they been fed?” He might have been talking of animals.

“I give milk. Estelle say wait for Mrs. Costello.”

He dumped Daisy in her cot and her bawling increased. It was, he thought, less distress than anger. Her eyes were slits through which she glared at him with concentrated malevolence. Amy, not to be outdone by her twin, began a more piteous sobbing which soon broke into loud crying.

He heard with relief the sharp closing of the front door and Lois’s feet on the stairs. Going to meet her, he said: “For God’s sake, cope in there. Estelle’s off with some injured boyfriend and she’s left a freak in charge. I need a drink.”

The drinks cupboard was in the drawing-room. Throwing his coat over a chair, he poured himself a large whisky. But the sounds penetrated: Lois’s angry voice becoming shrill, the crying children, feet on the stairs, more voices in the hall.

The door opened. “I’ve got to pay her off. She wants twenty quid. Have you got a note?”

He took out two tens and handed them silently over. The front door was decisively closed, and after a few minutes there was a blessed silence, but it was forty minutes before Lois finally reappeared.

“I’ve got them settled. You weren’t a lot of use. You could at least have changed them.”

“I hadn’t time. I was going to when you came in. What’s happened about Estelle?”

“God knows. I’ve never even heard of this boyfriend. She’ll reappear sometime, I suppose, probably in time for supper. Oh, this is the last straw! She’ll have to go. God, what a day! Pour me a drink, will you? Not whisky. I’d like a gin and tonic.”

He took the drink over to where she sat slumped in the corner of the sofa. She was wearing what he thought of as her working clothes. He hated them: the black skirt with the centre slit, the well-cut jacket, the soft gleam of the silk shirt, the plain court shoes. They represented the Lois from whom he felt increasingly alienated and a world which was as important to her as it was threatening to him. Only a moistness of the skin, a receding flush of the forehead betrayed the recent struggle. How odd, he thought, that one could get used to beauty. Once he had thought that any price would be worth paying if he could possess it, know it to be exclusively his, feed on it, be comforted, exalted, even sanctified by it. But you couldn’t possess beauty any more than you could possess another human being.

She drained the glass quickly, then, getting up, said: “I’ll go and get changed now. We’ll have spaghetti bolognese for supper, and if Estelle comes back I don’t want to tackle her till I’ve eaten.”

He said: “Don’t go for a moment. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

It wasn’t a good time to break the news, but when would the time be right? Better get it over. He told her the facts baldly.