An Immoral Code (31 page)

While he was away, Charles began to worry that Rachel might have found somewhere to live in his absence, thus scuppering all his hopes. But when he got home two weeks later, exhausted, fed up, and popping Immodium to keep a stomach bug at bay, he was relieved to find her still there. That evening she cooked for him, duck with some sort of plum sauce, and dauphinoise potatoes, which were a particular favourite of Charles’s. His sense of well-being completely restored by the prospect of a decent meal, and his stomach griping only slightly, Charles fetched a bottle of wine from his cellar and rummaged about in the drawer for the corkscrew, enjoying the tantalising proximity of Rachel as she busied herself at the stove. Then he realised suddenly that he was looking in the wrong drawer. This one was full of table mats. He closed it and glanced at the drawer next to it. No, it wasn’t the wrong drawer. This was where he kept the corkscrew and the potato masher, all those
bits and pieces, surely … Or was he going bonkers? He opened the drawer again, frowning at the contents.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Rachel.

‘The corkscrew,’ replied Charles, closing the drawer again and opening the other one, which turned out to be full of tea cloths, and bibs. Bibs?

‘It’s here,’ replied Rachel cheerfully. She opened the drawer next to the cooker and produced the corkscrew. ‘I moved those things over here next to the cutlery. It didn’t seem very logical to have them in that drawer. Really the table mats should be there, nearer to the table, you see. And I thought it was handier to have the cloths and things in the drawer nearest the sink. The clingfilm and foil are in here now. I hope you don’t mind.’

But dammit, thought Charles, if he’d wanted the corkscrew and things over there, he’d have put them over there. For an instant he hesitated, then smiled and took the corkscrew from her. ‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘Absolutely right. I have no sense of order.’ He turned away and began slowly, thoughtfully, to open the bottle. Oh, well, it didn’t matter particularly. It was just going to be a pain to keep opening that drawer for the next few months in expectations of finding the corkscrew, and finding table mats instead. Habits were rather hard to change at forty-five.

The evening passed off very pleasantly, and Charles was more than tempted to capitalise on the intimate, cheerful atmosphere, but he decided that it was best to leave it a few days before making his move. The next morning, as he went into his study to start work, he was enjoying a most agreeable little fantasy which involved Rachel undressing him, sinking to her knees … What the hell had happened in here? He stared at his desk, where last week he had left a series of piles of notes all carefully arranged, covering the desk, admittedly, but in an order which only he understood, for the purposes of cross-referencing. What he was
looking at now was a bare surface, and a neatly stacked pile of papers in one corner. He turned to the other desk, which was at right angles to this one, and on which stood his computer and a variety of books which he had left open at key pages. To his relief, these remained untouched. With a sigh, Charles sat down, and realised that there was something wrong with his chair, too. The two thin, well-worn velour cushions which had always rested upon the rather hard padded leather seat of the chair were not there any more. Grinding his teeth, Charles rose and searched the room, but the cushions were nowhere to be seen. The prospect of having to spend the best part of an hour reassembling his little piles of notes was bad enough, but he couldn’t even begin that task until he had retrieved his cushions.

‘This is un-fucking-believable!’ snarled Charles to himself as he roamed from room to room, seeking his cushions, and alarming the girl from the village whom Rachel had hired to look after Oliver for the next few weeks. ‘Have you seen my cushions?’ he demanded. The girl, Jeanette, looked at him as though he were mad, and Oliver, sitting transfixed on the floor with a brick in either hand, began to cry. ‘No, of course you haven’t!’ muttered Charles, and left them. He found the cushions eventually in the kitchen, and seized upon them with a glad cry. At least he could sit down now. Returning to his study and replacing the cushions on his chair, Charles sat down and looked about him. This was not the work of Mrs Dobey, his cleaning lady. She knew better than to lay so much as a finger on anything on his desk or tidy away his open books. Besides, he thought gloomily, staring at the space behind his computer where little fluffy whorls of accumulated dust had sat so comfortingly for so long, it was beyond her competence to have dusted everything so thoroughly. This had to be the work of Rachel. He sighed a deep sigh. She probably thought she was being helpful, getting his existence into order. Obviously she
was the fastidious type – he should have realised that by the way she dressed, and the fact that Oliver was always neat and clean and shining. Well, he would have to have a word with her about it that evening. She might be beautiful, and he might adore her and want her passionately, but there were limits to what a man could stand.

He decided to broach the subject after dinner that night, which was a curry cooked by Charles, and not very well cooked at that. The irksome beginning to his day had left him feeling broodingly resentful, a mood which wasn’t helped by the fact that Oliver seemed to have been crying non-stop all evening. He was teething, Rachel explained, getting up every now and then from her meal to walk him up and down the kitchen in an attempt to soothe him, stroking his fat, reddened cheek with her hand. After a while he began to grow a little quieter, and Rachel laid him experimentally in his pushchair, lined with a fleece, which was standing in one corner of the kitchen. Damned nuisance, thought Charles, glancing at it. He had already caught his knee on the thing twice, but Rachel said she had to have it there, it was the only way she had been able to get Oliver to sleep over the past two weeks in what was, to him, a strange, new environment. Miraculously, as they both stared suspensefully at him, Oliver, with a faint, sighing whimper, closed his eyes and fell asleep. Thank God, thought Charles, who thought he had the beginnings of a headache and was toying with the idea of taking a Nurofen.

Rachel picked up their plates and tiptoed to the sink with them, glancing briefly at the baby. Charles got up, picking up their wine glasses and the bottle, and took them through to the living room, where the fire had burnt low – too low, he thought despondently, to chuck another log on. It would never take. He sighed and refilled their glasses, then stood gazing down at the dying embers of the fire, wondering how he could
tactfully suggest to Rachel that she shouldn’t interfere with his things, without sounding too critical or ungrateful. He didn’t hear Rachel come in and turned to find her standing quite close behind him. He smiled, faintly startled, then said, ‘Sorry, dinner wasn’t one of my finest culinary efforts.’

She smiled back, picked up her wine and sipped it, then set the glass down again. She folded her arms and stood staring down at the fire. ‘It was great, really. I’m just sorry Oliver was so wretched all evening.’

There was a small silence, and then Charles said, ‘Listen, there’s something I just thought I’d mention …’ God, how was he going to say this? He was terribly bad at this kind of thing, and she had just thought she was being helpful, after all. Maybe he should forget it. Then he looked at her, saw the softened, lovely lines of her face in the glow of the firelight, and his heart turned over. She glanced up and caught his look, and in that moment the two of them stood perfectly transfixed, gazing at one another, before Charles leant down and kissed her, tentatively at first, then urgently drawing her against him. As he did so, Rachel half-expected to feel afraid, as she had always felt with any man before Leo. But there was no fear, just perfect acceptance. She wondered, as she kissed him back, achingly grateful for the feeling of his long, lean body against hers, how long she had wanted this to happen. Probably from the very first time she had seen him. But in all those months she had been too bound up in her own private pain with Leo, still hoping for the best, trying to pretend that Charles was nothing more to her than a friend. He was whispering to her between kisses, his voice feverish and incoherent, and Rachel felt a wonderful happiness expand within her. In her mind’s eye, lost in the pleasure of kissing him, it was like one of those time-delay shots of a flower unfolding, over and over, a combination of overwhelming emotional and physical sensation. At last Charles
took his mouth from hers, holding her face between his hands and looking at her unbelievingly.

‘I meant it when I said I was in love with you. I completely and utterly and absolutely adore you.’ His voice was unsteady with emotion, and Rachel felt instantly that this was a man of complete sincerity, whose declared love was as real and honest as Leo’s had ever been false and beguiling. There was a boyish earnestness and longing about him which captivated her entirely.

‘Do you?’ she whispered, unable to think of anything else to say, unable to take her eyes from his.

Charles nodded slowly. ‘God, yes. And if you don’t let me take you to bed now, I think I will go entirely mad.’ He kissed her again, and Rachel felt too dizzy with desire to resist.

After a moment she drew her mouth away from his. ‘I have to put Oliver into his cot first,’ she said softly, pausing for a moment before she turned and left the room. Charles leant back against the fireplace, trembling slightly, conscious of a pulse beating hard in his throat. He had not anticipated this, had not even been thinking about laying a finger on her this evening … He marvelled at the perfect timing achieved by a total lack of planning and wondered, waiting for her to return, whether he had not meant what he had just said to her, or whether he was just carried away by the intoxicating prospect of bedding her at long last. Whatever he felt or did not feel, he decided he would leave the matter of his study for another time, and began earnestly to pray that Oliver would not wake up in the next hour or so.

Felicity was standing over her desk, a copy of the early edition of the
Evening Standard
spread out in front of her at the jobs vacant section, while members of chambers trickled back in from lunch. ‘Fitter/turner wanted’. What was a fitter/turner, then? Whatever it was, Vince was probably not capable
of becoming one. She sighed. It must, admittedly, be pretty boring being a security guard for Marks & Spencer, standing watching middle-aged women buying underwear all day and with no mates to have a crack with. But it was the only job Vince had been able to get, and now he was going to jack it in. Given that he’d convinced himself he had to have a job to stop feeling like a kept man, she could just imagine how things were going to deteriorate once he was back on the dole again. She stared at the paper despondently. Panel wirers, paint sprayers, HGV/diesel fitters … The problem with Vince was that he had no training for anything. What had he ever done by way of gainful occupation, apart from a paper round at the age of fifteen and helping his dad out in the market? Then she suddenly remembered – he said he had worked on the minicabs one Christmas when he’d had no money. He wouldn’t want to go back to that, not the hours they worked, but what if he could become a proper taxi driver? He’d probably like that, reflected Felicity. He liked driving, enjoyed criticising other people’s road behaviour, and he would doubtless enjoy the kudos of a black cab, sitting outside Charing Cross Station reading
Penthouse
. She could just see it. But black cabs cost money, and you had to train really hard. She wouldn’t mind putting up the money for a cab, if he could do the training. She was earning a fair whack here, far more than she had ever imagined.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Camilla coming in, wearing the same morose, absent-minded expression that Felicity had seen for the last few days.

‘What’s up with you, then?’ she asked. ‘Got a mouth on you like a dog’s bum. I thought everything was wonderful in the world of young love.’

Camilla came in and sat on the edge of Felicity’s desk, taking off her jacket. ‘I am caught on the horns of a dilemma,’ she replied.

‘Oh, yeah?’ said Felicity with only vague comprehension.

Camilla ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. ‘I can’t talk about it here, but I really would like to tell someone.’

‘What are you doing after work?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Let’s go and have a drink and a good girlie talk, then,’ suggested Felicity cosily.

Six o’clock found them in a wine bar in Chancery Lane, discussing Camilla’s fortunes over a glass of chablis.

‘So, what’s the problem, then?’ asked Felicity.

‘It’s Leo. At least, I think it’s Leo,’ replied Camilla.

‘Oh, yeah? What’s he done, then?’ Felicity sipped her drink and waited, chin on hand.

‘He hasn’t done anything. That is—’ Camilla broke off. She looked candidly at Felicity, hoping that it wasn’t too indiscreet to talk to one’s clerk like this. ‘What do you think goes on between Leo and Anthony? Their relationship, I mean.’

Felicity was surprised, not by the question, but that Camilla should ask it. In the months that she had known them, Felicity had become aware of the subtle currents of emotion between Leo and Anthony, seen the way the older man looked at the younger, observed his voice and manner, and come to her own conclusions. Felicity was a girl who had seen and done much, and her experiences had bred in her an awareness which other people in chambers did not possess, protected as they were from the outside world by their upbringings. They, so far as she knew, had perceived nothing out of the ordinary. She took another sip of her drink, glanced warily at Camilla, and decided to hedge the question.

‘I don’t quite understand what you mean. What are you getting at?’

Camilla sighed. ‘I’d better explain. You see, I had a talk with Leo. He says they’re going to offer me a tenancy.’

‘That’s good. About time they had a woman at that place. Sexist sods.’

‘The thing is,’ continued Camilla, ‘Leo made it pretty clear that I wasn’t likely to get it unless I stopped seeing Anthony. Went on about the importance of maintaining balanced relationships in chambers, that sort of thing.’