Judicial Whispers (10 page)

‘It sounds to me,’ said Leo with a frown, ‘as though the young lady has some sort of problem. That is, of course, a quite valueless opinion to offer, since I don’t know her. But anyone who doesn’t respond positively to your physical charms must be mad.’ He raised his eyebrows and popped a fragment of water biscuit into his mouth.

Oh, don’t, thought Anthony. Don’t be camp. Don’t refer to us, to you and me, in that way. He felt that Leo was debasing what had happened once, trivialising it.

Leo perceived something of this as he glanced at Anthony’s face. How serious it all is at twenty-three, he thought. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘it does sound as though you’d be taking a lot of trouble on board if you did get too involved. You’re young, the world is full of young women. Don’t get tied up in messy emotional knots, other people’s hang-ups. And if you think it’s some sort of a game, for God’s sake don’t play. It’s unhealthy. Some people get a kick out of it, but I don’t think you’re one of them. Look, it’s made you unhappy enough already.’

‘Oh, I’m not unhappy,’ said Anthony, as he finished his wine. ‘I just find it all a bit confusing. But, no – you’re right. You’ve just told me what I’d already told myself. Only, it seems rather a pity. You don’t often meet someone with whom you feel so – so utterly right. Still.’

‘I know,’ murmured Leo. ‘One generally has to settle either for good conversation or for good sex. They rarely go together.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m rather afraid Sir Roger awaits me.’ Leo picked up his matches from the table and put them in his pocket. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he added to Anthony. ‘Women, in my experience, are never worth it.’

‘Right. Anyway, thanks for the drink,’ said Anthony, rising. He wondered what a gay forty-four-year-old’s experience of women could amount to. You never could tell. Leo was a strange one.

As Leo took a cab to Brooks’s and Anthony made his way back to chambers, the shades of the November evening were closing around the City. Lights twinkled in the windows of the clubs along Pall Mall and in St James’s. In the smoking room of White’s, Sir Mungo Stephenson sat nursing his whisky morosely, the glass resting on his broad stomach, his stumpy legs in their striped sponge-bag trousers stretched out before him. In the chair opposite, Sir Frank Chamberlin was toying with the
Telegraph
crossword, occasionally gazing into space and muttering to himself, pausing from time to time to take a sip of his drink. Sir Bernard Lightfoot sat in the armchair nearest to the fire, his eyes closed, his handsome narrow face serene and satisfied, listening to Sir Mungo carping about the new Lord Chancellor, Lord Steele of Strathbuchat. It was a cosy and reassuring sight, two judges of the Commercial Court and a Lord Justice of Appeal taking a well-earned rest after a hard day on the Bench, in the soothing, masculine surroundings of their club.

‘Naturally,’ muttered Sir Mungo, ‘one would expect no better from a crony of Thatcher’s.’

‘Wouldn’t one?’ enquired Sir Bernard without opening his eyes. He stirred slightly and crossed his ankles. ‘I don’t know about that. After all, I suppose he feels that, as he is now the Lord
Chancellor, he has to make his presence felt. One can see that.’

Sir Mungo snorted and took another sip of his whisky. ‘We don’t need any damn-fool Scot foisting his own ridiculous legal system upon us. Fusion of the professions, indeed!’

‘Oh, come,’ said Sir Bernard, opening his eyes. ‘It’s an old chestnut. Anyway, the Green Paper hardly goes that far. It merely talks about extending greater rights of audience to solicitors. Nothing horribly drastic.’ He closed his eyes again, smiling to himself in anticipation of his colleague’s deliberately provoked wrath.

‘Nonsense!’ growled Sir Mungo. ‘It’s the thin end of the wedge. You allow solicitors rights of audience in the High Court and the two-tier system will disintegrate.’

Sir Frank, his eyes still fastened on his crossword, nodded. ‘Indeed. You lose the critical mass.’

‘Quite!’ agreed Sir Mungo, wondering where on earth Frank got these peculiar expressions from, and what this particular one meant. Still. ‘If it is to be opened up in that way,’ he continued, ‘then the Bar will eventually disappear, and we shall have a system run by a lot of grey-minded solicitors with degrees from polytechnics. Good God! The next thing you know, you’d have the likes of Carter-Ruck on the Bench!’

‘Well, of course,’ said Sir Bernard, uncrossing his legs and pulling himself up in his chair to ring the bell on the wall next to the fireplace, ‘there are those who would say that solicitors are perfectly well equipped to appear in the High Court on behalf of their clients. They do so quite adequately in the lower courts, after all.’ He enjoyed playing devil’s advocate to Sir Mungo, even though he agreed almost entirely with his views.

‘Well, anyone who thinks
that
is a fool,’ replied Sir Mungo. ‘Advocacy is an exceptional skill. I wouldn’t trust the senior partner of any leading City firm to defend himself on a speeding charge. They couldn’t acquit themselves with even average
competence.’ He handed his glass to the steward who had appeared. ‘Another one, please, George.’

‘Small brandy, please, George,’ murmured Sir Bernard.

‘Moreover,’ went on Sir Mungo, hoisting his portly person up in his chair and fumbling in his breast pocket for a cigar, ‘in a properly regulated two-tier system—’

‘Thank you!’ exclaimed Sir Frank suddenly. Sir Mungo stared at him. ‘“Directed characters in a great duel”,’ said Sir Frank, looking up and smiling. ‘Nine letters. “Regulated”.’ He scribbled busily.

Sir Mungo continued to stare at him. Where had he got to before Chamberlin had gone off at his usual ludicrous tangent? Oh, yes. ‘As I say, in a properly regulated two-tier system, the advantage of the exclusivity of the Bar is that it consists of select advocates untainted by any close client contact. Now that, I believe, is vital to our system.’

‘“In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt …” Thank you, George,’ murmured Sir Bernard, taking his drink from the steward’s tray.

‘I don’t know that one need worry unduly, you know,’ said Sir Frank, removing his spectacles and folding up his paper. ‘It will simply mean a closing of ranks. I don’t believe that Lord Steele’s proposals will amount to anything, at the end of the day.’

‘But just imagine what it would mean if he manages to push the thing through,’ growled Sir Mungo, snatching puffs at his cigar as he attempted to light it. ‘Of course, the Bar would not lose out at the specialist level, but in the more general areas all the junior work would go to solicitors. The specialist High Court work would go to leaders, and the rank and file of the junior Bar would vanish within a decade.’ He stared angrily at the glowing tip of his cigar.

Sir Bernard eyed him lazily. Mungo really did enjoy having
something to get worked up about. But it was all nonsense. This new Lord Chancellor would see the error of his ways. As Frank said, ranks would close. ‘Well, at least that would keep the QC cabal happy,’ he remarked, then added, before Sir Mungo could continue a fresh harangue, ‘Speaking of the QC cabal, do you see that two men in Sir Basil Bunting’s chambers are applying for silk at the same time? Bit of a surprise.’

‘Oh?’ said Frank Chamberlin with interest.

‘Yes, Leo Davies and Stephen Bishop. Odd, isn’t it? I imagine neither is aware that the other has applied. Mind you, not before time in Bishop’s case. But then he always seemed to me to be a bit of a plodder.’

‘I like Davies,’ remarked Sir Mungo. ‘Got a bit of dash about him. Bit of colour. The Bar needs more like him. The junior members seem to me to be a very mundane lot these days.’

‘Oh, he’s colourful, all right,’ said Sir Bernard with a smile, swirling his drink gently in its glass.

‘Exceptionally able,’ said Sir Frank. ‘Very suitable.’ He nodded vehemently as he thought of Leo; he was very fond of him.

There was silence for a moment.

‘How do you mean – colourful?’ asked Sir Mungo. He’d seen Bernard smiling in that particular way of his.

Sir Bernard stretched his legs out before him, tugging down his waistcoat. ‘Oh, one hears things, you know. Rather fond of – ah – little boys, I believe.’

‘Davies? Good God!’ Sir Mungo stared at the fire in disbelief. ‘If anything, I would have taken him for a ladies’ man. But boys – how disgusting!’ He puffed his cigar and took another pull at his whisky.

‘Well, even if such a thing were true,’ said Sir Frank mildly, but leaning forward a little anxiously, ‘it’s hardly so very much out of the way, is it? I mean, we all know …’ Here tacit and well-understood reference was made to a senior figure on
the Bench, infamous among his peers for his eccentric sexual proclivities.

‘Well, Bishop’s not a nancy boy, is he?’ demanded Sir Mungo. ‘There are standards, you know. Call me old-fashioned’ – at this, Sir Bernard smiled and murmured something inaudible – ‘but I’m sick and tired of these faggots monopolising our institutions. First the BBC, now the Bar – next thing you know, it’ll be the army! I’m afraid that, for me, these things tell against a man.’ He shook his head. ‘Leo Davies. I am very sorry to hear it.’

‘Not likely to go down too well with the Lord Chancellor, either,’ remarked Sir Bernard. He took a last sip of his drink. ‘Not after that debacle with the Scottish Bar, accusations of gay intrigue, blackmail and whatnot. But frankly,’ he added, glancing at his watch, ‘it’s a matter of indifference to me. And so I shall inform our new Lord Chancellor when he asks me for my view of Davies, as I am tolerably certain he will. What a chap does in his private life can’t make much difference to the way he performs his job. Anyway, I must be dashing. Wife’s having a dinner party.’

He rose and bade them a smiling goodnight, then made his way out into St James’s to take a taxi to Camden, to the flat of a certain twenty-four-year-old girl of his intimate acquaintance.

Sir Frank sat in his chair, staring at the fire, while Sir Mungo snarled a little more about ‘damned Scots and queers’, before stumping out. Poor Leo, thought Sir Frank. What Sir Bernard had said about the new Lord Chancellor was probably right. He sighed, put away his pen and picked up his newspaper. He would have to have a word with Leo. He did so want to see him do well. Perhaps if they had a bit of a talk, then they could straighten it all out.

Two days later, Rachel lifted her phone in her office and heard Nora’s sing-song voice announcing that she had Mr Nikolaos on the line.

‘Put him through,’ said Rachel absently, wondering what fresh disaster had befallen him now. But fate had decided to put a decent limit on Mr Nikolaos’s current crop of problems.

‘Miss Dean,’ he said in important, slightly defiant tones. Rachel could tell that he had an announcement to make, that he had been chewing something over privately and now wished to share it with her. It struck her as sweet, the formality with which he still addressed her, despite their working relationship over the years.

‘Yes, Mr Nikolaos. Good morning.’

‘Good morning to you. Miss Dean, you are going to Bombay to see the master of the
Valeo Dawn
, yes?’

‘Well, yes – I haven’t booked my flight yet. I’m still waiting for my visa. But, yes, I’ll be going out there very shortly.’

‘Yes. Good. What I wish is this. The young man who is our counsel in this case – it is Mr Cross, yes? I wish him to go, too.’

Rachel’s heart sank. Oh, no – not more confrontation. Why, oh, why, had she ever instructed him? Not that he wasn’t the best company in the world – she couldn’t think of anyone she would rather travel with – but after the fiasco of Saturday night, she shrank from the prospect of everything else that his intimate companionship might entail.

‘Oh, Mr Nikolaos,’ she replied hurriedly, ‘do you really think that’s entirely necessary? I mean, I’m sure I can take the master’s statement without Mr Cross.’

But Mr Nikolaos was a man who, having reached what he perceived to be a decision of consequence, would not be shaken. He was only too accustomed to feeling helpless in the hands of his lawyers, and an opportunity to move the pieces about in his own chess game made him feel that he was still of some importance.

‘No, Miss Dean, this I have decided. Mr Cross says that the evidence is crucial in my case, and I wish him to see it himself, to inspect the ship himself.’

Rachel felt slightly patronised. ‘I am sure that the surveyor and I can assess the evidence quite adequately. In fact, it is the surveyor’s report which will be crucial, not what Mr Cross or I might think.’

‘Still, I wish him to be there.’ Rachel could tell he was not to be dissuaded. ‘He will be speaking for me in court, and he must see for himself where this explosion happen. Besides, Miss Dean,’ he added in paternal tones, ‘these ships are not always suitable places for young ladies to visit. I think a man would feel more comfortable, perhaps.’

Rachel bridled at this – she had heard it often enough before, but never from Mr Nikolaos. Still, he was only trying to be nice about it – at least he didn’t object to having a female solicitor, unlike a few former clients whom Rachel could think of. It had been more than a small impediment to her progress in her work,
encountering men who did not like their business to be handled by a woman; Rachel suspected that it was because they felt that it robbed them of their authority, rendered them impotent. She sighed. ‘Very well. But I have to warn you that Mr Cross may not be free. I’ll have to speak to his clerk.’

When she rang Anthony’s chambers, Rachel knew that there was a good chance that Anthony would already be tied up on the dates on which she had intended to travel. He was very popular and in court a good deal. But no, he was free, Mr Slee told her, consulting Anthony’s diary. ‘He’s got a summons on the twenty-third, but I’ve been trying to move that back, anyway. I think he should be fine from the twenty-third to the twenty-sixth.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Rachel unenthusiastically. Already various small fancies and fears were playing around in her mind. She detested having to feel like this, the bunched-up, nervous dread of something – nothing – that loomed ahead of her. Oh, stop it! she told herself. It’s only a business trip. He’s probably lost interest completely after last time, and just as well if he has. It was a ghastly mistake, and I should have known better. ‘Do you think I might speak to Mr Cross?’ she asked. She might as well tell him herself, so that he didn’t hear from his clerk and get the wrong end of the stick, imagine that she had somehow engineered it. That was the last thing she wanted.

‘Hold on, I’ll put you through,’ said Mr Slee.

Anthony was not quite sure what he thought of it all, when Rachel told him.

‘I told Mr Nikolaos that it was quite unnecessary for you to go,’ Rachel said in distant tones, ‘but he seems to think it imperative that you inspect the evidence for yourself, for some reason.’

Anthony leant back in his chair and fixed his eyes on the glow of the gas fire. ‘Didn’t you tell him that it’s all down to the surveyor? I’m no technical expert.’

‘Of course I did,’ said Rachel shortly. He caught the tone of her voice. She doesn’t want me to go, he thought. He wondered whether he really wanted to go either, after all that daft business at her flat. Not that he intended to let such an incident repeat itself, but they might be uncomfortable company for one another. The ghost of that Saturday evening would hang between them. At that moment David came into the room and made ‘coffee?’ signals at him. Anthony nodded, then tipped his chair forward. He rather fancied a couple of days away from London in freezing November, he decided. Only business, after all. Nothing more.

‘Well, I suppose if your client insists, and if William says I’m free …’

‘Yes, apparently you are,’ replied Rachel, just preventing herself from adding ‘more’s the pity’. She mustn’t let her irritability get the better of her. After all, it was her own stupid hang-ups which were to blame. Not him. Not Mr Nikolaos, either. Anyone else would treat this as a run-of-the-mill business trip. ‘You’ll have to get a visa,’ she added, ‘but I think they can rush these things through. Here, I’ve got the details somewhere …’ She pulled her diary towards her.

As he took down the address of the Indian High Commission, Anthony’s mind strayed beyond the business aspect of this trip to its further possibilities. Maybe being away with her, alone with her, would help. Help her to get rid of whatever problems she had. Whatever he had been telling himself since that Saturday night, he had to acknowledge that he was in love with her, and where there was love, there had to be hope.

‘Will you book the tickets for me?’ he asked. ‘I mean, I assume you’ve got all the timetables and stuff.’

‘Yes,’ replied Rachel. ‘And I’ll book the hotel.’ The hotel. Just the thought of that jolted her.

‘Fine. If you don’t mind doing all that, then …’ He wondered
what to say next. She sounded so uptight about the whole thing. ‘It should be fun,’ he added.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it should be.’ As she hung up, she told herself that that was the right way to look at it. He wouldn’t try – no, not after last time. He’d said ‘fun’, and that just meant a good time. A good time? She rubbed at her temples with her hands. She knew what Anthony’s idea of a good time inevitably led to. Oh, let it alone, she told herself. You can’t go on getting paranoid about these things. But she knew it was getting worse every time she saw him. She was slipping further and further. She hesitated a moment before picking up the phone again and making an appointment for the following evening with Dr Michaels.

Dr Michaels’ office was an unpretentious, rectangular and rather narrow room, decorated in pastel greens that reminded Rachel of school. The contents of the room, too, from the watercolour of a canal at a barge lock to the row of four cactus plants on the windowsill, bore the same stamp of impersonality, as did Dr Michaels herself. It was as though everything had been placed in the room – desk, chairs, bookshelf, little rug, cacti, picture and window blind – to turn it into a representation of a room, a pretend room. Rachel often felt, as she sat talking to Dr Michaels, as though she were in some silent theatre, her back to the audience. She imagined Dr Michaels walking onto the stage earlier, prepared in her role as the squat, comfortable Jewish psychoanalyst, sitting down, waiting for Rachel to make her entrance. Then Rachel would come in through the door and the play would begin.

It was generally the same one-hour play, but with varying scripts. Sometimes its mood was dictated by the way in which the streets of Earl’s Court affected Rachel on her walk to this room. Sometimes she found the crowds, the multiplicity of nationalities and their transitory quality quite enervating, and she would be
glad of her sense of isolation and remoteness, even though it was for that sense of separation that she sought Dr Michaels’ help. At other times, especially if the weather was fine, the same streets and the same people would exhilarate her, make her determined to cope with and conquer her problems, so that she could share and saunter in their sunshine without any secrets.

Today she had come by car, and the walk from the parking meter had been bleak and wet; she had turned into Culver Gardens and walked with a sense of futility towards the tall grey building which housed Dr Michaels’ green room. It seemed to have become purely habitual, this business of visiting Dr Michaels. There was no longer anything she could do to help Rachel. It even seemed to Rachel that Dr Michaels’ broad, impassive face conveyed the same message: I can listen, but can give you no more hope. She has heard all this a hundred, a thousand times before, thought Rachel. And not just from me. A vision flashed through her mind of all the little one-hour playlets performed in this room. Rachel wondered whether, in any one of them, Dr Michaels ever leant forward, her customarily deadpan gaze lighting up with excitement, and said, ‘I think I have the answer!’ As though any analyst ever could. Maybe it will be today, in my play, thought Rachel.

But they were into the second half-hour and Dr Michaels had evinced no sign of possessing a miracle cure. They seemed to be covering old ground. But then, what else was there in Rachel’s life, but dead ground? Doesn’t she ever get bored? wondered Rachel. But why should she? She is earning money just by nodding and listening.

‘It’s not just a question of rationalising it,’ Rachel was saying. ‘I can do that. I can go over events and face them, in the way you taught me, and I can say – “Look, there is your explanation. Now deal with the problem.” But it seems very artificial. I don’t really
need
to go through all that. It’s just mind games.’

‘What do you mean when you say you don’t need to go through it?’ asked Dr Michaels. Her face bore no look of curiosity. It was a pale, round face, not pretty, but with a heavy intelligence, framed with dark hair in short, springy curls. She looked back now at Rachel, who wondered, as she often wondered, whether the other woman resented Rachel’s slender prettiness, of which she felt inordinately conscious when in Dr Michaels’ muscular, plain presence. But Dr Michaels gave nothing away.

‘I mean—’ Rachel hesitated. ‘I mean that when it comes to—when I have a good reason for wanting to confront and get rid of my fears, my ability to rationalise it all fails me. Or rather, it doesn’t help me.’

Dr Michaels shifted her position slightly and rested her jaw on the fingers of one pudgy hand. Rachel noticed that she was wearing a bracelet of carved bone. It looked so incongruous, so little like an article of adornment, that Rachel was quite struck by the thought of Dr Michaels putting the bracelet on in the morning as she dressed, perhaps admiring it on her plump wrist. Perhaps some man had given it to her – Dr Michaels wore no wedding ring – out of love. Rachel found it difficult to think of Dr Michaels as a woman like herself.

‘You mean, when you are with a man,’ said Dr Michaels. It was not a question, not a statement – more in the line of a helpful hint.

‘Yes,’ said Rachel. Her mind flew to Anthony, and to the strength of his detaining grasp as they had struggled, absurdly, that Saturday night. She felt her muscles tighten suddenly at the recollection. ‘Yes. You see, there is this one person in particular.’ Rachel paused. Dr Michaels looked at her, waiting, not waiting, her expression inert. ‘I know that I’m very much attracted to him.’

‘You know that you are, or you feel that you are?’

This was an interesting question. The play had taken a new
tack. ‘I – I must feel that I am, surely, if I know that I am?’ replied Rachel, considering this. Dr Michaels said nothing. ‘I know that I am, in that he’s the kind of man – the kind of man that I think I would like. That I
do
like. Well, he’s not so much a man, more a boy, really. Then again … But he’s very good-looking, he’s very nice—’ She stopped and smiled. ‘That sounds trite, I know, but he really is … nice. That’s the only word to describe him. He’s intelligent, and he’s fun to be with, and I know that he’s very much attracted to me …’ Rachel wondered if she was becoming too detailed, bringing Anthony too much to life.

‘He sounds
very
nice,’ said Dr Michaels, and smiled suddenly. Rachel had never heard Dr Michaels speak jokingly before. What kind of man do
you
like? she wondered, as she watched Dr Michaels’ thoughtful gaze straying towards the window. Some large, loving bear of a fellow psychoanalyst, Rachel imagined, someone who makes love to you every which way five times a night. The thought of Dr Michaels in the frantic flesh. Rachel smiled. She’s probably a lot luckier than I am, she thought. But then, any woman is. It’s only Dr Michaels who knows it.

‘Yes. So, of course, I feel attracted to him. Or know I am, whichever you like. I just can’t respond to him in the way I want to. Or he wants me to.’

‘You see,’ replied Dr Michaels, ‘what I meant about the difference between feeling and knowing is that you must be careful to distinguish between someone for whom you feel a real sexual attraction, and someone who simply represents that which you perceive is – or should be – desirable.’

‘But how would you know?’ asked Rachel in bewilderment. ‘How would you ever know?’

‘I think, in your case, that it may make all the difference, ultimately. I don’t believe your problems are to do with men, as such. We have been over all of this. Your father is not all men. The man who attacked you does not represent all men. It is a question
of approach. Instead of regarding sex as a barrier to closer intimacy with someone, you should let it follow the intimacy, the closeness. But you must be careful to distinguish between the kind of inchoate attraction which you feel you must tackle as the answer to the problem, and those emotions which are’ – Dr Michaels hesitated – ‘more enabling. Which give you scope to respond.’