Judicial Whispers (15 page)

‘Benjy in?’ she asked. Leila nodded, wiping the counter with a cloth and not looking at Felicity. ‘Can I go up?’

‘You can, darlin’. Only I never see you.’

Felicity disappeared into the kitchen and came back a few moments later.

‘What was that all about?’ asked Rachel as Felicity sat down, slipping a glance at Leila as she did so.

‘Oh, just a little something to round off a good evening,’ said Felicity, and gave Rachel a wide-eyed, guileless look.

After they left the café, Rachel allowed herself to be taken to Felicity’s local. There she had two gin and tonics, and then decided she’d better not have any more. She was already feeling extremely heady, losing all sense of her customary fastidiousness in her new surroundings, closing her eyes to the music, opening them to smile around at the chattering, clinking pub. What an easy, untroubled life Felicity has, she thought. Even her problems are easy.

‘Oh, my God!’ uttered Felicity suddenly, and dropped her glance to the table.

‘What?’ said Rachel.

‘It’s Vince,’ said Felicity, casting little sideways glances up from the table without moving her head.

Rachel looked up with interest at the man approaching their table. She could see, she supposed, why Felicity was stuck on him. He was big and cheerful-looking and very attractive, in an unkempt way. He stood over their table for a moment, looking down at the top of Felicity’s curly head. She was staring into her drink, her mouth pursed tight.

‘’Allo, Fliss,’ he said tentatively.

‘Hello,’ she replied, then sat back and regarded him coolly.

Vince looked at Rachel, then shifted uneasily, glancing back to Felicity.

‘This is my friend, Rachel,’ said Felicity. ‘We’re just having a quiet drink together.’ Her voice was pinched.

‘Yeah, yeah, I can see that. ’Allo, Rachel.’ He nodded at her, then looked back at Felicity. ‘I just wanted a word, sort of.’

‘Well, “a word, sort of” will have to wait,’ replied Felicity. Rachel laid a hand on her arm.

‘No, look,’ said Rachel, ‘I have to be going, anyway—’

‘No,’ said Felicity, ‘we haven’t finished our natter. You want to see me,’ she said, addressing Vince, ‘you can come round later.’

Vince hesitated for a moment, then nodded. He moved off without another word, shooting Rachel an interested glance as he went.

‘There. You see?’ said Rachel, delighted for Felicity. ‘He wants to see you.’

‘Yeah, well. He wants a lot of things, doesn’t he? It could be anything. Doesn’t mean anything.’ But her heart was thudding. He did want to see her, talk to her. It must mean something. But she was out having a good time with her boss, and he would just have to wait. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s go back to mine for some coffee.’

Felicity kept apologising for the state of the flat, moving crockery hastily into the kitchen, throwing books and videos back onto shelves, plumping up cushions and emptying ashtrays. But to Rachel it was all wonderful, liberating. She thought with mild distaste of her pristine, quiet flat. This was real, she thought, not some made-up world where nothing happened. The muffled beat of ‘No Woman, No Cry’ suddenly came through the thin walls from the flat next door.

‘Yeah, well, we can compete with that,’ said Felicity, and put on an Eric Clapton tape. The flat next door got the message and
the volume dropped, and Felicity turned her own music down. ‘There,’ she said to Rachel. ‘Nice, neighbourly understanding.’

Rachel sat down on one of the tattered, fat batik cushions and leant her head back against the wall. Felicity switched on a small lamp which stood on the floor in the corner of the room and switched off the overhead light. Then she pulled over another cushion and sat down next to Rachel.

‘Cosy,’ remarked Rachel with a smile, looking round at the soft shadows. It reminded her of people’s flats at university. She was in another world, in someone else’s hands, her problems far away. Tonight she was nowhere.

Felicity had spread a few objects out on the floor between them, and Rachel watched with interest as she licked and stuck together two cigarette papers, carefully spread onto them a length of shredded tobacco from a Sun Valley tin, and then crumbled something that looked like an Oxo cube onto it. She wrapped the remainder of the cube up carefully in a piece of silver foil.

‘This is what I got from Benjy,’ she said to Rachel, as she licked the edge of the paper and rolled it carefully into a long fat cigarette. ‘You’re going to like this.’

‘You’re joking!’ said Rachel. ‘I’m a solicitor of the Supreme Court,’ she added self-mockingly, then laughed and leant her head back again.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Felicity mildly, twisting the end of the joint. ‘Take it from me, this is just what you need. Loosen you up a bit.’ She glanced at Rachel, who was looking dubiously at what Felicity was doing. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added, ‘the police aren’t suddenly going to burst into 86B Evelina Road and bust us. They’d be rounding up all of Brixton, at that rate.’

‘I’ve never smoked dope before,’ said Rachel. Why was she even contemplating this? Perhaps because of those wonderful words, ‘loosen up’. They sounded so good, so promising. Or
perhaps it was just that she was tired of being herself, living always in her right little, tight little code. Anyway, she reflected, it was true. Who was going to find out? What was going to happen? Nothing.

Rachel watched as Felicity inserted a little cylinder of cardboard into the joint, then lit the twisted end. She took a deep drag and the tip glowed red. She swallowed the smoke and leant back. ‘There,’ she said, handing it to Rachel, ‘now you’ll find out what it means to be taken out of yourself.’

Rachel took the joint precariously between finger and thumb and took a little puff. She tried to do as Felicity had done, but started coughing. Felicity fell about giggling.

‘Sorry,’ she said through her giggles. ‘You just looked really funny. Here, try again. Only take a deep, slow breath and hold it in.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ said Rachel. ‘You smoke. I don’t.’

‘Yeah, well, you’ll learn. Here.’

This time Rachel did as Felicity had told her, and tried to hold in the sweetish smoke. As she let it out at last, she felt a warm, expanding sensation in her brain. She took another drag, and the feeling came again, exquisitely pleasurable and soothing.

‘Here, hold on!’ said Felicity, as Rachel was about to take a third drag. ‘Don’t hog the joint! You don’t want to get so stoned that you miss it.’ She took the joint away from Rachel.

Rachel leant her head back, feeling languorous and happy.

‘So, anyway,’ said Felicity, settling back against her cushion, ‘tell me about your bloke. You know, the nice one with the dark hair that came round to the office that day.’

‘What makes you think he’s my boyfriend?’ asked Rachel. Her limbs were beginning to feel deliciously light. She wished Felicity would pass the joint back. Her mind had strayed to Anthony, and she realised she didn’t want to think about him.
He was intruding into her world of escape. She did not want him there.

‘Well, he looked at you like he was. I just had that feeling. Anyway, if he’s not, he should be.’

‘Yes,’ sighed Rachel, closing her eyes, ‘he should be.’

‘What – you mean he’s not made a move, then?’ She looked at Rachel in surprise, admiring for the hundredth time those fine cheekbones and that translucent, pale skin that didn’t need make-up, the black hair falling back from her face onto the old cushion.

Before she realised it, Rachel began to talk about Anthony. She told Felicity exactly what had happened – or hadn’t happened – between them. Felicity handed her the joint from time to time as she listened, and Rachel took it and smoked, almost heedlessly. Her eyes became dark, deep pools, and she gazed abstractedly at the lamp as she talked. She could see little spheres of light drifting from it and rising to the corners of the room. Then it seemed as though her own words, as they fell from her mouth, melted into the spheres of light and floated upwards with them. She found, at last, that she was weeping as she talked – soundless weeping, tears that simply flowed from her eyes as easily as words from her mouth. Felicity watched and listened. It could have that effect on some people, she knew, but she hadn’t quite expected this.

‘I know why it is,’ Rachel was saying. ‘I know why it is.’ She rocked her head back and forth against the cushion. ‘I haven’t been able to trust any man since my father. I can’t get close.’

Felicity spoke at last. ‘What did your father do?’ Mere cessation of speech after talking for fifteen minutes broke something of the spell for Rachel. She looked at Felicity, and drew some of her defences instinctively back down.

‘Oh, not much,’ she muttered. She pushed the tears away
with the flats of both hands. ‘He – he was just a bit hard on me. More than a bit hard.’

She looked away, dreading the next question. But Felicity didn’t ask it: she merely said, ‘Yeah, well, my old man used to knock me about something rotten,’ and gazed at the carpet. ‘In fact, the only bleeding thing he didn’t knock about was the budgie.’ She laughed without amusement. ‘It’s my mum I feel sorry for. Me and Sandy just got out as soon as we were old enough. It was worse for Sandy than me, really. I think it is, if you’re a boy.’

Rachel thought this a curious remark, but she did not question it. She was simply relieved at having to say no more about her father. But isn’t now the time? she wondered. Now, when you’re feeling like this, when you’re a million miles away from it all and there’s this – she closed her eyes and tried to find the words – this warm light shining inside of you. That was it. She felt illuminated from within. Her tears had vanished as quickly as they had come, cleansing something from her. She felt untethered, as though speaking of Anthony had loosened something inside her and it was drifting away, part of her, not part of her. But no, she could not tell Felicity about her father, nor about the rest of it. Felicity was not the right person. God, where was the right person?

‘Well, if you ask me,’ said Felicity in a businesslike fashion, drawing greedily on the very last tiny millimetre of the joint, feeling the heat on her lips, ‘this Anthony bloke just isn’t the one for you. Don’t go blaming your dad for everything, though. He’s not all men, you know.’

‘That’s what my analyst said,’ remarked Rachel.

This made Felicity feel profound. ‘Well,’ she said with an airy touch of pride, ‘it’s right, isn’t it? You don’t need qualifications to see that. But I don’t think you want to worry about Anthony any more. Tell him it’s no go.’

‘He says he’s in love with me,’ said Rachel sadly.

‘Doesn’t mean you owe him anything,’ retorted Felicity.

‘I wish, I really wish, it were as simple as all that,’ said Rachel, and sighed. ‘I want it to be right between us.’

‘If it was going to be, it would be. Find someone else.’ Felicity reflected for a moment on what she’d seen of Anthony. ‘Bit of a waste, mind,’ she added, then said, ‘but don’t get the idea that you can’t stand all men.’

It’s not an idea, thought Rachel, it’s a certainty. But she did not say this.

Felicity changed the music and they listened and talked, and the mood lightened, time stretched. The music and the dope made Rachel feel as though she were living on some other plane, one she didn’t want to leave. The thought of Nichols & Co, of work, of everything that was real, seemed far, far away.

‘Look, d’you want to kip here tonight?’ asked Felicity.

Rachel looked at her watch and got stiffly to her feet. ‘Oh, God,’ she moaned, ‘look at the time. It’s half one.’ She registered Felicity’s question and shook her head. ‘No, thanks. I must get back. I’ve got clients in the morning. I can’t turn up like this.’ She looked down at her crumpled skirt, at the long ladder in one of her stockings.

‘Well, you can always have the sleeping bag and the couch, you know.’

Rachel glanced at the sofa, and suddenly the thought of her own fresh, sweet bed seemed very welcoming. She felt enormously tired. ‘No, honestly. That’s sweet, but I’ll get a taxi.’

They rang for a taxi, and when it came and Rachel went down to the street, she passed Vince on the stairs. He didn’t recognise her, and she smiled, yawning, to herself. Lucky old Felicity. At least she knew what she wanted, even if he was unreliable and a heartbreaker.

All the way home to Fulham she thought of what she had told Felicity, and of her soundless, easy tears, and was glad it had happened.

Back in the clean, sober reality of her flat, Rachel realised that her clothes and hair smelt of smoke, and that her head, which had felt so deliciously light and expansive a few hours ago, was now aching profoundly.

She thought of having a shower, but it was now after two, and she knew she must get some sleep before the next day. She suddenly remembered Anthony and her promise to go with him to the Guildhall, and wondered briefly whether she should put it off. Tomorrow, she thought. She would take care of everything tomorrow.

She felt better the next day, but still weary from lack of proper sleep. In her mind there was an odd sense of distraction, as though she had visited some place in the past few hours and was still haunted by its imperfect recollection. It must have been the joint she and Felicity had smoked, she decided – what on earth had possessed her to do that? Too much alcohol and the desire to be, literally, out of her mind. And she had been. Something had been trapped within her, in those hours at Felicity’s flat. Like a valve, like that stubby, sinister piece of metal sticking up from the number two generator in the engine room of the
Valeo Dawn,
she felt something had been loosened, little bits of her past seeping out …

The blurred image of the generator valve reminded her, as she yawned her way through her tea and grapefruit, that she must get that statement from Captain Craddock typed up. She thought about the Bombay trip as she sat in the Embankment traffic; it seemed as though it had happened weeks and not days ago. She was struck by an odd new sense of serenity as she thought of Anthony and all that had been said. Her mind
no longer jarred with apprehension at the thought of seeing him. She smiled to herself, fiddling with the buttons on the car radio, pleased with the realisation. That was a start. That was something. No, she wouldn’t put him off this evening. In a way, she was rather looking forward to it.

When Rachel reached the office, she smiled a conspiratorial smile at Felicity as she passed her desk and, glancing briefly at the watchful faces of Doris and Louise, murmured, ‘I’ve got that Bombay tape to be typed up, Felicity – do you want to pop in and get it?’

Felicity rose and followed Rachel to her room, and closed the door gently behind her as Rachel hung up her coat.

‘Well?’ asked Rachel with a smile of curiosity, turning to Felicity, who looked somewhat worn out but perceptibly chirpy.

‘Yeah, it was all right,’ said Felicity with a sheepish grin. ‘I mean, he wanted to make up and everything.’

‘So everything’s fine?’ It gave Rachel a sense of vicarious pleasure to think that at least Felicity’s love life had taken a turn for the better.

Felicity picked at the corner of Rachel’s desk with her thumbnail. ‘Yes, I guess so. It’s just that – well, I feel I am being really weak about all this. I mean, I gave him an earful and everything, but I still let him stay …’ She glanced sadly at Rachel. ‘Now that I’ve let him get away with it, forgiven him and that, I know it’ll happen again. It’s bound to. He knows how soft I am.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Rachel, opening her briefcase and taking out some papers.

‘Don’t you believe it. He knows he’s got it made.’ Felicity sighed. ‘Maybe it would have been better if I’d told him to get lost. Thing is—’

‘I know. You love him.’

‘Yeah.’ Felicity looked down at the carpet and folded her arms. ‘Yeah. I’d do anything for him. That’s the way it gets you. You feel like you’re losing all your pride, all your self-respect. But you can’t help it. At least I can’t,’ she added wanly.

As she lifted the tiny cassette from her handheld recording machine, Rachel wondered what such a feeling could be like. She could not imagine herself in that dilemma, robbed of all self-possession, ready to do anything, just for someone’s love, just to keep them near. Would it make one feel utterly abased, or would one be beyond caring about such things? I’ll probably never know, she thought, gazing at the minute spool of brown cassette ribbon in its transparent cartridge.

‘Anyway,’ said Felicity, stretching out her hand for the tape, ‘this won’t get the baby bathed. I’d better be getting on with this.’

‘Thanks,’ said Rachel. ‘I’ll want four copies – one for the file, one for the master, one for counsel—’

‘That’s that chap, isn’t it? The one you were talking about last night.’

‘Yes,’ replied Rachel. ‘That’s Anthony.’ She suddenly remembered everything she had told Felicity, all the unstoppable words, the easy tears brought on by the night and Felicity’s dope, and felt oddly compromised, embarrassed. Last night’s sense of liberation had vanished. It occurred to her now that she should not have told Felicity so much. That had been a mistake, though one she could not have helped making. Felicity would expect more confidences, would expect to be able to ask after Anthony in the way that she, Rachel, had asked about Vince just a few moments ago. Much as she liked Felicity, Rachel did not want that.

‘You know,’ she added awkwardly as Felicity turned away with the tape in her hand, ‘all those things I said last night. About Anthony, I mean.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, it’s not as bad as it
sounds. I mean, you can forget it all. I was just being stupid. Out of my head, if you like.’ She smiled at Felicity, her expression frank and careless.

It seemed to Felicity that the little pocket of confidence which had opened up between them both last night had suddenly closed. She wishes she’d never told me, thought Felicity. She thinks it’s all right for her to know all about me and Vince, but she doesn’t want me knowing her stuff. She thinks she can treat me familiarly and keep herself distant. She returned Rachel’s smile a little sadly.

‘Yeah, well, sometimes the old ganja does that to you. Brings it all to the surface. Don’t you worry about it, though. You tuck it all back safely out of sight.’

Rachel sat, stung, after Felicity had left the room. She was right, of course. It had embarrassed her to allow her feelings and fears to be known, and now she wanted to pretend that none of it was true. But it was true. She stared at the backs of her hands. I can’t be honest with Felicity, so how can I be honest with myself? she wondered.

As the day progressed, Rachel found herself growing more tired and depressed, the cumulative lack of sleep draining away her energy. I can’t go tonight, she told herself at five o’clock. She rang Anthony’s chambers, but Henry told her that Anthony was at an arbitration at the Baltic Exchange and wouldn’t be coming back to chambers that evening. Rachel sat there after she had put the phone down, feeling grey and washed out. She would just have to wait for him, that was all. It crossed her mind to go straight home and leave a message for Anthony at reception, but somehow, since her return from India, the prospect of solitude in her flat repelled her. Time spent on her own seemed to have lost its contained, safe quality. She felt that the routine of life cocooned in her pretty flat would no longer protect her, that hinges somewhere in her were becoming unfastened, parts of
her flapping about in an unsteady wind. She did not want to be alone.

Felicity passed her door and stopped to say goodnight. She noticed Rachel’s drawn, thoughtful face, and thought of all the things Rachel had told her last night. It seemed so sad, thought Felicity. She was so lost and mixed up, and yet Felicity had thought her totally in control, her life wonderful, matching the perfection of her outward appearance. She did not, at that moment, envy her boss.

‘You ought to go home and get some kip,’ she told Rachel, pausing in the doorway as the rest of the secretaries packed their belongings up and headed for the lift.

Rachel sighed. ‘I’m meant to be going out with Anthony tonight. I don’t feel up to it, but he’s not in chambers and he said he would pick me up here. I’ll have to wait.’ She passed her slender white hands over her face. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any aspirin, or anything like that, have you? Last night’s just beginning to catch up with me.’

Felicity, eyeing her, hesitated for a moment. ‘I think I’ve got something somewhere. Hold on.’ She went away, then reappeared a moment later. She laid two white tablets on Rachel’s desk and a little paper cup of water from the water cooler. ‘There you go. They should do the trick.’

Rachel thanked her and swallowed them with the water. Felicity said goodnight, and left.

By the time Anthony arrived, Rachel thought she was feeling distinctly better. She would be able to get through the evening without too much trouble. Just so long as she got home at a decent time. She would leave this Guildhall thing at nine, not let Anthony persuade her to go to dinner afterwards.

‘How are you?’ asked Anthony, as they stood together in the lift. She looked bright, he thought, but a little strained. Perhaps she was still jet-lagged.

‘Good,’ she replied cheerfully. ‘Better than I did this time last night.’ And she did. Her mouth felt slightly dry, but she felt animated, alert. The lights along Bishopsgate, the traffic lights, the car lights, the shop lights – so many lights – all crowded in upon her vision. Yes, she felt good. She felt really good.

As she drove through the traffic on London Wall, Rachel tried to fasten her concentration on what Anthony was saying, but it seemed as though her own thoughts were rushing ahead of his words, jumping lightly from one thing to another, so that it was all she could do to nod and smile brightly at the right junctures. Anthony thought her preoccupied, but was glad she was so carelessly cheerful. It was a change from her usual watchful, slow-smiling reserve.

When they entered Guildhall, Rachel was struck by the way the great cathedral-like hall seemed to well up with sound, like a radio suddenly turned to full volume. Voices seemed to clash and rise, swooping notes of noise, and the faces that turned to her in the vast crowd of faces shone like discs. She was aware of a mild buzzing sensation in her limbs.

‘I’ve never been here before,’ she said wonderingly. She thought she had spoken to Anthony, but realised she must have been speaking to herself, that no words had come out.

They had reached some point in the hall and had stopped. Anthony was talking to people. Fred was there, Fred Fenton, and she spoke to him for a few moments before the crowd and the tide of conversation eased them away from one another. She lifted her eyes and looked up at the high vaulted roof, at the trembling rows of guild insignia. Or at least they seemed to tremble. She looked around slowly; the rigid forms and folds of the stone drapery on the Victorian statues and plaques ranging the walls seemed liquid with motion. How absurd, she thought, and smiled. She gazed ahead at the minstrels’ gallery, and it seemed to her that the music which floated from the unseen
musicians filled the air with a charming swarm of notes, a carpet of sound floating above the heads of the crowd and into the lofty grey corners of the Guildhall roof. She wanted to touch people on the arm and say, ‘Listen! You’re not listening – listen to that!’

A sudden unsteadiness shook her and she looked away, staring down at the floor, and the dancing in her heart ceased and settled. Her vision steadied. Someone to whom Anthony had introduced her was speaking, and she was able to focus her attention. She managed to make conversation, and her brain became a little clearer. She spoke to more people, felt smiling and animated, and drank some of the champagne she had been given.

A High Court judge made a speech, full of jocular topical references to the firm of Sinclair, Roche & Temperley on the occasion of their jubilee, and everyone laughed and felt cosy. Rachel could not follow much of it. Tables along the side of the hall were laid out with food, and she discovered herself to be ravenously hungry. She ate quickly and nervously, glancing from time to time back to Anthony, who was talking to some new people. She knew them, she thought – they were from 5 Caper Court. The big man with the moustache was Cameron Renshaw, whom she had instructed once. She must go and speak to him. She felt bright and eager and nervous, and swallowed back the remainder of her champagne before walking over to Anthony.

Leo had not wanted to come that evening. He had spent the past two days in sullen fury, unable to concentrate properly on his work, his talk with Frank Chamberlin gnawing away at his thoughts. For hours together he remained stolidly convinced that the thing was over, that he had lost the high moral ground and had now no hope of recovery. His application must fail, particularly in the light of the competition from Stephen. Then moments of cold clarity would occur, in which he told himself
that the Lord Chancellor’s Office could not be so ludicrous, so bigoted, as to care about anyone’s sexual peccadilloes. In those brief intervals he had been able to reassure himself that Frank had gauged the temperature of the thing entirely wrongly, that merit alone would be the criterion. Good God, these were the eighties, after all.

But then the doubts would creep back, the imagined contents of that unread report, the possibility of parts of his past having come to the ears of such as Sir Mungo, or Sir Mostyn Smith. Perhaps someone had, somehow, found out about that boy who had once been Leo’s lover, and who had finished up dead in some bedsit in Balham. That had been long after Leo had lost touch with him, and he had not felt remotely touched by the tragedy then, but now it returned to gnaw at his conscience. All it took was one wrong connection, rumour imperfectly attached to fact, and he could be finished.

Not knowing what was known – that was the worst of it. Perhaps the business of Sarah and James – that tacky domestic arrangement which he had imagined to be so discreetly tucked away in its rural fastness, far from the City or anyone who knew him – had reached someone’s ears. Not heinous, but sordid enough to tarnish his reputation at this most critical of junctures. It was when he dwelt on these dark and tormenting possibilities that Leo felt staggered by his own past naivety, by his years of calm assurance and the constant belief that things could be kept secret.

But berating himself for his own folly could do no good. Neither, he had told himself, gazing in his room at the engraved oblong invitation from Sinclair’s, could it do any good to shuffle oneself out of sight, letting the uncertainty of the next few months eat away at one. After all, it could still be that Sir Frank was worrying about nothing – in which case it behoved Leo to act with his usual ease and brilliance, to be seen among the
multitude of the great and good who would throng the Guildhall that evening, to conduct himself with his customary confidence and charm. Appearances were all, he knew. There was much that thinking could make so. If he were to behave as though such rumour as floated about neither troubled nor touched him, perhaps others could be persuaded that it simply had no basis, or was so slight in substance as to be easily dismissed. It was important to brave this storm, imagined or otherwise.