Judicial Whispers (16 page)

And so he stood near the entrance to the Guildhall, an easy, attractive figure, impeccably dressed, surveying the crowd with cool nonchalance. He made his way among them, murmuring a greeting here, nodding and smiling to an acquaintance there. He picked up a glass of champagne and drifted over to where Michael Winstanley, one of the Commercial Court judges, was chatting with Lewis Tree, a Lloyd’s arbitrator, and a couple of solicitors. Leo felt that his own conversation was as polished as ever, that the general laughter which greeted his wit was warm and appreciative, but then – or did he imagine it? – he thought he detected the narrowest of glances from Michael as he spoke, that the faintest breath of unease orchestrated the slight body movements of the other men. It was nothing, and yet it was everything.

Making an excuse, Leo moved off, his face relaxed and reflective, his heart grinding away at the suspicion that the manner of those men towards him had shifted in some minute degree, that something known yet unspoken hovered in the air. He told himself that it was all paranoia, nonsense, that his faculties were alert to find that which did not exist. In an effort to smooth away the tensions he felt, Leo drank several glasses of champagne. He attached himself to a rowdy and amusing little knot of the more jovial and urbane of Sinclair’s partners, but somehow his mood could not support itself for long, and he detached himself again, glancing at his watch and telling himself that it was time he left, sick of keeping up the front.

Then he saw Anthony and Cameron with a couple of people, and he strolled over to join them, thankful at the sight of Anthony’s young, kind face. Anthony would not judge him. Nor would Cameron. With them he could relax, feel more like himself, shake off this dog of self-doubt, if only for a little time.

At the same moment, Rachel was walking towards Anthony and Cameron, and as she approached them, she was struck by the appearance of the man who had just joined them. His head was turned away from hers, his handsome face grim and distracted as he sipped his champagne and stood, one hand in his pocket, detached from the chattering crowd around him. She noticed his silver hair, the rapidity of his blue gaze as he scanned the room impatiently, the fine, restless fingers that held his glass. Then he turned to look at her, and as his eyes met hers, Rachel felt as though jolted by some force. But his glance merely brushed hers and he looked away, his expression faintly troubled and bored.

Leo was wondering whether he knew this woman, and whether the manner in which she had looked at him meant that he should smile and say hello as though he remembered her. This kind of thing annoyed him. He liked to think that he had an unfailing memory for names and faces, that it was one of his social excellences. She was familiar, certainly. Damn, damn … He ran his mind back, glanced at her face again, and then realised that Anthony was introducing them.

‘How do you do?’ he said politely, and took her hand, which felt thin and cold. Then he remembered. This was the girl to whom Anthony had been talking in Fountain Court a few weeks ago, and who had passed him as he stood at the postbox. That dark-haired beauty. He made his customary, detached assessment of her charms as they made small talk, his eyes straying across the fine-boned, delicate face with its wide mouth and almond-shaped blue eyes. Rather bright eyes – possibly she had had too much champagne. He felt confirmed in
this as he began to realise that her conversation was somewhat out of the ordinary. It was neither the mannish, robust line normally taken by women who found him attractive but were damned if they were going to show it, nor was it the flirtatious, intelligently inviting approach favoured by women more sure of their own good looks. This was something else entirely – really rather sweet and unusual. She was talking to him very seriously about the measurements cast in brass lettering and figures in the stones at their feet, which interspersed metal crosses and fleurs-de-lis set in the marble floor.

‘You see,’ she was saying, ‘it says a hundred links. Now to what do you suppose that refers? Is it the distance from here to there – and if so, where?’

He smiled at her. ‘I haven’t a clue,’ he admitted.

‘Now, did you know,’ she went on seriously, ‘that a chain is sixty-six feet? I don’t think many people here would know that. Everyone’s forgotten about roods, poles and perches, things like that.’

Leo picked up the train of discussion with some amusement. She must be on something, he thought as he listened to her and scanned her intent, glowing eyes. Yes – though he couldn’t guess what. Certainly more than champagne. He wondered if Anthony knew about it. At that moment Anthony said something to him. The talk became more general; she began to talk to Cameron, then someone accosted Leo, and so they drifted apart in the eddies of conversation and people that swirled around the hall.

As she saw Leo moving away, talking to someone else, Rachel excused herself from Cameron and went over to one of the tables and put her glass down. She could not believe she had babbled so incoherently to that man, Leo. Something about him had made her so nervous, so self-conscious, that she had just said the first things that came into her head. What a fool he must think her. She felt most peculiar, she realised. Her mind felt as
though it were ablaze, dancing with tiny fiery imps of thought, yet at the same time she felt giddy and weak.

I must go, she thought, and lifted her tongue to the parched roof of her mouth. She looked back to where Anthony stood and could not face the thought of speaking to him, of explaining, of trying to get away into the night without him. She had to leave now.

She retrieved her coat and made her way out into the freezing air. Someone in a peaked cap gave her a little salute and said something; she gave him a wandering gaze and a tremulous smile. She walked across the cobbled square towards Gresham Street, where she had parked her car, and wondered whether she was capable of driving home. She had had only two glasses of champagne, and yet she felt so strange. She heard a voice behind her and turned. Someone loomed up through the semi-darkness.

‘Oh, hello, Roger,’ she said faintly. Roger caught up with her, his soft, interested eyes taking in her unsteady, smiling features. Dear dear, so Miss Dean was capable of having one too many after all. And where was that boyfriend of hers? This was something of a fortunate occurrence.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

She stood uncertainly for a moment. ‘Do you know, Roger, I think I’d better take a taxi home. The thing is, I’ve left my car in Gresham Street – it’s all right there at this time of night, but …’ Her voice trailed off. She wasn’t quite sure what she was saying. ‘I have to get my briefcase from it. Do you—’ She looked at him, trying to concentrate. ‘Would you mind finding me a taxi, Roger?’

‘Certainly,’ replied Roger easily. ‘No trouble at all. Let’s just get that briefcase of yours first. Wouldn’t do to leave it in the car overnight.’

‘No,’ she agreed. And she walked down the deserted street with him, glad that there was someone who could at least see her safely into a cab.

When they reached her car and he made his slow pass at her, it was as though all the loose, untidy ends of her mind flew together. His hands clutched her arms and he pushed his mouth against hers so that she fell back against the side of the car; the keys fell from her fingers into the gutter as she tried to push him away from her.

‘Just a little goodnight kiss, Rachel,’ he was saying, his voice soft but intent, and his grip utterly immoveable.

At the smell of his breath and the forcefulness of his mouth and body, a wave of fear broke over Rachel and she began to shudder and tremble violently in his grasp. She felt totally unable to struggle free from him, and as she wrenched her face away from his she brought her hand up and raked the side of his face with her nails. He stepped back and cried out with pain, but as she took a couple of staggering steps away and bent to fumble for her keys, her heart hammering, her only desire to get into her car and away from him, he grabbed her by one wrist and pulled her upright. He began to say something, and she had no idea what was about to happen next, when she heard a voice say, ‘Hey, hey. Come on.’ Roger turned to look at the figure approaching them in the dimly lit street. He dropped her wrist and flexed his body, tugging at his jacket and stepping nervously back as Leo walked up. Then he turned abruptly on his heel and strode away, his steps loud and hasty in the empty street.

She leant back against the car, clutching her keys in her fingers, looking away from Leo. He was standing, head on one side, hands in pockets, surveying her curiously. She was about to say something, she did not know what, but felt her chest begin to heave, dry sobs rising to the surface. She turned away, shaking, and leant against the car, dry, croaking sounds of misery and fear breaking from her throat. The metal frame of the car window felt like ice beneath her trembling hand.

Leo stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder, and felt the shaking of her body.

‘Hey,’ he said again. ‘Come on, come on. What’s all this about?’ He knew Roger Williams of old and could see that Roger, as usual, had been attempting to force his unwelcome but trivial attentions on this girl, but she seemed more than averagely upset about the whole thing. He turned her round and put his hands on her shoulders. Her whole body was convulsed with these dry sobs, and her head was bowed. This was not good, he told himself. He stood uncertainly for a moment, then glanced at his watch. Ten past nine. Here we go again, he thought, Leo the Good Samaritan. A distressed lady with too much champagne inside her and a little of something else, besides. He took the car keys from her fingers.

‘In you get,’ he said. He opened the passenger door and she slid inside. He got into the driver’s seat, searched for the ignition and surveyed the unfamiliar dashboard. Then he glanced at her, watching her fasten her seat belt, seeing the visible trembling of her whole arm as she did so.

‘Shall I take you home?’ he asked.

She whispered something, her head turned away.

‘Sorry?’

She lifted her head, but still did not look at him. ‘No. No, please. I don’t think I could …’ And the crying began in earnest, racking her completely.

Oh, hell, thought Leo. He wondered whether he should go and fetch Anthony. Then he turned to look at her again, and some instinct told him that was not a good idea. He sighed.

‘OK,’ he said, and started the engine. ‘I’ll take you back to mine for some coffee. I could do with the company of someone in a worse state than myself.’

Rachel stared out unseeingly at the dark streets, the people, the lights, her head leaning heavily against the seat. The sobs fell away from her and gradually ceased, but still tears flowed, sliding down her cheeks. She wondered that anyone could have so many tears inside them, thinking of last night in Felicity’s flat. She turned her head away from the window and watched, through the dancing blur of her tears, Leo’s hands upon the steering wheel, changing gear, his elbow leaning on the door and his chin resting on one hand as they drew up to some traffic lights. She lifted her eyes to his face; he was staring straight ahead, his face a blank.

Rachel’s body felt inert, and the dizzying patterns which had swum in her brain in the Guildhall had now subsided. There was a slackness in her mind which would scarcely admit sensible thought. She knew dimly that she should feel wretched and embarrassed at what had happened, her hysteria, but nothing in her was capable of proper feeling. She realised now that whatever Felicity had given her in the office had not been aspirin, but she could not even feel angry about that. She just wanted time to
wash it away, for normality to return – but above all, she did not want to be alone.

She looked at Leo’s face again, closed her eyes and then opened them. He must think that I am a nuisance and an embarrassment, she thought – but it did not trouble her. He had rescued her, and he would stay with her. That was all that mattered, until this thing inside her went away.

In fact, Leo was thinking about his case the following day, an application to set aside the arrest of a ship in Falmouth. He had ceased to think about Rachel, whom he intended to send home in a taxi after a couple of cups of black coffee and a brief lecture on the folly of drinking on top of drugs.

When they reached Mayfair, it took Leo some time and trouble to find a parking place near to the mews.

‘You can’t drive home tonight,’ he remarked. ‘If I leave it here you can get a taxi later and pick it up tomorrow.’ He turned off the engine.

They got out and she followed him up the cobbled mews to the door of his house. He went in ahead of her, switching on lights, and she followed him up into a long, low room, sparsely furnished, with deep leather sofas and pale, muted lighting. Rachel stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, near to a low square table. Leo switched on a lamp that stood on the table, tugged off his tie and threw it with his jacket onto one of the sofas.

‘Sit down,’ he said to Rachel, as he walked past her to the kitchen. ‘Or lie down,’ he added. ‘You probably need to.’

She was struck by the casual chill of his voice. I’m just being a bore, a nuisance, she thought. I should have let him take me home, or find me a taxi. But she felt so odd, so alienated, that the idea of returning home alone was impossible.

She edged towards the kitchen door, watching him spoon coffee into a cafetiere, his movements brisk, as though he
wanted to give her coffee and get rid of her. ‘May I wash my face, please?’ she asked. ‘I feel a bit of a mess.’

‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Second door on the left.’

She went into the bathroom, as clinical and impersonal as the living room, and splashed water onto her face and rubbed it dry. She glanced up into the mirror. Her face looked very pale, but her eyes were hardly red at all; instead they looked dark and luminous. She wondered what it was that wretched girl had given her. Whatever it had been, it was still working within her, not with the heightened euphoria of an hour ago, but as a soporific, fuzzing her consciousness. She took a comb from her bag and combed her hair over and over again, the sensation clearing her brain slightly, then lifted her hair back from her face with both hands, letting it fall over her shoulders.

When she went back through, Leo had laid two cups and the pot of coffee on the little table. ‘Sugar?’ he asked.

‘No. No, thank you,’ she murmured, and stared vacantly at the steam rising from the pot into the dimly lit air of the room.

‘You still have your coat on,’ remarked Leo, bending to fetch something from a cupboard.

She glanced down, then slowly unbuttoned her coat and laid it on top of his jacket. She sat down stiffly next to it, her limbs feeling heavy and chilled. Leo came back over with a bottle of brandy and a glass.

‘Not for you,’ he said, sitting down on the edge of the sofa opposite. ‘You’ve had more than enough interesting things for one evening, I’d say.’

She watched as he poured coffee into each cup, then slopped some brandy into his glass. The light from the lamp cut his face into angles, throwing shadows beneath his brow and cheekbones and in the hollow of his neck where he had unbuttoned his shirt. Rachel felt quite tranquil now, mesmerised, happy just to let each moment follow the next in a steady, neat progression.

He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled them back, then drank some brandy and looked up at her. ‘Drink your coffee,’ he said. ‘You need it. Then tell me what all that was about.’ He paused, and added, ‘You’re not the first person Roger’s made a pass at, you know. He wasn’t exactly trying to rape you. Or maybe it was whatever you’d been taking earlier in the evening.’ His voice was caustic, impatient.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, lifting her cup to her lips and staring straight at him.

‘I have been around long enough to know the signs,’ he replied. ‘You’re as high as a kite. Not very sensible to go drinking champagne on top of it. No wonder you overreacted to Roger.’

She set down her cup. ‘It was …’ she began. Then she suddenly felt very tired; was it even worth the bother of explaining to him? ‘It was something my secretary gave me before she went home. I thought it was aspirin.’

‘Your secretary?’ exclaimed Leo.

‘I think she did it with good intentions. I think she thought it would help me …’ And the tears began again; she could not help them, but simply sat, watching the outline of her coffee cup swim. ‘I know I was stupid to react to Roger like that,’ she whispered, feeling something brimming up inside her, the feeling that if she did not speak, if she did not let it all spill out to someone’s ears, then she would suffocate or choke on it. ‘But you know, people use words so carelessly. When you’ve been raped once, you keep – you keep thinking—’ She stopped and cupped her hands over her mouth, stifling her sobs.

Leo stared at her in alarm. Oh, God, this was that girl Anthony had told him about. He hadn’t made the connection. The one who couldn’t let anyone near her. He thought of what he’d said a moment ago, and cursed himself.

He stood up and came round the table and stood over her. Then he reached down, bundled his jacket and her coat together
and gently made her lie back on the sofa, pillowing them beneath her head, stroking her hair softly with one hand as she wept. Then he knelt down next to her and looked at her thoughtfully. Eventually the crying stopped and she lay there, her face wet, staring up at the ceiling, her eyes deep and dark from whatever drug it was she had taken.

I can’t send her home like this, he thought. Not in this state. He remembered what Anthony had told him that day in El Vino’s, and his curiosity was aroused. There was something going on here that was well beyond Anthony’s handling.

‘Tell me,’ he said softly after a moment. ‘Come on. You’re safe here, and you’ve got things inside you that you want to get out.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Haven’t you?’ She said nothing. ‘So start at the beginning and tell me. I promise it will make you feel better. I promise.’

She looked trustingly into his face, then a faint frown of anxiety touched her features. ‘Has Anthony told you anything about me?’ she asked, her voice very soft. ‘I know you’re quite close to one another,’ she added. Leo gave a wry smile. ‘He talks a lot about you …’

He hesitated, and then nodded, stroking the line of his jaw with one finger. ‘He’s told me a little. That you seem – afraid of him, perhaps. That’s all.’

She sighed and looked away. ‘I think you’re right,’ she said. ‘I think I do have to tell someone.’ She glanced back at him. ‘I thought that telling psychiatrists and all those people I used to see …’ Her voice trailed away. There was a pause. ‘I was going to talk to Felicity about it last night. That’s my secretary,’ she added.

‘The one with the line in useful pills.’

Rachel smiled in spite of herself. ‘Yes. I think she’s a great believer in drugs.’ Her fingers fiddled with the buttons on the front of her dress. She felt foolish lying down with Leo kneeling next to her, listening to her, but somehow she had neither the
desire nor the strength to move. Just to talk. ‘We smoked some stuff she had last night, and it made me sort of want to talk about it …’

‘My, you do get around,’ murmured Leo, pulling a cushion from the end of the sofa and making himself more comfortable. He felt it important that he should stay near to her. Sexuality in all its forms fascinated him, and here was some well-repressed experience that he thought might be very interesting.

‘… but I couldn’t. Maybe I should have.’

‘Tell me now,’ said Leo quietly. ‘Tell me what makes you so afraid.’

There was a long, deep silence, and then Rachel, her blurred black eyes searching the farthest shadows of the room, began to talk.

‘It goes back a long way, I suppose. To my father. I think it must have begun when I was about eight or so. Just coming to my room at night, touching me, telling me things. And then, as I got older, I began to realise that he shouldn’t be doing those things. That it was wrong. But it went on, and the things he did got worse. I couldn’t tell my mother – how could I? Then eventually – I don’t think I really meant to – I told a teacher at school. I was fourteen. And then – then the very worst part of it began.’ She took a deep breath. ‘They took my father away – I really did love him, you know, in a way, even though he did those things to me – and the days just began to get awful. My mother screaming, the most awful, hateful things at me, that I was a liar, that I’d destroyed our family and my father—’ Rachel put her hands over her eyes, tears trickling between her fingers. ‘I didn’t know what they would do to my father. And this woman – I don’t know what she was, a social worker, or a policewoman, or something …’ She stopped, sniffing back her tears. Leo pulled the silk handkerchief from the pocket of his jacket beneath her head and handed it to her.

‘Here,’ he said. Then he picked up his brandy and sipped it, watching her.

She took the handkerchief and mopped her eyes, then went on. ‘This woman told me I would have to go to court, give evidence. And I couldn’t face the thought of that. I couldn’t.’ She shook her head and stared at Leo’s dark blue handkerchief, stained with her tears. ‘So I ran away. But they found me, and they – I suppose they took me into care for a little while. I don’t know. There was an assessment centre, and I used to have to talk to these child psychiatrists every day. Counsellors, they’re called now. My mother came to visit me, and she didn’t yell and shout any more. She was very withdrawn and quiet. I don’t think she really wanted to have to see me, to think about what my father had done …’

Leo regarded her gravely, saying nothing.

‘So then,’ she sighed, folding the handkerchief into a neat square and dabbing at her eyes, ‘they told me that my father was going to plead guilty, and that I wouldn’t have to go to court … And in the end my father went to prison, and I went home to my mother. I had to face everyone at school. They weren’t meant to know, but they all did, of course. I never went out. I was taboo. Tainted. The three years after that were a nightmare. I just wanted them to be over so I could get away from home. I knew there wasn’t any point in running away again. There wasn’t anywhere to go. The worst part was the constant feeling that my mother blamed me, that she thought I’d made him do those things, that I wanted them.’ She drew a shuddering breath. ‘It was as though she was thinking about it every time she looked at me. They got divorced, and I haven’t seen my father since. I don’t think my mother has, either. I don’t see her much. She moved to Bath, got a job there. She’s become very bright and extrovert, the way she used to be. I think she’s had a few boyfriends. But she doesn’t want me there. I remind
her of – of all that.’ She sighed and unfolded the handkerchief. ‘I spoil the mood. Anyway, at the end of those three years I got away, went to university to study law.’ She stopped, and there was silence for a while.

Leo reached behind him and picked up his brandy again, and took a sip. ‘And?’

She put a hand up to her forehead and stared at the ceiling. Her pupils were still dilated, velvet-black centres to her blue eyes. Leo wondered whether she would be telling him this if she were completely in control.

‘And – I thought I had put it all behind me. I thought I could just be a normal human being. There wasn’t any damage, after all … none that you could see.’ Her voice was very quiet. ‘But I gradually discovered that there was something not right with me. Boys used to ask me out – they never did at school, only later – but when it came to – when they wanted to touch me, I would just freeze. I didn’t want them to. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want them anywhere near me. I hadn’t really hated my father until then – I’d just felt sorry for him. But I began to see what he’d done, how he’d ruined part of me …’ Rachel ran her tongue over her lips, her mouth dry.

‘Your coffee’s gone cold,’ said Leo. ‘Here, have a little of this.’ And he handed her the brandy glass. ‘I don’t think it can do much harm.’ If anything, he wanted to keep her suspended in this blank, talkative state, desiring more and more of the details of her past, scraps of her darkness.

Rachel took a swallow of the brandy and lay back again.

‘You would have thought that that would be enough, that God would let it go at that …’ She closed her eyes, little sweet drifts of alcohol coursing through her limbs and her brain. She was glad to be talking, glad to let it empty out of her like liquid from a vessel, the past flowing into nowhere. ‘Actually, it seemed to be getting better after a while. I went to see a psychiatrist
again, I began to come to terms with what had happened, to look at it, think about it.’ She paused. ‘A kind of exorcism, I suppose. And then I met this boy. He was in the year above me at university. He was very quiet, very much his own person. I met him at a Union debate. He was sitting next to me. I didn’t usually go to those things, but …’ Her gaze wandered round the room, lighting on pictures and pieces of sculpture. It was as though everything in the room was poised, listening. ‘Anyway, we began to go out together. Not as—just as friends, you know. We liked the same things, films, books. I think he was a bit shy of girls … I hadn’t really had a close friend, ever. Not since childhood … I had girlfriends at university, of course, but they must have—well, I suppose I kept at a distance, because I couldn’t do any of the things they did. So Alan was my friend, my closest friend, and I thought things were getting better for me, because I liked him being near me. I think I wanted something to happen. A love affair. Someone of my own. I know I did …’