This is the Life (20 page)

My wait-and-see approach was rewarded three days later, on Tuesday 6 December, when I received a fat and rather intriguing envelope from Philip Hughes. Inside it was a letter and a wad of correspondence. The letter was marked ‘Without Prejudice’ and it contained an offer: Arabella would accept a lump sum payment of £50,000 in full and final settlement if
Donovan consented to the divorce petition. All things considered, it was not a bad offer. A bit of negotiation could lower the payment by £10,000, and given the uncertainties of a trial and the distress, inconvenience and expense that it would cause, leaving aside the substantial financial award which Arabella might receive, I would have warmly recommended it to Donovan in normal circumstances. But his instructions on this point were clear: he would not consent to the divorce, not at any price.

I turned to the second paragraph. Donovan, Hughes alleged, was molesting Arabella with the enclosed letters. Such correspondence was to cease immediately or an injunction would be obtained.

Hughes’s threat was over-dramatic, I thought, and not to be taken too seriously. If Donovan had threatened physical violence of some sort or had camped outside her house or bombarded her with telephone calls it would have been different. To complain of epistolary harassment was taking things a little far; no one forced her to read the letters. Then I thought, Wait a minute: letters?

I picked out the bundle from the envelope. My sticky fingers leaving faint fingerprints, I removed them from the elastic band and counted fourteen enclosed in airmail envelopes bearing colourful English, Swiss and French stamps. They had not been opened. I fingered them. They crackled in my hands. They gleamed and slid around in my fists like clean plates. Then I put them to one side. There was no question of examining their contents. These were private communications, I had no business with them. They were strictly between Donovan and his wife.

Why, then, if that was so, was I to be found five minutes later in the office kitchenette, bent over a grumbling kettle, holding envelopes over the plume of steam?

I only unsealed three letters. There was no time to do any more and I was receiving strange glances from my workmates. June, though, had no qualms about asking me what I was doing. It is part of her charm, this directness.

‘James, what on earth are you doing?’ she said.

‘I’m working,’ I said boldly. ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ I yelped as the steam scalded my hand.

‘It looks like you’re opening mail you shouldn’t be,’ June said. That’s what it looks like.’

I gave her a reassuring smile, and continued steaming.

June said, ‘Well, I just hope you know what you’re doing.’

The first letter I unsealed was dated 28 September 1988, about a week after Donovan had received the petition and – again I consulted the chronology of the case that I had drawn up – the day after he had finished those rather curious exercises in his notebooks. (At that point I noticed something else for the first time: that Donovan had started his notebook exercises – his comeback, in other words – the day after he had received the petition. What was I supposed to make of that?) It was a strange letter. I had anticipated a billet-doux of some kind, some sort of plea from the heart: instead it read uncannily like the pleading in a statement of claim. Reading through it, I half-expected the short, pithy paragraphs (each making a distinct point) to be numbered and broken down into sub-paragraphs marked by Roman numerals.

The letter started by giving some facts as Donovan understood them. They had been married for just over twelve years. During that time they had had their ups and downs (I am paraphrasing, of course; I cannot reproduce that agreeable, eloquent voice which Donovan projected in his writing). Problems, difficult problems, had presented themselves and had been overcome. Why? Because the two of them had always valued their marriage. It was a precious thing which, until recently, they had always striven to preserve. So much, Donovan said, could not be in dispute. Then he moved on to his next point. Recently fresh difficulties had arisen, difficulties which had prompted her departure. Quite what those difficulties were Donovan was unable to say: Arabella had not voiced any specific grievances, she had merely packed her bags and left without a word, refusing to have any contact with him. Then, out of the blue, he had received her petition,
filled with wild accusations of cruelty and neglect and unreasonableness. Why, if she set any store by their marriage (as she had often claimed) had she not discussed her grievances with him? If he was in the wrong about something (which he was forced to deny, not knowing exactly of what it was he was accused) then he would make amends. He would meet her complaint.

Then Donovan took an alternative scenario. Let’s say, he said, that Arabella no longer desired to save the marriage. Did that justify her not speaking to him? No; no, because it represented a fundamental development which needed to be discussed: it was a serious matter that affected both of them and it was only fair that, as a party to the marriage, he should be heard. Whichever way you looked at it, Donovan concluded, her refusal to speak to him was unfair and unjustifiable and accordingly her petition was ill-judged and over-hasty. Besides, he loved her. He wanted to see her. She only had to telephone his clerk and, subject to his not being tied up, he would put her straight through to him, no matter where he was in the world. He counted on her to come to her senses. He loved her, Donovan said again. He loved her with all his heart.

I carefully replaced the writing papers (six sheets) in the envelope and re-sealed it with glue that I keep handy in a desk drawer. It was not possible, outside of a forensic examination, to tell that I had broken the letter-flap, that I had – let me make no bones about it – broken Donovan’s trust.

Once I had covered my tracks I gave the letter some thought. There was no doubt that, on paper, it expressed a powerful equitable argument. A neutral bystander armed with the bare facts would have to agree that Arabella should not, as a matter of fairness, have left Donovan in the lurch without any explanation or notice. To take a legal analogy, it was arguable that he had been unfairly dismissed: the procedures of consultation and warnings which a husband of twelve years might reasonably expect had not been followed. It might well be that Arabella was right to leave Donovan: but that did not mean that he was no longer entitled to a hearing,
especially as there was a possibility that, after such a hearing, she might have a change of heart.

To my mind, the letter showed that Donovan had something of a contractual approach to marriage. He saw it as an organic, mobile bundle of undertakings, reciprocal duties and implied terms. One of these, it seemed, was that a benefit to one party gave rise to a debt to the other. Arabella had obtained a benefit when she left him, but she had also incurred a debt: in return for her new freedom she owed him reasons and a chance to put his case. These letters from Donovan, I reflected, could be said to boil down to marital bills of exchange. Or maybe (this was playful conjecture on my part) Donovan saw marriage as a type of treaty, a bilateral agreement concluded between two sovereign persons – a concordat of love containing provisions and articles and reservations that could be invoked and enforced. (The law, I should say, took a different view of wedlock to Donovan. In its eyes, marriage was not a species of contract but a state of affairs. Quite whether this distinction clarifies anything I am not sure.)

I must say that in all the matrimonial cases I had ever worked on I had never come across a letter making an appeal to justice quite like this one. At first I did not know what to make of it; surely this legalistic approach, this reliance on objective standards of fairness, was, well, inappropriate? Surely the heart ruled the head in these matters? Then I remembered: these letters were not written by just anybody, they were penned by Professor Michael Donovan QC. If anyone knew what they were doing it was he. If he considered that this tack would succeed, then no doubt he was right; quite apart from his natural tactical gift, did he not know his wife better than anyone?

The second letter that I opened, dated 29 October, was relatively brief. It began with a definition: an irrational course of action is one which plainly will not achieve the result which it is intended to achieve. It is irrational, for example, Donovan patiently explained, to scramble eggs in order to reach the
moon. Similarly, Donovan said to Arabella, your actions are irrational on two planes. The petition was irrational because its weakness at law meant that it would not succeed in bringing about a divorce; and bringing about a divorce was irrational because it would not succeed in bringing her happiness. On the contrary, it would bring her nothing but misery. Surely she must see that? And if she did, surely she would act upon that insight?

There was one more thing (I continue to paraphrase). Should they not see a marriage guidance counsellor? Donovan was ready to put in as many sessions as it would take. Perhaps that was what they needed, a bit of expert advice. They could air their grievances, they could listen to each other afresh and maybe even really hear each other. What did she think about that? Would not a calm, rational third party be helpful in this complicated and inflamed situation? He asked her to think about it, in her own good time. He loved her.

As I glued up the envelope I gave a little smile. It was revealing that Donovan should suggest an arbitrator to cure the problems, and it was also a smart move. It was an arrangement he would naturally feel very comfortable with, addressing arguments to a presiding authority.

I opened the last letter of the series. It was dated 28 November, the day of the pre-trial review. It was completely different to the others and after I had read it once I told June, rather dramatically, to hold all calls. Then I read it again.

You should have spoken to me this morning, Donovan started. You shouldn’t have run away like that, I wasn’t going to eat you up, I simply wanted to talk. Arab, the least you can do is answer my letters. Write to me. Please, Arab, my darling. What is there to lose? At least acknowledge receipt, because – and here he began to read like a poor man’s lawyer, emotively pleading personal injury (heartbreak, nervous shock, hysterical aphony, distress) and loss of earnings (his work had been terribly affected). Then he failed to sound like a lawyer at all. He sounded like the man on the street, like absolutely anybody. Come back, Arab, he begged. Give me one last
chance. So disturbed was Donovan that he actually had started a sentence and discontinued it. The sentence which started
Remember everything we have done together, remember when
had been scratched out with a bold, undulating line and abandoned, which was most unlike Donovan, who wrote without any modifications or corrections. I kept reading. The letter continued along clichéd lines, finishing with the words (and here I quote),
I am desperate, Arab. My love, just tell me what I have to do and I’ll do it.

I must confess that I found all of this rather disappointing. It was unworthy of Donovan to resort to such shabby emotionalism. He was squandering his natural intellectual advantages and advancing exactly the sort of points that someone like myself, an ordinary man with merely ordinary ideas and words at my disposal, might advance. And I experienced another sensation, namely resentment. It bothered me that he should wade about in this way, in this mire, that he should humiliate himself like this. A man like Donovan, a noble spirit, begging and scraping to a woman like Arabella? It shocked me, if the truth be known.

Then I realized. Then the penny dropped. This was the cleverest ruse of all. Donovan, having sensed that his old line was not securing results, had decided to adopt a completely different tack altogether. Cogency, good sense and dignified requests for fair play had gone out of the window. In their place had come irrational supplications for clemency and forgiveness and emotional pressure. Donovan, in a last attempt to bring Arabella around, had got down on his knees to tug at her skirt and heart-strings. I could see his reasoning: Arabella was unbudging so therefore he would
move
her.

I put away the letter with a grin. You had to hand it to Donovan. He did whatever it took to win. If it meant demeaning himself then he demeaned himself. If it meant masquerading as a man at his poor wits’ end, then he would conduct that masquerade. He was a true professional, the advocate’s advocate.

That said, there was a slight problem here. There was
something even Donovan had not foreseen: Arabella had not read any of these letters.

I went to lunch feeling better about the whole business, more clear-headed. The letters might not have worked as far as Donovan was concerned, but they did help me, they did advance my understanding of the case. Arabella’s strange message on Donovan’s ansaphone, for example, could now be seen as a reference to the letters: stop sending me letters, that was what she had meant. I realized, of course, that Arabella could equally have been referring to something else, and that there was no way of verifying my assumption. But the important thing was that I now had fresh facts which, given a certain analysis, were consistent with, and explanative of, facts that had previously baffled me completely. Until I had read the letters, to take another example, I had wondered what Donovan was doing to prevent the case from coming to court: now I knew. Yes, things were beginning to fall into place. And what also heartened me and sent me to lunch happy was that I had been confirmed in the back-seat approach that I was taking not just to the whole business, but to the narrower matter of the litigation itself. I could rest assured, Donovan was on the case.