A Certain Justice (13 page)

“Venetia Aldridge came into my office before I left. She’d just defended Brian Cartwright. He told her that I knew three of the jurors had been bribed when I defended him in that assault case in 1992. He also told her about the Cartwright Agricultural Company shares he passed over to you before trial, I don’t think she’s going to let it rest.”

“What do you mean, she isn’t going to let it rest?”

“I suppose at worst she could report me to the Bar Council or my Inn.”

“Well she can’t. It’s over. It’s nothing to do with her.”

“She seemed to think it is.”

“I suppose you denied it?” Her voice sharpened: “You did deny it, didn’t you?”

“Of course I denied it.”

“Then that’s all right. She can’t prove anything. It’s your word against Cartwright’s.”

“It isn’t as simple as that. She could find proof about the shares, I imagine. And Cartwright will probably give her the jurors’ names if pressed.”

“It’s hardly in his interest to, is it? Why the hell did he tell her, anyway?”

“God knows. His way of handing out a tip for services received, I suppose. Conceit perhaps. Wanted to boast, to tell her that it was his cleverness, not counsel’s, that got him off last time. Why do people do these things? What does it matter why he did it? He did it.”

“So what? Even if he does give the names, it’s still his and their word against yours. And why shouldn’t he give me the shares? You know how it was. I came to see you in Chambers just as he was leaving and we had a chat. We took to each other. You stayed on and I shared a taxi with him. I rather liked him. We talked about investments. A week later he wrote and gave me the shares. It was nothing to do with you. We weren’t even married.”

“We were a week later.”

“But he gave them to me. Me personally. There’s nothing illegal in a friend giving me some shares, I suppose. It was nothing to do with you. He would have handed them over even if we hadn’t been engaged.”

“Would he?”

“Anyway, I could say that you never knew about the shares. I never told you, so that’s all right. And you could say that you didn’t believe Cartwright about the bribery. You thought it was his idea of a joke. No one could prove anything. Isn’t the law all about proof? Well there isn’t any. Venetia Aldridge will see that herself. She’s supposed to be such a brilliant lawyer, isn’t she? She’ll let it drop. And now I need another drink.”

Lois had never understood the law. She liked the prestige of being married to a barrister and in the early days of their married life she had occasionally attended his cases, until boredom drove her away.

He said: “It isn’t as simple as that. She doesn’t actually need proof, not the kind that would stand up in court. If this gets about I can say goodbye to any chance of taking silk.”

Now she was worried. She turned to him sharply, gin bottle in hand. She said, her voice incredulous: “You mean that Venetia Aldridge could actually stop you becoming a QC?”

“If she wanted to take the trouble, yes.”

“Then you’ll have to stop her.” He didn’t reply. She said: “Someone will have to stop her. I’ll speak to Uncle Desmond. He’ll tackle her. You always said that he’s the most highly regarded lawyer in Chambers.”

Now his voice was sharp. “No. No, Lois. You’re not to say a word to him. Can’t you see what that would mean? This is the last thing that Desmond Ulrick would be sympathetic to.”

“Not sympathetic to you, perhaps. Sympathetic to me.”

“I know you think that Desmond would do anything for you. I know he’s besotted with you. I know you borrowed money from him.”

“We borrowed money. We wouldn’t have this house if he hadn’t helped with that loan. Interest-free. The Cartwright shares and Uncle Desmond’s loan, that’s what paid the deposit, and don’t you forget it.”

“I’m not likely to. Fat chance we’ve got of paying it back.”

“He doesn’t expect to be paid back. He called it a loan to save your pride.”

It hadn’t saved his pride. Even in this, his extremity of worry, the old jealousy, irrational but ever-present, pricked him like the twinge of a familiar pain. Ulrick was besotted with her, that he could understand — who better? What he found repugnant was her exploitation of it, her exultation in it.

He said again: “You’re not to say a word to him. I forbid you, Lois. The worst thing would be to confide in anyone about this, particularly someone in Chambers. Our only hope is to keep it quiet. Cartwright won’t spread it around. He hasn’t done so for the last four years. It isn’t in his interest, anyway. I’ll speak to Venetia.”

“You’d better, and soon. You can’t go on relying on my salary.”

“I don’t rely on it, we rely on it. And you’re the one who’s been most insistent on working.”

“Well, I’m not as insistent as I was. I’m fed up with Carl Edgar. He’s becoming intolerable. I’m looking for another job.”

“Still, you’d better stick to the one you’ve got for the present. This is hardly the time to start handing in your notice.”

“It’s too late, I’m afraid. I’ve done so already, this afternoon.”

They gazed at each other appalled, then she said again: “So you’d better do something about Venetia Aldridge, hadn’t you? And quickly.”

T
he call came through to Mark Rawlstone’s Pimlico house just as the nine o’clock news on the BBC was drawing to an end. There had been nothing of importance in the House and, with a speech to work on for next week’s debate, he had dined at home alone. Lucy was visiting her mother in Weybridge and would be staying the night. Mother and daughter had, after all, things to talk over, particularly now. But as usual she had left his dinner ready, a duck casserole which he had only needed to reheat, a simple salad, prepared except for the dressing, fruit and cheese. He was half-expecting a telephone call and this could be it. Kenneth Maples was dining at the House, but had said that he might drop in later for coffee and a chat. He would ring to confirm. Ken was in the Shadow Cabinet; the chat could be important. Everything that happened between now and the election could be important. This might be Ken confirming that he was on his way.

Instead, with a mixture of disappointment and irritation, he heard Venetia’s voice. She said; “I’m glad I got you. I did try at the House. Look, I need to see you urgently. Can you come over for half an hour?”

“Can’t it wait? I’m expecting someone to ring me later.”

“No, it can’t wait. I shouldn’t have rung if it could wait. Leave a message on the answerphone. I won’t keep you long.”

The first spurt of irritation had given way to resignation. “All right,” said ungraciously, “I’ll take a cab.”

Putting down the receiver, he reflected that it was unusual for Venetia to ring him at home. Indeed, he couldn’t remember the last occasion. She had been as punctilious as he about keeping separate their love affair and their private lives, just as obsessive about secrecy and security — not because she had as much to lose as he, but through a fastidious dislike of knowing that her sexual life was the subject of Chambers gossip. It had helped that he was a member of Lincoln’s Inn, not the Middle Temple, helped too that an MP’s life, with its unpredictable and long hours, the journeys to and from his Midlands constituency, afforded opportunities for secret meetings, even occasionally for nights together at Pelham Place. But during the last six months the meetings had become less frequent, the first move towards them coming more often from Venetia than from himself. The affair now was beginning to have some of the longueurs of marriage, but with none of marriage’s reassuring safety and comfort. It wasn’t only that the excitement had gone. It was difficult now to recall those first heady weeks when their affair had first started, impossible to recapture that mixture of sexual enthralment spiced with danger, the exhilarating self-confidence of knowing that a beautiful and successful woman found him desirable. Did she still? Hadn’t it become a matter of habit for them both? Everything, even illicit passion, had its natural end. At least this affair, unlike some of his earlier, ill-advised escapades, could be ended without acrimony.

He had been meaning to end it even before Lucy had told him of her pregnancy. It was becoming too dangerous, the word “sleaze” altogether too fashionable. The British public, and in particular the press with their usual genius for hypocrisy, had decided that a sexual licence which journalists might permit themselves was disgraceful and unforgivable in a politician. The breed, never popular, must now be made uncomfortable by the imposition of an irreproachable sexual virtue. And he had no doubt his affair would rate the front page if the story broke on a dull day: rising young Labour MP tipped for junior-minister rank, devout Roman Catholic wife, a mistress who was one of the country’s leading criminal lawyers. He wasn’t going to take part in the usual demeaning charade, the public double act complete with photograph of the repentant adventurer, the loyal little wife nobly standing by her delinquent husband. He wouldn’t put Lucy through that, not now, not ever. Venetia would see sense. He wasn’t dealing with a jealous, vindictive, self-absorbed exhibitionist. One advantage of choosing an intelligent independent woman as a mistress was the certainty that an affair could always be ended with dignity.

Lucy had waited until the pregnancy was certain and well established before she told him. It was typical of her, the ability to wait, to know what she meant to do, to think out precisely what she meant to say. He had taken her into his arms, had felt the resurgence of a half-forgotten passion, an old protective love. Their childlessness had been a grief to her, a regret to him. In that moment he had realized overwhelmingly that he, too, had wanted a child with something of her desperation, that it was only because failure had always been intolerable that he had suppressed a hope which he had come to believe would never be fulfilled. Freeing herself from his arms, Lucy had given her ultimatum.

“Mark, this makes a difference to us, to our marriage.”

“Darling, a child always makes a difference. We’ll be a family. My God, it’s wonderful! It’s wonderful news! I don’t know how you kept it to yourself for four months.”

He realized before the sentence was out of his mouth that this could be a mistake. It wasn’t a secret that she would have found so easy to keep in the days when they were close. But she let it pass.

She said: “I mean it makes a difference to us now. Whoever it is you’ve been seeing — I don’t want to know her name, I don’t want to hear anything about it — but it has to end. You do see that?”

And he had said: “It has ended. It wasn’t important. I’ve never loved any woman but you.”

At that moment he believed it. He still believed it; in so far as he was capable of loving, she had his heart.

There had been an unspoken codicil to their concordance and both of them knew it. The dinner party planned for Friday night was part of it. Lucy would do what was expected of her and would do it well. She was little interested in politics. The world in which he strove, with its intrigues, its strategies for survival, its coteries and rivalries, its frenetic ambition, was alien to her fastidious mind. But she had a genuine interest in people, seeming unconscious of class or rank or importance, and they had responded always to that gentle, inquiring gaze, felt at ease in her drawing-room, knew themselves to be safe. He told himself that his world needed Lucy; he needed Lucy.

When the taxi turned into Pelham Place, he saw that a young man on a motorcycle was just leaving Venetia’s house. Some friend of Octavia’s, presumably. He had forgotten that she was now living in the basement. That was another reason for ending the affair. At least when she had been at school they could be sure of privacy for most of the year. She was an unattractive child. He didn’t want her even vicariously in his life.

He rang the bell. Venetia had never given him a key even when their affair was at its most intense. He told himself, not without a touch of resentment, that there had always been privacies Venetia would never surrender. He had been admitted to her bed but not to her life.

It was she, not the housekeeper Mrs. Buckley, who opened the door and led him upstairs to the drawing-room. The whisky decanter was already set out on the low table in front of the fire. He thought, as he had done before but now with a more positive reaction, that he had never really liked her drawing-room, never enjoyed or liked her house. It lacked comfort, individuality, a sense of welcome. It was as if she had decided that a Georgian town house must be formally furnished and had gone round the auction houses bidding for the minimum of appropriate pieces. Nothing in the room, he suspected, had come from her past; nothing had been bought because she deeply cared for it — the padded chaise longue which looked good but wasn’t really comfortable, the silver table with a few choice pieces which he knew she had bought one afternoon in the Silver Vaults. The one picture, a Vanessa Bell over the mantelpiece, at least witnessed a personal taste: she was fond of twentieth-century paintings. But there were never flowers. Mrs. Buckley had other things to do and Venetia was too busy to buy and arrange them.

He realized afterwards that he mishandled their meeting from the first moment. Forgetting that it was she who had called him for advice, he said: “I’m sorry, I can’t stop, I’m expecting Kenneth Maples. But I’ve been meaning to call in to see you. Life has rather fallen around my ears in the past few weeks. There’s something I think I ought to say. I don’t think we should see each other again. It’s getting too dangerous, too difficult for us both. I’ve had a feeling for some time that you’ve been thinking along the same lines.”

She never drank whisky, but there was a decanter of red wine on the silver tray. Now she poured herself a glass. Her hand was perfectly steady, but the dark treacle-brown eyes stared into his with a look of such accusing contempt that instinctively he recoiled. He had never seen her like this. What was wrong with her? Never before had he felt that she was maintaining a precarious self-control.

She said: “So that’s why you’ve condescended to come here, even at the risk of missing Kenneth Maples. You’re telling me you want to end our affair.”