A Certain Justice (14 page)

He said: “I thought you were feeling much the same. After all, we haven’t seen a great deal of each other in recent weeks.”

To his horror he heard in his voice a tone of almost humiliating appeal. He went on with a kind of desperate assurance.

“Look, we had an affair. I made no promises, neither of us did. We never pretended to be madly in love. It wasn’t on those terms.”

“What terms, precisely, did you think it was on? No, tell me, I’m interested.”

“The same as you, I imagine. Sexual attraction, respect, affection. I suppose habit really.”

“A very convenient habit. A sexual partner available as and when required whom you could trust because she had as much to lose as you, and whom you didn’t have to pay. It’s a habit your sex find it easy to acquire, especially politicians.”

“That’s unworthy of you. It’s also unfair. I thought I made you happy.”

And now there was a harshness in her voice which chilled his blood.

“Did you, Mark? Did you really? Are you that arrogant? Making me happy isn’t as easy as that. It requires more than an impressive prick and a modicum of sexual technique. You didn’t make me happy, you’ve never made me happy. What you did was to provide from time to time — when it was convenient, when your wife didn’t need you to entertain guests, when you had a spare evening — an instant of sexual pleasure. I could have done as much for myself, if less effectively. Don’t call that making me happy.”

Trying to find a foothold in what seemed a morass of irrationality, he said: “If I treated you badly, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s the last thing I wanted.”

“You just don’t understand, do you, Mark? You don’t listen. You haven’t the capacity to hurt me. You aren’t that important to me, no man is.”

“Then what are you complaining about? We had an affair. We both wanted it. It suited us. Now it’s over. If I wasn’t important to you, where’s the hurt?”

“I’m complaining about the extraordinary way in which you think you can treat women. You deceived your wife because you wanted variety, sex spiced with danger, and because you knew I was discreet. Now you need Lucy. Suddenly she’s important. You need respectability, a dutiful loving wife, a political asset. So Lucy promises to overlook the infidelity, support you through the election, be the perfect MP’s wife, in return, no doubt, for your promise that our affair is over. ‘I’ll never see her again. It never really meant anything. It was always you I loved.’ Isn’t that how philanderers reconcile themselves to the little woman?”

Suddenly he found the comfort of anger. He said: “Leave Lucy out of this. She doesn’t need your concern or your bloody patronizing sympathy. It’s a bit late to start setting yourself up as a champion of the female sex. I’ll look after Lucy. Our marriage has nothing to do with you. Anyway, it wasn’t like that. Your name wasn’t mentioned. Lucy doesn’t know about our affair.”

“Doesn’t she? Grow up, Mark. If she doesn’t know it was me, she knows it was someone, wives always do. If Lucy kept quiet it was because she knew it was in her interests to keep quiet. You weren’t going to break up the marriage, were you? It was just a little diversion on the side. Men do these things.”

“Lucy’s pregnant.”

He didn’t know what had made him say it, but now the words were out.

There was a pause. Then she said calmly: “I thought Lucy couldn’t have children.”

“That’s what we thought. We’ve been married eight years. You do tend to give up hope. Lucy wouldn’t go through the paraphernalia of infertility testing and treatment, she thought it would be too humiliating for me. Well, it wasn’t necessary. The baby’s due on 20th February.”

“How convenient. All done by prayer and lighting candles, I suppose. Or was it an immaculate conception?”

She paused, holding out the whisky bottle. He shook his head. She filled her own glass with wine, then said, her voice deliberately casual: “Does she know about the abortion? When you had that reconciling little talk, did you think to mention that twelve months ago I aborted your child?”

“No, she doesn’t know.”

“Of course not. That’s one sin you wouldn’t dare to confess. A little sexual misdemeanour, something on the side, that’s forgivable, but killing an unborn child? No, she wouldn’t be so charitable about that. A devout Roman Catholic, well-known supporter of the Pro-Life movement and now pregnant herself. That interesting piece of information would overshadow the months between now and February, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t there be for her a silent, reproachful, invisible sibling growing up with your son or daughter, isn’t that how she’d see it? Wouldn’t she feel the ghost of that aborted baby every time you held your child?”

“Don’t do that to her, Venetia. Have some pride. Don’t talk like a cheap blackmailer.”

“Oh, not cheap, Mark, not cheap. Blackmail is never cheap. You’re a criminal lawyer. You should know that.”

And now he was reduced to pleading, hating himself, hating her.

“She’s never harmed you. You wouldn’t do that to her.”

“Probably not, but you’ll never be certain, will you?”

He should have left it at that. Afterwards he cursed his folly. It wasn’t only in cross-examination that you had to know when to stop. He should have disciplined his pride, made a final appeal to her and left. But he was angered by the injustice of it all. She was talking as if the responsibility was his alone, that she’d been forced into aborting the child.

He said: “It was you who got it into your head that the Pill was harmful and that you’d better come off it for a time. It was you who took the risk. And you were as keen on the termination as I was. You were horrified when you found you were pregnant. An illegitimate child would have been a disaster. Any child would, you said so yourself. And you never wanted another child. You don’t even care for the one you have.”

She wasn’t looking at him now. Her angry eyes gazing past him were suddenly appalled and he turned to follow her glance. Octavia was standing silently at the door, clutching a pair of silver candlesticks. No one spoke. Mother and daughter were frozen into a tableau. He muttered, “I’m sorry. Sorry,” and, pushing past Octavia, almost ran down the stairs. There was no sign of Mrs. Buckley, but the door had been left on the Yale and he was saved the ignominy of waiting to be let out.

It was only when he was yards from the house and breaking into a run, desperate to hail a taxi, that he realized that he had never asked Venetia what she had wanted to say to him.

D
rysdale Laud was aware that his friends thought, not without a touch of resentment, that he had his life pretty well organized. It was a view with which he agreed and for which he took some credit. As a successful lawyer specializing in libel, his profession gave him ample opportunity to witness the mess some people made of their lives, messes that he viewed with proper professional sympathy, but with a greater wonder that human beings, given the choice between order and chaos, reason and stupidity, could behave with such a lack of self-interest. If challenged he would have admitted that he had always been fortunate. He was the indulged only child of prosperous parents. Intelligent and exceptionally good-looking, he had progressed at school and Cambridge from success to expected success, achieving a first-class degree in classics before studying law. His father, although not a lawyer, had friends in the law. There was no difficulty in finding a suitable pupillage for young Drysdale. He had become a member of Chambers at the expected time and had taken silk at the first reasonable opportunity.

His father had now been dead for ten years. His mother, left comfortably off, imposed on him no onerous filial duty, requiring only that he spend one weekend each month at her house in Buckinghamshire, during which she would arrange a dinner party. His part of the unstated bargain was to be present, hers was to produce excellent food and guests who wouldn’t bore him. The visits also provided cosseting from his ex-nanny, who had remained with his mother as general factotum, and the opportunity for a round of golf or a vigorous country walk. A bag of soiled shirts would be washed and beautifully ironed. It was cheaper than taking them across the road to the nearest laundry and saved time. His mother was a keen gardener and he would take flowers, fresh fruit and vegetables in season back to his flat on the South Bank of the Thames, near Tower Bridge.

He and his mother had an affection for each other which was based on a respect for the other’s essential selfishness. Her only criticism of him, hinted at rather than explicit, was his dilatoriness in getting married. She wanted grandchildren; his father would have expected him to carry on the family name. A succession of suitable girls was invited to her dinner parties. Occasionally he obliged by seeing one of them later. Less frequently the dinner party led to a brief affair, though it usually ended in recriminations. When the last candidate had demanded bitterly through her angry tears, “What is your mother? Some kind of pander?” he decided that the mess and emotional turmoil were disproportionate to the pleasure, and returned to his former satisfactory arrangement with a lady who, although highly expensive, was discriminating in her choice of clients, imaginative in the personal services rendered and entirely discreet. But these things had to be paid for. He had never expected to get his pleasures cheaply.

He knew that his mother, who retained an old-fashioned prejudice against the divorced especially when they had children, and who had found Venetia unsympathetic on the one occasion they had met, had been afraid that he might marry her. The thought had once crossed his mind, but only for an hour. He suspected that Venetia already had a lover, although he had never been curious enough to take the trouble to discover his name. He knew that their friendship was a source of gossip in Chambers, but they had, in fact, never been lovers. He wasn’t physically attracted to successful or powerful women, and would occasionally tell himself with a wry smile that sex with Venetia would be too like an examination in which his performance would be subject to subsequent rigorous cross-examination.

Once a month his mother, an energetic and still-handsome sixty-five-year-old, came up to London to meet a friend, shop, see an exhibition or have a beauty treatment, and would then come on to the flat, as she had this evening. They would have dinner together, usually at a riverside restaurant, and afterwards he would put her into a taxi for Marylebone and her usual train. It was, he thought, typical of her independence that she was beginning to question whether the detour was sensible at the end of a heavy day. Tower Bridge was inconvenient to reach from the West End and in winter particularly she disliked being late home. He suspected that the arrangement wouldn’t last much longer and that for both of them its ending would be a source of only mild regret.

The telephone rang as he re-entered the flat. Answering, he heard Venetia’s voice. She sounded peremptory.

“I need to see you, tonight if possible. Are you alone?”

He said cautiously: “Yes. I’ve just seen my mother into her taxi. Can’t it wait? It’s eleven.”

“No it can’t. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

Half an hour later he let her in. It was the first time she had been in his flat. Invariably punctilious in these matters, he called for her at her house when they had a date and took her home afterwards. But she entered his sitting-room without the slightest sign of interest either in the room, or in the wide expanse of shining water outside the windows and the glittering floodlit wonder of Tower Bridge. He felt a moment’s irritation that a room over which he had taken such trouble should be so disregarded. Ignoring the spectacular view which normally drew visitors to the windows, she flung off her coat and handed it to him as if he were a servant.

He said: “What will you drink?”

“Nothing. Anything. What you’re having.”

“Whisky.”

It was a drink he knew she disliked. She said: “Red wine, then. Anything you’ve got open.”

He had nothing open, but he fetched a bottle of Hermitage from the wine cupboard, poured her a glass and set it down on the low table in front of her.

Ignoring the drink, she said without preamble: “I’m sorry to come at such short notice but I need your help. You remember that boy Garry Ashe I defended three or four weeks ago?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I saw him at the Bailey after my case today. He’s taken up with Octavia. According to her they’re engaged.”

“That’s quick. When did they meet?”

“After the trial, of course, when else? Obviously it’s a put-up job on his part and I want it stopped.”

He said carefully: “I can see that it’s unwelcome, but I don’t see how you can stop it. Octavia’s of age, isn’t she? Even if she weren’t you’d have some difficulty. What could you allege against him? He was acquitted.”

His unspoken words were so obvious that he might as well have said them aloud: “Thanks to you.”

He asked: “You’ve spoken to Octavia?”

“Of course. She’s adamant. Well, she would be. Part of his attraction is the power he gives her to hurt me.”

“Isn’t that a little unjust? Why should she want to hurt you? She could be genuinely fond of him.”

“For God’s sake, Drysdale, be realistic. Besotted maybe. Intrigued perhaps. Liking the spice of danger — I can understand that, he is dangerous. But what about him? You’re not telling me that Ashe is in love, and after three weeks. This is deliberate, and one or both of them engineered it. It’s directed against me.”

“By Ashe? Why should it be? I’d have expected him to be grateful.”

“He isn’t grateful and I don’t expect or want his gratitude. I want him out of my life.”

Drysdale said quietly: “Isn’t he rather more in Octavia’s life than yours?”

“I’ve told you, this is nothing to do with Octavia. He’s using her to get at me. They’re even thinking of going to the press. Can you imagine that? A sentimental picture of them in the Sunday tabloids with his arm around her. ‘Mummy Saved My Boyfriend from Prison. Top QC’s Daughter Tells the Story of Their Love.’ ”

“She wouldn’t do that, surely?”