A Certain Justice (9 page)

“He told me he didn’t do it. She was a horrible woman who was always having men in the house. One of them killed her. He wasn’t near the place when it happened.”

“I’m aware of the defence. I conducted it.”

“He’s innocent. You know he’s innocent. You told the court that he didn’t do it.”

“I didn’t tell the court that he didn’t do it. I’ve explained all this to you before, only you’ve never been interested enough to listen. The court isn’t concerned with what I think. I’m not there to give them my opinion. I’m there to test the prosecution’s case. The jury had to be convinced of his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. I was able to show that there was a reasonable doubt. He was entitled to be acquitted and he was acquitted. You’re perfectly right, he’s not guilty, at least of that crime. Not guilty in law. That doesn’t mean that he’s a suitable husband for you — or for any woman. His aunt wasn’t a pleasant woman but something held them together. Almost certainly they were lovers. He was one of many, but in his case, no doubt, it came free.”

Octavia cried: “It isn’t true. It isn’t true. And you can’t stop us marrying. I’m over eighteen.”

“I know I can’t stop you. What I can do, and have a duty to do as your mother, is to point out the dangers. I know this young man. I make it my job to find out as much as I can about my clients. Garry Ashe is dangerous. He may even be evil, whatever that word means.”

“So why did you get him off?”

“You haven’t understood a word I’ve said, have you? So let’s be practical. When do you propose to marry?”

“Soon, in a week maybe. Perhaps two, perhaps three. We haven’t decided.”

“Are you having sex? But of course you are.”

“You haven’t any right to ask that.”

“No, I’m sorry. You’re quite right. You’re of age. I haven’t any right to ask that.”

Octavia said sulkily, “Anyway, we’re not. Not yet. Ashe thinks we ought to wait.”

“How very clever of him. And how does he propose to support you? As he’s to be my son-in-law I suppose I do have a right to ask that question.”

“He’ll work. I’ve got my allowance. You’ve settled that on me. You can’t take it away. And we may sell our story to the papers. Ashe thinks they would be interested.”

“Oh, they’ll be interested all right. You won’t get a fortune but you’ll get something. I can imagine the line he’ll take. ‘Disadvantaged young man unjustly accused of heinous crime. Brilliant defence lawyer. Triumphant acquittal. The dawn of young love.’ Yes, it could make you a pound or two. Of course, if Ashe is prepared to confess to his aunt’s murder you might even ask for six figures. And why not? He can’t be tried again.”

They paced together through the gathering dusk, heads bent close yet distanced. Venetia found herself physically shaking with emotions which she was powerless to make sense of or control. He would sell the story if a paper made it worth his while. He felt no loyalty to her, any more than she had felt liking for him. He had needed her; perhaps they had needed each other. And afterwards, in that brief interview, she had seen the contempt in his eyes, his conceit, and had sensed that he felt for her not gratitude but resentment. Oh yes, he would gladly humiliate her if he had the power. And he did have the power. But why was it worse to contemplate the sentimentality and the vulgarity of that press exposure, the pity and amusement of her colleagues, than it was to face the thought of his marriage to Octavia? Did she really with part of her mind — that mind in which she took such pride — care more for her reputation than for her daughter’s safety?

She had to make one more effort. They were turning out of the garden now.

After a moment she said: “There’s something he did, not perhaps the worst thing, but one which for me is crucial. It explains why I think of him as evil, which isn’t a word I normally care to use. When he was fifteen he was in a children’s home outside Ipswich. There was a residential social worker there — his name is Michael Cole — who really cared for Ashe. He spent a great deal of time with him, believed he could help him, perhaps loved him. Ashe tried to blackmail him. He said that if Coley, as he called him, didn’t hand over a proportion of his weekly wage he’d accuse him of assaulting him sexually. Cole refused and was denounced. There was an official inquiry. Nothing was proved, but the authorities thought it prudent to move Cole into another post not working with children. He’ll be under suspicion for the rest of his professional life — if he still has a professional life. Think of Coley before you commit yourself to marriage. Ashe has broken the heart of everyone who has tried to help him.”

“I don’t believe it. And he won’t break my heart. Perhaps I’m like you. Perhaps I haven’t got one.”

Suddenly she had turned away and was running through the gardens towards the Embankment gate, moving clumsily like a distraught child, the legs thin as sticks above the heavy trainers, the jacket flying open. Turning to watch her, Venetia felt a momentary spasm of an emotion which had some of the tenderness of pity. But it passed, and was replaced with a burning anger and a sense of injustice as physical as a hard knot of pain under the heart. It seemed to her that Octavia had never given her a moment of unalloyed satisfaction, let alone joy. What, she wondered, had gone wrong? When and how? Even as a baby she had resisted her mother’s attempts to cuddle and caress her. The sharp-featured little face, always an adult face, twisting into a bawling purple mask of hatred, the baby legs, surprisingly strong, clamped against her stomach thrusting her away, the body arched and rigid. And then at school it had seemed that every emotional crisis had been deliberately timed and to make Venetia’s professional life more difficult. Every speech day, every school play had been arranged on a day when it was impossible for her to get away, increasing Octavia’s resentment, her own nagging guilt.

She remembered now the time when she had been engaged in one of the most complicated cases of fraud she had ever defended, and had been called immediately after the court rose on a Friday to cope with Octavia’s expulsion from her second boarding school. She could remember clearly every word of the conversation with Miss Egerton, the headmistress.

“We haven’t been able to make her happy.”

“I didn’t send her to you to be made happy. I sent her to be educated.”

“The two aren’t incompatible, Miss Aldridge.”

“No, but it’s as well to know which has priority in your scheme of things. So the convent takes your failures?”

“There is no formal arrangement but we do recommend it to parents from time to time. I don’t want you to gain the wrong impression. It isn’t a school for problem children, quite the reverse. And the examination results at A level are respectable. Pupils do go on to university. But it caters for girls who need a more pastoral, less academic education than we are able to provide.”

“Or are willing to provide.”

“This is a highly academic school, Miss Aldridge. We educate the whole girl, not only the mind, but the girl who does best here is usually highly intelligent.”

“Spare me the school prospectus, I’ve read it. Did she tell you why she did it?”

“Yes. To get expelled.”

“She admitted that?”

“Not in those words.”

“In what words, Miss Egerton?”

“She said, ‘I did it to get away from this fucking school.’ ”

Venetia had thought: So at last I’ve got an honest answer out of her.

Miss Egerton had said: “The convent is run by Anglo-Catholic nuns but I don’t think you need fear religious indoctrination. The Mother Superior is scrupulous about respecting parental wishes.”

“Octavia can genuflect before the blessed sacrament day and night if it gives her any satisfaction and gets her a couple of decent A levels.”

But the interview had given her hope. A girl who could use that word to Miss Egerton at least had spirit. Perhaps on some bleak unwatered scrubland of the mind she and Octavia might yet find a common meeting-place. Perhaps there could be respect, even liking, even if there couldn’t be love. But it had only taken the drive home to show that nothing had changed. Octavia’s eyes still met hers with that same blank stare of obstinate antagonism.

The convent had coped in the sense that Octavia had stayed there until she was seventeen, achieved four modest passes in her O levels. But Venetia had always been ill at ease on her few visits to the convent, particularly with the Reverend Mother. She remembered that first interview.

“We have to accept, Miss Aldridge, that Octavia, as the child of divorced parents, will be disadvantaged all her life.”

“Since that is a disadvantage she shares with thousands of other children, she’d better learn to cope.”

“That is what we shall try to help her to do.”

Venetia had curbed an outward show of irritation with difficulty. Was this sponge-faced woman with the small implacable eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles daring to take upon herself the role of prosecuting counsel? Then she realized that no criticism was intended, no defence awaited and no mitigation invited. It was simply that the Reverend Mother lived her life by rules, and one of them was that actions had consequences.

Now, obsessed with this latest emergency, angry with Octavia and herself, faced with a calamity to which she could find no answer, she hardly remembered the short walk through Pawlet Court to Chambers. Valerie Caldwell was at her desk in the reception booth and looked up stony-faced as Venetia entered.

Venetia asked: “Is Mr. Costello in his room, do you know?”

“Yes I think so, Miss Aldridge. He came in after lunch and I don’t think he’s left. And Mr. Langton asked me to let him know when you came in.”

So Langton wanted to see her. She might as well go to his room now. Simon Costello could wait.

When she entered Hubert’s room she found Drysdale Laud with him. That didn’t surprise her; the archbishops usually acted together.

Laud said, “It’s about the Chambers meeting on the thirty-first. You are coming, Venetia?”

“Don’t I usually attend? I don’t think I’ve missed more than one Chambers meeting since you made them twice yearly.”

Langton said: “There are a couple of matters on which we thought it might be helpful to know your mind.”

“You mean, to indulge in a little preliminary lobbying in the interests of getting through the meeting with the minimum of dissension? I shouldn’t be too optimistic.”

Drysdale Laud took over. He said: “First we have to decide who to take on as tenants. We agreed that we could usefully find places for two more. It isn’t an easy choice.”

“Isn’t it? Come off it, Drysdale! Don’t tell me you haven’t reserved a place for Rupert Price-Maskell.”

Langton said; “He’s got an excellent reference from his pupil-master and he’s popular in Chambers. He’s academically outstanding, of course, Scholar of Eton, Scholar of King’s, First-Class Honours.”

Venetia said: “And he’s the nephew of a Law Lord, his great-grandfather was Head of these Chambers and his mother is the daughter of an earl.”

Langton frowned. “You aren’t suggesting that we’re being…we’re being…” He paused, his face for a moment a mask of embarrassment. Then he said, “That we’re being over-influenced?”

“No. It’s as illogical and indefensible to discriminate against Etonians as it is to discriminate against any other group. It’s convenient that the candidate you want happens to be the one best qualified. You don’t have to persuade me to vote for Price-Maskell; I was going to do so anyway. He’ll be as pompous as his uncle in twenty years’ time, but if we take incipient pomposity into account we’d never appoint a member of your sex. I take it that Jonathan Skollard has the second place? He’s less obviously brilliant, but I’m not sure he won’t prove to have the better mind, more staying power.”

Laud walked over to the window. He said in a voice unemphatic and unworried: “We were thinking of Catherine Beddington.”

“Men in Chambers spend a great deal of time thinking of Catherine Beddington, but this isn’t a beauty contest. Skollard is the better lawyer.”

This, of course, was what it was all about. She had known from her first entry into Hubert’s room.

Langton intervened: “I don’t think Catherine’s pupil-master would necessarily agree. He’s given her a very satisfactory report. She’s got an excellent brain.”

“Of course she has. She wouldn’t have been given pupillage in these Chambers if she were stupid. Catherine Beddington will be a decorative and efficient member of the Bar, but she isn’t as good a lawyer as Jonathan Skollard. I am her sponsor, remember. I’ve taken an interest in her and I’ve seen some of her work. She isn’t as impressive as Simon makes out. For example, when I’m in conference discussing points of law in manslaughter I do rather expect a pupil to see the relevance of
Dawson
and
Andrews
. Those are cases she should have learned before she entered Chambers.”

Laud said lightly: “You terrify the child, Venetia. She’s perfectly competent with me.”

“If she’s terrified by me I pity her when she has to stand up before Mr. Justice Carter-Wright on a day his piles are giving him hell.”

How long, she thought, were they going to pussyfoot around the real issue? How they hated any argument in Chambers, any genuine dissent. And how typical that Hubert had needed Drysdale’s support, the two archbishops acting in concert, as always. And wasn’t it a way of letting her know that Drysdale was heir apparent, that she might as well give up hope of succeeding Hubert as Head of Chambers? But at least in this matter they knew that her voice would be influential — more than influential, it would probably carry the day.

She saw their quick glances at each other, then Drysdale said: “Isn’t it a question of balance? I thought we’d agreed — at a Chambers meeting in the spring of ’94, wasn’t it? — that if we had two candidates for a Chambers vacancy, one male, one female, and they were equally qualified…”

Venetia broke in. “They never are equally qualified. People aren’t clones.”

Laud went on as if she hadn’t interrupted, “If we decided that there was nothing to choose between them, then in the interests of balance we’d take the woman.”