An Immoral Code (22 page)

‘I needed company,’ replied Leo. ‘Rachel’s gone to her mother’s with the baby.’

‘Ah.’ Frank nodded and drank again, smacking his thin, dry lips. ‘Tom gave me this,’ he remarked. ‘Jura Malt. Very good, I think. Mince pie? Mince pie to go with it?’

Leo could not help smiling. ‘Yes. Yes, that would be very nice.’

‘Shan’t be a tick.’ Frank went out, presumably to the kitchen. Leo sat nursing his Scotch and looking around him. The furniture was solid and unremarkable, like that of a headmaster’s study, the carpets faded, the bookcases dusty. The sweetish pungency of nicotine hung over everything, even though it was three years since Frank had managed to give up his thirty-a-day habit. Leo listened to the heavy tick of the clock on the mantel and knew suddenly that Frank was not going to ask him about Rachel, or probe him further about his unexpected presence here. The subject would only be broached again if Leo himself initiated it. Did he want to talk about it? Leo wondered. Frank might understand. Frank, after all, had been the person who had once suggested to Leo that he should marry, that a wife might be a useful means of scotching dangerous rumours. But Frank would have no answers, Leo knew. No, he decided, as Frank reappeared with a plate of mince pies, he would not touch upon his own life. They would talk of other things and people. Otherwise, thought Leo, as he glanced out of the windows at the darkening afternoon sky, he might be tempted to weep over the awfulness of it all.

The call came from the police station at four o’clock. In a way, as she stood in the living room doorway listening to Brian take the call,
Alison Carstairs was not in the least surprised. Paul had gone out straight after breakfast, too wrapped up in some surly, awful world of his own to pay any attention to stupid things like Christmas presents or his family. The hours had passed – not too badly; the girls had liked their presents even though she and Brian hadn’t been able to afford much – and everyone had eaten the Christmas lunch which Alison had cooked. Everyone except Paul. They would all have been quite cheerful – well, better than usual – if it hadn’t been for the fact of Paul’s absence. Alison had kept everything waiting for an extra half-hour in the hope that he might come, but she knew in her heart of hearts that he would be out all day. Doing what, she could only conjecture. He told her nothing these days. When she had found out towards the end of term that he had been truanting from school, she and Brian had tried to talk to him about it, but had met with only a dogged refusal to discuss anything.

Now, as she watched her husband’s anxious, weary face, Alison told herself that it had been only a matter of time. She felt oddly calm, resigned to whatever awful thing he had done. She had gathered from the nature of Brian’s terse remarks into the telephone that the police were involved, but that there had been no accident, that Paul was perfectly well. After a fashion.

‘Well?’ she asked, as Brian put the phone down.

‘Joyriding,’ replied Brian tonelessly. ‘He and two other lads from school stole a car. The police caught them just outside Foxedge. I have to go down to the police station.’

The girls had come up behind Alison, listening, their faces childishly aghast at the realisation that their brother was in trouble. And on Christmas Day.

‘What’s Paul done?’ asked Sophie, staring from her father to her mother.

‘Nothing,’ said Alison, turning and herding them back into the living room to their half-finished game of Monopoly. ‘It’s just something Daddy has to go and sort out.’

She watched from behind the net curtains as Brian walked down the short pathway through the shabby little front garden to where the car stood by the pavement. She had a sudden memory of the courtyard behind the old house, the space between the house and the converted stable block where the cars were always parked. His sleek yellow E-Type, her gleaming Land Rover, the pretence of practicality over sheer ostentation. Look at us, we have money. She thought of Paul sitting in the police station. Was this how it was to be from now on? Was this really what a sudden fall from wealth and comfort did to a family? She would never have thought that material things could matter so much. All she could hope was that this incident, the shock of getting into such trouble, would have reduced Paul to a condition where she and Brian could reach him, so that at least they might talk and try to mend things. They had to hold on to each other now, since there was nothing else to put their faith in.

Charles and Rachel had sat for a long time over lunch, finishing their wine, Charles talking reflectively about his past marriage in the hope of eliciting more from Rachel regarding her own.

‘Of course, Hetty and I were just children when we got married. You think you’re grown up at twenty-two, but you don’t realise how much there is still to learn. You only discover that later.’

Rachel leant back in her chair, running her hands through her hair. Outside the dusk was gathering, and the shapes of bushes and trees in Charles’s garden were blurring into darkness. Charles had switched on two lamps, one on the dresser, the other near the window, and the kitchen where they had eaten was filled with a low, warm light. ‘I’m only twenty-eight,’ she said, ‘yet sometimes I feel that I’ve learnt everything there is to learn. Except how to make life work.’

‘How old is your husband?’ asked Charles, chin on hand.

‘Forty-four – no, five,’ replied Rachel. She tilted her chair forward again and stared into the remains of her wine, wondering what Leo was doing right now.

Charles was faintly surprised at this. He had imagined her husband as being roughly her own age, the kind of person who was young and confused enough to be bisexual. Not that he had much idea what that entailed. He simply marvelled that anyone married to someone as lovely and desirable as Rachel should want to go around—well, the thought of doing that with other men was pretty disgusting. Charles had always played the strictly liberal line, all in favour of equal rights for homosexuals, lovely chaps – and girls, of course; lesbians, too, absolutely – but when it came to the nitty-gritty, what actually went on … He decided not to think about this, but to concentrate on the practicalities of Rachel’s dilemma.

‘If it’s not an impertinent question,’ hazarded Charles, ‘how did the two of you come to be married? I mean, if he’s …’

Rachel smiled sadly. ‘I’m not entirely sure any more. I was in love with him, of course. He must have loved me, needed me, something like that. And I suppose I had the idea – well, it’s that old cliché, women thinking they can change men. I thought that if—’ She almost said Leo’s name, but checked herself in time. ‘That if he had me, he might not need anyone else. He had already told me that there would be no more affairs with other men. I believed him. I wanted to, God knows. And,’ she sighed, ‘there was Oliver. All in all, given the combination of ingredients, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s all gone wrong.’

Charles rose and went over to a cupboard, from which he took a bottle of Chartreuse and two small glasses. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s have a glass of this and enjoy the fire in the drawing room. If it hasn’t gone out.’

They left the kitchen and went back to the drawing room, where the fire was low but still flickering, casting shadows against the walls. Charles switched on a small lamp and chucked two more logs on the fire, while Rachel sat down on the hearthrug, slipping off her shoes and drawing her knees up as she leant back against the log basket. Charles poured her a glass of the liqueur and handed it to her, then sat down in the armchair opposite her. The light from the fire cast a sheen on her black hair as she stared at the tongues of flame around the logs, which had begun to crack and sputter.

‘So,’ said Charles, resuming the conversation where they had left off, ‘what about his suggestion – what your husband said about leading separate lives but staying together?’

Rachel did not look at him. She continued to stare at the fire, and was silent for a long moment. Then she said softly, ‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s a possibility, but I don’t think I could stand it for long.’ She grimaced and sipped her liqueur, found herself about to say ‘Leo’s different’, and paused. ‘My husband is different. He’s really a very detached person. I’m not. I couldn’t live like that. God knows, we have, effectively, for the past two months, and it hasn’t exactly been pleasant. I think he’s met someone, you see – some man – and he wants to start an affair with him. That’s my guess. He just wants – well, sort of permission, I suppose. To do as he pleases. But still have us. Me and Oliver.’ She sipped again. ‘Oliver, mostly. If I go, Oliver goes. He doesn’t want that.’

Charles ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Then why doesn’t he just accept the way things are? Get on with life, give up having other men, women, whatever. If he wants to preserve the status quo that badly, I would have thought he could.’

‘Ah, but you don’t know my husband. He’s a most persuasive negotiator, and totally self-interested. If there’s a way of having it all without losing anything, then he’ll find it. Anyway, he’s
already acknowledged to me that the sex thing is a weakness, something he either can’t or doesn’t intend to control. So.’ She shrugged.

He gazed at her as she brooded by the firelight. So beautiful. A perfect Madonna. One was simply grateful that the divine infant was sleeping upstairs. He voiced his thoughts. ‘I don’t understand how he can be such a fool, married to someone as truly lovely as you are.’ His voice was soft, reflective. Rachel glanced up at him, and Charles held her gaze for a long moment. He wondered vaguely, mellowed by the wine and the general ambience, whether now would be a good moment, whether he should just join her on the hearthrug, take her in his arms, hope for the best.

Rachel, her dark eyes fastened on his, divined something of this, and realised that she had been attracted to Charles ever since she had first met him. A faint thrill of nervousness passed through her. Until she had met Leo, she could not bear to be touched by any man, had been unable to allow anyone close enough to make love to her. The psychological scars left by her father and by later traumas had been too deep. It was partly why she felt so utterly emotionally dependent upon Leo. She wondered now if perhaps Leo had in some way healed her, had helped her to trust … That seemed absurd, given the way he had betrayed her. But she was able, she realised, to look at Charles now, to know his thoughts, and feel entirely unafraid. Perhaps it was not so much to do with Leo, as with Charles himself, his kindness, his easy good humour which made the mildly sensual gleam in his eye quite unthreatening. Even so … even so, she hoped he would not do anything to spoil the perfect peace of the moment. At this point in her life, with all its confusions and uncertainties, she had no wish for anything beyond this pleasant, platonic friendship.

It’s all too ungainly, thought Charles. I’ll just creak when I
get up, and crack when I bend down. Or in my state I might fall over altogether. Then I’d have to lie there on the carpet pretending I’d fainted, or had a seizure, or something. Anyway, the setting might be perfect, but the timing’s not.

Charles let his lustful thoughts subside, took another sip of his drink and added, ‘Actually, your gorgeous young presence in the house is going to earn me a lot of kudos in the eyes of my children tomorrow. I do hope you’re going to let them labour under salacious misapprehensions.’

Rachel laughed. ‘If you like. But I think the sight of Oliver is going to alarm them, unless you explain things.’

Charles rubbed his chin. ‘True. They’ll start to worry about their inheritance. Not that they’ve got one, given the rate that Lloyd’s is swallowing up my money.’

The thinnest of wails sounded from upstairs. ‘Oliver,’ said Rachel, putting down her glass and getting to her feet. Graceful as a gazelle, thought Charles, suddenly realising that Rachel’s very youthfulness made him feel incipiently aged. Was this a good thing? He liked to think of himself as still possessing a certain youthful charm. ‘Bring him down here,’ he said, ‘and we’ll teach him how to play backgammon and gin rummy.’

In London, Leo was watching a film which he had videoed months ago but had never had time to watch before, and wishing that he could expect at any moment to hear the sound of Oliver crying upstairs, so that he could go up to him. He was horribly conscious of the silence, and wondering when on earth Rachel was coming back. He had drunk too much Scotch at Frank’s, and after the initial spurious warmth and sense of well-being, it had merely left him with a headache and an even deeper sense of depression. For the first time that he could remember in years, he realised that he felt lonely.

Late in the afternoon on Boxing Day, Rachel decided that she had to go back to London. Not that she particularly wished to. Every single moment of time spent in Charles’s house had been a pleasant release from tensions in her own. Even his children, of whom she’d been faintly apprehensive, were as easy and pleasant as he was. Nicholas was a younger version of his father, but with darker hair, and Chloe was pretty and intense, faintly suspicious of Rachel at first, until she perceived that there was no romantic relationship between Rachel and Charles.

She had sat with them all at lunch, listening to their conversation, their jokes, and realising wistfully that this was something that she and Leo would probably never create. There was a closeness, a genuine affection, which had taken years to achieve. At least it was pleasant to be a part of it. It lifted her spirits, made her feel human, included, and she saw that the past few months of her life had been cold and devoid of real happiness. How strange it was, she thought, watching Chloe playing on the carpet with a chortling Oliver, that one’s mind and life could gradually become numbed by a flat sense of
unhappiness, so that one was left feeling that this was the only way to be. It was not the only way to be. But, for the moment, that was the way her real life was, and she had to go back to it and sort it out as best she could.

‘Stay another day,’ said Charles. But even as he said it, he was aware that it might spoil the stolen pleasure of these last two days to try to prolong it. Charles, with all the experience of middle age and countless love affairs, knew, too, that there was a certain progression in matters of the heart, and with a sensitive creature like Rachel, things must be managed carefully. Stage one had been very nicely accomplished. The marvel of it was that he had established an affectionate intimacy without so much as laying a finger on her. Yes, the groundwork had been nicely laid. She could not now refuse to see him in London. They were friends, after all.

‘I can’t,’ said Rachel, but smiling, pleased that he had asked. ‘I get the feeling I haven’t been very fair. I didn’t even leave my husband a note. I assumed that he would know where I’d gone, but if he rings my mother and finds I’m not there …’ Then it occurred to Rachel, if he had rung her mother’s and found she wasn’t there, where would she tell him she had spent Christmas? Well, she would simply have to worry about that when the time came. A dragging reluctance to go filled her, but she fought it. ‘Anyway, we have had the most wonderful time. I’m very glad I bumped into you in Bath.’

‘So am I,’ said Charles. ‘Otherwise you might still be at your mother’s having a nervous breakdown.’

An hour later Nicholas brought Rachel’s bags and Oliver’s travel cot downstairs and loaded them into the boot. He and Chloe said goodbye to Rachel and kissed Oliver, and then went back into the house, leaving Charles and Rachel together by the car. Charles watched as Rachel strapped Oliver into his seat, Oliver sucking one of the passengers from his bus.

‘God!’ said Charles. ‘The bus!’ He ran back into the house and reappeared a few moments later with the red bus. Rachel put it on the back seat with the rest of his things.

‘Thanks,’ she said, and thought fleetingly of Leo. It would not have gone down well if his present to Oliver had been left behind.

Maybe, thought Charles, it would have been cleverer to let her forget Oliver’s bus. It would have afforded an excuse to see her. But he had the feeling, as he opened the car door for her, that he wouldn’t need an excuse.

‘Well, thanks again for – for everything. I think it’s done me a lot of good,’ said Rachel. She felt a little awkward, not quite sure how to say goodbye. Charles solved the problem by taking her hand lightly and leaning forward to kiss her swiftly on the cheek. It was a comradely kiss, and the squeeze he gave her hand was the ‘be brave’ kind, nothing more.

‘It’s done me good, too,’ replied Charles. ‘I feel years younger.’ At least he’d drunk less than he normally would have. He leant down to the window to wave to Oliver. ‘Be good to your mother, young man,’ he said.

Rachel laughed. Much of what Charles did and said made her laugh. Not because he was particularly funny, but because he seemed to enjoy life, would rather be cheerful than not. She was going to miss his good humour. She got into the car and started the engine, then drove slowly down to where the gravel driveway met the road. She turned to wave to Charles before setting off, and felt a pang at the sight of his tall figure waving back. She thought fondly about him, and about the past two days spent with him, for most of the journey home, and it was only when she reached the outskirts of London that she turned her mind to Leo, and what they would say to one another.

Anthony and Camilla wandered through Kensington Gardens after lunch that day, talking idly, watching the ducks on the cold
water of the Round Pond, and a handful of children playing with new bikes or boats. A biting wind whipped grimy leaves along the pathways. Anthony turned up the collar of his coat.

‘Give me your hand,’ he said to Camilla, stretching out his own. She laid her hand in his, and he rubbed her chilly fingers, then bent his head to kiss them. She felt her heart dip as he did this. Then he put her hand into his overcoat pocket with his and pulled her close to him as they walked. She smiled, and he glanced at her and caught this.

‘What?’ he asked. Over lunch they had talked of things remote from themselves, and there had been nothing to presage Anthony’s sudden demonstration of affection. Yet they both knew that they had slipped into the warmth of intimacy perfectly naturally. The night of the chambers Christmas party had been a fresh beginning, erasing all memory of Camilla’s infatuation, of the unhappy events of Grand Night. It had established a new friendship, entirely replacing the former imbalance, when each had been closely conscious of their disparate status in chambers. Now they regarded one another entirely as equals.

‘Nothing,’ replied Camilla. ‘Just smiling.’

He stopped suddenly, put his arms around her and held her against him for a long moment. He could feel his own heart beating quite violently, and was not sure why. He had a sense of rightness, of completeness with her, that he could neither understand nor explain. He stroked her hair lightly with his hand. Then she lifted her head and he kissed her for a long time, without thinking about anything at all.

‘The trouble is,’ he said at last, leaning back a little to look at her and brush some strands of hair from her eyes, ‘you are so impossibly nice. I can’t think of another word for you.’

‘I had a teacher at school,’ murmured Camilla, ‘who was always telling me off for using that word in my essays. “Use a descriptive word instead, Camilla!” she would say. And I would
think, well, nice is a descriptive word. The trouble is, it applies to everything.’

‘No,’ said Anthony. ‘Just to you. You are the nicest thing I know.’ And he kissed her again.

After a while they resumed their walk, Camilla leaning against Anthony, her head dipped against his sleeve, feeling extraordinarily, wonderfully happy.

‘You know,’ said Anthony, ‘that no one in chambers must know about this. Not that the situation has ever arisen before, but I have a feeling that certain kinds of relationships between barristers and their pupils might be frowned upon. So I shall have to treat you with my customary stern indifference. Will you mind that?’

She looked at him and laughed. ‘I won’t care.’

‘Hmm. Actually, it will be quite good fun. Pathetically childish, but amusing, pretending something isn’t what it is.’

‘And what is it?’ she asked softly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Anthony. He looked at her, touched her mouth with his finger, tracing her lips. ‘I honestly don’t know.’ But he had his hopes.

Freddie fumbled for the light switch as he set his suitcase down, then closed the door of his flat behind him. It had a musty, abandoned smell about it, even though he had been away for only a week. Bit much being sent packing on Boxing Day, he thought. But his son’s wife, Gemma – dreadful, silly name for a dreadful, silly woman – had booked some skiing holiday for the family over the New Year, so he’d had no choice. When Alec, his son, had been driving him to the station he’d managed to have a bit of a moan at him, but Alec had merely said that he’d told Freddie about it well in advance.

‘You knew before you came that we were going away on the twenty-seventh,’ he had said in mild exasperation.

Freddie had replied that he’d known nothing of the sort, but the fact was, he couldn’t remember whether he’d been told or not. Didn’t matter now. Here he was, shops all shut, nothing to eat, no milk except for that long-life stuff, abandoned by his own son’s family as soon as Christmas was over. He muttered to himself and stepped forward into a little heap of newspapers. He’d forgotten to cancel them. Remembered the milk, but forgotten the papers. Oh, well. He stooped slowly to pick them up. At least he would have today’s paper. Could see what was on television. Though he’d watched a damn sight too much of the thing over the last few days. No conversation to speak of, that family, except when he and Alec had escaped down to the pub. That had been more like it. Father and son. He’d been able to tell Alec about the Lloyd’s litigation, fill him in on some of the City gossip. It was good to be able to show Alec that his father was still keeping abreast of things, pitching in, even though he was on the far side of seventy.

Freddie took off his coat and wandered into the kitchen, filled the kettle and switched on the radio, listening to a bit of Radio Four while he pottered about. He glanced in the cupboards and saw that he had some corned beef and half a packet of Smash. That would do for supper. And he had in his suitcase the bottle of Famous Grouse which Alec had given him after a trip to the off-licence.

Freddie made a mug of tea and went through to the living room, conscious of how cold it was. He turned on the gas fire, blowing gently at it to ignite it, then glanced at his watch. Five to seven. Might as well switch on his electric blanket now. When he had done that, he settled down in an armchair with his tea, unaware that he had been talking to himself below his breath for the past fifteen minutes, as he had gone about his little tasks. It was something he did much of the time now. He took a sip of his tea, then, muttering, glanced across to the
window, where the curtains were as yet undrawn. Snow. The first thick flakes drifted in ghostly silence past the windowpane, dimming to invisibility in the darkness. Snow. Hadn’t seen snow in London since he and Dorothy came to live here two years ago. He settled back in his armchair, recollecting how the garden of the house in Hampshire had looked after a fall of snow, the little statues by the herb garden softly shrouded, the walk past the yews down to the wood an avenue of mysterious, wonderful white. The little lone birds that hopped about near the fountain in the deep, wintry silence. He remembered once taking a walk down to the pond to see if it had iced over, then trudging back up to the house, glancing up and seeing Dorothy waiting, looking out from the French windows, the room behind her warm and welcoming, tea by the fire. That picture had remained imprinted on his memory ever since. He closed his eyes and wondered whether it was snowing in Hampshire now, and who was looking from those windows at the hushed splendour of the garden that had once been his.

Alison closed her son’s bedroom door. The sigh which she let out made her body shudder perceptibly. After a second she heard him turn his music on. His refusal to talk to her about anything was pure defiance, as was the music, but the fact that he kept the volume at a reasonable level indicated a certain contrition, she thought. God, having to read signs, instead of being able to speak to him. She went slowly downstairs. Well, she supposed it happened to plenty of boys, getting into trouble with the police. Only not her son, not her Paul. It was never meant to happen to him. When they had had money, she had seen it as a sort of protection, private schools to keep her children away from malign influences. Had she been right? Did this prove anything? Paul might have got into trouble regardless. Children did, wealthy or poor. Look at all the problems they had with drugs
at those public schools. She thought of the court hearing that would take place in the near future, and her stomach tightened with fear. It would be in the local paper. Lucy Wright would read about it. God, why did she always think of Lucy Wright as a metaphor for the censorious wide world? She was only Lucy Wright, after all.

Alison paused at the foot of the stairs. It wasn’t the court appearance she was worried about, or the aftermath. They probably wouldn’t do much to a sixteen-year-old committing his first offence. No, it was Paul himself. Paul and the long term. God, the worry … It was as she stood there that she heard the sound, and thought at first that it was muffled laughter, that it was the girls playing some game somewhere. And then she realised it was not that. She took a step towards the door of the little workroom in which Brian kept all his Lloyd’s papers and correspondence, then stopped, listening to the appalling sound of her husband sobbing uncontrollably. A sudden anguish made her put her hand out to the doorknob. Then she drew it back. There was nothing she could do or say. She couldn’t comfort him, tell him that this was just a little thing, that Paul would straighten out in the long run, as teenagers did. Because it was not really to do with Paul – only partly. It was all bound up in the great parcel of guilt which Brian had put together, and which began and ended with Lloyd’s and the money, the world, which they had lost there and would never recover. She stood for a few seconds and then, because she could not help and could not bear to listen, stole quietly away.

Leo was standing in the kitchen with his hands in his pockets, watching the beginning of the nine o’clock news, when he heard Rachel come in. He turned his head and regarded her through the open doorway as she took off her coat, unbuckled Oliver from his baby seat and took off his snowsuit. He turned his
attention back to the television as she came down the hallway with Oliver in her arms.