An Immoral Code (29 page)

‘You persuaded the Names to vote as they did – you acknowledge that?’ Camilla’s voice was bold, but underscored with a light note of apology.

He favoured her with another candid look, and this time held her eyes slightly longer. ‘It’s my job,’ he said. ‘I am an advocate. I enjoy persuading people, on any level. Anyway, what I said was what I believed.’

‘But surely you can’t tell people what to do, unless they really want to do it.’

‘Can’t you?’ said Leo in vague surprise. Then he smiled and added quietly, ‘I think you can, you know.’ Camilla was aware that there was something in Leo’s voice and eyes which had a disturbing effect upon her. She was still trying to fathom it as he turned the conversation away from Brian and on to the subject which they had purportedly come here to discuss. ‘So, tell me how you think you’re getting on in chambers. Everyone thinks very highly of you, but I’d like to know how you see things.’

Camilla took a deep breath, grateful for the pause during
which the waiter cleared their plates away. ‘Well, I’m very happy. I mean,’ she added hastily, in case Leo should think she was referring to Anthony, ‘in every sense. I like the people. I like the work. I must admit that I was a bit nervous when I started – you know, about whether I could handle the work.’ She paused and watched as Leo poured them both some more wine. ‘But I think I can. I don’t doubt my competence now. I think it’s just a question of handling cases, of getting experience.’ Then she startled Leo by throwing him a question. ‘Do you remember what it was like when you first started? I mean, did you have misgivings?’

Leo sat back, smiling. He remembered only too well his supreme self-confidence, his utter belief in his own brilliance. Oh, to be twenty-two again and know the things one did not know then. He met Camilla’s gaze. ‘No. Absolutely none. I was convinced that I was the greatest thing ever to hit commercial litigation. Which is the right way to be, I imagine. It’s now that I’m older and wiser that I have misgivings.’

She smiled. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Anyway, I like to think that I could cope.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you can. In fact, Cameron wants to offer you a tenancy. We spoke about it a week or so ago.’

She looked astonished, delighted. That was one of the charming things about the young, reflected Leo – their way of evincing emotions with total openness, whatever their pretensions or assumed sophistications. Not that this girl had many.

‘Really?’ She had flushed slightly with pleasure and surprise. ‘God, that’s – that’s wonderful!’

‘Didn’t you think it was on the cards?’ asked Leo.

‘Well – I hoped so, of course, but it’s not the same as actually knowing …’

‘Naturally, the thing has to be properly agreed upon at the
next chambers meeting …’ Leo hesitated for a moment, then went on, ‘There is just one thing, however – it’s a little delicate, which is why I thought we should discuss all this over dinner.’ He glanced up at her. She was looking at him with faintly anxious expectation. He took a sip of his wine, then said, ‘You and Anthony have been seeing quite a bit of each other recently, haven’t you? Outside chambers, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ replied Camilla simply.

‘For how long – a few weeks, say?’

‘Something like that.’

Leo nodded. ‘We don’t have any Chinese walls, you know – chambers isn’t run along the lines of big City institutions, where relationships between employees are discouraged. But I have to tell you candidly that the thing with Anthony could make difficulties for you.’

‘How do you mean?’

Leo laughed and made a wry face, as if truly uncertain how best to express himself. But he knew exactly how he intended to express himself. Had known for a week. ‘Let me see … Well, one of the key ingredients to running a successful set of chambers is harmony. Total cooperation and good mutual understanding between everybody, tenants and clerks alike. Now, I have absolutely no right to speculate on how serious your relationship with Anthony might be, but it could ultimately have some bearing on whether or not you get your tenancy.’

Camilla felt her heart begin to beat hard. Suddenly the idea of being robbed of the prize of a tenancy at 5 Caper Court seemed impossibly dreadful. She would do anything, she thought, anything, to avoid it. She had worked hard for four years to get to this point, and her entire future career at the Bar was now at stake. ‘I’m not sure that I follow what you’re saying,’ she said. ‘I don’t quite understand why it should matter.’

Leo sighed, as if with regret. ‘Let’s put it this way. If you and Anthony should ultimately break up, as young people so often do, then that could be potentially bad for the general atmosphere in chambers. To be frank, it is desirable that relationships between people in chambers should be friendly, but neutrally so. Of course, since you are the first woman we’ve had in chambers, the problem hasn’t arisen before now.’ Leo had to prevent himself smiling at this point, recalling his own relationship with Anthony just a few years ago and wondering what Camilla would make of that, if she knew. ‘Cameron may not be aware that you’re seeing Anthony, but most of the rest of us know, and I can’t guarantee that it won’t go against you at the next chambers meeting.’ Nothing like the obfuscation of a good double negative, thought Leo.

Camilla stared at him. ‘You’re telling me I should stop seeing Anthony,’ she said simply.

He paused, then nodded. ‘To put it bluntly – yes. Please don’t think that I haven’t given this a good deal of thought. I like you, and I think you are extremely promising. And I’m telling you this because I don’t want your career spoilt for the sake of—’ He paused, letting the silence lend its own significance.

Camilla stared at the table, pondering this, and then she said slowly, ‘I’m very fond of Anthony.’

Leo let a few seconds elapse, and then said, ‘For someone like you, someone as intelligent and attractive as you are, there will always be plenty of people, you know.’ His voice was silken, casual. Camilla looked up and met his gaze, and in a sudden, clear-sighted moment, she realised everything. As though in little shock waves, memories of Leo with Anthony, the way he looked at him, spoke to him, came back to her, and recollections of Leo’s attitude to her, his faint irritability and resentment, suddenly crystallised into understanding. Leo was trying to annex Anthony, to ensure that no one else should possess that which he, Leo,
wanted for himself. And this was part of it, this intimate dinner, the faint seductiveness of his manner, this whitewash about relationships in chambers. She had learnt enough about Leo to know that he, of all the members of chambers, was the least likely to be concerned about such things. If it had come from Jeremy, or Roderick Hayter, she might have accepted it. But not from Leo. This was purely an attempt on Leo’s part to distance her from Anthony. Her astonished mind was still trying to cope with this revelation, when it suddenly occurred to her that even if Leo had some hidden agenda, it might be that what he had said was true. Maybe, in the eyes of the other members of chambers, her relationship with Anthony was likely to jeopardise her chances of getting a tenancy. She returned Leo’s steady blue gaze, watching his eyes narrow slightly against the smoke of his cigar. Well, there was a way round that one. This tenancy might be the most important thing in the world to her, but there was no real reason why she should forfeit Anthony into the bargain. She felt almost surprised at the cold calculation of her own thoughts, but then again, she told herself, this was the way one grew up. Certain situations taught you more and more about yourself. And she was not the fool Leo took her for.

Leo watched her, waiting for her response. At last Camilla said, ‘Yes, I think I understand.’

The waiter brought coffee, and there was a long silence. Leo stubbed out his cigar and sat eyeing her meditatively as she stirred her coffee.

‘Don’t do anything hasty. Take a few weeks to think about it. Nothing’s going to be decided until Easter. For all I know, you may decide that this relationship with Anthony is too important to throw away. Think about it and let me know.’

Camilla looked up at him. ‘I don’t really need to think,’ she replied, with a coolness which faintly surprised Leo. ‘I know my priorities. And I want the place in chambers.’

Leo smiled and nodded. ‘Good.’ He raised his glass. ‘Then here’s to your prospective tenancy.’

Camilla returned his smile, and said nothing.

An hour later, Leo swung his car into the driveway, reflecting on the evening’s work. What he had told Camilla had been roughly true. There might be those in chambers who looked askance on her relationship with Anthony. He had doubtless done everyone an enormous favour. With a pleasant sense of accomplishment, Leo got out of the car and locked it. He glanced up at the house and saw the faint glow of Oliver’s night light behind the blind, and, on the next floor, Jennifer’s light behind her curtains. She was still awake. Over the past two weeks there had been nothing more between them than the usual domestic exchanges, but the atmosphere had remained fraught with sexual tension, although of a more subdued nature than on that first evening. As he let himself into the house and hung up his coat, Leo realised that the effort of the last few hours of contriving the most minor of seductions – one of which Camilla had been largely unaware – had left him with a certain appetite. Was Jennifer worth the bother? he wondered. But before he had time to consider this question properly, he heard a door close at the top of the house, and the sound of Jennifer’s feet on the stairs. Bemused, Leo waited.

She appeared eventually on the first floor in her dressing gown, her feet bare, rubbing her eyes. She looked like a child, he thought.

‘I hope I didn’t wake you,’ said Leo, dropping his car keys onto the hall table.

‘No,’ she said, and came down the rest of the stairs. ‘I was just reading.’ She spoke in an oddly listless way, and he was instantly aware that she had abandoned her self-regarding, predatory manner. ‘There were three phone calls for you, and
one of them wanted you to ring back tonight. I took the notepad upstairs without thinking.’

She handed him the pad of paper, on which she had scribbled the names and numbers of the callers. He took it from her, glanced at it, then chucked it onto the hall table. ‘They can wait,’ he said. Then he looked at her. She had a wonderfully warm, tousled look about her. ‘Everything all right? Oliver go down quietly?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’ Then she yawned and turned back to the stairs. ‘Goodnight.’

It was too much for him, that she should have so easily discarded whatever desire she had had for him. Her very disinterest felt like a challenge. As she reached the foot of the stairs he said softly, ‘Jennifer.’

She turned and looked at him. He watched her hesitate, and then the expression on her face underwent a subtle change, a flicker of curiosity in her eyes. That in itself he found instantly arousing. ‘What?’ she said.

He moved towards her, and she stood perfectly still. ‘What?’ he repeated, and smiled. Then he leant forward and kissed her, unfastening the belt of her dressing gown, finding beneath it perplexing folds of winceyette. ‘What the hell are you wearing?’ he asked between breaths, as she kissed him feverishly back.

‘It’s my nightie,’ she said. ‘It gets really cold at the top of the house.’

‘Then come upstairs,’ said Leo, unwinding her arms from around his neck and turning her in the direction of the stairs and his bedroom, ‘and get it off. Right away.’

Rachel’s trip to Sydney was, in many ways, a therapeutic release for her. Being on the other side of the world from Leo, she began to appreciate the tension and uncertainty that characterised their existence together. She missed him, and yet she felt temporarily relieved, as though from some oppressive weight. But absence, too, lent an illusion of hope, and she found herself, in intervals of time spent alone, constructing new hopes, new possibilities for the relationship, and wondering whether he missed her, deceiving herself with the notion that time spent away from her might make him want her once more.

Her paper, which she delivered at the beginning of the second week, was extremely well received and this had the effect of boosting her self-esteem. The fact that she was being a successful ambassador for the firm made her feel more robust about her position within it, and she developed the conviction that Mr Rothwell would no longer be able to employ arguments about commitment and flexibility to hold her back.

She missed Oliver, too, but guiltily enjoyed being without the ties of motherhood for fourteen days. The conference was
as much a social as an academic affair, and Rachel realised that most of the men there, those without wives in tow, seemed to regard it as mandatory to make a pass at any attractive and apparently unattached female, but she managed to handle it all with an aplomb which she had not possessed two years before.

Something which she had not appreciated was the assiduity with which Charles seemed determined to pursue their relationship, even finding out somehow the name of the hotel she was staying at and sending a large bouquet of white roses to her room on the first day, with a card which read, ‘Because they remind me of you. All love from your relentless admirer.’ He telephoned her, too, and she found their conversations – which Charles was clever enough to keep friendly and neutral – extremely comforting, being so far from home. The fact that he cared enough to call her in what must have been the early hours of the morning in England both touched and amused her. The thought of him kindled in her a warmth which she tried to feel, but could not feel, when she thought of Leo. All she felt then was a dull ache. Unlike Charles, Leo had not troubled to phone her, although she herself had called a couple of times, ostensibly to see how Oliver was. Leo had been friendly, but there seemed to be a kind of blank, unaffectionate space between them, which left her sad but unsurprised.

By the time the two weeks were nearly over, she was more than ready to get home. On the day before she was due to leave, a good number of the delegates had already left, and there was generally a fag-end feeling about the conference, as though the game had been played out. On impulse, and longing to see Oliver again, Rachel changed her plans and booked a seat on a flight which would arrive in London late on Friday, instead of at lunchtime on Saturday.

Which was why, when she had paid off the taxi and let herself into the house, she found Leo in the kitchen in his dressing gown, a bottle of wine in one hand, and two glasses standing on the worktop. She was too tired to notice the two glasses, and only mildly surprised to see that Leo was pouring himself a drink – and wine, at that – at eleven-thirty on a Friday night.

From the heart-stopping moment when he heard the key in the front door and realised that it could be no one but Rachel, Leo knew that there was nothing to be done but to play the situation out, step by step. He had left Jennifer in bed upstairs, and now, as he watched Rachel come through the doorway into the kitchen, he could only hope that the girl had heard Rachel come in, that she would have the good sense to slip silently upstairs to her own room. He must, he knew, proceed on that assumption. As he prepared himself for the slight effort of making everyday conversation with his wife, there rose in Leo a sudden feeling of utter distaste for the predicament in which he found himself. Never in his life had he been forced into a position of humiliation and deceit, and he found the experience profoundly unpleasant. Before his marriage, he had been answerable to no one, had led his life without guilt or the need for dissembling, and even after it he had tried to maintain that position, cruel though it might be to Rachel. But to be found frolicking with the nanny was, he realised, perfectly abject.

These thoughts raced through his mind as he watched Rachel slip off her jacket. He carried on pouring the glass of wine and handed it to her. She shook her head, giving him a tired smile as she sat down. He leant forward instinctively and kissed her in greeting, thankful that Jennifer wore no perfume, yet at the same time detesting the fact that it should even matter to him.

‘I hadn’t expected you back till tomorrow. You should have rung me and I would have met you at the airport.’ He tried to
keep his voice light and unconcerned, but was half-listening for sounds from above.

‘I changed my flight at the last minute. You know how it is with these things. Everybody started to drift off yesterday – or was it the day before? – and I decided I would, too. I didn’t want to drag you out to the airport late at night.’ She slipped off her shoes, picked them up and put them in her lap. ‘How’s Oliver been?’ she asked.

Leo sipped some of the wine which he now no longer wanted, his body concealing the presence of the second glass on the worktop behind him. ‘He’s been excellent. I’m sure he’s missed you, but it’s not easy to tell …’ Leo tried to concentrate, to think of something to say. ‘He’s trying to pull himself up on things, but he doesn’t quite make it. Falls back with a bump on his nappy.’

Rachel smiled and yawned. ‘That I must see. But right now I’m going to bed. My body clock is all over the place, so I’ll probably wake up in four hours, but at the moment I feel as though I could sleep for ever.’ She got up and padded across the kitchen, her shoes in her hand.

He could think of nothing to say to detain her which would not be completely artificial, and realised that he should have found some pretext for going up ahead of her, to make sure that Jennifer wasn’t still there, but that it was now too late for that. She was at the foot of the stairs. He wondered suddenly, helplessly, whether Jennifer might not be the kind of little vixen who would deliberately stay where she was just to create some kind of domestic drama. He hoped to God she wasn’t.

But Jennifer was quite oblivious of Rachel’s arrival. When Leo had gone downstairs to fetch them both a drink, she had rolled happily over on the bed and begun to fiddle with the radio alarm, trying to tune it in to Kiss FM, or Capital. She did not hear the door, was unaware of the brief conversation
taking place in the kitchen, and by the time Rachel had reached the landing outside the bedroom, was lying back naked on the sheets, eyes closed, listening to Mick Hucknall.

Rachel had only an instant to wonder why Leo had the radio tuned in to whatever station it was tuned to, before she saw Jennifer. The shock went through her in a swift tide, then evaporated, leaving her feeling stunned and cold. And angry. The room was lit only by the glow of a lamp on the far side of the room – how very like Leo – and Rachel snapped on the overhead light. Jennifer sat up blinking, and gazed at Rachel with an expression of horrified astonishment that in other circumstances would have been almost comic.

‘I think you’re in the wrong room,’ said Rachel, amazed that she managed to keep her voice level and cold, and watched as Jennifer made an undignified scramble for the nightdress and dressing gown which she had so enthusiastically discarded half an hour before. Jennifer was saying something confused and apologetic, but Rachel did not listen. ‘Get upstairs to your room,’ she cut in. ‘Tomorrow morning you will pack and go, and I will sort out the matter of your wages with the agency. Leave your keys on the hall table.’

Jennifer, conscious of the humiliating fact that she was beginning to cry, bundled up her things and ran upstairs to her room. Rachel passed a shaky hand across her face and took several deep breaths to calm herself. She stared at the bed, at the sheets rumpled and spilt across the floor, and then turned to go back downstairs.

Leo was standing at the foot of the stairs, one hand in his dressing-gown pocket, the other holding a small cigar. He had listened to the little scene between Rachel and Jennifer and had groaned inwardly, but he could not help feeling a light underscoring of amusement as he watched Jennifer’s pretty bottom in retreat.

‘You’re not fucking Noël Coward, you know,’ said Rachel coldly. This startled Leo slightly, as Rachel was not given to swearing. He glanced at the cigar in his hand.

‘No,’ he murmured. ‘No, indeed I am not.’ He tried to put a note of apology into his voice, having already decided that the best way to handle this undignified incident was to treat it with light unconcern.

She went past him and into the kitchen, waited for him to follow her in, and then closed the door.

‘Has this been going on all the time I was away?’ she demanded.

‘No. Actually, it was more a spur of the moment idea when I came in this evening,’ replied Leo idly. He was determined that this conversation would be brief, that he would not allow it to develop into a full-scale row. Those were things which he could not abide and which he always did his scrupulous best to avoid. ‘I’m sure you’re not exactly surprised. I’d already explained to you how things were to be—’

‘Yes, but I didn’t expect it here, in this house, in our bed!’

‘I shouldn’t trouble yourself about it,’ said Leo calmly. ‘She’s of no significance, I can assure you.’

Rachel’s voice dropped from anger to a level chill. ‘She may be of no significance to you, Leo, she may just be another casual screw, but believe it or not, she is quite important to me. Don’t flatter yourself that I’m angry because I found you in bed with another woman. I no longer care whom you sleep with. The reason I’m angry is that, because of your laughable sexual incontinence, I have just lost a bloody good nanny. And it’s me, not you, who is going to have to waste precious time and energy finding another.’ She ran her fingers through her hair, and breathed deeply, glaring at him. ‘And now I’m going to bed. Let’s just hope you haven’t got some young man stashed away in the spare room.’

She left the kitchen, and Leo stood for a moment in the middle of the room, gazing at the glowing tip of his cigar. She had surprised him, certainly. He had never heard her speak in such a way to him before, and he was irritated by the fact that it was she who had had the last – and the best – word. It was not pleasant to be made to feel like a mildly degenerate fool. Still, the thing was over and done with now. Of course, there would be repercussions, but he could not trouble himself to think about those now. Leo sighed, ground the remains of his cigar with a little hiss into a puddle of water in the sink, and went upstairs.

For the rest of the weekend they avoided one another as much as possible. Rachel spent Saturday ringing round nanny agencies and compiling a list of girls to interview over the coming week, desperately hoping that she would find someone suitable quickly. She took Oliver shopping, ate with him in the evening, and left Leo holed up in his study, working. On Sunday, after a dismal morning, during which she and Leo hardly spoke, she took Oliver for a long and lonely walk in the park.

She sat on a bench, Oliver beside her in his buggy, and watched other small children wheeling around among the pigeons, listening to their shouts. She gazed at the families, at the mothers and fathers who chatted idly and smiled and followed their offspring with unconsciously proud eyes, and then thought of the hopes she had built up over the last two weeks. Well, she thought with an inward sigh, there was nothing like distance to lend enchantment. She had to face it. The bargain that she and Leo had struck was purely a licence for him to behave as badly as he wished. She could see now that nothing was likely to change for the better. Leo intended to conduct his life entirely for his own pleasure, without any regard for her or Oliver. That she was theoretically allowed to do the same was neither here
nor there. That was just a sop to his conscience. He knew she would just hang around waiting, hoping. Christ, how little he must think of her, she told herself bitterly.

A flock of Canada geese suddenly rose from the boating lake in a flurry of icy water and shrill honking, and Oliver laughed and waved his hands. Rachel smiled involuntarily as she looked at him. God, he was like Leo, even at this age – the same eyes, same shape of face, even beneath the baby chubbiness. She thought of Leo as he was with Oliver, and reflected that it was only in those moments that he showed a true, sincere tenderness towards any other living being. The rest was just ego, ambition and appetite. She wondered why he didn’t just divorce her and have done with it. He didn’t want her, that was now perfectly obvious. He would make love to the nanny – at least that supplied a certain titillation – but his own wife was simply too humdrum, too easy. She felt tears rising to the surface and blinked them back, rummaging in her coat pocket for a tissue. It was pointless feeling sorry for herself. The question was – what now? She could not, she knew, bear much more from Leo. She must put some distance between them. If anyone was to leave, it should be him. She was the wronged party, after all. But the idea of asking Leo to get out of the house seemed faintly bizarre. She could imagine only too easily how calmly, how obliquely he would decline to entertain the idea. And if he refused, what would she do? Start divorce proceedings, make things acrimonious? Her mind shied away from the very thought. Her instincts were merely those of flight. As at Christmas, she simply wanted to bundle herself, Oliver and their belongings out of the house and get away. Where? There was Leo’s country house, but that was impossible. She could not take refuge from him in a place that was so very much his.

Her mind began to busy itself with thoughts of letting agencies, of flats, of the possibility of staying with friends, and
then she let the thoughts die blankly away. She was too tired. Anyway, the priority was to find someone to look after Oliver until she could get a new nanny. She thought suddenly of Trudy, a woman who had been in hospital giving birth at the same time. They saw one another occasionally, and Rachel knew that Trudy had a nanny for her little girl. She would probably be happy to help out, if the nanny didn’t mind. This piece of inspiration cheered and relieved her. She would ring Trudy when she got back.