Judicial Whispers (11 page)

‘I see,’ murmured Rachel, dimly perceiving some truth in this. ‘But the question still remains – how would I know the difference? Do you mean that because I can’t respond to this man, I can’t really be attracted to him? That there’s some sort of Mr Right waiting out there?’ Rachel gestured with a quizzical smile in the general direction of Earl’s Court station.

Dr Michaels smiled and looked down, fingering her bracelet, slowly revolving it on her wrist; Rachel noticed that the hairs on Dr Michaels’ wrists were coarse and grew almost to the backs of her hands. ‘I’m not saying that. It may be that you’re very much attracted to him, but that this anxiety to resolve your fears sets up as a barrier between you. But you see, I think of you as someone who would respond very positively to the right person, to the right approach. I don’t really think you’re as afraid of it all as you might imagine. You say that this boy – or man – is good-looking, intelligent, funny. Fine. As we said, he sounds very nice. Does he turn you on?’

Rachel was struck by how curious this phrase sounded in Dr Michaels’ mouth. Turn me on. She imagined Dr Michaels being turned on. Rachel suddenly realised that a lot of men might find Dr Michaels a very sexy woman. Potent. Powerful.

She stared at Dr Michaels for a moment, wondering what the answer to this was. ‘I don’t think,’ she replied at last, ‘that I know what this is like. How could I possibly know? I’ve only ever been used.’

‘I believe, in spite of what you think, that you are capable of normal sexual response. I think you would know.’ Dr Michaels,
shorn of her sensible skirt and oatmeal sweater, of her bone bracelet, beneath the bedclothes, face down. Dr Michaels in her other life. How many lovers? A wild Jewish wanton, all her carefully contained desires unleashed.

Would I? wondered Rachel. ‘Would I?’ she said.

Dr Michaels stopped playing with her bracelet and glanced at her watch. She looked up at Rachel. ‘Stop concentrating on this young man as a focus of your anxieties. Can you speak to him about any of the things in your past?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. It’s too much of a burden. Besides …’ She turned her head to glance out of the window. It had stopped raining. She wondered if she’d get a ticket. She’d only had enough change for fifty minutes on the meter. ‘I don’t think it would help. I think it might just confuse him. Worry him. He’s very young. It might just – turn him off. There you are.’ She smiled and looked back at Dr Michaels.

‘Perhaps it says something about the nature of your attraction to him – that you feel you can’t tell him. I think it would indicate a lot if you met some man to whom you felt you could talk about all this.’

‘I have to go on a business trip with him,’ said Rachel. She looked back at the window, at the little pots of cacti. ‘In two weeks’ time.’

‘Well, don’t look upon everything as a test. There are things you enjoy about this relationship. Try to nourish them. And if you can’t explain the past to him, simply tell him that you need to keep everything on a platonic footing for the present. Feel less threatened. Just let it develop, take it for what it is. Not every man has to be seen as such, you know.’

Rachel smiled at this. ‘I know. It’s just that they all expect to be.’

‘So enjoy the trip. Enjoy being with him. But get things clear and unequivocal. I have no real anxieties for you, you know, Rachel.’

I like it when she uses my name, thought Rachel. It makes me feel a little more special, not just another hour-long slot in her working day. I wonder if she ever thinks of me when she’s not working? Rachel gazed at the square, capable hands with their plump fingers, envisaged her chopping, preparing, cooking, making food for her lover for them both to eat before they fell to their passion. She makes me feel thin and spare and dry, while she looks rich and full and—But why should I think this? Maybe all is not wonderful for her. Not all doctors are healthy, just because they cure others. But I have to believe her to be so. She has to be what I am not.

‘Haven’t you?’ she asked.

‘I think we fought through the worst of it long ago. No, it’s just a question of understanding your emotions and motives a little better. Try not to confuse the significance of relationships.’ She looked at her watch again.

‘I know. Time to go,’ said Rachel. She stood up and slipped her coat on, lifting her dark hair clear of the collar. ‘Thank you, Dr Michaels.’

‘I hope I can be of help from time to time.’

‘Maybe I should come more often,’ murmured Rachel, thinking back hopefully to the days when time spent with Dr Michaels had been the warm haven of the week.

‘I don’t think you need regular therapy, Rachel. I think there are still difficulties, but—’

‘Better to confront them as real issues in real life, yes? I am trying, believe me.’

She went out into the gathering gloom of late afternoon, seeing in her mind’s eye the rectangular stage of Dr Michaels’ room, perhaps the props requiring a little rearranging before the entrance of the next character, with Dr Michaels sitting there patiently, unmoving, waiting for another life to pass before her eyes.

Although they spoke once or twice on the phone in the intervening days, Rachel did not see Anthony until the evening of their flight. She checked in, bought a magazine and a paperback, and sat down in the coffee lounge where they had agreed to meet. It was ten o’clock, and the flight was at eleven. Already the terminal had a sleepy, deserted air about it; the duty-free shops were closing down, a couple of vacant cleaners pushed their wide duster mops around the shining floors, and only a handful of travellers dotted the lounge. Rachel drank her coffee and tried to concentrate on her magazine, but time was slipping by and still Anthony had not appeared. When the flight was called at ten-thirty she felt a squeeze of alarm at the thought that he might miss it, that she might have to make this trip alone. She realised that she had gradually become accustomed to the thought of travelling with him; it would be lonely otherwise.

Deciding she could wait no longer, Rachel picked up her hand luggage and made her way to the gate, yawning. She had had a long day and already felt weary at the thought of the eight-hour flight. Where on earth could Anthony have got to?
She continued to scan the faces of the passengers trickling into the departure lounge, and it was only when the flight was about to board that she saw him hurrying up to the desk. The sight of his tall figure relieved and cheered her.

‘What happened to you? I thought you weren’t going to make it,’ she said, as he strode over to her, glancing down at the seat number of his boarding card.

‘What happened to me? I’ve just spent the past hour wondering where on earth you were. I’ve been waiting in the Club lounge.’

Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, God! I forgot about the Club lounge! I’ve been waiting in the ordinary one. Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’m just glad to see you. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to going alone.’

‘Neither was I,’ replied Rachel, happy that he was there. They smiled at one another. Dr Michaels had it all wrong, she thought. How could she not be attracted to him? It was a question of time, that was all. She would have to explain that to him. It would be all right.

‘Come on,’ he said, as the last few passengers dawdled past the stewardess, ‘we’d better get on. I don’t think we can be sitting together,’ he remarked, ‘since we checked in separately. But maybe the flight’s not full.’

The flight was only half full, and they were able to sit together in a bank of three seats, piling the flight paraphernalia of headsets, pillows, rugs and magazines into the spare seat between them.

When the hostess brought dinner, Rachel had only a coffee and some fruit, but was amused to see Anthony devour everything which was brought to him by way of food and alcohol.

‘You’ll starve,’ he remarked, glancing at Rachel’s meagre meal.

‘I ate earlier in the evening. I don’t care for the food on aeroplanes.’

‘Don’t you?’ said Anthony, genuinely surprised. ‘I love it. Little feasts on plastic trays. I like all the tiny bits and pieces, the little sachets of stuff, pats of butter, dinky cutlery all wrapped up. It’s like being a child.’

‘You don’t fly very often, do you?’ she asked, smiling and leaning back to look sideways at him.

He shook his head. ‘I had to go to Livorno once, and I went to the States with Adam last summer, but this is real luxury,’ he replied, glancing around the Club Class section.

He’s like a child, she thought, quite unaffected, able to enjoy everything that is a novelty. It was odd, she supposed, that he could be so clever, so intellectually gifted – for she had come to realise that he had a natural talent as a lawyer – as to be able to deal easily with immensely complex issues of law, often involving weighty issues and vast sums of money, and yet still be so young in other ways. It was a great burden of responsibility to carry, she reflected. Still, he seemed to bear it quite easily.

Anthony enjoyed himself. He read the in-flight magazine – Rachel did not think she had ever seen anyone do this from cover to cover before – put on his headset, flipping through the radio channels with amusement, and settled back to watch the in-flight movie when it came on.

Rachel tilted her seat back, tucked the pillow beneath her head, pulled the rug over her legs, and slept. She slept only fitfully, however, and woke from time to time to glance at Anthony. He seemed to be enjoying the film, whatever it was. She glanced at the screen and saw Al Pacino mouthing soundlessly at a blonde woman in a restaurant. She wondered how Anthony could manage to stay awake. She fell asleep again, and when she woke the cabin was largely in darkness, with huddled forms shifting uneasily beneath their blankets, the businessmen having
put away their laptop computers and filofaxes to dream of sales targets and earning curves.

Anthony was sleeping, too, but Rachel could see that he had not given up without a struggle; he still had his headset on, and Rachel’s magazine lay on his lap. She studied his face in the half-light, the long, soft line of his cheek to his jaw, the dark hair flopping over his forehead. How long his eyelashes were. She had had no opportunity yet to speak to him about – about just letting things alone, keeping them friendly. There hadn’t been an appropriate moment. He had been so eager to enjoy this journey that there had been no hint of anything beyond friendly companionship between them. Maybe it would continue like that. Good, she thought, feeling betrayal at her sense of relief. Good.

She leant back, reflecting that being with Anthony sometimes made her feel quite old. She thought of the countless trips she had made in her working life, the hotels, the airports, the in-flight meals. Schiphol, Brussels, Paris, Genoa – faceless, tubelike corridors leading to faceless arrival lounges, then boxlike hotel rooms the same as boxlike hotel rooms all over the world. And the people, the business people, the dreary, preoccupied masculine faces – even the women seemed to adopt token masculine expressions on business trips – with their briefcases and raincoats, milling past and around one another in their antlike quest for deals, for money, for contacts. She yawned, feeling on the floor for her shoes. She had achieved a sort of modus operandi for business travel, switching off and letting the blank vista of airports and taxi rides and offices and other people’s secretaries smiling at you with coffee slip by like a grey dream.

But there was Anthony, stirring now in his sleep as the pilot announced their descent into Bombay, for whom it was all fresh and new and exciting. How many years, Rachel wondered
sadly, until he, too, leant back wearily and dismissively on his fiftieth flight, ignoring the in-flight magazine, eating only a little, reading through his papers instead of watching the movie, perhaps taking a pill to help him sleep through the tedium of it all. But that was a long way away, she thought, watching as he woke. He smiled at her.

‘We’re nearly there,’ she remarked. ‘I’m going to freshen up a bit.’

When she came back from brushing her teeth and splashing her face with water, she found Anthony at the window seat on the aisle opposite, gazing intently down. She slid into the empty seat next to him and peered over his shoulder. Below them a ragged brown patchwork stretched out for mile after mile, made up of the tiny square roofs of Bombay’s shanty towns, ramshackle dwellings huddled together in a sea of teeming poverty.

‘I never thought slums could look romantic,’ murmured Anthony.

‘I shouldn’t think they are, close up,’ replied Rachel.

‘I want to go out and have a look round as soon as we’ve checked into the hotel. What time is it?’

Rachel glanced at her watch. She had reset it to local time earlier. ‘About midday. I know it’s first thing in the morning at home, but my body tells me it’s bedtime. I just want to go to the hotel and sleep.’

‘You’ve had a sleep,’ said Anthony, as they returned to their seats. ‘In fact you’ve been asleep for most of the flight. You missed a good film.’

‘I still feel exhausted. Sleeping on planes isn’t the same thing, anyway.’ She glanced at him. ‘You need a shave.’

And they smiled at one another, childishly pleased with their adventure.

Bombay airport was shabby and crowded, the air hot and
humid and laden with some hidden promise, the fragrance of a place that was foreign and vital. Brown-faced businessmen in starched, short-sleeved linen suits sauntered around with briefcases; knots of families, women in saris with clutches of children and babies-in-arms, queued at the ticket desks, and the airport police moved about with a powerful air of authority. Rachel and Anthony waited for a long time at a battered baggage carousel, and when they finally emerged onto the hot pavement outside the terminal, a dozen voices jabbered at them and hands leapt to take their luggage. They stood bewildered, until one man eventually singled himself out from his fellows, whom he shooed importunately away, and, taking their bags, directed them with peremptory gestures towards the taxi rank, where a queue of dilapidated Morris Oxfords stood. Having loaded their bags into the boot of one, the man stood patiently while Anthony dug out some tattered rupees. These appeared to be insufficient, and the man frowned and shook his head until Anthony produced some more. Rachel watched this performance, thinking that a masculine presence at least spared one the effort of doing it all oneself.

The taxi bumped its way along heat-laden roads, through the shanty-town suburbs and into the city. It was a slow, sweat-trickling journey. The traffic, both vehicle and pedestrian, was dense. Children and chickens wandered into the road from the maze and huddle of the shanties, then sidled away at the sound of the taxi horn. The occasional cow would lumber ruminatively across the road, dogs nipped in and out of the traffic, tongues panting in the sun, and the noise of car horns, bicycle bells and scooter klaxons merged in a jangle of raucous sound.

Anthony gazed in fascination at the ramshackle huts lining the road, their roofs and walls of plywood and rusting corrugated iron, curtains of sacking covering their dark entrances, where watchful women squatted and bare-bottomed
toddlers played in the dirt, their merry shouts and bright eyes flashing in the smoggy air. Everyone seemed cheerful, despite the squalor. People of all descriptions swarmed along the roadside – housewives, beggars, workmen with tools and handcarts, street vendors, tea boys carrying their gleaming cans of food and tea to offices, neat crocodiles of schoolchildren in white blouses and grey pinafores – mingling with the traffic. Some of the huts had been turned into booths and these, as well as the little one-man roadside stalls, peddled an infinite variety of sweets and nuts and fruit and fried food. The shanties stretched for ever, an endless sprawl of Indian humanity.

Suddenly a fetid stench rose into the air as they lurched across a bridge. Anthony and Rachel both sat back from the window. ‘God!’ said Anthony. ‘What on earth is that?’

‘Fish farm – is fish farm!’ said their driver, waggling a brown hand in the direction of a river bank.

‘Remind me not to have the fish tonight,’ murmured Anthony.

The hotel was a cool and sudden contrast to the bustle of the Bombay streets. The lobby was filled with the expensive cosmopolitan calm of the five-star hotel. Anthony and Rachel felt as though they had been set down in an oasis, a quiet spot in the very hub and heart of the teeming city. The corridors of the hotel, as they walked with the porter to their rooms, could have been the discreet corridors of any hotel in the world, except for the faintly marshy, musty aroma that pervaded them.

Their rooms faced one another across the corridor. Anthony stood in the doorway of his, fingering his key, as the porter took Rachel’s bag into her room.

‘Well – I’ll give you a knock after I’ve had a shower and things. Then we can have a look around. Maybe get some lunch.’

‘Fine.’ She nodded. She noticed his face wore a suddenly self-conscious look, as though he had only just become aware of where he was, and that she was alone there with
him. I’ll have to say something to him before this evening, she thought. But it wasn’t going to be as easy as she had imagined.

After lunch, they stepped out into the bright afternoon heat to wander around. Rachel bought some earrings from a street stall and Anthony bought some aspirin from a chemist, whose shop was dense and tiny and flyblown, crammed to the ceiling with teetering shelves of assorted pharmaceuticals, some apparently dating back to the sixties. Every shop seemed to yield its own little enclave of hangers-on, groups of men wandering in and out, chatting among each other, or to the patron and his customers.

After an hour or so, the muggy air and the noise and the importunity of endless beggars began to weary them; even the exotic succession of colourful booths and shops began to pall.

‘I’m longing for civilisation and a long, cold drink,’ said Anthony. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘Philistine,’ murmured Rachel. ‘I think we’re almost back at the hotel, anyway. If we go up that road there …’

‘I think you’ve called me that before,’ remarked Anthony, and his hand, swinging at his side, caught hers. She stopped in the dusty street and looked up at him. Her pale face was lightly filmed with sweat.

‘Anthony, there’s something I want to say—’

‘What? That I shouldn’t hold your hand?’ He smiled at her, raised her hand to his mouth and brushed it with his lips.

‘No,’ she said quietly, and disengaged her fingers from his.

He sighed and his shoulders drooped. ‘What, then?’

‘Let’s go back to the hotel first,’ she said.

They walked back in silence to the hotel, through the quiet cool of the lobby and out again into the hot air, onto the lawns that surrounded the swimming pool. They sat down at a table in the shade of one of the towering palms which filled the courtyard, and ordered lime sodas.

As the white-uniformed waiter drifted away, silence fell between Rachel and Anthony. It was broken by the sudden explosive splash of a German businessman diving into the pool. Both glanced sharply up, watching him swim sedately to the far end. Then silence and heat fell again.

‘So,’ said Anthony at last, ‘what was it you wanted to say?’ It has something to do with us, he thought. It’s going to be something sad and final and I don’t want her to say it. Even though everything that’s happened between us so far has been a disaster, I don’t want to hear it. I want there always to be another chance.