Marrying the Mistress (13 page)

Laura had, admittedly, told Simon he was far too young to think of marrying. Twenty-one was absurdly
young, especially for a man, especially for a man not yet qualified, one year out of university. And twenty-one was too young for Carrie, too, particularly as, having abandoned medicine for no good reason Laura could see, she hadn’t decided what else to do. Of
course
she got pregnant! What else was there for her to do, in her self-inflicted dilemma,
but
get pregnant and have all subsequent decisions taken out of her hands? Vainly, Simon had tried to explain that Carrie didn’t want to be pregnant, hadn’t meant to be, was only going to go through with it because the baby was Simon’s, Simon’s and hers. Laura saw Simon as trapped. Simon saw Carrie as trapped. Carrie saw Simon as trapped, twice over.

‘Her. And now me.’

‘I
want
you.’

‘I hope you do.’

He did. Seventeen years later, he still did. Carrie was the one decision – if, indeed, she’d ever been anything so crisp and deliberate – of Simon’s life that he had never doubted. He took her on, hoping at some unexpressed level that she’d set him free. And she did. Or, almost, anyway: certainly, as much as she could, as much as he’d let her. If he really let her, he’d either be driving down to Stanborough now with Alan, or not be driving down at all.

Carrie had asked Laura to come and stay.

‘I won’t, thank you. It’s sweet of you, but—’

‘Just a few days,’ Carrie said, her eyes shut, concentrating on making her voice sound as she wished her feelings felt. ‘Change of scene, a diversion.’

‘The dogs—’

‘Can’t they go into kennels?’

‘I don’t like to send them, at the moment. I don’t like to leave them.’

‘Bring them then—’

‘Oh, I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that. They never go anywhere, you see. It really is good of you, but I’m better here, really I am. Perhaps Simon—’

‘Bloody maddening,’ Carrie said, after she put the phone down. ‘All that pure obstinacy masquerading as the poor victim.’

Rachel was leaning against the wall by the telephone, waiting for Trudy’s line not to be engaged.

‘D’you mean Gran?’

‘I do, as it happens. But you shouldn’t have been listening.’

‘You shouldn’t shout then.’

‘I’m afraid,’ Carrie said, sweeping past Rachel with an armful of unironed laundry, ‘that your grandmother is enough to make anybody shout.’

Rachel looked at her father.

‘Wow!’

‘Sometimes,’ Simon said stiffly, ‘it’s a bit hard for one generation to understand the problems of another generation.’

Rachel grinned.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Very funny.’

‘C’mon, Dad. Gran’s never been very nice to Mum.

Has she?’

‘Rachel,’ Simon said, ‘I don’t really want to talk about it. Not now.’

Rachel turned her back and began dialling Trudy’s number.

‘Or ever,’ she said.

She was right, of course. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to have to say out loud that he agreed with Carrie’s view and Rachel’s view – even if he did – because of the implications and consequences of such a confession as far as Laura was concerned. In fact, this Thursday afternoon driving westward, he felt fairly irritated by Laura himself, not just because of her attitude and current conduct, but also because it was so fiendishly difficult to get time away from the office, and his partners were beginning to complain.

‘C’mon, Simon,’ Ted Freeman had said, ‘your father hasn’t
died
, has he?’

Sometimes recently, Simon thought it might have been a lot easier if he had. If Guy were dead, there’d be none of these recriminations and resentments and endless, hopeless, pointless conversations about what went wrong. He could see Laura, as a widow. She’d make a very decent widow, quiet, carrying her grief and solitude with a sort of small distinction. Simon felt he could have handled the widow in a way he seemed unable to handle the wronged wife. Mothers make widows quite naturally, he thought, it’s a kind of tradition. But mothers as abandoned women? Simon saw the turning off the Stanborough ring road almost too late and wrenched the steering wheel round, without signalling,
causing a furious blaring of horns from surrounding braking cars.

‘Sorry,’ he mouthed through the window glass. ‘Sorry.’ Stupid to do that.
Stupid
. He knew the Stanborough roads as well as he knew any besides those in his own part of South London. He leaned forward a little in the driving seat, as if to concentrate better. Six miles now. Six miles down lanes he had cycled so endlessly as a boy, not looking where he was going so much as staring at the speedometer to see if he was covering this stretch a few seconds faster than he’d done it the day before. He thought of Carrie.
‘Plus ça change,’
she’d say.

Laura was stooping in the garden, pulling the dead heads off daffodils. The dogs were lying six feet away, waiting for her to do something more interesting. Above them, the apple trees were in fat bud. When she saw the car come down the lane, Laura crossed the rough orchard grass to the drive, so that she was standing, waiting, when Simon pulled up.

‘You are so sweet to come.’

He bent to be kissed.

‘You look tired,’ she said. She touched his forehead.

‘Probably because I am.’

‘Did you have any lunch?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘Yes—’

‘I had a Twix bar,’ Simon said. ‘I bought it when I stopped for petrol.’

‘Why didn’t you buy a sandwich? Something sensible?’

‘Because, Mum, I wanted a Twix bar.’

Laura put her hand inside his arm.

‘I’m going to make you a sandwich now.’

‘Thank you,’ Simon said. He glanced down at her. She looked small and pale and neat. She had her pearl earrings on. When she took off her gardening gloves and put a hand out to calm the dogs bounding round them, he noticed that she was no longer wearing her wedding ring. She’d always worn it, along, usually, with her engagement ring, which she used to twist backwards, if doing any rough jobs, to protect the stones in it.

‘No ring,’ he said.

She didn’t look at him. She disengaged her arm and took a step ahead and opened the back door. She said, over her shoulder, ‘Well, it’s over, isn’t it?’

Simon said, ‘I haven’t seen him—’

‘Haven’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘Once.’

‘And?’

‘It lasted three minutes,’ Simon said. ‘My fault. I lost my temper.’

Laura said, her voice warmed with pleasure, ‘I don’t blame you.’

Simon moved across the kitchen towards the bread bin. It was square and made of white enamel, with BREAD stencilled on the side in black. He had known it all his life. He put a hand on it now, as if for reassurance.

‘I’ll make your sandwich,’ Laura said.

‘Mum, I really can—’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it. I want to.’ She pulled a chair out from the table. ‘Sit down.’

He sat, awkwardly. She took a banana out of the fruit bowl and put it down in front of him. ‘Eat that while you’re waiting.’

He looked at the banana. He said, ‘I’m not ill, Mum. I’m not a child, either. I’m just a father of three with rather more on his plate than is quite manageable just now, who, as I do most of the time, missed lunch.’

Laura was slicing bread, and cheese. She said brightly, ‘How’s work?’

‘There’s an endless amount of it and seemingly no time to do it in.’

‘But you have partners—’

‘Yes, I do. But we have more work than we have people to do it.’

‘Why don’t you hire someone else?’

Simon pushed the banana away from him.

‘Because the figures don’t quite permit that yet.’

Laura put a plate down in front of him. It bore a thick brown-bread cheese sandwich. His mouth watered.

‘Then we’re going to have to come to some arrangement.’

He looked at her. She had turned away and was rummaging in the cupboard.

‘What?’

‘Well, I can’t expect you to do everything for nothing. Not with Carrie and the children to support.
Here we are. Apple and walnut chutney. I made it last September.’

‘Mum,’ Simon said, ‘what are you going on about?’

Laura went past him, putting the chutney jar on the table as she went, and plugged in the kettle. Then she turned back to Simon. Her expression was bright and slightly detached, as if she’d been rehearsing what she was about to say.

‘I told you,’ she said, ‘it’s over.’

‘I know that—’

‘And I don’t want to have anything more to do with it. Or him. I telephoned him this morning and told him so. I want – I want to
erase
him.’

Simon pushed the sandwich plate away, too.

‘But, Mum, nothing’s sorted. Not the house, nor money, nor Dad’s will or pension, not the divorce,
nothing
. We haven’t even started.’

‘I’m not starting,’ Laura said. She spooned tea into a teapot.

‘You—’

‘I’m not,’ she said, ‘you are.’

Simon put his head in his hands.

‘I came down today,’ he said with resolute steadiness, ‘at immense personal and professional inconvenience, to start talking to you about finding the right person to represent you and to discuss what sort of deal you wanted. I came, Mum, to get the ball rolling. You agreed. Alan agreed. We all agreed.’

‘Sorry,’ Laura said. She didn’t sound it.

‘What do you mean, sorry?’

‘Sorry, but I’m not doing any of that.’

She put a cork mat painted with flowers on the table and then the teapot on top of the cork mat.

‘I didn’t want you to come down here on false pretences,’ she said, ‘but it would be worse if you went away under them, too. I’m not having any more to do with this, Simon. I’m not instructing solicitors, I’m not planning strategies, I’m not – most emphatically not – having one more single thing to do with your father.’

He leaned across the table towards her. He said incredulously, ‘But you want a settlement, don’t you? You want a fair share of the assets, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do. I want that very much. It’s the least I’m owed.’

‘Then we have to discuss it. You have to have a lawyer. You have to tell professional people what you want them to do for you. You have to have
some
communication with Dad.’

Laura began to pour the tea into blue-and-white-flowered cups.

‘No, I don’t’

‘Mum!’ Simon shouted.

She pushed a teacup towards him.

‘I’m going to leave it to you,’ she said. ‘You’re on my side, you know what’s due to me. I don’t have to do anything more, Simon, because you are going to do it for me.’

Alone in his chambers in Stanborough Crown Court, Guy dialled Simon’s work number. A girl answered. Simon, and Ted Freeman and Philip Stott, employed an endless series of girls as receptionists who stayed just long enough to have some idea of the nature and customs of the firm before leaving for an identical job, to relieve the tedium.

‘Is that Nicky?’ Guy said.

‘No,’ the girl said, ‘it’s Miriam.’

‘Miriam,’ Guy said, ‘this is Guy Stockdale. Simon’s father. I wonder if I could have a quick word with him?’

Miriam said laconically, ‘He’s with a client.’

‘And when do you think he will be free?’

‘He didn’t say. He’s got appointments until six-thirty.’

‘Perhaps,’ Guy said, ‘you could give him a message then?’

‘OK,’ Miriam said. He heard her rustling for something to write on.

‘Just say that his father called and would very much like to speak to him urgently. I’ll give you my number.’

‘OK,’ Miriam said again.

Guy put the phone down. He looked at the notepad beside it. He had written ‘Ring Simon’ at the top of the sheet, and while he was telephoning he had somehow drawn lines round Simon’s name, giving it black emphasis. Simon had been in Stanborough yesterday. He had been to see Laura. Guy knew this because Laura had telephoned him to tell him that she was having nothing further to do with him, ever, and that Simon was now going to take her cause up for her, entirely, completely.

‘Have you asked him?’ Guy said, as gently as he could.

‘I don’t need to,’ Laura said. She sounded hard and deliberate, as if she was saying something she’d set herself to say.

‘Do you think that’s fair?’ Guy said. ‘Fair on Simon?’

There was a small pause and then Laura said, in the same intentional voice, ‘It will be what he wants.’ Then she’d said, ‘Goodbye,’ with a formal emphasis on the first syllable, and put the telephone down.

Guy had looked at his watch. Simon would have been in his car, alone, on the motorway. Guy could have called him, on his mobile, before he got to Hill Cottage, before Laura gave him her extraordinary instructions. He could have, and he didn’t. He spent, instead, a small and intense amount of time praying
that Simon might think to come and find him, in the court building, even if it was only to shout at him, and then he tried to turn his attention, energetically, to work-in-hand.
‘Please,’
he’d found himself saying at intervals to himself all afternoon. ‘Please.’ Simon didn’t come.

‘Keep hoping,’ Merrion said, from London that night.

‘Keep trying.’

‘The former is easier than the latter.’

‘That’s why the latter works more often.’

‘You’re such a Puritan—’

‘Are you OK?’ she said.

‘No,’ Guy said. ‘Not tonight.’

Guy had found it difficult to concentrate in court, afterwards. Twice, he’d been virtually reprimanded.

‘Your Honour,’ the prosecuting counsel had said loudly, pointedly loudly. ‘Your Honour, I am referring to sheet
eight
of the transcript.’

And then, an hour later on, a harried witness, whom he should have rescued from the prosecuting counsel ten minutes before, turned to him in anguish from the witness box and almost shouted, ‘Do you think I would have waited thirteen months for this court case to stand here and
lie?’

He had apologized. He had apologized twice. He felt obliged to. The barrister had looked complacent; the witness startled. Guy had put his hand on the stout legal volume that lay always on the bench before him –
Blackstone’s Criminal Practice
(dark blue and gold) – to centre himself, steady his thoughts. When the usher
finally made the court stand at four-thirty, for his departure, he felt oddly weak, almost giddy, as if he’d been fighting to acclimatize himself to something utterly unfamiliar.