Splitting (13 page)

Edwin’s wife walked for an hour and reached her mother’s house. Lavender Hatherley opened the door, wearing an apron she’d been wearing as long as Angelica could remember. Behind was a glimpse of familiar shapes and colors, but a new, strange man in her father’s armchair.

“Quite the stranger!” said Lavender Hatherley, with a touch of anger in the voice, but she took her errant daughter in, washed her, warmed her, fed her and put her to bed as if she were six.

News got round Barley that Lady Rice had left her husband and gone to her mother. She’d been discovered in bed with Lambert Plaidy, and Rosamund had walked out on Lambert as a result, taking the children. Lady Rice’s name was mud, but what could be expected from a rock-star? Angelica White should have accepted the position God had given her in the world: stayed a girl from the estate, daughter of the school choirmaster, and married a local boy. But like mother like daughter—think how Lavender White had behaved!

Barley mourned the loss of Susan, and saw merit in the fact that she’d gone back to her first husband, her one true love. They blamed Lady Rice for Susan’s departure: news of the dinner party had got round, and it was thought that Lady Rice and Natalie had conspired to bring about Susan’s humiliation and hurl lobster soup in her face. It was as if blame and Susan were of the same magnetic pole: you could bring them together, think you had closed the gap, then at the last moment they’d veer suddenly away. By all the laws of nature they were unable to meet.

And that was the end of that.

A
NGELICA SIMPLY DOESN’T KNOW
what to do.

The doors of Rice Court are locked against her. She has not been allowed in to collect even her personal belongings. Any security guard who might recognize the former lady of the house and pity her has been replaced. Those who now man the gates have been shown photographs and been told she is a madwoman, and when she appears weeping and distraught, to beat upon the doors or batter her hands upon the uniforms of their strong breasts, they can see that she is indeed mad. They catch her small wrists in their big hands and call for police and ambulance to restrain and help her, but by the time the authorities turn up she has always gone.

A suitcase of her clothes, her toothbrush, and so forth, turns up at her mother’s house, dropped off by Robert Jellico, to demonstrate that she has no ally in him.

“Where’s her eight hundred thousand pounds?” Lavender Hatherley calls after him, and she could swear he replied, “What eight thousand pounds?” but he was revving his Range Rover at the time to get away as fast as he could, and Lavender cannot be sure.

Sir Edwin will not receive his wife’s telephone calls. Lambert Plaidy has gone to Australia with Roland. Rosamund has given up her medical practice altogether. Even Natalie shuts the door in Angelica’s face; she has Serena to look after now. Natalie is bringing her up as part of her own family. She wants to put the past behind her and Lady Rice is part of that past. The greengrocer gives Angelica the smallest, meanest apples. Ventura Lady Cowarth receives her, but in the kitchen. Lord Cowarth is ill in bed with suppurating mouth ulcers, but that is probably just a story. Lady Rice is out, out, out. Ventura tells Lady Rice she will be happier out of Barley altogether, and recommends a London divorce solicitor, one Barney Evans.

“But I don’t want to be divorced,” cries Lady Rice. “I want to be back home with Edwin and happy again. I can’t bear him thinking badly of me.”

“Then you shouldn’t have been such a silly girl,” says Ventura.

“Her back’s still bad,” says Jelly. “You can see when she moves.”

“Good,” says Angelica.

Angelica is not sure whether or not she wants a divorce: she knows she needs money. She has none. She goes to the bank and finds the joint-account closed. One of her credit cards still works, however. Her friends from the old days are out of sympathy with her. Music is all rap and funk and acid house, and the drugs have changed. She is alone. She can’t stay home with her mother; Mary Hatherley, once her friend, now her step-sister, sleeps in her bed and Angelica is left with the sofa.

She takes her story and her plight to Barney Evans. He is a large, fleshy man with a double chin and a benign and bumbling air. He wears a dusty suit, a pink shirt and a pinky-yellow tie.

“What does that remind you of?” asks Angelica.

“The lobster soup the night of the dinner party,” says Lady

Rice.

“So it does,” says Angelica. “When your memories are strong enough, I have them too.”

“We’d better pay attention,” says Jelly. “This is important.” In real adversity they are quite companionable.

“Are you sure you’re telling me the truth?” Barney Evans is asking her. “It may be hard for a court to take your story at face-value. Fully clothed, you say?”

“Yes,” says Angelica. “You have witnesses?”

“No,” says Angelica. “By the time Mrs. MacArthur saw me I had hardly any clothes on at all. He’d ripped them from me.”

“And you walked to your mother’s in that state?”

“Yes. There was a child in the bed, too.” Barney Evans raises his eyebrows.

“The quieter we are about that one the better,” he says. “You know how people’s minds work these days.”

“We were all just keeping warm,” she says. Barney Evans stares at her.

“You make my life difficult if you don’t tell me the truth,” he says. “However, we will work with what we have. If you do decide to divorce, it seems unlikely that you have any claim on the matrimonial home or contents,” says Barney Evans, “since both are owned by the Rice Estate. As for alimony, the Court may well take the view that you are young and healthy and have earned very well in the past, and can earn again; and will award you very little.”

“What about my £832,000? The money I brought to the marriage?”

“But you seem to have no receipts, no documents.”

“I handed the cash over to Robert Jellico. He was very grateful. He’ll tell you. He’s a trustworthy man, everyone knows that. It will be in his books somewhere.”

“The Rice Estate has creative accountants: sometimes things show up in their books, sometimes they don’t. Depends what they want to happen. And it is Robert Jellico’s job to appear trustworthy.” Barney Evans smiled at Lady Angelica Rice.

“Things don’t look too good, do they?” remarks Jelly.

“No,” reply Angelica and Lady Rice together.

“I’m sorry,” says Lady Rice. “I haven’t managed any of this very well.”

“You didn’t even get any good fucks either,” says the so far unidentified voice, querulously.

“Never mind,” says Barney Evans. “Cheer up! I’ll look after you. I’ll take my chances with your fees. I daresay you’ll end up with a penny or two. I’m not pressuring you, but it might be a good idea to start proceedings before your husband does. The one who initiates the divorce normally has the Court’s sympathy.”

“Edwin would never divorce me,” says Lady Rice. “All this is just a temporary upset.”

Barney Evans raised his bushy grey eyebrows.

And here ends Jelly’s formal and official account of how Angelica Lamb split, and took her life into her own hands.

A
NGERED BY RECEIVING A
divorce petition from Sir Edwin stuffed full of malicious and lying allegations, from lesbianism to bestiality, bad cooking to adultery, Angelica booked into The Claremont, using the credit card Sir Edwin’s advisors had forgotten to cancel.

On her way to the hotel Angelica stopped at Fenwicks, the Bond Street department store, and there bought suede leather thigh boots, open mesh stockings, a small silver skirt, a white singlet and a leather jacket. She charged these to her card. She changed out of her depressed and dowdy country clothes in the powder room, and would have surely dumped the full, long floral skirt, chunky sweater and sensible laced and muddy shoes behind, but Lady Rice said that would be a wicked waste of money and insisted on stuffing the discarded garments into bags and carrying them about with her.

Lady Rice was made nervous by Angelica’s general desire to stride free, shove what she needed in a pocket and leave her purse at home. On the way out of the store, Jelly stopped Angelica in her confident lope and made her buy knee-length skirts, white blouses, cashmere sweaters and plain little-heeled shoes, and a collection of wigs. Angelica explained to the salesgirl, who regarded the kind of clothes she was required to sell with obvious distaste, that these were for her sister, who was acting the part of an office worker in a TV commercial. “No-one,” said Angelica, “would be seen dead in these—in real life.”

“Bitch!” hissed Jelly White.

The salesgirl pretended she had not heard: it was that or take on as an antagonist this lanky, limby, foul-mouthed, forceful, unsmiling, unpretty but attractive person, who would doubtless win any engagement.

“Enjoy,” was all the salesgirl said.

As Jelly White, Angelica took a three-day refresher course in computer technology, and brushed up her shorthand skills. She called Catterwall & Moss and determined that the firm who provided their secretarial staff was called the Acme Agency. She contacted them and produced references on Rice Estate headed paper signed by Robert Jellico, and from Rice Court signed by herself. Within weeks she organized herself a temporary post at Catterwall & Moss, and within days of arriving was working exclusively for Brian Moss, and had proper access to all
Rice v. Rice
files. With her new computer skills she deleted all references to the credit card she retained, other than those which automatically made payments as and when required. It was all perfectly simple.

As Lady Rice said, “At least it keeps me in touch with Edwin. I don’t feel so alone.” Jelly said, “I’m a prudent person. Forget the divorce, a gal needs something to fall back upon, and indeed into. Secretarial skills and Brian Moss’s arms are not to be sneezed at. What a pity he’s a married man!” Angelica said, “Jesus, you are both so wet!”

I
N HER PETITION, LADY
Angelica Rice alleged adultery between Anthea Box and her husband over a six-month period previous to the date on which she, Lady Rice, had left the matrimonial home.

Lady Rice claimed physical assault; over-frequent and perverted sexual activity which led to her humiliation; drunkenness, drug-taking and financial irresponsibility on the part of her husband; she asserted that her husband’s relationship with his dogs was of a sexual nature. She claimed she had been eased out of her home, Rice Court, to make way for Sir Edwin’s paramour, Lady Anthea Box. Lady Rice, on the other hand, had throughout the marriage been a good and faithful wife. Sir Edwin had behaved intolerably and she wanted this reflected in any property settlement. And she wanted her £832,000 back.

“An out-of-London court!” exclaimed Brian Moss, this seeming to be the part of Barney Evans’ letter-plus-enclosures which most affected him. “What a nightmare! I have no influence whatsoever in the provinces. A nod in London is simply not as good as a wink anywhere else. How ever are we to get this case settled? And how strange: the wife has claimed almost the same unreasonable behavior as has the husband.”

“I expect it’s because they were married so long,” said Jelly. “They can read each other’s minds.”

“Eleven years isn’t a long marriage,” said Brian Moss. “There was a couple in here the other day in their nineties wanting a divorce by consent. I asked them why they’d left it so long and they said they’d been waiting for the children to die.”

He laughed; a deep, hoarse, unexpected laugh at a pitch which made the many racing prints on the wall rattle, and Jelly laughed too, at his joke. Her tinkly little laugh made nothing rattle, but he pinched the swell of her bosom where it disappeared under her blouse. Just a little pinch; friendly.

“What do you think about the money?” asked Jelly.

“She hasn’t a hope,” said Brian Moss. “It’ll be so far buried in the Rice accounts it would cost her a fortune to get it out. And we’ll get Sir Edwin’s allowance reduced to zero for the nonce, so she can’t claim that either. The woman’s clearly a trollop and a bitch.”

Outside the elegant Regency windows, central London’s traffic flowed, or tried to flow. Only emergency vehicles seemed able to make progress—police, fire, ambulance. Their sirens approached, passed, faded, with enviable speed.

“I make a good living,” observed Brian Moss, “out of other people’s need to be in the right; they like to claim the privilege of being the victim. It helps to call her a trollop and a bitch if I’m doing her down, but who’s at fault in the Rice debacle is of no importance. The property is all that matters, and we’ll make sure she doesn’t get her greedy little fingers on too much of that. Clients assume that conduct during marriage will have an effect on a property settlement and steer it in the direction of natural justice, but it’s rash to make any such assumption. Or only in the most extreme cases.”

“You don’t see the Rice divorce as extreme, then? Merely run of the mill?” enquired Jelly.

“Very much run of the mill,” said Brian Moss, “other than that both parties do have to go to considerable lengths to hide their income.” It was fortunate, he said, for Sir Edwin that the Rice Estate had books of magical complexity. “I imagine it is,” said Jelly White placidly.

He loved her calmness, her interest in his work. If only his wife Oriole had the same. Oriole’s sweaters were covered in baby milk and vomit: she had new twins; she could think of nothing but babies. “Otherwise,” said Brian Moss, “it’s just a normal divorce. Both parties vie for the moral high ground, never noticing that a major landslip has already carried the whole mountain away. And both parties enrich me, thank God.”

“You are a very poetic kind of man,” said Jelly White, and Brian Moss caught up a little of her fair hair between his fingers and tugged, and she smiled obligingly, and Lady Rice sighed.