Alchemy (32 page)

She had finally rung me to flirt a little while letting me know she was busy elsewhere. I texted Joel and spent an evening getting pissed, trashing the government and the world generally.

‘You OK?’ he asked halfway through the session.

‘Don’t I seem it?’ It wasn’t like him to ask

‘You seem a bit tense, look a bit tired.’

‘Thanks. I’ve been in love but I may be falling out of it.’

‘Oh love. That old merry-go-round.’

‘Roller coaster is more like. Nothing “merry” about it.’

‘Well I wouldn’t know. Since the big A I’ve been virtually celibate. Virtual sex. Maybe that’s the thing to go for. Trouble is it’s served up by some grubby sleaze merchants thousands of miles away and nobody even gets to touch.’

‘All breathing human passion far above…’

‘Something like that.’

We’d moved away from my danger ground. I’d lied to Joel, except that it was just a bit of self-defence not grey enough to be a real lie. And he probably knew that anyway.

James Chalmers called me in to talk about a case we were involved in, a squabble over merchandising rights in a toy that was itself a spin-off from a tele advert. The company that had made the original short claimed they’d been cheated out of a share of profit on the toy. The toymakers who’d enjoyed a Christmas killing said it was all theirs. The advert had come from a small indie production company making films on a shoestring. The toy boys were a branch of a conglomerate marketing around the world. Now the makers of the original product being advertised were asking for their share too.

“This is counsel’s opinion. ‘James pushed it across his desk at me. ‘It gives us the backing we need.’

We were representing the puppet masters whose product would delight the hearts and bring smiles to the little faces of children throughout the globe, of every hue and feature. It stood on James’s desk, a hairy blob of jelly in green bendable plastic with no neck and a toothy grin. The makers had given it a name, the Whirly-gon, which was part of their case. It had started life as a germ to be driven out by a new cleaning fluid. They hoped it was the next ET.

‘I don’t think this is right.’

‘Jade, you can’t just dismiss counsel’s opinion. It cost enough. And well, he is rather more experienced than you. One of the most prestigious in the field, in fact.’

‘I know his reputation. It’s just that in this case I think he’s too optimistic. After all there was a contract, though not a very well drawn one.’

‘That’s his point. Hardly worth the paper it was written on. Back of the envelope stuff.’

‘But a contract. I think the judge could take the view that given the inequality of the parties the weight must lie with the original creator. Saltire versus Ableson for instance.’

‘That isn’t how counsel interprets it. We must go with his advice or rather advise the client to.’

‘I think I’d like my doubts on record,’ I said carefully, ‘and I think the clients should be warned. If they were prepared to come to some arrangement…’

‘You seem to be keen on settlements, Jade. We don’t get money or prestige out of settlements. Winning damages and costs – that’s what counts.’

‘But losing counts even more. Against us.’

Chalmers sighed. ‘I wish I could carry you with me, Jade, but in view of your opinion, I think I’d better handle this on my own. I can understand that women don’t have the same stomach
for a fight, that you tend to avoid confrontation, but there are times when you have to stand up and be counted, even take a risk.’

So I was off the case as Chandler would say. S and F didn’t stand for Settle and Fixit as Drew and I had always joked, but rather Subtle and Floggit, two unsavoury characters from a comedy of bad manners.

‘You’ve blown it, Jade,’ Helen said when at last we met in the corridor. ‘Why did you have to disagree with counsel’s opinion? You know men don’t like to be crossed, especially senior partners.’

I’d forgotten that QCs, counsel, were like old-style hospital consultants for us, the ones matron had to follow, from ward to ward with: ‘Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.’ But if they got it wrong it was the nursing staff who somehow took the blame or at least the patient’s disappointment and pain.

Then I had to wonder whether my judgement had been infected by my own predisposition to be on the side of the underdog. Carefully I went through the whole brief again, looking for flaws in my argument. Well, maybe I’d overstated the case. Maybe there was room for doubt. But if there was then the law itself was an ass, braying in favour of the letter rather than what was fair and right. OK, Sir Galahad, get back in the kitchen.

Drew’s replacement turned up the following week I’d caught sight of him sitting nervously in reception when I went down to collect some documents and wondered if he was a client. He’d been waiting to be interviewed: short, lank fair hair and built like a rugby fullback even in his dark pinstripe.

“This is Sebastian, Jade, who’s taking over Drew’s job. Be nice to him. He rowed for his college.’

‘Only in the second boat.’

‘I’ll see you later, no doubt.’ Helen smiled up at him and was gone.

She had let me know, quite deliberately, that whatever there
had been was over. Thinking I might throw up I shut myself in the loo, raging and weeping by turns. I had been her little experiment that hadn’t delivered the expected result. And it was my own fault. ‘You blew it, Jade.’ Or would it have happened anyway? In traditional style that evening I fell to pieces playing
Der Rosenkavalier
over and over; the last scene, but now the roles were reversed. The countess was going off with Sophie and it was Octavian who got to sing her heart out alone on stage.

The next day I called in sick but it was only postponing the moment when I had to go back. Suddenly it was clear to me not only that I had no future with Helen, never had except in my dreams, but that I had none with S & F either. And what the firm was doing seemed increasingly unrelated to why I had switched my degree to law in what now seemed a lifetime ago. I’d seen myself as a kind of Robin Hood, defending the defenceless, the poor and the underdog against the powerful whether that was political or corporate power. Now I seemed increasingly asked to use my talent such as it was to support the strong and knock down the weak who couldn’t afford the superior advice of a Settle and Fixit. Our old name was seemingly embedded in my brain now and I couldn’t think of them in any other way.

I would play it cool when I went into chambers, let no one see my hurt. Be bright and efficient. Above all Helen should never know although in that hiccuping cry of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the last word on changed love:

…all is turned through my gentleness,
Into a strange, fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go, of her goodness;
And she also to use new-fangleness;
But since that I so unkindly am served
I fain would know what she hath deserved.

When we lost the case in spite of counsel’s opinion, or perhaps even because of it making us too sure of ourselves, I hid my glee and murmured words of sympathy to James Chalmers when we met beside the water-cooler. Stony-faced he merely ducked his head in acknowledgement and walked stiffly away. I had committed the unforgivable sin of being right as I realised as soon as I read the full judgement.

Helen was still just as distant. I wondered if she had tried out the new boy, Sebastian, but what could he bring that was fresh for her to experience unless, I thought bitterly, a touch of SM? Obviously my own days at S & F were numbered. I began to study the alternatives. I could try for some teaching. Media departments and studies were burgeoning in the universities. I signed up to a society of lawyers, experts in the field who met once a month to discuss the legislation and theory underpinning what we did from day to day at S & F. A lot of the members combined practice with academia. I sensed there was an integrity to their discussions though they would have seemed unbearably dry to an outsider. I began to get back a sense of what it was all meant to be about. I found myself speaking out and was asked to contribute to a study of recent cases. It gave me something to do in the evenings, now that I no longer expected to spend time with Helen. But it was also my little hand grenade. Publication would pull out the pin and I would lob it into the glossy offices of S 8c F. The explosive was my analysis of the Whirly-gon case and why we had lost it.

‘Great stuff,’ Jack Silver, the distinguished editor, said after I had delivered my chapter. ‘You’ll probably be blackballed.’

By now I’d decided I wanted to be on my own anyway, where I didn’t have to be patronised or watch my back all the time. If I could hang on at S & F for a few more months I’d have clocked up enough experience for the wide world. So I ran around as a smiling dogsbody who was never asked to comment on a case any more, but spent my time on witness statements and
organising the stacks of files that would accompany the real movers and shakers into court. Then my time bomb went off. The doorstop of a book on media law dropped on to James Chalmers’ desk.

It was the latest thing and everyone in our field had to have a copy as I’d known they would. When he summoned me to his office I was ready. The volume sat fatly in front of him.

‘I imagine you know why I asked you to come in. I regard your analysis of the Whirly-gon case as a serious breach of confidence.’

‘I was careful to use only the accounts in the public domain; the very full report of the judgement and the transcript of the proceedings. I don’t think I can be said to have breached confidence.’

‘You’ve made us look complete idiots. And as for counsel…He’s livid. I saw him at the Groucho yesterday evening. He’d had an advance copy. We won’t be able to use him again.’

‘I’m sorry he’s taking it like that. It wasn’t meant to be a personal criticism.’

‘Of course it’s personal. Everything is.’

‘If you’d like me to resign…’

‘In the circumstances I think that would be for the best.’

‘I have been here for quite some time…’

‘How much do you want?’

‘Perhaps we should discuss it another day. I imagine you’d like to consult first.’

I knew exactly how much the law entitled me to as severance pay, of course. It was a calculated part of my set-up costs if I was to have a hope of going it on my own. I didn’t rush to clear my desk but I stayed out of James Chalmers’ way while the negotiations about my settlement dragged on. Then suddenly it seemed one Monday morning my days with S&F were nearly over. I was leaving on Friday.

That evening I was settling down to fill in the required forms
that would give me the Law Society’s go-ahead for putting on my own show, when the phone rang. It was Helen.

‘Can I come and see you before you leave, Jay?’

‘When were you thinking of?’

‘James is at a dinner tomorrow. He’ll be late back.’

The rest of the evening and the next day was spent in the old ferment as I ran through the different scenarios of how our last meeting, for I sensed that’s what it was, would play. My flat had declined into bachelor squalor in the last few weeks so I had to get up early to clean it and change the sheets. On my way back from the office I bought a decent bottle of wine and the cheese that Helen liked. I was just in time. She was buzzing the entry phone ten minutes early.

‘I left just after James. I must be back before he is.’

‘Did you bring your car?’

‘I thought I might be offered a drink so I came by cab.’

‘G and T or wine?’

‘G and T, then wine.’

I mixed her drink, poured myself a glass of Gamay and brought them over.

‘James doesn’t know I’m here. He’s more or less forbidden me to see you. Not in so many words but the meaning is quite clear. It’s not just everything else. The book is the last straw because he’s never been asked to contribute to anything like that. He says your analysis is very good and lie can’t bear it. He thinks you’ll go to a rival firm and be in competition with S & F.’

‘Settle and Fixit.’

‘Is that what you call us?’

‘Drew and I used to have a joke about it.’ I was playing it cool just as I’d rehearsed to myself. Helen put her glass down and came towards me.

‘Aren’t you even going to kiss me? Are you so angry?’ The scent and warmth of her so close were too much.

‘Make love to me, Jay,’ she said as she had all those months ago. And it was Thomas Wyatt again but this time:

Thanked be fortune; it hath been otherwise,

Twenty times better, hut once in special,

In thin array, after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

And she caught me in her arms long and small,

Therewith all sweetly did me kiss,

And softly said, ‘Dear heart how like you this?’

After, when we were lying finishing off the bottle of wine, she sat up and looked at her watch.

‘I must go soon.’

‘How’s Sebastian?’

‘Plodding. No imagination. I call him Bash. He doesn’t know why. You’re much better. The best, in fact.’

‘Then why can’t we go on?’

‘Because you’re a romantic, Jay. You want too much; more than I can give. I realised that very soon. You’re dangerous or you could be if I let you and I like my comforts. I’m not brave. “All for love and the world well lost.” That sort of thing. Being a senior partner is important to me. Not many women make it. I took a short cut by marrying James. After all those years of exams and slog I wanted some fun, to be at the top without having to struggle for it. I like a lot about my life and the rest I take care of in my own way.’

‘James needn’t worry that I’ll go to a competitor of S 8c F. I’ve decided to try and go it alone. Set up by myself. If that doesn’t work then we’ll have to see. Meanwhile let’s say I’m having a sort of gap year though I won’t be going round the world. I’ll be holed up in a dingy office touting for the briefs nobody else wants.’

My lady was right that there was too little time to prepare for the young earl’s wedding that was to be of an unsurpassed splendour though some wondered why the bride had it not at her father’s house as the custom was. Once again we made ready to entertain their majesties. Whole trees were felled for firing, bushels of wheat were taken to the mill to be ground for making of bread, vats steamed with the brewing of gallons of beer. The forests were hunted of game of every kind of bird and beast until nothing more stirred and the river was emptied of fish which now swam round and round in the ponds until called for. Maids churned butter and made cheese. The royal beds where their majesties were used to lie at Wilton were aired, sprinkled with herbs and rose petals and made up with silken sheets.