Judicial Whispers (27 page)

‘Here,’ she said. She put her lips softly against his, tasting the brandy, his body warm beneath her hands through the thinness of his shirt. ‘I want to be here with you.’

He felt tired. Forty-four, tired and longing just to sleep. But there were needs to be filled and beliefs to be sustained.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come to bed.’ He kissed her gently and she nodded, then rested her head upon his shoulder, feeling as though the past few hours had aged her by years.

Now was the season of the office Christmas party. All over the City of London the event was breaking out in its many and varied forms like a horrible rash. Restaurants rang at midday and in the early evening to the screeching laughter of secretaries in silly hats, and to the banter of white-socked clerks pulling crackers and drinking too much in a haze of cigarette smoke, surrounded by the remnants of overpriced turkey dinners and cheap wine. In works canteens, in office dining rooms, in boardrooms and in rented-out wine bars, sound systems belted out disco music, company bosses looked on with lofty indulgence and left after half an hour, typists got tight and had their virtue compromised by office boys and lowly computer operators, and the trains and buses were not pleasant to travel on after eight o’clock in the evening.

On the day before the Nichols & Co office party was due to take place, Felicity stumbled into the lift on the eighth floor with armfuls of documents. Balancing the pile with her chin, she jabbed at the buttons and then dumped the papers on the floor as the doors closed. A second later they opened again, and Mr Lamb got in. The doors slid shut and Felicity stood
apprehensively against one wall. Mr Lamb turned to gaze at her as the lift began its slow descent. Conscious of his stare, Felicity folded her arms and feigned interest in the lift buttons.

‘I notice you seem to have been keeping out of my way recently, Felicity,’ he remarked smoothly.

‘Not bleeding surprising, is it?’ she replied, not taking her eyes off the buttons. God, this lift was slow. He’d better not try anything.

‘Maybe I’ll give you a ring later this morning,’ he said, unperturbed by her tone of voice, ‘and we can do that little thing I suggested the other week, eh?’ And he reached out a swift hand and squeezed at her breast. Almost as soon as he did so she lifted her hand and whacked him as hard as she could across the cheek, and he lurched sideways a little.

‘You do that one more time, you dirty old git,’ she snarled at him, her chest heaving with anger, ‘and I’ll have you! You can’t go around harassing people, you know!’

Mr Lamb had instinctively put his hand up to his cheek, which bore the flaming imprint of Felicity’s fingers.

‘You little bitch!’ he hissed. ‘I’m going to have you out of here so fast your feet won’t touch the ground!’

‘Good!’ she retorted. ‘I’ll be glad to be out of this stinking place! But before I go, I’ll tell them all about the little games you’ve been playing, you sexist pig!’

The lift had reached the basement and stopped. Mr Lamb leant out and pressed the ‘doors closed’ button, and kept his finger on it. ‘And I’ll just tell them that you’re a little troublemaker, cooking up stories out of spite at being fired. No one’s going to listen to you, Felicity. Remember, you don’t stand particularly high in anyone’s estimation.’ He took his finger off the button and the lift doors slid open. ‘I’m afraid your Christmas isn’t going to be a very happy one,’ he added. He stepped out and the lift doors closed behind him.

Felicity leant back against the wall, shaking slightly, and closed her eyes. Tears pricked her eyelids. She stabbed at a button, any button, and rode up a few floors, then mopped her eyes as she searched for the button for the basement again. She took her bundles of paper down and left them by the shredder, then went back up to her own floor, where she fetched some work from her desk and took it through to Rachel’s room. She was just setting it down on the desk when Rachel came in behind her.

Rachel glanced at Felicity, whose face still looked tearful.

‘That’s the last of those letters,’ said Felicity, turning to leave.

‘Thanks,’ said Rachel, and swung herself into her chair, tucking her legs beneath her. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, as Felicity reached the door.

For a moment, Felicity thought of confiding in Rachel, telling her all about Mr Lamb and his threats – but the time when she might have told Rachel about it, sought her help, was past. They were still friendly to each other, but Rachel felt guilty about Felicity, and this tinged their relationship with uneasiness.

She looked at Rachel. ‘Time of the month,’ she said, with a little smile. ‘Just something someone said. You know how you overreact.’ And she left, closing the door behind her.

She sat down at her desk and stared unseeingly at the little array of Christmas cards sellotaped to the back of Louise’s VDU. Why did they give each other Christmas cards every year, she wondered, when they sat next to each other all day, every day? God, she hated offices. So what if she didn’t get a reference from this place? Maybe she could find something closer to home, something she would enjoy doing. Working with kids, or handicapped people. Then she sighed. Fat chance. You needed qualifications and, anyway, it wouldn’t bring in the right kind of money. If only Sandy would get a job. Even if it was just banging out burgers at McDonald’s. But she’d given
up nagging him. She felt tears rising again as she thought of what Mr Lamb had said. She shielded her eyes with one hand and stared down at a memo on her desk, as though reading, as Doris padded up.

‘Here, Fliss – d’you want to see what I got my little grandson in Petticoat Market? It’s ever so sweet …’

‘Yeah, in a minute, Doris,’ said Felicity with an effort, not looking up, hand still shading her eyes. ‘I’m just trying to concentrate on this.’ She waited until Doris had buttonholed a couple of the filing clerks and, to a background of ‘Innit lovely?’ and ‘Aw, it’s sweet!’, she made her escape to the loo, locked herself in a cubicle, and wept. When she had finished, she scrumpled up the length of lavatory paper into which she had been crying and stared at it. Someone banged into the cubicle next door, and there was a rustling of skirt and knickers, then a genteel tinkling.

At least she’d be out of this prison of an office, she told herself, closing her eyes and resting her head on her fists. She’d sign on. They’d get by. Something would happen. It was just having that bastard stitch her up like this – that was the worst of it. That smug, horrible, groping bastard. And when she’d gone, he’d start on someone else. She pondered the possibility of going now to one of the partners and telling them what had happened. But it wouldn’t be any use. They’d have her out, anyway. They’d just about had enough of her before Rachel came. Besides, Mr Lamb was no doubt in John Parr’s room right now, selling her down the river, telling him that Miss Dean was finding Felicity too slack and that they’d have to ask her to leave.

Oh, well. She sniffed, waited for the occupant of the next cubicle to leave, and then came out and splashed cold water over her eyes. At least it wasn’t all doom and gloom. She still had Vince. She brightened at the thought of Vince. She’d be able to go down the pub with him tonight and tell him all about it,
get it off her chest. Yeah, she’d tell Vince, and he’d cheer her up, tell her it wasn’t so bad after all. He might not have a job or any money, Vince, but at least he was optimistic.

On the other side of the City, the occupants of 5 Caper Court were in readiness for their own Christmas party. Sir Basil was, with trepidation, preparing to surrender his set of rooms to the use of the staff for the evening, trying not to think of the state the cleaners would find the carpet in afterwards. Each year it seemed to him that the thing sank to lower and lower depths. It was never rowdy or out of control, naturally, but it was no longer the exclusive, gentlemanly affair which it had been in Sir Basil’s father’s day, restricted to the tenants and the head clerk. Now all the staff attended and, with the unaccustomed luxury of free alcohol, some of them grew quite boisterous. Much food and drink was consumed, and the eldest of the typists, Mrs Frears, invariably got tipsy and started calling Sir Basil ‘dear’ and telling him about her son in the navy. That was always Sir Basil’s cue to leave.

It was for these reasons that Sir Basil had held his own party at home a few days before, where he could relax in the knowledge that his guests would not have to witness the postboy being sick on the stairs, or Henry overindulging in Cameron Renshaw’s Glenmorangie.

Sir Basil would willingly have paid for a lavish luncheon for the staff at one of the Chancery Lane restaurants, so that the chambers party might revert to being a discreet little festivity among the barristers only, but, as Mr Slee pointed out, in these days of egalitarianism, such a thing would smack of elitism and the typists wouldn’t like it. It sometimes seemed to Sir Basil that the members of his typing pool displayed all the refined temperament of thoroughbred racehorses.

Mr Slee himself oversaw the preparations for the festivities in quite a Pickwickian frame of mind, but that day he was conscious
of feeling not quite so well as he should. He sat down heavily in the clerks’ room after he and Henry had carried the two cases of Moët up to Sir Basil’s room, trying to pace the thump and flutter of his heart. Too much carrying, he thought. That was all it was. He should have got one of the younger tenants to help Henry. He sat, recovering himself, and eyed Jeremy Vane, an arrogant man in his middle thirties who regarded himself as by far the most able man in chambers, as he came in with two briefs.

‘There we go,’ said Jeremy loftily, scribbling the inverted looped cross on their backs to show they were completed, and dropping them into a tray. He glanced at Mr Slee.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve been hitting the festive spirit early, William. You’re looking a bit pink about the gills.’

Mr Slee stared at him indignantly. ‘Certainly not! I’ve just been humping great crates of champagne about for the likes of you to drink this evening.’

‘Oh God, the chambers party,’ said Jeremy. ‘Well, I can only look in for half an hour or so. I’ve got a frightfully heavy workload, even if it is Christmas.’ Jeremy regarded his practise as one of monumental importance and dedicated more energy and attention to it than his clients or his bank balance required.

Leo came in in his shirtsleeves and grinned at Jeremy. ‘Got judgment in the
Kapetan Kirios
this morning. Your amendment was struck out and the application dismissed. But I suppose you know that?’

‘I was aware,’ said Jeremy coldly. Try as he might, he always found himself cast in the pompous, unbending role when Leo was about. ‘I still feel it was a perfectly proper case for service of a third-party notice.’

‘Well, well. I won’t say I told you so. Win some, lose some, eh, Jeremy? By the way, the word among the secretaries is that the new typist has the hots for you. Save yourself for this evening. We know you like them young.’

Jeremy took a dim view of Leo’s frivolities and said nothing for a moment. Then he smirked and remarked, ‘Speaking of which, I hear your new girlfriend is rather on the – ah – young side. Young for you, that is.’

Leo only smiled. ‘Twenty-seven, actually. I’m so glad you’re taking an active interest in my love life, Jeremy.’

Jeremy sniffed and left the room, and Leo, after fishing out some refills for his stapler, went out, too.

‘What’s this about a girlfriend?’ Mr Slee asked Henry, staring after Leo. Henry broke off whistling ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ and glanced at Mr Slee.

‘Didn’t you know? David reckons it’s love. Leo’s been out everywhere with her. Even took her to the old man’s bash the other night. A real looker, David says. Funny that,’ added Henry, tucking a sprig of holly behind the computer, ‘but in all the time I’ve been here I never heard he had a girlfriend. Not till now. I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t queer. I mean, the way he dresses an’ all. You know?’ He resumed his whistling.

Mr Slee looked at him but said nothing, merely laid a hand over his heart, testing, wondering.

The atmosphere at the chambers party was always a little uneasy to begin with, until people had had a few drinks and begun to loosen up. Anthony turned up early, at six-thirty, determined to stay for only a short time and then leave; Leo, he knew, always worked late, and Anthony wanted to be gone before he showed up. It had been a few weeks since he had last seen Rachel, and the pain of loss had begun to fade, but the blow which Leo had inflicted on his pride still smarted. He picked up a glass of champagne from a tray and went over to join Cameron Renshaw, who was leaning against one of Sir Basil’s ceiling-high bookcases with a glass of Glenmorangie in one hand and a chicken drumstick in the other.

‘Do you think I’d make a good Father Christmas?’ Cameron asked Anthony glumly.

Anthony smiled and regarded Cameron; take away the glasses and the moustache, and the basics were all there.

‘Um – with the costume – and a bit of padding, of course—’

‘Bugger the padding,’ replied Cameron, finishing his chicken and dropping the bone into Sir Basil’s wastepaper basket, then hitching at his braces with his thumb. ‘I’ve got enough of that already. My wife has told the assorted heads of the Cubs and Brownies – Big Badgers and Brown Owls, or whatever they are – that I will be Santa Claus at their damned party this weekend.’

‘I’m sure you’ll be very good,’ said Anthony mildly, as David Liphook came over to join them, fresh from the wine bar with William Cooper.

‘What’s all this?’ enquired David, who didn’t like to be left out of any conversation. Anthony told him. ‘Oh, yes, marvellous casting, Cameron. Ho, ho, ho! You know, you could have used this evening as a dry run. Dressed up and handed out little pressies to everyone. Sir Basil would love it.’

Cameron sighed morosely and poured himself another drink. ‘To think of it – I, a QC, the toast of the Commercial Bar, scourge of the Admiralty Court, in a red suit with a white cotton-wool beard. It’s not as though I even volunteered. Oh God, here they come,’ he added, as the typists flocked in and made their chattering way towards the trays of champagne. The heady scent of Anais Anais filled the air.

Forty minutes later, Anthony was crossing the room on his way out when Sir Basil intercepted him with a bottle of champagne and refilled his glass. Anthony accepted it, knowing that it wouldn’t be diplomatic to let Sir Basil see him leaving too early. They talked together for a moment or two, Sir Basil formal but avuncular, Anthony polite but not entirely at his ease. He
remembered only too well Sir Basil’s opposition to his joining chambers two years ago, when the beloved Edward, before he had decided to take up farming, had been the favoured candidate.