Judicial Whispers (4 page)

The Menopausals, Felicity called them.

Only one of them, Doris, ever went out of her way to be friendly to Felicity, but it was a friendliness that Felicity mistrusted. Doris was a plump, soft woman in her fifties, the oldest of the secretaries, with a sweet voice and a permanently sympathetic expression, which was somewhat marred by the bright watchfulness of her small eyes. They were eyes that would fasten confidingly on those of her listener, and all Doris’s communications seemed to have a confidential, secretive quality. She would show little acts of kindness to Felicity, bringing her the occasional coffee, consulting her on the choice of wool for a matinee jacket for one of her beloved grandchildren, showing her photographs of herself and her husband on holiday in Spain. But in spite of these little displays of affection, Felicity mistrusted Doris. She suspected her of talebearing, of gossiping, of spreading rumours about what Felicity did out of office hours. Give her Louise any day. A bit sharp-tongued, but at least she was straight up and down with it.

As Felicity sat back down at her desk, Doris smiled across at her. ‘Ooh, Felicity,’ she said in a voice like Dralon, ‘have you seen this new lady partner yet, the one you’re working for?’

‘No,’ said Felicity, ‘I haven’t.’

‘Oh, no, you wouldn’t have, would you? You were just a tiny bit late again, wasn’t you? Well, she’s ever so lovely, Felicity. Really elegant – beautiful suit she has on.’ Doris’s voice was humbly rapturous.

Felicity took all this in with interest. ‘Does she seem nice, then?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t know, Felicity. I haven’t spoken to her yet. But she’s got one of those looks – you know—’

‘Stuck-up,’ interjected Louise, in a tart voice, not looking up from her word processor.

‘Ooh, no!’ said Doris gently. ‘No. She did look very proper. But I wouldn’t call her stuck-up. No.’

‘You’ll have to watch yourself round her,’ remarked Louise to Felicity. ‘That’s all I’d say.’

God, thought Felicity, this didn’t sound too promising. When Doris had gone back to her word processor, she got up and went into Miss Dean’s empty room. She surveyed the desk, pulled open a couple of drawers. It was her job to keep Miss Dean supplied with all her bits and bobs, stationery, paperclips, stuff like that. She’d better get some. It wouldn’t take two minutes.

She trotted down to the post room, where the stationery was kept, selected some pens, paperclips, Post-it notes and a hole puncher, then stood exchanging banter with the office boy and gossip with the post girls. She glanced at her watch. She’d been down here nearly fifteen minutes, she’d better get back. But she couldn’t resist putting her head round the door of the telex room and saying hello to the boys, and since Terry had a copy of
The Sun
and the
Sunday Sport,
she had to have a quick look at her horoscope and read the problem page in the latter. Disgusting, it was. Made you wonder if they didn’t make it all up.

By the time she had giggled her way out of the telex room and stopped at reception to tell Nora, who was a Scorpio, the gist of her horoscope, it was past ten. Mr Lamb was waiting in Miss Dean’s room with Miss Dean.

‘Miss Dean and I have been waiting for you, Felicity,’ said Mr Lamb in cold and meaningful tones, ‘for ten minutes.’

‘Oh, have you, Mr Lamb?’ replied Felicity. ‘Ever so sorry.
I’ve just been getting Miss Dean some things.’ And she tumbled her cache of pens and paperclips onto the desk and held out her hand in greeting to her new boss. ‘Hello. I’m Felicity.’

Rachel Dean looked at Felicity as she shook her hand, and saw a pretty, untidy-looking creature with garish clothes which did nothing to conceal an extraordinary figure. She smiled warmly at Felicity because one couldn’t help smiling at her, but her first impression was that this scatty-looking creature did not give the appearance of being a model of efficiency. Rachel had had secretaries in the past; some had been a positive asset, some a liability. Felicity, she suspected, fell into the latter category.

Felicity, looking at Rachel, marvelled at what she saw. I wish I was that slim, she thought, and had cheekbones like that and smooth black hair all swept back. Dead sophisticated. I want to be like that. I want to wear a suit like that and have a knockout smile that looks like vanilla ice cream. Some hope, she thought. She smiled bravely at Rachel and watched her walk round behind her desk, wondering how much her shoes had cost.

‘Thank you for getting me these,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s dreadful to start off with not even a paperclip to your name. I wouldn’t even know where to get that sort of thing.’

‘Oh, I’ll take you round in a bit, if you like, introduce you to the chaps, show you where everything is,’ said Felicity brightly.

‘Miss Dean has met most of her colleagues already, Felicity,’ said Mr Lamb, ‘and I think you’ve wasted enough time this morning chatting your way round the building.’ He turned to Rachel and gave her his best smile. ‘I’ll leave you to get on, Miss Dean.’ And he strutted out.

‘They’re not all like him,’ said Felicity. ‘He’s a prize one, he is. Would you like a coffee, Miss Dean?’

‘Please call me Rachel. Yes, I would – black with one sugar, please.’

‘It wouldn’t go down too well with Mr Lamb if he heard me
calling you Rachel,’ said Felicity doubtfully. ‘He’s a real one for form. He’ll never call you anything but Miss Dean.’

‘God, I hope not,’ said Rachel. ‘Still, office managers are a breed apart, aren’t they?’

‘I don’t like to think of them breeding, much!’ said Felicity with a giggle, and Rachel laughed, too.

While Felicity fetched the coffee, Rachel sat down at her pristine desk and began to sort out the jumble of stationery which Felicity had dropped on it, quite glad to have something to do. She’d have to start ringing round soon, reminding people where she was, chasing up contacts. The first day in a new firm was bound to be a bit blank, she supposed. Still, here it was, a new beginning.

Felicity came back with the coffee.

‘Here we go,’ she said, her tongue between her teeth as she set Rachel’s plastic cup down in front of her. ‘Cheers!’ she added, saluting Rachel with her own cup.

‘Cheers,’ said Rachel.

‘So,’ said Felicity, ‘what d’you want me to do, then?’

‘Well, I don’t exactly know, Felicity. I haven’t really got much to do myself. I have some phone calls to make, and with luck I should get a couple of files from my old firm this afternoon. They’ll need to be photocopied and the originals sent back. I have some letters to get out – do you want me to dictate a couple to give you something to be getting on with?’

‘If you like,’ said Felicity. ‘I don’t really mind.’

‘Well, I have to send out a standard letter to a list of different people, telling them where I am and so on. Not very exciting, but I suppose you like to keep busy, don’t you?’

Felicity’s eyes widened. ‘Well – yes, generally,’ she murmured. God, this one seemed a bit keen. Working for Mr O’Connell had been a doddle, since he was out at the pub half the time, but Miss Dean seemed quite a different proposition. Oh, well, she’d
just have to stick to her resolution. She would become amazingly efficient; Rachel would tell everyone what a marvellous secretary she had, and how lucky she was. She’d show that bunch of geriatrics. ‘Anyway,’ she added, thinking of what Rachel had said, ‘why can’t you just ring your old firm up and tell them to get your stuff round here, pronto?’

‘Well, there’s a certain protocol about these things – I mean, a way of doing it,’ she added, seeing Felicity’s blank expression. ‘I’m effectively leaving one firm and taking quite a bit of business with me. Not that there are any hard feelings about it, but they’re not likely to fall over themselves to pass things on. I suppose I’m quite lucky that I haven’t got clients ringing me up right now, asking me to do things on a case when I haven’t got the file in front of me.’

‘Right,’ murmured Felicity. And the phone rang.

‘Speak of the devil,’ said Rachel, and picked it up. Felicity fluttered her fingers and trotted out, deciding to pop down to accounts and have a little natter with Moira. Mr Lamb could hardly have a go at her for not getting on with things when there was nothing to be got on with.

Michael Nikolaos was a small, shabby Greek shipowner, with a small, shabby office in Piraeus. Since he had been telephoned by the master of the
Valeo Trader
with news of her grounding, he had been sweating and cursing and trying to get hold of Rachel Dean. He loved Rachel, he trusted her, and she had steered him through a number of problems over the years. He often thought he must be beset by more difficulties than any other shipowner in Greece. He was probably right.

It had taken him a while to track her down to her new office, and by the time he had poured forth his troubles he was agitated and miserable. He should never have bought reefer vessels. He had enough problems with bulk carriers without adding to them with refrigerated cargoes.

‘Well, all right, all right,’ Rachel was saying soothingly. ‘We’ll arrange for a surveyor to inspect the hull as soon as we can and see what the prospects for refloating her are. Who are the agents at Almirante?’

‘I think it is – yes, it is Stern. Stern.’ Mr Nikolaos tapped his forehead impatiently with fat fingers and wiped away some beads of sweat. Piraeus sweltered in the September sun. His desk was a mess of papers, and on the corner of it his second phone had begun to flash.

‘Very well, I’ll get on to them now. And we can get someone down to talk to the master and the pilot.’

Mr Nikolaos groaned. ‘There was no pilot on board. The master say he sail without a pilot.’

‘The vessel sailed out of Almirante without a pilot?’ Rachel sighed and made a note. Where did Mr Nikolaos get his masters from?

‘Yes! I don’t know why – but, yes! This is dreadful business for me, Miss Dean. If the vessel is damaged they will have to jettison cargo. Then I am sued for short delivery – this is too many troubles for me! And we don’t know what is damage to ship …’ His voice trailed away on a bleat of panic and despair.

‘Calm down, Mr Nikolaos,’ said Rachel as kindly as she could. Poor old Mr Nikolaos, one disaster after another. Still, at least it was a new case on the first morning of her new job. God bless him. ‘We don’t even know if there is any damage. So let’s just wait and see what the surveyor says. All right? Now, you get those documents over to me as quickly as you can. I’ll be in touch this afternoon.’

As Mr Nikolaos put one phone down and picked up the other with trepidation in his heart, Rachel sat back in her chair and looked up to see the figure of Roger Williams, one of her partners, standing in the doorway. He was a square-faced, plump man with warm eyes that held the eyes of others just a
shade too long, and a habit of making himself as proximate to women as possible when speaking to them.

‘I’ve come to tell you I’m taking you to lunch,’ he said with a smile.

‘Thank you,’ said Rachel, and smiled brightly back. Roger and four others had been present at her final interview, and she knew that she should be grateful for the fact that he had probably been one of those most in favour of her joining Nichols & Co, but she wished that everything he said didn’t sound so much like an insinuation.

‘Just you and me and Fred Fenton. You’ve met Fred, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, yes. Yes. I was introduced to him this morning.’ That was a relief – someone her own age. Fifty-year-old males could get a bit oppressive; they always seemed to think that a young woman was some sort of challenge they had to rise to. It could make social occasions tiresome.

‘Right you are,’ said Roger. ‘See you downstairs at twelve-thirty.’ He paused, leaning against the door frame, sliding one hand into his trouser pocket. ‘Settling in all right, are you? Got a decent secretary?’

At that moment Felicity came tripping back, bringing Rachel some tapes for her machine. Roger glanced at her and laughed. He looked back at Rachel. ‘Well, ask a stupid question,’ he said, and raised his eyebrows. He turned to Felicity. ‘Hello, Felicity.’ His expression as he gazed down at her, watching her fiddle with Rachel’s dictaphone, was one of supreme self-assurance: the powerful male animal in a male-dominated office exerting authority over the inferior female minion.

‘’Lo, Mr Williams,’ murmured Felicity coolly.

‘Boyfriend been keeping you up late again?’ Roger continued to regard her. ‘You’ll have to tell him to give it a rest now that you’ve got some real work to do, for a change.’
And he smiled back at Rachel, glanced at Felicity again, and sauntered off.

‘Isn’t he lovely?’ remarked Felicity cheerfully. ‘He’s a pig, he is.’

‘Felicity! He’ll hear you!’ said Rachel. Her phone rang again and she picked it up.

‘So what if he does?’ murmured Felicity to herself. She’d never told anyone about the time he tried to grab her tits in the lift – it would just have been more trouble than it was worth and the end of her job, more likely than not. But she’d be ready for him next time. Just let him try. Her meditations were interrupted by the sound of Rachel’s voice.

‘OK, there’s something for you to do now,’ said Rachel. ‘A messenger has just dropped off two of my files from my old firm at reception. So if you go and fetch them and bring them to me, you can make a start on photocopying them.’

‘Okey-doke,’ said Felicity, and headed for the lift. She could have a look at that astrological computer printout that Nora had had done at the weekend while she was down there. Wouldn’t take more than five minutes. And if Rachel was going out to lunch with porky Williams, maybe she and Moira could nip out to the pub for a few drinks and a bit of a giggle.

Three weeks to the day that Felicity had vowed to mend her ways and become a paragon of secretarial virtue, she was shaken awake by her brother at ten past nine. It took a lot of shaking to rouse her. At last she rolled over, pushing a tangle of hair from her eyes and squinting up at him. Vince, who was lying next to her, muttered something and pulled the duvet around himself.

‘Christ! What time is it?’ she said, her eyes beginning to focus.

‘It’s ten past nine, Fliss. You’ve slept right through your alarm.’

Felicity groaned and reached out a hand to the clock radio blaring tinnily on the floor by her bed. She shut it off. ‘God. Oh, God. Sandy, I feel dreadful. Oh, God.’

At last she managed to pull herself out of bed and make her way to the bathroom, where she stood swaying uncertainly by the washbasin. Slowly she turned on the cold tap and splashed water over her face. She stood there, her face dripping, leaning on the basin for a moment, then reached out for a towel.

In the kitchen Sandy was making her some tea.

‘What am I going to say, Sandy? I’m going to be dead late.’ She slumped down in a chair. ‘I’ve never felt this bad before.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re doing too much stuff, I reckon.’

‘That’s great, coming from you.’

‘Yeah, well, why don’t you say you had to go to the doctor’s, or something?’

‘I’ve said that twice before to her. I reckon I’m going to cop it this time. And she’s so nice to me, Sandy, she always sticks up for me …’ She took the tea that her brother handed to her. Her hands were shaking slightly and her face was pale and hollow-eyed. She had only had four hours’ sleep.

After a pause, she put down her tea and stared at her hands. ‘Sandy, I don’t think I can make it without something. I’ll be like a zombie, otherwise.’

Without a word Sandy left the room. When he came back he handed her some pills.

‘Coupla chalkies. Here you go.’

She took them and swallowed them with some tea.

‘Listen, Fliss, you’ve got to slow down a bit. I mean, Vince is my mate and all that, but—’

‘But we need my job, right?’ She glared at him. ‘Because I’m the only one in this stinking flat who can be bothered to get off their bum and go to work every day. Right? Well, don’t you think I’m getting a bit sick and tired of propping you up? I’m entitled to my fun, too, you know. Why is it
me
that’s got to get up each day and have all the hassle and aggro, while you sit around doing nothing and having a good time?’

Sandy leant back against the sink. His spindly arms stuck out from the overlarge T-shirt in which he slept.

‘I don’t have that much fun, actually. It’s effing boring half the time. I sometimes think I’d rather have a job.’

Felicity stood up and pulled her jacket from the hook behind the kitchen door. ‘Then why don’t you bleeding go and look for one?’ she demanded, and left the flat, banging the door as hard as she could.

The amphetamines were beginning to take effect by the time she got to the office. She managed to slip into the Ladies and apply enough make-up to disguise the ravages of last night’s session, and she even managed a bright, defensive smile as she slipped into her chair under the watchful gaze of the Menopausals. She had begun to sort through the papers next to her word processor when she heard Rachel’s voice.

‘Felicity, may I see you for a moment, please?’

Oh, God, here we go, thought Felicity. She went into Rachel’s room.

‘Close the door, please, Felicity.’ Felicity closed the door.

‘I’m really sorry I’m late. I had this dentist’s appointment I forgot to tell you about. I would have rung in, but—’

‘Save it, Felicity.’ Rachel gave her a stern look. ‘The dentist’s appointment is not the point. The point is that I had to send out two copies of the surveyor’s report on the
Valeo Trader
urgently this morning. You knew that yesterday. You had all yesterday afternoon to photocopy them, and I arrived in the office this morning to find that you hadn’t even taken them off the file. I had to copy them myself. I had to get Doris to type the letters to go with them. God knows, I don’t regard photocopying as beneath me, Felicity – but I have better things to do.’

‘I’m sorry,’ mumbled Felicity.

‘And I have to cover for you when you’re late. That’s the pathetic part. How do you think I feel making excuses for you to Mr Lamb? Excuses! I don’t like the man any more than you do, but I have to tell you it makes me feel quite small covering for you all the time. I do it because I like you, Felicity – and because I think you could be better at this job than you pretend. Your administration’s excellent, you sort my appointments out, you keep track of things – but your typing’s sloppy and your timekeeping is non-existent.’ Rachel paused and sighed; Felicity said nothing. ‘Look, I know that working for me is something of
a second chance for you, so why don’t you make the most of it? My good nature is not inexhaustible, you know.’ She leant back, weary of the subject. ‘Anyway, you seem to have quite a backlog of my tapes, so I’ve asked Simon if Doris can take a couple.’

This was humiliating, to have Doris helping her keep up with her work. ‘Yes, all right. I’m ever so sorry, Rachel.’

‘That’s OK,’ Rachel sighed. Felicity ran her eyes over Rachel’s lavender silk blouse and the little gold bar pin that fastened it at the throat. So neat, so perfect. Her life must be like that, thought Felicity, serene, ordered, all colour-coordinated. Why can’t my life be nice? she wondered. Well, it’s not, and that’s all there is to it. She left Rachel’s room, buzzing slightly now, and decided to have a cup of coffee before starting on the tapes.

Mr Nikolaos had thought that his life could not get any worse. Apart from the grounding of the
Valeo Trader
, he had just been informed by the shipping agents in Brisbane that the
Valeo Pennant
, which had arrived from West Africa with a cargo of soya-bean oil, was being blacked by the ITF.

‘I don’t believe this thing!’ wailed Mr Nikolaos to the agents. ‘Why are they doing this? Tell me!’

‘They seem to have got wind of the fact that you’ve been underpaying your crew. The stevedores are refusing to unload the cargo.’

‘This is only cash-flow problem! You understand?’ The shipowner’s round face was creased with worry. One vessel in dock in Almirante awaiting repairs to its propeller – expensive repairs – with an entire reefer cargo jettisoned and large claims from the cargo owners about to come in at any moment, and now a second vessel blacked in Australia, while the cargo receivers fretted and the berthing charges mounted. It could not get any worse.

It got very much worse that same afternoon, when a fire and
explosion in the engine room of the
Valeo Dawn
in Bombay harbour killed eight crewmen and blacked out the entire vessel, causing the breakdown of the refrigeration system on a consignment of frozen squid. Mr Nikolaos actually cried for three minutes before ringing Rachel to tell her of the two latest tragedies in his shipowning career.

Rachel leant against the filing cabinet in Simon MacBride’s room, recounting the latest disaster to have befallen Mr Nikolaos. Simon was a fellow partner, some nine years her senior, and she felt that she liked and trusted him rather more than the others. Besides, she had known him before joining the firm, having been at university with his wife. She found she went to him most days just to exchange gossip or to take soundings on whatever current problems she had.

‘Poor Mr Nikolaos,’ said Rachel. ‘He’s been running this shoestring operation for years, carrying general bulk cargoes, and then he decides to get a couple of reefer vessels in hopes of building up business. So much for his hopes.’

‘What caused the fire? Do they have any idea?’ asked Simon.

Rachel shook her head. ‘It’s impossible to say, yet. The engine room is gutted – they’re just lucky the whole ship didn’t go up. Possibly one of the engines started it. I don’t know.’

‘But I thought there was an explosion?’

‘Well, quite. Anyway, I’ve got Finlayson’s to instruct a surveyor first thing. I’ve already had the solicitors for the cargo interests on the phone. They didn’t hang about.’ She sighed and plucked at the silk-covered button of her cuff. Simon noticed how white the cuticles of her delicately shaped nails were. She always seemed so clean, he thought, so utterly immaculate and cool. He was aware that most of his colleagues fancied her from afar, but for Simon there was something chilly about her slender, fine-boned loveliness. He could never imagine anyone mussing
up that sleek black hair. She probably wore white underwear. Too clinical and perfect for him. He wondered if there was a man … No, he would have heard. Roger would have been sloping around telling everyone. Roger was one of the ones who occasionally referred to her in unspeakably crude terms. But then Roger referred to most women that way.

‘So I can foresee a long, protracted argument ahead,’ Rachel was saying. Simon roused himself from his speculations to concentrate on her words. ‘I know it’s early days, but I can see us having to instruct counsel and I’d like to have someone lined up.’

‘What about Bernard Kelly?’

‘No. I’ve gone off him lately. I’d like someone new.’

Simon considered. ‘How about that young bloke at 5 Caper Court? I’ve forgotten his name. Anthony something. Alistair uses him a lot. Says he’s extremely good. Very keen.’

‘I’ve never used anyone from that set,’ said Rachel. ‘My old firm had a down on them. I think the senior partner had a row with one of the leaders there. No, that’s not true – I did instruct Cameron Renshaw once on a reinsurance case.’

‘Well, he’s someone new, if that’s what you want.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind. Thanks.’

Simon lowered his feet from his desk and swung round in his chair. ‘I’m meeting Sally for a drink in Leadenhall Market tonight. Fancy joining us?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Rachel with a smile. ‘I’ve got a load of household chores to catch up on. Bye.’

When she got home, it seemed very quiet in the flat. She had told Simon she had chores to do, and he had assumed she was meeting a man somewhere. But Rachel had been telling the truth. She set down her briefcase in the hall, then took off her coat. It was past seven o’clock, so she made herself a small
vodka and tonic and switched on the compact black television set that stood discreetly in the corner of the living room. She left it tuned into the Channel 4 news while she went into the kitchen to make her supper. She made herself a salad of ham and avocado and lettuce hearts, a wholewheat roll with low-fat spread, poured a glass of milk, and took it all back into the living room on a tray.

When she had finished supper she washed up, rinsing the cutlery carefully, and then went to change. When she was changed into what she thought of as comfy old clothes, Rachel looked as immaculate and tasteful as something from a page in
Vogue
. She got out a tin of beeswax from the cupboard below the sink, a duster, some cleaning spray and a J-cloth. She cleaned all the surfaces and cupboards in the kitchen. She spread wax polish on the kitchen table and polished it gently, then replaced the vase of freesias that had been standing there. Rachel liked fresh flowers. Elegant little arrangements with faint fragrances, not opulent, imposing blooms with overpowering, sensuous scents. Those would have troubled her. When she had finished in the kitchen, she went into the living room and carefully dusted all the surfaces. Then she waxed and polished the wooden tables that stood by each sofa, and passed a duster over the glass of the framed watercolours on either side of the fireplace, and over the shining mirrors, and straightened the rugs. She stood back to admire her work. Then she stepped forward again to tidy the pile of magazines lying on one of the tables – the
Law Society Gazette, Tatler
and
The Economist.

No need to do the bathroom – she had done that last night. Tomorrow night she would hoover and clean her bedroom. She washed her hands in the kitchen and gently rubbed hand cream into them; she always remembered to push back her cuticles with the soft edge of a towel when she did this. Then she put
what little washing she had into the washing machine and set it off. In the morning she would hang it on the clothes rack which was left standing in the kitchen during the day. Rachel never hung clothing over radiators.

When she had finished in the kitchen, she fetched her briefcase from the hallway and went to her bedroom to do some work at her word processor. At ten she switched off her desk lamp and went back to the kitchen to make herself a cup of Ovaltine. She listened to
The World Tonight
as she drank it, flicking through the back of
The Times
to see if there was anything worth watching on television. When she saw that there wasn’t, she washed her mug, switched off the radio, and went to the bathroom to take off what little make-up she wore and clean her teeth.

In bed, she switched on her clock radio to
The Financial World Tonight
, and opened her book at the place where she had stopped reading the night before.

When she at last switched off her bedside light, Rachel fell quickly asleep, her arms curved protectively around her breast, her legs tucked in.

In her Brixton flat, Felicity lay back on a cushion with her eyes closed. The Guns N’ Roses tape that Vince had put on was competing with the sound of ‘Buffalo Soldier’ from the Rastafarians’ flat next door.

‘Come on,’ said Vince, ‘try it.’ He leant over, his long hair touching Felicity’s cheek as he spoke. Felicity shook her head and did not open her eyes. ‘Go on,’ urged Vince, ‘it’s good.’

‘No,’ said Felicity firmly. She opened her eyes to look at him as she said this, then closed them again. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve had half that joint and I’m not doing anything else.’

‘It’s not a joint – that’s so old-fashioned. It’s a spliff. You call it a spliff.’

‘Call it what you like,’ said Felicity. ‘That’s all I want. I’m getting up in time tomorrow. And you’re going home.’