An Immoral Code (17 page)

On her way out, Rachel passed Anthony standing near the doorway. He smiled at her and murmured goodbye, and she noticed his gaze stray to the stairs, where a red-headed girl had just arrived. The girl passed her, and she heard Anthony say, ‘So you decided to honour us with your presence, after all?’ Despite his faintly caustic tone, Rachel could tell that he was pleased about something.

Rachel went downstairs, buttoning her coat. As she paced slowly down the dark street towards the gleam of lights and traffic of Park Lane, she decided that she would watch Charles Beecham’s documentaries from now on. At least it would give her something pleasant to think about. She wished she was the kind of woman who could have said yes to him. Sighing, she turned up her coat collar against the cold.

The City ushered in Christmas with its customary spirit of commercial bonhomie. Everywhere – on office walls, on the sides of filing cabinets, pasted on windows – hung the masses of Christmas cards sent out by firms to choke the postal service, depicting the Thames in winter, snow on St Paul’s, and containing seasonal greetings in any number of languages, designed to cover the global market. The windowsill and mantelpiece of every executive, broker, lawyer and accountant boasted an array of invitations from other executives, brokers, lawyers and accountants to an endless round of drinks parties and festive get-togethers. Cases of wine, bottles of Scotch, parcels of smoked salmon and hampers from Fortnum’s and Harrods were delivered daily in the offices of chairmen and managing directors, and secretaries everywhere, in time-honoured ritual, bestowed upon their bosses a variety of tasteless mugs and ties in exchange for Belgian chocolates and bottles of Cacharel.

At 5 Caper Court there was a distinct atmosphere of frivolity and cheerfulness, rather like that at the end of a school term. People took long lunches, or came in late after cocktail
parties and drinks parties in the various Inns, and the steady stream of work slowed perceptibly. Christmas fell on a Sunday that year, and the annual chambers party was to be held on Friday evening. Thursday saw Felicity in a state of high elation, organising the arrival of the champagne and food and wearing a large, dangling pair of Christmas-tree earrings with tiny flashing lights. The sight of her so depressed Leo as he came into the clerks’ room to drop off some post before leaving to go home that he almost resolved not to attend the party. Normally Leo enjoyed Christmas, but this year a mood of anxiety and gloom had settled on him. Twelve months ago he would not have believed that his life could have drifted into its present unhappy confusion. There were days when he felt that he had lost sight of his own identity. Once it had been simple – he had a public face, that of a high-flying, handsomely paid barrister with all the material and social trappings of a successful and happy bachelor, and in private he conducted himself as he pleased, taking his pleasures with men or women, according to his fancy of the moment, enjoying the fact that his secret world was entirely his own, shared with no one. Now – now he was married, for the sake of his career, to someone whom he could never love as she wished to be loved, caught in a relationship in which the carefully contrived domestic conversations which had held it shakily together had recently descended into constant bickering, the father of an infant son whose very existence both puzzled and profoundly moved him, and there seemed to be nothing private or personal left. He still had his work, was still known and admired as a QC, but the magnitude of the Capstall case demanded all of his time and attention, so that he no longer enjoyed the stimulus of a varied range of work, regular court appearances and the customary string of successes which inflated the ego and the bank balance. He lived and breathed Lloyd’s, the audit evidence, run-off contracts, open
years, RITCs, time and distance policies, asbestos and pollution liabilities, and seemed destined to remain so immersed for the next year. There was Charles, there was the pleasure of being in love, but somehow his married state and claustrophobic domestic life rendered it faintly absurd and pathetic. He had nothing he could call his own.

Now the sight of Felicity in her jaunty earrings, with a sprig of mistletoe tucked in the bodice of her low-cut jumper, made him wish time could suddenly leap ahead by two weeks, obliterating the prospect of the holiday that was to be got through. He and Rachel had not discussed how they were to spend the time. They discussed nothing now. It had occurred to Leo that he could just take off to Wales, spend Christmas with his mother, leave Rachel to her own devices, but this seemed callous. Besides, he would have to endure his mother’s questioning. And it would take matters no further. No, he decided, as he dropped his letters in the tray, tonight he would talk to her. They must resolve certain things, find a
modus operandi.
Otherwise life would be insupportable. Revolving this in his mind, he didn’t hear Felicity as she called out goodnight, but merely turned and walked out of the clerks’ room, grim-faced.

‘Bloody hell,’ remarked Felicity to Henry. ‘Look at the face on him. Like a smacked arse. Doesn’t believe in the festive spirit, obviously.’

When he got in, Rachel was still not home. The sight of Oliver’s expensive pushchair in the hallway lowered Leo’s spirits even further. In the living room toys and bricks lay scattered across the carpet, and from upstairs he could hear the sound of Jennifer talking to Oliver as he splashed in his bath. That was another thing, thought Leo, kicking a stuffed rabbit aside as he crossed the room to the cupboard where the drinks were kept. The nanny. He and Rachel might be virtual strangers to
one another, but somehow the presence of an outsider, even if unseen and unheard most of the time, heightened the tension. Why couldn’t Rachel stay home and look after Oliver herself? God knows, she didn’t need the money.

Jennifer came down with Oliver, clean and powdered and in his pyjamas, the tendrils of his hair still damp and fragrant with baby shampoo, and murmured hello to Leo. She did not look at him. When Leo was around she behaved as though somehow faintly embarrassed, and this irritated Leo even more.

He did not respond to her greeting, but merely snapped at her, ‘I wish you could make sure his toys and things were cleared up before we came home, Jennifer. It’s rather annoying to find the place cluttered up with them.’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Rachel usually asks me to leave them put so that she can play with him.’ She moved around the room, quickly picking things up and putting them in the toy box. Then she bent and kissed Oliver, and left the room without another word. Leo stood nursing his Scotch and staring down at Oliver, who sat slapping his rattle with a fat fist. Then Oliver looked up at Leo and smiled, and Leo sighed and smiled back, realising that this was probably the first time today that he had done so. He set down his drink, and was about to squat down and pick Oliver up when he heard Rachel come in.

She appeared in the doorway, her face drawn and tired. ‘You’re late,’ he observed. ‘I thought you were making a point of leaving the office on time these days.’

She was instantly stung by this remark. Because of the discussion she had had last week with Rothwell and Parr, she had been trying since then to convince herself, and them, of her equal worth to male partners in the firm. This evening she had stayed behind an extra forty minutes trying to sort out a tanker problem in Sri Lanka, anxious not to be open to accusations of putting her domestic life ahead of her clients.

‘Has it not occurred to you, Leo, that Oliver is as much your responsibility as mine?’ Rachel ran tired fingers through her hair. ‘Why can’t
you
get home by six-thirty every night? Why should
I
be the one who always has to rush back?’

Leo picked up Oliver and cradled him against his shoulder, feeling a warm patch of dribble soak through his shirt. ‘Because you’re not the one pulling in half a million a year. That’s why.’

I can’t get away from it, thought Rachel. Not at the office, not here. You are what you earn. And you earn what you earn because of what you are, apparently, not what you do. ‘Thank you,’ she said coldly, ‘for putting it in such clear terms.’

They said nothing for a moment, then Leo turned and sat down in an armchair, stroking Oliver’s head. Rachel watched him, oddly aware that Leo was holding the baby tenderly, yet like a weapon. Then he said, ‘Sit down. You look very tired. I want us to have a talk.’

The words filled her with a slow, dissolving panic. What was he going to say? That it was all at an end, that she must leave, that he would keep Oliver? In her tired and abject emotional state, each one of these seemed neither unlikely nor unreasonable. Another stronger part of her knew that that was nonsense. But she wished, as she went to pour herself a drink to fill in the interminable seconds until he spoke again, that it was she who was holding Oliver, and not Leo. It was as though that made her vulnerable, and him dangerous.

She poured herself a glass of sherry and sat down on the sofa opposite him, sipping at her drink, her other hand toying idly with a
Winnie the Pooh
cloth book. She waited, not meeting his eyes.

‘I want to make a suggestion,’ said Leo. ‘I want us to try and reach an understanding. The way we are – the way we behave to one another – is not a good thing. For us or for Oliver. I think we should try to clarify the situation.’

‘Is this your way of saying that you want a divorce?’ asked Rachel. Her heart was hammering, and she fought to keep her voice and expression neutral. It was what she had feared for weeks. She had been schooling herself in the ways of not loving Leo, but at a moment such as this one the strength of her feeling for him rushed to the surface. She did not want to lose him, awful as things were between them. She had told herself that it was hopeless, yet she still hoped.

There was a pause, which seemed to Rachel interminable. ‘No,’ said Leo. He had thought long about this. In many ways it was the obvious solution to their predicament, but something held him back from such a step. Each time he thought of the house without Rachel and Oliver, he felt something approximate to fear. It was hardly that, but it was enough not to want to push them away altogether. He still felt affection for Rachel, was aware that, when things had been less complicated between them, he had enjoyed her company more than that of most people. If they could reach an understanding about their lives, maybe they could recover something of that. Above all, there was Oliver. Leo did not perfectly comprehend his feelings for his son, but he knew that he did not want Oliver to grow up without a father, as he himself had. And he had seen enough of divorce and its sad trappings to know that his relationship with Oliver would be irrevocably damaged if he and Rachel were to divorce now.

Rachel said nothing for a moment. ‘I don’t understand you, then. How do you intend that we should – clarify the situation?’

Leo sat Oliver on the end of his knee, jogging him idly. ‘You must have known ever since you married me that our relationship wasn’t going to subsist on a conventional level.’ He spoke so calmly, not even looking at her, that Rachel was filled with a sudden anger.

‘Must I?’ she retorted. ‘Don’t you realise that, right from
the very beginning, I have known nothing, Leo, absolutely nothing?’ She heard him sigh slightly, but for the moment she cared nothing for his distaste for rows, for scenes. ‘You seem to have forgotten, but when you asked me to marry you, you said that you loved me, that you were finished with – with … boys, young men – whatever …’ Her angry outburst faltered as she groped for words, and Leo cut in.

‘What’s the label you’re trying to find for it? Homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality? So that you can compartmentalise it, treat it as something separate from me? Well, I’m afraid that it
is
me, it’s part of my personality, and I can do no more about it than I can about the shape of my nose.’

Rachel sat back in despair, trying to fight back the tears she could feel rising up. Was it worse trying not to love someone than loving them? she wondered. She drew a deep breath and tried to keep her voice steady. ‘Then why – why did you ever tell me that you would change? Why have we been going through this whole charade?’

Leo was silent for a moment. He couldn’t tell her the truth, couldn’t admit to her that it had all been a convenient device. He spoke slowly, carefully. ‘Perhaps … perhaps then I thought that being married, leading a different life, would bring about some kind of change in me.’ He bobbed Oliver on his knee, and Oliver gurgled with delight. Leo waited for her to say something, but she said nothing, and he could sense her anger fading away into weariness and incomprehension. ‘Look,’ he said, turning to her, ‘I told you once that I don’t go the distance. I thought I could be the kind of person that you want, but it’s obvious to both of us that I can’t. I can only be myself, and all that is very complicated.’

‘By which you mean that you don’t want me any more. Not physically. But why am I stating the obvious? That all finished months ago.’ She took a sip of her drink and looked away from him.

‘That’s part of it. I don’t know what I want. But that could change. I can’t say. But what I want is for us to try to lead independent lives for the time being, not to maintain a pretence. To understand one another. I want us both to bring up Oliver. But we can’t do that if we’re both pretending that there is a – a certain kind of relationship between us, when there isn’t.’

Rachel laughed. ‘What? Let’s just be good friends?’

‘If you like. Yes.’

Rachel contemplated her sherry glass. As usual, Leo, she thought, you want it all ways. You want Oliver, so you must keep me. But you don’t want me. You want other people, the kind of life you used to lead. Yet if you have to try to live up to expectations as a husband, you can’t do that. You still believe that I love you so much that I’ll stay with you whatever – but you’d like the atmosphere at home to improve. So you’re cutting a deal. And what’s in it for me? I still have you – but only on certain terms … She felt suddenly weary and confused, and very close to tears.

‘Do you mean’ – she could hear her own voice shaking – ‘do you mean that if I need you, if I need comfort, as I needed it that night last week, that I can come to you? That you will be kind to me, without my expecting anything more?’

God, I am a shit, thought Leo suddenly. How lonely she must be. He set Oliver on the floor, where he began to whimper, and went over to her. She had begun to weep, and he raised her to her feet and, for the first time in weeks, put his arms around her. He remembered the last time he had made love to her, after their conversation in the restaurant about Francis. He had wanted to know then whether he still commanded her unconditional love, and his curiosity had been satisfied. It would be the simplest of things now to take her to bed, to use sex as a means of helping this along. God knows, ever since he had first met her he had slept with her as a means to an end, in one way or another.
Why not now? But he knew at this moment that he could not even manufacture the desire, not while he felt as he did about Charles, who seemed to consume all his waking fantasies. To make love to her now would only create new hopes in her, hopes which he had no wish or intention to fulfil. So, in answer to her question, he merely replied gently, ‘Yes, that is what I mean. I don’t want there to be any unkindness, but—’