Letter to Sister Benedicta (6 page)

D
ECEMBER
11

One confusion is at last resolved. I know now who “the aforementioned Richard Mayhew Wainwright” is. Today there was a ring on my doorbell (strange occurrence these days because nobody calls, knowing that if they did call, they wouldn't know what to say to me) and when I opened the door, there on the mat stood a lean woman with faded hair calling herself Evelyn Wainwright, holding her handbag to her as if it was a china plate and might break, and asking to see Leon. I was so surprised that anyone should ask for Leon that an immediate and totally unexpected statement burst out of me. “Leon's dead!” I said, and seeing Evelyn Wainwright's look of disbelief, had to qualify this by stammering: “Well, when I say he's dead, I mean he's not absolutely dead. He could die any day.”

It seemed only fair, after this dreadful confusion to ask the woman in. We went into the drawing-room and she sat down on the edge of the sofa, still clutching her handbag and I waited for her to explain why she had called. She stared at me, sizing me up. Then she looked round the room.

“It's not as grand as his office, is it?” she said.

“Leon's office?”

“Mr Constad's, yes.”

“Do you know,” I said, “I don't remember the office very well. He had so many. He started with a very small one in an alleyway off Fleet Street. It was over a gymnasium and you could hear people thumping about all the time.”

After a pause, Evelyn Wainwright said: “He
is
ill then?”

“Yes, he's very ill. He had a stroke.”

“I shouldn't have come then. You see, I didn't believe them at Mr Constad's office – that secretary of his – I didn't believe he wasn't there. I thought the secretary was hiding him and not letting me see him. I mean, they do this, the secretaries of important men: they hide them.”

Evelyn Wainwright was moving nearer and nearer to the edge of the sofa and nearer to the edge of tears. I thought she might bump down on to her thin bottom with a wail.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. And the word sounded like a click coming from the back of her throat. I got up. It's a long time since I've made a cup of tea for anyone but the window-sill painters.

“Please do relax, Mrs Wainwright,” I said feebly and went to the kitchen. While I was there making the tea, I longed to peep back into the drawing-room and see if Evelyn Wainwright had let herself tumble back into the sofa. I realized that I wanted to keep the woman there until I had quite unravelled the mystery of her and discovered her connection with “the aforementioned Richard Mayhew Wainwright”, imagining that all of this was very important and would reveal to me more about the true state of Leon's mind than anything the doctors had told me.

When I went in with the tea, Evelyn Wainwright was standing at the french windows looking down on to the street, in the way that Leon had stood watching for Noel on the day that Noel never arrived.

“Tea!” I said, and she turned round with a look of surprise. Then she crossed to the sofa and perched on it again, but this time without her handbag which had fallen to the floor.

“I won't stay long,” she said.

“Oh,” I said; pouring the tea, “you can stay as long as you like. I expect I shall go to see Leon this afternoon, but I've really got nothing to do until then.”

“I wouldn't have thought of intruding on you – at a time like this. It was only that I didn't believe them, you see. They said: ‘You can see Mr Partridge if you like,' but I knew that Mr Partridge was young – younger than my son – and he wouldn't have done a good job for me. So I said: ‘No, I must see Mr Constad. Mr Constad is the best. I've been told that he's the best and I must have the best man or what hope do I have of winning my case?' You see, Mr Constad – your husband – had mentioned this Partridge before. He said he was too busy to take on my case, but this Partridge would look after me. But ‘No', I said, ‘I can choose who I want and I've been told you're the best and my son will pay. It's not as if you're not going to get your money.'”

I had poured Evelyn Wainwright a cup of tea and she tried to take a sip of it straightaway, but it was too hot and she went on talking. She didn't look at me as she talked, but at a fixed point straight ahead of her on the carpet, as if she was trying to balance.

“You see, I know I have a case. I know that with a clever man to speak up for me, I could win. But it's not a usual case, you see, mother against son, and I knew Mr Constad didn't want to take me on. He wanted to give me to Partridge, but I said no. And then the next time I went to see him – I had an appointment with him – his secretary said: ‘Mr Constad can't see you today, but Mr Partridge will see you.' So I said: ‘What is all this? It isn't as if my son won't have to pay and I want to see the best man. I need a really good man, or I shall lose. With Partridge I'll lose, I know I will.' So I went home without seeing anyone. I wouldn't see Partridge.

“Then a day or two later, I rang up for an appointment with Mr Constad and that secretary said: ‘Oh no, I'm afraid Mr Constad is ill and won't be available for some time. Can I suggest you see Mr Partridge?' So I said again: ‘What is all this? Maybe I'm not Burt Lancaster, but I can pay!' And all she'd say was, ‘Mr Constad's been taken ill. He's very ill and can't see anyone.'”

Evelyn Wainwright's eyes blinked faster and faster as she spoke. She tried her tea again, took a sip, then another and on the third sip looked up at me.

“I'm not explaining myself well, am I?” she said, “You see, since all this has happened, my nerves have been terrible. I know what it is now to suffer from nerves and I never thought I would because I never suffer from any kind of nervous complaint and now I can't sleep or do anything properly because all I can think of is my home being sold under my feet, just taken away from me and I'm quite powerless. And your husband was the one man, you see, they told me might win my case – the one man. And now of course he's ill and can't help me and I know I won't win with Partridge. Partridge is younger than my son!”

After a pause, during which Evelyn Wainwright drank the rest of the tea, I said: “I'd like to know more about it, Mrs Wainwright. Perhaps, if my husband recovers, he could do something for you . . .”

“Oh no. It's quite wrong of me to have come. I didn't know he was really ill, you see. I thought that was just a downright lie. He's in the hospital then?”

“Yes. In a nursing home. He gets very good care.”

“And when will he be out, Mrs Constad? I keep asking them at his office, but they say they can't say.”

“No, well, no one can say really. He's had a very severe stroke. He just lies there and we all wait and wonder.”

“I'm sorry if he's ill. I dare say there must be other people, solicitors I mean, who could help me win, but I was told your husband was the very best. They said he'd fight for me.”

“Well, I'm sure he would have done. Though he doesn't win all his cases. He's lost some quite important ones. I expect he would have tried to win yours. He always tries to win.”

“I need a fighter, you see Mrs Constad. Someone who can stand up and say there's right on my side. Because I know there is. I mean, I've lived in my house for thirty-seven years. Thirty-seven years! And now Richard's just taking it away from me and selling it. I walk by the estate agent's window and there it is, For Sale – my house!”

“Well, if the house is yours, Mrs Wainwright . . .”

“It's
not
mine, that's just it; it's Richard's. I made it over to him years ago when my husband died so that when I die it will be his and he wouldn't have to sell it to pay the duty. But I never dreamed he'd turn me out. It's greed, that's all it is, greed and debts. He just wants the money. He doesn't care about the way I feel. And there's nothing written down to say he can't sell it. That's why your husband didn't want to take me on. He said ‘There's nothing written down to say he can't sell it.'”

“It does seem rather odd not to have written that down . . .” I began, but Evelyn Wainwright wouldn't let me interrupt, she just wanted to go on.

“Family solicitors, you see,” she said, “when they drew up the document giving the house to Richard, they never dreamed that Richard wouldn't let me stay on. There was a Clause 3 (they never should have been allowed to write that Clause 3, your husband said) and all they put down was that Richard should make provision – ‘adequate provision' they wrote – for me if for any reason the house was sold. And I remember Richard laughed and said: ‘We'll never sell the old house, we're all much too fond of it and I don't think Mother could live anywhere else.' So I never dreamed, did I? And who would have dreamed that one's own son . . .? And it's only greed, that's all it is, greed and debts. And I said: ‘Why don't you sell your own house, Richard? Why don't you go and live in a bungalow?' But he won't entertain the idea. ‘I've got a family,' he says, ‘and we need a big place, whereas you, you don't need a huge old house like that any more, do you Mother? You're lost in it.'”

“It's very large, is it Mrs Wainwright?”

“No, not at all, it's a family house – five bedrooms. And I manage perfectly well and I love every room in it. And whatever will I do in a wretched bungalow with this ‘integral garage' whatever that's meant to mean? I mean, I've been to see it and if I live to be a hundred, I'll never think of it as home. I never will. But I'm powerless, you see and do you think that's right, Mrs Constad? Do you?”

I was trying hard to imagine Evelyn Wainwright's house and her in it. I saw a lot of shabby things and moulting animals on rugs and I thought, she must have been lonely and neglected a long time to be so full of rage.

“I don't know,” I said, “I've never been very good at judging things. I often get everything quite wrong. But I dare say when it comes to court, you'll be allowed to stay on. Judges don't like young men selling things off, they have a hatred for this, in fact.”

“How do you know this, I mean, when there's no clause to say he mustn't sell?”

“I used to go to court quite a lot. It used to interest me. And I got to know quite a bit about the ways of judges. There are no young judges, you see. They're all old. They make all the noises of old people, squeaks and wheezes and farts, which can be quite distracting in the middle of an important trial. They never notice their old-men's noises, but everyone else does and really it's enough to make you lose faith in them. But what I can tell you is that they hate the idea of anyone selling anything off. It's as if they saw their gowns being sold next and their wigs and their latchkeys to rooms in the Middle Temple.”

Evelyn Wainwright looked at me as if I was mad. I realized that I was smiling and that my smile was inappropriate. I took it off my face (it seemed a long, long time since a smile had been there) and offered Evelyn Wainwright some more tea. She shook her head.

“No, I can't stay any longer,” she said, “and I wouldn't have bothered you if I had known your husband really was ill. Perhaps when you go to see him – unless he doesn't want to be bothered with work – you could remind him about my case and tell him I'm refusing to see Partridge and then when he comes out of hospital, he might be able to give me some time. I mean, I may not be Burt Lancaster, but . . .”

I thought, if you could see Leon, Evelyn Wainwright, see him the way he is now. “Your case is on his mind,” I said curtly.

“Is it? Well, if it's on his mind, he'll take me on won't he? He'll fight for me?”

“He might die.”

“Oh no! He couldn't die, could he? I mean what a waste! A man who can fight like him and people need other people to fight for them, don't they?”

“Sometimes, perhaps.”

“He won't die, will he?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh, he mustn't die.”

“I'll show you out, shall I?”

“Yes. I looked you up in the telephone book, you see. That's how I found you. I thought, Mr Constad is so well protected he won't be in the telephone directory but there he was. I was very surprised. I didn't think, with his reputation and protection he'd be in the book.”

When we were at the door, I thought suddenly, I never want to see her again and I said: “Please don't wait for Leon, will you? Please go and see Partridge. Partridge will help you.”

“He won't, Mrs Constad. He won't. I need the best and I'll wait and Richard will have to pay the costs, the judge will see to that.”

And then she was gone, the lift swallowing her and I thought of her driving back to her home and putting out dog food in old plastic bowls and birdseed in little trays. I don't know why I imagined her with pets; I believe she must have smelt of animal fur and faded blankets and I found her repulsive. I couldn't feel sad for her, though I tried. I sympathized with the son Richard who wanted the old home gone and his mother out of the way and safe in a centrally heated bungalow with shiny floors.

But why is her case on Leon's mind? Does Leon remember her and her rage? Or is there nothing of her at all inside him, only the disembodied phrase “the aforementioned Richard Mayhew Wainwright” which he may not even recognize as a name, just as a kind of pattern his mind keeps making? I think what I must do this afternoon is to tell him that Evelyn Wainwright has been here to see me and watch him closely for any sign that this information is helpful to him.

It occurs to me that he might be feeling guilty about this case, which doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to his others, which are all very brightly coloured and this is rather a faded one and for this reason wouldn't have appealed to him and he may even have sat there saying to himself, “I wish this poor washed-out woman was Burt Lancaster.” Or perhaps it was this case that made him understand at last that often the law is quite rigid and arbitrary like a bad headmaster who thinks that he sets to rights everything that is wrong in the school. Perhaps he at last noticed that the law only solves half of what it thinks it solves and that in some cases it is quite fumbling and inappropriate and what is needed is something else. In his long silence, perhaps Leon is determining what the “something else” is and may reveal it one day, when he's discovered it. But I have my doubts. Leon has always had such faith in the law and all the thousand ringings of his green telephone and his red telephone and his white telephone have never made him lose that faith, and as far as anyone can tell, it must be with him still.