Marrying the Mistress (31 page)

‘This is the last time,’ Ted said to Simon.

Simon nodded.

‘It isn’t that I’m not sympathetic, but we can’t just go on with you so preoccupied with your family troubles: you’re only half with us.’

Simon nodded again. Ted was eight years older than Simon and when he wanted to make a point, behaved as if the age difference were almost a generation, as if he were a father reprimanding a son. Mostly, Simon bore it. In the first place, he liked Ted and in the second Ted did all the personal-injury work in this office. If you did personal-injury work, you got paid by the insurance companies at about a hundred and twenty pounds an hour. If, however, like Simon and Philip, you did mostly employment and immigration and housing, you got paid at the legal-aid rate which was only about a quarter of that. Ted never said, overtly, that he was the one who paid most of the bills, but the implication was there, all the time, in his attitude. Simon picked up his jacket.

‘I’ll be back at four.’

‘Four!’

‘It’s an hour and a half’s journey, minimum, each way.’

Ted blew air out between his teeth. He shook his head.

‘It’s only half-ten now—’

‘I can’t concentrate,’ Simon said. He picked his car keys up and dropped them into his trouser pocket. ‘I’m no use here this morning.’

‘I’m fond of my mother,’ Ted said. ‘But basically she does what I tell her.’

Simon went past him to the door.

‘Lucky you.’

His car was parked in the derelict yard behind the office building. The yard also contained Ted and Phil’s cars, and the overflowing industrial-sized waste bins from the kebab house on the ground floor. Simon had often seen rats around these bins. It had occurred to him to telephone the local health and safety inspectorate, but the brothers who ran the kebab house were both well over six foot and already extremely suspicious of having a bunch of lawyers working in the offices above their premises. He’d had visions of opening his front door at home and finding a posse of vengeful Greeks standing outside, and had decided to let the rats alone. Dealing with trouble was a very different matter from provoking it.

He drove the car out of the yard and headed west. It was a warm day, humid, and the car’s fan system blew tired, gritty air into the car. At least only Ted knew where he was going. Carrie didn’t; nor did Rachel. He had seen them both briefly that morning before work, but neither had really looked at him. It was better, perhaps, that they should not know he was going to see Laura; better that they should know nothing until the deed was done.

Laura looked better. It was remarkable how much better she looked. She had on a pale-yellow shirt and dark-blue cotton trousers and her pearl earrings. She looked almost happy; almost girlish. She greeted him without any of the heavy, needy dependency she had greeted him with for months, and took his arm, and led him
around the house to the place where she was making her new border. There were delphiniums planted all along the back, in the painstakingly turned earth, and a neat regiment of lavender plants sat on the path in pots, ready to go in.

‘Lovely,’ Simon said. He put his sunglasses on.

‘I knew you’d like it,’ Laura said. ‘You’ve always been interested in my garden.’

Simon squinted at the sky. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been very interested in any garden. His own garden was a shambles. Ask Carrie.

Laura led Simon round to the terrace and sat him in a garden chair under a dark-green canvas umbrella. Simon didn’t remember the umbrella.

‘Is this new?’

‘Yes,’ Laura said. ‘Isn’t it nice?’

Simon looked up at it. It was solidly made, with wooden struts and brass fittings.

‘Expensive?’

‘A bit. But it will last. I’m going to get you a glass of wine.’

Simon gave her a quick smile.

‘No thanks, Mum.’

‘But to celebrate, to celebrate your being here—’

‘I’m driving.’

‘Just one glass—’

‘Mum, no thank you. And anyway, I haven’t come to celebrate anything.’

Laura sat down in the chair next to Simon’s.

‘What do you mean?’

Simon took his glasses off. He said awkwardly, ‘I’m glad – really glad – to see you looking so much better.’

‘I am!’ Laura said. She smiled at him. ‘Of course I am! I just couldn’t bear not knowing what was going to happen to me. But once I knew I was staying, everything fell into place.’

Simon leaned forward. He put his elbows on his knees. He said, staring out across the grass and the borders and the greenhouse to the field that rose steeply behind the house, ‘I’m not sure you can assume that.’

Laura said sharply, ‘Simon I hope this nonsense isn’t going to start all over again.’

Simon glanced at her, over his shoulder.

‘Nonsense?’

‘You ordering me about as if I had no mind of my own, as if I had no say in the matter.’

Simon said slowly, ‘I am not advising you about one more single thing.’

‘Excellent,’ Laura said. ‘Now let me get you something to drink.’

‘No,’ Simon said. ‘No. I’m not staying.’

‘But you came for lunch! You said you were coming for lunch!’

‘I didn’t,’ Simon said.
‘You
did.’ He sat up straight and turned towards her. ‘I’ve got something to say to you.’

Laura put her head slightly on one side. She smiled, the small, dignified smile she had used on Wendy.

‘Pleasant, I hope, darling.’

‘I’m not acting for you any more,’ Simon said.

‘Acting?’

‘I can’t be your lawyer any more,’ Simon said.

‘What?’

Simon looked straight at her.

‘I can’t cope with you any longer. I can’t handle being your lawyer in this matter. I shouldn’t ever have agreed in the first place, but I did and now I have to get out before any more damage is done.’

Laura put her hands to her face. Her eyes were wide.

‘I’m not quite sure—’

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘I was sorry for you, I
am
sorry for you but you’ve exploited me and played games with me and set me against my own family, and I’m afraid I’ve come to the end. I’ll help you find a new lawyer, but it won’t, most definitely, be me.’

Laura said, with rigorous control, ‘I’m not quite sure I understand what you are saying—’

‘That I’m still Simon,’ Simon said. ‘But I’m not your lawyer any more and I can’t compensate you for anything Dad has or hasn’t done.’

‘I see,’ Laura said. She moved her hands a little. ‘This doesn’t sound like very typical Simon talk to me. I imagine that Carrie—’

‘She doesn’t even know I’m here. No-one does, except the office. And they don’t know what I’m here
for.’

Laura said unsteadily, ‘I can’t quite believe this.’

Simon said nothing. He crossed his legs. He observed that the sole of his left shoe was beginning to part company from the upper.

‘It’s very hard,’ Laura said, ‘to believe that I am hearing this from you, of all people. Perhaps I was silly; I’m
sure I am in many ways silly, but I really thought you understood, that – well, that you minded for me.’

Simon stared at his shoe.

‘I do.’

‘Do you?’ Laura said. Her voice rose a little. ‘You tell me you are abandoning me but you still care?’

‘Yes,’ Simon said.

‘Oh Simon,’ Laura said, ‘who has made you so heartless?’

‘You have.’

‘I — ‘

‘You’ve pushed me to the limits, and beyond.’

‘Don’t speak like this to me, don’t—’

‘Mother,’ Simon said, ‘I love you. As my mother. I always will. I’ll stand by you as much as I can, as much as you make it possible. But you are not first with me. You were, I’m sure, when I was little. All mothers are like that, to their little children. But you aren’t now. You haven’t been, since I married.’

‘I
knew
Carrie came into it!’

‘Not because of anything she’s said,’ Simon said. ‘Not because of any pressure she’s brought to bear on me. But because—’

‘Don’t say it!’

He shrugged. He took a step away, out from the shade of the new umbrella.

‘OK. If that’s what you want.’

Laura moved towards him.

‘What am I supposed to do? What do I do now?’

Simon put his sunglasses on again.

‘Find a new lawyer.’

‘How do I do that? How can I know who to choose? Who will I be able to trust?’

‘I’ll send you a list,’ Simon said. He took another couple of steps away.

‘Don’t go,’ Laura cried. ‘Simon, don’t go! I’ll do anything, I’ll—’

‘Sorry,’ Simon said. He turned and blew a sketchy little kiss towards her with his right hand. Then he took his car keys out of his pocket. ‘Got to go.’

Laura cried, ‘You can’t leave me like this!’

He didn’t look at her again. He said, ‘Bye, Mum,’ almost with his back to her, and then he went quickly across the terrace and out of her sight round the corner of the house towards his car.

Rachel was standing by the kitchen table, eating crispbreads out of the packet. There were scattered crumbs all across the table. She glanced up when Simon came in.

‘What are you doing here?’

He dropped his jacket over the nearest chair back and tugged his tie loose.

‘Thanks, darling, for the welcome—’

‘It’s ten-past four,’ Rachel said. She put a forefinger in her mouth to dislodge a piece of crispbread. ‘Why aren’t you in the office?’

‘I have been in the office.’

‘Why’re you home now?’

‘I wanted to be,’ Simon said. He went over to the sink and turned the tap on. Then he stooped and drank
from the tap, his face sideways on to the water, holding his tie out of the spray.

‘You never come home early,’ Rachel said.

Simon stood up and wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve.

‘Then today’s different, isn’t it? Can I have one of those? I’m starving.’

‘They’re pretty boring.’

He bit into it and crunched. She watched him.

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘None of your business,’ Simon said.

‘Why won’t you tell me?’

‘I will. In due course. Where’s Mum?’

‘She isn’t back yet.’

Simon reached across the table for the crispbread packet.

‘When will she be back?’

Rachel looked at the clock.

‘Soon.’

Simon took two crispbreads out of the packet.

‘I’m going to have a shower. Before she gets back.’

‘Lucky her.’

‘Rachel,’ Simon said, ‘when Mum gets in, will you tell her I’m here?’

‘OK.’

‘Thank you,’ he said.

She watched him go out of the room and heard his feet go up the stairs, quite fast, as if he were running. Then she heard various doors open and shut and the thud of his feet across the floor above and then the
unmistakable groan and shudder of the shower being turned on. Rachel never used the shower. She preferred baths. She liked lying in the bath with the door locked and her music on, very loudly, so that if anyone banged on the door and told her to hurry up, she genuinely wasn’t able to hear them.

She folded the torn edges of the crispbread packet over and put the packet in a cupboard. Then she took out a small cardboard drum of raisins and tipped some into her hand. Then she took a tired apple out of the fruit bowl – Carrie would never buy new fruit until the old fruit was eaten – and sat at the table, chewing at the apple with one hand, and picking at the wood grain on the tabletop with the other. Simon had looked, well, sort of OK. Not exactly happy, but not tired and grumpy either. She heard the shower being turned off. He’d wind a towel round himself and pad into his bedroom before drying, leaving blotches of wet on the carpet. Jack did that, too. Perhaps it was men. Rachel looked at Simon’s jacket, hanging on the chair back. It looked male, too, even without Simon inside it. Rachel sighed. Thinking about men made her think about women, too, and she didn’t want to do that at the moment. She’d thought about love for years, it seemed, years and years. It was really all that she and Trudy had ever talked about. But now – or for now – she discovered she didn’t want to think about it. It didn’t seem an adventure, if her family were anything to go by, it just seemed to be a mess.

A key turned in the front-door lock and the door opened.

‘Hi!’ Carrie called.

‘Hi,’ Rachel said, nibbling tiny last pieces out of her apple core.

Carrie appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was carrying her bag and her briefcase and her jacket.

‘Hi, Rach. Whew, it’s hot.’

Rachel put the apple core down on the table.

‘Dad’s back.’

‘What, home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is he ill?’

‘No,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s having a shower. He said to tell you.’

Carrie leaned forward and dumped all her things on the table. ‘Heavens.’

‘I heard the shower turn off—’

Carrie straightened up. She put her hands to her hair and let them fall again.

‘He’ll be down in a minute.’

‘He wants you to go up,’ Rachel said.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rachel said. She got up and picked up her apple core. ‘Why don’t you go and see?’

Simon was standing in their bedroom, dressed only in his boxer shorts, towelling his hair. Carrie stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. She took one shoe off and flexed her toes.

‘Hello,’ Simon said.

Carrie stepped out of her other shoe.

‘You’re early.’

‘I couldn’t concentrate. I went back to the office, but I was just too restless.’

‘Back?’

‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘After I got back from Stanborough. I went to see Mum.’

‘Oh,’ Carrie said. She bent and picked up her shoes. In a careful voice she said, ‘And how was she?’

‘Devastated,’ Simon said.

Carrie didn’t look at him. She went past him slowly in her stockinged feet and dropped her shoes by the sofa.

‘What about this time?’

‘Me,’ Simon said.

Carrie turned to look at him. He stopped drying his hair and threw the towel on to the bed.

‘I went to tell her something.’

Carrie sat down on the sofa and bent forward to massage one foot.

‘I went to tell her,’ Simon said, ‘that I’m not acting as her lawyer any more.’