Splitting (15 page)

The powder room where Jelly achieved this transformation was one of the original back bedrooms of the pleasant Georgian house in which Catterwall &’Moss was housed, haphazardly converted. The room was high and large; plaster flaked from the ceiling. Thick cream paint covered, the walls and ancient plumbing alike. Draughts whistled under the doors. Go into the loo as typist, adopt the body language of those who command, rather than those commanded, and come out the client.

As it happened, Sir Edwin had not turned up. Lady Rice flounced out, sidled back into the powder room and changed back into Jelly, bypassing Angelica. Jelly realized she could exist without Angelica. She had her own existence. Perforation was approaching split.

“Just as well he didn’t turn up,” said Jelly. “There’d only have been a scene.”

“Chickened out,” said Angelica, and retired for a time, defeated, disappointed in spite of herself.

“I love him,” moaned Lady Rice. “If only I could just see him, meet him, talk things over, he’d realize that he really loved me; he couldn’t possibly prefer Anthea to me. She’s ten years older than he is.”

“Face it,” said the other voice, “you were a dull fuck. You deserve what happened.”

B
OTH LAWYERS WERE NOW
trying to persuade Lady Rice to accept an out-of-court, once-and-for-all, clean-break settlement, which Lady Rice was not prepared to do. Prompted and nudged by Angelica, she was prepared to fight.

“Such settlements may suit the Courts and the lawyers,” said Angelica, in the form of Lady Rice, boldly to Barney Evans. “They save the Court time and trouble, but they don’t suit me. Why should I let Edwin get away with his crimes against my life, my spirit? Let my husband be answerable to me for the rest of his life: let him support me for ever. He can disguise his assets temporarily, but in the end truth emerges. Doesn’t it?”

Barney Evans, a fine dray horse compared to Brian Moss’s swift and elegant steed, sniffed and trumpeted and avoiding saying, “No. In my opinion and experience truth rarely emerges.” Clients had to be protected from the world, allowed to keep their illusions. Yes, justice exists: yes, heaven exists. This was the task of the lawyer, as it was that of the priest. “Lo, there shall be no corruption, no mortality! The law protects you; Jesus saves you.”

“I demand justice,” Lady Rice persisted in crying, as did so many who came up against the legal system in any land under the sun. “I will never rest till I have it, and nor should you!”

Oh, Lady Rice was a nuisance: the virtuous one. Barney Evans and Brian Moss agreed, by a look exchanged, a soft sigh of common understanding. It is never easy to be reminded of what one has come to.

“I’m sure I’ve seen Lady Rice somewhere before,” said Brian Moss to Jelly White after Barney Evans had shared another sherry with him and departed, and the
Rice v. Rice
files were once again put away.

“She was almost a celebrity once upon a time,” said Jelly White, head turned towards the computer, stretching and bending her fingers so as to save herself from Repetitive Strain Injury (Wisdom v.
BT),
which can so wretchedly affect the computer worker. “That was before she married Sir Edwin, back when she was a pop star. She was No. 1 for eight whole weeks with ‘Kinky Virgin,’ and on TV a lot. After that she was lead singer in a group of the same name; they toured quite successfully. But that was all. Marriage put paid to her showbiz ambitions.”

“I don’t look at TV,” said Brian Moss. “I don’t have the time. When I get home I have to bath the babies. We have twins, you know. Fifteen months old. I’m a New Man. Why did Edwin Rice marry a pop star in the first place? Didn’t he need someone he could take to hunt balls? It’s so much easier to marry a woman other men ignore. That’s what I did when I married Oriole. I knew I would be safe; Oriole would always be faithful: I make a real effort to be the same. Anthea Box will suit Sir Edwin much better than his first wife ever did, so long as she can stay off the drink. Those are hard-drinking circles, I believe. She’s out of the same stable as he is, that’s the main thing when it comes to marriage. Isn’t she some kind of cousin? I hope there’s nothing unfortunate in the genes. I find Barney Evans a very pleasant and helpful chap. I was at school with his brother. Salt of the earth.”

“Aren’t you lawyers meant to be somehow antagonistic,” asked Jelly, “if only on behalf of your client? I was surprised you were so friendly.”

“We go through the motions,” said Brian Moss, “but, like anyone else, all we really want is as much profit and as little fuss as possible. We professionals are all on one side, the punters on the other.”

The pace of the divorce and the property settlement was labored and slow. Lady Rice withdrew her petition and let Sir Edwin’s stand, since a nod and a wink from Brian Moss suggested to Barney Evans that Sir Edwin would be generous if she did. Sir Edwin’s refusal to communicate directly with his wife continued. Lady Rice complained of undue influence from Anthea Box. And indeed, a letter from Brian Moss’s office suggesting that Sir Edwin make another attempt to meet Lady Rice and sort things out in a friendly fashion was fielded by a phone call from Anthea, saying it was out of the question. Jelly, who took the call, said she’d let Brian Moss know. She did nothing of the kind, of course, since Brian Moss was unaware of the initial letter: she had written it herself.

Lady Rice received a letter from Barney Evans saying it was in his client’s interests to move the hearings from the provincial Courts to London, since they would get a better hearing there with a more sympathetic judge. Lady Rice wrote back to say no, the provinces would do her very well. She would rather trust an impartial judge than a sympathetic one. Sympathy could sway like a tree in a high wind; first here, then there. Lady Rice did not know whence this wisdom sprang; sometimes she felt she was older than her years.

Lady Rice remained vague as to her whereabouts. She gave Barney Evans her mother’s address for correspondence. Let Edwin have a sense of her as Lilith, whom Adam discarded, the original, wronged wife, who wanders the outskirts of the universe, bringing trouble to mankind, never resting, for ever spiteful, for ever grieving, making others feel bad.

The best place to hide, she knew, is beneath the nose of the searcher. It was obvious to Jelly White that such staff at Catterwall & Moss whose job it was to look after Sir Edwin’s private finances would have neither time nor inclination to look through the files when the hotel account arrived. Who would be bothered to check that Rice, Sir E., didn’t have “and Lady A.” tucked-in next to it? No one. Nor would The Claremont think it prudent to point out to anyone that Lady A., according to the newspapers recovering from bulimia and anorexia in a nursing home somewhere in the Midlands, was to their knowledge living in their Bridal Suite. It suited them well enough to have a titled lady in residence, although that lady went incognito.

O
NE TUESDAY MORNING LADY
Rice woke from her sea of sorrow and went to work as usual, climbing into the Volvo as Angelica, preparing to leave it as Jelly. The driver was obliged to make an emergency stop as a police car chased a young car thief down the wrong side of the road.

“Okay?” he turned to ask his passenger.

“Just fine,” she said, but her heart had been in her mouth, and her head had banged against the glass partition. She thought she had recovered, and no harm had been done, but she found herself howling aloud. She howled as in films the man who turns into a werewolf howls, body and mind stretching and deforming: all had gone into overload. She was giving birth to yet another self. Her name was Angel, and no angel, she.

Ram the chauffeur, seated behind the glass partition which cut off employer from servant, stopped the car, turned his head and fixed Angelica/Jelly with startled eyes. His eyes were dark, well-fringed, kind, albeit male. Angelica’s dress was up to her knees. She was changing her slimming black stockings to Jelly’s ankle-thickening beige. But her leg from ankle to knee, whatever she wore, remained long, slim and fetching. She moved her knees quickly together, but too late.

“Is that my exhaust holed?” the driver asked. “Or is it you?” Lady Rice, Angelica, Jelly, Angel howled again. They howled because it was a Tuesday morning, and on Monday nights Anthea often stayed over at Rice Court. So much Mrs. MacArthur had told Lady Rice, whilst explaining that whatever evidence Edwin Rice required her to give in Court, she would. If Edwin said Lady Rice and Lambert were in the big fourposter bed, not the spare room, so be it. Her loyalty was to him, not the newcomer Lady Rice. It was Sir Edwin who paid her wages, and Lady Anthea knew how to treat staff: not as if they were friends, but keeping a courteous distance.

Since this conversation it had been the habit of the female combo that was Angelica to drug herself to sleep on Monday nights, so heavily that it would be nearly Tuesday lunchtime before the three awoke. But the exigencies of employment had made that impossible, and here they were, caught halfway between Angelica and Jelly, at eight thirty on a Tuesday, knowing that this was when her husband’s enjoyment and capacity for sex was at its highest—many’s the time she had slipped out of bed early so as not to encounter it, as she remembered to her pain—and, worse, the chance thereby increased of his saying something intimate, loving, kind to her rival. And at that very moment, if she thought about it, that rival, like as not, would be in the marital bed. Of course the entity howled.

They made no further effort to move their legs together. They were in any case wearing French knickers which hardly hid a thing. In fact they found themselves moving their legs further apart.

“For God’s sake, what are you doing?” pleaded Angelica, suddenly alarmed. “This is no answer to anything.”

“You don’t know this man from Adam,” warned Jelly. “Remember AIDS.”

“I do as I like,” said Angel, for it was she, moving her legs further apart. “And I have what I want, and what I want, as ever, is sex. “What is going on in here?” demanded Lady Rice, who had been dozing, but was startled sufficiently to be back at least notionally in charge. “I know I said I wanted a fuck, but I was speaking theoretically.”

“Oh no you weren’t,” said Angel. “And that was me speaking, anyway. Hi, everyone, I’m Angel.”

“I don’t want someone like you in my head,” said Lady Rice, panicky. “I just know you’ll be trouble.”

“We don’t want you interfering,” said the other three. They were already ganging up on her. “You had your chance and a fine mess you made of it.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Lady Rice bitterly. “Thanks, everyone.

Edwin, Anthea, Mrs. MacArthur, and all my Barley friends: thanks to the inside of my head now too, it seems, for trying to destroy me. I’m getting out of here.”

And Lady Rice retired, part hurt, part glad to have been given permission, to some brooding part of her being, to rock in her sea of sorrow and absorb its mournful nutrients. She was finally glad she’d been an only child, had never had sisters.

“Please don’t make that noise,” Ram pleaded. “It makes it difficult to drive.” He was, Angel supposed, for she was looking at him closely, as Jelly never did and Angelica never would, in his late twenties. He was fair-complexioned and had well-manicured nails which rested with confidence on the well-padded wheel; he was blessed with the strong jaw and. sharp eyes of a business executive, Only the chauffeur’s cap suggested that the car was the tool of his trade, not the badge of his status. But the emergent halfway woman didn’t really care who he was or what he said, or indeed what he saw—one stocking half rolled off, the other un-suspended, and the suspender straps with their plastic button device falling loose—tights are tricky to change in confined surroundings; stockings less of a problem, but still provide some difficulty—that person halfway between a couple of I’s and a she uttered another howl, and tears ran down her face.

Ram turned the Volvo without so much as a comment, let alone asking for permission from his multi-faceted employer, into an underground car park. “Spaces” flashed out in red lights in the narrow street outside. As the car turned in, the barrier to the entrance rose, apparently of its own accord. (The electronic world is so much in tune, these days, with the living one, it is not surprising we get confused, see ourselves programmed, incapable of political or social protest, as we go about the routine of our lives.) The car approached, access was willed, the barrier rose: the horror of the scene thus revealed—the dark mouths of concrete stalls, the puddled floor, the scrawled tormented walls, the stench of urine—seems an inevitable consequence of that very willing. Forget it, don’t argue, don’t fight, don’t attempt to reform; technology doesn’t, why should you? You are less than the machinery which serves you, and by serving you controls you; more prone to error, the ramshackle entropy, than when you were poorer but more in control. The human spirit splits and fractures, it has to, to make an amoeboid movement round technology, to engulf it, as flesh forms round a splinter, the better to protect itself. The four-fold entity of Lady Rice is not yet commonplace, but may well yet be.

Ram took his vehicle deeper and deeper underground. Angel swayed, first this way, then that, as it traversed the descending levels, the bare stretch of thigh above her stocking tops sticking, first this side, then that, on hot leather, until there was nowhere else for the car to go but the furthest, deepest, blackest stall, after which the entrance signs turned to exit signs. Ram McDonald reversed the Volvo into this small space, with considerable skill. The vehicle’s windows were of darkened glass. The occupants could see out; no one could see in. The rich like to travel thus, and the journeys, after all, were on Sir Edwin’s charge account. Ram left the front seat and joined Angel in the back. She did not protest. Anthea clasped Edwin, Edwin clasped Anthea; the sun did not go out, nor society disapprove. What matter then who clasped whom, in lust or love, since decency and justice had foundered anyway?