The Lady of Situations (30 page)

In a year's time he had succeeded in making himself useful to his leader. In three he had made himself indispensable. Mr. Haven, a former governor of Alabama who had long abandoned his native South for the more lucrative practice of Wall Street and who was nationally known as a legal champion of the conservative cause, was then engaged in his long battle to invalidate what he considered the socialist statutes of the New Deal. Thad threw himself into the fray with all the fervor of a crusader. He had not previously been much involved in economic philosophy, but he now unhesitatingly adopted his leader's credo that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment had been designed to guarantee to corporations the continuation of free enterprise and that freedom of contract was the root of democracy.

The war only cemented the friendship and alliance between the older and younger man. Thad, though strong and seemingly fit, had the humiliation of being barred from combat by a discovered heart murmur which his own physician had deemed innocuous. He had then wanted to serve the government in a civilian capacity, but Mr. Haven had persuaded him that his duty lay elsewhere.

"I'm all for your fighting, my boy, but if you can't fight Huns and Japs and Wops you'd better stay home with me and fight the Hudson River squire. We've seen what he did in peacetime.
Think
what he may do with war powers!"

By 1946, now a full partner in the firm, Thad had become indissolubly associated with Haven in the minds of the downtown bar. The two men were said to complement each other. Thad could be as sober and quiet as his leader was volatile. He could be the person to whom the client might turn when the old man was going too far, to suggest a compromise when Haven wanted to fight to the death. And he knew when discreetly to tug his senior's coattail when an oral argument had gone on long enough.

This latter ability was important, as the oral argument brought out Mr. Haven's particular genius. His capacity to simplify and dramatize the most complicated and dryest facts made him a popular litigant even with liberal judges.

"It's really more than half the battle," he would insist to Thad. "Our briefs are writ on water. They moulder on the back shelves of bar association libraries. All a lawyer really has is that golden moment when the right sentence or even the right phrase wings its way from him to an attentive court, and he senses that it may bring him victory. Did Shakespeare care about printing his plays? Not at all! The passage of his words from actor to pit was all the glory he needed."

Words indeed had become the obsession of George Haven's old age. His constant complaint of the young lawyers of the office was that they couldn't write. "And if they can't do that, how the devil can they think?" he would demand. "Can you have a thought you can't express?" He abandoned his church in Smithport where he spent his summers and weekends when its minister adopted the revised version of the King James Bible. And so it seemed in keeping to Thad, on a winter morning late in 1946, when Haven spoke of a new recruit to their litigating team as "at least someone who can speak the language."

"I didn't know we had a new associate."

"We didn't until this morning. And she's not a new associate. She's been with us for almost three years. She's a transfer from Estates and Trusts. It's Mrs. Hill."

"Natica Hill? Why does she want to be a litigator?"

"She doesn't. Or at least she hasn't asked to be. I am the one who wants her. What do you know about her work?"

"Nothing. I hardly know her. I sat next to her at the firm dinner last October. She seems bright enough. And she's certainly attractive."

"Watch out for her, Thad. She's a
femme fatale.
"

"Well I certainly wouldn't have guessed
that.
She struck me more as quiet and businesslike."

"Still waters, you know."

Thad perceived that the old man was enjoying himself. There was something he wanted to tell, but he was going to take his own time about it.

"Have you moved her to Litigation to see if I can resist temptation?"

"No. You seem all too resistant to the fair sex. It's high time you thought of getting married, my boy. Thirty-five is half your biblical span."

"But I'm not, I take it, to marry Mrs. Hill."

"Heaven forbid!" Haven raised his hands in dismay. "I guess it's time I explained the mystery. We had an important death over the weekend. Angus Hill."

"Really! I hadn't heard."

"It'll be in the evening papers. I would have called you, but I knew you'd gone to Boston to visit your ma."

"You're an executor, aren't you?"

"I am that. Together with his widow and his nephew Tyler Bennett. It's a very large estate, of course. Bennett came to the house last night to talk about the will. There's one little thing that may give us a bit of trouble. Natica Hill, as you no doubt know, was Angus's daughter-in-law. She was married to the only son, who shot himself six years ago. Because of the way the son's trust was set up, she got nothing from his estate. And now Angus has left her nothing."

"Why was he so hard on the poor girl?"

"She may indeed be poor, but it's for no lack of trying to be rich. She was married to a minister who taught at Averhill School. When young Stephen Hill joined the faculty there she set out to snare him. She got him into bed, claimed she was pregnant and bamboozled him into marrying her after she shed her impecunious clerical spouse. Then she had a convenient miscarriage in Paris, if indeed she was ever pregnant. Angus told me she was quite capable of bribing a Frog doctor to go along with her story. When poor Stephen cottoned on at last to the sort of creature he was hitched to, he blew his brains out. Not that he ever amounted to much. Angus said he was even a fairy."

"Then how did she ever seduce him?"

"Oh, I suppose she flattered him into thinking he was a real man, that he had given her the thrill of her life. And then, when she had him snagged, she probably sneered at his sorry performance."

"I must say, sir, she didn't strike me as that type at all."

"Of course not. They never do."

"And what is she doing working for a firm that represents her husband's family?"

"Good question. Nobody but I, and you now, knows the full extent of Angus Hill's suspicions of her. And his wife did not share his attitude at all. She even put the girl through law school. It was at
her
behest that I hired Natica."

"I see. But what are you and Bennett really afraid of? A daughter-in-law isn't an heir or next of kin. She has no standing in court to contest the will."

"Unless she were mentioned in it. And she
is
mentioned in it. Angus states that he is leaving her nothing because she has been 'otherwise provided for.' Our man who drew the will assumed that this had been done. But it hadn't. Unless you count Angelica Hill's paying for her law school, which is pretty thin."

"Even so, it doesn't sound like much of a case for Natica. I wouldn't care to take it."

"No, but some shyster might, and that's just the point. He'd use it to get his dirty toe in the door and then have a fine old time digging into all the complicated Hill trusts and family corporations. We'd probably end by making some sort of settlement just to get rid of him. Now I don't say that Natica is going to do that. But just in case she has any inclination I've taken her out of Estates and Trusts, at least while Angus's estate is in administration. I don't want her poking her nose into inventories and appraisals."

"Did you tell her that?"

"Do you think I'm a complete dodo? No, when I talked to her earlier this morning, I told her frankly that I knew of divisions of opinion about her in the Hill family, that I took no side and had no opinion of her myself, except that Tom Hilliard in Estates considers her a first class lawyer. I then suggested it might be easier on all if she were to be out of the department while members of the family were going there on estate business."

"And did she buy that?"

"She was too smart not to pretend to, anyway. And I sweetened it a bit by telling her I'd heard about the fine writing style of her memoranda of law and that I'd like her help on one of my briefs. And I capped it all off by telling her she'd be working for the great Mr. Sturges!"

"That must have really done it."

"Anyway, she allowed as she'd be happy to make the switch. So there you are, Thad. She's all yours!"

T
HAD WAS
soon to reflect that if Haven had been trying to promote something between him and Natica, he could hardly have done better than voice the warning he had. For the contrast between the serious, silent and very efficient young woman who listened attentively to his instructions and then departed to effect her researches in the library, and the lurid seductress of the unhappy Stephen Hill invited constant speculation as to her true character. Sometimes he thought that the late Angus Hill's suspicions of her motives and plots must have been sponsored by paternal possessiveness or even by the actual malice of a money-obsessed old man living in his nasty fantasies. At other times Natica's coolness, her imperturbability, the very plainness and neatness of her business suits, struck him as verging on the sinister, the mask of a nature capable of awe-inspiring crime. But in every role in which his fantasy cast her she was always interesting and at times dramatic. And her very lack of flame aroused erotic thoughts as to what a little fire might do to her.

Haven had been retained by a southern state to argue the constitutionality of "separate but equal" schools for blacks. The argument in the brief that Thad was preparing for him, and in which Natica was assisting him, was that a federal court could not take judicial notice (as urged by the NAACP) of the fact that such legislation invariably resulted in unequal schools. The fact had to be proved.

Natica's supporting memorandum of law went further. She contended that even if inequality was proved, it had to be shown that the state legislature had anticipated it. "We might even argue," she suggested, "that a court has no warrant to interfere with state government unless it be shown that it was actually impossible to achieve equality under the statute. So long as equality
could
be achieved, the statute is valid, and the student who suffers discrimination must be left to his remedy in the state courts."

Thad could not help wondering if she was trying to ingratiate herself with a partner by favoring his known partiality for states' rights. He decided to take her to lunch at the Downtown Association where she might talk more freely than in the office. She accepted his invitation but without the alacrity with which clerks were wont to respond to such bids from members of the firm.

"Do you mind if we wait till one?" she asked. "I'm expecting a call from my landlord about the renewal of my lease."

Thad
did
mind. He was a creature of habit who liked to eat at noon. But he reflected that Natica was not an ordinary clerk. She had, after all, been part of a family which was one of the firm's principal clients.

At their table at the Downtown he suggested that the time had come for them to be on first name terms. Again her assent was polite but casual.

"Which do you prefer? Thad or Thaddeus?"

"The former. And you're Natica, not Nat, is that so?"

"Yes. Though some call me Nat. I've never really thought the name lent itself to abbreviation."

He found, when he directed their discussion to their case and its merits, that she showed no disposition to gratify him by adopting his constitutional principles. Indeed, she was surprisingly outspoken in her more liberal views. When he asked her at last how she would decide their case if she were a justice on the court, she did not hesitate to answer that she would invalidate the statute.

"Your attitude is certainly not reflected in your memos."

"No, why should it be? A job's a job."

"And you don't find it disagreeable to have to argue a position with which you don't agree? Which indeed I suppose you may even find inhumane?"

"Not at all. Time will take care of these matters. The South won't be able to hold out forever. I don't think we should have even fought the Civil War."

Thad did not like this at all. His grandfather had fought in the war at the age of seventeen; the Sturgeses had been ardent abolitionists. He saw no inconsistency between this and his position on states' rights. The Constitution was the Constitution. He voiced his thought.

"You don't have much concern for states' rights, I take it."

"Very little."

"And the Constitution?"

"Oh, the Constitution can always be stretched to fit what the majority really want. What would the founding fathers have said to what we've done to the commerce clause?"

"Then you think the Constitution offers no protection?"

"To whom?"

"Well, to minorities. What about the Bill of Rights?"

"I can't forget that only five years ago a unanimous court permitted thousands of U.S. citizens to be put in prison camps without trial."

"But that was wartime, Natica!"

"And can't wartime come again? Or other emergencies? The only true safeguard of liberty is that the majority values it. If
that
should ever change!"

"I had no idea you were such a cynic."

"I'm not a cynic. I try to be a realist. The Constitution is a very man-made thing. I mean made by men. You tend to believe that things can be tied down with words. Women know better. I doubt we'd even have had a Constitution if women had had the vote. It's a kind of straightjacket you have to keep getting yourself out of every time a major social change is needed."

"So you're a feminist, too."

"Wouldn't you be, if you were a woman?"

"But you have the vote now. Women voters outnumber men. You're a lawyer, a member of the bar. It seems to me you're doing all right."

"Just tell me this, Thad. How many women partners do you have?"

Of course he had none. Decidedly, he was not enjoying the conversation. The lunch was not turning out at all as he had visualized. But he didn't want to get angry at her. He asked her now about the call she had been expecting before lunch, and they turned to the safer topic of rent control. At least they both hated their landlords.