Yours Unfaithfully (9 page)

As Melanie followed the other delegates across the marble floored foyer of the Hilton Hotel her stomach was in knots. She made her way to the front of the conference room and sat almost dead centre in the front row. He did say, ‘sit at the front’ and this was as near the front as it was possible to get. Gradually the room filled up and she was pleased to see that the delegate sitting on her left was a woman, not a fat or unfashionable one but a very shapely and exceedingly well dressed one. After a few seconds a terrible thought crossed her mind, could this be Sharon ... his wife? Maybe she’d decided to hear her husband address the cream of local society at his Hilton debut seminar. No doubt she was very proud of him, why shouldn’t she be?

When he appeared on stage she pushed her head down in a feeble attempt to hide. It was a pointless gesture as he had already focused on her, beaming at her with that fabulous smile she’d pictured a hundred times since the party. She glanced discreetly to her left and saw that Sharon was smiling back at him. Had he really invited her here simply to be humiliated? Was it too late to escape? A quick look round indicated that the doors had been closed at the back of the room. If she stood up now she would attract the attention of a hundred pairs of eyes, mostly male.

A Senior Partner from Nina’s firm went to the lectern and introduced Ratty. “We are of course delighted that Rattani Naziree has chosen to join Osborne Melrose Law. He brings enormous experience and immense skill in technical matters of law. Rattani is going to talk to you for the next hour on the history and background to contract law and I’m sure you’ll want to give him a very warm welcome.” Without further prompting everyone in the room raised their hands to applaud the newcomer.

“Hello, good morning ...and welcome ...in that order.” Ratty’s huge smile lit up the room like a firework display. Another ripple of applause rang though the gathering. “In the short time that I have been with Osborne Melrose Law I have been tremendously impressed by the high standards maintained by my new colleagues. As you all know the firm is long established and has an excellent reputation. I am pleased that I will have the opportunity to represent some of you in the months ahead and I am delighted to be able to say that I have already started making friends with some of you.” He looked straight at Melanie as he spoke.

There could be no mistake. His eyes were fixed on hers as firmly as an exocet missile locks on to its target. Well, she thought, if Sharon hasn’t realised yet that he’s talking to me then she soon will. Visions of a cat fight breaking out in the front row entered her head. She imagined Sharon tugging her hair out in bunches and screaming ‘slapper’ to her as the men around laughed and cheered. She recognised that it would be dangerous to turn and see what expression Sharon was wearing, but she also knew she couldn’t stop herself.

Amazingly Sharon seemed quite happy and not at all put out at having to share him with the woman next to her. If he was my husband, I wouldn’t sit here and watch him making eyes at another woman in front of half the town. But he isn’t my husband, he’s hers, I’ve got a husband. She hadn’t heard a word Ratty had said in the last two minutes and she was meant to be assessing his performance as a speaker.

“Whenever I’m sitting where you are, waiting for the speaker to get started I wonder if I’m in for an hour of agony or sixty minutes of scintillating speech and fortunately, more often than not, I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy the latter. I’ve sat through some exhilarating speeches from master orators from many different backgrounds. One of the speeches that sticks in my mind was about the three minute rule, and this is how it went: The Three Minute Rule says that when you meet someone new you probably decide if you like them or not within three minutes. Actually he said, you more likely decide within thirty seconds. He also said that research has shown that Jury’s have been asked when it was that they made up their minds about the guilt or innocence of the accused, and most of them said that they had decided within three minutes of seeing the accused, usually even before they had heard them speak. Now it’s not yet three minutes but already I’ve decided I like every one of you and although I can’t promise you a speech as good as those I’ve referred to I hope when you leave here today you will know a little more about the history of contract law than you do now. And most of all, I hope you will enjoy the experience.” Again his soft smile shone down on his subjects. They loved it, their response was radiating around the room like an electric charge. It was pure magic.

This is cabaret, Melanie thought, I love it.

Ratty talked about Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, Head of the Appeal Court and one of our most celebrated judges. “Today we accept it as normal that women should sit in our boardrooms and even lead political parties.”

He looked straight at Melanie as he said, “We respect the women in our society as our equals in every sense of the word. Alas, it wasn’t always so ... Lord Denning often spoke about the influence of the Church on canon law and later into common law and how two hundred years ago the legal existence of a woman was suspended during marriage. The husband was provided with the right under common law to keep her by force which meant that he could beat her as long as it wasn’t in a violent or cruel way. The yardstick by which such force was deemed reasonable was that the stick used to beat her should not be thicker than the man’s thumb. I wonder, is there anyone in this room would dare to agree with such a view today? ... No, I thought not.”

“It wasn’t until 1891 that the courts gave women the right to come and go as they pleased and this was as a result of a case where a husband took his wife prisoner after she had left him. Fortunately for the young woman, a writ of habeas corpus was brought and the court ordered her release. From that day forward it has never been in doubt that a man has no right to restrict his wife’s liberty.” Melanie found herself looking straight into Ratty’s eyes. He has deliberately written his speech for me, she thought. He’s sending me a clear message that I can see him if I so choose to.

“If we fast forward two hundred years to 1976 we can see how the law finally moved to protect battered wives with the Domestic Violence Act of that year. Not only that, but now a man’s mistress was also able to receive the protection of the law through a mechanism now referred to as a ‘common law wife’.”

“Lord Denning was to take charge of a very famous case involving two young ladies who needed little protection; Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies. Indeed it was the
government
that needed protection from
them
. I refer of course to the Profumo Case, a scandal which rocked the government in 1963 after the Secretary of State for War, Mr John Profumo, admitted having an affair with one of the girls. The affair forced the resignation of Profumo, and many people believe that it led to the resignation only weeks later of the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. Rumours at the time linked a number of senior officials to the girls, who can truly be said to have had a hand in writing the political history of that decade.”

His ability to tell stories was like nothing Melanie had experienced before. Ratty had the complete attention of every ear in the room as he slipped one joke after another into his dialogue of fascinating but factual accounts of legal history.

Ratty moved into areas of law more akin to the daily business of most of the delegates gathered in the room. He explained the Anton Pillar order which, for the first time, allowed the courts to order the seizure of pirate tapes and records. He then explained Lord Denning’s role in the origin of the Mareva injunction, which allowed creditors to seize assets which were almost certain to be disposed of contrary to the creditor’s best interests, through the means of an interlocutory injunction.

Melanie was enjoying the history of English law and she was basking in the attention he was giving her, as time and again he aimed his smile directly at her. She was by now convinced that everyone in the room had noticed his declaration of affection for her. It was like they were having a private seminar, as if he was talking to her, and the rest of the people in the room were eavesdropping on them but still Sharon didn’t seem concerned.

“Before I finish I want to tell you about another remarkable speaker I had the privilege of listening to and indeed meeting recently. His name is Khotsu Trinity. When I met him he was about to make his first public speech on his first ever trip outside his own country, Lesotho in Southern Africa. I talked with him for some time and was impressed by his humanity and sincerity, but when he began his speech I also realised that he was a gifted man with very special qualities.”

“His role within the charity is to teach people in his country how to farm with one cow or one goat and to use the manure to nurture crops and to be self sufficient. We’ve all seen and read about poverty in Africa recently, thanks to the G8 concerts but you may not be aware that Lesotho has even more problems than most other African countries, and those problems have a strong connection with contract law. Many thousands of men from Lesotho worked in the South African gold mines, but they have recently been made redundant. Another ten thousand workers were employed in the rag trade, making clothes for the big brand names, names in fact that some of you are wearing today. But, the contracts to make these clothes offered little in the way of long term protection to the factories in Lesotho and when those brand owners found that they could get their clothes made for even less money by using lower paid labour in China they dumped their workers in Lesotho and left them to starve. If only the late Lord Denning could rule on such an unfair contract the outcome would be in no doubt, but sadly English law cannot help these people.”

“Now I’m going to stop short of asking you to boycott these big brand names, although some of you might feel like doing so, but I am going to ask you to help me to raise a few pounds, here, today, for that charity. To get you started I am going to offer a full day of my time to any firm in return for a thousand pound cheque for the charity. I think you all know what a day of my time would cost if you had to pay Osborne Melrose Law, but this will be a day of my holiday so don’t worry, they won’t lose out.” He said this with his usual smile, and to the obvious amusement of everyone in the room.

“Thank you sir.” Ratty pointed to a man sat just behind Melanie. “Well, I didn’t have to ask twice did I? Thank you. Can I ask others of you who would like to help this cause to write a cheque, or a pledge on the back of your business card will do just fine, and pass it to one of the staff members by the doors as you leave, and can I thank you all for being a great audience. I hope you have enjoyed my exploration into our legal past and I hope to have the privilege of working with many of you in the future. Thank you.”

As Ratty closed his speech Melanie hurriedly looked at her watch, convinced that less than half the allotted hour had passed. Not so, in fact Ratty had overrun by ten minutes.

The entire audience rose to their feet and gave Ratty a tumultuous round of applause. It was like he was the star of a West End show instead of a lawyer explaining legal history. They loved him, that was for sure, and so did she. Maybe it was the atmosphere of the crowded room coupled with the almost obscene knowledge that she had just had a very personal relationship with Ratty in front of a hundred people, one of whom was his wife, but she felt very much in need of some time alone with him!

As people started to trickle out she waited at the side of the stage in case he came down to speak to her. She tried not to make it too obvious and she never took her eyes off of Sharon. To her surprise Sharon was making her way towards the back of the hall and the exit. She certainly wasn’t showing any interest in tackling her adversary. Melanie began to feel like the victor in a jousting contest. Her rival having been well beaten, was now slinking off to hide and lick her wounds, while she, Melanie Fisher, waited to claim her prize. When she took her eyes off of the retreating figure of Sharon, Ratty was standing beside her.

“Well, how did I do?”

“As if you don’t know, Ratty,” she said, “You were fantastic. I loved it, everybody loved it, you must have known from the response you got at the end just how well you’d done? I was really proud of you for raising money for those poor people in Lesotho, but did you really meet that man, the way you said?”

“Yes I did and I suppose if I’m honest I did think it went rather well. Are you ready for the lunch I promised you?”

“‘There’s no need now is there? You only wanted to take me to lunch so that I could tell you how well you’d done, but you know the answer to that, so I can head on back to work if you want.”

“Is that what you want, Mel?”

Melanie didn’t answer. Instead she turned slowly left and right on one foot and gripped her small pink handbag demurely, whilst looking at her shoes.

“You have just answered my question Mel. You couldn’t bring yourself to say no, could you? I’ve thought of practically nothing else this week except Wednesday and lunch with you. I’ve just finished a talk which was entirely for you; even though those other people seemed to think I was talking to them. Why are you being like this…? Are you really so afraid to have lunch with me?”

“What is Sharon going to say about you taking me to lunch instead of her?”

“How do you know about Sharon? Oh of course... Nina. Melanie, do you know where Sharon is now?”

“Probably waiting for you outside I should imagine, that’s the way she was heading.”

“You’ve seen Sharon, have you?”

“You know I have, for God’s sake, I was sitting next to her wasn’t I?”

Ratty burst into laughter and put his hands around Melanie’s waist. He pulled her towards him and pecked her nose with his lips. “You thought that woman was Sharon, my wife? ...actually, my ex wife!”

“What, you mean she wasn’t Sharon... and Sharon isn’t still your wife? You’ve split up?”

“Yes, two years ago. We still speak to each other; we’re still friends ...at a distance. She’s moved on; she’ll probably marry again soon.”