Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  ‘So Ross made him an offer he couldn’t refuse?’

  ‘Five thousand pounds an acre. That’s what people are saying. And there’s four hundred acres, all the way up to the road. Two million quid. And extra for the cottages. He’s keeping on both gamekeepers with a pay rise for their loyalty.’

  Miles shook his head. ‘More money than sense, it sounds like.’

  ‘A very nice gentleman, Mr Clegg. Comes in here a lot, likes to buy his wine here. I asked him, “Wouldn’t you do better getting it at your own place, Freeza Mart, if you don’t mind my asking?” Their prices are lower than ours, they’ve more muscle with the suppliers. But Mr Clegg said he prefers buying it here, because he gets the advice and the service. Very pleasant, Mr Clegg, I’ve a lot of time for him.’

  Driving back to Chawbury, Miles felt wave after wave of envy breaking over him, a tsunami of raw covetousness. Why was life so unjust? Of course he understood exactly why Ross had bought West Farm. It marched with his own property—with Silas’s tumbledown cottage—and protected him from encroaching development. And the shooting was surprisingly high quality for a farm shoot. That was why Miles had wanted it himself. In his life plan, he had envisaged inviting James Pendleton to shoot there, and putting the gamekeepers onto the Straker Communications payroll.

  Now the shoot belonged to Ross, and James would doubtless be shooting there with him instead.

  Davina spent the Monday alone at her desk at Chawbury, composing a letter to her husband. It underwent many drafts before she felt satisfied, with each word carefully considered. The earlier drafts were much too long, she decided, running to six sides of handwriting, giving too many reasons for her decision. In the end she kept it short and factual: she had decided to leave him, and would in due course be seeking a divorce. She had been thinking about this for a long time, and not taken the decision lightly. Now the children were grown up she felt it was possible, even though she realised it would be unsettling for the family for a time. But she had reached the conclusion it was the right thing for both of them. Finally, she acknowledged the many happy times they’d spent together over the years, and how proud she was of their children ‘who will always be a great bond between us.’ As a long P.S., she added, ‘There is no hurry for us to decide anything. You will want to know there is no one else involved. Let’s try and keep everything as civilised as possible, out of respect for each other and for the sake of the children. And please try not to be too cross.’

  Having arrived at the version she felt was as good as it was ever going to be, she made a fair copy and put it in an envelope. The process of composition had been draining and, looking at the time, she was amazed to see it was already four o’clock in the afternoon—she’d been at her desk for six hours. She went into the kitchen to put the kettle on and found Mrs French wiping down worktops. ‘You look exhausted, Mrs Straker. What have you been doing?’

  On a whim, Davina told her her decision. She was going to have to hear sometime, everyone was, and she felt the need to start the process. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to mean a lot of change,’ Davina said. ‘I don’t know where I’ll end up living. Or what will happen to this house. I’ll miss the garden dreadfully …’ She suddenly felt heart-breakingly sad about it all.

  She set off for a long walk along the valley, only turning back when she reached the leylandii screen at the bottom of the Cleggs’ garden. The lights were all out at Chawbury Park; Dawn was spending all her time up in London these days, only coming down at weekends. Dawn was someone else she ought to tell, Davina realised; not just because she was a dear friend, but they were family as well now through Mollie and Greg, not to mention the Archie and Gemma situation. There were so many people who were going to have to be told, the prospect exhausted her; all their old friends and neighbours discussing them, talking about them, taking sides. She’d detest all that, the gossip, she’d have nothing to do with it. Whatever she felt about Miles, she would never demean herself by being disloyal about him. Whether Miles would be equally magnanimous, she wasn’t sure. In fact, she dreaded him opening the letter and wondered if she was mad to be taking such a drastic step.

  Twice during the walk she almost decided to call the whole thing off. The letter was not yet posted, it wasn’t too late. Strolling home in the twilight, she thought how pretty the manor looked on the brow of the hill, and how cosy with the windows lit up, and the thought of leaving that beloved house and garden filled her with dismay. And wasn’t it unfair on the children to break up the family? And where would they all spend Christmases and Easters with separated parents? And how especially sad for Mollie and Greg, so early into their own marriage.

  But then Davina reflected on Miles, and all her suppressed anger rose up again. The past couple of months, during the lead-up and aftermath of Mollie’s wedding, had been especially bad. Miles had been a nightmare. He had spent the weekends raging against Archie, against Ross and Dawn, against Gemma. It hadn’t helped that Ross bought that shoot, which was clearly a big factor in it all. Miles could be so immature. He wouldn’t refer to Ross by name, only as ‘the owl murderer.’ He couldn’t go out to dinner locally without regaling everyone with the story of the owl. And then it found its way into one of the newspapers. Miles insisted he’d had nothing to do with it, but Davina wasn’t sure she believed him. And he was being ridiculous about Gemma, too. She was a perfectly nice girl, she’d looked sweet at the wedding reception, and so polite. But Miles referred to her as ‘the scrubber.’

  In the end, it was his attitude to the children that made the marriage untenable. One by one, he’d fallen out with them all. Apart from at the wedding, she hadn’t seen Peter for six months, or Samantha either; if she so much as mentioned their names in front of her husband, he became tetchy. Mollie was as good as ostracised by marrying Greg—Miles insisted he wouldn’t have Greg to stay in the house—and now Archie had fallen from grace too. If she wanted to speak to her own children, she had to wait until Miles was out to use the telephone. During the wedding, Gemma sweetly invited her over to her little house in Vauxhall to play with Mandy—her only grandchild—but if she told Miles he’d try and stop her going, so she’d have to sneak off behind his back, which was perfectly ridiculous. No, she had to end the marriage, she had to be brave, her mind was made up. She fetched the letter from her desk, addressed it to Miles at his office marked ‘strictly private,’ and drove to the village to put it in the box. The errand completed, she took a deep breath and poured herself a glass of wine from an open bottle in the fridge.

  It was only the next morning Davina remembered she hadn’t told her solicitor about the letter and wondered if she should have. So she rang Lincolns’ Inn Fields and spoke to Angela, who was very reassuring and supportive, but slightly put out that she hadn’t kept a photocopy. ‘From today on, every letter, every phone call, every conversation must be copied, logged and minuted. Ideally tape recorded if you feel comfortable about that. I’m opening a file for you and I need you to be scrupulous about telling us everything. If I’m not here myself, talk to my colleague Tristram whom I think you met.’

  ‘You’re being so kind,’ Davina said gratefully. ‘I’m so sorry about all this. I know I’m being a perfect nuisance.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Angela. ‘You’re taking the first important step in the second part of your life. And you mustn’t hesitate to ring about anything, however trivial. Because in a divorce, nothing is trivial, the devil’s in the detail. As soon as you hear anything from your husband, any reaction to your letter, ring me.’

  Miles, it so happened, had been at a breakfast briefing at the offices of Trent Valley Power 4 U, where they were announcing an exciting diversification into the online gaming industry. The rationale, as Miles helped formulate, was that TVP4U’s 5.7 million customers would be offered, at great convenience to themselves, the opportunity to play internet blackjack and poker on the utility giant’s website, with prize money (and of course any losses) added to or subtracted from their qua
rterly direct debit.

  Returning to Charles Mews South, he found Davina’s letter sitting on a pile of today’s invitations on his desk. Assuming it wasn’t important (Davina was forever forwarding requests for work experience and internships for neighbours’ children) he did not open it immediately. Eventually getting round to it, he was astonished by its content and the measured manner in which it was written. Evidently Davina was very cross about something and he wondered if she might somehow have found out about the Samantha misunderstanding in Paris. He certainly hoped not. If she had, he reckoned it would take a diamond bracelet to patch things up, not that Davina particularly desired jewellery. A specimen tree for the garden then.

  He considered ringing her, but decided against. Better to let her stew in her own juice for a while, they were going out to dinner together tonight with clients in any case. Later he read the letter a second time. Something about its tone had been niggling away at him, as though it were written with calculated deliberation rather than in the heat of anger. He lifted the phone to ring Chawbury, changed his mind and dialled Angela Strawbetter at Freshfields instead, just in case. He’d always heard she was the best.

  It came as a shock to learn, when put through to Angela, that regrettably she couldn’t represent him since she was already engaged by another party in the matter.

  ‘What? Davina’s rung you? You can’t be serious. When?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Straker, but that’s all I can say without speaking first to my client.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but you can tell your client that I’m not bloody paying your bills. I hope she realises that. And I hope you do too. Davina doesn’t have money of her own, you know. Not a bean. And if you start sending me her bills, you can bloody whistle for it.’

  ‘I’m going to say goodbye, Mr Straker. It isn’t appropriate for us to speak directly in this way.’ He heard the click of the receiver being put down on him.

  Now Miles was really mad. How dare Davina start ringing divorce lawyers without his permission? Had she the first idea what they charged? Hundreds of pounds an hour. It wouldn’t surprise him if she hadn’t even enquired about fees, she was like that. And, worse, there was the publicity. All the big divorce firms leaked like sieves, they all had hotlines to the gossip columns. If it got into the papers they were having marital problems, he’d bloody kill Davina. Clients didn’t like seeing their confidential advisors all over the newspapers, not in that context anyway.

  By lunchtime, he had engaged his own divorce lawyer, a silver-tongued rottweiler who regularly represented rock stars and royals. ‘I don’t for one moment think this will come to anything,’ Miles briefed him. ‘My wife’s probably having her period. Or the change of life. Or feeling depressed because the children have grown-up and left home and it’s dawning on her how little she’s achieved in her life. But as a precaution, I want you on standby. If we hear a squeak out of her, I want you to scare the living daylights out of her with a ten-page letter. Knock her sideways. Tell her she won’t get a cent and I’ll be demanding custody of the children. And keeping both houses—which are mine anyway—so she’ll have nowhere to live.’

  The rottweiler made encouraging noises, but pointed out that it might present problems to give her nothing at all. ‘And what ages are your children, Mr Straker?’

  ‘God knows. Twenty-two or something up to … Peter’s thirty I think. Not that you’d guess. No job and no prospects either.’

  ‘Child custody won’t realistically be a factor then, Mr Straker. But you can depend on us to represent you … vigorously. That’s what we’re known for at these chambers. We never forget who it was who created the family’s wealth in the first place.’

  With lawyers retained by both sides and eager to lock horns, it was surprising how rapidly everything began to move. Davina found the process mortifying, though Miles considered it worse for himself than for his wife, since he had more to lose.

  His starting position—that Davina should buzz off without a penny or a bed to sleep in—quickly became untenable, his lawyer explaining that, in any ultimate settlement, the judge would take into account the behaviour of both parties in the interim. So with much complaining and ill will, he agreed to move out of Holland Park Square and rent a London apartment for himself. Davina would make her (temporary) home in Holland Park, while Miles kept possession of Chawbury Manor. In the long run, Miles intended keeping both his homes. If necessary he could rent Davina a small cottage in somewhere like Dorset, where you could get them cheap.

  He had chosen to hold on to Chawbury rather than Holland Park Square for two reasons. The first was simple spite. He realised Davina was more attached to their country house than their town one, and she would miss her garden. Well, that’ll teach her, was Miles’s attitude. Secondly, the greater part of his self-esteem was tied up in his ownership of Chawbury, nor did he want to loose access to it for his annual client lunch party. And so—grudgingly, reluctantly, and with many self-righteous outbursts against the injustice of the law—he instructed Davina through his lawyers to pack up his clothes and personal possessions and various paintings from Holland Park Square, and have them delivered to the first-floor flat in Mount Street which was to become his new weekday base.

  The Mount Street flat suited Miles surprisingly well and, with the help of his three assistants and Makepiece, his driver, who hung up his pictures, was soon made habitable. From his windows the view was of the Connaught Hotel, and there was twenty-four-hour porterage downstairs which made deliveries straightforward. At his insistence, Carmelita the maid came round four mornings a week from Holland Park to keep the place tidy, make his bed and wash up his coffee cup. Aside from coffee, Miles did not cook or eat in the flat, preferring the Connaught and Scotts.

  At first, the life of a late-life bachelor suited him very nicely. The removal of Davina from the scene made him realise how superfluous she had been for so long. He could not honestly say that, in material terms, his life was disadvantaged in any way without her. It was liberating not to have to inform her of his plans, or to find her clothes strewn over a bedroom chair or her toiletries cluttering up the bathroom. Between his secretaries, Carmelita and Mrs French, it was a simple task to run Mount Street and Chawbury Manor, and Miles began to think Davina had shot herself in the foot by walking out on him. As he attested in one of his many legal depositions about their marriage, Davina’s contribution to the running of the households was precisely nil. ‘She spent her days dabbling in watercolours and confusing my gardeners with her instructions,’ he asserted.

  Davina, meanwhile, felt perpetually anguished about her change of circumstance. Not wanting to discuss it with her friends, she saw almost nobody, apart from the children and Dawn. Dawn was the only friend she took into her confidence, and after their weekly yoga Dawn would always ask how Davina was feeling. True to her word, Davina tried hard not to complain about Miles beyond the general inference that their marriage had become unhappy. Dawn, for her part, was unrestrained in her prying, desperate to learn what precisely had gone wrong. Davina made Dawn promise to tell no one about the separation, even Ross, and it was a measure of Dawn’s loyalty to her friend that she resisted telling him for almost a week. When she did eventually tell him, Ross commented, ‘Well, it was the women, wasn’t it? Davina must have got fed up with all the other women.’

  Dawn was astonished. ‘Miles had mistresses? I’ve never heard that before.’

  ‘You must of. He’s famous for it. He was seeing Serena—your Serena, the decorator—for years and years apparently.’

  Dawn was so tantalised by this piece of gossip she couldn’t decide whether or not it was appropriate to pass it on to Davina. She didn’t want to be the one to upset her dear friend and neighbour; on the other hand, Davina probably knew about it already, and if she didn’t she surely ought to know, it might be relevant to the divorce. So, with trepidation, she did tell her what she’d heard. She was surprised when Davina seemed to take it calmly in her stride
. Though privately, Davina was mortified.

  As a matter of fact, Davina did not feel comfortable picking over her failed marriage with Dawn, particularly since she constantly raised the financial aspects of the divorce. She was far too keen to hear what Davina was expecting in any settlement, and what Miles’s ‘total wealth’ might be. ‘This house must be worth seven million at least,’ Dawn said, sitting at Davina’s kitchen table and gazing about her. ‘And Chawbury Manor has to be worth four. Five on a good day.’

  ‘I’ve really no idea,’ Davina replied vaguely. ‘I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘And Miles’s business must be making a mint too,’ Dawn went on. ‘Ross says it would fetch a multiple of eight times earnings in a trade sale.’

  For Davina, her priority lay in visiting or telephoning the children, and doing her best to reassure them she was alright, and that everything would continue to be alright in the future. She saw a great deal of Mollie, who was sweet to her and regularly came round for kitchen supper while Greg was out doing his politics. Since their marriage, his search for a safe Labour parliamentary seat had accelerated, and many of their weekends were spent up in the Midlands and the north of England making contact with constituency officials. Davina also spent several evenings in Roupell Street visiting Archie, Gemma and Mandy. One of the more obvious dividends of her separation from Miles was that she could now see her granddaughter whenever she liked, and invite her and Gemma over to Holland Park for tea and walks in the park. Mandy loved feeding the squirrels in Holland Park and playing in the playground which was so much nicer than the Vauxhall playground. Archie was still working on the door at Thurloes so was frequently out when Davina visited Roupell Street, which meant she got to know Gemma better, and discovered she liked her very much. She was a natural mother with plenty of common sense; a lot more than Archie, if truth be told.

  The preliminary sparring over the divorce ground on, and each time she received a letter from the lawyers she felt quite sick. Miles’s solicitors kept issuing manipulative diatribes, pages and pages long, which left her belittled and depressed. How could he allow them to write things he knew to be untrue? Her replies, at her insistence, started off conciliatory, attempting to defuse the escalating venom. But, over time, Davina found herself acquiescing to Angela’s argument that they should match fire with fire, until the replies sent in her name achieved a similar tone of violent injury and theatrical outrage as those sent in the name of Miles.