by Bill James
Naturally, Manse had to adjust the truth a certain amount, anyway, before he dealt with his lawyers. It would not be clever to let them know where his main money came from, or much about it at all, really. They thought the haulage and scrap metal firm produced his income. Or they pretended to think it. They did not want to be told the reality, did they? Certain tough and kinky rules cooked up by the law chiefs governed their game and they had to be careful which kinds of business folk they took on to their books, fearing taint. Too much truth could be … too much. They’d probably heard ‘haulage and scrap’ mentioned by quite a few of their customers and would never laugh or even smile at it. You expected this kind of considerate treatment when you was paying the sort of fees lawyers wanted, especially London lawyers. It was all based on so much an hour, or not so much but very much an hour. Manse would write the cheque, though, and never niggle. He needed them. He felt more comfortable knowing they was there and screwing him the way top lawyers did to folk throughout the centuries. You could not get safe, and stay safe, cheap.
The lawyer he had to see was a woman and black. Manse did not mind. He felt they should be allowed to get on if they was good enough. That is, women, white or black, and blacks, women or men. He thought she took a reasonable interest in the parts of his life he had come to talk about, namely, the divorce and his will. He found it strange in a way to think of her ancestors in, say, Jamaica or the Congo, ages ago, and now producing this woman who would look into some of the most important matters of his personal self. Those ancestors could never of imagined one of their descendants might one day be taking a detailed scan of Manse’s private situation. She was probably brought up in this country. She didn’t have an accent, except London. But, obviously, her roots would go back to somewhere else.
She was about thirty-two, wearing light-coloured glasses and an engagement ring and wedding ring, so she should understand OK about divorce. The light-coloured glasses didn’t spoil her looks. In fact, they seemed just right to show she was a lawyer, not a waitress somewhere. Manse would certainly never try any moves with her, though, because it would be not very appropriate, considering what he’d come to see her about. And, in any case, she had the rings. They might mean something. The engagement ring had two square diamonds at least half a centimetre by half a centimetre, and most likely genuine. The wedding ring was wide and pale. The paleness did not mean it was low grade gold. Manse had heard that Welsh gold had this whitish tinge, and the Royal Family liked it. Her husband might also be a lawyer and they could have quite a decent home somewhere with a fair whack of money going in. Good luck to them. If she had children she might be able to pay a nanny, ethnic or not. This was how things was changing in Britain. Why not? To quite a degree Manse believed in change and equal chances.
She had some papers in front of her on the desk. She said: ‘They’re asking for a one-off payment of two million to your wife, to complete the divorce, Mr Shale.’
‘That’s the kind of figure I thought they’d come up with.’
The room was big. Manse would not say too big, though some might consider the size of it showy. Most probably it could be called a suite. One side had a big table with nine chairs around. It must be for conferences, proving she could call people here and they’d have to come. Eight of the chairs was ordinary, straight-backed office furniture. At one end of the table, though, he noticed a much larger chair, with arms to it and a high back. This must be where she sat when she organized one of her meetings. Manse thought she deserved it if she had done all her law exams and brought in a lot of fees to the company, Crossman, Fenton and Stuckey. She was Fenton, Joan Fenton. He would of been pissed off if they had given him less than a partner. He had to be treated as considerable.
She said: ‘As I see it, Sybil left you and the children. Desertion. We could reasonably dispute any claim at all, let alone two million.’
‘She’ll need a bit of cash.’
‘But she’s not your responsibility now.’
‘You can’t just step away from that kind of thing.’
‘This is what divorce means. It’s an act of stepping away.’
Manse didn’t get ratty at being given a lesson like this, even though she was a woman and black. In her kind of job she would be used to having her say. They spent their time arguing. In any case, he would admit she was probably right when she said ‘an act of stepping away’. Lawyers could be like that – blunt. Manse wondered if he felt scared of stepping away. Did he want to hang on to Sybil somehow? But giving her big money wouldn’t help him hang on to her. It would help her stay away from him. He felt confused now.
‘I can understand you don’t want to seem punitive,’ the lawyer said.
‘That would be cruel,’ Manse said. ‘Syb’s Syb.’
‘Syb’s a bit of a slag.’
‘Oh, I –’
‘We don’t reward her for sloping off and ditching you, Matilda and Laurent.’
‘She’s taken up with some nobody as far as I can make out. He’s got no career worth talking about.’
‘My notes say he’s a vet.’
‘Along those lines. Or a roofer. She’s used to expenditure. All right, she’s living in North Wales where the shops in Rhyl or Prestatyn are not Rome or Paris, but I don’t like to think of her having to skimp. If you’re stuck in a place like that you probably need to do a lot of purchasing to help your morale. I heard there’s a town there that looks like it’s made of slate and it’s always raining. I expect there’ll be a station and trains to London or Manchester where she could find fashion items, travelling First in case of unpleasantness from soccer hooligans and so on. She flits about. Well, obviously. It costs. Plus, there’s the skiing and riding and Wimbledon.’
‘I’d like to offer them something – a token – to show the sods you’re not vindictive, but nothing like what they’re asking. This is a real, standard try-on. Of course it is. It’s the kind of thing we expect at the start of a negotiation, not much more than a formality, the insolent prats.’
‘Ah,’ he replied.
‘What?’
‘You’re saying it wouldn’t be good for your image or the firm’s if you agreed too easily to what they’re asking. You’d look soft, a pushover?’
‘Fifty grand would be generous beyond,’ she said. ‘I’ll offer them twenty as starters, and see where we go from there.’
‘She’s the mother of my children,’ Manse said.
‘Well, yes. That’s quite usual for a wife. What’s not so usual is she buggers off and abandons them.’
‘Have you got children?’
‘Have I?’
‘Well, yes. Have you?’
‘This meeting’s about you, Mr Shale, not me. We’re getting along really well now, aren’t we? And so to the will.’
It struck Manse as wrong, this damn breeziness from her. She did not seem interested in whether he could of paid the two million if he had to. It made him feel small. They ask for two million and she’s going to offer twenty grand, maybe going to fifty, so as not to seem vindictive, as she called it. Wouldn’t it seem like vindictive to reply with a brush-off twenty grand when they’d demanded a hundred times more? He saw now it had been crazy even to think of making a move for her, and even to think of making a move for her and rejecting the idea. This one didn’t hardly know he existed. She came from a family tradition going back generations there in the Caribbean or Africa and didn’t bother with people like Manse, except as business. He had always recognized he was a flash-in-the-pan. It became so clear when he was up against a lot of history, like hers. He was in off the street from some dump outside London and she’d settle his little matters fast and send him back there. He’d more or less said the two million was OK with him, which meant he had a lot more beside that. But she did not seem to care. She would arrange his life for him like she wanted it and maybe not like he wanted it and then it would be, ‘Goodbye Mr Shale, we’ve got along really well, haven’t we?’ In a couple of weeks he’d ge
t a letter saying she couldn’t work it down to twenty grand but kept it to forty grand and in a couple of weeks later here comes the bill, terms strictly thirty days, and meaty.
‘We have to cater for what happens if you die soon,’ she said.
‘Well, yes.’
‘That is, before the children are old enough to take their shares of the inheritance direct and in full.’ ‘Well, yes.’
‘I know there are physical risks in the haulage and scrap business. Runaway vehicles. Old iron heaps shifting.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘It’s obvious we mustn’t have Sybil controlling trust funds meant to guard assets for the children. The divorce helps us here, certainly. She’ll no longer have much of a case for administering any such trust. If you remarry or begin an established partnership, we can then do a will that specifically names the new wife or partner as principal trustee. That would finally cut Sybil right out.’
‘In her own way, she’s quite fond of the children.’
‘Which way is that?’
‘I don’t think she’d scheme to cheat them out of their legacies.’
‘Do you want the money you’ve managed to put by through enterprise and prudence in the haulage and scrap trades, despite competition and hazard, to go to some bed-hopping slapper, and whomever she’s shagging at the time, singular or various, instead of remaining safe for Laurent and Matilda until they reach due age?’
‘I don’t think of Syb as –’
‘Are the children to be sole beneficiaries?’ she replied. ‘I mean, as things stand at present. That is, you, divorced, single, unattached. Do you have other family you might want to see right?’
‘Not exactly family.’
‘Kith rather than kin?’
‘That kind of thing.’
‘Women?’
‘These are people who –’
‘You started relationships for comfort when Sybil pushed off? Did you cohabit?’ ‘That matters?’ he asked.
‘It might give extra credibility to any claim they made against your estate. If they had the run of your home it suggests depth. How many?’
‘Three in particular, but never at the same time.’
‘Each had spells living with you and the children?’
‘Very, very limited,’ Manse said.
‘What duration?’
‘Never more than weeks.’
‘How many weeks?’
‘Four. Perhaps five or six, absolute max.’
‘And how far did the cohabiting go?’
‘Well, we –’
‘I mean, did they carry out domestic tasks about the house – cooking, cleaning, helping with the children: wifely things? If it came to a dispute, these could have a symbolic significance, suggest further depth. Could any of them cite, say, ironing, freezer de-icing, window-cleaning, hosting parties at your place?’
‘They were very kind.’
‘Have you got names?’
‘Well, of course.’
‘Would you write them down, please?’ She pushed a note pad and pencil over the desk to him. He listed the three, Lowri, Patricia and Carmel. She took the pad back and glanced at it. ‘At the end of one of these tours of duty, who decided it was over?’ Joan Fenton asked.
‘This often took place without any sign of distress or anger. I live in an ex-rectory and would hate to have screams and yells in that kind of property.’
‘You would decide it was over?’ she replied.
‘I can see the importance of that question, in the circumstances.’
‘Did any of them, all of them, ever return for a further few weeks?’
‘Never overlapping. They was a real help – I mean, helping keep my spirits up.’
‘Etcetera. I’d say you’ve got to remember each of them for at least a thirtieth of your assets, and possibly a twenty-fifth. Courts would be sympathetic to them. Did it trouble the children – these women alternating in and out?’
‘They never got the names wrong or showed they liked one better than the others, which could of obviously been hurtful.’
‘Did you?’
‘What?’
‘Like one of them better than the others. Shall we make it, two thirtieths and one twenty-fifth? But that might cause aggro and disputes. Where there are several mistresses performing the same services it can be tricky working out which is the primus inter pares.’
‘I’d rather think of them as friends.’
‘An eternal problem where there is a multiplicity of crumpet,’ she replied. ‘Primus inter pares – first among equals is an oxymoron, of course, yet like most oxymorons has an accessible meaning.’
‘I heard they’re well known for it.’
She stood up. ‘I suppose that in London you’re reasonably safe – lost in the crowd, as it were. But, talking of possible early death, and taking into account your profession and its uncertainties, I hope you normally have a bodyguard, bodyguards, nearby. And a bodyguard, bodyguards, you can trust. Goodbye, Mr Shale. I’ll get the trust details worked out. Next time you’re in London everything should be ready for signature. Matters have gone very well, I’d say, wouldn’t you?’
Shale considered he and the Pre-Raphaelites were very close in a spiritual sense, despite the century and a half gap. At the Denz funeral, Mrs Lake had spoken in quite a decent style of a possible new partner for him, but, obviously, neither of them knew then that on the next afternoon, following the divorce and will discussions, he’d meet Naomi Gage for the first time on this trip. They both came to stand at more or less the same instant in front of an Edward Prentis picture called The Remembrance. Shale already had a Prentis on the wall at home, and, eventually, this helped in the conversation with Naomi. But he didn’t go forward at a rush talking to her. That would be like trying a pick-up, and he could tell this would turn her off. She did not at all look the type. She gave most of her eye contact to The Remembrance. He just stayed there, gazing, the two of them quiet, appreciating. Manse thought the best plan was to let the Edward Prentis do the work.
He could feel an invisible but strong link being made, from the painting to him and from him to her, or possibly the other way, from the painting to her and from her to him. But whichever direction you took, it always started from The Remembrance, like that picture had been put there only to draw the two together and offer them a kind of blessing. Yes, he knew this must be rubbish, but the idea did take hold of him for a little while, and brought delight. Although the gallery was quite busy Manse had the notion that the three had become sealed off and private: The Remembrance, the woman and himself. Hubert could not of been part of it, even if he’d gone with Manse to the gallery.
Although clearly impossible, Manse would have liked to thank Denzil for causing the visit to London and creating in a roundabout manner the chance for this deep Prentis experience, a kind of unplanned spin-off from his cremation. Manse realized that some refused to class Edward Prentis as a real Pre-Raphaelite – not one of the ‘Brotherhood’, as a group of painters of that period called themselves. But Manse loved his work and he could see at once that Naomi did, too. But, of course, he did not know her name at that stage.
Manse stood in front of the Edward Prentis Remembrance painting with Naomi, though, clearly, he wasn’t exactly with Naomi and did not know her to be Naomi at that time. He had to realize that many people stood close to other people in galleries when looking at pictures, but this did not necessarily bring them together at all, beyond the togetherness of looking at the same pictures. Any linking was with the pictures not with one another. As Shale saw it, the difficulties he met came in two special kinds.
First: how could he start a conversation? Manse would feel ashamed to seem like some slimy git sniffing around galleries for women on their own to chat up. That meant high-quality and famous art would be treated as nothing more than a classy route to a pull, showing rotten disrespect for the Pre-Raphaelites and for Naomi. As Manse saw things, he had come to the gallery for th
e Pre-Raphaelites, not to prowl for attractive women, but if an attractive woman turned up in front of a Pre-Raphaelite, and the same Pre-Raphaelite that Manse was enjoying, this could be regarded as possibly a pleasant bit of luck. Possibly, yes. The piece of luck could be ruined, though, if he said or did anything that made her think he was just a schemer on the lech trail. Such glorious use of colour, wouldn’t you say? Or, to put it another way, Feel like a fuck?
Second … but Manse found the second problem much more complicated. While they was both admiring the Edward Prentis a family came into the room, parents and two boys, the boys aged about ten and twelve, one crew-cut, the other blond curls. Manse could tell at once these was the kind of offspring who didn’t give a monkey’s about galleries or the Pre-Raphaelites. He didn’t understand why the parents had brought them. They should of left them home with their warder. The two kids started chasing each other and shouting and pretending to fight and did most of it in front of the Edward Prentis. There ought to of been an attendant in the room to tell them to quieten down, but there wasn’t and Manse said: ‘Now, lads, this isn’t the place for games. You’re spoiling our view of the picture.’
One boy, the younger one, gave him the finger and the other – crew-cut – said, ‘Piss off, ugly mug.’
Manse said: ‘That’s enough. Get lost.’
The father said in a big, icy voice: ‘Hey, you, did I hear you speak to my boys?’ He and his wife were on the other side of the room looking at a picture by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, a definite true star of Pre-Raphaelites.
‘Are they your boys?’ Manse said.
‘What does that mean?’ he said.
‘What do you think it means? It means are they your boys?’ Manse said.
‘He’s being rude, Geoff,’ his wife said. He was about forty, hefty, wearing a brown leather waistcoat over a red T-shirt. Maybe this was his gallery outfit. Manse could imagine him this morning in Ruislip, or Guildford – that kind of place – thinking to himself, ‘What will I put on today for the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition? Ah, of course – the brown leather waistcoat.’