Not Playing the Game

by Jennifer Chapman

Damned foreigner, the chairman thought, though Bertie was as English as they came, even if he had been brought up in Golders Green. The rumblings would go on for months, the chairman knew that, but hoped it would all blow over because he reckoned Dan Lovell to be a sound man and a victim of circumstance, just as he had been himself over the business with the Boy Scouts. The best hope was that something would come along to supersede the wretched business, another little war, something of that nature. In the meantime, poor Lovell would just have to ride it out and keep a low profile.

  He took another drink off Goldschmidt then went home and telephoned Westminster.

  ‘How did it go?’ Dan asked.

  ‘Out for blood, my dear chap, some of ’em, at any rate, but my advice is just to sit tight.’

  ‘I expected as much,’ Dan said.

  ‘How is the little lady?’ the chairman enquired, solicitously.

  ‘She’s made a very good recovery,’ Dan told him, cringing at the chairman’s choice of words, wondering whether it was all worthwhile. ‘The court case will be unpleasant for her, but at least she’s familiar with these sort of proceedings.’

  ‘Eh?’ the chairman uttered.

  ‘At least she’s familiar with these sort of proceedings,’ Dan repeated louder. ‘You do know that she is a solicitor?’

  ‘Had no idea.’

  ‘She’s just become a partner in Marriott and Lovell.’

  ‘Business and pleasure. Dear, oh dear, they never mix, my dear chap.’

  Dan gave up. ‘Thank you for letting me know what’s happening,’ he said.

  ‘Anything I can do, you know that.’

  ‘Yes. I’m grateful. Goodnight then.’

  The next day Dan left London early and drove back to the constituency. He wanted to see Mickey, to make sure she was all right, to find out if he could do anything to help; but chiefly he wanted to pre-empt any thoughts she might have as to her own culpability in the mess they now faced.

  He realized it was more than likely he’d have to be a witness at the trial and that the attendant publicity would probably finish him. Fair or unfair, scandal stuck, and almost certainly the party would expect his resignation; but his most immediate fear was the effect this would have on Mickey.

  As soon as he entered the office, he was aware of that particular sensation of being an embarrassing presence. Wilma, habitually deferential, but with the ease of the long-serving employee confident of her position, now flushed when she saw him and avoided eye contact during a brief and awkward exchange of pleasantries. He might have been charged with the rape himself and could almost hear Wilma’s heart racing and thudding.

  ‘Is Mrs Evans in?’ he asked, subconsciously reacting to the seemingly hostile reception by referring to Mickey in formal title.

  ‘Yes, and Mr Victor,’ Wilma said, implying by her tone that the old gentleman was there for the gravest of purposes.

  ‘I’d better see him first,’ Dan said, thinking aloud more than addressing Wilma.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, as if he had been attempting to appease her and only partially succeeded. A sudden wave of irritation, even anger, rose in him.

  ‘Thank you, Wilma,’ he said curtly, the only time in the many years he had known her that he’d spoken sharply.

  He went through to his office where Victor Marriott was ensconced with a tray of tea and biscuits and a copy of The Times. He realized now that he had committed the cardinal error of failing to consult his retired partner, of completely disregarding him. He was blackly guilty of consigning Victor to the past and in the moment of seeing him was stung by remorse at this thoughtlessness.

  ‘Dan!’ Victor half-rose, stiffly.

  ‘Please Victor, don’t get up.’

  ‘I’ll ask Wilma to bring another cup,’ the old man said, sinking back into his seat.

  ‘No, I’m alright, thank you,’ Dan said.

  There was a pause.

  ‘How are things?’ Victor enquired into the silence.

  ‘Victor, I must apologize for not speaking to you sooner. It was inexcusable.’

  ‘Oh, I should think you’ve enough on your plate without worrying about me,’ Victor countered, stirring his tea, but Dan could tell he was upset.

  ‘A bad business though,’ he added. ‘Bad all round.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is,’ Dan concurred. ‘I may have to resign my seat.’

  ‘I trust not, Dan. I trust not.’

  The teaspoon fell with a clatter into the saucer. Victor looked at him, and Dan, innocent, felt heavily guilty.

  ‘This firm, you know, has been in practice since the turn of the century,’ the old man said.

  Initially this observation seemed something of a non sequitur, though had he been less exhausted Dan would have gathered straight away the direction in which it was to lead.

  ‘These wretched cases, always “not guilty” pleas, that’s the trouble,’ Victor had continued. ‘I remember a particularly unpleasant one, years ago it was, involving some poor woman who, undoubtedly, was an innocent victim; but the accused pleaded not guilty and the defence dragged up details of every liaison she’d ever had. The case was proved but I reckon the chap who raped her got off lightly with a prison sentence. Her punishment was far worse; she had to go on living in the community where everyone knew the most intimate details of her private life, and the same applied to her husband and the other men she’d known. Oh, I know the legislation has changed since then and there’s supposed to be anonymity for the victims of rape cases, but I wonder how much.’

  ‘Especially when a semi-public figure is involved,’ Dan said, saving Victor the unpleasant conclusion to the point he was making.

  ‘I can’t say how sorry I am,’ Victor said after a moment’s pause, and the sort of sigh that had to pass a lump in the throat. ‘To me though, the paramount consideration has always been the continuation of the old firm.’ His voice had become a little shaky.

  ‘I understand,’ Dan said evenly. ‘I’m sorry as well, Victor. Sorry you’ve had this worry.’

  ‘I must be on my way,’ the old man concluded, rising fully this time, his tone now changed to a lighter note, his burdensome task completed. ‘I’ve been given a shopping list as long as your arm.’ He made an exaggerated chuckling sound and edged towards the door.

  ‘Don’t worry about seeing me out,’ he carried on. ‘Wilma can fetch my coat.’

  When he was gone, Dan, alone in the office, felt only sympathy, knowing him well enough to understand how very difficult it must have been for Victor to have sought his resignation from the firm. He considered his situation for some little while then called through to Mickey on the intercom.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As predicted by Victor Marriott, Arthur’s plea to the charge of rape was to be ‘not guilty’, and how could it be otherwise when he stated so positively that Mickey had been his mistress, that they had holidayed together on the Island of Sark, that she had invited him to the Lovell house the night of the supposed rape.

  Mickey, who understood so well the workings of the law, nonetheless felt persecuted by its processes now that she was caught up in them subjectively. The endless questioning by the police and then by her own solicitor, and her inability to explain, even to herself, how she had allowed Arthur into her life. He’d been like a crevasse she’d been powerless to prevent herself falling down, but how could so weak and esoteric an explanation be proffered in court? But then why did anybody fall from the green and pleasant land of open sunshine into the dark recesses where nothing was clear, the discomfort extreme and the means of escape an impossible mystery. Mickey was not consciously a great dweller upon self. She was in her own eyes quite ordinary: she’d never attempted anything special or truly adventurous, yet the likening of Arthur to a crevasse came to her after reading a story in the newspaper about a man who fell down the real thing on the Polar icecap and broke his leg and might have died. Mickey read the story and wondered why anyone would want to attempt such da
ngerous ground and in the bleakness of a frozen wasteland.

  Perhaps for Mickey it was simply that love had not worked and she’d looked for something else, equally absorbing and confusing to replace it.

  Now she found the only way she could face the forthcoming trial was numbly. Worse than what was happening to herself was the dragging of Dan into the affair. His kindness and assurances of no blame on her part tore at her more than if he’d been angry and accusing; but the thing had to be got through and nothing could improve or alter the circumstances.

  Without fully realizing it, she was allowing herself a degree of punishment by remaining at her parents’ house. They too were kind but so dreadfully partisan that her sense of guilt gained a mammoth proportion.

  According to Molly and the Walrus their elder daughter was the victim of two monsters: the one, Arthur, unspeakable and skirted around like a bereavement, and the other, David, whose reputation for drinking had now reached beyond the social circle of the club.

  ‘Thank goodness you didn’t have a baby,’ Molly said, and Mickey’s inside ached with emptiness.

  The Walrus cashed in the portfolio of investments David had arranged for him and changed all the insurance policies. He told Mickey what he had done and blew into his moustache with a gust of vengeance.

  Mickey could think of nothing to say. She no longer knew what was expected of her and as she felt she’d never known how to please her parents in the presentation of her personality, she allowed these brickbats to fall on her without protest, though the injustice of their misconception sliced further grooves in her guilt-ridden soul.

  Then the unexpected happened. Two days before the trial was due to begin David telephoned and asked if he could see her. Despite all that had taken place and the logical explanation that probably he wanted to discuss the divorce, Mickey’s heart danced at the sound of his voice and the hope she had thought buried leapt forth with insane joy.

  After she had replaced the receiver, she saw that her hand was shaking. She felt hot and cold at the same time and foolishly lightheaded. David had said nothing to indicate anything glorious in his wanting to see her but there had been an absence of hostility in his tone, a reversion to something approaching his old manner of speaking to her, the suggestion of intimacy.

  They were to meet that evening, in the bar of the hotel where the gaudy, indigestible dinner dances had taken place, but more particularly, where they’d had the wedding reception: those two hideous events, enjoyed and destroyed by a myriad of treacheries.

  Mickey phoned Molly from the office and told a lie as to why she’d not be home for dinner and at half-past seven drove to the hotel. David was already at the bar and Mickey noticed straight away how ill he looked. His skin had a grey pallor and his physical attitude was slumped, added to which, he was drinking tomato juice. When he saw her he stood down from the stool and smiled.

  ‘What can I get you?’ he asked, friendly but ill at ease.

  ‘I’ll have the same as you,’ she answered, taking in every detail of his face and expression.

  ‘I’ll call the barman,’ he continued, awkwardly. ‘Do you want to find a table.’

  Now that she was with him their physical closeness produced a strange new sense of loss. Here was an area of being she had inhabited and by some terrible mistake moved away. Everything was familiar but in the past; a place of which she was no longer the tenant, revisited.

  She sat down in a quiet area of the room and in a minute David joined her with drinks.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked after a few moments’ silence.

  ‘I’m alright,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see that you were.’

  She didn’t answer. This was more than she could stand, his being kind.

  ‘Mickey, I’ve been worrying about how you’ve been, and now that it’s so close . . .’ mentioning the trial was difficult.

  ‘There’s a trick to getting through these things, you just have to pretend that none of it’s really happening,’ she heard herself say, quite clearly, even loudly, though she wasn’t sure how it sounded.

  David, his head bowed, gazed down at his hands, the fingers loosely linked.

  ‘I’m sorry you’re having to go through all this,’ he said.

  ‘You’d be justified in saying it’s all my own fault,’ she said, quietly.

  He glanced up at her.

  ‘Not entirely,’ he said.

  His hands parted and for a moment she thought he was going to touch her, on the arm, on the leg, her body felt like a magnet pulling his touch to it. If only his hand would make the first contact it seemed that everything else might fall into place, all the dislocated pieces come together again.

  She sat very still. He had not touched her but it was impossible he did not sense the current he had created.

  ‘Mickey,’ he said, looking at her again. ‘I wanted to see you.’

  She waited for him to go on.

  ‘I wanted to see you,’ he repeated as if he had thought better of elaborating the point. He smiled. ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing.’

  She tried to think what to say though it was agonizing extending her mind to the outward things.

  ‘I’ve been offered work in America,’ she said.

  For a fraction of a second the smile froze on David’s face.

  ‘I see. I’m so pleased for you. What a marvellous opportunity.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When do you go?’

  ‘Oh, soon. I expect.’

  They were silent again.

  ‘What about you. What have you been doing?’ she asked. She’d closed the door. Slammed it shut in his face. Stupid! Stupid! Oh why had she mentioned America.

  ‘The same old thing. No games though, no sport at all for months. I’ll have to get back soon or I’ll seize up completely.’

  ‘How are the others? I haven’t seen anyone, not since . . .’ It was a meeting destined for incomplete sentences.

  ‘Much the same. Will any of them change?’ The comment surprised her with its weariness. ‘Would you like another drink?’ he added.

  ‘Let me get them,’ she offered. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘I’d like a scotch, but I won’t, I’ve given it up, trying to, anyway. No, I won’t have anything else and I must let you get home!’

  ‘If you’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. As I said, I just wanted to see you, to make sure you were alright, and you are.’ He stood up for a moment and put his hand on her shoulders. She thought he was going to say something else but again seemed to think better of it.

  She watched him cross the room. At the door he paused and briefly turned to see her staring after him. She had never felt so lonely.

  *

  ‘Where have you been? I was worried sick you’d gone out on a bender,’ Josephine accused him.

  ‘I’m quite sober,’ he snapped with the irritability of the drinker denied alcohol.

  ‘Alright. Alright. I’m sorry,’ Josephine snapped back, then she sighed and went towards him, touching his arm. ‘I’m sorry, David,’ she repeated, cautiously.

  He moved away from her. The sight of her sunk into his heart to produce a sensation he had been trying for some time to ignore.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked again, this time without accusation.

  ‘To see Mickey,’ he answered her and, if she’d given him the space of another moment he might have added an explanation, dug out of the guilt that came from his lack of feeling for her.

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘David, we’ve got to talk.’

  He followed her from the hallway into the living room. She waddled now with the weight of her pregnancy. She sat down awkwardly and waited for him to take the seat opposite. He felt alert, uneasy but with a premonition of the release he now knew he must have.

  ‘David, I can’t marry you. I’m sorry, but there it is.’ She seemed to be holding herself in. ‘It’s not just because of Mickey, I don’t want you to think that. It’s simply th
at I don’t want to be married, not to anyone.’

  ‘Jo,’ he began to interrupt.

  ‘No, please, let me finish. You see I don’t think I can live with you or anyone else, not permanently. I’m a phoney, you see,’ her words were running on now, unstoppable, ‘I’m the sort of person who talks with authority about Mahler or Chagall when I’ve only heard about them myself on the telly. I become an art expert overnight after reading half an article in the Sunday Times colour supplement. It’s the way I am and I don’t want to live with someone who knows. They’d end up despising me or treating me as a joke, but worse, they’d make me despise myself. You see, I can cope with it alone. I can go on pretending to myself.’

  There was nothing David could say, though he was immensely grateful to her and perhaps had some slight idea that the performance had been just that and entirely for his benefit.

  ‘I’d like to move back to my flat as soon as possible,’ she continued, ‘before the baby is born. I think I’ll be able to stay there. The law is on the side of pregnant women these days. I can’t lose my job.’ Being practical was the only course.

  ‘If you’re sure this is what you want,’ he said, after what he hoped was a decent pause. He stood up and moved towards the table of drinks.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said, her eyes following him, watching his hand hover over the spirits. The delicate process of weaning him off the booze precluded hiding the bottles. She knew how close he was to being an alcoholic and that any obvious measures of restraint would destroy his resolve. If he thought of himself as dependent on drink there was the danger he would accept it as a battle lost. She waited, willing him to come away from the table. Her greatest fear was that he would not hold out between her leaving and Mickey returning.

  ‘Will you help me put my things together,’ she said, unable to resist distracting him. ‘I might as well leave tonight.’

  He turned to her, leaving the bottles untouched.

  ‘Jo.’

  ‘Yes?’ Oh please God, she could not cope with a kindly compromise, the platitudes of pity.

  ‘You’re not a phoney.’