The Needle's Eye

by Margaret Drabble

  He arrived at Rose’s just after half eleven. Emily opened the door to him, the telegram in her hand. She gave it to him. It read: AM LEAVING COUNTRY WITH CHILDREN AS LEGAL MEANS SEEM DILATORY AND DOUBTFUL STOP HOPE YOU ENJOY YOURSELF WITHOUT THEM AS MUCH AS I DID

  ‘What a bastard,’ said Simon.

  ‘Lovely, isn’t it,’ said Emily.

  The telegram was dated with the day’s date, and had been sent at eight thirty in the morning. Emily said he had picked the children up at nine, so she assumed he had sent the telegram from home before leaving, but could not decipher the postcodes to be sure of this. ‘And now,’ said Emily, ‘I’ve got to go, I’m sorry, I’ve got to go, I feel awful, leaving you like this, but I dumped all the children at a neighbour’s and I daren’t leave them there a minute longer, I’ll ring you, shall I, and see what’s happened? Rose is downstairs in the kitchen. What a lunatic that man is, he ought to be locked up. I’ll ring you, shall I?’

  And off she went, running down the street to the bus stop on the corner. Simon went downstairs, and there was Rose, sitting in the semi-basement on the old settee. She did not look up at him as he entered: staring at the floor, she said stiffly, ‘I didn’t want to ring you.’

  ‘Rose,’ he said.

  She looked up, and then stood up. He walked towards her and put his arms round her and she leant against him.

  ‘I’m so ashamed,’ she said, into his chest.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry. I should never have let you go yesterday.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, muffled, quivering, leaning towards him and stiffening back in the same movement, ‘no, no, I should never have come, I must have been mad, I should never have come.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘never mind.’

  He held her in his arms, and stroked her tight shoulders. He had imagined holding her, often, and always in terms such as these: to reassure, to help, to console. It was on these terms that he had first known her. And he had imagined for himself satisfactory moments, such as this, such as yesterday when he had so badly failed. And in the projected images he had been glad, at last, to hold her, glad that she had turned to him, glad that grief had driven her to him. But of course it was not like that at all. Because what he had never allowed to have any reality was the degree and the nature of the crisis that would give her to him, that would lean her against him, as she now was leaning. She was too unhappy, he could not take any comfort while she was so unhappy. There was no satisfaction in it. He was too unhappy on her account. He should have known that that was how it would be.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said again, as much to himself as to her.

  He was still holding the telegram. After a moment she backed away from him: they looked at it together.

  ‘Do you believe it?’ he said.

  ‘How could one know?’ she said. ‘How could one possibly know?’

  ‘Are the children on his passport?’

  ‘Yes, they are. All three of them. We were going to France for a week, just after Maria was born, and we put all three of them in both passports. We shouldn’t have done, I know. I knew it.’

  ‘I’d better ring the solicitor again,’ he said: she gave him the number, and he rang. This time he was in: he had been out shopping with his wife in the car. Rose sat and listened, while Simon explained who he was, and what had happened, and asked what ought to be done. She heard them discussing injunctions, and affidavits, and vacation judges, and the extreme difficulty of getting anything done at Whit weekend when judges and barristers are on golf courses, and airports are crammed with casual holidaymakers. What Simon could hear and she could not was her solicitor’s deep disapprobation of the whole affair. What those two need is a psychiatrist, not a solicitor, he said, from time to time. He had been hoping to spend the day asleep in the garden, had Rose’s solicitor. However, as the minutes ticked by, he managed to work up a little enthusiasm for the task ahead: he insisted on speaking to Rose, and explained to her that she would have to provide an affidavit explaining why she needed an ex parte injunction. She dictated the contents of the telegram to him, and this time could not miss the snort of indignation that Jeremy Alford gave, in his quiet house. ‘All right,’ he said then, ‘that’s enough, I’ll draft something, don’t you worry. Just you sit and wait, I’ll be back to you on the phone in a few minutes, as soon as I’ve got hold of the judge and Counsel. Don’t go away, will you, I’ll be needing you and that telegram.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s all a mistake,’ said Rose, at this point. ‘Perhaps he didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I don’t care whether it’s a mistake or not,’ said Jeremy Alford. ‘I’m not taking any more risks with that man. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘All right,’ said Rose, meekly, and put down the telephone.

  And then she and Simon prepared to wait. Simon made Rose a cup of tea, and told her not to worry. She looked at him anxiously, and tried to drink her tea. They were both thinking of the Calvacoressi case, though neither of them dared to mention it. After five minutes, the solicitor rang back saying that he had got hold of the vacation judge’s private phone number from the duty officer at the court, and that luckily it happened to be Mr Justice Ward, an exceptionally nice man, who luckily happened to live conveniently near, in Highgate. So as soon as I’ve got hold of Counsel, I’ll be back on to you too and we’ll arrange to meet up together, he said. Lucky you’re there to make sure she turns up, said Jeremy Alford to Simon. Yes, said Simon, looking at Rose, sitting on the chair arm, biting nervously at the quick of one finger, running the fingers of the other hand through her hair. I’ve just remembered, said Alford, in a low voice, about that Calvacoressi case. Yes, said Simon. I’m sure you’re right.

  After another ten minutes, he rang back and said that all the barristers in the relevant Chambers seemed to be out, probably in their country cottages. What on earth do I do now? he said. He was beginning to sound rattled. Simon was getting quite fond of him. Try them all again, said Simon. One of them is in a hotel in Weymouth, Alford said, I got the number and tried to get him paged, I was getting so worried, but they said he’d gone out for a walk with a packed lunch. Try some of the others again, said Simon, they can’t all be out.

  A quarter of an hour later, Jeremy Alford rang back and said he had got hold of Francis Morris, at his tennis club, and had persuaded him to meet him in half an hour at his own home in Barnsbury. If you drive Rose over here, he said, she can read the affidavit I’ve drafted, and swear it, and I’ll get the order from Francis as well. All right, said Simon. Two minutes later Alford rang back and said for God’s sake don’t forget to bring that telegram, will you, we can’t do anything without it.

  So Simon collected Rose, and the telegram, and put them both in the car, and drove them down the hill to Barnsbury. It was a beautiful morning: London lay like a map from the hill top, green sewage works, Hackney marshes, towers, railways, council blocks, all glittering with glass and metal in the summer air. They passed the Palace, went down, over the Archway bridge with its wrought-iron work, and into Islington. The clock in the car said that it was now ten past twelve. An aeroplane flew overhead. Perhaps Christopher and the children were by this time high up over the Mediterranean. Rose asked, as they drove down Upper Street, what the injunction would mean: would the police arrest Christopher at an airport, should he still be in the country? How would they know who he was? How would they get the message? Simon found it hard to reply, because he did not really know the answers, though it suddenly struck him that he ought to have asked Rose, while she was still at home, if she knew her husband’s passport number, which would surely be a help to the Home Office. Too late now, for she certainly wouldn’t know it off by heart.

  He had visions of the Sunday papers, covered with items about Rose and Christopher. He wondered if she had thought of that. It would make a pleasant Sunday distraction from the Turkish death toll. He wondered how the press got hold of such information. Jeremy Alford had said something a
bout the press. It wasn’t going to be very pleasant, he suspected.

  When they arrived at Alford’s house in Barnsbury, Alford himself was waiting on the steps for them. Their greetings were perfunctory: Alford hustled them into the house, where Francis Morris, gloriously dressed in white from his tennis, was waiting for them and drinking a glass of beer. ‘Hello, hello,’ he said, in a reassuringly fruity public-school voice: Simon noted himself feeling reassured, like any guilty party with a good defence, though he knew for a fact that Francis had more voice than brain. ‘Well, well, well,’ said Francis Morris, smiling blandly as though it were a party, ‘quite a little drama, this time, Mrs Vassiliou?’

  And even Rose smiled faintly, responsively.

  ‘Never you mind, Mrs Vassiliou,’ said Morris. ‘We’ve been talking it over, Jeremy and I, and we think you’ve nothing to worry about, nothing at all. Even if he’s already got the children out of the country, we’ll get them back again. And as for the custody case, he’s done himself in completely, hasn’t he, Jeremy?’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s right,’ said Jeremy Alford. ‘Now look, Rose, here’s a copy of the affidavit, would you just read it through, and then I’m terribly sorry, we’ll just have to go down the road to a friend of mine who’s going to act as Commissioner for Oaths, so he can witness it.’

  There seemed to be an air of urgency: Rose produced the telegram, read the affidavit, was marched down the road to a fellow solicitor who was lying in bed with flu, swore it, marched back again. And now, said Jeremy Alford, now we can go and visit the judge.

  ‘What, all of us?’ said Rose. She was so confused by now that she had no idea what was happening.

  ‘Yes, all of us,’ said Jeremy Alford.

  So they all got into Simon’s car, and he drove them back up the hill to Highgate.

  Mr Justice Ward’s house was an agreeable house. Perhaps it was the look of the house itself, as much as the feeling that they had reached authority, that calmed their jangling nerves – for the bonhomie of Francis, at first so welcome, had begun to appear forced, and Simon had started to wonder why the fool hadn’t taken two minutes off to change out of his tennis things, they weren’t really all that becoming, after all. Jeremy Alford was feeling guilty about having left his very pregnant wife cooking the lunch when he had promised her an easy weekend, and his guilt was making him irritable. And as for Rose, she simply didn’t seem to know what was happening. She was clutching the telegram, Exhibit A, as though it were a death warrant. So the calming influence of the Ward house was much needed. It was an attractive but modest house, 1905, detached and homely, with flowerbeds in front of it and flowers in window boxes, and it had a particularly attractive fanlight. Simon was staring at the fanlight when Lady Ward opened the door, and he had to bring his eyes down sharply. Lady Ward was also homely: she breathed out a calming preoccupied competence. She was a little woman, with a large bosom, and she was wearing a green dress and an overall.

  ‘Come in, come in, excuse my overall,’ she said, smiling distractedly at them, flinging open the door. ‘Do excuse me, I was just having a little clean-out in the kitchen, so nice to have the house to oneself for a change, I was really enjoying myself – come in, come in, Humphrey’s in here, he’s expecting you.’

  ‘We’re so sorry to disturb you,’ Rose was beginning to say, as they were ushered into the drawing-room – ‘not at all, not at all,’ said Lady Ward, ‘it’s what we’re here for –’ and disappeared promptly into the kitchen, unable to resist the lure of an uninterrupted fiddle with her own pots and pans.

  Humphrey Ward looked, if anything, more benign than his wife, because less dotty. He shook hands, sat them down, took their papers, with a kindly concern, then offered them all a glass of sherry – ‘You could drink it,’ he said, ‘to cheer yourselves up, while I peruse these documents?’

  ‘That would be very kind,’ said Jeremy Alford, who seemed to be acting as spokesman: Francis Morris had undergone a strange nervous eclipse, and Simon was acutely aware that his professional status was highly ambiguous, a fact acknowledged by a discreet, questioning, sympathetic glance from the judge himself. He was too delicate to ask questions, was Mr Justice Ward, so he poured them all a glass of sherry – all the glasses attractive, but all different, the ends of sets, a fact which seemed to attune agreeably with the whole room. It was a pleasant room, not particularly tasteful, not particularly elegant or luxurious, but comfortable, inhabited. Books lined the walls: house plants stood about, some bandaged and propped up by strange splints, like invalids, too well loved to be thrown out, others flourishing more cheerfully. The settee and chairs were large, old-fashioned, deep, and covered in a large flowered print. In one of the chairs sat Humphrey Ward, his scarcely greying head bent over the affidavit. He looked remarkably young for his post: perhaps the fact that like Simon he was dressed in his gardening clothes made him look even younger than usual. The khaki trousers (a wartime inheritance), the muddy boots, the coloured shirt, all inspired confidence: watching him, as he sipped his sherry, Simon began to remember facts about him, bits of gossip, lawyers’ stories. He had sat on committees, he had belonged to organizations associated with penal reform, he had founded a hostel for ex-prisoners. A nice man, a conscientious man. And he had two daughters, that was right: one of them worked in a primary school, he knew somebody that knew her, in fact somebody was married to her, and the other daughter was on some Race Relations body. He must have grandchildren the same ages as Rose’s children, whose brief history he was now reading.

  When he had read all the relevant documents, Mr Justice Ward made no objection to signing the order. So that was that. They all sat back for a moment, not quite liking to think what to do next, because it was obvious, since nobody knew where Christopher was, that it was impossible to serve the injunction on him. Francis Morris requested leave to announce the making of the injunction in the press: the judge smiled gently and said that leave was not necessary, as technically the hearing of an application for such an injunction would be in open court. Ah yes, of course, said Francis Morris, annoyed with himself for the slip. I’d better get moving, then, said Jeremy Alford, I’d better ring up the evenings, and see if I can catch the late edition.

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ said Rose, suddenly. She had been sitting very quietly, watching the little motes turn in the sunny air. ‘Don’t do that, I couldn’t bear it, not all over the papers again.’

  ‘Now come, Mrs Vassiliou,’ said the judge, gently. ‘Surely you’d better do all you can, at this stage, rather than regret it later? It’s unfortunate, I agree, but it’s the lesser of two evils.’

  ‘But we’ve no proof,’ said Rose, ‘that he ever meant to do anything. Perhaps he was just threatening me. Perhaps he’s been at my father’s for hours.’

  ‘That’s an interesting point,’ said the judge. ‘Did anyone think to ring your parents to see if they were there?’

  Nobody had thought, it appeared. So Jeremy Alford rang the number of the house in Norfolk, and enquired of a servant whether or not Mr Vassiliou and the children had arrived. Not yet, he was told, though they were expected.

  ‘So we’re none the wiser,’ said the judge, sighing gently, and looking at his watch. It was by now after one, and the judge was doubtless thinking of his lunch.

  ‘Well, we mustn’t impose on you any longer,’ said Jeremy Alford, ‘I must go and ring the Press Association and the Home Office.’

  ‘Do use my telephone,’ said the judge, but without marked enthusiasm: so they all rose to their feet, and began to take their leave. As Rose was shaking his hand she quite suddenly burst into tears again, and stood there, holding his hand and weeping. There, there, said the judge, patting her on the shoulder, don’t you worry, it’ll all be all right, you wait and see, you go off and get yourself some lunch and forget about it for an hour or two, it’s all safely in hand now, there’s nothing more you can do.

  ‘Perhaps she’d like a sandwich?’ said Lady Ward, who had appeare
d quietly in the background, no doubt to remind her husband that it was time for his lunch.

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ Rose managed to say, through her tears: and Simon led her off. His last view of the Wards was of their worried, concerned faces, as they stood at the window together watching them go, before going into the kitchen, to eat their meal off the kitchen table, amongst the half-cleaned silver.

  In the car, they discussed what to do next. Jeremy Alford was torn between a desire to stop at the nearest Xerox machine, take a copy of the injunction, track down Christopher and serve it on him in person, probably as he was about to board a plane for Cyprus at Heathrow airport, and a desire to go home quick, placate his wife, and eat his lunch. Francis Morris wanted to get back to his tennis club: his role was over. He said this so clearly that Simon heartlessly dropped him, with effusive thanks, at a taxi rank. He then took Jeremy Alford home. Mrs Alford dutifully offered Simon and Rose something to eat, but was highly relieved when they declined. She did not feel up to entertaining.

  ‘We might as well leave it to you,’ said Simon. ‘We’re better out of the way, really.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ said Jeremy. ‘You’ve been most helpful. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’

  And he pulled a face at Simon, signifying, Rose is impossible, and Simon pulled one back, signifying, yes, I agree. Rose intercepted these looks, and managed to convey, humbly, that she quite agreed with both.

  ‘Well, I’ll take her home,’ said Simon.

  And so he took her home, having promised to communicate if anything happened at Rose’s end, and to await communications from Alford himself. They got back to Rose’s house in Middle Road at just after two. The whole process had taken nearly three hours. Time enough to arrive in the Middle East, more or less.

  And in Rose’s house, they sat down and continued to wait. Simon was hungry, but felt it would be indelicate to make too much fuss about it: Rose said she did not feel up to eating.