Judicial Whispers

by Caro Fraser

  ‘What happened to you? I thought you weren’t going to make it,’ she said, as he strode over to her, glancing down at the seat number of his boarding card.

  ‘What happened to me? I’ve just spent the past hour wondering where on earth you were. I’ve been waiting in the Club lounge.’

  Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, God! I forgot about the Club lounge! I’ve been waiting in the ordinary one. Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’m just glad to see you. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to going alone.’

  ‘Neither was I,’ replied Rachel, happy that he was there. They smiled at one another. Dr Michaels had it all wrong, she thought. How could she not be attracted to him? It was a question of time, that was all. She would have to explain that to him. It would be all right.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, as the last few passengers dawdled past the stewardess, ‘we’d better get on. I don’t think we can be sitting together,’ he remarked, ‘since we checked in separately. But maybe the flight’s not full.’

  The flight was only half full, and they were able to sit together in a bank of three seats, piling the flight paraphernalia of headsets, pillows, rugs and magazines into the spare seat between them.

  When the hostess brought dinner, Rachel had only a coffee and some fruit, but was amused to see Anthony devour everything which was brought to him by way of food and alcohol.

  ‘You’ll starve,’ he remarked, glancing at Rachel’s meagre meal.

  ‘I ate earlier in the evening. I don’t care for the food on aeroplanes.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ said Anthony, genuinely surprised. ‘I love it. Little feasts on plastic trays. I like all the tiny bits and pieces, the little sachets of stuff, pats of butter, dinky cutlery all wrapped up. It’s like being a child.’

  ‘You don’t fly very often, do you?’ she asked, smiling and leaning back to look sideways at him.

  He shook his head. ‘I had to go to Livorno once, and I went to the States with Adam last summer, but this is real luxury,’ he replied, glancing around the Club Class section.

  He’s like a child, she thought, quite unaffected, able to enjoy everything that is a novelty. It was odd, she supposed, that he could be so clever, so intellectually gifted – for she had come to realise that he had a natural talent as a lawyer – as to be able to deal easily with immensely complex issues of law, often involving weighty issues and vast sums of money, and yet still be so young in other ways. It was a great burden of responsibility to carry, she reflected. Still, he seemed to bear it quite easily.

  Anthony enjoyed himself. He read the in-flight magazine – Rachel did not think she had ever seen anyone do this from cover to cover before – put on his headset, flipping through the radio channels with amusement, and settled back to watch the in-flight movie when it came on.

  Rachel tilted her seat back, tucked the pillow beneath her head, pulled the rug over her legs, and slept. She slept only fitfully, however, and woke from time to time to glance at Anthony. He seemed to be enjoying the film, whatever it was. She glanced at the screen and saw Al Pacino mouthing soundlessly at a blonde woman in a restaurant. She wondered how Anthony could manage to stay awake. She fell asleep again, and when she woke the cabin was largely in darkness, with huddled forms shifting uneasily beneath their blankets, the businessmen having put away their laptop computers and filofaxes to dream of sales targets and earning curves.

  Anthony was sleeping, too, but Rachel could see that he had not given up without a struggle; he still had his headset on, and Rachel’s magazine lay on his lap. She studied his face in the half-light, the long, soft line of his cheek to his jaw, the dark hair flopping over his forehead. How long his eyelashes were. She had had no opportunity yet to speak to him about – about just letting things alone, keeping them friendly. There hadn’t been an appropriate moment. He had been so eager to enjoy this journey that there had been no hint of anything beyond friendly companionship between them. Maybe it would continue like that. Good, she thought, feeling betrayal at her sense of relief. Good.

  She leant back, reflecting that being with Anthony sometimes made her feel quite old. She thought of the countless trips she had made in her working life, the hotels, the airports, the in-flight meals. Schiphol, Brussels, Paris, Genoa – faceless, tubelike corridors leading to faceless arrival lounges, then boxlike hotel rooms the same as boxlike hotel rooms all over the world. And the people, the business people, the dreary, preoccupied masculine faces – even the women seemed to adopt token masculine expressions on business trips – with their briefcases and raincoats, milling past and around one another in their antlike quest for deals, for money, for contacts. She yawned, feeling on the floor for her shoes. She had achieved a sort of modus operandi for business travel, switching off and letting the blank vista of airports and taxi rides and offices and other people’s secretaries smiling at you with coffee slip by like a grey dream.

  But there was Anthony, stirring now in his sleep as the pilot announced their descent into Bombay, for whom it was all fresh and new and exciting. How many years, Rachel wondered sadly, until he, too, leant back wearily and dismissively on his fiftieth flight, ignoring the in-flight magazine, eating only a little, reading through his papers instead of watching the movie, perhaps taking a pill to help him sleep through the tedium of it all. But that was a long way away, she thought, watching as he woke. He smiled at her.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ she remarked. ‘I’m going to freshen up a bit.’

  When she came back from brushing her teeth and splashing her face with water, she found Anthony at the window seat on the aisle opposite, gazing intently down. She slid into the empty seat next to him and peered over his shoulder. Below them a ragged brown patchwork stretched out for mile after mile, made up of the tiny square roofs of Bombay’s shanty towns, ramshackle dwellings huddled together in a sea of teeming poverty.

  ‘I never thought slums could look romantic,’ murmured Anthony.

  ‘I shouldn’t think they are, close up,’ replied Rachel.

  ‘I want to go out and have a look round as soon as we’ve checked into the hotel. What time is it?’

  Rachel glanced at her watch. She had reset it to local time earlier. ‘About midday. I know it’s first thing in the morning at home, but my body tells me it’s bedtime. I just want to go to the hotel and sleep.’

  ‘You’ve had a sleep,’ said Anthony, as they returned to their seats. ‘In fact you’ve been asleep for most of the flight. You missed a good film.’

  ‘I still feel exhausted. Sleeping on planes isn’t the same thing, anyway.’ She glanced at him. ‘You need a shave.’

  And they smiled at one another, childishly pleased with their adventure.

  Bombay airport was shabby and crowded, the air hot and humid and laden with some hidden promise, the fragrance of a place that was foreign and vital. Brown-faced businessmen in starched, short-sleeved linen suits sauntered around with briefcases; knots of families, women in saris with clutches of children and babies-in-arms, queued at the ticket desks, and the airport police moved about with a powerful air of authority. Rachel and Anthony waited for a long time at a battered baggage carousel, and when they finally emerged onto the hot pavement outside the terminal, a dozen voices jabbered at them and hands leapt to take their luggage. They stood bewildered, until one man eventually singled himself out from his fellows, whom he shooed importunately away, and, taking their bags, directed them with peremptory gestures towards the taxi rank, where a queue of dilapidated Morris Oxfords stood. Having loaded their bags into the boot of one, the man stood patiently while Anthony dug out some tattered rupees. These appeared to be insufficient, and the man frowned and shook his head until Anthony produced some more. Rachel watched this performance, thinking that a masculine presence at least spared one the effort of doing it all oneself.

  The taxi bumped its way along heat-laden roads, through the shanty-town suburbs and into the city. It was a slow, sweat-tri
ckling journey. The traffic, both vehicle and pedestrian, was dense. Children and chickens wandered into the road from the maze and huddle of the shanties, then sidled away at the sound of the taxi horn. The occasional cow would lumber ruminatively across the road, dogs nipped in and out of the traffic, tongues panting in the sun, and the noise of car horns, bicycle bells and scooter klaxons merged in a jangle of raucous sound.

  Anthony gazed in fascination at the ramshackle huts lining the road, their roofs and walls of plywood and rusting corrugated iron, curtains of sacking covering their dark entrances, where watchful women squatted and bare-bottomed toddlers played in the dirt, their merry shouts and bright eyes flashing in the smoggy air. Everyone seemed cheerful, despite the squalor. People of all descriptions swarmed along the roadside – housewives, beggars, workmen with tools and handcarts, street vendors, tea boys carrying their gleaming cans of food and tea to offices, neat crocodiles of schoolchildren in white blouses and grey pinafores – mingling with the traffic. Some of the huts had been turned into booths and these, as well as the little one-man roadside stalls, peddled an infinite variety of sweets and nuts and fruit and fried food. The shanties stretched for ever, an endless sprawl of Indian humanity.

  Suddenly a fetid stench rose into the air as they lurched across a bridge. Anthony and Rachel both sat back from the window. ‘God!’ said Anthony. ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘Fish farm – is fish farm!’ said their driver, waggling a brown hand in the direction of a river bank.

  ‘Remind me not to have the fish tonight,’ murmured Anthony.

  The hotel was a cool and sudden contrast to the bustle of the Bombay streets. The lobby was filled with the expensive cosmopolitan calm of the five-star hotel. Anthony and Rachel felt as though they had been set down in an oasis, a quiet spot in the very hub and heart of the teeming city. The corridors of the hotel, as they walked with the porter to their rooms, could have been the discreet corridors of any hotel in the world, except for the faintly marshy, musty aroma that pervaded them.

  Their rooms faced one another across the corridor. Anthony stood in the doorway of his, fingering his key, as the porter took Rachel’s bag into her room.

  ‘Well – I’ll give you a knock after I’ve had a shower and things. Then we can have a look around. Maybe get some lunch.’

  ‘Fine.’ She nodded. She noticed his face wore a suddenly self-conscious look, as though he had only just become aware of where he was, and that she was alone there with him. I’ll have to say something to him before this evening, she thought. But it wasn’t going to be as easy as she had imagined.

  After lunch, they stepped out into the bright afternoon heat to wander around. Rachel bought some earrings from a street stall and Anthony bought some aspirin from a chemist, whose shop was dense and tiny and flyblown, crammed to the ceiling with teetering shelves of assorted pharmaceuticals, some apparently dating back to the sixties. Every shop seemed to yield its own little enclave of hangers-on, groups of men wandering in and out, chatting among each other, or to the patron and his customers.

  After an hour or so, the muggy air and the noise and the importunity of endless beggars began to weary them; even the exotic succession of colourful booths and shops began to pall.

  ‘I’m longing for civilisation and a long, cold drink,’ said Anthony. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Philistine,’ murmured Rachel. ‘I think we’re almost back at the hotel, anyway. If we go up that road there …’

  ‘I think you’ve called me that before,’ remarked Anthony, and his hand, swinging at his side, caught hers. She stopped in the dusty street and looked up at him. Her pale face was lightly filmed with sweat.

  ‘Anthony, there’s something I want to say—’

  ‘What? That I shouldn’t hold your hand?’ He smiled at her, raised her hand to his mouth and brushed it with his lips.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly, and disengaged her fingers from his.

  He sighed and his shoulders drooped. ‘What, then?’

  ‘Let’s go back to the hotel first,’ she said.

  They walked back in silence to the hotel, through the quiet cool of the lobby and out again into the hot air, onto the lawns that surrounded the swimming pool. They sat down at a table in the shade of one of the towering palms which filled the courtyard, and ordered lime sodas.

  As the white-uniformed waiter drifted away, silence fell between Rachel and Anthony. It was broken by the sudden explosive splash of a German businessman diving into the pool. Both glanced sharply up, watching him swim sedately to the far end. Then silence and heat fell again.

  ‘So,’ said Anthony at last, ‘what was it you wanted to say?’ It has something to do with us, he thought. It’s going to be something sad and final and I don’t want her to say it. Even though everything that’s happened between us so far has been a disaster, I don’t want to hear it. I want there always to be another chance.

  He looked at her, at the soft blackness of her hair and the slenderness of her arm as she reached across to finger the little brown paper bag containing her earrings, which she had laid on the table.

  ‘This is going to sound – well, presumptuous,’ she began.

  ‘Presume away.’

  ‘Look, Anthony, I like you very much – I really do—’ She paused and glanced at him, then tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. ‘But this is a business trip.’

  ‘I know. I know that.’ He squinted up at the shafts of sunlight falling between the palm leaves. The German had begun to swim back down the length of the pool. The chattering of birds high above tore at the air for a few seconds, then died away. ‘Rachel—’ He shifted his chair so that he was directly facing her and leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees. When he looked up at her a stripe of sunlight fell across his face, and he creased his eyes against it. ‘I didn’t come out here with some idea of seducing you. If that’s what you’re worried about.’

  She sighed. ‘I told you it would sound presumptuous. But you didn’t really let me finish.’

  He dropped his head, then plucked a blade of grass and rolled it between his fingers, saying nothing.

  ‘What I wanted to say was – I like you, and I just need to take things slowly. There are – have been – some things in my life that I don’t want to talk about, but if you give me enough space – then I think it might be all right.’ I sound ridiculous, she thought, ridiculous and pretentious. Why can’t I find the right words?

  He lifted his head and looked past her, over her shoulder, to the waiter approaching with their drinks. She went on. ‘Anthony, I’m just not ready for a relationship at the moment. Because – that is – I thought I was coping with things, and that’s why I asked you over that night—’ Her voice was hurrying along and she did not look at him, until he suddenly laid his hand on her arm. She stopped and looked up to see the smiling waiter standing next to her. She started and smiled hesitantly, foolishly. The waiter placed their drinks on the table, then left them. Rachel did not go on, merely stared at the chilly droplets slipping down the side of her drink in the heat.

  ‘So you’re not telling me to push off?’ he said at last. He was smiling as he took a sip of his drink. Oh, thank you, God, he was thinking. She does think there can be something – that this isn’t all just doomed to failure.

  She looked at his face and laughed, relieved. ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘I thought you were going to. I thought that was what this was to be all about.’

  ‘But you do understand?’

  ‘I think so. Well, perhaps not entirely. You just want things to – slow down, sort of?’ He put his drink down.

  She nodded. ‘Just give me some time.’

  He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Can you tell me why? I mean, you said something about things that had happened …’

  ‘No, that’s not important. Just that you understand that I want this to be a friendship. Until I’m ready for – for – whatever,’ she finished, looking down.
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br />   ‘OK. But there’s something I want you to understand.’ He had lowered his voice, and she looked quickly at him. ‘I want you to understand’ – he looked intently into her eyes – ‘that I love you, that I haven’t felt this way about anyone for – a long time. I wanted to tell you that. I’ll do anything you say, play it any way you like. But you talked about being made love to, and that is something I want to do to you more than anything else in the world.’ His voice was very quiet.

  She looked away, watching the German climb dripping from the pool, sunlit drops of water showering the warm tiles by the steps, light glancing off the choppy water where he had emerged. ‘So, you see, this mustn’t just be a game. Please.’

  She did not know what to say. The earnestness in his voice moved her, worried her. Was she playing games with him? She looked back at him, at the serious brown eyes, the anxious, gentle mouth, the way his long fingers were stroking the cold glass, at the lean frame beneath the thinness of his shirt, the slight sweat stains where it touched his body. Does he turn you on? That was what Dr Michaels had asked Rachel. Of course he does, she told herself. He must do. I want him to. Only not just yet.

  ‘It’s not a game,’ she said quietly.

  He could think of nothing to say. I’ve told her now, he thought. I’ve said it all, and now I must wait like some hopeless swain until she bestows her favours. It struck him as rather quaint. He had never been in such a situation before. What did one say or do next? He sat back and glanced at the pool. He should let it go. Let it all go and see how things went when they got back to London. ‘I feel like a swim,’ he said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Far away in London, a raw and chilly wind blustered through the courtyards and alleyways of the Temple, sending drifts of dead leaves from the garden of the Master’s House into Inner Temple churchyard, forcing its way into the collars of clerks hurrying through Serjeants’ Inn and Hare Court. As the early dusk crept over the grey buildings and ancient stairways, lights shone in barristers’ rooms upon rows of briefs and humming computers, on high bookcases, on piles of documents, on polished tables and polished minds. In the murmuring courtrooms, judges listened and counsel soliloquised, clerks dozed and ushers yawned, witnesses fidgeted and juries daydreamed. Throughout the long winter afternoon the law and its agents toiled away endlessly, sifting and burrowing, piling up words and paper that would all be forgotten a century hence, while the world beyond the Temple and the law courts hurried on regardless.