by Caro Fraser
There he sat on the arm of one of the armchairs, chin resting on his hands, staring at the telephone. It had to be true, he told himself. It was why she hadn’t rung for two weeks. She’d said she would, but she hadn’t. Every day, when he’d come back from court, he’d asked Henry hopefully for his phone messages. Nothing. Every evening he’d waited, or asked Adam if there had been any calls for him. Nothing. Why hadn’t he rung her? Because she’d asked him for some space, because he’d trusted her, thought that she just needed a little time. He remembered her face, her lovely face, the sweet seriousness of her expression that day beside the pool in Bombay.
‘It can’t be right,’ he said aloud, and picked up the phone.
As he dialled, he thought about Leo. It was here that his belief faltered, then came to a complete standstill. What did Leo ever have to do with women? How could anyone who had tried to seduce another man, as Leo had tried to seduce Anthony, suddenly turn himself around and – and what? So he’d taken her to David’s for dinner. It didn’t mean anything.
At that moment Rachel answered the phone. Anthony’s mind was so preoccupied that he was momentarily taken aback.
‘Hello?’ At the sound of her familiar, cautious voice, his fear slackened slightly. This was all fantastic speculation on David’s part. There was a rational, simple explanation.
‘Hi,’ he said, keeping his voice neutral. ‘It’s me, Anthony.’
Rachel’s heart dropped like a stone. She put down the copy of Vogue she’d been reading. ‘Hello, Anthony,’ she replied.
He sat down, cradling the phone in his hand. It occurred to him that he hadn’t a clue what to say to her, of how he could possibly broach the subject. ‘How have you been?’ he asked. ‘I hoped you might have rung this week.’
Rachel, too, subsided into a chair. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Anthony. I’ve been rather busy.’ It was now or never, she said to herself. She was a coward; she should have rung and told him, put out that light for ever. But how did one do such a thing? How could she have rung him and said, ‘By the way, I don’t want to see you any more because I’m in love with someone else’?
‘So I gather,’ replied Anthony, his heart tightening within him. ‘David Liphook told me about his dinner party on Wednesday.’
Of course, she thought. Of course. She had supposed he might come to hear of it that way, but not so quickly, not before she’d had the chance to speak to him.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Yes, I was there.’
There was a silence, then Anthony said, ‘With Leo.’ It was not a question, but a flat statement. Go on, he thought, tell me that it was all a coincidence, that you happened to be there and so did he. Or tell me that it was just that once, and that – oh, even lie to me. Go on.
‘Yes. I – well, he asked me to go with him.’ Why am I hedging like this? she wondered. Why don’t I just tell him?
‘You seem to have got pretty intimate since I introduced you two,’ said Anthony tersely. And then he thought of that night at the Guildhall. Had it been then? As simple as that? Was that why she had left? Impossible. He suddenly said, ‘Have you been seeing him since then?’
She was relieved at the question. It demanded an honest reply. It all had to come out now.
‘Yes,’ she replied weakly.
Anthony let out a long breath. What the hell was going on here? ‘As friends, or what?’ he demanded.
‘What do you mean?’ she answered.
‘I mean’ – he hesitated, hating this whole business, wretched, sick at heart, sick with love turned sour – ‘I mean, is there something between you two that I should know about?’
‘Anthony—’ Rachel gripped the receiver tight with both hands. ‘Look, the fact is, I have been seeing him. And – I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I think I’m in love with him.’ Silence. ‘That’s about it. I know I should have called you, but what was I to say? I didn’t know any of this was going to happen. I didn’t do it to hurt you. Nor did Leo.’
Leo? She said this as though he felt the same way about her. The idea was absurd, fantastic. ‘Well,’ he replied, hoping that he could hate her so much that he would never have to feel love for her again, and knowing he could not, ‘you seem to have accomplished a lot in a short space of time. Well done.’
‘Oh, Anthony, it wasn’t like that at all! He called me the week after I met him, and we went to dinner – and well, he wanted to see me again. Don’t talk as though I did this on purpose.’
‘And are you fighting him off the way you did me? Or doesn’t he bother you that much?’ asked Anthony savagely. He wanted to know everything, whether they had slept together, whether Leo had managed to offer her something he could not, whether the whole thing was just one-sided … But if it was, why was Leo still seeing her? Why had David said that Leo seemed serious about her?
‘Anthony …’ Rachel felt completely helpless.
‘Have you slept with him?’ demanded Anthony.
‘You have no right to ask me that,’ she said.
‘You mean yes.’ Anthony closed his eyes. Through his bitterness, it all struck him as rather ludicrous. If anything, she was as much a victim as he was. She must think of Leo as her knight in shining armour. He laughed before he spoke. ‘Oh, Rachel, if you only knew …’
The sound of his laugh distressed and alarmed her. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked hesitantly.
He sighed. No, he was not the one to tell her. He felt suddenly dispassionate. ‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Nothing.’ There was a silence. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘that I’d better send back the papers on the Valeo Dawn, don’t you?’ That was how it had all started, and that was all it came back down to, in the end.
‘If you think you want to,’ said Rachel sadly. ‘Anthony, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know, when we were in India, that any of this was going to happen. I’m sorry.’ She wanted to say more, to try to offer some comfort, but she knew that in such a situation there was no comfort to offer, only more humiliation.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Anthony. ‘It’s not your fault.’ And he put the phone down.
She told Leo the following evening about her conversation with Anthony. They were having a light supper in a wine bar before joining some friends of Leo’s – carefully selected; a female barrister from 14 King’s Bench Walk and her husband, and a professor of jurisprudence at King’s and his wife – at the theatre.
He listened carefully, his expression not changing as she spoke, one elbow resting on the table, his hand covering his mouth. Rachel’s voice was sad, perplexed.
‘I felt dreadful – no, worse than that, I felt so helpless. Nothing I could say was of any use.’ She sighed. ‘You see, he told me once that he loved me. It wasn’t as though I wanted him to’ – she hastened to assure Leo of her own disinterest, thinking, misguidedly, that he might care – ‘but when someone says that, it’s as though – as though they’re burdening you with some sort of responsibility. Cutting a little piece out of their soul and handing it to you.’ Leo’s glance flickered from the tablecloth to her face. He said nothing. ‘And after I’d told him that we’d slept together – well, not directly, but he assumed it when he asked me and I said it was none of his business – when I told him, he just said, “Oh, if you only knew,” or something like that. And laughed. “If you only knew Leo.” What do you suppose he meant?’
Leo took his hand away from his mouth. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, staring at his wine. ‘I don’t know Anthony’s mind.’ He paused. ‘Was that all he said – about me, I mean?’
She nodded. ‘He just said he would be sending back the instructions I sent him on that case, and then he hung up. That was all.’ She looked at Leo. ‘All of this is going to make a dreadful mess of your friendship, isn’t it?’
Leo drained his glass. ‘It can’t be helped.’ He set down his glass and looked at her, then laid a hand over hers. ‘Can it?’ She shook her head slowly, her eyes fixed on his, almost clouded with love. ‘Anyway,’ he added, �
��don’t worry too much about Anthony. He’s very young. And the young have resilient hearts. He’ll be all right.’ In five years’ time, thought Leo, there will still be something left of Leo and Anthony. And of Rachel? He did not know. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go, or we’ll be late.’
While Leo and Rachel and their companions sat through the opening night of the latest Tom Stoppard play, Anthony was doing his best to get very drunk at his friend Simon’s dinner party. But Simon could see how things were going and managed to prevent Anthony from going completely overboard, so that by the time midnight came he was only miserable and maudlin. He stayed at the dinner table as the seven other guests made their noisy, hilarious way through to the other room for coffee and music, not in the mood to join them.
He sat, flattening out the flimsy discarded wrapper from an Amaretti biscuit, folding it carefully, thinking bitterly, drunkenly, of Rachel, of Rachel with Leo. Simon had unwisely left the decanter of port at the other end of the table. Anthony eyed it for a moment and rose a little unsteadily, then reached across successfully for it. He filled his empty wine glass very full, and drank it off, then half-filled it again. He knew he would feel dreadful in the morning, but he didn’t care. He merely wanted to blot out the thought of his lovely Rachel in Leo’s bed. He’d only come to Simon’s this evening in the hope of distracting himself from his own misery. But, of course, it hadn’t helped.
Leo Davies, he told himself, was completely without morality, without loyalty. Whatever warped appetites he had, he could only have done this to satisfy the worst of them. The man who would happily have taken Anthony into his bed two years ago could now, without any qualms, rob Anthony of something he had known – had known was precious to him. And what would be the end result for Rachel? What happiness could she possibly find with someone like that? When Leo turned his attention to the next pretty young man, as he had once to Anthony, what would become of her? Bastard, thought Anthony savagely, drinking off the rest of his port. Fucking bastard.
Miranda, the girl who had been sitting next to Anthony at dinner, having carefully arranged this beforehand with Simon, stood in the doorway of the dining room. She watched Anthony drain his glass and gaze moodily at the tablecloth. She was not sure how drunk he was. Not too drunk, she hoped. She crossed the empty room softly and sat down in the chair next to his. Then she slipped a hand onto his shoulder and kissed his cheek gently. He turned to look at her, his expression unchanged. He had known Miranda for a long time, in a distant, occasional sort of way. It had often crossed his mind that she was extremely attractive, that some day they might get together. The thought had always been idle. He knew she liked him. Now he looked at her, and felt nothing at all. He looked away.
‘You’re not exactly enjoying yourself this evening, are you?’ she murmured.
‘Pass me the port,’ he said.
She did so, saying with a smile, ‘Wrong direction.’ He slopped some into his glass. ‘I don’t think Simon wants you to drink too much of that, you know,’ she added lightly.
‘Bugger Simon,’ replied Anthony, and drank.
‘Why don’t we—’ Then she paused, her arm still resting on his shoulder, and ran a finger thoughtfully down his cheek. ‘Why don’t you let me drive you home? Mmm? I don’t much want to stay, either.’
He looked at her. Oh, why the hell not? he thought. She might take his mind off the whole sordid thing. One way or the other, he didn’t much care.
‘You can if you want,’ he said drunkenly.
He got to his feet and she followed him out into the hallway. He didn’t seem hopelessly plastered.
‘Hold on,’ she said. She slipped into the drawing room and told Simon she was taking Anthony home. When she came out, he was leaning against the wall next to the front door, fingering his car keys. She lifted them from his hand and dropped them into his pocket. ‘We’ll take my car,’ she said. ‘You can get yours tomorrow.’
The cold night air had something of a sobering effect on Anthony. By the time they reached South Kensington, he was so hardened in his resolve to dismiss Rachel and Leo utterly from his life that he managed to kiss Miranda quite convincingly before they got out of the car. But when they reached the second floor and Anthony put his key in the lock, he realised that he did not want to do this. Far from seeking a refuge from thoughts of Rachel, he simply wanted to lose himself in his own misery, to lie and think of her, even if it was painful. It suddenly seemed to him the only way to make the pain abate, to confront it over and over until its keen edge was blunted.
He turned to Miranda. ‘I think we’d better just make this a quick coffee and then say goodnight,’ he said to her, before going into the flat. ‘Don’t you?’
She looked at him sadly, a little reproachfully. He realised he had been very rude to her all evening.
‘Maybe now’s not our time,’ he added.
‘Anthony, darling,’ she said, ‘I don’t really want any coffee. Let’s just say goodnight.’ She leant forward and kissed him, then turned and went back downstairs.
Anthony sighed and closed the door. There would be another time with Miranda, he knew. That was the way their set did things, little weavings in and out of one another’s lives, like a dance of some kind, dinner parties and love affairs, beginnings and endings, on and on, roughly the same people, the same little world, the City, the lawyers, brokers, merchant bankers, the girls and boys, the bistros, the parties, the lunches, credit cards, possessions … a pageant of materialism illuminated by sex and the constant, wistful search for the perfect person, the one who would set one’s heart at rest.
It should have been so simple with Rachel, thought Anthony, leaning against the door, feeling drunk. She would have been the one. He closed his eyes and thought of her smile, the way she dipped her head and looked up, her dark hair, her lovely eyes. It was like a small, narrow blade twisting slowly in his insides, worse still when he thought of Leo with her, making love to her, possessing her. It would have been fine, thought Anthony, opening his eyes, gazing ahead of him at the kitchen door. With a little time, everything could have been good. Wonderful. If only Leo hadn’t got in the way. Charming, irresistible Leo – Anthony knew only too well what it was like to be touched, to be seduced by Leo, his eyes, his looks, his talent for making one believe. Why had he done this? Anthony asked himself again. He had thought Leo cared for him, was concerned for him – and yet he had destroyed his relationship with Rachel, knowing how precious and fragile it was. Even after Anthony had confided in him, he had been able to do this …
These thoughts were simply the same ones which had been coursing through his head all evening. Alcohol had not chased them away – merely intensified and distorted them. He pulled his tie loose and went into his room, and lay face down on his bed, wishing tomorrow was any day but Sunday.
He had not intended to speak to Leo about any of it, merely to stay out of his way until his anger and unhappiness had abated a little, but as he came upstairs from the clerks’ room on Monday morning, he saw Leo in his shirtsleeves, laughing in conversation with Michael, then turning to go into his room. The sight of him, the sound of his easy laughter, jarred Anthony like a blow. With his heart thudding, he ran up the last few stairs and followed Leo into his room. Leo glanced over his shoulder as he heard Anthony come in behind him. Anthony closed the door and leant against it, and Leo turned to face him as he reached his desk.
‘I want a word with you,’ said Anthony, so angry that he had no idea what he was going to say.
Leo raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘Perhaps you’d better sit down,’ he replied, his voice cool, but adrenalin pumping in him. He had expected, but not wanted, something like this. He picked up his glasses from the desk and put them on, scanning the papers he held in his hand, affecting a lack of concern.
From somewhere in the back of Anthony’s mind came the ghost of that schoolboy rule – you didn’t hit someone who was wearing glasses. How absurd. He had no intention of hitting Leo – but
there was a tension, a murderous anger in him demanding some sort of resolution, some sort of confrontation.
‘You know,’ said Anthony, ‘you’re an even bigger bastard than I could have thought possible.’
‘Oh?’ replied Leo, looking up, quite without any resources, moral or verbal, that could help him to deal adequately with what was coming. He had nothing to say, no excuse.
‘Don’t say “oh?” like that, as though you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ said Anthony in a slow voice, his breathing made rapid by his anger. ‘You know what you’ve done. I spoke to Rachel last week—’
‘Yes, I know,’ cut in Leo. ‘She told me.’ He took off his glasses and laid them on the desk with his papers. Then he waited.
‘If you weren’t twice my age, I’d want to beat you up,’ said Anthony. ‘It’s about what you deserve. But we don’t do that kind of thing, do we, Leo? We’ve got a code, a way of behaving. Haven’t we?’ Leo said nothing. ‘Or maybe,’ went on Anthony, ‘you don’t really understand that code. Maybe where you come from people do deceive and betray one another.’ Leo flinched inwardly at this, but still said nothing, a muscle in his jaw flickering.
Then he looked up. ‘Is that all?’ he asked. ‘Because I do have some work—’
Quite what Anthony had intended to do when he launched himself clumsily at Leo, he was not quite sure, but Leo, although he staggered back slightly as Anthony came at him, was fast enough to recover and grasp Anthony by the wrists. He shoved him against the wall and held him there, his face close to Anthony’s, both men breathing hard.
‘Do you know what’s really pathetic?’ said Anthony through clenched teeth, pushing against Leo’s grip but conscious of the older man’s wiry strength. ‘She says she’s in love with you. And what are you going to give her in return, eh, Leo? Have you told her? Have you told her what’s going to happen when the next little boy you fancy comes along? Does she know about your kind of love?’