A Certain Justice (4 page)

“Not until now. But I’ve heard a rumour that she’s changed her mind. And she is, of course, the senior. Only just, but there it is. She was called a term before you.”

Laud said: “Venetia made her position perfectly plain four years ago, when you were off for two months with glandular fever and we had a Chambers meeting. I asked her then whether she wanted to take the chair. I remember her reply perfectly. ‘I have no ambition to occupy that seat either temporarily or when Hubert decides to vacate it.’ What part has she ever played in running this place, in the more tedious chores, even in the finance? All right, she comes to Chambers meetings and protests at whatever other people propose, but what does she actually do? Her own career has always come first.”

“Perhaps this is about her career. I’ve been wondering if she might not have an ambition to become a judge. She’s apparently enjoying sitting as an assistant recorder. If so, succeeding me as Head of Chambers would be important to her.”

“It’s important to me. For God’s sake, Hubert, you can’t let her cut me out because I happened to have appendicitis at the wrong time. The only reason she’s senior to me is because I was in the operating theatre on the day she was called. It put me a term behind. I don’t think Chambers is going to choose Venetia because she was called in the Michaelmas term and I was forced to wait until the Lent.”

Langton said: “But it does make her senior. If she wants the job it will be embarrassing to reject her.”

“Because she’s a woman? I thought we’d come to that. Well, it may terrify the more timid members of Chambers but I think they’ll put fairness over political correctness.”

Langton said mildly, “But it isn’t exactly political correctness, is it? We do have a policy. There is a code of practice on sexual discrimination. That’s what it’s going to look like if we pass her over.”

Trying to control the mounting anger in his voice, Laud said: “Has she spoken to you? Has she actually said she wants it?”

“Not to me. Someone — I think it was Simon — said she’d hinted at it to him.”

It would be Simon Costello, thought Laud. Number Eight, Pawlet Court, like all Chambers, was a hotbed of gossip, but Simon’s contribution to it was notorious for inaccuracy. If you wanted reliable news you didn’t go to Simon Costello.

He said: “It’s pure guesswork. If Venetia wanted to initiate a campaign she’d hardly begin with Simon. He’s one of her
bêtes noires
.” He added: “It’s important to avoid a contest if it’s at all possible. It’ll be fatal if we descend to personalities. Chambers could become a bear garden.”

Langton frowned: “Oh, I hardly think so. If we have to vote, that’s what we’ll do. People will accept the majority decision.”

Laud thought with some bitterness: And you no longer care. You won’t be here. Ten years of working together, of covering up your indecision, of advising without appearing to advise. And you do nothing. Don’t you realize that defeat would be, for me, an intolerable humiliation?

He said: “I can’t think she’ll have much support.”

“Oh I don’t know. She’s probably our most distinguished lawyer.”

“Oh, come off it, Hubert! Desmond Ulrick is our most distinguished lawyer beyond question.”

Langton stated the obvious. “But Desmond won’t want it when the time comes. I doubt whether he’ll even notice the change.”

Laud was calculating. He said: “The people at the Salisbury Annexe and those who work mainly from home probably care less than those physically in Chambers, but I doubt whether more than a minority will want Venetia. She’s not a conciliator.”

“But is that what we need? There are going to have to be changes, Drysdale. I’m happy I shan’t be here to see them, but I know they’ll come. People talk about managing change. There’ll be new people in Chambers, new systems.”

“Managing change. That fashionable shibboleth. Venetia might well manage change, but will they be the changes that Chambers want? She can manage systems; she’d be disastrous at managing people.”

“I thought you liked her. I’ve always seen you — well, I suppose as friends.”

“I do like her. In so far as she has a friend in Chambers, I’m that friend. We share a liking for mid-twentieth-century art, we go occasionally to the theatre, we dine out about once every two months. I enjoy her company, presumably she enjoys mine. That doesn’t mean I think she’ll make a good Head of Chambers. Anyway, do we want a criminal lawyer? They’re a minority here. We’ve never looked to the criminal Bar for the Head of Chambers.”

Langton answered an objection understood but not stated. “Isn’t that rather a snobbish view? I thought we were getting away from that. If law has to do with justice, with people’s rights, their liberty, their freedom, isn’t what Venetia does more important than Desmond’s preoccupation with the minutiae of international maritime law?”

“It may be. We’re not discussing relative importance, we’re choosing the Head of Chambers. Venetia would be a disaster. And there are one or two other matters which we’ll have to discuss at Chambers meeting on which she’ll be difficult. What pupils to take on as tenants, for example. She won’t want Catherine Beddington.”

“She’s Catherine’s sponsor.”

“That will make her objections more compelling. And there’s another thing. If you’re hoping to get Harry an extension of his contract, forget it. She wants to do away with the Senior Clerk and appoint a practice manager. That’ll be the least of the changes if she gets her way.”

There was another silence. Langton sat at his desk as if spent. Then he said: “She seems to have been a bit on edge in the last few weeks. Not herself. Is anything wrong, do you know?”

So he had noticed. That was the difficulty with premature senility. You could never be sure when the gears in the mind might not engage again, the old Langton disconcertingly assert himself.

Laud said: “Her daughter’s home. Octavia left boarding school in July and I gather she’s done nothing since. Venetia’s let her have the basement flat so they shouldn’t be on top of each other, but it isn’t easy. Octavia’s not yet eighteen, she needs some control, some advice. A convent education is hardly the best preparation for running around London unsupervised. Venetia’s over-busy, she can do without the worry. And they’ve never got on. Venetia isn’t maternal. She’d be a good enough mother to a beautiful, clever, ambitious daughter, but that’s not the kind she’s got.”

“What happened to her husband after the divorce? Is he still in the picture?”

“Luke Cummins? I don’t think she’s seen him for years. I’m not sure he even sees Octavia. I believe he’s married again and lives somewhere in the West Country. Married to a potter or a weaver. A craftsperson of some kind. I’ve got a feeling they’re not well off. Venetia never mentions him. She’s always been ruthless in writing off her failures.”

“I suppose that’s all that’s wrong, worry about Octavia?”

“It’s enough, I should have thought, but I’m only guessing. She doesn’t talk to me about it. Our friendship doesn’t extend to personal confidences. The fact that we go to an occasional exhibition together doesn’t mean that I understand her — or any other woman, come to that. It’s interesting, though, the power she exerts in Chambers. Has it ever occurred to you that a woman, when she is powerful, is more powerful than a man?”

“Powerful in a different way, perhaps.”

Laud said: “It’s a power partly based on fear. Perhaps the fear is atavistic, memories of babyhood. Women change the nappy, give the breast or withhold it.”

Langton said with a faint smile: “Not now, apparently. Fathers change nappies and it’s usually a bottle.”

“But I’m right, Hubert, about power and fear. I wouldn’t say it outside these walls, but life in Chambers would be a great deal easier if Venetia fell under that convenient Number
II
bus.” He paused, and then asked the question to which he needed an answer. “So I have your support, have I? Can I take it that I’m your choice to succeed you as Head of Chambers?”

The question had been unwelcome. The tired eyes looked into his and Langton seemed to shrink back in his chair as if bracing himself against a physical attack. And when he spoke Laud didn’t miss that quavering note of petulance.

“If that is the will of Chambers, of course you will have my support. But if Venetia wants it I don’t see how she can reasonably be rejected. It goes by seniority. Venetia is the senior.”

It wasn’t enough, thought Laud bitterly. By God, it wasn’t enough.

He stood looking down at the man he had thought was his friend and, for the first time in that long association, it was a look more judgemental than affectionate. It was as if he were seeing Langton with the critical, unclouded eyes of a stranger, noting with detached interest the first ravages of merciless time. The strong regular features were losing flesh. The nose was sharper and there were hollows under the jutting cheekbones. The deep-set eyes were less clear and beginning to hold the puzzled acceptance of old age. The mouth, once so firm-set, so uncompromising, was slackening into an occasional moist quaver. Once his had been a head formed, or so it seemed, to be topped by a judge’s wig. And that surely was what Langton had always hoped for. Despite the success, the satisfaction in succeeding his grandfather as Head of Chambers, there had always hung about him the uncomfortable whiff of hopes unrealized, of a talent which had promised more than it had achieved. And like his grandfather, he had stayed on too long.

Both, too, had been unlucky in their only sons. Hubert’s father had returned from the First World War with lungs half destroyed by gas and a mind tormented by horrors of which he was never able to speak. He had had energy enough to father his only child, but had never effectively worked again and had died in 1925. Hubert’s only son, Matthew, as clever and ambitious as his father, sharing his father’s enthusiasm for the law, had been killed by an avalanche while skiing two years after being called to the Bar. It was after that tragedy that the final spark of ambition had seemed to flicker, then die in his father.

Laud thought, “But it hasn’t died in me. I’ve supported him for the last ten years, covered his inadequacies, done his tedious chores for him. He may be opting out of responsibility but, by God, he’s not going to opt out of this.”

But he knew with a sickness of the heart that this was mere posturing. There was no way in which he could win. If he forced a contest Chambers would be embroiled in an acrimonious dissent which would be publicly scandalous and could last for decades. And if he won by a narrow margin, what legitimacy would that confer? Either way, he wouldn’t easily be forgiven. And if he didn’t make a fight for it, then Venetia Aldridge would be the next Head of Chambers.

I
t was never possible to estimate how long the jury would be out. Sometimes a case which had seemed so strong as to admit no possible question of the accused’s guilt resulted in a wait of hours, while one of apparent doubt and complexity produced a verdict with astonishing speed. Counsel had different ways of occupying the dead hours. The occasional sweepstake on the time the jury would take to arrive at their verdict provided at least a diversion. Some played chess or Scrabble, others went down to the cells to share the suspense with their clients, to encourage, sustain, perhaps warn, while others reviewed the evidence with their colleagues and meditated possible lines for an appeal if the case went against them. Venetia preferred to spend the waiting time alone.

As a junior she had walked the corridors of the Bailey, moving from the Edwardian baroque of the old building to the simplicity of the new, then down to the marbled splendour of the Great Hall to pace under the dome between its lunettes and blue mosaics and contemplate once again the familiar monuments while she emptied her mind of the things she might have done better, those she could have done worse, and prepared herself for the verdict.

Now this perambulation had become for her too obvious a defence against anxiety. She preferred to sit in the library, and her insistence on solitude ensured that she was almost always alone. She took a volume from the shelf without noticing its title and carried it over to a table with no intention of reading.

“Garry, did you love your aunt?” The question brought to mind a similar question asked — when? — eighty-four years earlier, in March 1912, when Frederick Henry Seddon had been found guilty of the murder of his lodger, Miss Eliza Barrow. “Seddon, did you like Miss Barrow?” And how could he convincingly answer that, of the woman he had cheated out of her fortune and had buried in a pauper’s grave? The Frog had been fascinated by the case. He had used that question to demonstrate the devastating effect which one question could have on the result of the trial. The Frog had come up with other instances too: the expert witness for the defence in the Rouse burning-car case whose evidence had been discredited because he couldn’t give the coefficient of expansion of brass; the judge, Mr. Justice Darling, leaning forward to intervene in the trial of Major Armstrong to ask why the defendant, who claimed that the arsenic he had bought was for the destruction of dandelions, had parcelled it up into small portions. And she, a fifteen-year-old, sitting in that small, under-furnished bed-sitting-room, had said: “Because a witness forgets a scientific fact or the judge decides to intervene? Is that justice?”

The Frog had for a moment looked pained, because he needed to believe in justice, he needed to believe in the law. The Frog. Edmund Albert Froggett. Improbably a bachelor of arts, obtained by external study at some unspecified university. Edmund Froggett, who had made her a lawyer. She acknowledged this truth with gratitude to that odd, mysterious, pathetic little man, but he seldom came into her mind as an invited guest. The memory of the day when their relationship ended was so painful that gratitude was subsumed in embarrassment, fear and shame. If she thought of him it was because, as now in this moment, some trick of memory intruded on the present and she was fifteen again, sitting in the Frog’s bed-sitting-room listening to his stories, learning about the criminal law.