The Needle's Eye (55 page)

They all met up again at the end of the week, on Friday, in Court. The Law Courts were being cleaned: dust sheets draped the stony corridors, and giant vacuum cleaners lay like snakes upon the ground, lending the place a festive, temporary look, reminiscent of a display in a marquee. There was something festive in the reunion. There they all were, Mr Justice Ward in his wig, looking very small on the bench, his large size dwarfed by its dimensions: Francis Morris in his wig, the ends of which stuck out smartly and wildly like a lobster’s white whiskers into the sunny air: Christopher’s counsel, his solicitor, an unexplained black man in a wig, Christopher himself, Rose, Julie, Emily, Jeremy Alford. Jeremy Alford’s wife had had her baby: it was a boy, welcome after two girls. Christopher, Rose whispered to Simon and Julie, had sent Shirley Alford a huge bunch of flowers. Isn’t he
awful
, she whispered to Julie. Awful, yes, said Julie, but there were worse ways of being awful. Yes, I suppose so, said Rose.

Rose had got to work on Julie, during the week. Or had it been the other way round? It was no longer possible to tell, thought Simon, but it had happened. And explanations had, of course, been necessary. She had probably done the right thing. She had an instinct for these things.

Mr Justice Ward was explaining the nature of the injunction to Christopher’s solicitor who was listening politely and humbly, as well he might. He was consulting his papers, he was saying that the custody case was due to be heard by his colleague Menzies in three weeks time, and that it would be a good idea if time were saved by having the Welfare Officer’s Report, which had been ordered months before, ready by that date. It is more than usually important, Mr Craddock, he said, that the case should be disposed of soon. These are children we are dealing with, not building sites, you know. Yes, my lord, of course, my lord, said Craddock. And now, said Mr Justice Ward, perhaps your client would step into the witness box for a moment, I want to make quite sure that he has understood the meaning of the solemn undertaking that he has been required to give the court.

And so there stood Christopher in the witness box. He too listened politely, and nodded his head intelligently. He had been subdued, since the press had got on to him. He had himself hidden the Sunday papers, that morning in Norfolk: he had got up early and shoved them all under his mattress. They had been full, once more, of the Vassilious: Greek abducts children: Vassiliou makes trouble again: More Drama for Ward-of-Court Heroine: More Thorns for Rose: Another Calvacoressi Case: Divorced Greek steals Heiress’s children: the papers variously declared.

He had not been able to conceal their contents for ever: his father-in-law had got hold of them in the end, and he had not been very pleased. Neither, it is true, had he been very angry: he had forgiven him, but not without some unpleasantness. And now the press were on to Christopher all the time. He had moved out of his flat, into a small hotel in South Kensington, and was trying to keep himself out of the papers. He had called on Simon, one evening, and stayed for a meal, at Julie’s insistence. He seemed lonely. It was hard to resist
the notion that he was lonely, and penitent. There he stood, looking sad and remorseful, agreeing with every word that the judge said, apologizing for his behaviour. Behind him the usher stopped cleaning her nails, and looked up, idly, as Christopher said, ‘I assure you, my lord, I never at any point intended to abduct those children. I assure you. I would never take any action without the court’s consent.’

‘In that case, Mr Vassiliou,’ said the judge, blinking and peering, ‘In that case, what a pity it is that you wasted so much of the court’s time. And gave some of us, if I may say so, a rather unquiet weekend.’

‘Ah well,’ said Christopher, ‘I’m sorry about that. I didn’t realize what a trouble it would cause. Though it was, in some ways, quite a useful experience.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the judge. But Christopher would not repeat it, was reluctant to explain himself. I meant nothing, he said, I did not mean what I said. I meant only that now I know where I am. You may say that I have been wasting the court’s time, I cannot help feeling sometimes that the court, with its extraordinary delays, has been wasting mine. It is reassuring to find that things do get moving, when they have to.

Mr Justice Ward was amused, despite himself, by this.

‘Oh yes,’ he said, in quite a friendly tone, ‘we can get moving when we have to. And I can tell you, if you make another move either to remove the children, or to threaten your unfortunate wife with removing them, you will find yourself in prison in no time. You know what that means, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Christopher, smiling dourly. ‘Yes, I’ve been through this before.’

And he looked, from the witness box, at Rose.

And that was that.

‘You’ll have no more trouble from him,’ said Jeremy Alford, as they stood out in Fleet Street and waited for a taxi. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’

And he was right. The case came up before Mr Justice Menzies in three weeks’ time, as had been predicted, and Mr Justice Menzies,
who did not much care for Rose, nevertheless found himself obliged to admit that Christopher might be an even worse prospective guardian for his own children. ‘Really, Mr Craddock,’ he said, glaring at him angrily, as though Christopher had broken the rules of some club by smoking in the wrong room, ‘really, I should have been very much more inclined to give your client a favourable hearing, had it not been for his irresponsible behaviour over the Whitsun weekend. I am afraid I cannot take his application very seriously, in view of the way he himself has acted.’

He did not mention the fact that when the Welfare Officer had called on Christopher, Christopher had been an hour late for the appointment, and had nothing to show as suitable accommodation for three children but a small single room in a hotel in Gloucester Road, full of whisky bottles. (When the Welfare Officer had called on Rose, she had felt guilt because she was reading the
Guardian
instead of scrubbing the floor.)

The judge did not like to dwell too much on all of this. He did not like Rose. He managed to convey that if Christopher had not proved himself even worse, there were things in his affidavit about Rose that he would have taken very seriously indeed. Jeremy Alford, listening to this, trembled: for was it not Menzies who had, in similar cases, rudely dismissed medical and psychiatric evidence, pouring contempt on expert witnesses? He had once given custody to a father, because his wife was living with her lover: the father had been a most unsuitable parent, a religious maniac, a vindictive and violent man. Menzies had dismissed the family doctor’s evidence on these matters as an impertinence. There had been an outcry, at the time, but he had got away with it. Jeremy Alford wondered if he dared do it again. But he did not. He gave Rose the children: he said she could keep them. When it was over, it was obvious that he could not have done anything else. The Welfare Officer, a nice woman in her fifties, had liked Rose immensely. They had had a long conversation about the problems of the district, ending up with a discussion of the prospects of Mrs Sharkey’s Eileen’s baby. Both agreed that they were poor. They had shaken their heads, over a cup of tea, and liked each other, and the Welfare Officer had said firmly to the judge
that the children were perfectly happy and well-cared for with their mother.

‘You’ll have no more trouble from Christopher,’ said Jeremy Alford, again, standing there on the pavement, hailing a taxi with his umbrella, a strong wind tugging at his raincoat.

But within a year, Christopher had moved back into the house in Middle Road.

In a way, Simon said to himself, eighteen months later, when he had got used to it, we ought to have expected it. What else were they to do? It had not much surprised him, even at the time. Looking back, he took comfort in recalling his lack of surprise.

The new situation even had its conveniences, from his own point of view. It was not as though Rose and Christopher were happily reconciled, warmly reunited. They still had their problems, and one of the results of their new arrangement was that they seemed to need company and support. The two families, the Camishes and the Vassilious, saw quite a lot of each other. This improved the quality of Simon’s domestic life immensely. Julie invited the Vassilious to dinner constantly, and they often accepted. They also met, with the children, at weekends, from time to time, and organized an occasional excursion to Kew Gardens or Hampton Court. Christopher taught the Camish children to roller skate. Julie taught Rose to crochet. Rose seemed genuinely fond of Julie, and Julie, responding to affection, merged a little more happily in Simon’s mind with the image he had once had of her.

In fact, in some ways Julie seemed to be becoming what he had once taken her to be: as she grew older her mannerisms began to suit her better, she became better looking, it seemed that she had managed to achieve her childhood ambitions, she had managed to become smart, and generous, and worldly. She had become an attractive woman. He caught glances directed towards her, at dinner-parties, and could now see that they expressed admiration. Perhaps they had always done so, and he alone, guiltily, had misinterpreted them. It was he alone that had thought, when people had thanked her for gifts or hospitality, that the thanks contained an element of
mockery. It had not been so, perhaps. People liked her. They liked her company. Rose liked her. They would talk together on the telephone for hours, like real women, and Julie would come back to him and report what Rose had said.

Things were better, domestically, than he had ever hoped. He even began to enjoy his social life, now that one or two of his own friends were included in it; Julie had become more gracious towards his interests.

Indeed, the new regime was so successful that Diana, who had in a sense initiated the whole thing, was heard to remark in exasperation that it was all Simon Camish’s fault that the Vassilious had gone back to each other. He couldn’t have stood the strain of the real thing, she said, but he’s quite happy propping them up and watching and helping and acting as mediator. Well, let them be, said Nick. He had given Rose up long ago. But Diana could not quite let them be. Her relinquishing of Simon was more recent, she did not like to see Rose playing so successfully the role in which she had cast herself. It’s a great mistake, she said, a kind person aggrieved as much by her own pique as by her cause for pique, it’ll do them no good, you wait and see, you wait.

And of course there was some truth in what she said. It worried Simon greatly. Julie had improved, in his mind, it was true, but Rose had deteriorated. Christopher’s effect upon her was not for the good: she became increasingly querulous, strained, irritable. She and Christopher would quarrel, even in public, for no reason, idly, bitterly, tiresomely, and Rose always emerged from these disputes without credit. She appeared, she was, petty, vindictive, resentful. Simon had thought, at one time, that these evidences of her unhappiness would have gratified him, but as he watched, he knew that he was losing more than he could gain in secret pleasurable knowledge. He was losing her: she was being destroyed, before his eyes. And yet he accepted what she had done. He accepted her terms, completely. What else could she have done?

He waited, patiently, as everyone else waited, for Rose to announce that she and Christopher were buying a new house. It was inevitable that they should: they could not go on living where they
were. And with the announcement, thought Simon, I will know that that is it: she will really have made the sacrifice, she will have lost.

He waited, but the announcement never came. At first, as the months passed, he thought, she is winning some victory in there, behind those threadbare curtains. She is sticking it out, meaninglessly faithful she is loyal to her vows. But then he began to notice that things were changing. It was not only Rose herself that was changing, it was the whole district she lived in. By some freak of fashion, it was coming up in the world. The process was at first so slow that it was almost imperceptible: but once noticed, the signs were clear, they multiplied, the change accelerated. Sale notices appeared on house fronts: whole streets were bought up, painted up, resold. Property prices soared. Rose’s own house tripled in value, while she did nothing but sit in it. The less traditional branches of the middle classes moved in: an actor, a journalist, a publisher, a civil servant, a lecturer in sociology, an antiquarian bookseller. Front doors were painted black and khaki and ochre and sage. Lace curtains and decorative little wrought iron gates disappeared: the prams on the street got shabbier, the windows dirtier, the glimpses of wallpaper more expensive, and the shop on the corner began to sell French cigarettes. Some of the Greeks stuck it out: there were still a few houses with the bricks painted red and the pointing picked out in other colours, but their number was not increasing, as it had been. But then the Greeks were on the whole fortunate enough to own their own houses, so they could not be dislodged. It was the tenants who began to disappear. Once the landlords latched on to what was happening, out they went, all those who could be legally evicted. Mrs Sharkey’s tenancy was protected by law for the first year of the improvements, but she knew she was going to have to get out in the end. ‘I can’t complain,’ she said, ‘I’ve only been paying a pound a week for the whole house. That’s why the roof leaks. There’s fungus as big as my fist growing out of the ceiling upstairs. You can’t complain, at a pound a week, can you?’ Mrs Sharkey was lucky, she was on the list for a council flat and was given one when her rent was increased. It was on the tenth floor, and she moved in there with her two sons, her daughter Eileen, and her granddaughter. At first she
was quite thrilled with it: Rose, visiting her, was vaguely depressed by her enthusiasm for the new kitchen and the small square rooms and the mini-balcony where she was not allowed to hang her clothes or keep budgies. Then, being Rose, she reproached herself for this mean, romantic response. I’m a fool, I’m a fool, said Rose to herself. But after six months Mrs Sharkey was fed up with the flat: the plaster was cracking, the lift never worked, she missed talking on the front steps, she missed her neighbours, she missed Rose. Rose felt reassured. She sat there and watched the baby, bumbling about in a caged, listless way, now getting on for three years old, and listened to the story of the flat’s disadvantages, and the drama of Eileen. Eileen, despite her lack of scope and her boring job in the bedding factory, had managed to go even more to the bad. Rose found this exhilarating, though she could not have said why. Eileen had got herself mixed up with a group of flashy would-be pop-singing would-be Hells Angels boys who hung around in the pub on the council estate. A modern pub it was, called, for some reason, Prester John. It was a depressing spot, though one could see that the architect had made every attempt to integrate it into the landscape. It had a forecourt, where stone mushrooms served as seats, and plants grew out of pots from a topsoil of fag ends. Sitting in this forecourt on a stone mushroom one summer evening, Eileen had been shot in the leg. She had not been aimed at: the youth responsible had been aiming at Terry Monk from the Balls Pond Road. But he had been a bad shot, and Eileen had received the bullet in her thigh. It had cheered her up no end. She had been in hospital for weeks: Rose, visiting her, had found her elated, transported, her heavy face deeply transfigured by pain and notoriety.