“It’s only half past seven,” said Selena mildly.
“—well, drag her away from dinner in the middle of the evening, and tell her she’s got to cough up another eighty thousand quid—”
“I’m afraid,” said Timothy, “that it will be another hundred and sixty thousand. I’m sorry to add to your troubles, Cantrip, but if Deirdre’s going to get a hundred thousand, I don’t see how Ragwort and I can agree to less for the minor and unborn issue of Dorothea. The judge would think it very odd, you must see that.”
“Sweet suffering swordfish,” said Cantrip, clutching his forehead in an interesting dramatic gesture, “there ought to be a law against it. All right — tell Camilla that she’s got to cough up an extra hundred and sixty thousand if she wants this thing to go through and she’s got until ten-thirty tomorrow morning to decide about it.”
“The urgency,” said Julia, “is of not of my client’s making. If Camilla needs more time to reach a decision, no doubt the application can be adjourned. I don’t know, of course, how soon we could have another date for the hearing — I hear that the list is rather crowded… and the widow, I gather, is in her late eighties, and not, alas, in the best of health… Still, Cantrip, it’s entirely for you to advise your client.”
“Time was,” said Ragwort, “when a young woman just of age would not have thought it proper to obstruct the arrangements made by her elders for the preservation of the family fortune. Or, if indifferent to propriety, would not have thought it expedient. Has your client considered, Julia, how her present conduct may affect her expectations?”
“My client seems to think,” said Julia, “that she can expect little from the generosity of her relations. In reaching this conclusion, she is perhaps influenced by the fact that the occasion of her eighteenth birthday passed entirely unnoticed by the rest of the family.” Julia, a sentimental woman, looked reproachfully at Cantrip, as if holding him personally responsible for this neglect.
“Oh dear,” said Selena. “You mean they forgot it altogether? Not just its legal significance?”
“Altogether. There was not so much as a postcard. It was in striking contrast, I gather, to the celebration of Camilla’s coming of age four years ago. So my client feels that she should take advantage of the present opportunity to secure her financial independence, and it seems to her that a sum of a hundred thousand pounds is the minimum required. She realizes that she won’t have it until her grandmother dies, and that in the meantime the atmosphere in the home may be a little strained, but the prospect does not seem to trouble her unduly.”
“I see,” said Selena, rising from her chair. “I’d better ring Tancred’s, I suppose, and see if they can arrange for us all to have further instructions from our clients before half past ten tomorrow. After that, perhaps we can all go and eat something. Aren’t you joining us, Julia?” For Julia had begun that process of gathering things together which signifies her intention to depart.
“I’m afraid I can’t. Deirdre’s waiting for me in the bar at Guido’s — I said I’d take her to dinner there.” She again looked reproachfully at Cantrip. “Someone ought to do something to celebrate the poor girl’s birthday.”
CHAPTER 2
On the following morning, having accepted the hospitality of the spare bed in Timothy’s flat, I woke to find him making a hurried breakfast. At nine o’clock, if the efforts of their solicitors could achieve it, the parties to the Remington-Fiske application were to be gathered together in 62 New Square to receive advice and give instructions on Julia’s minor amendment. In order to discuss certain preliminary matters with the other Counsel concerned, Timothy proposed to be there at half past eight.
There had been aroused in me a measure of curiosity about the family: I thought it would be of some interest to observe them at first hand, and I supposed there could be no objection to my presence.
“My dear Hilary,” said my former pupil, “there is every objection. The relationship between Counsel and client is one of absolute confidentiality. We could hardly expect our clients to speak frankly to us of their most intimate personal affairs”—in Lincoln’s Inn this means their financial affairs—“before an audience of gossip-mongering academics.”
When Timothy decides to be pompous, it is no use arguing with him. “Very well,” I said. “If that is your view, then naturally I respect it. I shall stay here and have a leisurely breakfast.”
“You can come to the hearing, if you like,” said Timothy, generously offering me the same freedom to sit in the public benches as is enjoyed by every citizen, and every visitor to our shores, with an hour or two to wile away in the Law Courts. “I think we’re in Court 25.”
My mind was occupied, as I finished breakfast, with musing on the English law of entails, molded through the centuries by the conflicting ambitions of the landowner and his heirs — his for a dynasty, theirs for cash. I was familiar, naturally, with the medieval procedures for barring the entail by way of fine or recovery. It occurred to me, however, that I was wholly unfamiliar with the modern form of disentailing assurance, and had no idea what signs it might give of its ancestry. Impatient, as is the way of the Scholar, to remedy immediately such a
The heavy oak door leading to the Clerks’ Room and the waiting-room was already open, as is usual in the daytime; but neither was occupied. I settled down in the waiting-room, in the little niche between bookcase and window, not troubling to provide myself with a chair; the Scholar, in pursuit of knowledge, is indifferent to physical comfort, and I was content to sit on the floor.
A few minutes later, happening to glance out of the window, I perceived the approach of a little group of people. They were led — I mean only that he seemed to know the way — by a man, as I judged, in his middle fifties. He wore the pin-striped subfusc which is the uniform of the professional man going about his business, and the signs of one who has prospered in his profession — a fullness of flesh and ripeness of complexion, claret-dark under thick white hair, not often seen in those obliged to frugality.
Tall as he was, an inch or two over six foot, he had no great advantage in height over either of the two women beside him, and a very slight inclination of the head was enough to show an attentive deference to the one walking on his right. She looked, I thought, accustomed to deference: iron-haired and angular of feature, she bore herself with that inflexibly upright carriage which can only be produced by a sound training in deportment and an absolute conviction of superiority. My attention was chiefly engaged, however, by the striking good looks of the girl on the man’s left. Tall, as I have mentioned, with a dark fur jacket swinging loosely from her shoulders, she walked with her head thrown back a little, as if to drink in the air of the clear February morning, and seemed consciously to restrain the athletic vigor of her stride to avoid out-pacing her companions. Straight black hair, straight black eyebrows, the brightness of her eyes and the brilliance of her smile emphasized by a slight suntan — yes, she was splendid to look at. There was nonetheless, and despite the difference in ages, a sufficient family resemblance between the two women to make one think that the elder must once have been very handsome; and that the younger might some day be rather formidable.
I had thought at first that there were only three of them; but then I saw that there was another girl, small, almost dwarfish by comparison with the others. She was a pudgy, mouse-colored, suet-faced little creature, pitifully plain by contrast with the dark girl — but I fear I flatter her, for her plainness was absolute, not comparative. She trailed along behind the others, head down, shoulders thrust forward, as though to advertise and reproach the effort she had to keep pace with them. By adopting this posture, and by stuffing her hands firmly into her pockets, she had begun to turn a rather elegant coat into something which could hardly be offered to a discriminating jumble sale.
They reached the flight of steps leading to the main door of 62 New Square. Obeying, it seemed, some instruction from the man, the plain girl remained at the foot. The others, ascending, were briefly hidden from my view; but a few moments later the door of the waiting-room opened, and they were within a few yards of me. Sitting, as I have said, on the floor between the window and the bookcase, I was perhaps in a rather inconspicuous position — at any rate, none of them appeared to notice me; and I, absorbed in my researches, did nothing to draw my presence to their attention.
“There seems as yet to be no one in the Clerks’ Room,” said the man in a tone of apology, as he ushered in
