‘Wondering why I invited you out here this afternoon?’
‘No,’ lied Jordan.
‘It’s about tomorrow. Like I told you, I’m not as confident as either Bob or Dan. Even if there’s no damages awarded against you, you’ve still got a lot of costs and-’
‘Stop!’ demanded Jordan, loudly. ‘We’ve done this too many times and I’ve told you no too many times. It’s still no. Always will be, so let’s forget it once and for all, OK?’
‘No, it’s not OK!’ she argued. ‘You’re going to be out a lot of money, whatever happens. That’s not fair.’
Jordan swept out his arm, encompassing the house and beyond. ‘So you brought me here to show me you could afford it more than I could!’
‘That’s not fair, either!’
‘Tell me it isn’t true then.’
‘I wanted to talk to you, by ourselves. The court break was convenient. I wasn’t trying to impress you. This is just how it is.’
‘I am impressed,’ finally conceded Jordan. ‘But not enough to take your money. It’s no longer a conversation between us.’ He’d never imagined himself uninterested in anyone else’s money, Jordan further conceded. But there had been a lot of other things – attitude changes – over the last few weeks that he wouldn’t have imagined possible, either.
‘Never again,’Alyce promised. She sniggered. ‘Promise you won’t get mad if I say something else, though?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘You know who you reminded me of, yelling at me like that?’
‘You tell me it’s Alfred and I’ll yell louder,’ he said, joining in the game.
‘It was Alfred. How he used to speak… talk to people… talk to everybody…’ She hesitated at Stephen’s return with a black uniformed woman to clear the table apart from their wine and water glasses. Allowing time for them to get out of hearing, she said, ‘People never worked for us, either in Manhattan or Long Island, beyond a few weeks, because of it.’ She physically shuddered, at the recollection.
‘In the land of the laid-back, why on earth does everyone automatically refer to him as Alfred, never Al!’
Alyce’s laugh this time was more spontaneous. ‘Call Alfred Al! You’ve got to be joking! He was always Alfred and even then only to a very few people.’
‘How the hell did you ever get involved with such a…’ Jordan paused. ‘A man.’
‘Monster would have done,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many times and in how many different ways I’ve asked myself that same question. But he’s very good at hiding himself, when he needs to… when it’s necessary. And it was very necessary with me and the family and all that we’d created. It was only when it didn’t work, as he’d intended it to work, that it all started to go wrong. That the punishments started…’
‘You’re losing me,’ complained Jordan. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t even be talking about it, now that it’s virtually over. There’s no point.’
‘You know what I now realize Alfred really felt about me? About me and all the historic bullshit and where we, the Bellamys, are now?’ said Alyce, too engrossed in her own reflections to heed Jordan’s caution. ‘It was resentment. It was right, what Bob suggested in court, although he never brought it out like it truly was. It wasn’t me that Alfred loved. I don’t think it’s possible for him to love anyone, probably not even himself, although I think I said that he did. What Alfred really did love, which Bob challenged him with, was the idea of being the king in an American royal family – a king who could have as many mistresses as he wanted, like kings once did: like some still do, maybe. Marrying me gave him the combined lineage but to make it really work he needed the court and the country to rule. Which didn’t exist. But the Bellamy Foundation existed; the foundation on which I was a working chief executive until he persuaded me to resign, as I told the court. Except that it wasn’t because he considered it ill-fitting for me to be a working woman. He manoeuvred that to vacate the throne for himself. But he miscalculated, as Alfred so often miscalculated. The Bellamy Foundation is a charitable organization, with all the responsibilities that were explained in court. But there’s nothing charitable about the board that runs it. They’re hard-assed professionals who were the first to see Alfred for what he is, long before I did. Getting on to it wasn’t the shoo-in he thought it was going to be. He couldn’t get the necessary board member vote, certainly not when mother, who’s got the controlling vote structure, wouldn’t back him. That’s how the punishments started…’
‘Punishments?’ queried Jordan.
‘I believe that’s what the loans were, Alfred Appleton’s personally imposed financial penalties. And the neglect and the whoring, although I don’t think infecting me as he did was an intended humiliation, because to do that he had to contract it first and not even he would do that.’ Alyce abruptly laughed, although nervously. ‘Jesus, I’ve really run off at the mouth, haven’t I? Turned you into my therapist.’
Jordan laughed with her, anxious to lighten the mood. ‘I had a free afternoon.’
‘I know…’ she started, but then stopped.
‘Know what?’
‘I’m not going to talk about money, I promise. But I know from Bob what a hell of an input you made. I want to thank you and apologize for you getting caught up in it and I promise never again to mention any of that, either.’
‘You think I could have a moment or two to talk?’ asked Jordan, sure he knew what he wanted to say but not at all sure how to say it.
‘Depends what it is,’ qualified Alyce, cautiously.
‘None of what’s happened…’ Jordan started awkwardly, stopping at the sound from the far door of the garden room.
‘Hi!’ greeted Walter Harding, emerging through the foliage.
‘Hi!’said Alyce.
Shit! thought Jordan.
When they came to be delivered Jordan’s initial reaction to the verdicts was that of an anti-climax – despite, even, his total exoneration – because that was how he regarded the conclusion of the previous afternoon at the Bellamy house, anxious at its end to quickly leave a place which, until Harding’s intrusion, he’d hoped desperately not to leave that night. Hopefully not for many nights. So occupied still was he by that disappointment that at the opening of the court proceedings Jordan actually had to force his concentration upon Pullinger’s summation and guidance to the jury, which strictly obeyed Pullinger’s insistence on the priority of its required judgements.
This meant Appleton’s criminal conversation claim against him was the first to be dealt with and totally dismissed. Immediately following the verdict, Pullinger ordered that Appleton should pay three quarters of Jordan’s total costs for initiating such a flagrantly insupportable action, in part for which he held Bartle responsible for providing the inept legal advice. The jury found against Leanne Jefferies but again following Pullinger’s instructions limited the award against her to $50,000 in Alyce’s favour. They also found in Alyce’s favour on her cross petition against Appleton.
After discharging the jury Pullinger declared he had considered a bench order alleging perjury against Appleton but held back from doing so in the event of the man appealing upon the grounds he’d offered the previous day. He definitely intended an enquiry into alleged perjury against Mark Chapman and to carry out his already indicated decision to report both venere-alogists to their respective Massachusettes licensing authorities for professional misconduct. On the same grounds he was going to report David Bartle and Peter Wolfson to both the North Carolina and New York State bar associations.
‘In addition to which,’ Pullinger told the two attorneys, whom he’d ordered to stand before him, ‘I shall refuse ever again to have either of you appear before me on any legal matter, which I shall make clear to both bar associations I have nominated. I further order, upon the possibility of both or either of your clients being held in contempt of my court, against making comments or assisting in any way the media, either electronic or print, beyond what this court provides about any of the defendants or claimants in these proceedings. I want your assurance, which will be recorded by the court stenographer, that you fully and completely understand the order I have just issued.’
One by one the two attorneys, Appleton and finally Leanne Jefferies, acknowledged that they understood.
‘This hearing, the most disgraceful ever presented before me, is now closed,’ Pullinger concluded.
Reid’s office was judged both inadequate and inappropriate for the celebration and at a loss for an alternative
