‘It didn’t…’ started Jordan but stopped. Then he said, ‘Yes. That’s how it was.’
‘She chased you,’ insisted Beckwith. ‘You didn’t chase her: seduce her.’
‘We both knew what was happening.’
‘Harv! For fuck’s sake when are you going to start listening to me! What you’ve just told me, was that how it was? How it happened that you came to be in bed with Alyce Appleton?’
‘Yes.’
‘She made it easy for you? Invited you?’
‘If you-’
‘Harv!’ halted the lawyer, warningly.
‘Yes.’
‘We’re getting there, Harv. At the moment you’re not making it easy for either of us but we’re getting there.’
‘I’m not trying to make it difficult, for either of us! Me most of all. I didn’t understand the direction you were coming from.’ Why hadn’t he? Jordan demanded of himself. It surely wasn’t that obscure?
‘Trying to stop you getting skinned alive is the direction I’m coming from, Harv.’
‘Lesley said she thought I might have been set up, by Alyce and her husband together,’ said Jordan. ‘You think I could have been?’ Jordan felt humiliated even by asking the question.
‘It’s a way I might be tempted to go. Depends on the papers when I get to see them. Even as it is, you’ve got the beginnings of a defence if we can get the court to accept what you’re telling me.’
‘It was a holiday affair, for Christ’s sake!’
‘This is a divorce, with more damages accusations than I’ve ever encountered before,’ said Beckwith. ‘Two very different things that so far you haven’t got your head around.’
Jordan was suddenly swept away by a disorienting tiredness, for the briefest of moments his actual awareness ebbing and flowing. ‘Is there any more coffee in that pot?’
‘You OK?’ enquired Beckwith, pouring the dregs.
‘I’m fine,’ exaggerated Jordan. ‘We haven’t talked about the actual hearing. Will the court be closed or open?’
‘Depends upon a request from the plaintiff or defendant. There needs to be an application for a closed court from one or the other.’
‘I’m a defendant, aren’t I? Can’t I make the application?’
‘ Primary defendant,’ qualified Beckwith. ‘Which you’re not. And I don’t see it coming from Appleton.’
‘So we’re dependent upon Alyce for the hearing to be private?’
‘If she wants it to be. How serious is your problem with an open court, public hearing?’
‘As serious as it damned well can be! I don’t want to be publicly identified as a wife stealer. Because I’m not.’ The coffee was cold and too bitter and Jordan put it aside.
‘I may get some indication from pre-trial hearings.’
‘What about those pre-trial hearings?’ seized Jordan. ‘Surely we can argue for my dismissal from the proceedings, before it even gets to court?’
‘I’m going to file for dismissal, of course. But I’m not going to hold out hopes that I don’t have.’
‘This is a fucking travesty,’ exploded Jordan, despite all the warnings against losing his temper.
‘Travesty is a word invented for the law,’ said Beckwith. ‘My job is ensuring you’re not a victim of it.’
More my job that yours, thought Jordan.
Jordan was glad when almost at once Beckwith closed the meeting by announcing that the first of the exchanges from the other lawyers had been promised by the middle of the week and suggested a second session on the Thursday. Relieved, too. Jordan didn’t believe he’d handled himself well – maybe not even convincingly – during this first encounter with the American: the remaining, disorientating jet lag might have contributed a little to how ineffectual he considered himself to have been, but he couldn’t find a reason or excuse for the rest. He should, Jordan supposed, be encouraged by Beckwith’s argument that Alyce had been the instigator of the affair, but he wasn’t. He hadn’t had to exaggerate or lie answering the lawyer on how it had begun but there was no way of proving it to be the truth, so it came down to his word against hers. He wished he could remember what Alyce had said lying naked on the hotel bed in St Tropez. And that the questions crowding in upon him at this moment had come to mind when he’d been with Beckwith instead of now, when it was too late.
Finally, objectively, Jordan confronted a hovering feeling he could identify. He hadn’t regained control of or over his life today and he was scared. Shit-scared.
Eleven
The lawyer skimmed the photographs across the desk and said, ‘Here’s the guy who hates your guts and wants all your money.’
If Appleton ever found out what more was going to happen to him – which he never would – he was going to hate his guts a whole lot more, thought Jordan, picking up the prints. Alfred Jerome Appleton was a fleshy, heavy-featured, prominent-nosed man who combed his receding hair straight back, giving himself a high forehead, just above the left temple of which was a deep red strawberry mark. They were portraits but showed enough of the man’s shoulders to indicate a build to match his features. Jordan was sure, even before meeting him in the flesh, that Appleton would tower over him, although only ever physically.
‘And here’s his reason,’ said Beckwith, following with the photographs of Alyce. They reminded Jordan of the sort of pictures police released of someone after they had been arrested, charged with a crime and pictured for a criminal record file. Alyce was staring expressionlessly at the camera, her hair brushed – although not very well – straight down. Jordan didn’t think she’d bothered with any make-up, either, apart maybe for a lip liner, and she had worn her dark-rimmed spectacles, which she hadn’t when they had been together except when she’d needed to read. Her eyes were partially closed behind them. She was wearing black – Jordan couldn’t decide whether it was a dress or a sweater – without any visible jewellery. He was caught by the impression that, while not as determinedly as he’d tried, Alyce had posed to make herself as different as possible from how she normally looked.
‘That is Alyce, right?’ asked Beckwith, formally.
‘Doing her bag lady act on a bad day,’ confirmed Jordan. ‘Appleton looks years older.’
The lawyer went to the papers before him. ‘Eleven years older, to be precise. Appleton’s forty-one to Alyce’s thirty-one: there’s a couple of months between the birthdays that makes it eleven months at the moment.’
‘You got all the papers now?’ demanded Jordan.
‘The first of the formal exchanges, yes.’ It was a tossed aside blazer in a heap today, the shirt less strident than before, although the bison belt was the same. ‘Alyce’s lawyer is a guy named Bob Reid: don’t remember him from when I practised down there.’
‘How’s it look, as far as I am concerned?’
‘On first reading I think there’s enough for me to apply for a pre-hearing dismissal of some if not all of the damages claims,’ said Beckwith. ‘The dates are in your favour. Alyce is citing two gals by name – a Sharon Borowski and a Leanne Jefferies – and others unnamed, all the adultery before you and Alyce met in France. And she’s claiming the same sort of criminal conversation damages against one of them, Leanne Jefferies.’
‘Why not Sharon Borowski?’ broke in Jordan.
I don’t know at this stage.’
‘Tit for tat,’ declared Jordan, suddenly. ‘I’ve been trying to remember something Alyce said, when we were together. I asked outright about her marriage, used a silly expression like “what’s the status of your marriage?”. She said there wasn’t one, that it was over. I suggested she was playing tit for tat, she said “something like that” and asked if I was offended, at being used by her. I told her I wasn’t.’
Beckwith concentrated on one of the document bundles on his desk, before leaning eagerly forward over it as he had at their first meeting. ‘Her exchange doesn’t say anything like that! But then I wouldn’t expect it to. It’s certainly something I can put to her if we ever get into a full divorce court hearing.’