In Their Wisdom Read online

  23

  In that Christmas season there was no one, except those at the hospital and Dr Pemberton, who knew of Hillmorton’s state. There were, however, others who were having what some – though not Dr Pemberton – would have called crises of conscience. Dr Pemberton believed that persons’ decisions were formed before they admitted them. They did what they wished to, and all the arguments with their consciences were so many minuets which never influenced actions by a millimetre.

  That was not the view of the Symingtons, who had, since Swaffield’s volte-face, been talking to each other about what was the right thing to do. On the night of Boxing Day, they were having another of those conversations, not arguments, for they were trying to reinforce each other. It had been a cheerful Christmas, the children had gone to bed, they were in their own bedroom, Alison lying back against the pillows before she undressed, her husband having drawn up a chair by the bedside. He looked with love at her blooming face: it was being a good pregnancy. But, though he looked at her with love, he spoke with exasperation.

  ‘I must say, I think we might have been spared this.’

  He had said that a good many times before.

  ‘If you can’t see the way clear, I don’t think anyone could.’

  They were talking in married shorthand, and repeating what they had said often in the past days. ‘This’ was the consequence of Swaffield’s ultimatum. Since then, unknown to him, negotiations with the other side’s solicitors hadn’t been cut off short. Symington was too experienced for that, and legal probings had their own dynamic. By this time, he was convinced that Skelding would do a deal. Exact figures shimmered – like a proposal of marriage between a tentative middle-aged couple – among the cautious talk. But Symington would have guaranteed that the other man would settle for forty per cent – adding, just to touch wood, plus or minus a few per cent. This meant, with all costs paid, Jenny would receive something not too far from eighty thousand.

  ‘She’ll be happy with that,’ he said.

  ‘So she damned well should,’ said Alison. Though the Symingtons lived prosperously they had little capital.

  ‘If anything went wrong on appeal, she’d be sunk. And I’d be responsible.’

  ‘Not only you.’

  ‘She’s my client, and no one else’s.’

  There was no doubt what any respectable lawyer would advise. Or in fact insist on. But there was also the existence of Swaffield. He had given his orders.

  ‘He’s as obstinate as a pig,’ said Leslie Symington.

  ‘He’s a megalomaniac,’ said Alison.

  ‘He’s a very able man.’

  Neither of them had found any conceivable motive for Swaffield’s conversion. They had no idea, and were not to have, of how simple it might be. All they could think of was that if they won the appeal he would be triumphant, Swaffield pantocrator. If they lost, he would, they kept persuading each other, take care of Jenny. After all, he had his generosity – that was an act of faith, insisted on a shade too strongly to each other. Were men generous, when they had made a mistake – worse than a crime, a silly error – at someone else’s expense? That was almost the one doubt which Symington concealed from his wife, but she knew he had it.

  None of that was relevant. There was no doubt what a respectable lawyer should do. At least, up to a certain limit.

  ‘One has to go on telling him that he’s dead wrong. About as wrong as Wilde v. Queensbury, though for a slightly different reason.’

  ‘You’ve told him that.’

  ‘Well, the old image certainly ought to know. He is an old priapic image, isn’t he?’

  ‘There’s nothing to do but keep on.’

  ‘Which will leave us in exactly the same place.’

  Some lawyers – he had said so several times, but not that night – would have threatened to throw up the case. Swaffield’s reply wouldn’t have been unduly elaborate: ‘Then I’ll hire someone else.’ Some lawyers, perhaps not so many, would have let him. Would that have shown an excess of scruple? Professional duty said that you gave your advice. If it wasn’t followed, you did your best with what your client wanted. But Swaffield wasn’t Symington’s client. Did you do your best for what someone else wanted, a potentate who was paying your client’s bills? Particularly if that potentate was your own most powerful patron.

  It was a nice problem in what academic acquaintances were calling situation ethics: or what Bishop Boltwood would have called the ethics of cases, saying blandly that the old Catholic name was casuistry, before Protestants took that over as a term of abuse. Those reflections the Symingtons would not have found specially encouraging.

  ‘Say I clear out altogether. It will do no good to Jenny. Swaffield can dig up a decent stooge of a lawyer at the drop of a hat.’

  ‘We might feel a bit of relief.’

  ‘We might feel it was a luxury, keeping our noses clean if it did no good to anyone else.’

  Symington added: ‘And I’m not even sure it’s right. A lot of lawyers wouldn’t think so.’

  ‘And a lot of lawyers, let’s face it, wouldn’t pay the price.’

  That wasn’t cynical, though it was said smilingly, edged with awareness of the two of them. She knew that he had as much scruple as she, and as much as most moderate men. It was easy to make passionate exhortations about scruple, if you lived a life which couldn’t offer choices, as it did in theirs. They would, or at least they might, pay a considerable price if Swaffield got tired of them. A sizeable part of the firm’s work, of Symington’s influence there, and possibly of Symington’s long-term ambition, depended not so much on Swaffield’s personal concerns as on the litigation which, as with Jenny’s, he steered towards him. The curious thing was, they couldn’t decide whether, if Symington defied Swaffield to the limit and resigned from this case, he would get tired of them. The likelihood was yes. Emperors existed to have obedient admirers round them, and there were plenty more where they came from. And yet, this particular emperor was a capricious man. He might make more fuss of them than ever.

  No reasonable person would have bet on it. That didn’t make the choice any easier. But they were a buoyant couple, and before they got to sleep that night, they still had a hope that the point might not arise, and that, if Symington used all his skills on Swaffield, sense had a further chance to prevail.

  A few days later, in the first week of the new year, a conversation on a similar subject took place. It happened in Lorimer’s sitting-room in Lupus Street, and it happened about an hour after an outburst of sheer virtuous rage from Jenny, which began as soon as she got across the threshold. She had come straight from Swaffield’s office. Half turning, she was shaking her umbrella in the dingy little communal hall outside. She was flushed, rainswept, looking young and bright-eyed.

  ‘This is about the end,’ she said.

  Lorimer was not good at dealing with angry women. Lamely he said: ‘What is?’

  ‘What do you think has happened?’

  Lorimer had no reply.

  ‘You know that man Lord Clare?’

  She had heard Lorimer greet acquaintances, and speak of them, either by the full title or the Christian name, nothing in between, and she had picked up the habit.

  Lorimer could reply to that. Yes, he did know Lord Clare.

  Jenny said: ‘He’s a shit.’

  Lorimer did not often hear her speak in those terms.

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘You know, nearly all the money for Swaffield’s charity is collected in small sums.’ (This wasn’t strictly accurate. Swaffield had made large donations himself, and squeezed others out of fellow magnates.) ‘From people who can’t afford it. Elderly people who haven’t much themselves. They’re the ones who are sorry for other old people. The ones who haven’t anything at all.’ (This was nearer the fact. The charity collected a large number of small covenants, £10 a year and so on.) She went on: ‘Every penny ought to go to the purpose they are giving it for.’

  ‘Poi
nt taken,’ said Lorimer.

  ‘Well, Lord Clare doesn’t take it. Damn him to hell. He’s just going off to California with his wife, first class all the way, plushy hotels when they get there – and every blasted bit of his expenses charged down to the charity. He’s had the neck to write a letter saying that he’ll be doing some propaganda and so he assumes that it is all in order.’

  ‘Oh, I say, that’s not good enough.’

  ‘It’s rotten. And he’ll get away with it.’

  ‘Will Swaffield let him?’

  ‘What else can he do? After all, the bloody man will swear black and blue that he’s doing a mission for the charity.’

  Lorimer suddenly had a patch of eloquence.

  ‘In the Lords, you know, we speak on our honour. No oaths or anything like that. We don’t have to declare an interest unless we want to. We just speak on our honour.’

  Jenny smiled at him with something like tenderness. He was so much in earnest – and he hadn’t made his maiden speech after eleven years. Then she became outraged again.

  ‘Lord Clare doesn’t know what honour is.’

  ‘That’s going a bit far–’

  ‘If people like that don’t keep up standards, how do we expect anyone else to? Come on, we’ve sat here and said there’s no common honesty any more, haven’t we? Is there anything wonderful about that, when there’s no common honesty at the top?’

  She gazed straight at him. They were sitting on the sofa. Her spirits had become higher, the more she let her anger fly. He looked so gaunt and sad that she put her hand on his sleeve.

  ‘You wouldn’t defend him, would you?’

  ‘No, I don’t see how I could.’

  ‘It makes me feel absolutely bolshie.’

  ‘I feel bolshie too.’

  They understood each other, regressing to the idiom of their youth. Lorimer muttered: ‘I don’t know how we keep up standards. We’ve got to.’

  After that, for a long time afterwards, Lorimer was silent, even for him. That is, though he made noises of acknowledgement as she talked, laying the table for their meal, he didn’t volunteer a remark. When she again sat down beside him, he still stayed dumb. This wasn’t just ordinary inarticulateness. Jenny was irritated, and at the same time strained, by the trouble inside him. She stared at the clock on the mantelpiece, its back reflected in the mirror (where had his bits of furniture come from?), ticking away. At last she broke out: ‘Whatever is the matter, tell me?’

  ‘We’ve got to keep up standards.’

  It was like him, having got hold of some words, not to let them go, Jenny thought with irritation. There he was, opening his mouth without speaking, like a fish, Jenny thought again, more irritated still. When he opened his mouth and did speak, she wasn’t prepared.

  ‘Are we? Keeping up standards, I mean. I mean to say – you know – are you?’

  He was looking grey and embarrassed. At first she didn’t catch any sense of it, and then half understood.

  ‘You’d better go on,’ she said.

  ‘I mean, are you sure about your father?’ He was getting a trace more fluent. ‘Are you sure he wanted you to have all his money?’

  ‘How can I be?’ She was suddenly as embarrassed as he was.

  ‘Are you sure he didn’t want that woman to have it her own way?’

  ‘How can I be?’ she repeated. Then she reached inside for an honest answer.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘I’ve never been happy about it. I couldn’t tell you, you know.’

  At last she understood why he had shied away, when she talked about settlements and the appeal. She had misjudged him. Her diffidence had misled her. Whatever he wanted from her, it wasn’t the chance of money.

  ‘I rather wish you had.’

  ‘I couldn’t manage it.’ A long awkward silence. Then: ‘Jenny,’ (he scarcely ever called her by her Christian name, or, as far as that went, by any other appellation) ‘I don’t think I like this Swaffield business.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  ‘I mean, he may win the whole thing for you. But I don’t know whether you ought to take it, you see what I mean.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I don’t know about Swaffield. I shouldn’t like to be in business with him, I do know that.’

  Dear God, Jenny was thinking to herself, that was pathetic. Swaffield would eat several brighter men than this any day before breakfast. And yet she was respecting him.

  ‘What do you think I ought to do?’

  He couldn’t make himself clear. He seemed to be stuck with her father’s intentions.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ she said. ‘We can’t find out, we never shall.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Can you stand up to Swaffield?’ he said.

  ‘I can stand up to anyone. If I’m certain that I have to.’

  ‘Well then, I’m trying to say that you shouldn’t take more than your share.’

  ‘Who’s to decide what is my share?’

  ‘You’ll have to do that for yourself, won’t you?’

  Jenny was practical. She wasn’t going to make a martyr of herself. She said that martyrdom wasn’t on. She didn’t propose to give up the whole show, and let the other side win by default. But – he had touched a nerve. On the way back from that midnight soliloquy with Swaffield, Symington wasn’t the only one who was struggling with disquiet. So was she.

  For Symington, there was no question why he should be. It was a matter of professional responsibility or, if you preferred a more grandiloquent name, of conscience, such as Symington had since been thrashing over so often with his wife. For Jenny there was nothing so sharp. She was being disturbed by motives she couldn’t place. Maybe she wanted to behave according to her idea of decency, or even according to Lorimer’s idea, stiffer than her own. Maybe this was some kind of conscience too: though Dr Pemberton, if in possession of the facts, would have brusquely pointed out that Jenny, being a realistic woman, didn’t like running perceptible risks when she might have a reasonable settlement for the asking. That was when people called conscience to the rescue, Dr Pemberton would have remarked.

  Jenny wouldn’t have been got down by Pembertonian exercises in reduction. As she saw it, she and this man she trusted were trying to find a tolerable way to go. She didn’t want to behave like a card sharper. On the other hand, there was no call for wildness. Those earlier wills were enough justification for keeping one’s head. So she came back to the compromise which Swaffield was ordering her to throw away. She, and Lorimer too, were badly off. They were beginning to understand about inflation and soon they would be worse off. Compromise money would keep her from poverty for the rest of her time. It was honest enough, it was common sense.

  So she and Lorimer were talking like the Symingtons. They had their own problem in situation ethics, though they hadn’t heard the term. She could give instructions to Symington, whatever Swaffield said. What would be the price of that? Not so heavy as to Symington if he withdrew. Swaffield might turn vindictive, sack her from the one job she had enjoyed, demand his money back. Still she would be left with a considerable sum. The quarrel would be unpleasant. Shamefacedly, she would miss being on the fringe of Swaffield’s court. It wouldn’t be a disaster. As she explained this to Lorimer, telling him stories of Swaffield’s entertainments, Lorimer said: ‘I don’t think I would like to shake hands with a man like that.’

  She believed that Lorimer was jealous and felt pleased. Perhaps by this time she had submerged a thought which earlier hadn’t troubled her at all – that, though he was upright and wouldn’t have performed any shady trick he denounced in others, there was bitter envy mixed up with the uprightness. Now she wanted to think well of him, she liked to believe that his decency was pure.

  She mustn’t hurt Swaffield unnecessarily, she insisted. Oh yes, he was capable of being hurt. Much more important, she mustn’t force Symington’s hand. She owed something to him. Whatever happened, she mustn’t involve
him in difficulties with Swaffield.

  Since they were in a similar situation to the Symingtons, they not surprisingly arrived at a similar conclusion, or absence of one. They did so no more repetitively than the Symingtons, though Symington was a trained professional. Trained professionals when arguing their way through ethical mantraps were as repetitive as anyone else. In fact, Lorimer, much the stupidest of the four, was the one who havered least: but he was also the one with least to lose.

  In the end, they agreed, like the Symingtons, that it was wise to play for time. Jenny thought, rather less hopefully than the others, that Swaffield’s present storm might subside. If that time didn’t come, then, one way or the other, she would have to make the decision.

  24

  During January and February, Dr Pemberton received more reports on Hillmorton’s condition. The primary carcinoma had been discovered. It was in the prostate gland. That was no surprise, said Pemberton. But he might have noticed something wrong when he urinated, before the other signs developed? Not necessarily. Anyway, old men took that as a matter of course and didn’t go to a doctor. More fools they.

  He was being treated with deep X-ray therapy, Pemberton heard and gave a sceptical grunt. That meant more discomfort, and in his experience did no good. He saw no reason to alter his prognosis. He still guessed that Hillmorton had another year’s grace, if one could call it grace. It was all going according to form.

  Had he been told yet? The hospital doctor wasn’t certain, but thought not. Or at least (he used a civil servant’s phrase) not in terms. Pemberton had seen it all. He expected that Hillmorton saw the truth, and then had phases, quite long phases, of deluded hope. These terminal conditions, this one as much as others, more often than not carried fits of euphoria.