Errors of Judgment(3)

Leo strode down Middle Temple Lane in the gathering dusk, mildly dashed by the rebuff. Perhaps he’d misinterpreted those occasional lingering glances she’d been giving him all afternoon. Or could it be that his vanity was getting the better of him, and the signals were no longer quite what he thought they were? With fifty looming, the age gap between himself and desirable young things was growing ever wider, uncomfortably so. He tried to estimate how old Alison Lightfoot might be. Late twenties? Early thirties at most. Christ, she was probably wondering what a man almost old enough to be her father was doing asking her out on a date.

Smarting with self-doubt and wounded vanity, Leo passed along Crown Office Row and through the archway into Caper Court. With a conscious and somewhat ridiculous sense of athleticism, he sprang up the short flight of steps into Number 5, and went into the clerks’ room. Henry, the head clerk, was on the phone, and Felicity, his junior, was going through files, checking figures against her computer screen.

Felicity smiled when she saw Leo. ‘Afternoon, Mr D!’ she called out brightly. She was an attractive twenty-four-year-old, with brown, curly hair and a buxom figure normally attired, to the distraction of the male members of chambers, in short, tight skirts and clinging tops. Today she was wearing a suit, possibly as a concession to the prevailing sombre mood in the City, yet still managing to display a tantalising flash of cleavage and thigh. She was a cheerful, capable girl, but had few natural organisational or administrative talents, and since her job as clerk required her to manage the cases, arrange the conferences and negotiate the fees of twenty-eight barristers in one of the City’s leading sets of commercial chambers, she was normally either a whirlwind of fiercely concentrated activity, or in a fluster of scatterbrained panic. She was fond of a laugh, was Felicity, and she had a perky, easy-going rapport with the members of chambers which Henry, the head clerk, found occasionally exasperating. Henry, who was only in his thirties but old beyond his years, was a clerk of the old school, a man who did his job with a mixture of pride and the mildly facetious deference of a good gentleman’s gentleman, and he often wished Felicity would conduct herself with more decorum and less familiarity. That said, he had long nurtured a wistful, unarticulated passion for Felicity, and the confusion of his feelings probably contributed to his generally careworn demeanour.

While Henry was busy with his phone call, Leo decided to take the opportunity to consult Felicity.

‘Felicity …’ began Leo.

‘Yes, Mr D?’ Felicity had finished on the computer and was sorting through late-afternoon mail.

‘Felicity, do I strike you – I mean, someone of your age, as …’ Leo paused, searching for a better word, but finding none. ‘Old?’ He and Felicity had always had a close understanding, and she was one of the few people with whom he felt he could be so blunt.

‘Old?’ Felicity wrinkled her brow. ‘Well, you’re getting on a bit, Mr Davies, no use pretending you’re not. But I wouldn’t say old. I mean, for your age you’re holding up really well, aren’t you? A bit like Terence Stamp, or Anthony Hopkins—’

Leo held up a hand. ‘OK. That’s fine. Stop there.’

Felicity, happy to think she’d said the right thing, leant forward and said in a cheekily conspiratorial whisper, ‘I think you’re lovely. Whatever.’ Then she handed him some papers. ‘These came in for you from Bentleys.’ Leo took the papers without comment and left the clerks’ room.

Felicity watched him go. What had that been about? Perhaps Mr D was having some kind of midlife crisis. He didn’t seem a likely candidate. Those looks, and him so good at his job. He could charm the knickers off anyone, light up a room just by coming into it. She’d seen people smile just hearing his voice the other side of a door. It was something beyond charm, beyond sex appeal. The secret Leo ingredient. He needn’t worry about getting old, with all that going for him.

These were hardly Leo’s thoughts as he trudged upstairs. He went into his room, chucked his robing bag in a corner and dropped the papers on his desk. Unlike the rooms of most barristers, his was a haven of sharply defined order, no piles of books and papers littering the desk and floor, or stacks of briefs lining the window sill. Leo believed that focused thought and proper concentration required an uncluttered environment, and his polished desktop was bare except for his laptop, a PC, and a counsel’s notebook and some pencils and pens. The only concessions to homely distraction were two framed photos of Oliver on a bookshelf of All England law reports, and three austere and extremely expensive Anselm Kiefer prints on the wall opposite.