Errors of Judgment(46)

‘Sort of.’ He held his own umbrella over her. ‘Look, don’t get angry, and don’t get wet. I just want to talk to you.’

She stared at him. ‘Have you been waiting here all afternoon?’

‘Hardly. I only work across the road.’ Rachel liked the way he laughed when he said this. But she had had enough of men for one day. She turned away and started to walk in the direction of Bank station. He hurried along next to her, holding his umbrella gallantly over her head.

‘Come for a drink with me? Please?’ She kept walking. ‘Just one?’

She glanced at him, noticing that he had deep-set grey-green eyes, and was probably older than she had first thought. Early thirties, probably, though his slightly round face made him look younger. ‘You’re very persistent, aren’t you?’ she replied.

‘It’s my best quality. If you won’t come for a drink with me tonight, I’ll just have to wait outside your office again tomorrow night.’

‘Tomorrow’s Saturday.’

‘That’s true. OK, Monday night.’ He bumped into a fellow pedestrian and apologised, lost Rachel in the crowd, then caught up with her again. ‘So you might as well give in now.’

They had reached the junction of Gracechurch Street and Cornhill. Rachel stopped, and he did too. They stood together beneath his umbrella, the rain teeming down, people bustling past. He gazed hopefully at her, and she found herself thinking how random this was, unplanned, out of nowhere. The way things should be. She also found herself thinking that there was nothing to hurry home for – Oliver was having a sleepover with Josh.

‘It’s Friday. Everywhere’s packed.’ She realised she’d just said yes.

He realised it, too, and smiled. ‘I booked a booth at Abacus.’

‘Wasn’t that just a bit presumptuous?’

‘Do you have to talk to me like you’re constantly telling me off? I haven’t done anything particularly wrong, you know. I just saw you and liked you, and hoped we might get to know one another. Frankly, I thought booking Abacus showed a bit of foresight.’

Rachel smiled. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

He put out his hand. ‘Simon Wren.’

Rachel shook it. ‘Rachel Davies.’

‘Come on, then, Rachel Davies. Before the lights change.’ He took her arm just above the elbow and hurried her across the road. Rachel found she didn’t mind the proprietorial gesture at all, nor the assumption that lay behind booking the cocktail bar. It was quite nice to be taken charge of. She would just go with it, and see where the evening took her. Maybe she would even have reason to be grateful to Andrew Garroway.





CHAPTER TEN




That evening, Sir Vivian was hosting his celebrated champagne and hotpot supper party at his spacious apartment in Westminster. Sir Vivian was a person of some eminence in the legal world. He had lately been Recorder of London, was a Bencher of the Inner Temple and a Judicial Appointments Commissioner, and had interests which extended beyond the law and into the arts. Besides being an accomplished cellist and chairman of the Trustees of Glyndebourne Arts Trust, he had also written a well-received history of the Dutch Republic, and a biography of the painter Duncan Grant. Sarah was his only child, the product of a late marriage. Sarah’s mother had died when Sarah was just fifteen, and he had never remarried – partly because he had loved his wife too deeply to wish to replace her, and partly because he found the rewards of middle-aged bachelorhood too varied and enjoyable to want to tie himself down again. Although now in his early seventies, he remained suavely good-looking, and was one of the most popular ‘spare’ single men of a certain age among London hostesses.

Tonight’s party was one he held every autumn, and to which he invited prominent people from the world of the law and the arts to eat lamb hotpot and quaff champagne. (It was well known that the arriviste Jeffrey Archer had appropriated this idea, as he had so many other things, after being taken in the early seventies to one of Sir Vivian’s parties by the young David Mellor, then a pupil in Sir Vivian’s chambers). There was always much demand for invitations among the great and the good, and every year Jonathan Kittering and his wife Caroline, though merely a retired couple from Woking with no standing in either the world of law or the arts, were sure to receive theirs. Jonathan Kittering and Sir Vivian had been close friends for many years, ever since their schooldays, and one incident in particular had had a lasting effect upon Sir Vivian and had shaped certain of his attitudes.

In his teenage years Vivian Colman had been slender, golden-haired, and a precociously gifted cricketer, good enough to be chosen at the age of sixteen to play for the First XI against Uppingham. Daunting though it was for a year-eleven boy to be batting and bowling in the company of the gods of the upper sixth against the school’s fiercest rivals, he had acquitted himself exceptionally well. On that sunny afternoon in early June 1956, he had taken four wickets and achieved his first half-century, and been named man of the match. Young Vivian’s quiet pleasure in the day was, however, sadly spoilt when, later in the pavilion, after the others had gone to tea, Edwin Challoner, the captain of the First XI, tried to seduce him. Vivian was deeply upset and horrified, and it was by the merest good fortune that Jonathan Kittering had come into the pavilion at that moment and interrupted the incident. Challoner left swiftly, leaving Kittering to calm and reassure his schoolfellow.