A Certain Justice Read Online Free PDF Page B

might well manage change, but will they be the changes that Chambers want? She can manage systems; she’d be disastrous at managing people.”
    “I thought you liked her. I’ve always seen you — well, I suppose as friends.”
    “I do like her. In so far as she has a friend in Chambers, I’m that friend. We share a liking for mid-twentieth-century art, we go occasionally to the theatre, we dine out about once every two months. I enjoy her company, presumably she enjoys mine. That doesn’t mean I think she’ll make a good Head of Chambers. Anyway, do we want a criminal lawyer? They’re a minority here. We’ve never looked to the criminal Bar for the Head of Chambers.”
    Langton answered an objection understood but not stated. “Isn’t that rather a snobbish view? I thought we were getting away from that. If law has to do with justice, with people’s rights, their liberty, their freedom, isn’t what Venetia does more important than Desmond’s preoccupation with the minutiae of international maritime law?”
    “It may be. We’re not discussing relative importance, we’re choosing the Head of Chambers. Venetia would be a disaster. And there are one or two other matters which we’ll have to discuss at Chambers meeting on which she’ll be difficult. What pupils to take on as tenants, for example. She won’t want Catherine Beddington.”
    “She’s Catherine’s sponsor.”
    “That will make her objections more compelling. And there’s another thing. If you’re hoping to get Harry an extension of his contract, forget it. She wants to do away with the Senior Clerk and appoint a practice manager. That’ll be the least of the changes if she gets her way.”
    There was another silence. Langton sat at his desk as if spent. Then he said: “She seems to have been a bit on edge in the last few weeks. Not herself. Is anything wrong, do you know?”
    So he had noticed. That was the difficulty with premature senility. You could never be sure when the gears in the mind might not engage again, the old Langton disconcertingly assert himself.
    Laud said: “Her daughter’s home. Octavia left boarding school in July and I gather she’s done nothing since. Venetia’s let her have the basement flat so they shouldn’t be on top of each other, but it isn’t easy. Octavia’s not yet eighteen, she needs some control, some advice. A convent education is hardly the best preparation for running around London unsupervised. Venetia’s over-busy, she can do without the worry. And they’ve never got on. Venetia isn’t maternal. She’d be a good enough mother to a beautiful, clever, ambitious daughter, but that’s not the kind she’s got.”
    “What happened to her husband after the divorce? Is he still in the picture?”
    “Luke Cummins? I don’t think she’s seen him for years. I’m not sure he even sees Octavia. I believe he’s married again and lives somewhere in the West Country. Married to a potter or a weaver. A craftsperson of some kind. I’ve got a feeling they’re not well off. Venetia never mentions him. She’s always been ruthless in writing off her failures.”
    “I suppose that’s all that’s wrong, worry about Octavia?”
    “It’s enough, I should have thought, but I’m only guessing. She doesn’t talk to me about it. Our friendship doesn’t extend to personal confidences. The fact that we go to an occasional exhibition together doesn’t mean that I understand her — or any other woman, come to that. It’s interesting, though, the power she exerts in Chambers. Has it ever occurred to you that a woman, when she is powerful, is more powerful than a man?”
    “Powerful in a different way, perhaps.”
    Laud said: “It’s a power partly based on fear. Perhaps the fear is atavistic, memories of babyhood. Women change the nappy, give the breast or withhold it.”
    Langton said with a faint smile: “Not now, apparently. Fathers change nappies and it’s usually a bottle.”
    “But I’m