The Namedropper

Thirty-One

Jordan and Beckwith had alternated between cars to move between the hotel and the court building and that day they had used Jordan’s hired Ford. Beckwith accepted with a frown, although nothing more, at being told he’d need a taxi for his hotel return and within fifteen minutes Jordan and Alyce were driving in the opposite direction to the Bellamy estate. Jordan followed Alyce’s route directions from the civic centre court avoiding any possible media interference, isolating none, but Jordan quickly recognized the surroundings, and as they passed it nodded towards the previous night’s restaurant. ‘That’s where we saw them, after Wolfson made his pitch to Bob.’

‘Bob told me,’ said Alyce. ‘They must have thought you were having them watched, knowing where they were, when you walked in.’

‘They certainly reacted as if they had been caught doing something wrong,’ laughed Jordan. It wasn’t difficult for him to laugh – to be very happy – alone with Alyce driving through the low, undulating North Carolina countryside.

‘I can’t believe they thought I’d go for the offer, legal or otherwise. Bob doesn’t think they ever expected you to fight the case in the first place; that you’d be too frightened of losing and simply stay away.’

‘I still might wish I had stayed, after tomorrow.’

‘I’m not as confident as either Bob or Dan,’ Alyce admitted. ‘They don’t know Alfred like I do. He doesn’t lose, ever: doesn’t know how. He’ll appeal if there’s the slightest room for him to do so.’ There had been no building, no sign of any habitation at all, for the previous fifteen minutes and Alyce raised her arm, gesturing to his right. ‘Just around this bend there’s a turning to the right that suddenly comes up. Take it.’

Jordan did and almost at once found himself on the edge of a plain that stretched out in all directions as far as he could see. He said, ‘That’s incredible! The world’s flat and we’re right at the edge!’

Alyce shifted in her seat. Quietly, as if she were embarrassed, she said, ‘It’s all Bellamy land, as far as the horizon and as much – more than as much – again beyond.’

‘That’s… I don’t know… it must be…’ groped Jordan.

‘A lot of land,’ helped Alyce. ‘And there’s more, way over to the south right up to the coast. We’ve leased a lot of it: long, hundred year leases, but we still own it.’

‘ You own it,’ qualified Jordan.

‘Ultimately, I guess,’ agreed Alyce. ‘It’s all tied up in trusts and foundations and charities and God knows what. It was all here for the taking when the first ships landed, all those years ago. And a man named Hector Bellamy took it. At least, unlike most of the other early settlers, he didn’t annihilate the native Americans who already lived here. Maybe he should have done. According to the history they rose up against his settlement and killed him. But not until he had sons…’ Almost inaudibly, she said, ‘Which I can’t now have.’

Jordan wasn’t sure if she’d intended him to hear and pretended that he hadn’t. They drove on for what Jordan knew from the car’s speedometer trip to be a further ten miles, passing through an unexpected neon-lit township – which Jordan thought of as an unwelcome intrusion – before Alyce gestured another right turning on to a private blacktop. Within yards there was a CCTV-monitored gatehouse with a further camera-mounted identification speaker grill, into which Alyce leaned across him to announce their arrival. A huge, electronically-controlled barrier that filled the entire gate space began to open. From both sides of the gatehouse spread a high fence in front of which, at intervals, were printed warnings of its electrification. About twenty yards behind the fence began a thatch of even higher trees seemingly planted without any design but which, in fact, formed a straggled forest beyond which it was impossible to see from the outside. No house was immediately visible but there were several flocks of faraway sheep as well as a herd of nervously attentive deer. When the buildings came into view Jordan realized that there was not one house but several, a complex dominated by the central, columned and veranda-encircled white clapboard original with separate, two-and three-storey constructions grouped around it, completed by a single storey, L-shaped stabling to one side. Around it all was looped a stand of very tall and long-established shading trees. Jordan was surprised, when he stopped, to see that they had only been driving a little over an hour.

As the towering front door opened to their approach Jordan said, ‘It’ll be a uniformed butler!’

‘House manager,’ corrected Alyce, although it was a man in a black suit and tie waiting for them at the entrance. ‘We’ll eat something when I’ve got out of these court clothes.’ To the man she said, ‘We’ll use the garden room, Stephen. Take Mr Jordan through, will you?’

Alyce’s instinctive authority he remembered from that night at the Carlyle – but only occasionally in France – had returned, Jordan recognized, following the man as Alyce mounted the wide stairway winding around half of the circular entrance hall. From its panelled walls were displayed a portrait gallery of whom Jordan guessed to be Alyce’s ancestors. The garden room fulfilled its title. It was a vast glass-walled and roofed conservatory stretching out into sculpted and fountain-flower displays on three sides, with long-leafed plants and vases of more flowers inside. Jordan declined the offered drink, looking out beyond the neatly bordered and colour-coordinated beds in which two gardeners were working.

When Alyce entered she was wearing a V-necked sweater, light blue jeans that Jordan was sure he’d seen in France and was barefoot. He nodded in the direction in which he had been frowning and said, ‘What looks like a long red flag, way beyond all the buildings? It’s a wind sock, right?’

‘An airstrip,’ she agreed. ‘Flying is the quickest and most convenient way to commute up and down from New York. There’s a helicopter as well as a Lear. Both owned and run by the Bellamy Foundation.’

‘I didn’t guess it was anything like this… as extensive as this… an empire.’

Alyce shrugged. ‘Stephen offer you a drink?’

‘I thought I’d wait.’ Jordan saw that while he’d stood with his back to the room a table, glass topped to fit its surroundings, had been laid with cutlery, goblets and tumblers.

‘Lunch is scrambled eggs and smoked salmon.’

‘Sounds good.’

Alyce, totally comfortable in her own accustomed environment – the creator of her own environment – went to a side cooler Jordan hadn’t seen and said, ‘How about a drink now?

Jordan saw at once that it was the white burgundy he’d ordered for them in France. ‘Now I’d like one.’ His conflicting – unaccustomed – feelings were colliding. At that precise moment he knew himself to be confused. Seeking a balancing plateau, he said, ‘I thought your mother would be here?’

‘She likes the beach house at this time of the year. She paints. Actually paints quite well.’

Faraway in another part of the mansion there was the distant sound of a telephone and almost at once a louder summons from a multi-lined console on a side table. As Jordan gestured that he was leaving the room he heard Alyce say, ‘Hello? Hi… Sorry… Yes, he’s here now… I’m fine… no problem… OK…’ He was at the door when he heard, ‘Hey, come back.’ And when he re-entered the room she said, ‘Thanks for the politeness but you didn’t have to do that. It was Walter. He’s coming over when he’s finished.’

‘Walter?’

‘Walt Harding. He can guide you back, later.’

Jordan hadn’t thought about later; hadn’t thought about anything, not wanting to anticipate anything more than a minute ahead. Now he felt disappointed. He said, ‘I could have found my own way.’ He admitted to himself the hope that he wouldn’t have needed to. At least it took away the uncertainty.

Alyce didn’t reply, rising instead at the re-entry of the butler. He was pushing a flame-heated serving trolley from which, as they sat, he ladled eggs and fish on to plates and topped up both their glasses.

Alyce said, ‘I guess by this time next week you’ll be back in London?’

‘I haven’t thought about it. Let’s get tomorrow over, first.’

‘Wondering why I invited you out here this afternoon?’

‘No,’ lied Jordan.

‘It’s about tomorrow. Like I told you, I’m not as confident as either Bob or Dan. Even if there’s no damages awarded against you, you’ve still got a lot of costs and-’

‘Stop!’ demanded Jordan, loudly. ‘We’ve done this too many times and I’ve told you no too many times. It’s still no. Always will be, so let’s forget it once and for all, OK?’

‘No, it’s not OK!’ she argued. ‘You’re going to be out a lot of money, whatever happens. That’s not fair.’

Jordan swept out his arm, encompassing the house and beyond. ‘So you brought me here to show me you could afford it more than I could!’

‘That’s not fair, either!’

‘Tell me it isn’t true then.’

‘I wanted to talk to you, by ourselves. The court break was convenient. I wasn’t trying to impress you. This is just how it is.’

‘I am impressed,’ finally conceded Jordan. ‘But not enough to take your money. It’s no longer a conversation between us.’ He’d never imagined himself uninterested in anyone else’s money, Jordan further conceded. But there had been a lot of other things – attitude changes – over the last few weeks that he wouldn’t have imagined possible, either.

‘Never again,’Alyce promised. She sniggered. ‘Promise you won’t get mad if I say something else, though?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘You know who you reminded me of, yelling at me like that?’

‘You tell me it’s Alfred and I’ll yell louder,’ he said, joining in the game.

‘It was Alfred. How he used to speak… talk to people… talk to everybody…’ She hesitated at Stephen’s return with a black uniformed woman to clear the table apart from their wine and water glasses. Allowing time for them to get out of hearing, she said, ‘People never worked for us, either in Manhattan or Long Island, beyond a few weeks, because of it.’ She physically shuddered, at the recollection.

‘In the land of the laid-back, why on earth does everyone automatically refer to him as Alfred, never Al!’

Alyce’s laugh this time was more spontaneous. ‘Call Alfred Al! You’ve got to be joking! He was always Alfred and even then only to a very few people.’

‘How the hell did you ever get involved with such a…’ Jordan paused. ‘A man.’

‘Monster would have done,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many times and in how many different ways I’ve asked myself that same question. But he’s very good at hiding himself, when he needs to… when it’s necessary. And it was very necessary with me and the family and all that we’d created. It was only when it didn’t work, as he’d intended it to work, that it all started to go wrong. That the punishments started…’

‘You’re losing me,’ complained Jordan. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t even be talking about it, now that it’s virtually over. There’s no point.’

‘You know what I now realize Alfred really felt about me? About me and all the historic bullshit and where we, the Bellamys, are now?’ said Alyce, too engrossed in her own reflections to heed Jordan’s caution. ‘It was resentment. It was right, what Bob suggested in court, although he never brought it out like it truly was. It wasn’t me that Alfred loved. I don’t think it’s possible for him to love anyone, probably not even himself, although I think I said that he did. What Alfred really did love, which Bob challenged him with, was the idea of being the king in an American royal family – a king who could have as many mistresses as he wanted, like kings once did: like some still do, maybe. Marrying me gave him the combined lineage but to make it really work he needed the court and the country to rule. Which didn’t exist. But the Bellamy Foundation existed; the foundation on which I was a working chief executive until he persuaded me to resign, as I told the court. Except that it wasn’t because he considered it ill-fitting for me to be a working woman. He manoeuvred that to vacate the throne for himself. But he miscalculated, as Alfred so often miscalculated. The Bellamy Foundation is a charitable organization, with all the responsibilities that were explained in court. But there’s nothing charitable about the board that runs it. They’re hard-assed professionals who were the first to see Alfred for what he is, long before I did. Getting on to it wasn’t the shoo-in he thought it was going to be. He couldn’t get the necessary board member vote, certainly not when mother, who’s got the controlling vote structure, wouldn’t back him. That’s how the punishments started…’

‘Punishments?’ queried Jordan.

‘I believe that’s what the loans were, Alfred Appleton’s personally imposed financial penalties. And the neglect and the whoring, although I don’t think infecting me as he did was an intended humiliation, because to do that he had to contract it first and not even he would do that.’ Alyce abruptly laughed, although nervously. ‘Jesus, I’ve really run off at the mouth, haven’t I? Turned you into my therapist.’

Jordan laughed with her, anxious to lighten the mood. ‘I had a free afternoon.’

‘I know…’ she started, but then stopped.

‘Know what?’

‘I’m not going to talk about money, I promise. But I know from Bob what a hell of an input you made. I want to thank you and apologize for you getting caught up in it and I promise never again to mention any of that, either.’

‘You think I could have a moment or two to talk?’ asked Jordan, sure he knew what he wanted to say but not at all sure how to say it.

‘Depends what it is,’ qualified Alyce, cautiously.

‘None of what’s happened…’ Jordan started awkwardly, stopping at the sound from the far door of the garden room.

‘Hi!’ greeted Walter Harding, emerging through the foliage.

‘Hi!’said Alyce.

Shit! thought Jordan.

When they came to be delivered Jordan’s initial reaction to the verdicts was that of an anti-climax – despite, even, his total exoneration – because that was how he regarded the conclusion of the previous afternoon at the Bellamy house, anxious at its end to quickly leave a place which, until Harding’s intrusion, he’d hoped desperately not to leave that night. Hopefully not for many nights. So occupied still was he by that disappointment that at the opening of the court proceedings Jordan actually had to force his concentration upon Pullinger’s summation and guidance to the jury, which strictly obeyed Pullinger’s insistence on the priority of its required judgements.

This meant Appleton’s criminal conversation claim against him was the first to be dealt with and totally dismissed. Immediately following the verdict, Pullinger ordered that Appleton should pay three quarters of Jordan’s total costs for initiating such a flagrantly insupportable action, in part for which he held Bartle responsible for providing the inept legal advice. The jury found against Leanne Jefferies but again following Pullinger’s instructions limited the award against her to $50,000 in Alyce’s favour. They also found in Alyce’s favour on her cross petition against Appleton.

After discharging the jury Pullinger declared he had considered a bench order alleging perjury against Appleton but held back from doing so in the event of the man appealing upon the grounds he’d offered the previous day. He definitely intended an enquiry into alleged perjury against Mark Chapman and to carry out his already indicated decision to report both venere-alogists to their respective Massachusettes licensing authorities for professional misconduct. On the same grounds he was going to report David Bartle and Peter Wolfson to both the North Carolina and New York State bar associations.

‘In addition to which,’ Pullinger told the two attorneys, whom he’d ordered to stand before him, ‘I shall refuse ever again to have either of you appear before me on any legal matter, which I shall make clear to both bar associations I have nominated. I further order, upon the possibility of both or either of your clients being held in contempt of my court, against making comments or assisting in any way the media, either electronic or print, beyond what this court provides about any of the defendants or claimants in these proceedings. I want your assurance, which will be recorded by the court stenographer, that you fully and completely understand the order I have just issued.’

One by one the two attorneys, Appleton and finally Leanne Jefferies, acknowledged that they understood.

‘This hearing, the most disgraceful ever presented before me, is now closed,’ Pullinger concluded.

Reid’s office was judged both inadequate and inappropriate for the celebration and at a loss for an alternative they went back to the all too familiar hotel where a hurriedly arranged private room was hired and food and drink ordered while Alyce telephoned her mother to relay the news and Jordan returned to his suite to make an earlier-than-usual computer check that there had been no movement upon the existing shortfall enquiries, nor any new challenges. As an afterthought as he was actually leaving his suite, Jordan quickly dialled Lesley Corbin in London, who said she’d never had any doubt of the outcome and whom Jordan didn’t believe.

Jordan was back in his anti-climax depression when he got to the celebration, by which time Walter Harding had arrived and Alyce had passed on the court verdict. Also there were the DDK enquiry team who had never been called upon as well as some support staff from Reid’s office.

Harding approached Jordan the moment he entered the room and said, ‘Didn’t I tell you this was exactly as it would turn out!’

‘You certainly did,’ agreed Jordan. As well as a lot of other I-can-predict bullshit by which he’d become so irritated the previous afternoon that he’d switched off any attention to the man’s constant outpourings.

‘How’s it feel?’ demanded Harding.

‘I’m not sure it’s settled in.’ Jordan wished Alyce would break away form Reid so that he could excuse himself from the hospital administrator.

‘It was obviously nonsense from the beginning,’ insisted the man. ‘I guess you’re now going back to reality and England, where everything and everybody is normal?’

He’d never ever lived in reality, thought Jordan. Always the opposite, the unreality of living – being – somebody else, with somebody else’s name and persona. He said, ‘I’m not sure that’s an apt description, either.’ He saw Alyce had moved away from her lawyer and immediately excused himself to join her.

Alyce said at once, ‘I didn’t realize Pullinger was delaying the media release until tomorrow.’

‘Neither did I.’

‘By which time I shall be back at the house, beyond any camera lens.’

‘Is that what you’re going to do?’

‘There’s no better place to hide.’

‘For how long?’

‘For as long as I choose, although the judge put a pretty effective lid on it becoming a long-running saga, didn’t he?’

‘So what after you come out of retreat?’ pressed Jordan.

She smiled at the expression. ‘Regain my life. I’ve already arranged to get my place back on the board of the Bellamy Foundation.’

‘As well as?’

‘That’s as far as, for the moment,’ said Alyce. ‘There was something you were going to say, just before Walter arrived at the house yesterday?’

‘Maybe later,’ said Jordan. ‘Not now.’

‘Call me.’