‘I would also stress that Mrs Shaw has at no time expressed any wish to end her marriage, or to claim custody of her daughter; it is a situation that has been forced upon her, and to which she has responded with much courage and generosity. I submit that she is the right person to care for Emmeline, and to raise her in her own particular, and carefully considered, way; I therefore recommend, my lord, that she be granted both custody and care and control, and that generous access be granted to Emmeline’s father.’
It had been the right decision, Eliza thought, to choose him; the gentler advocate, the more sympathetic to how she was; the more concerned with Emmie and her welfare. It had been a risk, to go so strong on her working life, but it was a point she had wanted to make most passionately herself and he had done it for her with charm and tact. But … then there was Bruce Hayward who, summing up, was gently savage, and his own testimony to Matt as moving as Toby Gilmour’s had been to her.
‘I am confident that Mr Shaw can provide the kind of emotional support for his daughter that she needs; he is a most unusual father, and we have heard many testimonies to that effect; he is extraordinarily committed to Emmeline, both emotionally and practically. He already has arrangements in place for her, so that he can seamlessly take over her care; and I would recommend that your lordship grant him both full custody and care and control, with access to her mother at his discretion.’
Doesn’t look good for me, Eliza thought; just doesn’t look good. Her dissolute friendships – how much good really had Mariella done her? – her admitted adultery, her personal ambitions. It just wasn’t going to work, any of it; there wasn’t enough to be said for her. Literally. And with Emmie throwing her weight in behind her father …
Outside, they waited. Toby was quiet, tense, Philip smiling, over-effusive; the assistants were chattering brightly, Matt’s team looking across at them, smiling, patently confident. Eliza felt utterly exhausted, numb, not even frightened; just longing to have it over, the final humiliation, the ultimate pain … and regretting – almost – her decision.
‘All rise.’
She was going to be sick, she was … ‘No nose picking,’ whispered Toby, trying to smile. She didn’t even try to smile back. Clifford Rogers looked at them all with his now-familiar air of weary resignation.
‘We have heard a great deal. Some of it revelatory, some of it predictable. Some of it persuasive, some of it frankly incredible. And we are left with – what? Two people, two highly intelligent people, both undoubtedly good parents, both indisputably bad spouses. Two people who love their child so much but are so diametrically opposed to one another that they choose to fight for her, rather than learn not to fight one another for her.
‘We have a father, clearly successful and ambitious, who has built up an extremely impressive business, who wants to run his family in the same way, with astonishingly little consideration and generosity for the wishes of the people within it. And a mother who is a most talented editor, admired by her peers and her superiors, but who is not prepared to give up her career in order to do the rather more important job, of caring for her young child.
‘Or we could look at it another way, and say we have a child who did not ask to be born, who has every possible right to security and the love of both her father and her mother, and is denied that by both of them.
‘I am not over-concerned with the shortcomings of either, as they have been presented to me; it is my considered opinion that the behaviour of both of them is no better and no worse than that of a great many married people, who have had the maturity to find a way to stay together for the sake of the children. Unfortunately neither Mr nor Mrs Shaw are in possession of this maturity. I think Mr Shaw could actually make a very good fist of caring for his daughter as a sole parent, and Mrs Shaw could do pretty well at caring for her in the same situation. The child would clearly be materially well provided for either way. But neither scenario would be ideal for her. Far from it. And it is the interests of the child, the innocent party in all this unhappiness, that have to be paramount.
‘So – we need a Solomon. Unfortunately I am not one. I fear I lack both his brutality and his courage. Certainly in so far as a judgment would affect a child.
‘But – I have found one. In the child in this case, in the six-year-old Emmeline Shaw, who has, mercifully, more maturity and common sense than either of her parents.
‘We spoke at length, she and I; expecting merely to discover in which way and how badly she was affected by the break-up, I found my way forward.
‘I think the best thing I can do is tell you what she said. She expressed – of course as all children do in this situation – a passionate wish that things could continue as they were, that she could live at home with both her parents. But she has come to accept that this is not possible. As she put it, rather succinctly, her parents are too stupid.
‘She did however propose a scenario which I consider clearly not ideal, but acceptable. Given that her parents are financially succesful, I believe it to be workable.
‘She says she would like them to live next door to one another, in houses that were exactly the same, particularly her bedroom. Now, I can see this would be a little difficult to arrange precisely as she desires it, but I see no reason why, in one of the areas of London, with many adjacent streets of extremely similar houses, two identical, or very like, residences could not be found.
‘She would like to spend exactly half her life in each house, with each parent. She would like to spend the weekends alternately with each of them, at the house in the country which Mr Shaw so generously bought for the family, and where her pony lives. She would like them all to be together at Christmas and on her birthdays.
‘Now it seems to me, that, for a little girl who has already suffered considerably, who yearns to see her parents together, who loves both of them very much, and genuinely enjoys the company of both equally, this is no more than she deserves. Indeed, it is a great deal less than she deserves, as I have already observed.
‘I realise it would not be easy emotionally for the parents. I consider, however, that they could and should be able to accomplish it. I am not asking them to live together but for two weekends a year. I would hope they are civilised and mature enough to manage this.
‘I am mindful that shared custody in these situations is rarely successful and given the slightly charged potential of this one, particularly so. I therefore grant custody to the father, and care and control to the mother, with access for the father exactly as outlined.’
A long pause … then … and was that, several in his audience wondered, a gleam in his heavily lidded eyes, a smile struggling to break out on his lugubrious features?
‘I should add that Emmeline’s dearest wish, as outlined to me, next to having her parents living together once more, is to hold a gymkhana at the country house in roughly one year’s time. I do not, of course, propose to make this a condition of the settlement, but I would say again, that it is no more than she deserves. What I do realise is that it would necessitate that Mr Shaw keep the house, Summercourt, in the county of Wiltshire, and not sell it as I believe he had wished to do. I realise that considerable generosity would be required to do this. But I believe it to be financially possible for him and, given that he is to have custody of his daughter, I would like to think he would show his gratitude by granting her wish. May I say in closing that I am most impressed with Emmeline and what both – and clearly it is both – her parents have accomplished in her upbringing thus far. It is for this reason that I am so unwilling to disrupt her life any further than has already been done.’
‘All rise.’
Eliza walked into the house; Emmie appeared, holding Sarah’s hand, looking anxious.
‘Was it all right? Are you cross with me?’
‘It was absolutely all right, Emmie. And no, I’m not cross with you. I can’t ever remember feeling less like being cross with you. Come here and give me a big, big hug. And Daddy, he’s here too, just to tell you he isn’t cross with you either.’
‘Mummy! Mummy, get up! It’s light and it’s late.’
‘Emmie—’ Eliza forced her eyes open, peering at her watch. ‘Emmie, it might be light but it’s not late. It’s six o’clock.’
‘It must be late, there’s a man downstairs with a roundabout.’
‘A – a roundabout? Oh, you mean – yes. What on earth is he here already for?’
‘To put it up, he said. He said the sooner the better. Can I ride on it when he’s done it? Please, Mummy, please.’
‘No, Emmie, you can’t. It’s for all the children later—’
‘I’m a child.’
‘Emmie, for goodness’ sake, give it a rest. Go and put some clothes on, your old jodhpurs, NOT the new ones, and I’ll go down and let him in. OK? And what about your tack and stuff?’
‘I’ve already done that, and I can’t plait his mane and tail without Gail, I can’t do the ribbons. I could oil his hooves again …’
‘Yes, OK, do that.’
Eliza pulled on her jeans and a T-shirt – she could have a bath later – and risked looking out of the window. Rain was her greatest fear for today; rain and what it could do to a gymkhana. She had experienced enough of them, the flying mud, the drenched onlookers, the smell of wet pony, the feel of sodden saddle and slippery reins, the leaking refreshment tent, the rain-cooled tea, the cold fingers holding soggy sandwiches, the icy trickle down the neck … and rain had been forecast.
But – ‘Oh, my God.’ It wasn’t raining. It was grey. Very grey. But it was the good grey, the grey of mist, the grey that rolled slowly away into first a hint, then a promise, then a burst of sunshine. A small miracle. No, a large one. Of course it might change …
She looked across at the meadow, transformed into a pony paradise, a ring, jumps, all looking very professional, and in the corner nearest the house all the paraphernalia attendant to a gymkhana for later in the day, several bales of hay, dozens of buckets, a stack of chairs, and a large pile of poles, for musical chairs and poles respectively. Beyond that, the rough field had become a car park, already holding two horseboxes – one a very flashy thing, the sort that housed not only horses, but people as well, in an add-on apartment just behind the driver. She looked at it with some foreboding, fearing they had been brought here under false pretences; lured by an article in the
Daily News
, whose editor had insisted on publishing a half-page appreciation of the Summercourt Horse Show and which rather gave the impression that the gymkhana was to be an event only a little humbler than Badminton.
The paper was offering, indeed, a cup for jumping, 14.2 hands and under, to be presented by the editor, Mr Jack Beckham, who would be attending with his own family, the voluptuous Mrs Babs Beckham, one time weathergirl and columnist of the
Daily Sketch
, and their three teenage daughters, who according to their father didn’t really know one end of a horse from the other, but liked the boys who rode them.
‘They won’t find any groovy boys here,’ said Eliza briskly; but as it turned out, Gail the girl who looked after Mouse, had suddenly produced her three half-brothers, who lived in Bath with her mother and stepfather, two very presentable and one quite stunning, who bore a distinct resemblance to Marc Bolan, complete with wild head of glossy curls. Eliza, who hadn’t seen them for years, and who hadn’t believed in the beauty of the Marc Bolan one, although it was much discussed in the village, stared at them open-mouthed when Gail brought them up to the house two evenings before.
‘I got them over to help,’ she said, ‘they all know about horses, course, and Cal, he’s the one with the hair, Dad’s been after him with the clippers ever since they arrived, he’s been at vet college for a year now, so he might be useful with any accidents.’
Eliza said she hoped fervently that there wouldn’t be any accidents, and of course they would have a vet in attendance, but it would be very useful to have a second pair of hands just in case; and gazed in fresh awe at Cal, who looked as if he would be more at home on the catwalk or on
Top of the Pops
than in a vet’s surgery.
She went downstairs, greeted the roundabout man and told him where he could start to set up – in the furthest corner of the car-park field so as to startle the horses least – and went into the kitchen to make some coffee. Her mother was there already, looking as excited as Emmie.
‘It’s all so lovely, Eliza, if only Daddy was here to see it, and no rain, you see I told you so.’
‘I know, I can’t believe it. Now the programmes have arrived I do hope—’
‘Not yet, Mrs Horrocks is bringing them over. Mr Horrocks was running them off on the Gestetner until the small hours apparently. But I’ve got a proof – here – what do you think?’
Eliza looked at it; it was hardly a fine piece of printing. The front cover, which consisted of a drawing of Mouse by Emmie, above all the statutory details, had a considerable list to the left and contained in spite of all her efforts, two typos – one of which was leaving the second ‘M’ out of Summercourt – but at least the gate charge was now correct, one pound rather than one hundred which had only been spotted, incredibly, at the fourth proofing.