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By Andy Marlow
Copyright 2011 Andy Marlow
The Lawyer
“How was work today, honey?” called Nicky from the kitchen.
Jonathan didn’t answer straight away. He was busy lugging his suitcase through the front door, a deceptively simple task which was proving to be surprisingly difficult. The front door was of a curious design in that it would swing shut whenever you ceased to prop it open, a fact which would not have been a problem had Jonathan’s suitcase not been so heavy. As it was, however, it took all his strength and both his hands simply to lift it, so that his rear end was being continually abused by the sharp end of the door while he tried with all his effort to pull his load through.
“Fine,” he replied through gritted teeth. “Fine, as always.”
He looked behind him at the damage the door was inflicting and was dismayed to find his brand new suit being strained by the constant impact of wood on fabric.
His new suit: it had cost him £495, designed by and purchased from Emporio Armani no less.
Eventually the suitcase was through and the door slammed shut with a bang. Jonathan felt the fabric of his trousers to see what damage had been done and grunted in annoyance. It was cosmetic, but in his line of work image was everything. Only a small part of his day was occupied by dispensing legal advice; the rest, and by all means the most important part, was about simply looking the part. It almost didn’t matter whether you knew what you were talking about: as long as you wore a nice suit, had a nice haircut and threw in the right terminology like “breach of contract”, “offer”, “acceptance”, and “cause of action”, the firm was largely happy with your work. Put on this show all day, every day, and he was rewarded with a fat little pay cheque somewhere in the region of £200 per hour.
His working day: from eight a.m. in the morning to six p.m. at night, it earned him £2000. Per day. With that much in pocket, spending £495 on a suit is just spare change.
“Look at what this door did to my suit!” he exclaimed, almost to himself. He may as well have been talking to himself, for Nicky was not listening. She was busy in the kitchen cooking up dinner. She had, most likely, spent the whole day in that room, cooking and cleaning, washing and ironing. Yet it wasn’t that she was her husband’s domestic slave, forbidden from leaving the house; nor was it that she couldn’t get a job. It was simply the fact that she didn’t need one. When your husband is bringing home around £12,000 per week, you can afford to live a lifestyle of bored luxury.
That’s the keyword, though: ‘bored’. Housework had become a hobby for her, simply because the only alternative was daytime TV and she could not face the prospect of watching yet another episode of ‘Cash in the Attic’ or ‘Homes under the Hammer’.
She occasionally went out shopping. Yesterday, for example, she had gone to Dolce and Gabana on a £1,500 shopping spree, in which she had bought one mini skirt (£215), one short dress (£390) and a medium leather bag (which on its own came to a whopping £600). She had used the remaining £295 for lunch.
Jonathan walked into the kitchen and greeted his wife with a kiss. On the face of it, their marriage was strong, desirable, enviable. Under the surface, it was not so: for all her mind told her that she should be loving this lifestyle of obscene wealth and luxury in which anything could be hers, her soul was disenchanted by it all; meanwhile her husband, for all his wealth and apparent success, had gained a world-weary attitude which would have befitted a man twice his age. As it was, by his thirtieth birthday he had given up on all his dreams and accepted life as it was: artificial, cold, unfulfilling. He trudged from day to day wearing a mask, pretending like everyone around him that he was living the dream and loving every second, when really his essence had long since died and was buried somewhere in the pit of his stomach.
Nevertheless, the pair of them wore plastic faces towards each other. Jonathan only knew the attractive, glamorous surface of the woman in front of him and could never hope to pierce into the truth of her soul; Nicky could only see the success and charm associated with her husband, blind to his tired, worn eyes and inner darkness.
“How was your day?” he asked obligingly.
“Fine,” she replied, faux-thoughtfully. “I made us chicken pie, potatoes and peas for dinner.”
“Sounds scrumptious!”
The entire conversation was artificial, forced, and they both knew it. This had become a daily ritual for them: indeed, their entire lives were now ruled by ritual. Every day, Jonathan would leave home at seven o’clock in the morning for work. They would ritualistically say goodbye and ritualistically kiss, telling one another ‘I love you’ using words which had lost their meaning long ago. Then, at half past six in the evening, Jonathan would come home and they would have their kitchen ritual of asking each other how their day was. Nicky would have cooked them a meal and he would eat it, often in silence. Finally, both of them would retire into separate rooms to watch their separate TV shows and then go separately to bed. Every day was as predictable as the last.
Their television sets: both widescreen, both Panasonic, both £550. In total: £1,100.
“I closed the deal today,” announced Jonathan. His voice tried to convey excitement but failed miserably. Nicky, though, had just as much invested in their collective fiction as he did, so she answered just as faux-excitedly:
“Ooh! How much did you get?”
“In total, considering how long I’ve been working on it, £10,000 I’ve earned on this one.”
Jonathan had been working tirelessly all week on the deal. He was the solicitor in charge of drafting the contracts for a business merger between two giants of the mobile phone world. His efforts had left him with little time for his friends or even his wife, but it was over now- and it had paid off.
She hugged him happily. This was genuine happiness. Yet it was not out of pride in her husband but out of something more like greed: her joy was the same as she would have felt if a cheque for £10,000 had just been dropped through her letterbox.
Jonathan winced. He had little contact with his wife these days and, truth be told, he had secret inclinations about her true feelings. Despite his appearances- and hers- something inside him was uncomfortable, as if it understood that theirs was an empty marriage, an empty life, and all these monetary achievements brought nothing in the way of fulfilment. Yet if he did indeed feel that way, he did not show it.
“We can get that extension now!” she declared merrily as she returned to the pie cooking on the stove. “Ooh- I found something today. You might be interested. It’s on the coffee table.”
Jonathan traipsed into the living room to see what she was on about. Before him was the standard set-up: one sofa, two chairs, one of their televisions, a radio and their coffee table, with something odd and out of place lying on top of it.
Their coffee table: carved from mahogany, imported from Scandinavia and bought for £1,000 from an independent retailer.
He approached the mysterious object and recognised it instantly. It was his old diary which he had kept as a student. He had started writing it in on the first day of his Law degree at the University of Bath and had continued until sometime in his third year. It was battered, torn, old, and unsightly. If he was seen carrying it about, it would do nothing for his image. Yet there it was. It had a certain charm about it, an other-worldly ‘alternative’ feel which had attracted him to it in his youth.
His youth. He smiled a genuine smile as he remembered his eighteen year old self.
He had never been an avid writer, so his entries were less than eloquent. Nevertheless he opened the diary up on the first page and read:
“September 25th, 1999: First day at University today. Finally free! Freshers week is amazing. Remember: Amy. She’ll
be important. Lectures start next week. Looking forward to it. Three years time: Jonathan Barnett, LLB, fighting against corruption and oppression and injustice!”
It was like reading someone else’s diary. He almost didn’t recognise the person who had penned those words, but whoever it was intrigued him. He read on, and as he did so he began to feel something unnameable growing inside him:
“March 3rd, 2000: Turns out university invests in arms dealers. Not happy. Went to demonstration and ended up in occupation. We’re in lecture theatre now. Been here two days now. We shall not be moved!”
“July 12th, 2000: Visited a commune today. Hippies are still alive! Must visit again. Good way of life.”
The person who had written the words before him had been an idealist, a revolutionary, unjaded by the realities of life and still in possession of his dreams and values. Could