For a barrister I
really dislike personal conflict. Don’t you sometimes just wish
everyone could get along? I was forced to do a divorce case today. I hate
these. I’ve actually told my clerks to refuse them for me but after recent
behaviour I think they’ve decided to punish me. My client is a man in his late
forties. His wife had been unfaithful to him in the final throes of a
malingering vacuous twenty year marriage. He had been devastated but had begged
her to stay with him anyway. He is a businessman and she is a
housewife. They have a son, now just 20. It seems plain that she hates him,
though it is unclear why. He, on the other hand, still loves her. She had instructed lawyers to file
for divorce and was claiming a spectacularly large amount of money from him as
well as a yearly ‘pension’ for her ‘services’. Her claims were outrageous,
especially given her conduct. “I can’t believe it’s come to this,”
he said to me, outside court. “I know she’s fallen out of love with me but do
we have to keep twisting the knife?” “It’s important for you to stand up
for yourself,” I replied, “she can’t be allowed to take advantage of you.” “But who cares? I loved her and
slept by her side for twenty years. That’s as deeply ingrained in my heart as
ever it was. None of this matters. What’s mine… is hers.” “But what’s hers is not yours,” I said. “Is this the way it has to be?” “I’m afraid so.” “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you.
Here’s how it’s going to be: you will agree to her every demand. She may never
love me again, but I will always love her. There’s no future for me without
her, so I may as well continue only for her, and provide for her though she
looks not to me.” I understood him perfectly at that
moment, but I couldn’t in all conscience obey him. I spoke in private with my
opponent and negotiated a deal, favourable to her client but not such as to
obliterate my own.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Unrequited
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3 comments:
People can be so cruel at times.
Maybe he only realised how much he loved her because he had lost her.
Maybe he lost her because he never realised how much he loved her...
I understand the man. His determination to love her no matter probably feels noble to him. But it won't last forever, not unless he gets more out of it than a secret, waning false nobility. Even so, in this century? Any suggestion that nobility might be possible strikes me as laudable. Masochistic, perhaps, but after 20 years in love that's inescapable--on either side.
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