Free The Pupil by Caro Fraser

– is he exactly our sort of people?’
    ‘Well, I’m not exactly your sort of people, now, am I, Cameron?’ asked Leo gently, with an amused smile. Renshaw looked nonplussed. He liked Leo; Leo amused him. He didn’t care whether he came from a mining village or not. What he had meant was …
    ‘Oh, bugger it all!’ he roared. ‘Who cares about these schoolboys? I’m off to do some work!’ And he lumbered from the room. When he had left, Michael and Leo smiled at one another in silence.
    ‘A tenner says young Master Choke is still with us a year from now,’ said Leo. Michael hesitated for a second.
    ‘You’re on,’ he replied.

CHAPTER FIVE
    In the third week of December each year, it was customary for Sir Basil to fret about the chambers party. The party was a tradition that went back to Sir Basil’s father’s time. In those days, Sir Basil seemed to recall, it had been a fairly civilised affair, with a few bottles of excellent champagne and some canapés, and was attended only by members of chambers and a couple of outside guests of sufficiently high rank, like the Master of the Rolls. (Mind you, reflected Sir Basil, the Master of the Rolls hadn’t always behaved with the kind of decorum that one might have expected.) These days, however, the thing seemed to Sir Basil to be getting quite out of hand. The several bottles of champagne had grown to a couple of cases; there had to be a bottle of Glenmorangie for Cameron Renshaw, who absolutely refused to drink champagne; soft drinks and mineral water were laid on for those driving or bicycling home; a few cans of beer had to be provided, ostensibly for the postboy andthe inhabitants of the clerks’ room, although last year the postboy seemed to have mixed a good deal of Glenmorangie with several glasses of champagne and had to be carried to a taxi.
    In addition to this, it seemed that a formidable amount of food had to be provided. Not just little biscuits with scraps of smoked salmon on them, but entire sandwiches, chicken legs, crudités, dips, vol-au-vents, sausage rolls, nuts, twiglets, crisps, cheese biscuits.
    But what most exasperated Sir Basil were the numbers who attended. Far from being the intimate, serene event of former years, the dead hand of democracy had descended, and now the clerks, the typists, the postboy and, it seemed, their assorted relatives, also came. Last year a temp called Debbie had been sick on the stairs. Sir Basil was not looking forward to this year’s party. It was no consolation to him to know that, all over the City of London, the heads of multinationals, the leaders of great conglomerates, and the chairmen of mighty banking institutions were all forking out so that their staff could get drunk and offensive.
    He had suggested mildly to Mr Slee that perhaps the chambers party should be restored to its status quo, in return for which he would happily pay for the rest of the staff to disport themselves at some suitable restaurant. Mr Slee had drawn in a slow, whistling breath.
    ‘Ooh, no, sir. Can’t see that going down very well. Not with the girls, at any rate. Bit “them and us”, if you get my meaning. If they thought you were getting snobbish about it, they wouldn’t be best pleased. Bad as if you forgot their Christmas bonus.’ This was a timely reminder.Sir Basil had gazed at his head clerk. As always, it was with some reverence. He had no idea how much Mr Slee earned exactly, but he knew that it must be in the region of some fifty thousand a year, if not more. Mr Slee had a five-bedroomed detached house in High Wycombe and drove a BMW. Like all head clerks, his origins were lowly and his power absolute. Mr Slee and his kind could make or break a barrister’s career. They negotiated fees and arranged conferences and hearings. They wheeled, they dealed, and they kept their ear close to the ground. Rub your clerk up the wrong way, and you could lose your footing. Mr Slee’s word – though the word was always