Shadows cut across me. I feel them without opening my eyes. It’s Julie, with three guys and a girl called Anne who is due to start as a counsellor at another camp next week. I squint up at them through the sideways-falling bars of sun. Their tanned legs are huge columns, some smooth, some hairy. They swoop down on me. Anne seizes my left leg, Julie my right. Someone else grabs me from behind as I sit up. They all smell of beer already and they’re jostling, fooling around, excited from the crush of riding up here in the car together. I let myself go limp as they lift me and rush me to the edge of the pool, then swing me out. As they let go I twist and the water slams up at me. I go down, down, letting out my breath in the way that makes you sink deep, sculling up water with my hands so I won’t rise too soon. I send up a flight of bubbles to the surface.
I take off my waterproof, tie the sleeves at the top, pack stones inside the sleeves, tie the wrists. I twist the waterproof around your left leg and tie it, drawing the knot as tight as I can. Then I twist it again. But the tide is strong. What is heavy enough to take you down may not keep you there.
I want you to let out your breath now. I want you to do it, not me.
I kick off from the floor of the pool. I burst through the skin of the water and there you are, looking at me. Not right at the edge of the pool like the others, but standing back, smiling a little. You knew I was OK. I feel your eyes on my breasts as I climb out of the water. I stand at the poolside, gripping the edge with my toes. I poise myself, swing my weight forward and dive. It’s a beautiful dive, I know it as my body slices into the water. I come up and turn on my back and float. The sky above me is a rich evening blue, with the white loop of an aeroplane’s trail in it, high up. I think how far I am from home and I am completely happy. When I climb out of the pool and sit at the top of the steps squeezing water out of my hair, you are still looking at me. In a minute, I know, you’ll walk over to me. But I look down, prolonging the moment before it happens, the best moment, while I squeeze runnels of water onto the pale cream paving-stones.
The boat rocks violently. I’m afraid we will both go over, my feet tangled in yours. If you fall out of a boat you only have about five minutes to catch up. Even in calm weather the boat goes faster than you can swim. You taught me that. I lift your left leg, with the weight on it, and rest it on the side of the boat. I kneel down and brace myself against the floor of the boat, pushing you up. You don’t move. I shove and heave. I get hold of an oar and wedge it under you, then lever it down over the seat to lift you. The boat pitches and more water flops over the side. And then you move. It’s so slow that at first I don’t realize that this is enough. This is going to do it. You’ve begun to lose your balance and once that happens nothing in the world can put it right. I feel your weight shift at the beginning of your fall. You’re going over, but I don’t know it, and I’m still grunting and pushing when you slide away like a baby. The boat heaves and I almost fall after you, then it smacks back and rights itself. There’s no splash as you go in, sliding face-down on the water, your clothes belling out with trapped air. Then your left leg swings down as the weight of the stones begins to pull. Suddenly you are upright, standing in the water. And I see that the water is gaining, pouring back over you as you go down upright, your head bowed like a man in prayer. I see you quite clearly, first your whole body and a moment later just the top of your head, dark, with your body squat beneath it. Then going down. Then the grain of the water thick like darkness and you are gone.
You squat behind me and hold up the weight of my wet hair. ‘Let me help you with that,’ you say. I smell beer and cigarette smoke. Your body, your skin, your hair.
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘You won’t be seeing much more of me after the end of the month.’ The usher appears from nowhere with such alacrity that I suspect he has been hanging about in the hope of catching me. I’ve come in early to do some reading; I’m in open court at ten. A wave of fear flashes over me. Does he know something I don’t know? What is he trying to tell me? You’re not safe jet, don’t think it. A few more weeks and that’s your lot.
But he wouldn’t know. He’s only the usher. I’ve got to stop jumping at shadows. He stands in front of me, blocking my way, washing his big, meaty hands one over the other.
‘Yes,’ he goes on, ‘that’s it. I’ve done my time.’
‘You mean you’re retiring?’
‘Retiring on a full pension.’
‘Well … that’s very nice.’
‘And I can tell you now, I shall be glad to get out of it. I never thought I’d say that, but then I never thought things would change as much as they have. There’s no dignity in it any more. Hurry-scurry, head-down, a mound of paperwork every time someone goes to the toilet, if you’ll pardon the expression. And the judges we get aren’t what they used to be, present company excepted, of course. No style. Civil servants, the lot of them.’ He spits it out, grinning. He’s been waiting to say this for a long time, this excessively punctilious servant of the courts.
‘No, you used to get some real characters, but that’s all been done away with. My mistake was going over to the civil courts. I could have been in the Old Bailey by now if I’d played my cards right and stuck with the criminal.’
‘You’re moving then, are you, when you retire?’ It’s alarming how much I want him to say yes. I want him out of the way, in some big anonymous city where I’ll never have to think of him again. He knows too much. It leaps into my mind. It almost leaps onto my tongue. Leave me alone. You know too much. But he doesn’t; of course he doesn’t. He knows nothing. To him, I am what I appear. A district judge with no style, who probably only got the job because she’s a woman. Eating her sandwiches in her chambers. No character to speak of. A sign of the times, and of the way the law’s going. He’s glad to be getting out of it.
‘Oh no, it suits me here. I’ve got a little place down on the coast, about five miles from Wrerne Bay, I expect you know it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Beautiful bit of coastline. Takes a bit of getting used to, no good if you’re looking for sandy beaches and funfairs. But it grows on you. I go walking miles along the marshes.’
‘I know where you mean.’
‘And you’re what? About six miles the other way?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll feel the difference, after London. I daresay it came as a bit of a shock at first.’
‘No,’ I say coolly, ‘I know this area well. I used to spend every summer here when I was a child.’
He reassesses me, immediately absorbing this new piece of information into his picture. ‘Well, of course,’ he says, ‘London’s no place to bring up children these days, is it?’
I think of the teenage posse, out of their minds on boredom and cider, hanging round the War Memorial in the village on rainy Saturday nights. Too young for the pub, too old for home, their evening building to its climax of throwing up over the pavements.
‘We were happy there,’ I say, looking him straight in the eye. ‘In London.’
‘Oh well, it’s horses for courses, isn’t it?’ he says, consigning me where I belong. ‘Give me the marshes on a summer’s evening any day. Somewhere between nine and ten, when the light’s going. There’s some places they can’t change.’
And there he goes, stick in hand, his big, square body facing the light of the sea and the strange midsummer light that seems to shine out of the marsh. He’s got a dog with him. A collie that races ahead with the flag of its tail waving. He lets it run wild on the beach, calling it off fiercely when it unearths a dead crab or –
‘No,’ he says. ‘This month is the last I’ll be opening and shutting these doors.’
‘I wish you luck.’
He nods, baring his teeth again in that grin which I used to think deferential.
‘Likewise,’ he says. ‘Likewise, I’m sure. Madam.’
I go on past him, my wig box and case heavy in one hand, the bag with my gown and tabs in the other. My hea
rt is knocking in my chest again, too hard. I went to the doctor last week, after nights of lying awake trying to slow it down. I can’t be ill. He examined me, and then he said he thought I needed a holiday. Or some relaxation classes. There was a counsellor attached to the surgery now who ran a course of relaxation classes. They’d been a great help to several of his patients.
‘That’s no good to me,’ I said, picking up my bag, ‘I can’t afford to relax. I’ve got to keep going.’ I smiled, to make it into a joke.
‘Well, I can’t give you a prescription for that,’ he said, smiling too.
Now I put my fists on the windowsill and lean on them, looking out. It is a perfect autumn day, clear and crisp. The sky looks like something you could drink. There’s a very faint trail, high up, and the shining point of a plane, going westward.
No sound comes in through the double-glazed window. I find I have raised my hands and spread them on the glass.
I remember once, when I had my own practice and still did some criminal work, I had to go and see a client who’d been remanded in a new high-security wing of the local prison. At the entrance the outer door opened, but not the inner. You stood between inner and outer doors, sealed by glass, a sandwich of flesh held in transparence, while the time switch took effect. I don’t know how long I stood there. Thirty seconds perhaps. A guard, watching me. He had the sullen grin on his face some of them get when they see a female solicitor coming in to a prisoner they consider dangerous. You’d soon find out, if it wasn’t for us, that grin says.
My room is warm and stuffy. I should have done some reading but all I’ve done is stare out of the window and feel my heart beating steadily, much faster than it ought to beat. I put on my gown, my tabs, arrange my wig, look at my watch. It is ten to ten. For some reason, I find I am thinking of Mr Rossiter. I wonder if he is seeing his children every Sunday between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. I wonder whether he is still keeping a diary of the times he went to fetch them and found they were ill, or helping at the school fair, or suddenly invited to a birthday party. I think of how he waited for me outside the car-park. I can’t remember everything I said. I hope I said the right things.
‘All rise,’ orders the usher, and I come into court. I bow, they bow, I sit, they sit. I spread out my papers on the desk, shuffling statements. In a moment the clerk will ask me if I’m ready to begin. I’m not ready. I look out at the barristers, the solicitors and their clients behind them, the witnesses. It’s a road traffic case.
‘Are you ready to begin, Madam?’ asks the clerk, and I nod.
‘Yes, please.’
The clerks reads out the case of Islett v. Conrad.
Mrs Islett is thirty-four years old, and has two children who attend Cabot Lodge Primary School in Slatter Road. She shares the school run with two friends, each of whom has a child who attends the same school. On this occasion Mrs Islett had four children in her car, one in the front and three in the back. The child in the front was secured by a seatbelt, the children in the back were not, although seatbelts were fitted. Mrs Islett was unaware that the children in the rear were not wearing their seatbelts. According to her statement she had ensured that all the belts were fastened before she started the car.
Mr Conrad is twenty-eight years old, a salesman for Glaston Glazing. On the morning in question he was proceeding along Ellesleigh Road in an easterly direction, at a speed of between 25 and 30 m.p.h. Mrs Islett was stationary at the junction of Ellesleigh Road and Clare Avenue, waiting to turn right. Mr Conrad had precedence. As he came up to the junction he was indicating left. Mrs Islett, assuming that he meant to turn left onto Clare Avenue, checked that the road was clear in the other direction and then pulled out onto Ellesleigh Road. But Mr Conrad did not turn left; instead, he carried straight on and his vehicle struck Mrs Islett’s. As a result of the collision eight-year-old Kylie Barrett, a passenger in the rear of Mrs Islett’s vehicle, sustained a fractured elbow. Mrs Islett suffered from shock, bruising and minor whiplash. Since the accident she has been unable to drive and is now receiving treatment for depression.
Witness statements confirm that Mr Conrad indicated to turn left. One witness states that he may have also slowed slightly. Whether he slowed or maintained his speed, all three witnesses confirm that he drove straight on, colliding with Mrs Islett’s vehicle. They also confirm Mrs Islett’s statement that Mr Conrad jumped out of his car after the accident and abused her verbally.
I look at Mrs Islett. She is thin and tense, wearing a smart lime-green suit which drains any remaining scrap of colour from her face. She walks stiffly, staring straight ahead. As she comes forward to give her statement from the witness box she trips, striking her leg on the edge of a wooden bench. She gives a mouse-like shriek of fear and pain. Mr Conrad watches her with his arms folded. His face is impassive. Well-shaven, dark-suited, his shirt electric white. He leans forward to say something to his solicitor, catches my eye, thinks better of it and sits back again.
Mr Conrad gives evidence that he had turned left into Ellesleigh Road from Sheraton Hill, a quarter of a mile back. He did not notice it at the time, but he must have left his indicator on. No, he does not think he slowed down. He was travelling at between twenty-five and thirty miles per hour, too fast to take the sharp corner of Ellesleigh Road and Clare Avenue safely. If he had intended to turn left, he would have slowed down to about ten miles per hour. In answer to cross-examination by Mrs Islett’s barrister, he repeats the evidence in his statement. No, there was no question of him changing his mind about turning at the last minute. He gives his evidence well, and doesn’t get flurried by the barrister’s waiting silence into saying more than he means to say. He makes an effective contrast to Mrs Islett, who sounds as if she can barely remember what happened.
Perhaps she can barely remember what happened. The witnesses remember, and Mr Conrad remembers. He even happened to have glanced at his speedometer just before the crash. Everybody remembers that the children in the rear seat weren’t wearing their safety belts.
As the evidence continues I glance behind, onto the public benches. There’s a woman who looks like an older, wispier version of Mrs Islett, sitting next to a gingery man who is bolt upright, as if he’s waiting outside the headteacher’s study. There are two other youngish women. I wonder if these are the mothers whose children Mrs Islett was taking to school?
I think they are. I think that is what this case is all about. Mrs Islett cannot bear the thought of what happened, and what might have happened, to those children in the back of her car, who were not wearing seatbelts and were not her own children. She finds it so unbearable that she has almost managed to blot the accident from her mind, and cannot even retrieve it convincingly when she finds herself in the witness box. Instead of memory, she has depression. But if it can be proved that the accident was Mr Conrad’s fault, then she will be able to hold up her head with the other mothers. She will be able to remember.
The picture of the accident emerges slowly through the witness statements and cross-examinations. A woman in a hurry, four children packed into the car, squabbling and shouting. One of the school-run children arriving late at Mrs Islett’s house, so that they were in heavy traffic all the way, making them even later. Seatbelts which may have been fastened, as Mrs Islett states, when the car left the drive. Children bobbing and jumping all over the back seat, as attested by another witness in the car travelling behind Mrs Islett. And the same witness states that the driver of the car, whom he identifies as Mrs Islett, turned right round in her seat at a set of traffic lights and shouted at the children. He remembered because he felt sorry for her. All those kids.
Mrs Islett was late for work again, for the third time in the past fortnight. Mrs Islett was heading for a formal warning, which she had been told by her employer she would receive if she were late again.
I listen to Mr Conrad’s barrister winding up his case. He’s good: a young barrister getting his first cases, and putting them well. There’s not a trace of nervo
usness in him, any more than there is in his client. I put a question to him and he answers with just the right blend of courtesy and firmness. Mr Conrad and Mrs Islett are rungs on a ladder he’s going to climb fast.
I look at Mrs Islett. She is very pale now. I think she realizes that the evidence is not going her way. The courtroom is stifling, as it often is just before a judgment. I beckon to the clerk.
‘I’m going to retire for a few minutes before giving judgment.’
Back in chambers I put my hand over my chest and press in hard. I walk up and down the room, clearing my mind.
I know Mrs Islett’s life. I know it as if it’s my own, though she’s nothing like me. She has children. And she’d do anything for them. And now look what she’s done. A small case, heard by a small judge, and it’s going to destroy her. She’s the type who will always believe that a judgment given against her means she’s been publicly branded as a liar. And why shouldn’t she believe that? She’ll think that no one will ever trust her again. They’ve trusted her with their children, and she has failed to protect them. She’s let the kids run riot in the back of her car, without their seatbelts. She’s pulled out onto a main road without checking the oncoming traffic as she should have done. All the time she’ll have quick little pangs of thought running into her like needles. How can I ever face Kylie Barrett’s mother again? He swore at me. He opened the car door and swore at me. He said I was a stupid bitch. He said I shouldn’t be on the road if I couldn’t look where I was going.
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