FOWLE. Don’t say it, sir. After that rigorous training.
MORGENHALL. Well, there it is. I think I shall retire.
FOWLE. But cheer up, sir. As you said, other cases, other days. Let’s take this calmly, sir. Let’s be very lucid, as you put it in your own statement.
MORGENHALL. Other cases? I’m getting on, you know. Tuppy Morgan’s back in his place. I doubt if the Dock Brief will come round again.
FOWLE. But there’ll be something.
MORGENHALL. What can there be? Unless?
FOWLE. Yes, sir?
MORGENHALL. There would be another brief if …
FOWLE. Yes?
MORGENHALL. I advised you to appeal …
FOWLE. Ah, now that, misfortunately …
MORGENHALL. There’s a different atmosphere there, up in the Appeal Court, Fowle. It’s far from the rough and tumble, question and answer, swear on the Bible and lie your way out of it. It’s quiet up there. Pure Law, of course. Yes. I believe I’m cut out for the Court of Appeal …
FOWLE. But you see …
MORGENHALL. A big, quiet Court in the early Summer afternoon. Piles of books, and when you put one down the dust and powdered leather rises and makes the ushers sneeze. The clock ticks. Three old judges in scarlet take snuff with trembling hands. You’ll sit in the dock and not follow a legal word. And I’ll give them all my Law and get you off on a technicality.
FOWLE. But today …
MORGENHALL. Now, if I may remind your Lordships of Prickle against the Haverfordwest Justice ex parte Anger, reported in 96 Moor’s Ecclesiastical at page a thousand and three. Have your Lordships the report? Lord Bradwell, C. J., says, at the foot of the page: ‘The guilty intention is a deep foundation stone in the wall of our jurisprudence. So if it be that Prickle did run the bailiff through with his poignard taking him for a stray dog or cat, it seems there would be well raised the plea of autrefois mistake. But, contra, if he thought him to be his neighbour’s cat, then, as my Brother Breadwinkle has well said in Lord Roche and Anderson, there might fall out a constructive larceny and felo in rem.’ Oh, Mr Fowle, I have some of these fine cases by heart.
FOWLE. Above me, I’m afraid, you’re going now.
MORGENHALL. Of course I am. These cases always bore the prisoner until they’re upheld or over-ruled and he comes out dead or alive at the end of it all.
FOWLE. I’d like to hear you reading them, though …
MORGENHALL. You will. I’ll be followed to Court by my clerk, an old tortoise burdened by the weight of authorities. Then he’ll lay them out in a fine buff and half-calf row, a letter from a clergyman I correspond with in Wales torn to mark each place. A glass of water, a dry cough and the ‘My respectful submission’.
FOWLE. And that, of course, is …
MORGENHALL. That the judge misdirected himself. He forgot the rule in Rimmer’s case, he confused his mens sana, he displaced the burden of proof, he played fast and loose with all reasonable doubt, he kicked the presumption of innocence round like a football.
FOWLE. Strong words.
MORGENHALL. I shan’t let Tommy Banter off lightly.
FOWLE. The judge?
MORGENHALL. Thoroughly unscholarly. Not a word of Latin in the whole summing up.
FOWLE. Not up to you, of course.
MORGENHALL. Thank God, I kept my books. There have been times, Fowle, when I was tempted, pricked and harried for rent perhaps, to have my clerk barter the whole lot away for the few pounds they offer for centuries of entombed Law. But I stuck to them. I still have my Swabey and Tristram, my Pod’s Privy Council, my Spinks’ Prize Cases. I shall open them up and say … I shall say …
FOWLE. It’s no good.
MORGENHALL. What’s no good?
FOWLE. It’s no good appealing.
MORGENHALL. No good?
FOWLE. No good at all.
MORGENHALL. Mr Fowle. I’ve worked hard for you.
FOWLE. True enough.
MORGENHALL. And I mean to go on working.
FOWLE. It’s a great comfort …
MORGENHALL. In the course of our close, and may I say it? yes, our happy collaboration on this little crime of yours, I’ve become almost fond of you.
FOWLE. Thank you, sir.
MORGENHALL. At first, I have to admit it, I was put off by your somewhat furtive and repulsive appearance. I saw, I quite agree, only the outer husk, and what I saw was a small man marked by all the physical signs of confirmed criminality.
FOWLE. No oil painting?
MORGENHALL. Let’s agree on that at once.
FOWLE. The wife thought so, too.
MORGENHALL. Enough of her, poor woman.
FOWLE. Oh, agreed.
MORGENHALL. My first solicitude for your well-being, let’s face up to this as well, had a selfish element. You were my very own case, and I didn’t want to lose you.
FOWLE. Natural feelings. But still …
MORGENHALL. I haven’t wounded you?
FOWLE. Nothing fatal.
MORGENHALL. I’m glad. Because, you know, as we worked on this case together, an affection sprang up …
FOWLE. Mutual.
MORGENHALL. You seemed to have a real desire to help, and, if I may say so, an instinctive taste for the Law.
FOWLE. A man can’t go through this sort of thing without getting legal interests.
MORGENHALL. Quite so. And of course, as a self-made man, that’s to your credit. But I did notice, just at the start, some flaws in you as a client.
FOWLE. Flaws?
MORGENHALL. You may not care to admit it. But let’s be honest. After all, we don’t want to look on the dreary side; but you may not be with us for very long …
FOWLE. That’s what I was trying to say …
MORGENHALL. Please, Mr Fowle, no interruptions until we’ve cleared this out of the way. Now didn’t you, just at the beginning, put unnecessary difficulties before us?
FOWLE. Did I?
MORGENHALL. I well remember, before I got a bit of keenness into you, that you seemed about to admit your guilt.
FOWLE. Oh …
MORGENHALL. Just a little obstinate, wasn’t it?
FOWLE. I dare say …
MORGENHALL. And now, when I’ve worked for fifty years to get the Law at my fingertips, I hear you mutter, ‘No appeal.’
FOWLE. No appeal!
MORGENHALL. Mr Fowle …
FOWLE. Yesterday you asked me to spare you pain, sir. This is going to be very hard for me.
MORGENHALL. What?
FOWLE. As you say, we’ve worked together, and I’ve had the pleasure of watching the ticking over of a legal mind. If you’d call any afternoon I’d be pleased to repay the compliment by showing you my birds …
MORGENHALL. Not in this world you must realize, unless we appeal.
FOWLE. You see, this morning I saw the Governor.
MORGENHALL. You had some complaint?
FOWLE. I don’t want to boast, but the truth is … he sent for me.
MORGENHALL. You went in fear …
FOWLE. And trembling. But he turned out a very gentlemanly sort of individual. Ex-Army, I should imagine. All the ornaments of a gentleman. Wife and children in a tinted photo framed on the desk, handsome oil painting of a prize pig over the mantelpiece. Healthy red face. Strong smell of scented soap …
MORGENHALL. But grow to the point …
FOWLE. I’m telling you. ‘Well, Fowle,’ he says, ‘Sit down do. I’m just finishing this letter.’ So I sat and looked out of his windows. Big wide windows in the Governor’s office, and the view …
MORGENHALL. Fowle. If this anecdote has any point, be a good little chap, reach it.
FOWLE. Of course it has, where was I?
MORGENHALL. Admiring the view as usual.
FOWLE. Panoramic it was. Well, this Governor individual, finishing his letter, lit up one of those flat type of Egyptian cigarettes. ‘Well, Fowle,’ he said …
MORGENHALL. Yes, yes. It’s n
ot necessary, Fowle, to reproduce every word of this conversation. Give us the gist, just the meat, you understand. Leave out the trimmings.
FOWLE. Trimmings there weren’t. He put it quite bluntly.
MORGENHALL. What did he put?
FOWLE. ‘Well, Fowle, this may surprise you. But the Home Office was on the telephone about you this morning.’ Isn’t that a Government department?
MORGENHALL. Yes, yes, and well …
FOWLE. It seems they do, in his words, come through from time to time, and just on business, of course, on that blower. And quite frankly, he admitted, he was as shocked as I was. But the drill is, as he phrased it, a reprieve.
MORGENHALL. A … ?
FOWLE. It’s all over. I’m free. It seems that trial was no good at all… .
MORGENHALL. No good. But why?
FOWLE. Oh, no particular reason.
MORGENHALL. There must be a reason. Nothing passes in the Law without a reason.
FOWLE. You won’t care to know.
MORGENHALL. Tell me.
FOWLE. You’re too busy to wait… .
MORGENHALL. Tell me, Mr Fowle. I beg of you. Tell me directly why this Governor, who knows nothing of the Law, should have called our one and only trial together ‘No good’.
FOWLE. You yourself taught me not to scatter information like bombs.
MORGENHALL. Mr Fowle. You must answer my question. My legal career may depend on it. If I’m not to have wasted my life on useless trials.
FOWLE. You want to hear?
MORGENHALL. Certainly.
FOWLE. He may not have been serious. There was a twinkle, most likely, in his eye.
MORGENHALL. But he said …
FOWLE. That the barrister they chose for me was no good. An old crock, in his words. No good at all. That he never said a word in my defence. So my case never got to the jury. He said the whole business was ever so null and void, but I’d better be careful in the future …
MORGENHALL runs across the cell, mounts the stool, begins to undo his tie.
No! Mr Morgenhall! Come down from there! No, sir! Don’t do it.
They struggle. FOWLE brings Morgenhall to earth.
Don’t you see? If I’d had a barrister who asked questions and made clever speeches I’d be as dead as mutton. Your artfulness saved me …
MORGENHALL. My …
FOWLE. The artful way you handled it. The dumb tactics. They paid off! I’m alive!
MORGENHALL. There is that …
FOWLE. And so are you.
MORGENHALL. We both are?
FOWLE. I’m free.
MORGENHALL. To go back to your birds. I suppose …
FOWLE. Yes, Mr Morgenhall?
MORGENHALL. It’s unlikely you’ll marry again?
FOWLE. Unlikely.
Long pause.
MORGENHALL. But you have the clear appearance of a criminal. I suppose it’s not impossible that you might commit some rather more trivial offence.
FOWLE. A man can’t live, Mr Morgenhall, without committing some trivial offences. Almost daily.
MORGENHALL. Then we may meet again. You may need my services… .
FOWLE. Constantly.
MORGENHALL. The future may not be so black …
FOWLE. The sun’s shining.
MORGENHALL. Can we go?
FOWLE. I think the door’s been open some time. (He tries it. It is unbolted and swings open.) After you, Mr Morgenhall, please.
MORGENHALL. No, no.
FOWLE. A man of your education should go first.
MORGENHALL. I think you should lead the way, Mr Fowle, and as your legal adviser I will follow at a discreet distance, to straighten out such little tangles as you may hope to leave in your wake. Let’s go.
MORGENHALL: whistles his fragment of tune. FOWLE: his whistle joins MORGENHALL’S. Whistling, they leave the cell, MORGENHALL executing, as he leaves, the steps of a small delighted dance.
Slow Curtain
What Shall We Tell Caroline?
Michael Codron with David Hall (for Talbot Productions Ltd) presented What Shall We Tell Caroline? in a double bill (with The Dock Brief) at the Lyric Opera House, Hammersmith, on April 9, 1958, and on May 20, 1958 at the Garrick Theatre. The cast was as follows:
LILY LOUDON (‘BIN’) Brenda Bruce
ARTHUR LOUDON Maurice Denham
TONY PETERS Michael Hordern
CAROLINE Marianne Benet
Directed by Stuart Burge
Designed by Disley Jones
Scene One
The LOUDON’S living room at ‘Highland Close School’, Coldsands. It is an extremely dilapidated room given an air of festivity, as the Curtain rises, by the fact that a table is set for four and there are candles in odd candlesticks – one expensive silver, the other a china ‘Present from Coldsands’ – on the table. Doors on each side of the room; one, left, is covered in green baize and has pinned on it a few yellowing curling notices and charts of lessons which haven’t been read for years. The door is closed and leads to the boys’ part of the house. The door on the right is open and light floods through it from a staircase which leads to the bedrooms. Another door backstage right leads to the kitchen. At the back of the room tall French windows, which have never shut properly and let in winds of icy severity, open on to a strip of grey asphalt, the white end of a flag pole and the gun-metal sky of an early evening in March.
Other furniture: a basket-work chair, a fireplace full of paper, a very small electric fire, a horse-hair sofa wounded and bleeding its stuffing; a roll-top desk out of which bills, writs, exercise books and reports are perpetually being shaken by the draughts like the leaves of a dead tree. On top of the desk there is a ukelele and a globe. Among faded photographs of various teams an oar is hanging on the wall.
As the Curtain rises LILY LOUDON has her back to the audience and is tugging at one of the drawers. As she tugs the drawer comes right out and the globe falls down with a sickening crash.
The crash is immediately followed by a roar from the lit door which leads to the bedrooms. It is the voice of a small man entirely consumed with rage.
ARTHUR (off). Imbecile!
LILY picks up the globe with great calmness and puts it back on the desk, thoughtfully spinning it to find England.
ARTHUR (off) Lunatic! Fool! Whatever have you ruined now! What’s broken! Go on. Don’t keep it from me! Confess!
LILY picks up the drawer and carries it towards the table. She is an untidy woman, once inconspicuously good looking, whose face now wears an expression of puzzled contentment. She is wearing a lace evening dress of the late thirties, a number of straps are showing on her pale shoulders and a cigarette is dangling from a corner of her mouth. She shows no reaction at all to the diatribe from offstage.
(Off.) Just try and picture me. Stuck up here. Listening, always listening while you systematically destroy …
LILY puts the drawer down on the table and knocks off a glass.
(Off.) Aaah. What was that? The last of my dead mother’s crockery? Speak up. Put me out of my agony. For pity’s sake … The suspense… . What was it you imbecile? Side plate – dinner plate – not … ? You’re not to be trusted on your own. …
LILY takes out a number of presents wrapped in bright paper and tied with ribbon and arranges them on the table …
(Off.) Where are they? You’ve hidden them again?
LILY smiles to herself. Carefully puts out her cigarette.
(Off.) Do you realize what the time is?
LILY shakes her head.
ARTHUR (off.) Dusk. Have you done it? Answer me, can’t you? The loneliness – of getting dressed.
LILY puts a parcel by the place laid in the centre of the table. ARTHUR erupts into the room. He is a small, bristly, furiously angry man. He is wearing the trousers only of a merciless tweed suit, no collar and his braces are hanging down his back.
(His anger becoming plaintive.) You can’t imagine what a fly you are in the ointment of any
little ceremony like this … How you take the edge off my pleasure in any small moment of celebration. My own daughter’s birthday. A thing I’ve been keenly looking forward to and you deliberately … hide … my … clothes.
LILY puts the drawer, empty now, back in the desk and comes back to face her husband.
Perhaps it’s a mental kink in you. Is that the excuse you’d make? Do you plead insanity? If I had a pound for every time you’ve taken a collar stud and … I don’t know – eaten it … rolled it under the chest of drawers. Now, to carefully conceal the club braces … The sort of kink that makes women pinch things in Woolworths. Itching, destructive fingers. Furtive little pickers.
LILY pulls his braces, which are hanging down the back of his trousers, up across his shoulders, and fastens them. Then she kisses his forehead. This quietens him for a moment. Then he bursts out again.
That’s hardly the point. It’s dusk.
He runs to the windows and throws them open. A wind, howling in, makes the candles flicker. ARTHUR is hauling down the flag.
LILY. It’s bitterly cold.
ARTHUR. Found your tongue at last?
LILY. I said, it’s bitterly cold.
ARTHUR (comes back into the room, the Union Jack bundled in his arms. He kicks the windows shut behind him). Of course it’s bitterly cold. That wind’s come a long way. All the way from the Ural mountains. An uninterrupted journey.
LILY. Yes, I know.
ARTHUR (folding up the flag – calm for the moment). Think of that. From Moscow and Vitebsk. The marshes of Poland. The flats of Prussia. The dykes of Belgium and Holland. All the way to Yarmouth. Just think of it. Flat as a playground. That’s what I tell the boys.
LILY. I know you do.
ARTHUR. It’s a geographical miracle. It makes this place so ideal for schooling boys. There’s nothing like a wind from the Ural Mountains, Bin, for keeping boys pure in heart.
LILY. I suppose not.
ARTHUR. Added to which it kills bugs.
LILY. Yes, of course.
ARTHUR. Bugs and unsuitable thoughts. You know that, Bin. You’re in charge of that side of it. Have we had a single epidemic this year?
A Voyage Round My Father Page 12