by Mark Lawson
THE ALLEGATIONS
Also by Mark Lawson
BLOODY MARGARET
Three Political Fantasies
THE BATTLE FOR ROOM SERVICE
Journeys to all the Safe Places
IDLEWILD
GOING OUT LIVE
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
THE DEATHS
MARK LAWSON
THE ALLEGATIONS
PICADOR
First published 2016 by Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Associated companies throughout the world www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-2088-7
Copyright © Mark Lawson 2016
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For
MRD, who gave me the idea
DDR, who gave me the time
And To
FD and HB, who gave me the example
AA and AS, who kept me alive
and
SWAB, MF and F, for knowing the truth
Is the accuser always holy now? Arthur Miller, The Crucible
‘You are presumably very surprised at the events of this morning?’ asked the Inspector
Franz Kafka, The Trial
Whereof we cannot speak except with prurience, sanctimony or inspired retrospective wisdom, thereof we must not say a word
Blake Morrison, ‘It Was Good While It Lasted’
On the back page he saw that the News had transformed his statement that Katharina was intelligent, cool, and level-headed into ‘ice-cold and calculating,’ and his general observations on crime now read that she was ‘entirely capable of committing a crime’.
Heinrich Böll, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum
The student–teacher dynamic has been re-envisioned along a line that’s simultaneously consumerist and hyper-protective, giving each and every student the ability to claim Grievous Harm in nearly any circumstance, after any affront, and a teacher’s formal ability to respond to these claims is limited at best.
‘Edward Schlosser’
‘I am a Liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me’
CONTENTS
PART ONE
FALLS
PART TWO
FINDINGS
PART THREE
FACTS
PART FOUR
FALL-OUTS
PART ONE
FALLS
Burning Names
He set down the letters carefully, handwriting feeling unnatural after decades of typing. The unfamiliarity was amplified because, even before the death of the pen, he had never used dipped ink on vellum. An unrecognizable signature resulted, neater and more elaborate than it was on cheques and contracts, the N, D and final paired Ts looped and curlicued, giving him a stranger’s name. He raised the candle and angled it towards the paper, first drying the ink, then pressing the document towards the flame, watching the blaze until dropping the last ember to spare his fingers. Looking directly at the camera, he said: ‘In the days of the witch-hunts, writing someone’s name and then burning it was believed to be a way of bringing destruction down on them.’
The Centre
Appreciating its clients’ desperation for discretion, the business made vagueness an art form. The bi-annual reminders by e-mail read simply: Dear Mr Marriott – he had dropped his professional title in this context – your next appointment is scheduled for … In this case, July 16th. On credit card bills, the charge line was The Centre, W1, a deliberate contraction, designed to thwart search engines, of the actual trading title. Using the boxes below, indicate if you wish to accept this appointment. He placed his cursor over the Yes box and clicked.
Pedantry
Sir – Although I am an historian of American politics rather than a specialist in English language, I feel qualified to express concern at the increasing use, by police and media, of the word ‘historic’ to describe events that occurred – or, more often, allegedly occurred – in the past.
To be clear: ‘historic’ properly denotes something or someone unique, or otherwise of particular note. The correct word for what happened in the past is ‘historical’.
Some of those celebrities accused or arrested in connection with sexual offences – who seem to form such a large part of the target group of Operation Yewtree and now the related investigation Operation Millpond – may arguably be regarded as historic for their achievements in various fields. However, any crimes they may have committed in the past could and should only be described as historical.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Tom Pimm
Senior Lecturer in Modern American History
University of Middle England
Aylesbury Campus
Bucks
DID
NM: When I started out as an historian – I know that an doesn’t sound quite right these days but I have a colleague who beats me up if I don’t say it – there was quite a stark divide. One school – the ‘Great Man’ theory of history, or ‘Great Person’ we should say now – held that things happen because of certain persuasive or invasive personalities. Although, in the case of Suez, it would be the Weak Man Theory. The other version – in shorthand, Marxist – avers that events occur because of inevitable forces. Without sounding too much like a fence sitter, I suppose I’m sort of half-Marxist, half-Great Person. The virtues or flaws of individuals are important. But they affect – or are affected by – shifts in society or culture. Some believe that the English temperament would instinctively resist a Hitler. I would say that the question hasn’t yet been tested here in circumstances akin to Germany’s in the 1930s. I suppose what I’m arguing is that, in a country in which every woman were a lesbian, there could be no Don Giovanni. But might there arise a Donna Giovanni? And, if you want to go on, would there be a great opera about her? I tell my students to remain alive to the mystery of history.
KY: Although you yourself are a natural contrarian?
NM: No. I couldn’t possibly agree with that.
KY: Well, there you … oh, I see. You’ve got me.
NM: Sorry, Kirsty. I can never resist it.
KY: Okay, Ned Marriott, your second record?
NM: Well, I said that the Don Giovanni was the first LP I ever owned but I sort of liberated that from my dad’s collection when he was ill. You know a lot of those quizzes you get in magazines want to know the first record you ever bought because it’s such a significant rite of passage? In my case, it was the winter of 1968, when I was thirteen and – I can see th
e paper sleeve now – it was ‘Delilah’ by Tom Jones.
The Problem With History
‘The problem with history,’ Tom Pimm began his introductory lecture every September, ‘is that we know what came next. But – to understand the subject best – we must always remember that the people involved aren’t living in our past, they’re living in their present. King Henry VIII knew that Anne Boleyn was his second wife but not – at that time – that she was the second of six. Our retrospective perspective tells us that she was a transient infatuation but, by viewing her as such, we miss the much more interesting possibility that the King was truly in love with her and believed, as serial spouses often do, that this one was a keeper. And so always try to see then as a now. People knew that the Second World War was the second but not that the First was the first. We know that the original Millennialists were wrong to think that the world would end in 1000 AD but our job is not to sneer at their naivety – it’s to appreciate how and why they thought that. However distant their lives and their beliefs may seem, historical figures are in one crucial sense like us. They don’t know what’s going to happen next, they don’t know the ending.’
A Study in Evil
When disgrace and disaster arrived in his life, Ned Marriott was terrified – by the threat to his profession, reputation, family and health – but not surprised. As a teenager, it had struck him that those involved in devastating news stories always seemed astonished by what had happened. ‘It came out of nowhere,’ they told reporters. Or, even, bluntly: ‘I never saw that coming!’
And so he adopted a strategy of insuring against ruin by expecting it. With his first girlfriends, he assumed (often sensibly) that each date was the last. Getting married, he thought about the divorce statistics. Once divorced, he avoided a recurrence by not remarrying. Becoming rich, he put more than half of his after-tax earnings into savings, though always in a wide range of banks in case of a financial crash.
If every twitch in a limb was bound to be cancer, each e-mail from an employer undoubtedly the sack and any knock on the door assuredly brought news that one of his children had been killed, then it followed that such outcomes, because anticipated, would not occur.
These precautions worked for sixty years. Exactly that, in fact, as the catastrophe began on the morning after his landmark birthday party. Afterwards, Ned wondered if he had fatally relaxed. Having completed six mainly fortunate decades, what – except for the scheduled horror of eventual death – was the worst thing that could happen to him? Was it this thought that let bad luck in?
Although Emma and the girls had been told that there must in no circumstances be a surprise party, Ned accepted the inevitability of one and knew that this was an eventuality in which expectation would not prove preventative.
Emma had booked a car so that they could all drink. The driver knew who Ned was, or at least gave him the sort of recognition he suffered: ‘I seen you? History Channel. Hitler!’
Ned wearily smiled agreement. There had been a time when one of his stock anecdotes was the frequency with which he answered to the name of the twentieth century’s most-reviled figure, but it was a long time since he had found the confusion amusing. Adolf: A Study in Evil had been an American coproduction that he only undertook because of the procreative misfortune of having two daughters simultaneously at college. However, this oddity among his dozens of documentaries now seemed to be screened on a loop by the worryingly numerous UK channels devoted to the achievements of the Third Reich. Once, two telephone engineers, waist deep in a hole in the road, had raised their right arms in salute and shouted ‘Heil!’ as he walked past. He wondered what unknowing shoppers must have thought.
As normal, there were paps outside the restaurant, trawling for a bigger catch than him but happy to get a tiddler in their net until then. Ned agreed that the family would pose for one picture. He understood that the snappers were covering themselves in case you died or got caught with a lover (unless, even better, you killed her or vice versa) the following day, giving the papers a snap that now transmitted tragic poignancy or puritanical irony. But, if you refused to let them shoot you, they would capture your shying heads and ducking backs in an image to be printed in the event of your infamy.
Each of the foursome performed to type under photographic obligation. Ned tightened and lowered his jaw to reduce double chin, while Emma, an accidental and unwilling public figure, gripped his hand so tightly that his fingers tingled. His daughters were just as predictable. Dee glowed towards the flash storm, like a supermodel selling eye gloss, as Phee stared glumly down and sideways in the manner of a scandalous defendant hustled up the courtroom steps.
‘Cheers, Ned,’ piped one of the paps, the dark varnish of his tan suggesting warmer and more glamorous assignments just before this one. ‘And happy birthday, mate!’
Though delivered as lightly as it might be from one civilian to another, the greeting, in this context, flashed the warning that they knew what he was doing.
In acknowledgement of his family’s efforts in arranging the surprise party, Ned sportingly acted bafflement when, giving his name for the supposed table for four at Piero, the maître d’ fawningly apologized for a mix-up over bookings and directed their group, with a politeness always fighting a wink, to the adjacent private dining annexe, and from there to the top floor which housed the large rooms where launches had been held for some of the books and TV series.
As a teenager, Ned had fantasized about being the guest on This is Your Life, but that show had gone the eventual way of all broadcasting, and, even if it were still running, he was not quite famous enough to qualify. He had been offered Who Do You Think You Are?, but was too frightened of either crying when talking about his father or of discovering something terrible about him.
But tonight, he knew, would be a sort of This is Your Life. He noticed Dee sending a sneaky text as they walked towards the Attenborough Room and assumed that was the cause of the sudden reduction in the noise from behind the oaken double doors. He wondered which faces from his past would be revealed.
The first image as they walked in was of dozens of people standing in a semicircle three or four deep. Seeing him, they raggedly began to sing ‘Happy Birthday!’ He spotted his mother and her husband, the Pimms, Professor Hannah Smith and, less happily, Dominic Ogg, whom he knew would have been invited but hoped might have been too busy to attend. His once fellow Rhodes Scholar and now publisher, Jack Beane, looked as sleek and lean as Ned had hoped to be at sixty. Behind the ad hoc choir, in the centre of the room, were white-clothed tables laid with heavy silver cutlery that bounced spikes of light from electric chandeliers lining the ceiling.
‘Christ! How much did this cost?’ he whispered to Emma.
‘Oh, pooh! Just enjoy it. You deserve it!’
In a sudden rush of love and desire, he had a pleasant flash of their private celebration later.
During the applause that followed the final you – or yous, the timings staggered by some singing Edmund and others Ned – Dee, too near to his ear, made that piercing whooping sound that was the sonic signature of his daughters’ generation in the way that whistling had marked his grandfather’s. A waiter handed Ned a flute of champagne or a cheaper equivalent, fizzing so much that it spat bubbles on his hand. He took a sip – a rather metallic Prosecco – and raised it vaguely in the direction of the guests.
‘Thank you,’ he muttered to his family.
‘You said no but we knew you meant yes,’ said Phee. Dee threw her a disapproving look.
A waft of his mother’s night-out scent, instantly flashingback scenes from his life. He turned to embrace her.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I told you so!’
During his near-breakdown a decade and a half before, which his friends had called a midlife crisis but was, in fact, an end-life crisis – convinced that he would die at the same age as his dad – she had predicted that she would say those words at his fiftieth and sixtieth birthdays, a p
rophecy now fulfilled. Ned had a momentary panic that this maternal charm expired at midnight and that he or she, or both, were now doomed.
‘Many of the best!’ boomed his mother’s husband. ‘And many more of them!’
Ned toured the loud, yapping groups into which the guests had rearranged themselves. Dominic Ogg wrapped him in the man-hug that now seemed to be obligatory in any encounter with a television executive.
‘Mate,’ he said. ‘You’re History now and I mean that in the nicest possible way!’
Ogg mentioned three of the incredibly famous people he had most recently met and then said, in a busily self-important person’s learned tone of dismissal: ‘Give Perce a bell about finding a slot to see me. We should talk about what you want to do next.’
A half-dozen historians – what would the collective noun be? Court? Sphere? – were laughing at a story Antonia Fraser was telling. Ned was going over to them, rehearsing a joke about The Birthday Party, when he noticed Tom Pimm standing alone in a corner, beckoning and calling: ‘Nod! Nod!’
The two men did the half-embrace and back-pat – as if each were a baby with wind – that was their compromise with the new tactility of masculinity.
‘Can I ring you tomorrow?’
‘Yes, sure. You can talk to me tonight if …’
‘Not here.’
‘Christ. Is something wrong with … ?’
‘It isn’t cancer.’
‘Christ! Well, I’m glad. You mean you’ve had tests and …’
‘No. I mean it isn’t illness at all. No one’s sick. When people say they want to tell you something, you always think it’s – I suppose because it’s the thing that we most – so I’m just saying that it isn’t. It’s a work thing.’