by Mark Lawson
Ned accused her of ‘over-identifying’ and lectured her, in his domestic-professorial way, that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was a technical exercise in unreliable narration rather than, as Emma and her first Thursday of the month Winslow literati seemed to think, a multiple-choice paper on how you would bring up a child with an autism-type disorder.
But Emma held her ground, both at the group and also to some extent with Ned. After all, he made his living from the belief that History, which was only a posh form of fiction, was a handbook for the future behaviour of leaders and nations. Well, she believed that novels were a psychological rehearsal room. Readers of fiction were trying out other lives and putting themselves interactively (long before gaming) into crises and dilemmas. And it was the same, she privately felt, with the news. Looking at pictures of those killed by terrorism, accident, tsunami or flu virus, she thought not, as humans surely should, poor them, but, could that be poor me? If Emma wore a motivational wristband, it would ask not, as those of American Jesus-freaks did, WWJD? but WWID?
In a world so written-about and filmed, she doubted that anything now happened without the victim having already imagined it. Entertainment and journalism had prepped us for the footsteps running up behind, the sudden plummet of the plane, the bang in the next-door carriage, the shopper in the mall pulling a sub-machine gun from a shoulder bag, the dawn raid that drags your lover from your bed to a police cell. Our reactions had evolved from what is happening? to: so this is how it happens.
During the frequent recent stories of the arrests of elderly DJs and veteran children’s TV presenters, she had speculated what it might be like for the partner or child of someone whose life and personality were reinterpreted by an accusation. What would I do?
So this was how it happened. She was familiar with the symptoms of catastrophic shock from a motorway pile-up in fog years before and so the alternating shivering and fever, the tension about whether the next eruption would be from the gullet or bowels, were no surprise to her.
Dressing, while the female cop peeped through the doorframe like a creepy gym mistress, she was shaking so much that, even though the forecast was hot, she put on a thick jumper. It was one that she had never worn much because Ned – loyally, incompetently or pointedly – had bought a size slightly too small. The trembling of her hands meant that buckling her watch-strap took several attempts.
The junior detective with bad skin solemnly followed Emma wherever she went. Like brazen but well-mannered burglars, the police teams stepped aside for her when she passed them in the flat or on the stairs, laden with boxes and transparent bags, in two of which she saw the laptop and iPad they kept in the flat.
For the moment, they had not taken her iPhone. Which now flashed and played the theme from Ski Sunday. Caller ID: Maddy.
Succumbing already to the subservience of a hostage, she looked to the cop for approval to answer.
‘Do you know who it is?’
‘Our, er, nanny.’
‘Go on. I’ll stop you if I have to.’
Maddy spoke in such a slushy rush that, for a moment, Emma thought that, in some impossible coincidence, something terrible had happened to Toby on the same morning. It turned out, though, to be a continuation of the bad news she already knew.
‘Emma!’ the teenage Australian blurted, ‘the police are here! They say they have to search the house! What do I do?’
‘Stay there. I’ll just check something.’
She asked her new minder: ‘Apparently, they’re at our other … at our house in Buckinghamshire?’
‘A warrant may list several addresses of interest.’
Emma resumed her conversation with an occupant of one of them: ‘Maddy, I think you’d better let them in.’
‘Okay? Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’
‘Yeah. Look. I’ll explain later but what it basically is …’ – a tight throat and rising bile made speaking painful – ‘is that someone has made a completely stupid allegation against Ned’ – no reaction from the watcher – ‘and until he can disprove it … is Toby up?’
‘No. You know Tobes. He’d sleep through anything. What’ll I say when … ?’
She panicked at how much lying there would be from now on. ‘Keep him …’ Her voice like Brando in The Godfather. ‘Sorry …’ She tried to cough her clogged throat clear. ‘Keep him out of their way as much as you can. But tell him they’re a film crew – Daddy’s recording some links in the house later on …’
Was there the slightest of smiles from her minder at that? But the invention was credible: as TV budgets were squeezed, the Winslow house had often been used for filming to cut costs. And, if Ned were unable to come home that night, she could say that he was shooting some last-minute ‘stand-ups’ (the family had become fluent in the vocabulary of film-making) on location.
After reassuring Maddy that she hoped to be back by the time Toby came home from school, Emma checked with the cop that she was free to go when she wanted.
‘As long as you feel good to drive.’
‘No, I’d get the train. Leave the car for my …’
She asked if it was all right to make a cup of tea. The young cop nodded but, offered one herself, unsmilingly declined and stood at the kitchen door watching, so that Emma felt like someone taking an examination in refreshment.
Waiting for the kettle, she considered what to tell their son later. Should she flexi-board him to buy some time? Or tell him – rehearsing a speech of baby-talk vagueness – that ‘a silly person says Daddy did something bad and the police have had to take our things away to prove that he didn’t.’
Yes, that had to be the best approach, casting the family as victims whom the police were doctorishly trying to help. But, soon, it would presumably be all over online and, while the only bonus of the raids was that Toby would have no devices on which to see his father demonized, schoolmates would quickly update him from their screens. That was an argument against letting him sleep over at school.
And had Daddy done something bad? Watching the staunch wives, daughters and girlfriends standing at the gate while the statement of denial was read, or being helped up or down the court steps, Emma had thought, Can they really be so sure of his innocence? She suspected that it was just a social instinct, of the sort some wives of philanderers developed, to hold the family together.
So it may have been merely that impulse – and a lover’s blurred vision – that made her certain, when she heard the charge, that Ned was the victim of persecution. This must be a misunderstanding. But, if so, based on nothing or on something?
In her worst moments, she thought that letting ageing men teach large groups of women who were not only over the age of consent but also living away from home for the first time was like locking alcoholics in a wine cellar. Although universities had cracked down on droit de seminar – an English professor had taken hasty early retirement during Emma’s time at Manchester – the taboo on screwing students was seen as contractual rather than criminal, and men were weak while women, presumably, sometimes came on strong.
And Ned not only liked sex but to have it when he liked – their encounter just that morning would find many indicters on Mumsnet – and so it was possible – an unsisterly thought that, even unvoiced, made her feel guilty – that some silly bitch had got the wrong end of the … no, don’t go there.
She also knew that he was capable of adultery; he was getting divorced when they met, but had admitted to a ‘wild spell’ as his marriage failed. Would an allegation from a woman with whom he was cheating on her be worse than a complaint involving a relationship that pre-dated their meeting? If the accusation could not completely go away, then she prayed that it would come from the time before she knew him.
One of the removal team came into the living room and told their solemn colleague: ‘We’re done here.’
Emma declined the cop’s offer to leave her with what she first heard as ‘a flow’, but which turne
d out to be FLO (Family Liaison Officer), lying that her sister (non-existent) was on the way. She walked around the ransacked main bedroom and the spare, cracking the bitter internal joke, as so many of the warrant-searched must have done before her, that one’s first instinct was to call the police: desks and tables stood empty, dust outlines showing where objects had been; drawers gaped open. The box-files on the shelves above Ned’s work-desk in the second bedroom had mainly gone. She imagined his horror, and was only relieved that he was not at the moment writing a book.
Most of the stuff had been taken away from the flat unbagged and in un-gloved hands, which probably meant, she knew enough from Lewis, that the interest lay not in possible fingerprints but potential content. She thought of the husband of one of the agency’s writers, who had been suspected of fraud, cleared without charge but then convicted of having indecent images of children on his hard-drive. As Ned had to be more or less bribed to spend time alone with Toby until their son was old enough to have proper conversations about football – and he was not one of those creepy dads who slobber all over their daughters – she had little fear that he suffered an unhealthy interest in children, but, if the newspapers and occasional conversations with work-friends were to be believed, men’s computers were a storage depot for porn. Would that matter? She decided it would be a blessing in comparison with the alternatives.
For distraction, she wiped and polished the newly uncluttered surfaces. It reminded her of trying to fill time in the house when Mummy was having her operation. Toby had chess club on a Friday and so would be home at 6pm. If Ned wasn’t free – the word alarmed her – by then, it would surely be better to tell him a holding lie.
While she cleaned, the house phone had rung several times but the numbers on caller ID – which they had to have, in case of hacks and trolls, because of Ned being on TV – were unfamiliar. There were also repeated unknown numbers on her mobile. Was the notoriety beginning already?
She was drinking tea without tasting it when the landline trilled and the security panel identified: Ned Office. She was thrown by his having gone back to the university, but that must be good news.
Grabbing the receiver, she answered: ‘Darling!’
B & H
‘I called you to see you this afternoon, Professor Pimm …’
‘Actually, it’s only Dr Pimm.’
‘Dr Pimm, following my receipt of the completed Traill Report into the conduct and culture of the History department …’
As the assistant showed Tom into the room, the Director had made no eye contact, which was standard manners for him, but, with more than usual dysfunction, he continued to look down while pointing blindly towards a chair, and kept his shaved head low over the desk even as he began speaking. Tom saw that Special was reading from typed sheets of foolscap, on which could be read upside down, scrawled in big capitals at the head of the first sheet: SPEAK SLOWLY.
‘You have been found guilty by your colleagues,’ Neades read, at GCSE French Comprehension pace, ‘of contraventions of the University of Middle England’s “Respect” policy.’
The Director was morbidly, almost internet-freak-site obese. Massive man-tits wobbled against the fabric of his vainly undersized shirt each time he moved, although, perhaps to restrict these spasms, he most often opted to sit in gigantic stillness. There was no more motion on his pale slab of a face, which remained, seemingly regardless of the import of what he was saying or hearing, almost always impassive.
Some of his detractors on the campus claimed that it was this dour inscrutability that had raised Neades far above the position to which they felt his capabilities would naturally have taken him. By almost completely avoiding comment and reaction, he left it to others to assume his approval or infer a rebuke. The recipients of this unreadable stolidity then attempted to retain or gain his approbation by promoting him to a succession of posts from which more voluble participation in meetings might have disqualified him.
‘The findings are that you have committed multiple breaches of the disciplinary code over a period of twenty-two years. And, in the light of these findings, I am today setting out for you the steps that will now follow in this process.’
Tom stared at the bristled dome. Neades had succumbed to the common delusion of bald English men that shaving disguised the condition, which, in combination with his body-shape, meant that he resembled the stereotype of a football hooligan in all except the fact that he received an annual salary far bigger than the prime minister’s.
‘It is my judgement that these multiple offences constitute a breach of contract under the clause relating to the bringing of the academic institution into disrepute.’
Neades licked dry lips with a tongue furred yellow-white. By now, he was pausing for so long between sentences, and sometimes words, that an observer would have assumed that he was relearning speech after a stroke. The scribbled reminder to go slowly was presumably a warning from the legal department – a precaution against Tom later claiming not to have understood what he was being told – which the Director had followed with the meticulous obedience he showed to whichever regime was in place.
‘As a result – if you accept the findings – your contract of employment will be terminated with immediate effect. As you are in breach of contract, you will not be eligible for any severance compensation. However, your accumulated pension contributions and associated rights will remain unaffected.’
Tom’s chest and left upper arm were trembling from the rate at which his heart was racing. He was aware, as remotely as a doctor noting perspiration on a patient, of a slick of sweat rolling down the inside of his left leg until dammed by the top of his sock. The left side. An image of heart and stroke posters at the surgery. Left-sided-weakness. He was going to have a fatal thrombosis. His final sight would be the face of his immense nemesis talking in slow motion.
‘I understand that you are hearing some hard things today.’ For the first time, the Director stopped reading and resumed a more ordinarily ponderous speed of speech, but then, glancing at his crib sheet again, seemed to confirm that these theoretically human platitudes were scripted as well. ‘So do please take as much time now as you want to reflect on what I have just told you.’
But the accused wanted to speak at once. ‘You.’ The word emerged as the weakened squeak of a stricken animal. Tom tried to cough away the film of phlegm and refluxed bile that felt stuck in his throat. ‘You say …’ After a second paroxysm of raw hawking, he was finally able to ask: ‘You say I have been found guilty?’ His voice sounded like Tom Pimm as played by a frightened child. ‘But I seem to have missed the trial.’
For a period that felt considerably longer than the few seconds it probably was, Neades’ face and torso were stonily immobile. Then he stared down at the fan of foolscap on the desk, presumably attempting, like a Scrabble player mentally shuffling the line of letters, to construct an answer from the legally pre-agreed phrases in front of him.
‘These findings were the result of charges formulated from evidence received by the Traill Inquiry.’
Tom had an instant saving instinct that to lose his temper would serve to confirm whatever the charges were. But the calm voice he attempted had the sound of the thin whisper he had used to convince his mother that he was too unwell to go back to school yet.
‘But … but I am not aware of any charges ever being put to me.’
‘As I have stated, Dr Traill’s assessment of the evidence put to her was that a substantial number of breaches of the University code of conduct had occurred and that charges should result.’
Forcing down the impulse to scream the words, Tom asked: ‘But what are the charges?’
Neades again searched the typed sheets for a prompt. ‘If your decision is to appeal, then the formal complaints will be sent to you by letter or by e-mail.’
‘If I … ? But …’ He thought, but also saw in his mind in flashing form, like an Accident Stop sign, the word Kafkaesque. ‘But doesn’t an
appeal usually follow the trial which, as I say, I seem to have missed? Although clearly …’ The word was belied by its delivery, and Tom growled away another plug of gunge. ‘Cuh-cur-clearly and obviously I will be appealing.’
The Director blinked slowly several times, then slid his highest stack of pages aside to expose a single sheet of heavier, yellow paper holding short numbered paragraphs that looked professionally rather than home-printed. After studying the document for a moment, he kept his head down as he spoke. ‘If you agree to the termination of your contract today, you will immediately be eligible to activate your pension. In these circumstances, the University would guarantee to say nothing in public about the circumstances of your departure, which would be stated as having been by mutual consent.’
Neades looked up and, the rougher, faster speech confirming that he was now ad-libbing, concluded: ‘Of course, any settlement would be on the understanding that you never publicly discuss what has happened.’
‘But I don’t know what has happened yet.’
The deputy executive dean twisted his mouth and noisily kissed his lips together as if he had just finished a particularly delicious snack.
Tom was beginning to feel faint from the banging of his startled heart. He was not sure if, when he left, he would be able to stand. All except the most arrogant employees have imagined being sacked but, as a professional with thirty years’ service, he had foreseen a process involving merging of posts, notice periods, payoffs and a fancy printed pack (passed across the desk by someone like the George Clooney character in Up in the Air) outlining possible retraining schemes. Two weeks somewhere with Helen in the heat by the sea, making notes for Watergate to Whitewater: the Pathology of Presidential Scandals, and then lunches with old chums to discuss a clutch of visiting professorships. But now it seemed that he would leave as terminally, mysteriously and shamefully as a Soviet era leader.