The Allegations

by Mark Lawson

  ‘Take your time,’ said Neades, in a bad karaoke of compassion. ‘This is a lot to take in.’

  Confirming accounts that Tom had read about victims of attack or accident finding a final kick of energy to resist or summon help, he experienced, even as his circulatory system threatened to split, an impulse to fight and survive. He did not suffer the impression, much reported in ordeals, that this could not be taking place – it too obviously fucking was – but knew that he had to stop it.

  ‘Is this actually legal?’ he managed to ask.

  At considerable risk to the fabric of his shirt, Neades raised both arms. ‘I didn’t run this process! The new rubric demands that the investigation must be independent from the department involved. But I think you can assume, Dr Pimm, that the University will have thought this through thoroughly.’

  What Tom hoped was bile but was possibly vomit scorched the back of his tongue. He swallowed it down, fighting through a sore scratchiness like laryngitis to say: ‘I am giving immediate notice of my intention to appeal. This is without prejudice to any separate legal action I may take.’

  The recourse to formal language in moments of fear. A customer at the returns desk: I will be consulting my solicitor. Patients in the oncologist’s office: I have been advised of an experimental treatment in Bavaria with very impressive initial outcomes.

  ‘Look,’ said Neades. ‘These are very serious findings. I strongly advise you to consider the offer we have made you.’

  ‘BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE CHARGES ARE!’

  He had no control over the shout coming out – a purging bursting like blood or pus.

  Neades made the quick, defensive blinks of someone splashed by lemon juice. ‘I had hoped we knew each other well enough to discuss this calmly. That is why I made no arrangement for an observer from WH to be present.’

  ‘But …’ Like a singer botching the opening note, he paused and started again, softer. ‘But you’re asking me to resign without my even knowing what I’ve been accused of.’

  Tom congratulated himself on remembering a gerund in these circumstances.

  ‘I have only read Dr Traill’s executive summary. As I say, I didn’t run this process. But it’s my understanding that the charges relate to the Respect code – mainly under the B & H section …’

  Ridiculously, the image of a crumpled cigarette packet from his smoking days.

  ‘Benson & Hedges?’

  ‘Bullying & Harassment.’

  Fuck. So, hitting and hitting-on people. But Tom had never done the first and, though sometimes tempted, in a primitive masculine way, towards the second, was convinced that, unlike some colleagues, he had always avoided it.

  ‘Although, in your case, I understand, only B,’ said Neades.

  ‘Eh?’ queried Tom.

  The Director looked alphabetically confused for a moment. ‘Er, B – Bullying.’

  Tom flinched at the punching ugliness of the word, but had a rush of optimism that the allegations, whatever they were, did not involve sex or expenses – the standard destructions of an academic career – and so this was almost certainly survivable.

  ‘There is also, I am led to believe,’ Neades continued, ‘at least one charge of Insubordination.’

  ‘What is this, Dr Neades? Mutiny on the Bounty?’

  Tom’s anger, again, was an unstoppable spasm. Picking up an already unsheathed Sharpie, Neades made an illegible scribble in the margin, perhaps adding a degree of aggravation to the charge involving disobedience.

  ‘Professor, er, Dr Pimm,’ the deputy executive dean said. ‘I appreciate this is a big decision to make today. Can I suggest that you sleep on it … ?’

  Involuntarily, Tom released an asthmatic gasp. He already knew that there would be no hope of sleeping tonight, or potentially ever again.

  ‘Sorry? I …’ Neades faltered. ‘Can I suggest that you sleep on it and come back to see me tomorrow with your decision.’ Placed geometrically in parallel to his keyboard was a printed business card, which he slid across the desk towards Tom. ‘These are the contact details for David Wellington, Group WH Leader in Humanities. He can talk you through the pension situation and the confidentiality arrangements.’

  ‘And will he be able to tell me what the charges actually are?’

  ‘He’s sitting across the situation. He knows that you might call for support.’

  ‘Ke-van …’ The formality of ‘Dr Neades’ having failed to penetrate the managerial iciness, Tom now attempted intimacy, although sounding the counterintuitive second syllable of his superior’s name with the fussy articulation of a Victorian actor. ‘This is bonkers, isn’t it? I’m being asked to leave without even being told what I’m supposed to have done wrong.’

  ‘As you know, I have indicated the category of the allegations.’

  ‘You’ve mentioned two initials, one of which I haven’t done, and a word last applied to Captain Bligh.’

  ‘Dr Pimm, I’m afraid we have to take allegations of abuse seriously.’

  ‘Abuse? But I thought you said …’

  ‘Verbal impropriety – comments, jokes, argumentativeness – is, as I understand it, the basis of the case against you.’ The spread arms again, an arthritic magician’s reveal. ‘Although I am not running this process.’

  ‘Right. So actually you’re abusing the word “abuse”?’

  There was movement from no part of Neades, except, eventually, his eyes, which slowly widened, like an opening flower filmed in time-lapse photography.

  ‘Dr Pimm, I’d strongly advise you not to be clever. From my knowledge of the findings, there’s a view that that may be one of the things that got you into trouble.’

  Tom failed to stop himself laughing, but didn’t care. ‘Does it worry you that you run a university in which staff are being warned not to be clever?’

  Neades’ shoulders shook violently in a way reminiscent, for Tom’s generation, of Edward Heath, whose upper torso always trembled when he laughed, although the former prime minister always wore a jacket, presumably to obscure the knocker-wobble that now disrupted Special’s shirt. In repose again, he spoke in a plaintive tenor tone that Tom had never heard before. ‘So are we agreed that you should come back tomorrow when all this has had time to settle? I’m pretty jammed all day but I’ll instruct Elaine to juggle if necessary.’

  ‘I’ve already decided what I’m doing. I want to appeal and will be taking immediate legal advice.’

  The Director sighed so violently that a waft of rotten breath reached Tom. Locating the relevant sheet of paper, Neades recited widely spaced typed lines: ‘Following your request to challenge the disciplinary findings against you, arrangements will be made for an appeal hearing before senior managers from an external department. You are requested to provide a secure e-mail address on which you are happy to be sent the time and location of this meeting, along with a formal presentation of the charges. Before the appeal hearing, you will be invited to examine – after signing a confidentiality agreement – witness statements and other supporting documentation.’

  Neades was audibly wheezing now, his unhealthy bulk making sustained oration a struggle. He stopped and puffed noisily, releasing another rancid breeze, before resuming. ‘Because the University appreciates that this process may be daunting, you are permitted to bring with you to both the documentation stage and the hearing stage a supporter or observer, who must not be a qualified lawyer or someone who is herself or himself involved in any disciplinary proceedings at this University; and whose suitability to attend must be agreed in advance with your designated representative from Workplace Harmony. Pending the completion of this process, you will immediately be suspended on full pay. You are permitted one hour from this time to make any necessary removals from your office and to leave the premises. To protect the confidentiality of the process, you will not be required to be supervised during this time. However, if you are subsequently found to have made any physical alteration to or intervention in the
premises, or to have made verbal or electronic contact with any representative of the University, especially but not exclusively anyone whom you may believe to be a witness or complainant, your contract will immediately be terminated with no possibility of appeal. After leaving the premises, you will have no contact with colleagues or customers …’

  Tom knew what the word meant but was made even more than usually furious by hearing it in this context. ‘Customers?’

  ‘With colleagues or customers. This stipulation will include – but not be limited to – the attendance at any events taking place on premises owned, leased or in use on an ad hoc basis, however temporary, by the University of Middle England. Can I check one thing, Dr Pimm? You are not a member of any of the teachers’ unions?’

  A member for more than thirty years, Tom had left over the insistence of Quatermass (as father of chapel) on defending a policy of jobs for life, even if the posts were held by such incompetents as Daggers and Horny.

  ‘No. No, not now.’

  For the first time, Neades seemed briefly to smile, then posed with face and body frozen. Tom wondered if he should wait for the manager to stand, but the Director seemed to be doing ‘statue’ in a game of charades. Perhaps, like FDR, who would be lifted out from behind the Oval Office desk when the photographers had gone away, he was now winched in and out of the office when no one was looking.

  Stupidly, Englishly, Tom extended his hand in farewell, but the other man was fixedly examining his script, checking that he had delivered the sentences correctly.

  The only lavatory in the Administration block that Tom could reach in time was the Disabled cubicle on the second floor. Lowering his boxers agonizingly late, Tom dropped litres of acidic diarrhoea into the bowl while leaning forward over the floor in case the simultaneous retching became productive.

  When he came out, Professor Ironsides was inevitably waiting, hands impatiently holding his wheel-brakes and focusing a disapproving rictus that Tom at first attributed to a stench left in the cubicle, until he realized that he had just broken another rule of the university.

  With hands not quite perfumed enough by soap from their earlier purpose, Tom tremblingly selected from the contacts in his phone the name that he had always known he would call in such a catastrophe: Ned.

  Historic

  Although Ned, like many viewers, had often lamented TV’s devotion to crime dramas, one beneficial consequence was that Britons were now familiarized with the processes of police interrogation in the way that schoolchildren once knew poems by heart.

  The forgettably decorated room with the table, two chairs on either side, the angled cameras above and a recording machine on the desk. A glance at the clock from the top cop and then: ‘It’s, uh, 13.15 on Friday May 18th. This is an interview under caution as part of the Operation Millpond investigation. I am DI Richard Dent; also present are DS Heather Walters; the defendant Edmund Horatio Marriott and Ms Claire Ellen, his solicitor. The alleged offence is of an historic nature. Edmund Horatio Marriott, you are under arrest for an alleged sexual offence in or around March to October 1976 against Wilhelmina – known as “Billy” – Dawson Hessendon, now known as Mrs Hessendon Castle.’

  During the hours in the cell, the eventual moment of disclosure had grown in Ned’s mind until it felt like it would be spoken by an angel clothed in fire. But the actual revelation brought confusion and bemusement. Billy H! As he remembered, they had fu—, slept together a few times in London when he was doing his MPhil. He had met her, he thought, through friends, or possibly his brother. Jolly and jolly posh.

  ‘Unless Ms Ellen has any objections,’ Dent said, ‘my intention is that DS Walters will read the victim’s …’

  ‘Complainant?’ Claire queried.

  ‘Victim,’ Dent insisted. ‘Will read the victim’s statement into the record.’

  ‘I’m sorry for the delay, Mr Marriott,’ said Walters. ‘There was a development on another case.’

  Ned thought, Who else are you persecuting as well?, but, already learning the manners of a defendant, nodded his thanks for her courtesy. Although he felt far from normal – the stamping of his heart and churning of his guts unnervingly palpable – Ned was reassured by the fact that the ghost from his past took the form not of an inevitable avenging angel – as must surely be the case with so many of the accused – but as a bizarre ambush that he expected at any moment to be revealed as a prank. Although, even in modern culture, he doubted that there could yet be a TV game show in which people faced hoax arrest.

  The detective sergeant shuffled two foolscap sheets, coughed and took on the role of Ned’s old girlfriend. ‘I am Wilhelmina Dawson Hessendon Castle, often known as “Billy”.’ Castle, which must be her married name, was news to Ned, as was Dawson, probably what her mother was called before marriage, but you only discovered someone’s middle name by attending their wedding, seeing their passport or being arrested and questioned about them.

  ‘During the summer of 1976, when I was known by my maiden name of Wilhelmina Dawson Hessendon, though commonly “Billy”, I was working in a secretarial capacity for a publishing company in London. I was twenty-one years old at the time.’

  Although Ned had only rough recall of the woman’s actual voice – he thought of a generic southern posh girl – it was incongruous to hear her speaking in the Scouse accent of DS Walters, like Shakespeare acted by Americans.

  ‘During my time at Exeter University, I had become acquainted with Timon Edgar Marriott.’ The detective pronounced it Timmon; Ned saw that Dent had noted his startled reaction to his brother’s appearance in the story. ‘Commonly known as Tim. At a party to which I was invited by Tim Marriott, I was introduced to his brother Edmund Horatio Marriott, commonly known as Ned.’

  The world of thirty-eight years before, already hazy through the cataracts of time, was even less recognizable because everyone, as in a Russian novel, used their full family names. Nor did he remember Billy H. talking like a copper giving evidence in court, but knew that this was a quirk of the judicial system. His only previous involvement with the police, apart from nine speeding points tried and sentenced by post, was as the near-victim of a veering speeding driver while out running near what was then his country home in Sussex. He had learned from this experience that police statements were not verbatim but written by officers after interview. His own testimony had begun, It is my custom of a late Sunday morning to take exercise in the West Sussex countryside, a formula that made him sound like an Edwardian jogger who had got badly lost.

  ‘After that party, at which some consensual intimacy occurred, I agreed to have lunch with Ned Marriott and we subsequently had consensual sexual intercourse.’

  Immediately after lunch? Ned’s mental defence counsel sceptically challenged. Actually in the restaurant? In a cupboard like that tennis player?

  ‘It is my recollection that the first occasion took place at my flat in Earl’s Court and we also later had sexual intercourse on a few other occasions there or at Ned Marriott’s flat in Redbourne Avenue, in Finchley, North London. I was not involved in any other sexual relationship at the time, although I strongly suspected that Ned Marriott was. While he on occasion pressured me to perform sexual acts with which I felt uncomfortable’ – Ned made an amazed-face at the detectives and then Claire, who had not reacted – ‘our encounters were generally consensual. But, on one occasion, which I believe to have been at Ned Marriott’s flat in Redbourne Avenue, Finchley, North London, he raped me.’

  The word was like a bomb blast in the room. Understanding the impact, Walters had paused to let the allegation settle. When the moment unfroze, Ned turned to his solicitor, with his mouth open and hands spread wide, like a footballer protesting to a referee. But Claire showed nothing. Surgeons, he supposed, allowed as little reaction when a victim of motorway carnage was wheeled into theatre.

  ‘I had consented to sexual intercourse,’ the woman detective resumed reading. ‘But, knowing from my awareness of my me
nstrual cycle that I was at high risk of becoming pregnant, I warned Edmund Horatio Marriott that I was not contraceptively protected and asked him to withdraw before ejaculation.’

  Even in his horror at what was happening, Ned had to stifle laughter at the dialogue, like a badly-dubbed porn film, that was created by police reported speech, a kissing mouth pulling away to gasp: Edmund Horatio Marriott, I know from my awareness …

  ‘However, he ignored me and pushed harder, continuing until ejaculation. Afterwards, he laughed and said: “That was amazing, the best ever.”’ To Ned’s ear, Walters adopted a sort of thuggish bluster for his alleged post-coital remark. ‘I could not understand why he was laughing. Although I was extremely upset and worried, I hoped that I would not become pregnant. Subsequently, however, I discovered that I was pregnant and, after consultation with my General Practitioner, underwent a termination.’

  Claire scribbled something, which Ned, glancing across, saw was: medical notes? He nodded, then thought that, if all this came out, it was the abortion that would appal his mother more than the sexual allegation.

  Walters turned over a page, which showed that only one paragraph remained: ‘I did not inform Ned Marriott of the termination because we were no longer in contact and I had no need of financial assistance from him. Because our relationship was intermittent and we had sexual intercourse on a number of occasions, I cannot be certain of the date. But to the best of my recollection, the rape occurred between the months of March and October in the year of 1976.’

  Ned’s in-head attorney jeered: Well, you can’t have been very traumatized then! Someone wouldn’t say that they remembered being stabbed at some point during 1976!

  ‘At the time, I told no one, feeling that I would be disbelieved because the assault occurred during a previously consensual encounter. In fact, it was only during recent publicity about changing understanding of what can constitute sexual assault and rape’ – well, which was this?, wrote Claire – ‘that I came to understand that I had been raped by Ned Marriott and to contact the police. Statement ends.’