The Allegations

by Mark Lawson

  For completion of the Documentation Stage, you and one supporter if desired (subject to the conditions above) are invited to attend Conference Room 1 at the Aylesbury Motel (location and directions on Attachment A) between 2.30 and 4.30pm on Friday June 7. You may take written notes but no photographic record will be allowed. A representative of WH will be in attendance.

  For completion of the Hearing Stage, you and one supporter if desired (subject to the conditions above) are invited to attend the Ground Floor Meeting Room at the Marlow Motor Inn (location and directions on Attachment B) between 2.30 and 4.30pm on Friday June 14. The hearing will be chaired by Professor Henry Gibson, Professor of Creative Writing at UME. A representative of UME WH will also be in attendance.

  Please contact me immediately to confirm these arrangements or express any observations that you may have. Unless otherwise advised by you, we will continue to use this e-mail address as the primary means of communication.

  With best wishes,

  David Wellington

  WH Group Leader, Humanities

  House Arrest

  Academic historians were the unknown studying the unforgotten. But TV dons were given a little glimpse into what happened to monarchs and politicians. The dilemma of celebrity, Ned had concluded, during the period when he became The Hitler Man, was that it involved alternating irritation at both recognition and the lack of it.

  Before his fall, a few days without public acknowledgement (though this generally consisted of people saying that they ought to know who he was, rather than that they did) would have left him fearing that his lucrative spell in the moonlight of TV would soon be over. Now, he hoped to go unnoticed.

  And this risk was reduced by a tactic thrown up by his roiling mind. On the first day of disgrace, home from the interrogation suite, he had suffered an agoraphobic panic and sentenced himself, from a reflex that even the pedantic Tom Pimm would surely accept as an irony, to house arrest. Emma, told everything, declared an unconditional belief in his innocence that would have made him weep in loving gratitude if he were the kind of man who could. She e-mailed History to say that he was down with a virus for a while; the secretary, wishing him better, advised that they would require a sick-note after three days’ absence. Toby, knowing only that a bad person had been telling tales about Daddy like sometimes happened at school, was baffled and anguished but seemed satisfied with his mother’s assurance that the lying toad would be made to pay for this, and gave Ned a tight, silent hug that forced him to sniff away a lurking tear-burst.

  What sense could there be in leaving this place of safety and trust? Until, in the early hours of that first sleepless night, he suffered a trembling, sweating, breathless fit of such intensity – his jerking jaw making speech impossible for some minutes – that he feared his heart was failing him. For forty-eight years since he had woken to be told of his father’s death, Ned had visualized dying in the night like this and wanted an ambulance calling at once, but Emma phoned the out-of-hours service and provided enough negative answers (to questions about pains, pallor and pre-existing conditions) and personal context (her husband had received some unexpected bad news that day, no not of a medical kind) to be diagnosed with shock, prescribed deep breathing exercises and camomile tea and advised to see his GP as soon as possible.

  Emma drove him there, after he had asked her to put his name into Google to check if there was any mention of his infamy. Despite Claire’s reassurance that nothing would break soon, he suffered the common delusion of the humiliated that everyone knew everything.

  His concentration shattered by distractions, he had written down his ten main physical problems on an index card. Coughing away throat phlegm (one of the symptoms), he read them to Dr Rafi, who listened without the visible concern that Ned felt was merited by this description of imminent physical collapse, then asked him if he had recently suffered any major shock or trauma.

  Ned cleared his throat again. ‘Anything I say here – even if it isn’t medical – is confidential?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Well, I should say, unless you inform me of your direct intention to kill anyone …’

  ‘Oh, no, no, not at the moment.’

  ‘And, even then, I have to check with the General Medical Council.’

  ‘Okay.’ When Ned spoke, it was as if a tumour filled his throat. ‘I was – I find this almost impossible to say …’

  ‘You know, doctors have heard most things.’

  ‘Yesterday, I was … arrested … a woman I knew – a former girlfriend – has made a claim …’

  True to his promise, the GP looked no more alarmed than if Ned had mentioned that he had a bug he couldn’t seem to throw off.

  ‘She was, I should say, an adult at the time and, of course, I completely …’

  Dr Rafi raised a hand. ‘My friend, all I need to know is what effect this, this … event has had on you. This has obviously been a huge shock for you. And what you describe – the difficulty sleeping, the digestive issues, extremes of temperature, the muscular spasms and loss of concentration – these, though obviously no fun at all to go through, are classic symptoms of sudden trauma, leading to what we call mixed anxiety and depression disorder. Now, I need to ask you a couple of questions. Do you have people who are supporting you?’

  An image of Emma and Toby at the breakfast table. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are there ways in which you fear the situation becoming worse?’

  This question, he guessed, was designed to identify potentially unbearable pressure points: a loan becoming due, a court appearance, a tragic anniversary. ‘Telling my daughters, I suppose. And, of course, if, probably when to be honest, it all becomes public.’

  ‘And – please do answer honestly, there is a lot of help we can give you – have you had any thoughts at all of harming yourself?’

  Yes. ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, I know you’re a bit iffy about pills.’ Ned had followed an intricate regime of diet and exercise for a year before reluctantly submitting to the middle-aged male panacea of statins. ‘But I really think you need a little help at the moment to settle you down. I recommend two treatments in particular.’

  ‘And these are – what? – Antidepressants? Antipsychotics? Sleeping pills?’

  ‘Oh, my friend, I don’t know how helpful these labels are. Will you try these and then come back to see me in a week? Do you need me to sign you off work?’

  Ned had been dreading the call to Neades and now saw a way of delaying the explanation. ‘Oh, er, can you? That would …’

  The doctor reached for a pad, on which Ned could read upside down the words medical and absence. A counterfoil strip showed that only two or three sign-off chits were left. Ned pictured a Britain in which the workforce divided between those depressed by unemployment and employees too depressed to do their jobs.

  ‘I’ve given you a month,’ said Dr Rafi. ‘We can always top-up if need be.’

  The dispensary manager, handing him the white crinkly bag with a stapled top, said: ‘So, will we be seeing you back on the box soon?’

  Ned’s scalp instantly pricked hot. The nurse, who would surely know what the drugs were for, must have guessed that he had suffered a breakdown and / or been sacked.

  ‘Oh, I’m, er, having a bit of a break.’

  Emma, in the car, asked: ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘That’s like asking someone coming back from the butchers if they’re vegetarian. I’ve got a bagful of Swiss marching powder here.’

  ‘Ned, I’m trying to help.’

  Ecstatic to find no paparazzi outside the house, he vowed that he would never go out again, except to be bailed, jailed, cleared or buried. But, that lunchtime, his mobile rang and it was a number that he could see no excuse to go on ignoring.

  ‘Nod!’

  ‘Oh, er, Tom. Hi.’

  ‘Look, are you okay? Someone told me – and not one of the nutters – that there’s a rumour you’re off sick. I said, sure, it’s Puligny-Montrachet Syndrom
e. I saw him going down with a case of it – or possibly two cases – the other night.’

  ‘I’m fine. It’s just a bug I can’t throw off.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Scorch marks at both ends of the candle will be all, I said. Look, Noddy, I need to talk to you …’

  ‘Sure. Go on.’

  ‘Ideally, alone and not on the phone. Can I meet you somewhere?’

  ‘Do you want to come here?’

  ‘Lads’ night out, I thought. I take it you’re not actually housebound with this bug, mate?’

  ‘Are you all right, Tom? You sound a bit manic.’

  Eating with a Towel

  Ned was almost permanently aware of a dampness on back, hands, and scalp. The cold sweat, previously a cliché of thriller fiction, was his natural body temperature. The damp handshake, until now a detail from campus anecdotes about despised colleagues, became a daily social obstacle.

  But it was when he tried to sleep or eat that his internal engine really went to work. Startled awake, an hour into his first night of shame, by the clammy wetness of the pillow, he first suspected tears – this would have been no surprise, the way he was feeling – in his uneasy sleep. But, if so, then his whole body, from ears to feet, had found a way to weep because every limb and ligament was slicked. After the last, short, pill-induced, deep but bad-dreaming blackout after dawn, reluctantly accepting that he could not force himself under again, he would stand in the bathroom and wring out his pillow-case and UME sweatshirt (the name-claim of the garment never so tested) into the sink, liquid spilling as if they had been soaked in the bath over-night.

  Meals released a sauna-drench of warmer sweat. Fantasizing an appetite, he forced down some milk-soaked cereal and coffee at breakfast and slurps or chews of adult baby-food – a gloopy soup, a fluffed risotto – at roughly the times he would once have eaten lunch and supper.

  But, as soon as he consumed even lukewarm food or drink, he felt his temperature rising and perspiration blurred his eyes, until he was dabbing them and then his forehead with a napkin that rapidly became soaked. After two days of this, he began to take to the table a hand-towel from the bathroom, staunching the cascade between bites and eventually tying the cloth round his head as an emergency turban.

  ‘Is it – have you asked Dr Rafi – the pills?’ said Emma.

  ‘It’s the Disgrace Diet,’ Ned replied, failing to stop another drop of salty seasoning falling from his face to the plate. ‘Apparently, shock either makes you unable to eat or unable to stop eating. And I’m sure most people would rather have the thin version. The health sites say it’s quite normal – normal if you’re falling apart, that is.’

  ‘You’re not falling apart,’ Emma said.

  The Literature of False Accusation

  Summary: On the day of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief financial officer of a bank, is puzzled by his landlady’s failure to bring his usual breakfast. Shortly after 8am, he is surprised in his bedroom by two men in dark suits who tell him that he is under arrest for an unspecified crime. The boss of the arresting agency arrives and holds an impromptu hearing in the room of K’s fellow lodger, Fräulein Bürstner, whom the suspect impulsively kisses.

  Confined under house arrest, K is subpoenaed on a Sunday to an address where his trial will apparently take place. In the attic of a tenement building, he locates the proceedings but is unable to discover the nature of the charges or even the identity of the judges. K delivers a lengthy denunciation of his situation and the court. Later, K returns to the building, hoping to catch the court unawares, but its sessions have been suspended, although he meets a young woman who seduces him.

  Returning to work at the bank, he enters a store room, where he finds that the agents who arrested him are being tortured, apparently for trying to bribe K. The suspect is visited by his Uncle Karl, who urges him to employ Huld, a lawyer, to write a brief for the court, although Huld acknowledges that the document will be tough to construct without knowledge of the crime or the jurisdiction.

  A client at the bank suggests that K should consult a man called Titorelli, who turns out to be the official court painter. The artist confides that no defendant has ever won a case and advises K to prolong the hearing for as long as possible.

  On the eve of his thirty-first birthday, two men again arrive at K’s lodging although, this time, he seems unsurprised and almost welcomes them. They walk to the edge of a quarry, where the men kill K.

  Reader Review: While it is complicated to talk of Kafka’s intentions – given that his wish, ignored by his executor, Max Brod, was for The Trial to be burned and never published – he had presumably planned that any reader would assume K to be completely innocent and falsely accused. And this was fine in 1925 and for most of the book’s library life. But those encountering the novel for the first time since 2008 would think that K, being a banker, was guilty of at least something, and possibly everything.

  This Penguin Classics edition was dated 1976 which, as the publication history showed a reprint every year at that time, suggested that Ned must have bought the paperback around the time of his life now under suspicion. But, in contrast to some of the other set-texts on Reputation 101, he had no memory of reading it on a holiday or another particular occasion.

  Encountered again now, the unexpected police raid induced such lurid visions of his own arrest that it took Ned more than an hour, repeatedly forcing himself to re-read the same paragraphs, to complete the opening pages. But, whatever your doubts about the methods of Operation Millpond, you were at least told upfront what you were supposed to have done, although with the drawback that the media were informed simultaneously.

  He recalled the broad details of the obscure prosecution – possibly helped by the film scripted by Pinter with that guy from Twin Peaks as the suspect – but had forgotten the weird detail that the state’s one mistake – which leads to K finally finding out what little information he obtains – is to have wanted their secret business recorded by a painter. He must ask Tom if anyone had ever made the connection with Nixon and his ruinous tapes.

  And it was the ‘process’ Tom was going through – Der Prozess was the original German title – of which the book most reminded him: the opacity of the charges and the difficulty of mounting a defence. But, when he asked his friend if he had ever read or was re-reading The Trial, Tom replied that he had just finished it but had come to the conclusion that ‘the point about what I am going through is that it is specifically not Kafkaesque.’

  Snap!

  Acceding to Tom’s pleas to meet, Ned had tried to calculate the venue where he was least likely to be known. He settled on The Best Cafe, as the premises claimed to be in flaking green and yellow paint above a door that carried no reviews or tourist board rosettes in support of the naming.

  A twenty-minute walk from the middle of Winslow, on the edge of an estate, it was on the head-clearing route that Ned took when blocked on a book or script, and he had occasionally come in for lunch or tea, excusing it as thinking time.

  Around a hatched serving counter were discoloured photographs of burgers, pizzas, pastas, curries, salads and breakfasts of escalating cholesterol: Big, Super, Monster, All-Day, the latter adding chips to the traditional British morning feast. A laminated poster, with handwritten amendments stuck on, listed these and other options. Curling away at the edges as it became unstuck, a poster on the inside of the door appealed for information about a student who had gone missing in the area two years previously. Ned felt a flash of anger against the police for not focusing their resources on the disappeared rather than an ejaculation from when Harold Wilson was prime minister.

  At several tables were groups of four or five men, apartheiddivided by race. They wore the colours of physical labour: the blue cloth of overalls, the yellow shine and grey reflector stripes of Hi-Vis, although the fabric of some of these jackets was now orange, possibly due to the finding that eyes had become so used to the original safety shade that they now screened
it out. The men were heavy-set, their chins unshaven and hands smeared with oil or grease, teasing each other in languages that sounded Slavic and African. The throaty shouts suggested the universal man-banter of sex and sport. This business would mainly rely, Ned guessed, on road-gangs and house-builders. Even on this early summer evening, they were chasing down piled carbohydrate – pies, chips, at least one All-Day Breakfast – with, in one concession to the temperature, frequent swigs from chilled cans of beer, empties Stonehenged around each plate. But these were Ned’s preferred people now: he doubted that they would have seen even his Hitler programme.

  He was trying to decide between water and Diet Coke when the bell-ping of the door made him turn to see Tom, giving an eyebrow-raising sweep of the premises.

  ‘Christ, Nod! Is your next book a history of working-class England?’

  ‘Ha. No, there’s something I need to say.’ A questioning face from his friend. ‘And I got the sense there was something up with you as well?’ A grimace of confirmation. ‘And, even if we were overheard here, we wouldn’t be understood. They do wine but it’s almost certainly sub-Lidl. The beer’s fine. I’m sticking to water, though.’

  ‘Golly. The old liver took a kicking at the sixtieth?’

  ‘No. It’s these pills I’m on. I’ll tell you in a minute. They do Budvar or another more generic Eastern European brew?’

  ‘No, no. Water’s fine.’

  ‘Tom, I haven’t gone AA or anything. You don’t have to jump on the wagon just because …’

  ‘No. Snap. Doc’s bollocking.’

  ‘Really? Jesus, I hope you haven’t got what I’ve got,’ Ned said.

  His friend looked concerned. ‘Ditto.’

  ‘Two bottles of still water, please,’ Ned asked the matriarch of the managing clan, which he had classified, without inquiry or evidence, as Albanian. Despite many years of service, she still required him to point to the requested bottles in the fridge behind her.