by Mark Lawson
Until her sister’s prediction, it had never occurred to Phee that Emma (ES, for Evil Stepmother, in Dee’s formulation) might be pregnant again. She was not sure how to deal with this, not due to the further dilution of her father’s affections and assets but because of how the annunciation would have resulted. The tactful desire for their parents to be celibate (the prince’s plea to his mother in the play from which her name came) is less easily available to children whose father lives with a much younger partner.
Oh? Phee replied. I was worried it was divorce. The swift reply: Y worry? Result! lol Xxxxx Then, immediately, at the speed of speech. PS If wuz that, he tell us aloan, not with ES. OMG, D not ill????? Xxxx Once raised, this possibility became the only one. She sent a text to her father, D you’re not ill are you?, and, after two distracted hours in which she had to keep nudging back the time bar while watching The Great British Bake Off on iPlayer, unable to remember for more than a few seconds which patisserie had actually been that week’s technical challenge, he replied: No no no. Just boring admin. Tell all on Sat XX
From this reply, Phee divined that Daddy was going to show them, or ask them to witness, a will, or living will: many friends of her generation had reported such morbid parental conversations. When she confided in Andy, he reassured her by saying that he was certain she was right and, against all precedent, even Dee eventually agreed, and the assumption seemed to be confirmed when she checked if she could / should bring Andy to the lunch and got the response: Do you mind if only family biz for moment? No offence. So, intermittently, until Saturday came, Phee war-gamed the future in which they would have to decide whether to switch off Daddy’s machine. As the sisters had historically disagreed on everything, she envisaged a decision reached by the UK Supreme Court eventually being referred to the European Court of Human Rights.
As one of their contests in adulthood involved attempting to arrive first for any social engagement with their father, Phee found herself falling in step beside her unalike double passing the Commonwealth Institute at 12:35.
‘Oh, hello,’ said Phee, trying to disguise her frustration that their besting schedules had matched.
‘Howsa, Little Sis. You still think Living Will?’
‘Or just Will. But that’ll be fine because he’s always had that complete equality thing.’
‘Ish.’
They turned down a street where offices and warehouses had been converted into apartment blocks with balconies, the Americanization of London accelerating. Couples in fluffy towelling robes, the sort bought or stolen from hotels, were drinking Buck’s Fizz with their feet up on the railings, overlooking joggers jostling past tubby men in blazers and straw-hats heading to the cricket. Phee had thought Daddy was going to the Test match, but he had texted that he didn’t fancy the weather forecast.
She asked her sister dutifully: ‘How’s … ?’
One male name had appeared more than others on her sister’s recent texts, and she had tried to commit it to a memory from which it had now infuriatingly dropped out.
‘Jacob,’ Dee helped her. ‘Jay-cob.’ Phee assumed the second pronunciation was some sort of dirty joke. ‘Can’t find the dishwasher but knows where a clitoris is. Blokes are a compromise.’
Phee hated the fact that her sister’s frankness still made her blush.
‘And Andy?’ Dee asked.
‘Fine.’
An inquiring glance invited more detail, but Phee said nothing.
Like sprinters at the finish, they both speeded up on the steps but Dee pressed the doorbell first, gave her name and was buzzed in.
‘Oh, you’re both here,’ said Emma, admitting them to the flat. She seemed to have lost several pounds in the week since the party, which must finally rule out pregnancy. Perhaps it was their stepmother who was ill, which, Phee guiltily thought, would be the easiest of all the potential revelations.
In their childhood, Daddy had perfected a mathematically equal welcome, ducking his head between theirs, placing a hand gently on their hair and pulling them towards one cheek each. But he held them there for much longer than usual, which worried her.
Emma came in from the kitchen and placed one of her signature quiches, browned broccoli breaking the surface like rocks, alongside a bowl of salad leaves, a basket of crusty bread and a plate of salmon fillets steamed almost white. Daddy handed them each a glass of Prosecco but she noticed that he poured water for himself. So he was the one who was sick. She saw him smiling bravely from white sheets, steroid-bloated, baby-bald.
While serving food and picking at it, they swapped bland anecdotes about what Toby, Jacob and Andy had been doing, then compared notes on post-party hangovers and TV bingewatches, but all four knew that this was only a prologue to the troubling discussion to come.
In the silence that followed their exhaustion of the subjects they had in common, Daddy and Emma communicated in blink-Morse before she said: ‘There’s something we have to tell you.’
We means a kid, Phee was thinking, and the tight line of Dee’s lips suggested that she had reached the same conclusion.
‘A … woman – I’m tempted to call her something else – has made an accusation against your dad …’
An affair. So another couple of days of rubbish in the papers, with columnists and bloggers ridiculing the names they had been given.
‘This was long ago, before you and I were even around …’
Emma’s tone was so positive that Phee was slower than her sister to understand the implications.
‘Christ! You mean like Jimmy Savile?’ Dee blurted.
Blood rushed to their father’s face. ‘No. Absolutely not like, like him,’ he snarled. ‘This, this woman was in her twenties at the time …’
‘So that’s …’
But the sentence remained unfinished. Indestructible Dee – always called by most observers the ‘confident one’ of the two women who must never be referred to as ‘the twins’ – bumped herself up from the table and stumbled towards the bathroom door, one hand flapping towards her eyes to catch tears while the other was cupped in front of her mouth against another gush.
The Press
Fearing the newspapers was a familiar sensation for Ned. The publication of books, the screening of TV series, the reporting of the plagiarism case and the divorce had all brought days of anticipatory belly-ache and nights of churning wakefulness waiting for the smack of rolled newsprint on the mat, or, in London, the drive to Victoria or St Pancras late at night to buy a wet-inked first printing from the bundles unloaded to be transported north.
The outcomes of these vigils varied. Because books might be reviewed within a period of weeks or ignored completely, publication dates brought moments of giddy reprieve, the relief of not having to face a hostile notice overcoming disappointment at the missed possibility of a good one. In contrast, TV critiques and court reports always appeared, if they were going to, on the day or at latest Sunday after they occurred.
But such waits for execution had been changed, like so much else, by the Internet. As part of a mystifying mission to give their content free of charge to readers who in many cases hated the paper, some publications posted book and TV reviews long in advance of the doorstep or bookstall drops, forcing the subjects of judgement either to set up alerts for their own name or risk a tip-off text from a pleased or consoling friend. And as the publications released their web editions during a span of several hours around midnight, the sleepless nights of those under editorial threat were punctuated by surfing to see if any reports had yet appeared. For the most recent TV series and books, he had alternated between staying up until 00:00 to check if any stuff was on the web or going down to the study in the early hours, when he could be sure that all the dailies or weeklies would be up. But if the reviews were good, the composition of prize acceptance speeches kept him from sleeping, and, if bad, bile had the same effect.
In this case, though, the only possibilities were no news or bad news. His pattern became tha
t at 3am – he usually managed a couple of hour-long Diazepam-assisted naps between 9pm (the earliest Emma would let him go to bed) and around 2am – he went down to the study and Googled himself.
As the iBook, iPads and desk iMac were still retained by the police – his impressive loyalty to one brand, it struck him, was now unlikely to result in any more gifted products or the sponsorship deal of which he had long dreamed – he was using a Samsung Chromebook, one of the instinctive economies to which fears for his future earnings and legal fees had driven him. He had sent Emma to buy it, citing fear of being noticed, although his real concern was being spotted in an act of infidelity to Apple. She used a credit card that bore only her name.
To Ned’s horror, the second of his pre-dawn trawls threw up Ned Marriott rapist among the search terms, but, his galloping pulse making his fingers shake on the keys, this turned out to refer to a blog by someone in the History Department of the University of Portsmouth who had moaned that Ned operated as a ‘rapist and plagiarist of the work of historians who are far more original and formidable but don’t have any mates in the media.’
Ned had accidentally uncovered this sentence many times in the digital swamp but had never previously been pleased to see it. And, for six days, it was the same. There was the generalized brutal abuse that any slightly public figure now had to expect in the online stocks – Nazi cunt, Blair-fucker, Channel Whore, BBC cock-sucker, fat cunt, Professor Pervert, stupid cunt, paedo cunt, Tory cunt, Marxist cock-fucker, Biased Broadcasting Cunts – but there was no suggestion that he had done anything wrong except earning money in public. And while the standard cyber-catch was not ideal reading in his paranoid, insomniac condition, he knew that the abuse would be much worse if he were a woman.
So he thought, each morning: Good. But returning to bed for the mumbled exchange with a mostly comatose Emma – ‘Anything?’ / ‘No.’ / ‘Good. Sleep then.’ – he was always unable to obey her instruction, dramatizing the time when this nocturnal search would be productive.
Bad People (2)
Although football in England was now almost a year-round sport, there were, even in a World Cup summer, still a few Saturday afternoons that fell empty for Ned and Toby. Usually they played penalty shoot-outs in the mini-goal in the garden, which Ned enjoyed. He had been warned that the major drawback for older or second-time fathers was the impact on the knees of kickabouts but his joints were holding up fine; his only football-related difficulty was being old enough to have seen England win the World Cup, an event that seemed science-fictional to his son.
But, when Ned’s post-arrest agoraphobia made him terrified of playing outside – imagining paparazzi behind the hedgerow – he pretended to have a tender patella and suggested that they play FIFA 2014 in the games room: a Champions League final, with Ned as Liverpool (his dad’s home team and now, by adoption, his) and Toby controlling Manchester City, a team based in a place with which he had no personal links but had adopted, in the opportunistic stock-market way of young fans now, in the season that Man City won the Premiership.
Toby’s avatar – a six-foot-six-inch striker – had just completed a hat-trick, from another Aguero assist, when Ned’s iPhone vibrated and then sounded (his ringtone Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Into the Woods’) on the window-sill that was one of the places with a consistent signal.
Abandoning his defence of a free kick just outside the box – Toby Marriott and Ya Ya Toure standing over the ball – Ned uncurled himself with arthritic inelegance from his semi-lotus crouch in front of the flat-screen TV and grabbed the trembling rectangle. It was a call from a mobile that failed to link to a name in his contacts. Advice from Claire had confirmed his psychotic instinct that, while waiting for exposure, he should be wary of taking calls from unknown numbers, fearing the excitedly coiled voice of a newspaper reporter.
‘Gooooooalllllllllllll!!!!’ shouted Toby as the call rang out and went to voicemail. An elaborate goal celebration was going on in the corner of the room, the lampstand a corner flag, as the 901 alert came on and Ned accepted it.
He knew the helium-squeak Ulster tones immediately. ‘Kevan Neades on Saturday afternoon, 16:15. Professor Marriott, would you be able to give me a call at your earliest convenience?’
The mobile number given and repeated. Toby made the L-sign with his fingers. ‘Loser! Loser! 5–1 to the Blues!’
‘Tobes, do you want to go and get a couple of Diet Cokes? I’ve just got to take this call.’
As the back of Toby’s light blue replica shirt vanished from the door frame, the last number redialled was answered: ‘Neades.’
There was a foreign echo on the line, a hint of insect chirrup in the background. The Director of History had a weekend place in France. Ned identified himself.
‘Ah, yes. Thanks for calling back so swiftly.’ The voice was as clear and cold as in the office. Ned, abroad for the weekend, would be half-tanked by now, pre-Diazepam at least, but Neades was teetotal, for reasons of either health or Presbyterianism. ‘First off, I should ask you: are you bearing up under all this, Ned?’
Unable to face cold-calling Neades with news of his notoriety, Ned had asked Claire to send a letter.
‘Well, I wouldn’t wish it on you.’ Because so few people knew yet what had happened, Ned was rarely asked how he was coping but already had a scripted response: ‘Luckily, I’ve got good family, friends, doctors, lawyers.’
‘It’s good that you have the support you need,’ Neades replied, the sentence as lacking in inflection as a foreign language student parroting sample phrases.
‘And my mate Pimm is going through something similar, which helps in a funny sort of way.’
One of the director’s signature long silences was filled with insect noise. ‘I couldn’t speak to that.’ Another pause to underline his discretion. ‘As I will be informing your legal representative by letter, you will be suspended on full pay. This is a precautionary suspension, under established protocols. The University makes – and intends – no judgement on the situation in which you find yourself and will make no decision until its outcome.’
Was Neades reading from a brief or did he now speak effortless bureaucratese? ‘The business is winding down for the summer. But, internally, for the moment, your customers will be advised that you are on a leave of absence for “personal reasons”. Externally, the University will make no statement pro-actively. Against inquiry, we will advise of the advice given to your customers.’
Toby, prone in front of the television, was fiddling with ingame tactics screens, switching to his favoured 1–1–8 formation. A picture came to Ned of his son struggling through a rolling maul of reporters and photographers outside the door.
‘And if … if …’ He ignored the apocalyptic prompter whispering when. ‘If the actual … reason … becomes known … then …’
After lengthily exploring his trademark option of not talking at all, Neades answered: ‘Then, not pro-actively but against inquiry, Ex Comms would advise of your precautionary suspension.’ More dead air with a cicada soundtrack. ‘As I am required to do, I’ve passed the details on a confidential basis to WH. You should expect a call to see if we can offer any support during what we are aware must be a very stressful time for you and for your family.’
In the final sentence, the English pupil reached vocabulary and meanings so far beyond his comprehension and delivery that it had the sat-nav staccato of a phrase generated from a digital word-bank, as did: ‘Is there anything that I have said to you today that requires clarification?’
‘No.’ Ned hated himself for the inculcated manners that made him finish the call: ‘Thank you.’
Through the window, he could see Emma, kneeling beside a flower bed, doing some of whatever it was that people who liked gardening did. As he watched, she put down the trowel, wiped her hands on her gardening jeans, leaned back and kneaded tension from her neck and shoulders.
Ned looked back to where Toby was practising penalties, scoring every time to ei
ther side.
‘Sorry,’ he said, then, with forced jauntiness: ‘So. How many minutes have I got to score five?’
‘Yeah, that’s so going to happen.’ Solemnity descended over Toby’s gap-toothed grin. ‘Was that one of the bad people, Daddy?’
The Literature of False Accusation (2)
Summary: In a Norwegian town, mainly dependent for employment and wealth on the curative legend of the local spa, the medical officer, Dr Tomas Stockmann, comes to suspect – from the numbers of bathers suffering a gastric bug – that the healing waters are diseased. Confirming this with the most modern scientific tests, he believes that what would now be called his ‘duty of care’ is to close down the baths, while a completely new water supply system is installed, and expects to be thanked for saving lives. Instead, he is accused by the local newspaper and the business community – led by the mayor, his brother Peter – of ruining livelihoods by destroying tourism. Dr Stockmann has his house stoned, is denounced at a public meeting and is driven out of town with his family.
Reader Review: The version of An Enemy of the People on Ned’s shelves was the script of the production he saw at the Playhouse Theatre in London in late 1988. From the dates, Cordelia and Ophelia must just have been born but he had no memory of whether he had taken Jenny to the theatre or someone else. This adaptation had been written by Arthur Miller in 1950 and, three years later, heavily influenced Miller’s own consideration of a wrongheaded mob, The Crucible.
Ned had bought the script after seeing it performed because, at the time, he identified strongly with the evidence-faced intellectual purity of the scientist, seeing in the modernity and justified certainty of Tomas something of his own position in relation to the fusty professorial time-servers of the UME History department. This identification may have been encouraged by the fact that Miller’s Dr Stockmann was explicitly a self-portrait of the playwright’s virtuous opposition to the McCarthyite witch hunt.