by Mark Lawson
The automatic insecurity of an employee suddenly summoned before a superior makes her fear that the Director might be attempting a form of subliminal suggestion, planting in her mind the idea that the process may be followed, one way or another, by dismissals. Could her own survival be dependent on successfully intuiting what she is being asked to do? It is impossible in these situations to know how suspicious to be.
This opaque conversation has given her an abrupt sense of how institutions operate. She is unsure of the meaning of this meeting, or even if it has one. There seems no way of knowing if selection for this duty is reward or warning, prize or punishment.
Leaving
She spends six hours sleepless beside him, listening to his stentorian snores, unable to nudge him because that would require touching. Afterwards, her first thought was to call a minicab but, in such a state of agitation, it felt ridiculous to entrust herself to another stranger. She has read in the Standard about rapes by drivers.
The Wash / Don’t Wash argument in her head. The need to be clean wins. Straddling the sink behind the plastic drape, sluicing herself as best she can, she feels more like a woman in 1876. Awake, she pictures the diary pages again, repeatedly doing the sum, unable ever to come to a number smaller than between twelve and sixteen.
Two or three cars start up outside. The traffic is building on the Finchley Road. Her watch is curled like a dog turd on the thinning carpet. Quarter past six.
Sneaking out of dormitory at Madingley Hall has left her skilled at dressing quietly. Yesterday’s dress and emergency pants, although they don’t have the fresh feeling she expects. She scrunches the soiled pair to the bottom of her handbag. No need to wee or clean her teeth until home. The cardigan lifted from the sofa as if it is a jewel in an alarm-protected case.
At the click of the door latch, he stirs.
Morning tongue-stuck speech: ‘You going?’ She doesn’t answer. ‘That was great. See you.’
Her heels ludicrously loud on the stairs. A scowling Latina might open a door at any moment. A sudden memory from movies that you are supposed to carry your shoes until the street.
On the noticeboard, a note in big capitals: NED. LUCIA RING. PLEASE CALL HER. She imagines him insisting that his mother is called Lucia.
Although everyone is still pretending it’s summer, the cold on the street makes her shiver and wish her woollen top was thicker as she buttons it tightly up.
On the platform, a workman in a donkey jacket slowly inspects her: heels, boobs, hair. He winks. ‘Dirty stop out, eh? Lucky him.’
The awareness that she must look unbrushed, unshowered and and and and fucked.
Do tube trains always stink like this? Choosing a carriage as far as possible from the winker, she takes from her handbag the little book with the fake red leather cover and 1976 stamped in gold. She sees it as a birthdate. 1976–.
Her blue biro X is against the 7th. So. So. So. Thirteen.
Duty of Care
The reception area is decorated with frozen seconds of television: a hostage scene from an award-winning cop drama that is in her stack of unwatched box sets, an image from The Big Jigsaw Challenge. The latter looks as if it was taken just before the moment that has become known as ‘heelgate’, involving the allegation that the winner, in the speed completion round, knocked a rival’s piece off the table and secreted it away on a cunningly chewing-gummed shoe. There are two gaps in the line of picture frames, looking too erratic to be a pattern. She wonders if the spaces once held photographs of presenters now exposed as paedophiles.
Double doors in the corner split open, admitting a tall guy with a sandy flat top, wearing ripped jeans and a T-shirt printed with the legend: Clever Clothing Slogans Are So Yesterday.
‘Jess?’ he checks. ‘Dom’s out of his LA call. Do you want to come with me?’
On an L-shaped sofa placed below two windows looking onto the canal, Ogg is flicking through a thick script, its edge rainbowed with replacement pages in multiple colours. Ignoring their entrance, he goes on reading. It looks like cover footage of a judge on the day of the publication of the report from an official inquiry. Ogg appears different, younger than she remembers. But TV, she has observed, is a rare area of life in which older men tend to have more hair and better teeth than when you last saw them.
Suddenly looking up, Ogg says: ‘Oh. Hey, Jess. Come in. Come in. Thanks, Percy.’
The PA faces Jess and, forming a tea pot from one hand, performs a charade of pouring into a cup made from the other, while pulling a question-mark face. The gesture is borderline obscene and she wonders if it might not have been easier for him to speak, which she does: ‘No. No, thanks, I’m fine.’
When he’s gone, Jess says: ‘Percy? That’s not a …’
‘It’s his surname. Not a public school thing, by the way. His choice. People can be called what they want here. Except God. That one’s taken. Arf Arf.’
Her intended real laugh was less convincing than his fake one.
‘You’re still happy with “Jess”, Jessamy?’
‘Sure.’
‘So,’ Ogg announces the start of the proceedings proper. ‘Long time since we worked together. Thanks for mailing that CV. You’ve done some fun stuff.’
There is work around but it pays the same or less than it would have done ten years before, which is why she is so pleased and intrigued by the unexpected summons to Ogglebox.
The boss opens her CV on his iPad and reads it, making lipshapes of approval.
‘Herstory have kept you busy,’ he says. ‘You know Alice started here? I don’t mind telling you: she’s the one I dread pitching against for things.’
‘Yes, she’s great.’ The freelance’s dilemma of how to flatter this possible employer without criticizing the other in a way that might get back. ‘They’re very much into concept doc, I suppose. You’re lucky if the presenter isn’t in costume.’
‘Lol,’ Ogg says. ‘Look, I’m certainly keen on finding something for you here.’
General rather than specific interest – the freelance’s disaster.
‘But, Jess, there’s something else I wanted to try out on you …’
A warning blip on the radar that women in the workplace develop. The joke in the industry is that the only person at risk of sexual harassment from Ogg is himself. But has he somehow managed to operate under the level of gossip? The dinner to discuss the state of TV, the theatre trip on which a friend has just let him down. With lightning mistrustful calculation, she works out that Alice had just dumped him and she will be the get-back shag.
But what Ogg says is: ‘Tell me as a matter of interest – back in the day, how did you get on with Ned Marriott?’
The scenario she had imagined and rehearsed as soon as she got the e-mail: an offer of work but with him. But this topic – her researcher’s mind works out – was introduced as something else apart from possible employment.
‘Fine,’ she lies. ‘I was very junior.’
‘Indeedy. Indeedy. Look, Jess, I’m not going to beat … I’m not going to blow smoke up … Jess, I’m going to completely be frank with you. A colleague here tells me that you may have had a bit of a to-do with the professor once. A – let me clarify, we’re not judgemental here – an unwanted to-do.’
A sudden thought of people, diagnosed with tumours, who are told: it might have been growing for years. And a sense of jeopardy, knowing that two paths are being offered but unsure of the destinations at the end of them. Professional good sense is to give the answer that Ogg wants. But what would that be?
‘Can I ask why this has suddenly come up now?’
‘You mean because it was a long time ago?’
‘Well, nine, ten …’
She stops herself but he has got her. Ogg’s colossal vanity and corporate vocabulary make it tempting to dismiss him but the caricature version of him could not have achieved such a career; the question that has trapped her gives a feel of his dealmaker’s skills.
&n
bsp; He does a lap of honour for the admission he has won: ‘So, during The English Witch Hunts? Yes, that was the information I had.’ A drop in his voice as marked as if he is obeying the stage direction sotto voce. ‘Jess, can you tell me as much as you feel able to about what happened?’
The moment of invitation to identify herself as a victim. If she has not done so before, it is because she is unsure that there was damage or, if there has been, how lasting it is. ‘Look, if anything happened, it was a … a location grope. Stuff – you must know this – stuff goes on on shoots. Less so now but … then …’
‘I see. Are there other charges – or charges against others – you might want to bring?’
The shift in tone and language is disorientating, a doctor becoming a cop.
‘Well, hang on. I haven’t brought any charges against anyone.’
‘Jess, my information is that Professor Marriott sexually assaulted you.’ A memory of confiding in Alice once during filming. ‘As Ogglebox had – and has – a duty of care towards you, we have passed this allegation to Operation Millpond, which is …’
‘Yes, I know. But can you? … I’m not sure I …’
‘My decision – on advice – was that to do this was consistent with our duty of care towards you.’
Her historian’s training is to ask, when analysing an action, who most benefits from this?
‘Look, if you … I have no complaint about the way the production company …’
‘That would not have been a factor in our decision.’
She smiles.
‘Why are you smiling? Jess, it is my understanding that officers from Millpond will contact you. This company will give you any support you need and, as I say, we are keen to work with you again. I can also tell you, confidentially, that you are not the first complainant.’
What she has taken for a pencil sharpener on Ogg’s desk is, he proudly demonstrates before she leaves, a fold-up pair of roller-skates.
She must look shaken because Percy, escorting her out, offers a look of hyperbolic kindness, suspecting an applicant turned down for a job.
Leaving, Jess stares at the gaps in the wall of photographs as if they are complicated paintings.
W9
It is obvious that the ninth witness is used to being interviewed; after half an hour, they have received only cagey condemnations of the college management and admissions of differences with certain colleagues. This is a conciliator, a survivor.
Andrea glances at Jani and sees approval for the escalation they agreed in advance if necessary.
‘In your view, are sexual relationships ever acceptable in an educational environment?’
A flutter under the calm charm he has shown so far. ‘What an extraordinary question.’
During the ten days of taking evidence, Andrea has learned, as all interviewers and interrogators presumably do, that a pause is a trap into which one of two talkers will fall and it should never be you.
‘Well,’ W9 finally says. ‘I think there’s general acceptance now that such liaisons are not generally wise between teaching staff and students. Certainly, I accept it.’
Hasty training as an investigator has made her alert to the present-tense denial that may confess to past demeanours; the politician’s ‘there is no sexual relationship with this woman’. When they review testimony, her HR colleague is brutal about this verbal casuistry but Andrea is happier to concentrate on what is happening now – how many people could survive a review of their entire life or career? Jani, though, keeps repeating that the scope is historic.
In line with which view, she now gives the witness a clipped precis of his previous answer: ‘There is acceptance now. So there have been times when there was not acceptance in History?’ After a week and a half of confusion over this word, Jani adds: ‘In the History department?’
The tense silence of a TV contestant facing the top money question. ‘Are you making a specific accusation?’
Jani looks scandalized at this misunderstanding: ‘No. Not at all. I am speaking generally.’
‘And is this really within the remit of a study of the conduct and culture of the department?’
Renewed incredulity from Jani. ‘Well, the university has rules on sexual conduct. Very much so. And it seems to me that this is well within the remit of the Traill Inquiry.’
The only pleasure for Andrea of this nasty task from Neades has been to watch sharp, fast minds at work – in a percentage of staff at least – calculating whether to answer and then what.
‘Let me say then, Ms Goswani,’ W9 says, ‘that it would be surprising if, in any place of further education, there has been no element of sexual indiscretion over the last two decades. And I doubt that UME would surprise us in this way.’
‘Let me ask you very directly, Professor. Have you yourself ever broken the university’s Customer Boundary Code?’
Andrea leans across, inviting a whispered conference with her colleague – she has not seen them being genital detectives – but Jani’s look is fixed on the witness. He waits so long that Andrea wonders if he has decided on silence. But then he says: ‘Can I ask when this code you invoke was introduced?’
A small smirk from Jani at another attempt to separate past and present. ‘The code became a de facto appendix to all longterm and temporary contracts from the start of the academic year 2006.’
‘Then – while setting on the record my concern at this line of questioning – I am confident that I have never crossed a boundary with a student.’
He is, she feels, being careful but candid, appealing to the god of second chances, and Andrea is about to take over the questioning when Jani goes on: ‘And have you ever – at any time – had an inappropriate relationship with a teaching colleague?’
Startled by this line of attack, Andrea rests fingers firmly on Jani’s arm to get her attention, but the intervention is shrugged away as if itself an example of improper contact. And, for the first time, W9’s charm and calm cracks: ‘Jesus Christ, did I miss the memo that Sharia law had been introduced?’
Jani types energetically. When she has finished, Andrea squeezes her co-questioner’s arm firmly until she turns to look.
‘Aren’t we going off-map here?’ Andrea whispers.
From behind a cupped covering hand comes the reply: ‘Claims have been made against him.’
Whereas Goswani seems to have a prosecutor’s purity, though of a terrifyingly zealous kind, Traill feels uneasily that she is here to achieve the result Neades has already ordained, like a theatre mind-reader reproducing the doodle that a volunteer has sealed in an envelope behind a screen. And she doubts that it involves the removal of the department’s biggest star.
‘I see him more as a witness than a suspect,’ she murmurs to the woman from People. Then, audibly, to the witness: ‘Professor, I want to ask you about your experience with some colleagues. Dr Tom Pimm?’
‘Well, I certainly haven’t had sex with him.’
Andrea’s smile is partly powered by the memory that Pimm had made the same joke in reverse. Several of the witnesses have commented on the friendship of the men and she is starting to suspect that loyalty will make the interrogation pointless when, finally, they get something they can use: ‘I have to admit that sometimes – as a friend – I have raised concerns with Tom about the way he carries on.’
‘You mean his sexual conduct?’ Goswani cuts in.
It strikes Andrea that, during a process that sometimes seems to have gone on longer than the Middle East peace negotiations, they have spent accumulated hours watching people deciding whether, or how much, to lie. The latest witness has come to a decision: ‘I think I’ll just leave it as having warned him about the nature of some of his relationships.’
‘Are you … ?’ her colleague starts, but the speaker continues: ‘I think a lot of his problems come from the way he talks. Almost everything he says is a pun, a joke, a nickname.’
‘That sounds quite cruel?’ Traill prompts
.
‘Yes, I suppose if you’re the one on the end of it.’
‘He identifies a person’s weakness?’ Goswani asks.
‘I suppose you could say that. I’d say more that he’s a worldclass sarcastic. But, to be fair to him, I think a lot of it comes from terror of being a boring talker. Even if he just says “hello” to you, it’s likely to be in a foreign language or funny accent. He says the word “so” in Anglo-Saxon. Even just trying to find a time everyone can make for a meeting first thing the next day, he’ll ask: “Anyone for tennish?” ’
By the end, he’s restored to the friendly, confident figure who started the session.
‘My outburst earlier,’ he says. ‘I apologize if my tone was inappropriate. I just felt that it was all getting a bit …’
Andrea remembers the name he says but can only guess a spelling – Sovanarola? – which ignites the jagged red-line of the spellcheck, but she can sort it out later.
Goswani asks: ‘As a matter of interest, does he have a nickname for you?’
‘Actually, he does. Pretty kind by his standards, though. Because of something people noticed when I was first on TV. It’s Nod.’
‘Thank you, Professor Marriott,’ says Andrea. ‘Just a reminder that your evidence today will be treated as anonymous and should not be discussed with anyone.’
PART FOUR
FALL-OUTS
Your Love Always
‘I want a hug.’
‘Okay.’
Folding down a corner of the page, she balanced the manuscript on the bedside table and took off her reading glasses, a move incorporated into foreplay by this age. She turned to embrace him, her arms around his shoulders but hips and pelvis curved away, a move she had perfected with an early boyfriend before she was on the pill and he would try to get away without a condom.