by Mark Lawson
‘I don’t think that’s what I’m saying. Following a recent root-and-branch review of the UME code of conduct, it was decided that a presumption of truth would be applied to complaints in this area.’
‘This area being … ?’
‘B & H. Yes.’
‘Although my client …’
‘Was accused only of B. Yes. And, of course, also Insubordination.’
‘I’m not fucking having that,’ Tom, from nowhere, declared.
Claire was about to refer again to her client’s recently fragile health when Tom laughed and she understood what had happened, although the panic was only slightly reduced. ‘Dr Pimm’s sense of humour,’ she reassured Wellington, ‘has caught me out a few times as well.’
The bureaucrat’s face was expressionless. ‘Some people might argue that has been part of the problem.’
Scribbling a note about this comment possibly suggesting further bias in the process, Claire said: ‘As far as I can see, you are saying that, if someone defined themselves as a victim, they were accepted as one?’
‘So. On that, what I would say to you is – bullying is like beauty.’
In speech that consisted of administrative euphemisms, quotations from online modules and the anachronistically adolescent tic of so on that, this one phrase had the jagged poetry of a song lyric or the title of a film that won prizes at festivals.
‘Wow,’ said Tom. ‘If I get nothing else from today, I’ve got the title of my memoirs.’
Wellington frowned. ‘Are you writing them?’
‘I don’t have much else to do at the moment.’
Claire’s raised hand advised a silence, which she filled with the bewildered echo: ‘Like beauty?’
‘So. On that. Bullying tends to be in the eye of the beholder. If someone thinks it’s happened, then it has.’
Claire tried out in her mind a comment about how much cheaper and quicker the court system would be if justice adopted that principle, but dropped it when she remembered that there was a category of allegations – including those recently made against a member of this department – for which intelligent people did suggest that standard.
Her calculation left a gap, which Tom saw. ‘That’s interesting. So, if I happen to think that Dr Kevan Neades is a sycophantic mediocrity, then he is?’
Claire’s grinning head-shake tried to pass this off as a waggishly lovable comment from her client. Wellington seemed to be struggling with his professionally required open-mindedness. ‘Might that not be an example, Dr Pimm, of the type of personal comment that led here?’
‘But there is a point there,’ Claire said. ‘If anyone who said anything about Dr Pimm was assumed to be telling the truth, then why would the same principle not apply to what Dr Pimm said about others?’
Unable to prevent a checkmate grimace, Wellington bought time by stirring and test-sipping his tea. ‘So, on that, the university has instituted, in certain areas, a policy of sympathy towards the victim.’
‘Alleged victim.’ A flashback to the interview suite with Ned.
‘Well, no, these allegations have been proved.’
‘Really? When and how?’
‘When we accepted them as true.’
Tom’s mocking guffaw. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if I stepped out of here into a street in Prague with corpses swinging from the lampposts.’
Claire got the reference; Wellington, if he did, made no acknowledgement, focusing on her as if to pretend Tom wasn’t there. ‘So. On that, er … er …’ Eye-slide to her name on paper. ‘Claire. Suppose someone were to call you a, er, er, black whatever. Or a, er, woman whatever. Surely the fact that you have felt offence makes irrelevant whether or not they intended it?’
Wellington had whispered the reference to race. He seemed terrified by her being black, the reactions of English liberals in this respect strangely indistinguishable from those of apartheidera white South Africans.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, genuinely, rather than rhetorically. ‘As far as I am aware, no allegation of sexism or racism has been made against my client.’
‘So. On that, I was giving examples of sensitivities on which someone might be their own judge. The same could apply to a lack of professional respect or to resistance of authority, of which Dr Pimm was found guilty.’
‘By a secret court on undeclared charges! And you still seem to be equating sexism and racism with – which is all this was – squabbling and ego-rattling between colleagues.’
‘Who,’ Tom added, ‘were frequently useless, rude or otherwise infuriating.’
‘In your opinion, Dr Pimm,’ Wellington said.
‘Yes, in my opinion. But you’ve just said that, if I found them stupid or rude or annoying, then they were.’
‘I don’t think that’s quite what I said. But after what happened with Professor Padraig Allison, the University instituted a policy of zero tolerance on this kind of thing.’
‘This kind of thing?’ challenged Tom, all four words matchingly emphatic. Claire tried to moderate his volume and tone with a warning touch on the arm. ‘Are you seriously suggesting a connection between sexually abusing and raping students and a bit of staff-room argy-bargy over how history should be taught?’
‘So. On that, the University has recently actioned a rootand-branch overview of rules on duty of care.’
Approaching the conclusion that she could be no more use to Tom in this world of grandiloquent contradiction than a lawyer would have been to Alice in Wonderland, Claire let the dialogue of mutual incomprehension continue.
‘And don’t you have,’ Tom asked the WH Director, ‘a duty of care to avoid staff having to work with incompetent colleagues?’
Wellington smiled and nodded like a politician who has been asked a hoped-for question. ‘I can see why you would say that. So, on that, the University has no specific rules against incompetency, but it does have them in the area of B & H.’
‘The University has no specific rules against incompetency,’ Claire repeated to him with a sceptical tremolo. ‘Isn’t that like …’ – she considered but abandoned a church having no specific rules on faith as the Church of England was such an example – ‘ … like a hospital having no specific rules on hygiene?’
‘I can understand why you would think that.’
‘Also, as Dr Pimm raised in his appeal …’
‘To be exact, it was an informal hearing.’
‘As my client raised in his hearing with Professor Gibson, this process of yours seems to assume a constant saintliness in the behaviour of the complainants in the workplace.’
‘That observation has been noted. The University is learning hard lessons from this process.’
‘You’re admitting that the process was flawed?’
‘I don’t think that’s what I’m saying.’
‘So. On that,’ Claire dared to say. ‘I’m fascinated to know if you, Mr Wellington, have ever lost it with anyone in the office or, indeed, has anyone ever lost it with you?’
‘So. On that, I myself recently had a 360.’
Claire and Tom bounced bemused looks between them. She could only imagine some variety of extreme manicure, probably intimate.
‘That’s a 360-degree management evaluation by colleagues who are encouraged by anonymity to speak frankly. And, when I got the feedback sheets, one member of the team had written: “David can be a bit tetchy sometimes.” And you know what my thought was?’
‘Was it, “Welcome to the workplace, you hyper-sensitive self-obsessive. You’re probably no day at the beach yourself all the time so get over it”?’ Tom disingenuously guessed.
‘What? No. I told myself: “David, you need to be less tetchy.” ’
Claire saw the flaw in this. ‘But you’d have to watch yourself with everyone, all the time, because the anonymity means that you don’t know who it was who thinks you’re short with them?’
‘Yes, indeed. The benefit is that I’ve become less tetchy in gen
eral.’
‘Mr Wellington,’ Claire asked. ‘Is it worth pointing out that Dr Pimm has recently finished in first place in most categories – for what I believe is the third year running – in the student feedback survey?’
Wellington looked puzzled, possibly because of no longer recognizing the word student. He unnecessarily smoothed his hair. ‘So. On that, Dr Pimm’s professional performance would not be a defence against this kind of thing. It’s a frequent regret in our department that we have to let very good – even brilliant – people go.’
The Television of False Accusation
One night in the week that he was officially declared innocent – although he did not experience the expected physical sense of suspicion lifting – Ned watched a television programme alone. Emma was in her study, writing transatlantic e-mails. The deal on Your Love Always had apparently become more complex than expected.
During the adverts before the drama started, Ned meticulously tilted just half a glass of Crozes-Hermitage from the bottle on the coffee table. There had been too many nights of waking up at 2am, bone-frozen in front of a television showing an old film.
He had been drawn to The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies by the familiar chime of the title and a prurient memory of the name that had replaced Katharina Blum’s. At the time when the Bristol landlord was arrested by police investigating the murder of a young architect who was one of his tenants – and then found guilty within hours by broadcasts and newspaper reports – Ned had been one of the mob, luxuriating in the details of the creepy bachelor schoolteacher (code for the crime that was the twenty-first century media’s joint favourite with murder) who reputedly liked to read dodgy classical erotic verse to his pupils and collected French films. The clinching giveaways of a killer, though, were a blue-rinsed combover and grammatical pedantry dispensed in a campish drawl. As a sophisticated consumer of news, Ned knew that such stuff would not be printed unless it a) came from the police and b) was entirely true.
But, though the first qualification may have been in place, the second categorically wasn’t. Jefferies had been completely innocent and received apologetic pay-outs from a railway station rack of newspapers. Another stage in his rehabilitation was this contrite bio-pic on peak-time TV. The programme was clearly supposed to make the accusing rabble repent their false conviction but Ned didn’t have to. He was, by this time, no longer a member of the mob but one of its quarries.
As such a viewer, he found in the play reassuring proof that dark, tense, toxic smoke could billow with no spark beneath. And, whereas a Hollywood version of the same story would have made the central character an ex-marine headteacher married to the Secretary of State, Jefferies remained a slightly fey, strange, spiky loner, very well played by one of those English character actors who – after years of being cast in small roles as solicitors, minor diplomats and BBC managers – finally gets their chance when a casting director lines up a newspaper cutting with Spotlight and sees a similarity in the features.
But, although the Böll novella had been a favourite on his disgrace-related reading list, the allusion to it in the TV title seemed surprising, as Katharina was a murderer and the landlord wasn’t. And, although Ned painfully identified with the scenes in which Jefferies was accused and interviewed, there was no comparison between their exonerations. In most cases – except for those men you read about who were inconclusively arrested every few years over the sudden death of an earlier wife – murder was something you either had or hadn’t done, and, once you were not guilty, someone else was; dropped suspicion brought only sympathy and guilt from those who had distrusted you. With sexual allegations, you were the only suspect, and a declaration of innocence had no impact on some doubters, who could continue to believe that you had been the lucky beneficiary of the absence of evidence or competent prosecution.
What the Jefferies case consolingly showed, however, was that baseless, smokeless completely false accusation did occur. All the landlord had done was to be unmarried, with funny speech and hair and a liking for high culture and this was enough, in the times in which he lived, to be assumed likely to have killed a young woman.
During the last commercial break, he heard Emma going quietly to bed without coming in to say goodnight.
Cuttings (6)
UME TO SEEK NEW VC
The University of Middle England has pledged to ‘scour the whole world – not just the world of education’ to seek a successor to Sir Richard Agate, who has resigned as Vice Chancellor with immediate effect. Sir Richard, 64, has been appointed first President of the newly created Fair Finance Foundation, a body created and funded by the leading UK banks with the aim of ‘improving the public image of the financial sector’.
In his three years at UME, the former senior Whitehall civil servant instituted a controversial policy summarized in his introductory address to staff as ‘monetizing knowledge’. The phrase caused much concern across the Aylesbury and Coventry campuses and unrest also resulted from reductions in academic staff and budgets at the same time that the teaching loads of remaining staff were significantly increased. Sir Richard was also forced to deny a series of allegations that staff perceived as expensive or uncooperative were forced out through dubious disciplinary processes. He was embarrassed by the leaking of an e-mail demanding ‘brand loyalty’ and ‘avoidance of dissent’ from members of teaching staff.
Union leaders and other detractors further alleged that the quantity and salaries of non-teaching management multiplied significantly during the regime of a man who, after leaving the Civil Service, built up an impressive portfolio of public service and private sector posts. His positions have included being a non-executive board member at the BBC Trust, the weapons manufacturer International Peace Solutions Ltd, the bank HSBC and Arts Council England.
A representative of the UCU (University and College Union), a trade body representing professionals in further education, said: ‘We urge the university to look now for an education specialist to fill the post. The brief and unsuccessful tenure of Sir Richard Agate was a perfect example of the danger of the fashion for inflicting on academic institutions those whose experience lies in other areas. It was not for nothing that a colleague nick-named him FUMO.’
Sources on campus explained that the acronym stands for: F*** Up, Move On.
Further Action
You can tell a lot about someone in England by what they offer you to drink. According to canteen chat, there were parts of London now where officers visiting victims of burglary were commonly asked: red, white or craft beer? Usually it was tea or coffee?, although you had to pace yourself when working through a witness list because even the clearly innocent seemed, for some reason, to become flustered when a police officer asked to use their loo.
Providing no choice, Mrs Hessendon Castle said I’ve made us a pot of tea because that was what a woman of around sixty served at half-past four in the afternoon in a house in a Notting Hill mews. Heather was at least offered the option of milk or lemon in a drink that smelled like bath salts.
‘If you’re hoping I can remember anything else, I fear you’ve wasted a trip,’ her hostess said. ‘My daughter even got me one of those “box sets” of I, Claudius and sat me down through the opening episode but nothing else came back.’
‘Thank you, that’s great,’ said Heather, taking a teacup, her hand feeling huge and clumsy against the fragile china. She noticed on the woman’s tanned left fingers, as vivid as surgical scars, the white stripes where she had once worn rings. ‘No, that isn’t why I’m here today.’
‘Oh, I see.’
The list of career development courses sent round by the training department included Breaking Bad News. Because the work of a detective may include telling a parent that the corpse of their child has been found by a morning dog-walker, Heather had signed up. Since transfer to Millpond, her refresher modules on Taking Sensitive Evidence had more often been relevant but she had soon discovered that this squad also sometim
es had to deliver unwanted information.
‘Mrs Hessendon Castle …’ Heather left a space for an invitation to more casual address, which never came. ‘As you know, we have investigated your complaint of historic serious sexual assault. We passed a file to the Crown Prosecution Service but they concluded that no prosecution should follow in this matter.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see.’
In other cases of giving notice of non-pros, Heather had experienced angry crying or screaming but, with a woman of this sort, the absence of tears was as ingrained as the provision of tea.
‘It’s very important to understand, Mrs Hessendon Castle, that this doesn’t mean that you were disbelieved or that anyone thought you were lying. But someone has to make a decision on whether there is what we call a “realistic prospect of conviction”.’
‘Well, I’m sure, but that doesn’t seem to have applied to some of the cases one has read about in the newspapers. They seem sometimes to have gone to court with almost no evidence at all.’
‘I can understand why you would say that. I suppose we would argue that the outcome of earlier cases could affect the decisions in later ones, so comparisons may not be exact.’
Her eye, professionally primed to seek revealing detail at the address of a suspect, instinctively swept these innocent premises as well. On a corner table was a shrine of pride, containing framed photographs of family members gathered around tiered or candled cakes, but the only adult males were of ages to be the woman’s father (in a black and white snap), son or son-inlaw. From this – and the Polo Mint lines above the knuckles – she deduced a divorcee rather than a widow, but one who had failed to meet anyone else. Half-bottles were precariously balanced in a wine rack in a corner of the room.
‘I can understand your disappointment,’ Heather said. ‘But, as I said, no one is suggesting that you were not raped. Just that it is impossible to be sure of proving that you were in court.’