Unnatural Relations

by Mike Seabroook

  Christopher hesitated, then glanced over his shoulder at Jamie behind him. Jamie gave him a dazzling smile. The judge, who saw the smile, blinked. "I'm over here," he murmured. Christopher turned quickly back. "It's all true, my lord," he said in a low voice. "But only as far as it goes. He's trying to take it all on himself, and that's not true. It simply isn't true," he said, his voice rising. The judge raised his eyebrows, but Christopher rushed on, his words suddenly tumbling over each other. "He's trying to... to make out that he led me on and it was all his doing that we... I mean, well, it was both of us, sir. I mean, my lord. What I'm trying to say is that everything he said in that statement is true, but he isn't to blame, sir. He's trying to protect me, sir, and..."

  The judge, seeing his confusion, waited for a moment, then intervened. "But the boy claims in the affidavit that you were reluctant to take part in these sexual antics, at least to begin with," he said. "Are you now saying that he's not telling the truth, that you weren't reluctant? Are you impugning his statement?"

  Christopher thought for a moment. "I'm not allowing him to take all the responsibility, my lord. I'm only saying that everything he described in the statement is true. I take every bit of the responsibility. It's me that's standing here, and I wouldn't have it otherwise. I mean, I'd rather it was me here than Jamie. And we never did anything I didn't want to do, so I suppose that makes it my responsibility anyway."

  "You seem to want it both ways," observed the judge, in a mild tone of voice. "You're telling me that the Potten boy's affidavit - in which he claims total responsibility - is the whole truth, and you're also telling me that you accept full responsibility yourself. Which is it?"

  "Oh, my lord," repeated Christopher desperately, groping for a form of words to make himself clear, "I'm not doubting his statement at all. From the very first time we - er - did anything, it was always what I wanted. I'm only saying that although I wanted to do what we ended up doing, as much as he did, I was frightened..."

  "Frightened?" said the judge. "What were you frightened of? Of being found out? Of the fact that you were committing an offence? Frightened of what?"

  "None of those," snapped Christopher suddenly, surprising himself. "You're just putting words into my mouth. If you'll let me think I'll be able to say what I mean properly..."

  As he forgot his fear and confusion in a healthy burst of frustration and anger he unconsciously straightened and squared his shoulders. Jamie felt his heart lighten for the first time since the judge had begun interrogating Christopher. Even Lane felt a faint impulse to cheer.

  Christopher stood leaning on the front of the dock and tried to gather his thoughts, and the judge had enough consideration to leave him alone for a few moments. "Frightened was the wrong word, sir - my lord," said Christopher. "I wasn't frightened of being found out or anything. I never gave that a thought. Nor did he. We never thought about that sort of thing. What I meant was that I wasn't sure. He said in his statement that I was - I forget what he said, but he meant that I held back, and I did, but only because I wasn't sure he knew his own mind. I wasn't sure he was doing it because he really wanted to - because he... because he loved me."

  He paused for breath, and the judge opened his mouth, but Christopher, his voice rising passionately, rushed on before he could speak. "As soon as I knew, as soon as I was sure, I stopped trying to stop him. I just had to know. I had to know he was grown-up enough to know what he was doing, and that it wasn't just a silly kid's crush, or just because he was lonely because of his situation at home. As soon as I knew I didn't try to stop him. I didn't even want to stop him. So when he says it was all his doing, he's just trying to save me. It was my responsibility, if it was anybody's. His too, of course, I'm not denying that, but mine too. I loved him, and I wanted him desperately. It's just that there was nothing - nothing dirty about it all, as everybody makes it sound. It was..."

  He floundered for the word, and had a moment of inspiration. He became aware that the violent trembling which had afflicted him, threatening at times to take his legs from under him, had ceased altogether. His tongue unglued itself from the roof of his mouth, and he realised suddenly that he didn't care what they did to him any longer. If Jamie could go through that for me, he thought to himself, there's nothing I can't put up with for him. "It was inevitable, sir," he said, almost shouting the word. And then, as if all the stuffing had been drawn out of him in that one explosive word, he abruptly subsided.

  The judge's dry voice dropped into the silence. "Tell me, Rowe. Do you feel any remorse for what you have been doing?"

  "Remorse?" queried Christopher, taken by surprise as he strove to gather his forces after his outburst.

  "Remorse," snapped the judge. "You're familiar with the word, I suppose? Do you feel any kind of regret?"

  "I feel a lot of regret that I've brought a lot of hatred and trouble down on my family," he said, trying to speak calmly. "I feel a lot of remorse for bringing suffering and anxiety down on Jamie's headmaster and his wife. I feel regret at costing my parents a lot of money, and all the hate mail, and the people cutting them dead in the street. And my brother Neil going through hell at school. And most of all making Jamie - putting Jamie in a position where he felt he had to bring all kinds of things that are completely private and belong only to him and me out into the open, to be read in a roomful of people like some sort of pornography. And, I'm not exactly happy to be standing here. It's not very pleasant from where I'm standing."

  The judge looked at him irritably. "Are you deliberately misunderstanding me?" he snapped. "You know perfectly well what I mean. Do you feel for one second the slightest sorrow, regret, remorse or whatever you care to call it, for what you did with this wretched boy? For practising homosexual acts with him?"

  "No," said Christopher in a tone of sudden, utter finality. There was a gasp from the public seats behind him. He looked round and saw his mother biting her hand and his father putting an arm round her shoulders and speaking softly into her ear. The judge looked at him, so surprised by his straight answer that he could think of nothing to say immediately. Christopher saw a chance and took it.

  "I can't be expected to be sorry for something that did nothing but good to the only two people whose business it was, and no harm to anyone at all," he said. The words came out in a torrent. A hectic flush suffused his face and neck. "I'm very sorry to have brought all the trouble I spoke of just now on all those innocent people, and I'm very sorry that what Jamie and I did was against the law. That's why I pleaded guilty, because it's against the law. It's a wicked, senseless law, it's inhuman and cruel, but I can't do anything about that. I pleaded guilty..." he repeated, suddenly running out of steam again. He sagged against the dock, grabbing at the rail for support, and waited.

  "Very well," said the judge, glancing up at him expressionlessly. "That's all for the moment. You may sit down." Christopher did so, in great relief. As he did so he was able to shoot a quick glance at Jamie, and was comforted by a smile, infinitely tender and full of concern. At the same time Dr Lane gave him a brief, almost imperceptible nod. Christopher caught it and interpreted it as signifying approval. It pleased and cheered him beyond words.

  The judge made a note. "Thank you Mr Compton," he said as he finished. "I'm obliged to you for your indulgence. Please continue with your submission."

  "If your lordship pleases. My lord, I respectfully submit that the affidavit sworn by my client's friend, James Potten, is a very powerful mitigating factor in this case. I now move on to other mitigating factors. I can deal with those more rapidly.

  "I should like to urge strongly on your lordship first of all the fact that the climate in matters of sexual behaviour is considerably more enlightened than in previous times. We have advanced a long way since the days of Oscar Wilde..."

  "Not everyone would necessarily claim that that represents an advance, Mr Compton," suggested the judge. Jamie's spirits took another downturn on their yoyo-like course.

  "That's t
rue enough, my lord," said Compton in his silkiest tone. "But there is a broad consensus of enlightened opinion that a liberal approach to matters of private morality is, generally, a good thing. It is thus recognised by all shades of medical opinion that homosexuality is neither a disease nor a perversion - at least," he qualified swiftly, seeing the judge preparing to interject, "not a wilful social perversion. It is believed by virtually all experts in the field of sexual psychology that a person's sexual orientation is determined during the first three or four years of life, and that once it is thus determined it is neither possible nor desirable to alter it. In other words, my lord, one's sexuality is not in any meaningful sense 'curable'.

  "Many would go further, my lord, and suggest that since homosexuality is a naturally occurring condition of a minority of people's lives, there is, in effect, nothing requiring a cure. My lord, this condition has now been recognised as a legitimate expression of a person's sexual impulses. The law has it that persons of this deviant sexuality may not gratify it until they reach an age five years greater than that permitted for the heterosexual majority, but..."

  The judge interrupted. "Mr Compton, this is not new to me. The fact is that Parliament left the offence to which your client pleads guilty on the statute book. Why was that?"

  "My lord, it is not for me to try to fathom the minds of the legislators, but one may hazard that when the law was relaxed it was still believed in some circles that 'cure' or reversal of sexuality was a possibility. I venture to suggest that perhaps Parliament felt at the time that people who grew up to find that they were of this orientation should not seek to fulfil it until a fair time had been granted to see if it was merely temporary. Since that notion is largely discredited..."

  "Is it?" asked the judge. "It seems a perfectly proper notion to me."

  "As I said, my lord," said Compton, looking cross and, for the first time, a little rattled, "it has been at a discount for some years among virtually all enlightened medical opinion..."

  "Are you suggesting that I'm not enlightened?" asked the judge, appearing to be rather enjoying himself.

  "With the greatest respect, my lord, I was talking about enlightened medical opinion, rather than judicial. I'm sure your lordship's personal credentials in the matter of enlightenment are impeccable." Jamie smothered a giggle, and even Christopher, whose head had dropped lower and lower in the dock over the last exchanges, looked up and managed a faint smile. The judge, by contrast, bestowed a steely glance on Compton, who was apparently engrossed in sorting through his papers. The judge let it pass, however, and Compton continued.

  "My lord, in this case, one would surely find it very hard to believe that Potten was remotely likely to become a paid-up heterosexual. I submit that no one reading the statement I read earlier could be in any real doubt that the boy has come to terms with something which he recognises as an integral and immutable part of his personality.

  "In the light of that, my lord, I submit most earnestly that, whilst it is not in dispute that the offence has been committed, in the present climate of opinion, coupled with the nature of the two participants, it is a technical offence only. In other words, it is a case of malum prohibitum rather than one of malum in se." He paused, glancing a little anxiously up at the judge, who, however, gave no sign of his thoughts.

  "I should like to raise with you next, my lord, the nature of my client himself. Christopher Rowe is nineteen years old. He comes from an excellent family. His parents have been happily married for twenty-three years, and have one other child, a son now aged fourteen. It is a very stable family, all the members of which get on exceptionally well. In the present time, when the divorce rate and numerous other factors all indicate that the family is diminishing in its potency as a social unit, that is itself something that deserves mention. It suggests that my client, if allowed to re-enter his family with the minimum of anguish and the minimum of penalty and the associated stigma, will so much the more rapidly be able to take a full place as a valued member of society.

  "My lord, my client's family have been utterly, and admirably, supportive of the boy throughout the terrible ordeal which the past few weeks have been, for all the family, not merely for my client..."

  "Have his family suffered?" asked the judge, looking across the court at Christopher's parents, sitting, white, drawn and worried on the edge of the front bench.

  "They have indeed, my lord. Since the boy was arrested and the case was reported in the newspapers, they have received a quantity of poison-pen letters of the vilest kind. They have had to have their telephone number changed and made ex-directory. My client's father has had on more than one occasion to paint out obscenities, abuse and threats daubed on the garden gate, the walls of his house, the pavement, the road outside and even on the windows of the office where he works. Both parents have suffered a certain amount of social ostracism in the town, though mercifully most of their acquaintance have been towers of strength to them. The younger son has, inevitably, had problems at his school, though there also, in the main, people have been kind rather than the opposite.

  "Then there have been the attentions of the press, who have been the cause of much of the pressure they have been under. On one occasion the younger son was assaulted and jostled by a crowd of pressmen; although one may take a certain satisfaction in reporting that on that occasion he in fact retaliated against the man who assailed him to telling effect. Most of all, though, of course, my lord, the family have had to endure the appalling ordeal of waiting over several weeks worrying about the fate of their beloved son. As Christopher himself said under your lordship's questioning a few minutes ago, the majestic panoply of our profession - of this court, even, with the greatest respect, my lord, of yourself, look very different from his position. It has been, truly, a frightful ordeal for them all, my lord."

  "Humph!" grunted the judge. "You tell me the press are to blame for all this, but doesn't everybody with any sort of grievance against anybody these days blame the press? It seems to me that it's your client who should be reproaching himself. If he'd behaved himself none of this would have occurred at all, would it, Mr Compton?"

  "My lord, of course if my client had not committed his offence the rest would not have followed. But my client has not so much reproached as tortured himself with the deepest and most agonising remorse throughout the period since his arrest. And with respect, my lord, I cannot take the view that he is to be held responsible for the activities of the press, who published his full address, the place of work of his father, photographs of his parents and even his innocent fourteen-year-old brother and the name of his school. Nor in my respectful submission is my client to blame for the obscenities and other mindless activities of the mentally disordered elements in the local populace. If that view held good, my lord, well, again with the greatest respect, we should be enshrining the idea that any criminal's entire family could properly be held partially responsible for his crimes. I refuse to accept that, my lord." The judge grunted, but he left it at that.

  "To continue, my lord, I repeat that my client is a boy with as stable and wholesome a background as any nineteen-year-old boy can possibly be blessed with in this country at this time. They will continue to love him and support him whatever happens. He is due to go to University very soon, in October, to read psychology..."

  "Psychology!" ejaculated the judge. "He could have started by making a case study of his own, couldn't he?"

  Compton's head shot up and his eyes flashed angrily. "My lord, I must protest at that remark. It was outra... it was most improper, if I may say so with respect."

  "Mr Compton," snapped the judge, also angrily, "are you presuming to instruct me in what it is 'proper' for me to observe in my own Court? How dare you?"

  "I meant no disrespect, my lord," snapped Compton back at him, his look belying his words. "But I am entitled to make a protest at what I consider to be a gross and unjustifiable slur on my client. Indeed, my lord, it wasn't a slur, it was the merest insu
lt."

  The judge stared at him. Then his expression cleared a little. "Very well, Mr Compton, I hear your protest. I myself protest at your own use of the word 'improper'. It's not the sort of word a young member of the bar should get into the habit of directing at judges, if he's wise." He looked witheringly at Compton.

  "My lord, if I used an - er - improper word, I apologise. But I don't apologise for making my protest in protection of my client. It's what I'm here for," he said stubbornly. The judge looked hard at him for a long few seconds, then nodded to him. "Go on, Mr Compton."

  "As I was saying, my lord," Compton went on, still visibly smouldering, "my client is to go to University very shortly. The University authorities have been acquainted with his present situation, and they have indicated their willingness to keep his place open for him, whatever the decision of the Court may be, stating that they see no reason why it should interfere with his academic career. He intends to seek a practise as a consulting psychologist when he graduates - and since he is a highly intelligent young man, who attained excellent results at school, there is every reason to hope that he may achieve considerable success in his career. I urge you once again, most earnestly, to consider this, and his potential value to society, in passing sentence, my lord."

  Compton paused and took a long drink of water. "My lord, there are just two more points I wish to draw to your attention. First, in this case, there is one thing which is conspicuously absent. That is, my lord, any actual harm done to any third party. My lord, I mentioned the concept of malum prohibitum. This boy's offence was against the law, but it operated against no person's interest. Of course it would be possible to imagine a case in which such actions did operate to some person's detriment, such as where he used his superior age and sophistication to seduce a younger boy who was unwilling, or who was too immature to know his own mind or his own sexuality, into a homosexual liaison.