by Francis King
Every witness was first obliged to produce a passport as proof of identity. When the old boy had handed his to the barrister and the barrister had risen and passed it on, Maddy riffled through its pages. In addition to the usual formality of checking his identity, she was doing what the Home Office had suggested that she do. Unfortunately the passport was a new one, less than five months old. It recorded only a single journey. But she was happy with that single journey. She pounced. ‘Why did you spend three months in Tunisia?’
‘Three months?’ The watery eyes blinked at her. ‘ I’m sorry madam …’
‘It says here – three months. Three months,’ she repeated. She tapped the right-hand page open before her with a fingernail.
‘Oh, I think you’re mistaken, madam. I spent only a week in Tunisia.’
‘A week? Then why does it say—?’
‘I think, madam, that you’ll find that that stamp is the visa stamp.’ That he corrected her with such humility exasperated her far more than if he had been indignant or triumphant.
‘A visa stamp?’
‘Yes, madam, the Tunisians, er, give visas for a minimum of three months. One can also get them for, er, six months and even a year, I believe. But then one pays more. Naturally one pays more.’ He gave a little cough, raising one hand to his mouth. ‘ I think, madam, that if you look on the opposite page you’ll see the date stamps – arrival in Tunis, departure from Tunis.’
Maddy tossed the passport down on to her desk. Her face had flushed. He had made her look a fool and she did not care for that. But she had got him anyway, she consoled herself. He had been out of the country without the partner who, he had claimed in his statement in the bundle, was absolutely essential to his well-being.
Later in her examination of this pathetic creature (as she later referred to him when telling Jake of her day over dinner), she put it to him: ‘So you rely a great deal on the appellant?’
‘Oh, yes, madam. Yes. I couldn’t manage without him. He’s an exceptionally kind man. And efficient. When I was in hospital for an operation, a major operation, he spent the whole day by my bedside. Day after day. I kept urging him to go home but, no, he insisted. He even gave me a bath when I was well enough to get out of bed. He insisted on that. He wouldn’t let the nurse do it.’
‘I see.’
The trap had closed. Later she would write in her Reasons for Refusal: ‘Mr L’Estrange maintained in his statement that he relied entirely on the appellant. This hardly accords with his visit, unaccompanied, to Tunisia for a holiday.’ It was better not to specify that the period of the holiday had been only a week. Ideally, she would have liked to have been able to write ‘a holiday of three months’.
At the close she said: ‘Now, Mr L’Estrange, do you think that you can more precisely define for me the nature of your relationship with the appellant?’
He paused. Then, with unexpected boldness, he met her gaze and held it as he replied in a loud, firm voice: ‘ I love him. He loves me. That’s the long and the short of it.’
‘You are sure of that?’
‘Absolutely’
‘I can understand your being sure about your own feelings. But how can you be sure about his?’
‘We have now lived together for more than four years. He could not keep up a charade for that long.’
Muddy gave a small, pitying smile. It said: Oh, you self-deceiving fool!
‘You’re a retired dentist. Am I right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘A distinguished dentist? You have a lot of letters after your name.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He smirked as he looked down at the long, folded hands that had been so skilful at dealing with expensive root-canal fillings and implants.
‘Were some of the well-known people who wrote letters of support for you former patients of yours?’
‘Yes. Yes, that is the case.’ Intelligent enough to see what she was getting at, he hurriedly added: ‘But they have all – well, most of them – met Mahmoud – er, my partner. They long ago came to regard me as a friend, and many, I think I’m right in saying, now also regard him as a friend.’
Again she gave that small, pitying smile.
‘It is odd that there are no supporting letters from friends of his, in addition to those from these friends of yours.’
‘My friends are his friends. He has no Moroccan friends now. He prefers it that way. In any case’ – once again his voice surprised her by its loudness and firmness – ‘would a recommendation from a fellow Moroccan carry much weight in a court of this kind?’
She paused, head lowered, as her nails still clicked over the keyboard. Then she looked up: ‘ Since you are retired, surely you could go to live in Morocco with the appellant? What’s to prevent that, if you do not want to be separated?’
‘Well …’ He glanced first left, then right, as though for invisible support. ‘I am an old man, eighty-one. My life is here. My friends are all here. I have lived in the same house for – let’s see – yes, twenty-nine years. It’s full of my books, my pictures, possessions. I have a bad heart condition. Cardiomyopathy. I see my specialist regularly. In Morocco I might not get the same standard of treatment. Might I? Then there are my two sisters. They are both widows. Both older than me. One is now in a nursing home. She’s got senile dementia. One is – is here today. She is to be a witness. Her health is also bad. I like to think that I am a support to them – not just a financial support, in other ways too. I must be near them.’
‘I see.’ Again the nails tapped briskly on the keyboard. The she looked up. ‘ That will do.’ The tone was curt. Other adjudicators said ‘Thank you’ to terminate an interview. ‘ Thank you’ and ‘please’ were words that she herself preferred not to use when presiding in court. She believed strongly that, while in court, one had to show who was master. A lot of adjudicators – like that ass that she had replaced the day before – were far too eager to ingratiate themselves with appellants and their lawyers and witnesses.
The one-hour adjournment for lunch had ended. Maddy had eaten her sandwiches in the office with two of her female colleagues. The Moroccan and the old man and woman had found a café filled with workmen with dirty boots and loud voices and braying laughs.
The old woman now struggled to her feet. Her macintosh was draped over the back of the chair beside her and her beret, looking like a vast, hairy toadstool, lay on the seat. The barrister jumped up to help her, taking her left arm, the good one, even though it was with the hand of that one that the old woman was grasping her ferruled stick. ‘ Lean on me, dear,’ she said not in her usual loud, gruff voice but in a liquid, cooing one. ‘That’s it.’
‘I get giddy when I first get up. I’ll be all right in a moment.’
‘Take it easy! No hurry!’
‘Since my stroke I tend to get this giddiness. After my first one I was fine, but since this one …’
‘No hurry, no hurry!’
The barrister looked up at Maddy on the dais, in expectation of a sympathetic response. But Maddy was feeling far from sympathetic. She was asking herself: Is this, consciously or unconsciously, some kind of playacting? Appellants often put on a performance. Only two or three weeks ago the fair-haired, pale-faced English wife of a Kosovan had arrived in court with a newborn baby in a pushchair, in order to be a witness. She had gazed adoringly at the Kosovan while rocking the baby in her arms. The court usher had later told Maddy that, on leaving the courthouse, the wife had got into one car with the baby, while the appellant had got into another, much larger one with two male friends. There had been the most perfunctory of goodbyes between husband and wife. The husband had paid absolutely no attention to the baby.
‘I hope that I can hear properly,’ the old woman said, having sat down. She appealed to the barrister: ‘I wonder if you could just help me adjust my aid. It’s difficult for me with my wonky arm.’
‘Of course, dear.’ It was said in the same liquid, cooing voice. ‘
What number do you want?’
‘Could you turn it up to three? No, four might be better.’
Slowly, solicitously, the barrister began to take the old woman through the statement already presented in the bundle. Yes, Mr L’Estrange was her brother, her older brother. Yes, they had always been close. That was natural since her husband had been killed in the War, less than two years after he had married her. He had been a pilot, she added. Fighter Command. Yes, she had recently had the second of two strokes. That meant that she could no longer look after her little garden – or put out the rubbish – or lift the cat’s tray. That sort of thing. Her brother and Mahmoud – his friend – were wonderful in that respect. She had only to ring them. It was Mahmoud of course who usually did all these little jobs. Her brother now had that heart problem.
The barrister leaned forward: ‘ Could you say something about the nature of the relationship between your brother and his – his friend?’
Briefly the old woman looked non-plussed. She pursed her lips, put a hand to her paralysed cheek, sighed. Maddy also now leaned forward. She was feeling a cynical amusement and also, yes, a cynical admiration. She often felt those emotions when listening to witnesses.
‘It’s not the sort of relationship that I ever knew much about until he – Mahmoud – came on the scene. I think my brother met him in some pub. There was the difference of age, a big difference. And there was the difference of interests. I don’t want to sound snobbish in any way, but my brother is – well – well, he has no financial worries, none at all. And he’s had a good education, loves books, opera, is interested in archaeology. Mahmoud is – different. He’s an excellent sportsman. When not working in the restaurant, he spends most of his time playing football with a team on Highgate Heath or watching television. One has to accept that. But Mahmoud has made my brother happy. My brother’s wife died five or six years ago – they had no children – and my brother then seemed to go into some kind of decline. He was horribly depressed. He stopped going out, entertaining. But now, with Mahmoud, he is happy. Happier than I’ve ever known him, I think – even during his marriage. They love each other – yes, they love each other. I’m sure they love each other. At first that seemed odd to me – even – yes – even rather shocking. But now … Oh, I think it wonderful that they’ve found each other. It would be cruel if they had to separate. Terribly cruel.’
‘If he went to live in Morocco, as has been suggested, how would that affect you?’
‘Oh, I’d be absolutely devastated. Devastated. I don’t know how I’d manage without all the support I get from him. And from Mahmoud too. They’re wonderful to me, both of them, as I said.’
She broke off, looked fearfully up at Maddy, then pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of her jacket and put it to one eye and then the other.
Suddenly, astonished, Maddy realised that all this rigmarole – as she had first thought of it – had moved her. No, it wasn’t a rigmarole, it wasn’t playacting. It was as though she had listened to a thrush pouring out its valiant, artless song at the fall of a winter’s night. It was real, just as the tears had been real. Her fingers suddenly stopped clicking at the laptop. Then she forced them to go on with their task of transcribing this banal and yet patently sincere witness to the reality of the love between an ancient, well-to-do, highly educated man and a young, impoverished, half-educated one.
‘How do your family feel about the partnership?’ the barrister prompted.
‘Oh, we all accept Mahmoud as one of us. He comes to all our family gatherings – the Christmas dinners with my son and his wife and all the grandchildren – the weddings, the christenings. He even comes to the funerals!’ She gave a little laugh. ‘We all – all treasure him, you know. Even my little dog, my pug, treasures him: If I’m off colour Mahmoud travels all the way to Kennington to take Suzie for walks. And Arabs are not supposed to like dogs, are they?’
When the old woman had finished her testimony, Maddy astonished the barrister by saying ‘ Thank you’, giving her first smile of the day, and not herself putting a single question or challenge.
‘That brings our session to a close.’ Maddy closed the laptop and put it under her arm. ‘You will have my decision in the next four to six weeks.’ She got to her feet.
‘Was I all right?’
As Maddy left the room, she heard the old woman ask the barrister the question. She did not hear the answer.
In the office, Maddy refused the offer of a cup of coffee from the adjudicator whose place she had taken the day before. Inexplicably she had all at once begun to feel depleted and depressed. ‘I must pick up the twins,’ she told him. ‘I’m already late for them.’
Thank God, the Volvo was there in the forecourt. But where on earth could Jake have taken it? One side was splashed with mud. On a closer inspection, she also saw that the roof was spattered with greyish-green bird shit. The interior reeked of cigarette smoke. He knew that she hated it when he smoked in the confined space of the car or of either of the two lavatories. Oh, it really was too bad!
As she drove off, she began to formulate what she would say in her report. As always the words leapt one after another into her nimble mind I do not accept that this Appellant holds a genuine belief that he will be persecuted or ill-treated were he returned to Morocco. His evidence was often confused and he repeatedly contradicted himself even when being questioned by his own counsel … It is perfectly credible that Mr L’Estrange is genuinely attached to the Appellant. But of the Appellant’s attachment to Mr L’Estrange one might be forgiven for being more than a little cynical. After all …
At that moment the words, previously jostling each other as they rushed out, tripped over each other, floundered, collapsed. That was what she ought to say, what they wanted her to say. But was it really what she felt? Was it the truth? Halted at the next traffic lights, she picked at the skin round the nail of her forefinger, then raised the forefinger to her mouth and tore at the tag of skin with her teeth. She felt the blood oozing out.
Soon after that, she saw the three figures walking through the rain sheeting down, inexorably malevolent. The L’Estrange man was a little ahead of the others. He was now using his sister’s stick as he hobbled along. The Moroccan was carrying the old woman’s handbag in one hand while with the other he held over her head a small, green, folding umbrella, presumably hers. Her good hand rested on his raised arm, even though that must have been uncomfortable for her, since he was so much taller than she was. Bowed, from time to time stumbling, she looked pitifully tiny and vulnerable. Clearly they had given up on the bus and were walking to the underground station. Maddy slowed, all but stopped. Would you care for a lift …? Those were the words that now leapt into her mind. Then she swept them out of it. It was no good to be sentimental about the spectacle of two old people and a young man battling against the rain as they trudge to an underground station. After all, the brother could have certainly afforded a taxi or a minicab. In any case, they had been right. One of them had said ‘There are a lot of bad eggs and we have to smash them before they hatch out. If from time to time a good egg gets smashed in the process, well, in the interest of the safety of this country that’s how it has to be.’ He had gone on to talk of sleepers. ‘All too often the more respectable these people seem to be, the more likely it is that they are up to something sinister.’
Could that handsome, fleshy Moroccan be up to something sinister? Why not? How would that pathetic, credulous couple know if he were?
She pressed the accelerator. Other words began to leap into her mind. The Appellant has failed to discharge the burden upon him to the standard or at all …
The school door was closed. The place, usually so noisy with its host of young children, was eerie in its silence. Maddy pressed the bell and then, her impatience getting the better of her, pressed it again only a few seconds later.
Miss Middleton’s flat, cheery face appeared round the door. ‘Oh, it’s you. That wretched court must have kept you
again!’
‘Yes, I’m done in. I don’t know how long I can go on with that job.’
‘It must be your public spirit that holds you to it. The little ones are ready. Waiting.’ She turned: ‘Lucy! Laurel!’
Suddenly the seven-year-old twins materialised on the upper landing of the grandiose staircase of the Edwardian house. They were wearing identical shiny black strap shoes, identical tartan skirts, and identical braces over their teeth.
Maddy held out both arms to them, as she cried out: ‘The Campbells are coming!’ It was something that she often cried out. Although born and bred in London, she was proud of her Campbell ancestry. ‘But the Campbells are sorry they’ve come so late.’
‘Oh, mummy, mummy!’ They screamed in unison as they raced down the stairs and into her arms. Simultaneously Lucy said ‘What happened to you?’ and Laurel ‘We’ve been waiting an age.’
‘Sorry, darlings, sorry, sorry! Mummy had a horrible day. It began with Daddy forgetting to fill the petrol tank and then got worse and worse from then on. Never mind! The Campbells have come – at last, at long last. Oh, I’m so happy to be with my darlings!’
Everybody is Nobody
A few days before his death, Lois’s 82-year-old father had remarked with wry melancholy: ‘The old become invisible’. Now she herself had become invisible at the age of only thirty-seven. ‘I’m here, here!’ she wanted to shout across a road or down the aisle of a supermarket. ‘Look at me!’ But no one would look spontaneously, only when forced by her to do so. As someone whom she knew approached from a distance, she would become aware of the head wavering and the eyes swivelling away from her, to be followed by an abrupt scuttle across the road, even in the face of heavy traffic, or of a dart into a shop or down a side-turning.
It was not hostility, she constantly told herself. At first those with whom she and Brian came into even the most fleeting contact had been so sympathetic and helpful – their manner all too often suggesting that they themselves were drooping under the burden of the same intolerable grief as they were. Strangers had left flowers not merely at the house but, so it was reported, on the bank of that wide, calm, implacable river. By that river someone had even propped against a tree a Barbie doll, oppressively still in its box, its ever-open, thick-lashed eyes staring out through shiny cellophane. One ungainly mare of a woman, known only from the school run, had galloped towards Lois as they had simultaneously approached a letter-box, had thrown her arms round her and cried out ‘Oh, oh, oh! I can’t bear it.’ It might have been she to whom the terrible thing had happened. But those times were over. Now there was only an embarrassment so acute that people could no longer cope with it. Clearly they had decided, however unconsciously, that it would be better, if also brutal, to pretend that Lois had travelled out of their lives into a remote tundra of grief where it would be futile to try to reach her.