by Tom Sharpe
They wrote politely to Messrs Shortstead, Publishers, of Edgware Road, apprising them of an unfortunate fact that had been brought to their notice by a client, one Mr Lockhart Flawse, that his name appeared in that extremely successful novel, Song of the Heart, by Miss Genevieve Goldring and published by Messrs Shortstead, and that in consequence of this unfortunate error they were forced into the regrettable course of having to request Messrs Shortstead to make good the damage done to the private, professional and marital reputation of Mr Flawse by the aspersions cast on his character in the book by a financial payment and legal costs, at the same time withdrawing all copies unsold from circulation and destroying them.
‘That should set the trap,’ said Mr Gibling to Mr Gibling. ‘It is to be devoutly hoped that they will employ the services of some up-and-coming young man in our profession who will advise them to contest.’
Messrs Shortstead did. The reply from the least senior member of the firm of solicitors, Coole, Poole, Stoole and Folsom and Partners, one Mr Arbutus, stated that while Messrs Shortstead and the author of Song of the Heart, hereafter termed the novel, were prepared to offer Mr Flawse their apologies and his legal costs and if necessary some small sum for his pain and injury, they were in no way obliged nor would consider much less agree to the withdrawal of all unsold copies, etc. The letter ended on the cordial note that Coole, Poole, Stoole and Folsom and Partners looked forward to hearing from Mr Gibling. Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling rather doubted it. They held the matter in abeyance for a fortnight and then struck.
‘Four hundred thousand pounds damages? Do my ears deceive me?’ said Mr Folsom when Mr Arbutus showed him their reply. ‘I have never in all my career read anything so monstrous. Giblings have gone mad. Of course we will contest.’
‘Contest?’ said Mr Arbutus. ‘They must have something …’
‘Bluff, boy, bluff,’ said Mr Folsom, ‘I haven’t read the book of course but such a sum is unheard of in innocent libel. Come to that, it’s unheard of in deliberate libel. Probably a typist’s error.’
But for once Mr Folsom erred. Mr Shortstead, taking his advice, instead of his own intuition which told him that Song of the Heart was a little different in tone from Miss Goldring’s other numerous novels, instructed Mr Arbutus to answer in kind and, reversing the natural order of things, to tell Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling to sue and be damned. And next day on the third floor of Blackstone’s House, Lincoln’s Inn, London, when the mail was brought before him and opened by the senior clerk, that aged and austere gentleman discovered for the very first time in his life that Mr Gibling the elder could do the hornpipe very creditably on his desktop; having done so be demanded the immediate production of two, no, three bottles of the best champagne to be sent for at no matter what cost.
‘We have them by the nose,’ he sang gleefully when Mr Gibling the younger arrived. ‘O Lord that I should live to see this day. The nose, brother o’ mine, the nose. Read it again. I must hear it.’
And Mr Gibling trembled in litigious ecstasy as the words ‘sue and be damned’ quivered in the air.
‘Sue and be damned,’ he gibbered. ‘Sue and be damned. I can hardly wait to hear that threat pronounced by counsel in court. Ah, the judge’s face. The beauty, brother, the beauty of it all. The legal life is not without its precious moments. Let us savour the pleasure of this splendid day.’
Mr Partington, the senior clerk, brought in the champagne and Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling sent him to fetch a third glass. Only then did they solemnly toast Mr Lockhart Flawse of 12 Sandicott Crescent for stepping so simultaneously into their lives and out of the pages of Miss Genevieve Goldring’s novel with its oh-so-appropriate title. That day there was little work done in Blackstone’s House, Lincoln’s Inn. The drawing-up of writs is not an arduous job and the one issued by Gibling and Gibling between Lockhart Flawse, Plaintiff, and Genevieve Goldring and Messrs Shortstead, Defendants, was no different from other writs and merely stated that Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Our other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith; To Genevieve Goldring properly named Miss Magster c/o Messrs Shortstead … ‘WE COMMAND YOU that within fourteen days after the service of this Writ on you, inclusive of the day of service, you do cause an appearance to be entered for you in an action at the suit of Lockhart Flawse and take notice that in default of you doing so the Plaintiff may proceed therein, and judgement may be given in your absence.’
It was served the following day and caused little consternation in the offices of Messrs Shortstead and a great deal in those of Coole, Poole, Stoole and Folsom and Partners where Mr Arbutus, having read Song of the Heart, had discovered the horrid nature of the libel published on the aforesaid Lockhart Flawse; namely that he made a habit of being tied by his wife to the bed and being whipped by his wife, Jessica, and vice versa, and when not whipping or being whipped, stole money from banks in the process of which he shot dead several bank cashiers.
‘We can’t even plead innocent libel,’ he told Mr Folsom but that worthy man had reason to think otherwise.
‘No authoress in her right mind would deliberately set out to write a book in which she named a person she knew and ascribed all these perversions and crimes to him. The thing’s a nonsense.’ It was a view shared by Genevieve Goldring. ‘Never heard of the creature,’ she told Mr Shortstead and Mr Arbutus, ‘and besides, it’s an improbable name. Frankly, I can’t remember having written about anyone called Lockhart Flawse with a wife named Jessica.’
‘But it’s down there in Song of the Heart,’ said Mr Arbutus, ‘you must have read it. After all, you wrote it.’
Genevieve Goldring snorted. ‘I write five novels a year. You can’t expect me to read the wretched things as well. I leave the matter in the competent hands of Mr Shortstead here.’
‘But don’t you check your own proofs?’
‘Young man,’ said Mrs Goldring, ‘my proofs don’t need checking. Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr Shortstead.’
But Mr Shortstead, while he was beginning to hold a different point of view, held his tongue.
‘Then we are to plead innocent libel?’ asked Mr Arbutus.
‘I see no reason to plead libel at all,’ protested Miss Goldring. ‘For all we know this man Flawse does tie his wife to the bed and whip her and with a name like Jessica she thoroughly deserves it. After all, it’s up to him to prove he doesn’t.’
Mr Arbutus pointed out that truth was no defence unless in the public interest.
‘I should think a bank robber and pervert was of very considerable public interest. It will probably increase the sales of my novels.’
Counsel thought otherwise. ‘We haven’t a leg to stand on,’ said Mr Widdershins, QC. ‘I advise settlement. We can’t hope to win in court.’
‘But won’t the publicity do us good even if we pay?’ asked Mr Shortstead, pushed into adopting this line by Miss Goldring who was always complaining that her novels were never sufficiently advertised. Mr Widdershins doubted it but, since he was being paid to conduct the defence, he saw no good reason to deprive himself of the financial remuneration a prolonged case was bound to bring him. ‘I leave the decision to you,’ he said, ‘I have given my opinion and that opinion is that we will lose.’
‘But they are demanding four hundred thousand pounds in settlement out of court,’ said Mr Shortstead, ‘and surely no court is going to award damages to that amount. It’s outrageous.’ It was.
*
The trial was held in the High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, before Mr Justice Plummery. Mr Widdershins acted for the defendants and Mr Fescue had been instructed by Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling. The latter were in raptures. Mr Justice Plummery had a reputation for barbarous impartiality and a loathing for quibbling barristers. There was no recourse open to Mr Widdershins but to quibble, and to add to the difficulties of the defence there was Miss Goldring who, if she couldn’t win th
e case, was determined to lose it as flamboyantly as possible.
Mr Shortstead sat beside her shivering in the shade of her crimson hat. One look at the plaintiff, Lockhart Flawse, had been enough to tell him that here was a clean upstanding young man of a type he had forgotten existed; who more probably owned banks than robbed them and who, if he was married, treated his wife with a tenderness that was positively chivalrous. Mr Shortstead was a good judge of character.
Mr Fescue rose to present the plaintiff’s case. It was an impeccable one. Mr Lockhart Flawse of 12 Sandicott Crescent, East Pursley – and here Mr Widdershins was seen to cover his eyes with his hands and Miss Goldring’s hat to quiver – was a close neighbour of the defendant, so close that he was known to her and had on one occasion been invited to tea by her. A note, passed to Mr Widdershins from Miss Goldring, simply said, ‘Liar, bloody liar. I’ve never seen the little shit in my life,’ at which Mr Widdershins’ hopes rose a little. They were lowered by Mr Fescue’s continued description of Lockhart Flawse’s virtue and tribulations subsequent to the publication of Song of the Heart. Among these tribulations the most important had been his sacking from the firm of Sandicott & Partner, Chartered Accountants, where he had been previously employed. Evidence would be produced that his forced retirement from the lucrative profession had been the direct result of Miss Goldring’s infamous attack on his private life and his wholly fictitious propensity for robbing banks and murdering cashiers. Mr Fescue, lacking the knowledge, did not mention that Mr Treyer’s readiness to provide such evidence had been obtained in a private interview in which Lockhart had explained that unless Mr Treyer was evidentially co-operative he, Lockhart, would be forced by his conscience into revealing the true facts about Mr Gypsum’s tax evasion and VAT avoidance to the appropriate authorities, a threat which had been made the stronger by his production of copies of all Mr Gypsum’s files, both dummy and real.
Furthermore, said Mr Fescue, the plaintiff had been shunned by his neighbours to the extent that eleven houses adjacent to his address or in the same street had been left by their occupants to avoid any connection between them and a supposed murderer. And finally there was Mrs Flawse, correctly named in the novel as Jessica, who would testify that she had never once tied her husband or been tied by him to their marital bed and that there wasn’t a whip in the house. Mrs Flawse’s distress was of so great an order of magnitude that she had recently taken to wearing a veil to avoid being accosted (in the street) by men with a taste for bondage and flagellation, or alternately insulted by women she had formerly been able to invite to her house but who now refused her entry to their own. By the time Mr Fescue had finished he had portrayed an accurate picture of the young couple’s social isolation for quite the wrong reasons, and an inaccurate one of their future financial prospects as a result of the publication of Song of the Heart for the right reasons, namely that the damages to be paid would be enormous.
When Mr Fescue sat down Mr Justice Plummery and the jury were clearly impressed and Mr Widdershins rose for the defence extremely handicapped. It was all very well for Miss Goldring to claim that Lockhart Flawse was a liar. It was going to be another matter to prove it. Mr Flawse did not look a liar. If anything he looked the opposite while, even behind her veil, Mrs Jessica Flawse radiated an innocence that was in marked contrast to the raddled flamboyance of his client. Booze, books and bed had all left their marks on Miss Goldring. Mr Widdershins did his best. The libel, he claimed, was entirely innocent. The defendant had no knowledge of the plaintiff’s existence and had never so much as set eyes on him. The imputation that she had once invited him to tea was utterly without foundation and the fact that Miss Goldring lived in West Pursley while the plaintiff occupied a house in East was purely coincidental. However, in the light of the statements made by his learned friend, Mr Fescue, the defence were prepared to apologize and make financial reparation for the damage done to the plaintiff and his wife and for the scorn, ridicule and consequential loss of his profession … Here Miss Goldring broke away from the restraining hand of Mr Shortstead and rose to say that never, never, never would she pay one penny, one single penny to a man she had never written about in her life and that if anyone thought she would they were mistaken. Mr Justice Plummery regarded her with an immense distaste that would have withered the Sphinx at fifty yards and rendered it articulate at a hundred.
‘Kindly sit down, madam,’ he snarled with blood and iron in his voice. ‘What you will or will not do it is up to the court to decide. But one thing I do assure you, a second interruption and I shall have you held for contempt. Proceed with what there is of your case, Mr Witherspin.’
Mr Widdershins’ Adam’s apple bobbed like a ping-pong ball on a waterspout in a fairground shooting-gallery as he tried to find words. He had no case.
‘My clients plead innocent libel, m’lud,’ he squeaked in direct contradiction to his instructions. Mr Justice Plummery looked at him dubiously.
‘That is not what I understood,’ he said.
Mr Widdershins asked for an adjournment to consult with his clients. It was granted and was spent in exultation by Mr Fescue and Mr Gibling and Lockhart, and in acrimonious arguments by Mr Widdershins and Miss Goldring. Mr Shortstead was ready in the face of the plaintiff’s case to settle out of court. Miss Goldring, in the face of his pusillanimity and the judge’s distaste, was not.
‘It’s all a damned lie,’ she shouted, ‘I never had that little shit to tea and I never used the name Lockhart fucking Flawse in any of my books.’
‘But it’s there in Song of …’ Mr Shortstead began.
‘Shut up,’ said Miss Goldring. ‘If it’s there you must have put it there because it wasn’t in the manuscript I sent you.’
‘You’re quite sure about that?’ said Mr Widdershins, looking for some ray of hope in an otherwise hopeless case.
‘I swear by Almighty God,’ said Miss Goldring with a vehemence that was convincing, ‘that I have never ever heard the name Flawse in my life, let alone used it in a book.’
‘May we see a copy of the manuscript?’ said Mr Widdershins, and Mr Shortstead sent for it. The name Flawse was there in bold pica type.
‘What do you say to that?’ said Mr Widdershins.
Miss Goldring said a great deal and most of it true. Mr Shortstead said little and all of it true.
‘Then we shall contest the authenticity of this document,’ said Mr Widdershins. ‘Are we all agreed on that?’
Miss Goldring was. Mr Shortstead wasn’t. ‘That is the manuscript we received,’ he maintained.
‘That was not, is not, nor ever will be the manuscript I dictated. It’s a fucking forgery.’
‘You’re absolutely sure about that?’ said Mr Widdershins.
‘I swear by Almighty God …’
‘Very well. We will contest the case on those grounds, that this document which came into the possession of Mr Shortstead was not the original manuscript you wrote.’
‘Precisely,’ said Miss Goldring, ‘I swear by Almighty God …’
She was still swearing by Almighty God and by lesser deities when she entered the witness box the following day to be cross-examined by an ebullient Mr Fescue. Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling could hardly contain themselves. In fact Mr Gibling the elder couldn’t at all and had to leave the court hurriedly while she was still in the witness box.
‘Now, Miss Magster,’ Mr Fescue began before being stopped by the judge.
‘I understood the witness’s name to be Miss Genevieve Goldring,’ he said, ‘now you address her as Miss Magster. Which is it?’
‘Miss Genevieve Goldring is an alias,’ said Mr Fescue, ‘her real—’ He was interrupted by a squawk from the witness box.
‘Genevieve Goldring is my pen name, my nom de plume,’ she said.
Mr Justice Plummery studied the feather in her hat with disgust. ‘No doubt,’ he said, ‘no doubt your profession requires an assortment of names. The court requires your real one.’
‘M
iss Magster,’ said Miss Goldring, sullenly aware that this revelation would disillusion a large section of her public. ‘But I am best known to my admirers as Miss Genevieve Goldring.’
‘Again no doubt,’ said the judge, ‘but then from what I have gathered your admirers have peculiar tastes.’
Mr Fescue took his cue from the judge. ‘I am prepared to call you Genevieve Goldring if you so prefer,’ he said, ‘it is not my intention to harm your professional reputation. Now is it or is it not true that in Song of the Heart you describe the character named Flawse as being addicted to what is known among prostitutes and their clients as bondage and flage?’
‘I did not write Song of the Heart,’ said Miss Goldring.
‘But I thought you had already admitted writing it,’ said the judge. ‘Now I hear—’
What he heard was a tirade from the witness box on the iniquities of publishers and editors. When she had finished, Mr Fescue turned to Mr Justice Plummery. ‘Would it not be as well to examine the original manuscript and compare it with others submitted by the defendant to her publishers, m’lud?’ he asked.