June screamed. ‘Nothing!’ she screamed.
She was crying. Her face was streaked with tears, it ran with tears like my windshield in the Colford Square rain. I stood and stared. My eyes focused on the picture she had framed on her desk, a picture of her jumping for England. She is just splashing into the sandpit, her outstretched arms and legs are bright black and glistening, the sand is spurting around her as she arches forward; her eyes and mouth are wide open and she looks shocked. What a strange activity, I thought, jumping for your country.
‘Nothing!’ she screamed again. ‘Now get out, you pig!’
I ran out of there. I made off thinking, My God, what have I done? What have I said? I was expecting her to be grateful for having expelled Lexden-Page so quickly, now here she was upset. I could not understand it. My June, whom I liked so much!
Back at my desk, I started thinking. I thought about June crying, and about Lexden-Page. I thought about the terrible workload that awaited me, the telephone calls, the letters, the effort. I thought about Donovan. I thought about June crying. All these things flashed through my mind.
I cleared my desk.
‘Goodbye, June,’ I said as I passed her. ‘I’m off.’
It is only a short walk to the senior partner’s office, no more than twenty paces, and yet when I got there I was out of breath. My chest was tight and fisted-up.
I knocked and walked in. He was talking to a client. I interrupted him.
‘I’m taking a few days off,’ I told him. ‘I need the time to sort out some private business,’ I said. I left immediately, before he could say anything. His face wore a dumbfounded expression, but I did not care, I was too angry. I was too angry to give a damn.
That was only a couple of hours ago. Right now the telephone is ringing. When it finishes, I will take it off the hook. Meanwhile, let it ring. Let the damn thing ring.
SIXTEEN
The telephone is disconnected and it is time to get on with my story. But I cannot. I cannot go on, not when I am in this state, not while my mind is ringing like this.
What fills my head, what tintinnabulates between my ears, is an outcry, an outcry composed of these cries: Why? Why? Why had I not got that tenancy? Why had circumstances conspired so freakishly against me? The omissions, near-misses and close shaves that had ganged up to foil me were fiendish. They were outrageous. First of all there was the fiasco of my failure to apply in writing for a tenancy, then there was the one-in-a-million scenario of the chambers failing to contact me when Bernard Tetlow had moved on. What could have been simpler? There was a demand and there was a supply: I wanted that job and they wanted me to have it – so what force had come between us, and why? The cruelty of it! It breaks my heart to think of it! Here I am, an unregarded small-time solicitor, up to my neck in small potatoes, surrounded by the second-rate, the mediocre and the so-so, my days a mindless sequence of deadlines, petty conversations and tiny facts. Look at what has become of me: a nobody, a human nothing. James Jones has turned out to be no one at all.
I know what you are saying here. You are saying, My God, what a self-pitying, bellyaching, unpleasant little man. He’s behaving like a spoiled brat. Why doesn’t he grow up? Why doesn’t he get a grip of himself?
Well, I do not buy that, I am afraid. I do not buy all that stoical stuff, taking the rough with the smooth and letting bygones be bygones. To hell with all of that, to hell with getting a grip of myself! I have a legitimate grievance here. I worked myself to the bone for that tenancy, and what did I get? Nothing. I was robbed! Let bygones be bygones? Why should I?
It makes me despair. When I think of what I have become, when I think that I used to be a lawyer. I used to have analytical faculties, powers of cerebration, ratiocination. And now … now I cannot even understand a simple legal concept; even a notion as straightforward as marital cruelty makes me struggle. That is not the worst of it. To think that I could, that I should, right at this moment, be someone else, that I should now be something – that is the worst: that my name should be up there on that blackboard in Essex Court, that James Jones should be there, figuring in the law reports and newspapers, in the periodicals and the footnotes: that instead – instead we have this rubbish.
Why? And why me? This is what I want to know. Why should I be the one to end up this way? Why, of all people, me?
I have mopped my face, dropped a fizzing disc of aspirin into a glass of water and swallowed the solution. It has worked, and I have calmed down. I have regained my sense of proportion. I have stopped crying (yes, for the first time in two decades I have cried, you can see the tears where they have landed on the page and made words run) and I have pulled myself together. It is vital that I do not allow myself to be side-tracked by such irrelevant emotional outbursts. Why I did not get taken on at 6 Essex is neither here nor there. It does not go anywhere towards meeting the question in hand, which is this: why did the Donovan affair end in the way that it did?
The sooner I am able to answer that query the better, because the sooner I will be able to return to work. That does not mean that I am in any great rush to get back. No, I will say this for my job: as a partner I am allowed a certain flexibility. I have certain freedoms. If I want some time off, I can usually take it. There is a theoretical danger of being voted out of the firm by the other partners – of being fired – but I know how rare this is and how much leeway I have. This leave without notice that I am now taking is against the rules, but the transgression is not grave enough to put me in any real hot water. Eyebrows will be raised and subtle reprimands will be forthcoming, but that is all. If there is one thing I still do know about in this maelstrom, it is the tolerances of Batstone Buckley Williams.
Going back to Christmas, 1988, I holed up in bed for a day or two afterwards. Cushioned by duvets and extra pillows, waiting for the new year, I managed to put a lid on the Oliver Owen revelation. Forget it, I told myself. It’s over. It’s not important. It’s all turned out for the best.
Then, as I began to feel better, I actually drew strength from Oliver’s news. It occurred to me that I had been paid a great compliment: when that vacancy arose at 6 Essex, they had gone to great lengths to contact me. Of all the young barristers in the Temple, I was the one they had singled out. To do that they must have really rated me. They must have thought that I was quite something.
A thrill of gratification ran through my limbs. Then I thought, Maybe I still have some of that old brainpower. Maybe there are grey cells that can still be salvaged.
Excited by this possibility, I decided to put myself to the test. To start with I reacquainted myself with the principles of international law. Yes, they still made sense. Then, during four sleepless days, I reread all of Donovan’s writings (which is not to say that I took in every word). I looked again at the notes and observations I had made about them over the years, often surprising myself with the perceptiveness I had shown in those days. Was I really responsible for that acute note in the margin? Was that mine, that penetrating aside?
Gradually, after a week of fruitful concentration in front of the blazing gas fire, my confidence in my mental abilities began to return. I began to make something of an intellectual comeback. I began to apply my mind seriously, less tentatively, to the themes of Supranational Law, trying to understand how and why Donovan had arrived at the prescriptive conclusion that international law should, in the final analysis, be more than just an expression of the relations of sovereign States. I had already seen that Donovan would have to come to terms with the principle of the self-determination of nations and autonomy generally, that he would have to look at the function and rationale of the State; and instead of leaving those frightening subjects alone and waiting to see how Donovan would deal with the problems, I took them on personally, head-to-head. I went to the library and boned up on philosophical texts, perusing Locke, Rawls, Nozick and the rest of them in record time. I am not saying that I understood or appreciated everything I read, or that I did not rely heav
ily on secondary texts. Of course I did. But what was extraordinary was the facility with which I grasped the concepts that these great minds bandied about – I actually understood what they were saying, where they were going. Needless to say, it thrilled me to be there, alone in the library’s reading room, involved once more in academic pursuits, shadowing difficult ideas along their steep, breathtaking routes. Yes, I said to myself as old thought-patterns and insights came back to me from the past, Yes, I remember now. And then I thought, This is it. This is what it’s all about. This is the life.
When, after three weeks, this idyll came to an end, I felt refreshed, as sharp as I could remember. Shaving on the morning of my return to work, I looked forward to tackling the demands of the weeks ahead. Then I suddenly remembered.
The trial. The Donovan showdown. I had forgotten all about it.
As my blade curved around the contours of my face, carving tracks of fresh skin through the shaving cream, I counted the days until February the 1st: eighteen. The trial was just two and a half weeks away and still Donovan and I had not talked about, let alone decided on, such things as the evidence, the lines of argument, the problems that we might face. I had not heard from Donovan since the game of golf and it was vital that we went into these matters. It would be the first thing to attend to when I went to the office.
Rodney gave me some disconcerting news.
‘Mr Donovan? He’s in Rio de Janeiro isn’t he?’
Because I was a little tense I said, ‘I don’t know, Rodney, you tell me.’
That’s right, sir, he’s in Rio,’ Rodney confirmed. ‘Due back on February the 14th, if I’m not mistaken.’
This took me aback. It did not make sense: how could Donovan be at his divorce trial in London if he was in South America?
Rodney gave me Donovan’s hotel number in Rio. After a number of attempts June finally put me through. Mr Donovan was not replying, the receptionist said. It was 6.10 in the morning, she said. Take this message, I said: James Jones phoned. (I thought about phrasing the message in the imperative – Phone James Jones, urgent – but decided against it.)
I received no reply that morning and when I returned from lunch there was no message for me. This was no laughing matter, I thought. This was serious. Something had to be done, I had to find out what was going on. Just then, just as I was wringing my hands in anxiety, I received a telephone call. It was from Philip Hughes. He made no sense at all.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I must say that I expected it all along. I could see it coming a mile off.’
I really did not know what to say to this.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’
‘Well, the ball’s been in your court for about six weeks now,’ Hughes said, ‘and I think it’s time we heard from you.’
‘What about?’ I said.
‘The money,’ Hughes said. ‘The fifty thousand.’
I asked Hughes what he was talking about.
The settlement, he told me. The settlement fee. The case had been settled, he said. Don’t say I had forgotten? The case had been settled back in December, the 9th of December to be precise. That was when Donovan had accepted his offer, when he had signed the agreement. Surely I remembered now?
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember. Yes, of course. The settlement. The fifty thousand.’
Donovan was no longer fighting the divorce. He had given up the ghost. Behind my back.
‘Mr Donovan’s in Brazil,’ I said.
‘I know,’ Hughes said. ‘But the agreement specified payment of the first instalment within thirty days. Thirty days elapsed a week ago, Mr. Jones.’
I told Hughes that I would look into it and hung up. The divorce was on. The trial was off.
Why had I not been told? Why was I always the last to find out? I was the solicitor, for God’s sake. I should have been the first to know. Nothing should have been agreed without my say-so.
June came in. ‘Mr Lexden-Page to see you,’ she said. ‘It’s about this morning’s hearing.’
‘What? Ah yes.’ I remembered. The pre-trial review of Lexden-Page v. Westminster C.C. was scheduled for eleven o’clock. ‘Yes, I’ll see him, June,’ I said.
In he came. In came Lexden-Page. He was, as usual, bristling with anger.
‘Come on, Jones,’ he said. ‘Let’s get a move on. We’re going to be late.’
We took a taxi to Westminster County Court, and ten minutes later we were seated around the registrar’s table. Not unpredictably, the Council was trying to strike out the action on the grounds that it was frivolous and vexatious. I could think of little to say to this. At best our damages amounted to a pound or two, and it would plainly be a waste of court time to pursue this amount in this particular case. To make matters worse, Lexden-Page refused to settle for any amount. He wanted his day in court.
I said, ‘I see the force of my friend’s arguments.’ I paused. Lexden-Page glared at me. I said, my voice lacking conviction, ‘But this case does not simply revolve around a scuffed shoe and a stubbed toe. It involves an important principle.’ I looked at my papers, trying to think just what that principle might be. The registrar and my opponent regarded me with curiosity. ‘This may be a frivolous matter for the Council, with its millions of pounds of resources, but for the Plaintiff, an ordinary citizen, it goes to the very heart of his liberty as a pedestrian. This case also goes to the root of the responsibilities which the Council bears towards its rate-payers and towards visitors to its borough. These are not matters to be brushed aside. The Plaintiff has a substantial complaint which must be heard.’ The registrar and my opponent looked at each other in mild amazement. I leaned over to Lexden-Page. ‘Anything else?’ I whispered. ‘Anything else you want me to say?’
‘Say it as if you mean it, damn you,’ he said furiously.
The registrar struck out the claim. Lexden-Page began spluttering and reddening. Once outside, he found his voice.
‘I’m appealing,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to end here. I’ll take this to the highest court in the land. It’s an outrage. It’s a scandal. And you,’ he said to me, losing his voice half-way through the accusation, ‘you … I want a new solicitor. I want someone who …’ He could not continue. He was choked up with emotions.
‘Mr Lexden-Page,’ I said. ‘You’re upset now. That’s understandable. Why don’t we talk this over at some other time, when we’ve regained our objectivity. Go home now and phone me tomorrow to make an appointment. How does that sound to you?’
I put my protesting client into a taxi and hailed another one for myself. As we groaned away from the kerb I forgot all about the morning’s hearing and began thinking about Donovan, about his sudden consent to the divorce. It had me in two minds.
It made sense and yet it did not make sense. On the one hand he was quite right not to contest the case. On that hand he had seen reason, he had seen that there was little to be gained from fighting the divorce. There were two possible explanations for his change of tack: either he had foreseen all along that he would probably not manage to dissuade Arabella and had planned this last-minute concession; or he had understood, for the first time (maybe when his letters had been returned), that his marriage was irretrievably lost, that nothing he could do would bring Arabella back: thus prompting his sudden decision to settle.
Looked at in this way, the case fell into place. There was nothing superficially baffling about it, there was nothing that could not be fitted into the picture. It left one or two question marks – the episode on the golf course, for example – but nothing that could not be explained away or dismissed as irrelevant. On the face of it, then, the settlement made sense, it was susceptible to a consistent analysis. But, in another, more profound way, it did not make sense. That was what bothered me in the taxi back to the office.
The arithmetic of events was unconvincing. In the equation you had Donovan’s determination to fight the divorce, plus his conviction that Arabella would not be able to prove her
contentions, plus his father’s deep anxiety to save the marriage, plus Donovan’s great skill as a litigator, plus the relative weakness of Arabella’s case; even given certain minuses (the distress of the trial, the question as to whether Arabella was really worth it, the generous terms offered by Arabella) these elements did not, by my calculation, equal to a settlement. Which meant that either the settlement was a ruse of some kind or, more likely, that there was a factor, an x, which still had not been revealed to me. But what could that be? What did the x stand for?
I will briefly go into this question, because it may be important. A while back I videotaped a magic show on the television. It was an old-fashioned show. There was a man in chains in a water-tank, there was a man in a top hat sliding blades and saws through a leggy girl lying flat-out in a box. That was the kind of show it was. The performer who really interested me, though, was a magician. After spending a few minutes flapping handkerchiefs into doves, he performed a trick – a simple, unspectacular trick, but all the more intriguing for that – which really got to me: he put his palm to the camera and produced card after card in his hand from thin air. How had he done it? To this day I do not know. I replayed the scene twenty times in slow motion and twenty times I drew a blank. It was not because of my eyesight that I did not see what was going on; no, it was a question of angles. The magician had ensured, in a cunning, subtle way, that certain of our (the viewers’) lines of vision were blocked: so that no matter how hard or how often we looked, we would see only one part of what was happening, the trick part. Something like that was going on in the Donovan case, or at least that was the impression I received – an impression that I was seeing only a portion of the action; that something was going on behind the scenes.
So what? it might reasonably be said. We cannot know everything, and since when do our lives tie up like shoe-laces, into bows? You learn to live with loose ends. You have to, otherwise you go crazy.
This is the Life Page 17