by Tim Parks
Judge Savage circumnavigated the ring road. The police had been checking the residency status of the prostitutes. They were arresting illegal immigrants. He turned off at the first lights and stopped the car. He fiddled with the mobile, then remembered that Minnie’s number had been withheld. It didn’t come up on the display. He couldn’t call her back. For a while he sat still, staring at the houses. It was familiar. Where was he? He remembered. This was where the Community was, where he had come all those months before to pick Sarah up the day she savaged her hair. She had looked very pretty in the market yesterday. The Community would welcome, he thought, a middle-aged professional man experiencing a religious crisis. They would be glad he wasn’t white. He saw himself sitting, singing hymns to the twang of the guitar. David Sayle had been obsessed by some odd notion of community, religious community. The two words went together apparently. It’s such a tight community, Minnie always said. The Koreans. They kept their odd religion, their little altars to dead relatives. Twenty minutes later he found Christine’s car parked in the space the frozen food delivery van always left in Carlton Street. In life I took her husband’s job, and now she has taken our flat. If you ring that bell, I’ll kill you, Daniel told himself.
Back in the Cambridge at 4 a.m. he still couldn’t sleep. Why hadn’t he gone to a pharmacy? It’s pills I need. He turned off the mobile in case he did sleep, drank a few shorts at random from the fridge, watched a film he couldn’t make head nor tail of. One-eyed and fiercely wakeful, he reflected. The usual themes of love and money seemed recklessly muddled. His head ached. The phone is ringing on the screen, he told himself. Not in the room. But the film was set in the Middle Ages. So he picked up the receiver. It was one of those solid, old grey dial phones they have only in places like the Cambridge Hotel. You told me you were at this number, Minnie said. She had been trying for hours. I’ve got something to tell you. They think I’m responsible, she said. For what? For all the people they’re arresting. They think I’m the grass. I’m scared. I called the police but nothing happened. Now Judge Savage was wide awake again. Immediately, he called the Broughton Street station. I really can’t wake the inspector at this hour, the desk sergeant said. I’m sorry. There is an inspector on duty, if you’d like to talk to him. It’s about the Korean girl, is it? Everybody knows, he thought. Well, sir, Inspector Mattheson did take all the details and told me to assure you he has it all in hand.
Then it was morning. It’s Monday. Have I slept? He hadn’t turned the television off. The talk was of Montenegro. It was eight o’clock. In the shower he shook his head violently from side to side. Wake up, Savage! A pushover for Serb troops, the earnest reporter was saying.
Are you all right? Mrs Connolly asked. He bumped into her quite by accident in the car park behind the court. Unless she had contrived to bump into him. I’m fine, he told her, fine. In his room in chambers he immediately phoned Mattheson. The man was on the line almost before he knew he had the connection. Hello? Didn’t recognise you, the policeman said, you sound odd. Sure, we’ve got the score, it’s okay, and we’re monitoring the situation. Not to worry. Daniel was struck by something American in Mattheson’s delivery. There was a tone of facile reassurance. Don’t worry, Mattheson repeated, but if you don’t want trouble yourself I would keep as far away as possible.
Fortunately, no sooner was he in his place in court than there was Gillian Crawley to keep him awake. In no time at all his mind was wonderfully concentrated on the trial in hand. It is within my power to have you sent downstairs so that the defendant can give evidence in your absence he told James Grier. The young man had begun to shout. I am not and never was a pushover in court, Daniel told himself.
The elder of the two Crawley girls completed her examination in chief and went on through the late morning to survive two aggressive cross-examinations from Sayle’s counsel and from Grier’s. Fragile as she had seemed at first, she grew in strength. She would not be drawn on the question of who had actually thrown the stone. She had been talking on the mobile to Ginnie Keane and at the same time trying to listen to the words of The Offspring above the noise of the road. She liked that song. The name of the song is: I won’t pay, she said. So she hadn’t seen the fatal moment. She’d heard a sudden bang. The other lawyers felt their clients’ interests were best served by letting the story stand.
Both cross-examinations sought to ridicule the account of the kissing game. Sayle’s counsel in particular, the buxom and embattled Mrs Wilson, asked the defendant how long she had had to rack her brains in order to come up with such a preposterous fabrication. The girl wasn’t shaken. Have you ever kissed, she asked, when there’s loud music and a real thunder of traffic, I mean so it’s deafening sometimes? And the radio like on full, and you can put it on full because of all the traffic. Everything booming.
I am not here to answer your questions, Mrs Wilson told her. She was sixty if she was a day. The idea of her kissing in a car with crashing music had set one or two members of the jury smiling. Well, it’s easier, the girl said.
Easier? You must excuse me, Miss Crawley, if I can’t always follow.
I mean, the girl was patient, when they’re people that are not, like, your boyfriend, the noise and the rush, it’s exciting, and sort of, I don’t know, it’s less embarrassing. With the road. We called it playing bridge. She hesitated: I mean, like that night, I was only kissing Stu, to warm up before John.
John Davidson?
Yes. He’s my real boyfriend.
But . . .
With the noise, it’s less embarrassing, she said. Being with someone who’s not your boyfriend, she said. That was playing bridge. It’s like you could be with anyone. Like being at a concert. Because of the sound of the traffic. Like standing under a waterfall. It’s easier.
Mrs Wilson gave up.
Grier’s lawyer was a bright-faced black woman, a thoroughly negro African woman with an even posher accent than Daniel’s. She was a brilliant barrister, a born actress, swaying about and swirling her gown back and forth. Derisively, she asked Miss Crawley whether this wasn’t all schoolgirl fantasy, a heated fantastical adolescent story designed to hurt the lives of people she resented for reasons that it would be as well to confess. Intelligently, Gillian Crawley waited for a real question. Daniel was often surprised by the astuteness of the least educated witnesses. When I leave court, I’ll collapse, he thought. I’ll break down. Only the enigma of this impossible trial is keeping me awake.
If we are to believe your version of events, counsel was saying, we shall have to suppose, shall we not, that Miss Singleton and Messrs Riley, Davidson, and Simmons have all lied to this court, repeatedly and under oath, not – the black woman’s face gleamed with intelligence as she raised her eyes and her voice – to save their own skins, on the contrary, but merely to protect Mr Sayle and Mr Grier!
Not Jamie, David, the girl said quickly.
I beg your pardon?
To protect Mr Sayle, the girl explained. There was a pause. Nobody would have done it for Jamie, would they?
The answer was entirely convincing, for its obliqueness, its splendid missing the point. The girl was a liquid they couldn’t cage. Judge Savage raised his eyebrows to the handsome black counsel. Smart as she was, she had allowed herself to be drawn into a dynamic where her next question could be no more than an instinctive reaction to the defendant’s remarkable claim: Why then, Miss Crawley, have you broken ranks? What makes you different from your friends? Aside, that is, from a decidedly feverish imagination.
The girl stared.
Counsel tried to give the impression of being in control. Miss Crawley, I have put it to you that the overwhelming flaw in your ridiculous story is that it obliges us to assume that five people are risking prison sentences out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to two of your number. You have insisted that that loyalty exists, at least to Mr Sayle, but at the same time you yourself are not being loyal. Now why is that? Why are you different from them? Why are you telling us
this ‘truth’ as you claim, when they are not?
At last a question had been posed that the girl did not expect, or did not want to answer.
Isn’t it rather, counsel insisted, that you have invented this complicated and steamy story because it lets you off the hook?
The court hummed. The jury looked fatigued. A press reporter’s eyes were glazed.
Miss Crawley . . .
A voice from the dock called out: Tell her, Gill.
It was Janet Crawley. Half a dozen lawyers were on their feet protesting. There were the usual remonstrances and warnings and as a result nobody heard for a moment what the defendant had said. She had spoken softly. I’m sorry Miss Crawley, Judge Savage was obliged to interrupt, we didn’t hear your answer.
I’m pregnant, the girl whispered. I’m going to marry Mr Davidson, and my kid’s not going to get born in prison for anybody, not even for Dave Sayle.
Mrs Whitaker had also been pregnant, Daniel was thinking, some six hours later. But perhaps Sedley had been wise not to stress the point. The policeman helped him into a cab. In the late afternoon, prosecution had made his closing speech. Then counsels for Sayle, Grier, and Singleton had made their final speeches. I think you’d better take a cab, sir, the constable said. They had been remarkably brief, as if seeking to deny the complications of the case, to insist on the obviousness, one way or another, of their positions: these people were on the bridge and threw stones; these people arrived at the bridge after stones were thrown. I was afraid you’d hurt yourself there, sir, he said, dusting off Judge Savage’s jacket. Let me get you a cab. And Minnie too is pregnant, Daniel told himself, giving the driver the name of the hotel. I did the best I could by the girl, he thought.
In any event, the day had now passed and he could sleep. The whole thing started, he thought, in the back of the cab, clutching his dispatch bag, because a young woman got pregnant and began to dream of a different life for herself in a different community. He watched the streets sliding by, the brick and shiny glass and the dull press of windblown shoppers against the brittle light of Salisbury Street. He hadn’t known then that she was pregnant. That was where he had stood and waited for her when she hadn’t come. The corner with Drummond. He had bought a bottle of champagne, drunk it with Christine and Martin. They had sold the house but Martin was dead. Martin never had a child. I have to do my duty by the child, Gillian Crawley said in the witness box in explanation of her extraordinary evidence. I don’t care what we swore to each other, or what we said we’d say. The defendants stared. Daniel put his face in his hands in the cab and laughed.
I thought for duty’s sake I should give you a call, Kathleen Connolly said, when I heard you’d fallen like that. Is there anything seriously the matter? He had fallen down the steps at the back of the court, the judges’ separate entrance. How had she learned about it? He had banged his head. How did she know he was staying at the Cambridge Hotel? They agreed to dine together. When really he should have gone to bed. My babysitter’s away, she was telling him, but if you don’t mind Stevie, why not come here? I’ll sleep better this way, he thought. He would go out and eat properly, come back at elevenish, then fall asleep. As easy as falling down a flight of steps. Coming out of the back door, facing the small flight of steps, he had blacked out. No damage done, he told the policeman. He had banged his head, hurt his knee. Probably my whole life, he thought, this old girlfriend will occasionally call me and tell me she’s desperate, she’s been imprisoned, beaten up, whatever. She knows I have to respond because of the way our relationship started. You keep out of it, Mattheson said, and all will be well. Tomorrow, at the rate we’re going. Judge Savage told himself, you’ll be summing up. You sum up, then you ask for a holiday. Pressing private reasons.
But Kathleen’s aperitifs gave him an unexpected rush of energy. He began to speak volubly. Call me Dan, he told her. He spoke about the Crawley girl, her extraordinary evidence. Could she have made up such a complicated story? This was indiscreet. He spoke about barristers’ fees. He spoke about the folly of the proposed new legislation on the recognition of sperm donors. What does it matter who one’s natural father was? He spoke about Ireland and Montenegro and Martin Shields and the Mishra case. Why hadn’t they been found guilty of unlawful abduction? He spoke excitedly, perhaps wittily. Stevie, it turned out, couldn’t speak at all, but made moaning and grunting sounds. Walking jerkily, arms held high like a puppet, the boy wanted to touch Daniel’s face. He’s fascinated by your colour, Kathleen Connolly laughed. I don’t think we’ve ever had a guest who wasn’t white. He likes to touch people he hasn’t seen before. The boy seemed to be trying hard to say something. Uh, he said. He bellowed, uh! Not an entirely unheard of phenomenon, Daniel laughed. I’m in fine form he thought. Not tired at all. The boy was unsettling. Uh, he insisted. He turned to his mother and came out with a shrill, high-pitched scream. He likes you, she said.
It was a small terraced house in an area that couldn’t decide whether to gentrify or not. Kathleen Connolly was only a modest cook. When he began to eat, she replied to him earnestly on a number of social issues. She couldn’t agree with him on the question of spanking children. Oh I really think you’re wrong there, she said with reference to his remarks on the minimum wage. I can’t understand, she said, your distinction between ABH and exploitation in the workplace; they’re both forms of violence, aren’t they? In the end one’s beaten up once, she insisted, and it’s over with, but the low wage is a form of violence that is practised day in day out your whole life. She wore track-suit bottoms and a polo-neck, as if determined to offer a reverse image of the crisp dress and heels she wore at work. It’s never over when they beat you up, he told her. In your head, it’s never over. Dan, she said. Forgive me, I hadn’t thought. He sensed at once how pleased she was to stand down like this. Do you think about it a lot? Then she told him she was convinced society was drowning in its own selfishness. Drowning. She opened a bottle of wine that he knew was cheap. She would not be well paid herself, he thought, knowing the CPS. The whole problem with prosecutions was the miserable funding for the CPS. People simply had no reason for not being selfish, she insisted. Almost everybody, she became extremely intense, who ends up in court, don’t you think, has been blinded, blinded by selfishness. Why shouldn’t people be selfish? she demanded. The only reason is the law, and even if they’re caught, most of them get off. The percentage of acquittals is mad, she said. I wouldn’t even be surprised if these stone-throwers didn’t get off. Would you? Why shouldn’t they be selfish?
Daniel was taken aback. People aren’t selfish in regard to their children, he told her. Then he remembered her husband had bailed out as soon as he saw their child was handicapped. Suddenly he felt overwhelmed by it all. The energy left him. He had no intention of seducing her. I never seduced anyone, he thought. Moaning softly, Steven had been sitting in front of the television. When Daniel rose to go – I’m so tired, he said – the boy pawed him, he wanted to embrace him. Fourteen or fifteen years old, he must be wearing a large and cumbersome nappy.
I can drive you back to the hotel, Kathleen insisted. If it’s only for half an hour or so, I can leave Stevie with the TV and tell the lady upstairs to keep an eye out. Only now did Judge Savage appreciate that the house was divided into flats. Why hadn’t he realised? She only had the downstairs. Why did I imagine she would be more fun, he wondered, as Kathleen left the room and climbed the stairs. He felt vaguely angry. Her eyes seemed brighter at work. He heard her talking in a soft voice from the landing above. There was a photo on the sideboard of a group of friends in a rubber dinghy. She hurried back down. Just half an hour, Stevie, she told the boy in a suddenly loud, Women’s Institute voice. Just half an hour. Protesting, Stevie pawed at her. She invites people here on purpose to have them witness these scenes, Judge Savage thought. Who would feel ready to make a pass at her after witnessing such a scene?
Oh he’s done so well, she was saying as they climbed into the car. Unexpectedly, it w
as a white Peugeot 205 convertible. Impossible to get a taxi to come out here at this hour, she repeated. You may as well phone for a spaceship. She buckled up rapidly, pushed the key in the lock and turned to him. Forgive me for insisting, she smiled, but you do look ill, Judge. I’ve been quite worried for you.
She sat looking at him in the dark of the car. The smile lingered. Having done her best, he thought, with the spectacle of her son, the talk of social issues, the indifferent food and indecent wine, she suddenly turns on the intimacy. Anyway, it’s been great to get to know you away from court. She turned to the road. Know me? he asked lightly. I thought everybody knew everything about me. Sometimes I think they know even more about me than I do. Well, it’s not all bad, she laughed, is it? I don’t know, isn’t it? No, I think the girls rather like a man who’s wicked from time to time. Selfish you mean, he said. She referred to herself as a girl, he noticed.