Dunster

by John Mortimer

  ‘There aren’t going to be any damages,’ he said, ‘because your lot aren’t going to win.’

  ‘Robbie Skeffington’s forecast is half a million plus costs. You’ve got no way of paying that – either of you.’

  ‘There’s no way we’re going to have to.’

  ‘That’s what I came to tell you. It’s just possible that Crispin Bellhanger won’t enforce the damages. He’s not really interested in money.’

  Dunster looked at me with considerable amusement and said nothing.

  ‘I don’t want to see you lose Beth’s home, Tash’s home. Your home, come to that. I don’t want to see you bankrupt and put out on the street and I don’t think Cris does either.’

  ‘Yippee! He’s cracking up!’ When the words finally came from Dunster they did so with a whoop of delight.

  ‘He’s prepared to behave extremely generously. I wish you could understand that.’

  ‘Generously? Not bloody likely! He’s on the run! Of course he is. He knows he can’t win and he wants to buy me off. Just like he bought off Jaunty, and you too, Progmire. He’s promoted you to be the chairman’s yes man and spokesperson on delicate missions.’

  ‘It’s not a bribe. It’s what I think he’ll do whether you go on with the case or not.’

  ‘Then why did you come here to tell me about it?’

  ‘In the faint hope that you could understand what sort of a man Cris is. And when you understand that, you might wonder whether you ought to go on hounding him.’

  ‘You mean, let him get away with murder? Just in case I lose an old house in Camden Town, which is a damn sight too big for us, anyway. Is that the honourable way you want me to behave?’

  ‘It’s not a case of honour.’

  ‘Oh. What is it, then?’

  ‘Just ...’ – I looked at Beth, appealing to her – ‘commonsense.’

  ‘You mean it’s sensible to give up fighting, at the moment when the enemy’s starting to retreat?’

  ‘Can’t you see?’ I asked Beth directly now. ‘You’re both running the most ghastly risk!’

  She had found a fingernail which wasn’t to her liking and had been chewing it without embarrassment. Now she stretched out her hand, looked critically at the back of it, and considered the result.

  ‘It’s his case,’ she said. ‘He’ll make up his mind about what to do with it. From what you say, it does sound as though we’re winning.’

  I had come to offer them a way to avoid annihilation, and found them united and poised for victory. I stood up, out of patience with Dunster’s limitless self-assurance.

  ‘A word before you go, old man. You tell your boss to stuff his damages. He’ll never get them, anyway. And you know why? Because we’re going to win. We’ve been told that by Ken Prinsep and he doesn’t act for clients he doesn’t believe in. “This is a truth that has to be told.” That’s what he said. And the jury’re going to have to accept it.’

  Later Lucy told me there’s no such thing as a barrister who believes in all his clients. He’d go off his head if he tried to generate so much faith.

  ‘You’ll have heard of Ken?’

  ‘I don’t believe so.’

  “Oh, Progmire! You do live in a world of your own, don’t you? He’s the leading radical barrister and he’s prepared to take on my case for £200 an hour, which is nothing. Juries love him. And they can’t stand being patronized by that awful little old-public-school creep, Skeffington. Ken says he spends his time hanging round the Sheridan club and brown-nosing the judges. Old man, that’s the lot you’ve got in with. Trust you to join the establishment just as it’s on the way out.’

  I couldn’t resist glancing at the Tribune poster on the wall and saying, “Your father thought that’s what it was doing quite a long time ago now.’

  Dunster gave me a look full of pity and said. ‘You know, for a moment, I thought you’d read our manifesto and come over to join us. You see I’m constantly trying to think better of you, Progmire.’

  Despite my protests, Beth came down the stairs to see me out. I said, ‘Tash says she’s not coming for any more weekends.’

  ‘Yes. She told me that.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That it’s her life. She must make her own mind up about what she does. I think she was pretty annoyed about your girlfriend too.’

  “What do you think about that?’

  ‘I’m really glad.’ After all those years I still felt a faint pang of disappointment as she said. ‘I told you. It’ll be a great relief to see you settled.’

  ‘Are you settled?’

  ‘Of course we are.’

  Don’t be quite so sure about that, was what I restrained myself from saying. We got down to the front door and Beth opened it.

  ‘You know I only came here to help.’

  ‘You shouldn’t bother. He doesn’t need that.’

  ‘What does he need?’

  ‘I suppose for people to believe in him.’

  ‘And this Ken Prinsep’s prepared to do that for £200 an hour.’

  ‘You weren’t always like that, Philip.’ Beth also looked at me regretfully. ‘You weren’t always thinking about money.’

  The landslide that started when Dunster threw the first stone was slow, ponderous and inescapable. It moved, however, at varying speeds. Sometimes it would take a great lurch forward and the earth would tremble. Sometimes it hung suspended, scarcely moving, with only small fissures to betray the underlying upheaval. Then we could travel on, avoiding the potholes and cracks in the roadway, as though the disaster area didn’t really exist. I drove to the Isle of Dogs, moved back to my old desk in the accounts department and supervised the budget of a new and quite uncontroversial series about the world’s great art collections. Cris and I hardly discussed the libel action and the subject never came up on the agenda at board meetings. I did notice, however, that Sydney Pollitter became more flattering than ever to Cris and treated him with the sort of reverent concern usually reserved for those whose days are numbered. His colleagues on the Board went through our business with only the smallest hint of embarrassment.

  Natasha no longer visited and I spent the weekends with Lucy. We cooked and shopped together, went out to the Odeon or drank in the Mummery bar – but our relationship was a curious one. It seemed, like the long-awaited battle between Cris and Dunster, to hang suspended in time. Most affairs are restless; like history they can’t stand still. They must be forever moving, upwards towards some deeper understanding or down to a final crash from which you can hope to escape with only minor injuries. Lucy and I stayed at the point we had reached when she first took off and neatly folded her clothes. I didn’t tell her I loved her and she didn’t refer to the subject again. Whatever she may have felt for me was curiously undemanding and I hadn’t reached the point of worrying about that either. We made love. We didn’t quarrel. We didn’t seem to find much to argue about. It was as though all my emotions, hopes and fears were fixed on the trial that was bound to happen, and that my time with Lucy was a safe haven of ordinary life.

  Nor did our friendship excite much comment among the Mummers, who were used to a changing of partners in an elaborate formation dance as one production gave way to another. Sex, indeed, was one of the main reasons why new arrivals in Muswell Hill, which otherwise offered few opportunities for romantic meetings, wanted to join our group. Martin, the bank manager, used to take great trouble at auditions to weed out those candidates who, he said, were more interested in the parts of fellow actors than those created by any dramatist. Once accepted into the company, however, your life was your own, and indeed a certain cheerful promiscuity was felt to be the mark of a professional, like using Leichner numbers 5 and 9 and buying the Stage every week at the Tube station. When I turned up in the bar of the Mummery with Lucy there were few comments, although Pam did draw me aside to ask. ‘Are you sure she has a sense of humour?’ and said, if she’d been a mature, experienced and really physical typ
e of woman I might have felt just the tiniest bit jealous. But as it’s only Lucy. I honestly don’t mind at all.’ Dennis, the dentist, said, ‘You seem to be pretty well rooted in that girl, Philip.’ So at least I felt like a healthy tooth.

  It was Lucy who told me all about Ken Prinsep. ‘Bit of an odd background,’ she said. ‘Born in Canada. Rich family of biscuit manufacturers. Went to Yale Law School in the flower-power era. Took part in protests in the South. Did some human rights cases after he joined a law firm in Chicago. Then decided that England was the only place where justice was incorruptible and went to Cambridge to read Law. Got a First but had some difficulty finding chambers. The English legal hacks probably felt he took it all a bit too seriously. Finally got into a radical set we brief sometimes – they specialize in things like terrorism and porn. The litigation partner says he can be brilliant, but he was behind the door when tact was handed out. Also that he can’t quite get on the same wavelength as some of the judges.’

  ‘It sounds as though he’d suit Dunster.’

  ‘Perhaps. But he might get too involved in the case. He might be too much on Dunster’s side, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Not exactly. Can you be too much on the side of someone you’re defending?’ Was I too much on Cris’s side, for instance?

  ‘Oh, yes. Our litigation partner says that can be very dangerous.’

  A few days later I was sitting in my office, staring out of the window and wondering if Cris had heard any more from our lawyers, when the telephone rang and a surprisingly deep and resonant voice said, ‘Is that Mr Progmire? Maurice Zellenek here.’ He pronounced it Morreece in the American manner, although he didn’t have an American accent, ‘I had the pleasure and privilege of seeing your Trigorin, Mr Progmire. A young lady in my lawyer’s office was kind enough to obtain a ticket for me.’

  I vaguely remembered a man who had been talking to Lucy after the first night, a stranger to the Mummers with all his hair at the wrong end of his face.

  ‘Mr Progmire. Your Trigorin was quite something.’

  ‘Well. I suppose it was. Something or other.’

  ‘I was led to believe that you are a modest sort of person. That’s a mistake, let me tell you. In our business modesty gets you nowhere very much.’

  I wondered what I was meant to say. That I was the greatest Trigorin since Stanislavsky? And what did he mean by ‘our business’? Sitting in front of a pile of accounts and awaiting a difficult libel action, I was still ridiculously pleased to be told that I was a part of the world of entertainment, for that must have been what it was. Grocers and dentists don’t talk about ‘our business’.

  ‘I’m not sure I was a wonderful Trigorin, but it was very kind of you to telephone and tell me so.’

  ‘The purpose of this call is not just to congratulate. The purpose is to suggest we meet and talk. Talent is a kind of rarity these days, especially among men in middle life. I shall be away in Hungary for several months. May I look forward to calling you on my return? Shall we do lunch?’

  ‘It would be a pleasure.’

  ‘No, sir, Mr Progmire. The pleasure is entirely mine. “A subject for a short story.” Unforgettable, the way you handled that great line.’

  Mr Zellenek then left my ear and I sat looking at the river and wondering if the call were not a practical joke organized by Dunster as some obscure form of revenge. However, when I told Lucy what had happened, she said that her client Zellenek had been greatly impressed by my acting, was surprised to find I was an accountant and had asked for my telephone number. ‘I didn’t want to tell you that,’ she said, ‘in case he didn’t ring and you’d’ve been disappointed.’ I thought that this was very considerate. ‘He’s got some big project for next year,’ Lucy said. ‘I think it’s a series for Channel Four.’

  Was he really going to ask me to go into ‘the business’? Would Mr Zellenek finally release me from the world of budgets and balance sheets and set me up forever on the creative side? I allowed myself to toy with this idea for a little while until there was a distant murmur of thunder and the case of Cris v. Dunster took another lurch forward.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I drove down to Exmoor, as we had so many years before when Beth decided that it was time I went through ‘the ordeal by fire and ice’. My destination was, once more, Blair Cottage; other than that I had no more idea of what I should find, or how I should be greeted, than when Beth first drove me, far too fast, along the seaside road and then inland, between the tall hedges and through the little towns with their gift shops and boarding-houses and cream teas, towards the moor and the parents I had never met.

  Dear Progmire

  In the past you have appealed to me as a geezer who could see further through a brick wall than most other geezers. You sorted out my personal and business affairs in double-quick time, if you remember, and I thought, there goes an old head on a pair of youngish shoulders. I have never had much luck with so-called professional advisers. Solicitors and accountants seem only interested in drink or women (or both) and in sending exorbitant bills. So I thought I’d ask your advice as I have done in the past.

  My problem is legal and business mixed, so it should be up your street. Mike’s away, getting her mother into a home at the moment, so if you could motor down here tooty sweet, say Thursday morning, we could go up to the Old Huntsman for a ploughman’s after our chinwag.

  I would be much obliged if you’d say nothing about this to my daughter, Beth, her husband – or anyone else, come to that. I’ll keep an eye skinned for you around midday.

  Sincerely

  Jonathan Blair (Major, Retired)

  This unexpected letter, in spiky, unpractised handwriting, much crossed-out and clearly the result of considerable thought, had arrived in an envelope marked PERSONAL AND EXTREMELY PRIVATE. In Spite of Jaunty’s instructions, I took it to Justin Glover, whom I had seen a number of times since our first conference, feeling in need of a certain amount of advice myself.

  Robbie Skeffington had plunged us into such a hot certainty at the start of the case that the time was bound to come for cooler feelings and I found our solicitor in a state of increasing apprehension. ‘The key witness,’ Justin told me, ‘is obviously going to be Major Blair. If he goes into the witness-box and says Sir Crispin commanded the operation, we can only attack him on the grounds that he’s trying to save his son-in-law’s pocket. Robbie’ll do that with wonderful brutality, of course. But it may not be enough to destroy the old boy’s evidence. It’s something we ought to be worrying about.’ Then I showed Justin Glover the letter and he said I’d better go and find out what it was all about, as it might do some good and he didn’t see why it should do any harm.

  So I left Muswell Hill and Lucy around dawn and at exactly a quarter to twelve I passed the gallows on which the notice Blair Cottage swung and drove down the rutted path to the stable yard and the house sitting uncomfortably among the gravel. I parked and got out of the car as the baying started and the task force of assorted dogs leapt for my genitals. It was like old times.

  The back door was open. I stood on the step and rang the bell, which made a loud, high-pitched buzz and produced no Major. I waited and then crossed the threshold into the kitchen, setting off a hysterical reaction in the dogs who leapt, yelped, barked and bounded as though I were an escaped axeman who had called to murder Jaunty. I did my best not to give these animals the satisfaction of seeing how nervous their welcome made me. I had come a long way on an important mission and I was determined to complete it.

  The house was as cold as I always remembered it, as though the dark furniture, the shiny lino and the dun-coloured wallpaper gave off their own particular chill. The kitchen floor was well stocked with boots, slippers, dog bowls and the small mess of a half-trained puppy who had been over-excited by my arrival. There was a plate on the table which had held bacon and eggs, a half-full packet of Mother’s Pride and an almost finished mug of Nescafe. The number of dirty dishes in the s
ink testified to the time it had taken Mike to get her mother into a home.

  I went through the kitchen into the hall. Most of the interior doors were open. I saw Jaunty’s office, with the bureau bulging as ever with papers, some of which had floated to the floor. On the carpet, handy for the sitting-room sofa, there was a whisky bottle, a glass and a saucer full of the butts of small cigars. I went to the foot of the stairs and, having no desire to inspect Jaunty’s bedroom, I called into the shadows, ‘It’s Progmire!’, which seemed, in that empty house, rather a foolish thing to say.

  There was no answer and I went out towards the stable yard. The dogs were delighted to see me leave the house and their clamour sank to sullen growls as they returned to the kitchen. Only the old black lurcher, who had slept throughout the excitement on a patch of blanket beside the cooker, trotted out after me.

  The long, mournful faces of silent horses peered over half doors, looking as though they had been waiting a long time for some attention and had become resigned to the lack of it. But there were some signs of activity around the stable yard: a bucket filled, a hosepipe pulled out and the door of the tack room swinging open. The big lorry stood with the ramp ready for a nervous horse to be induced to step inside. It was then that I first heard a faint and distant sound, a weak hint of thunder but more metallic and not so far away. One of the lorry doors left open was banging, I thought, and not shutting properly. And then it came again, closer and more insistent. But what attracted my attention was the lurcher whining.

  It had left me to go up the ramp and it was standing looking into the shadows, making sounds of distress. There was straw on the floor of the lorry and the darkness smelt of horse piss. I was about to turn away, drive down to the pub and try phoning later, when there was a fainter boom and a weaker rattle. It seemed to come from in front of me. I could see more clearly now and there was a short ladder propped up against what looked like a pair of large cupboard doors over the back of the driver’s cabin. There was no mistaking it now, the rattle of the bolted metal, and over the lurcher’s concerned whining the faint sound of a human voice in panic.