Mr Love and Justice

by Colin MacInnes

  ‘Now, as regards the poncing charge,’ said the Detective-Sergeant looking at Edward, ‘if that comes up first we’re calling you as a prosecution witness. You can refuse to appear, of course, that’s entirely up to you, but if you do I’d suggest you take counsel’s opinion as to what your own legal position might then be. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m ready to testify.’

  ‘Oh. You are?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ve decided it’s my duty to the Force even though I have to leave it.’

  ‘I’m not much interested in your motives, Constable, any longer. What I’m interested in is facts. Now. If you and your colleague here are going to testify you’ll have to get together and make sure your statements correspond. We’ll be up at the Sessions, don’t forget, with defending counsel and the whole bag of legal tricks. So I want some co-operation so that you both get the whole thing absolutely crystal clear within your two minds. What I don’t want,’ the Detective-Sergeant added, putting down the dossier, ‘is any conflict of evidence that might lead to an acquittal. I do not want, in short, if you can grasp this, the Force to be made a fool of. Any questions?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Very well. That’s it. You can carry on.’

  The telephone rang and the Detective-Sergeant, answering, looked up angrily. ‘Constable,’ he said to Edward. ‘Did you tell them downstairs they were to put your private calls through to my office here?’

  Edward got up. ‘It’s from the hospital, sir. My girl. She’s very ill.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, all right then. Take it.’

  Edward picked up the apparatus, listened, hesitated, then said, ‘Thank you. All right, thank you,’ and put it down.

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Bad news?’ said the Detective-Sergeant, a faint glint of a former light appearing through the thunder on his brow.

  ‘My girl’s had a child, stillborn, sir.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry, lad. Very sorry.’

  The star sleuth said to Edward, ‘I hope it’s a natural miscarriage, not the other thing.’

  Edward stared at him and tensed, but as he rushed the star sleuth saw him coming, and picking up a truncheon the Detective-Sergeant used as a paper-weight he cracked it on Edward’s skull between his eyes.

  MR LOVE AND JUSTICE

  Than a prison there is only one place more impressive to the human spirit and even more a symbol of our mortal condition: a hospital. In prison there is the allegory of sin, punishment and (in theory at any rate) redemption. In a hospital, the deeper allegory of birth, death and (occasionally) resurrection.

  Thus when respectable citizens pass by prisons (which they rarely do because jails are tucked away in improbable places) they avert their hearts and eyes from the reality that a prison is a particular extension of a society and not in any essential way a thing apart from it. And if one ponders upon prisons and, better still, goes inside one (other, of course, than as a visitor), one is forced to the conclusion that the prisoners are us: one fragment of those outside who save for chance and technicality might very well be inside; and that insofar as sin is universal all are criminals, even if not deemed so by the conventions of temporary self-invented laws.

  But when it comes to hospitals the healthy man may avert his eyes and heart with greater trepidation: for birth, death and healing are by much more general consent our inescapable lot. And these beneficent places are, in their way, even more awe-inspiring because from the sentences they can pass there may be no release and no appeal on earth. And that is why the only place which coppers and criminals really fear are the white wards where those temporal imperfect figures, the screws and wardresses of the jails, become as guardians of something greater, the white-robed nurses and physicians.

  As for the inmates, in either case they have a strong if momentary sense of solidarity. If you’re in jail ‘the others’ is the world outside; if you’re in hospital you belong to the fraternity of the sick – an aching body set apart from the community of the healthy beyond the disinfected walls. And it was not surprising that Frankie, convalescing from his wound on crutches, and Edward whose skull was healing likewise beneath an impressive turban of lint and bandages, should often have been thrown even closer together than their fates as healthy men had already brought them.

  Their favourite rendezvous was the long sun-parlour where in this progressive establishment the walking-wounded were permitted to foregather, free from the martial disciplines of their wards, for chats, draughts, reading, at evenings telly-viewing, and for the calls by flower-laden visitors at the appointed hours. The nurses, in the brisk and bossy manner of their calling, came frequently to disturb the comfort and tranquillity of the patients with thermometers and pills, and summonses to X-ray rooms and distant theatres, and charts to fill in with dots and crosses indicating such things as whether or not their charges had been, as they put it, ‘good boys’. The doctors in their more remote and stately fashion made periodical forays, often, as with the colonel on his inspection, in files that indicated seniority and which trooper, in this army of good-health, held commissioned or non-commissioned status. But mostly the patients, attired in government dressing-gowns much too short for them (or else too long), were left to their own devices of boredom, pain, amity and tiffs.

  Edward and Frankie had long ago put each other entirely ‘in the picture’ as to their respective pasts: the bonds of solitude, and ennui, and suffering, and even more the discovery that both were now outcasts from the law soon overcame any slight initial reluctance on either side. There was also the enormous interest and satisfaction of meeting ‘the enemy’ as equals on this neutral ground: as if they were two warriors of opposing camps interned, as a consequence of the misfortune of arms by some Swiss-like power, now pleased and eager with clear consciences to betray military secrets to each other.

  When their two girls came to visit them in the evenings, the broken ice formed again ever so slightly: for these were both creatures from the outside world, living reminders of a troubled past and a most uncertain future. Not that either man was anxious or embarrassed by his own girl’s behaviour to her sister: each woman had been most correct, and as the days passed even cordial; and the men learnt to their astonishment, mild alarm, and then hilarity that the two girls carried on, outside the hospital, a certain degree of cautious social intercourse: phone calls, requests to convey parcels on a day either couldn’t come and even joint excursions to their respective Odeons. And when both of the girls retired as the end of their visit was heralded by the clanging, by some eager authoritative nurse, of a bell that did more harm to broken nerves in a minute than the hours spent in the sun-parlour had healed, the two men gathered up the mags and fruit and fags they’d left, and laughed: though handing by mutual, unspoken agreement any flowers either girl had brought them to a horticulturist cleaning-woman to carry home. For each of them felt what many patients must have done – that it’s a bit tactless of most kindly souls to bring flowers only when they visit hospitals, or graves.

  Time after time they speculated on the days that lay ahead: chewing with joint professional gusto over every aspect of their own case and each other’s. ‘So Frankie, you don’t think,’ Edward said, ‘you’ll go down on either charge?’

  ‘Honest, Ted, no, I don’t. In the affray I was the victim, there were bags of witnesses and the feller’s not marked at all himself, it seems. As soon as he comes up for trial I just can’t see how they can bring me into it except as an absent witness with the affidavit that I gave them.’

  ‘Yes, boy. But the other thing?’

  ‘Well – you say you’re out of the cowboy forces now. Of course, cop, I still don’t believe you – not till I see you busted anyway, then I might. But even so I just can’t see they’ve got the evidence, if, as you say, you’ve finally decided not to testify: and – remember this – the longer the thing’s delayed the harder it is to prove.’

/>   ‘Correct. What happened a year – even a month – ago convinces juries far less than what happened yesterday.’

  ‘And what about you, boy? I’d say you’re in the clear as well: dismissed, okay, but wedding bells and an honest job of some kind for the first time in your life.’

  ‘Well, there’s the inquiry I’ve still got to face, of course. But from what I gather although they think that officer acted within his rights by bashing me when I attacked him, they’re not very pleased at it all happening inside a station. So they’ll try to keep it very quiet. Otherwise, if they don’t …’ Edward’s eyes gleamed slightly ‘… I might bring a civil action for assault.’

  ‘You’ve been having a chat with your lawyers, too. I can see. And what of the future, sonny? What are you going to do?’

  ‘I dunno: it’s too early to say, really. Besides, outside my career I don’t really know anything at all.’

  ‘No coppers do.’

  ‘Why should they? A job’s a job. One thing I had thought of, though, is setting up with my wife when we get married in a dressmaking business: that’s her own trade, you see.’

  ‘You’ll need capital for that …’

  ‘Well, we’ve got a little bit of that put by.’

  ‘We won’t ask from where. So – dressmaking: what does that mean? Little fitting-room upstairs? Places where the mugs who pay for the chicks’ gowns can come in and admire their undies as they try them on?’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘While you and your missus go out and leave them alone there for a while? Boy, that’s it! A little high-grade brothel’s what your establishment will be.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Frankie.’

  ‘I’m not! You’ll see! The idea will grow on you.’

  Edward drank reflectively from some repellent but no doubt curative beverage. ‘And you, Frank,’ he said. ‘You’ll be going back to sea?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I’m not sure. As a matter of fact I’ve been turning the thing over and I think I might consider opening up a little investigation agency.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know – divorce and such-like. It’s quite a busy trade and with hardly any overheads. I know a lot of the angles now and contacts, and it seems to me it’s a possibility.’

  ‘You’ll have to be careful, sonny, that’s all I have to say.’

  ‘And so will you, son! We’ll both of us have to be.’

  An uneasiness in easy chairs, a creaking of un-oiled wheel-carriages, and a rapid extinction of pipes and cigarettes all signalled the evening visit of the house doctor. He was accompanied (as not in his formal, perilous visits to the wards by day when he came flanked by assistants and by students, and himself followed sometimes behind some mighty specialist) only and informally by the ward sister – a fierce and dreadfully cheery martinet whose days of maximum glory, as her huge, sexless, medalled breast bore witness, had been spent on hospital ships in time of war. The doctor himself was young, fair-haired, sharp, and amiable – a man of the new and blessedly rising school who believe that patients are best consulted, to obtain results, about themselves and no longer treated, in the style of some of the older physicians, as culpable and rather tiresome imbeciles.

  ‘Having a natter?’ the doctor said sitting down beside Frankie and Edward and, to the scandalised but respectful glare of the ward sister, offering them each a cigarette and taking one himself.

  ‘That’s about it, doc,’ Frankie answered.

  ‘It passes the time, sir,’ Edward added.

  ‘Your girls both well?’ the doctor asked, a glance of friendly complicity coming into his sandy eyes.

  They each said they were.

  ‘Well, we hope to be turning you both loose among them before so very long,’ the doctor continued, ‘but please don’t ask me when because, of course, only your specialists can give me the final okay for your release – and what’s more we’ll need the permission of the sister here.’

  The three men smiled. The sister looked severe.

  ‘Anyway,’ said the doctor, rising, ‘when you do get out you’ll both have to take it easy for a bit: ’specially with the women and – this’ll please you – work. You’ve both’ (his tone became suddenly professionally grave) ‘sailed very close to the edge in your two very different ways. When you get your discharge come and see me, if you like, and I’ll tell you all the gory details of just how bad you were. But not now. We want you to get fit, not turn into a pair of hypochondriacs.’

  Left to themselves Frankie and Edward watched the night come on, a bit restive (as beasts are when they know the summons will soon be coming to the manger) and talking only spasmodically.

  ‘You know,’ Edward said, ‘these hospitals are really terrific. All this goes on – all these people here – they treat you whoever you are – no questions asked – not even any money. Just so long as you’re sick you’re welcome. People should know about it,’ he continued. ‘People should know what goes on inside these places.’

  ‘You might say, Ted,’ said Frankie, ‘they should know what goes on inside the cells and jails and station headquarters, too. Over in other countries where I’ve been and even in Europe on the Continent, thousands of people – and the very best among them – have had experience of the law from the inside on account of the political upheavals. But here everyone is so damn innocent: so simon-pure. They unload all their moral problems on to the law’s shoulders and leave you boys to get on with doing just what you like in the public’s name. Well, if they do that one day they’ll wake up and find they’ve given you not physical authority but all their own moral authority as well.’

  ‘Citizens,’ said Edward, ‘broadly speaking, just don’t want to be responsible. I’ve always said that: they just don’t want to know. They lack the sense of responsibility themselves and only the Force is left with any sense of obligation to the community.’

  ‘That’s just what I say, man! If you hear a scream in the night these days you say, “Oh, the law will take care of it”. A hundred years ago or even fifty, our grandfathers would have grabbed hold of the poker and gone out and taken a look themselves. They’d have done something: not just dialled 999.’

  ‘I guess that’s the age we live in,’ Edward said.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t like it, Ted. Because you cops – well, you’ll switch to any boss: any boss whatever. Whoever’s got a grip then you’ll obey him however good or bad his acts and his ideas may be.’

  ‘Well, Frankie, tell me! What else do people believe in any more but just authority! Whatever it may represent?’

  ‘That’s it: nothing at all! Not religions, anyway. As religions have got weaker coppers have got stronger – you ever noticed that? The cop is the priest of the twentieth-century world, inspiring fear and if you’re obedient, giving you absolution. But there is one very, very big difference from the old religions. The god of the coppers is the copper: you’re the priests of a religion without a god.’

  In the gloaming Edward’s face was indistinct and so was Frankie’s and they talked in the direction of each other’s voices. Edward said, ‘If that is true, boy – and I really just don’t know – all I can say is we coppers are exposed to very great moral stress: we have to deal more with Satan every day than the rest of you possibly ever dream of.’

  The lights burst on and a high female voice cried, ‘Beddy-byes! Come along, boys, or I’ll have to spank your little bottoms! Back to your wards you go: last one turns off the telly – and the lights!’

  Neither man moved – as much by disinclination as in rebellious assertion of their manhood. ‘These nurses!’ Frankie cried. ‘The first thing I’m going to do when I get out is date that one and break her bloody heart for her!’

  ‘I doubt if she’d be interested,’ Edward said, returning from the light-switch where he’d gone to restore the soothing, healing twilight. ‘I know you kill them, Frankie, but that one, I think you’d find she’s wed to her sputum mugs and
bedpans.’

  ‘All chicks are interested,’ Frankie said, ‘unless they’re frigid.’

  ‘You sure of that? I think there are some who centre it all on their vocation or on just one single man.’

  ‘Sex, boy, is a woman’s chief vocation: and plenty of it.’

  ‘Frankie: it ever occurred to you that your experience, really, is very limited?’

  ‘Mine? Well! Well, if you say so, officer.’

  ‘I mean this: you don’t know about other kinds of women because you’ve never met them; and you’ve never met them because you’re only interested in them if they play it your way.’

  ‘Well – that may be. But you, Ted: you consider your experience is so varied, then?’

  ‘No – not varied but I think it’s deep.’

  ‘Deep? Yeah? Excuse the question, boy. That girl of yours: she’s not your one and only by any chance is she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought maybe so. You mean the only one you ever had?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At your age? And you say you’ve got experience? And frankly, Ted: can I say this? that girl of yours: I know she’s a loyal kid and worships you and all the rest of it but … well, she wears glasses! And she doesn’t dress very sharp, now, does she? I mean, with a chick like that in spite of all her qualities I think you’re bound to have a very blinkered vision.’

  ‘If you wear blinkers, Frankie, you see straight: straight ahead and see where you’re going to all on one track. I don’t think it’s real sex always to begin again and again with someone else: I don’t think you add to it or build anything or go really deep.’

  ‘That “deep” again: you’ve been in deep with that lass?’

  ‘The longer it lasts the further we both seem to be from ever coming to the end of each other. I think real sex, Frankie, is quite simple: it’s one girl.’

  ‘But you’ve not tried others.’

  ‘I still think what I say.’