Kid Gloves

by Adam Mars-Jones

  Except that Dad never mentioned it, and I never heard the anecdote from family friends, many of whom were lawyers. It’s not so salacious an anecdote as to be impossible, revealing nothing more disreputable than roguishness, so perhaps his prudish side led him to be discreet by the time he had children, children whom he wanted brought up in the belief that a wedding night was an encounter between two trembling virgins. Or perhaps the story has been misattributed. It sometimes happens that an anecdote becomes detached from its original subject, and either melts away or migrates towards a new owner, someone deemed to be larger than life.

  In the case of another story I can immediately declare its falsity, though its source is an ex-registrar of Westminster County Court who knew Dad at the relevant period. If Dad had appeared as an extra in the film of Thunderball, thanks to the intervention of a grateful Kevin McClory, if it had even been mentioned as a possibility, over one drink or twenty, we would have heard all about it.

  There were times in his lifetime when Dad’s exporting of his vitality seemed actively preposterous. I remember returning to the Gray’s Inn flat one evening in my teens when a small parental drinks party was breaking up. I used the stairs, slowing down as I heard the social hubbub above me on the third floor, so that I hung back instead of showing myself and joining the group of half-a-dozen guests gathered on the landing, putting on their coats.

  Dad was presiding over the dissolution of the party. He pressed the button to summon the lift and then pinched his nose with his fingers to give his voice a grating Tannoy quality. Oh my God, I thought, he’s not going to do that old routine, surely! The lift-operator routine, so embarrassing, predictable and out of date. ‘Third floor, going down …’ he intoned. ‘Ladies’ lingerie, hats and gloves …’ Was he going to find some new twist to freshen up the whole cringe-making performance? No he wasn’t. He didn’t need to. Still holding his nose, he bent his knees so as to give a poor impression of someone sinking out of sight … and everyone copied his stance, laughing helplessly. Sophisticated grown-ups seemed to be entirely under his spell, though admittedly with alcoholic help.

  I might have been watching footage of some strange cult. Dad was some sort of hypnotist, and his audience was well and truly under. It was like the children’s game of ‘Simon says’, except that Dad was Simon, and so he didn’t need to say ‘Simon says’ to get his way. He just said things, and people surrendered all resistance.

  How do I measure up to Dad? I’m a taller make of man than he was, so wearing his trousers would be out of the question even if I had them taken in. Any shirt of his would leave my wrists to dangle, but I keep his singlets of sea island cotton (‘Sunspel for Austin Reed’) in circulation, and for quite a time wore his Japanese Burberry knock-off fawn raincoat, which was almost long enough in the arms.

  The splendid Preacher of Gray’s Inn, Roger Holloway, was about the same height and build as Dad (though trimmer) so it was to him I offered first refusal on his clothes. I’ve really only seen agitated clergymen jumping up and down wearing nothing but their underclothes in Ben Travers farces, but Roger was powered by wild joy rather than panic as a succession of velvet smoking jackets came to light. It turned out also that some ceremonial items of judicial wear were indistinguishable from what clerics are supposed to wear on similar occasions. Perhaps some buttons needed to be altered, but from that day forward Roger didn’t need to visit Westminster, in the run-up to gala events, to pester minor canons of a suitable size for their finery.

  Dad’s cheap-looking wardrobe wasn’t itself a coveted piece of furniture, and even desirable items like the dining-table went off to auction – in Yorkshire, since we had been advised that larger pieces sold better there.

  The little utility chest of drawers, though, from the bedroom I shared with Tim (where the comic that showed me the instructively tender men lurked) now sits immediately next to the desk where I write, as if it had followed me patiently around with its message of reassurance, wagging its tail, waiting for this moment of acknowledgement. Its bottom drawer no longer contains anything that might challenge the patriarchy.

  In fact the chest, as well as its cargo of not quite Gatsby-grade underwear, is now the home of miscellaneous patriarchal souvenirs, such as a pair of white kid gloves trimmed with gold braid. These are relics of the old assize system – it was traditional in various towns to present a judge with such gloves when there were no criminal cases needing to be heard, symbolizing and celebrating the innocence of the populace. Dad received three pairs in his early years as a judge, before the assize system was replaced. I wore my pair in public just the once, at a party with an eighteenth-century theme on Coldharbour Lane, teamed with a loose white shirt, aiming for a dilute Byronic effect. It felt exhilaratingly unwise to be dressed so fancily on a street where you could get into enough trouble wearing clothes of the current epoch.

  There’s also a gleaming cigar box lined in green felt, with a dedication inside: ‘To Mr William L. Mars-Jones, Q.C. In appreciation of the preservation of my stainless character. Swansea Assizes July, 1958.’ Stainless steel, of course, though the effect is slightly undermined by the message merely being typed on a piece of paper and stuck inside the lid of the box. This was from a client who was charged with stealing scrap metal and then trying to sell it back to the people from whom he had stolen it, accused of both law-breaking and idiocy. Considering the way he had been delivered from disgrace, the client might have stumped up for silver, if not platinum, and suppressed the little joke – except that, as Dad tended not to mention, he didn’t work for free.

  There’s also a grey jewellery box (covered with a material vaguely mimicking either velvet or suede) containing another of Dad’s treasures, swathed in cotton wool although the object in question isn’t actually delicate. It looks like a bookmark, about two inches wide, four and a half long, and it’s made of silver. There’s a dove engraved on it, flying downward with a scroll and ribbon in its beak. This is Sheikh Yamani’s Christmas card from 1984. The message in flowery script runs, ‘Ahmad Zaki Yamani / Wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’, then an engraved imitation of the sheikh’s signature in English script, and finally ‘25 December 1984’. The em-phasis on the date of Christmas seems excessive and awkward, as if the sender thought it might vary from year to year. On the other side is engraved a calendar for 1985.

  This is clearly an object de luxe, though I’m not clear about how it’s supposed to provoke admiring comment. Actually used as a bookmark? It’s a bit bulky for that. On a mantlepiece with the other cards? An elaborate but more conventional Christmas card would do the job better. As a desk-top accessory and talking-point? You might say, ‘Shall we make it April the second? According to Sheikh Yamani it’s a Tuesday …’ Leaving it open for your companion to say, ‘I think you mean the day before …’, not believing you until the card has been handed across, with a show of reluctance (he’s a close personal friend), and its full three-and-a-bit ounces weighed in the palm of the hand. Perhaps not even then.

  Three-and-a-bit ounces! To put it in context, if this was luncheon meat, it would make a substantial portion for one.

  As for why Dad was on the receiving end of a silver Christmas card from the Saudi oil minister, I have no idea. If he had been involved in international trade negotiations, I’m sure he would have said. He showed off this mega-trinket at the time, but was mysterious about why he had been sent it. He may have been as much in the dark as anyone else.

  It’s possible that Sheikh Yamani simply carpet-bombed the pages of Who’s Who with his seasonal greetings. I wonder how many of the recipients responded in kind. It
can’t quite have been the usual oh-God-they’ve-sent-us-one-we-have-to-send-them-one mid-December flurry. If there wasn’t a return address as such, there was always the Saudi embassy. I imagine various failed attempts at striking the right note, with drafts beginning ‘Dear Sheikh’ and ‘Dear Ahmad’ following each other into the waste-paper basket. Conversation, perhaps, about whether it wouldn’t really be more sensitive, more reciprocal, to send an Eid greeting (either Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha) at the appropriate time instead, perhaps with a photograph of the family, even some of the children’s artwork, crayon sketch or potato-print. A bit pushy, maybe?

  Silver Christmas card, kid gloves, cigar box. Not a bad haul from the trolley-dash of clearing the parental flat.

  There are other less exotic relics in my keeping, mainly books. The non-legal books in the Gray’s Inn flat were either leather-bound and gold-tooled trophies (A Child’s Garden of Verses, Thy Servant a Dog) that we sons were given as children, or novels belonging to Sheila, either in Book Society editions or The World’s Classics imprint, with its pleasing solid though dinky format. I remember being shocked at the age of twelve or so by Kipling’s brutal realism in Thy Servant a Dog. ‘I found a Badness. I rolled in it. I liked it.’ – was there no limit to the filthiness of print? It seemed astonishing that such obscenity was felt suitable for leather covers, and put in the hands of children.

  The book titles that most tantalized me in Sheila’s library took the form of phrases, like Audrey Erskine Lindop’s The Singer Not the Song (made into a famously campy film, with Dirk Bogarde very much leather-bound in the trouser department and verging on the gold-tooled) or Enid Bagnold’s The Loved and Envied, both of which I read in due course. The World’s Classics books, though they sat very satisfyingly in the hand, were heavier going, Lark Rise to Candleford, Esther Waters, New Grub Street. I don’t think I finished any of them.

  Dad wasn’t a novel reader (if you except The Godfather), saying that he did too much reading in his work to enjoy it as a leisure activity, which is a perfectly reasonable attitude although it’s a distinction that wouldn’t actually occur to a book-lover.

  His taste in reading matter off-duty ran to financial guides and investment magazines, some of them standard news-stand fare and some of them verging on the cabbalistic. I took just one of them from his bookshelves when we cleared the Gray’s Inn flat. It’s called The Campione Report, written by Dr W. G. Hill, JD, and published by Scope Books in 1989. I’ve only just now looked at it. As far as I can see, it might just as well be called Protocols of the Elders of Mammon.

  The Campione Report announces sternly that it ‘may not be reproduced or copied in any way’ and is ‘for use of original buyer only’. Dad’s is ‘confidential registered copy’ no. 748. There’s a disclaimer on an inside page: ‘Whilst reliable sources have been sought out in compiling this book, neither the author, publisher nor distributor can accept any liability for the accuracy of its contents nor for the consequence of any reliance placed upon it.’

  The main text is rather more seductive. ‘Tax havens are like beautiful women …’ purrs a passage headed ‘Is Campione your cup of tea?’. ‘Each one has different charms. Unfortunately, as with the ladies, they often offer a negative characteristic or two as some sort of price in return for enjoying their favours. The charms of Campione are many, the price is low, and the negative aspects are few …’

  It certainly sounds lovely.

  The artificial-sand beach with real palm trees, maintained beautifully at public expense, looks like a set from a Hawaiian travelogue. The churches and schools are absolutely gorgeous, and kept up like no others in Europe. Garbage is picked up free. Unfortunately, the locals still have to pay something for water, gas, electric and telephone. But these services are subsidised …

  There’s no VAT, and foreigners pay no income tax. Visitors can renew their tourist status indefinitely, by walking across the street every three months, into another country, and will never be asked to register with the authorities.

  Subsidized Shangri-la! VAT-free Brigadoon innocent of garbage! Where is this haven? Well, Campione turns out to be a rocky little enclave of Italy entirely inside Switzerland, a square mile huddled round a municipal casino – whose takings are what subsidizes local services. Population (in 1989) 3,000. Historically a place where monks trained local boys to become master masons and stone-cutters, and not exactly a haven, just a place where no-one can be bothered to collect tax, certainly not from foreigners. Campione offers all the benefits of Switzerland, including efficient communications and neutrality in wartime, and none of the disadvantages, such as military service (two months of active duty every summer, for life).

  The philosophy advanced by Dr Hill is Permanent Tourism, though I wonder if Dad was tempted by any of his other publications. Permanent Tourism sounds like anything but fun. Wasn’t the Flying Dutchman a permanent tourist?

  He didn’t consult me about money matters, and to be sure I would have had no economic knowledge to contribute, but there are other paths to prudence. I would have warned him against any financial scheme seemingly inspired by Passport to Pimlico.

  The book’s intended effect of privileged information, oligarchic insiderdom, is immediately undone by the choice of material used for the cover. As Dad’s fingertips stroked this ‘leather-bound’ book of dreams, for which he had paid £50 – more than a pound a page! – didn’t he notice they were in fact meeting a texture reminiscent of the notebooks that were always offered as prizes by the Reader’s Digest, those abject booklets bound in ‘luxurious’ Kidron or Skivertex? This is a dream that crumbles at first touch. It dies under the fingers.

  In real life Dad’s financial dealings were unsteady. After Black Monday in 1987 he asked if I could lend him some money. He had come unstuck with futures – now futures had come home to roost and were sharpening their claws on the present. He seemed only slightly embarrassed about it. No more than if he had run out of stamps, and needed to catch the post.

  In fact it was a good time for him to ask for money, probably the only time in my life I could have helped, since I had a regular income from the Independent without yet having saddled myself with a mortgage. Even so it felt more like a test of loyalty (would I pass him by on the other side?) than a case of real need on his part. How could my few thousand stave off bankruptcy? – which was what he seemed to be saying. But I stumped up and he got his affairs in order, paying me back inside a year.

  We had a family joke about Dad and his reverse financial acumen, wondering what would happen if he ever invested in Krugerrands. Would his fellow benchers be making panicky calls to their brokers from the Senior Combination Room, falling over each other in their rush to get out of what had for so long been a watchword for safe investment, now that it was clearly marked for destruction?

  When I say ‘family’ joke, I mean only the surly confederacy of sons. We didn’t include Sheila in jokes about Dad’s reliable unreliability in money matters. She had to manage its consequences in earnest. Her judgement was better than his, just as her purely intellectual powers were greater, but without the confidence required to impose these advantages on others they go for nothing.

  Only on the humble level of the chromosome did she have the power to overrule the man she had married, in the one small department of life where he could accurately be described as recessive. Her crisp brown-eye instruction overruled his tentative blue-eyed suggestion, so that there were no blue-eyed boys in the family, just the blue-eyed man.

  She also threw her short sight into the mix. Dad was long-sighted and in later life wore half-moon spectacles o
f the sort that seem so perfectly designed for incorporation into judicial body language, particularly the sceptical upward glance at counsel over the rims, that no-one would be shocked to learn that they were worn by judges whose vision needed no correcting.

  Another easy target for our jokes was Dad’s collection of busted bonds – highly decorative certificates conferring rights in abandoned ventures, such as mines and railways, that might in theory be revived and yield a return. (I would love to pretend that one of them was for the New Sombrero Phosphate Co.) In the meantime, framed up, they were attractive examples of nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century engraving. Financial dealings often have an erotic tinge, as witness those sultry, pouting tax havens, and so we decided that ‘busted bonds’ was as close as Dad would allow himself to get to busty blondes.

  After his retirement Dad decided to sell the portfolio of busted bonds he had built up over a decade or more. The bonds tended to be large in format, unmanageable as objects, so he asked my help in taking them to market. He phoned for a taxi and we travelled in high spirits to the address in Regent Street of the dealers who had sold them to him. I think he was expecting grand premises rather than a small office on an upper floor near Hamleys, which turned out to be our destination.

  I don’t quite know why Dad was expecting a hero’s welcome and a large cheque, except for this being the script his temperament always wrote for him. In the end he settled for about a third of what he had paid in the first place. He was crestfallen, naturally, perhaps more about having lost face in front of me than because of the setback itself. Even so he had resilience, and bounced blithely back in a matter of minutes.