The Black Mountains

by Janet Tanner

  Jack stiffened. What the hell did they expect?

  “I’m not given to lying, sir. I shall tell you exactly what happened that day.”

  The judge peered at him narrowly over his spectacles, then cleared his throat.

  “Hmm. I see. Proceed, Mr Scales. I shall decide how much leading of the witness can be permitted as we go along.”

  “Thank you, your honour,” the prosecuting counsel paused for a moment, then went on, “ Perhaps this would be an opportune moment for me to say I am not questioning for one moment the honesty of Mr Jack Hall. It will doubtless be raised at some stage that he has a most distinguished war record. But I would remind you it is not he who is on trial here, but his brother, a much more colourful character, as I believe I have already shown …”

  Jack did not dare look at Charlotte, but he guessed it was all she could do to restrain herself from leaping to her feet and interrupting.

  “Mr Hall,” the prosecuting counsel turned his attention to Jack once more. “A previous witness, an employee of the late Mr Thorne, has already told us how you and your brother came bursting into his office looking for trouble. You did not arrive at the same time as your brother, however. Is that correct?”

  Jack nodded. “I arrived a few minutes after him.”

  “Why?”

  The short sharpness of the question took Jack by surprise.

  “I … I’m sorry, I don’t understand …”

  “You arrived at Mr Thorne’s office a few minutes after your brother had forced his way in, and you, too, charged up the stairs without further ado. I simply ask, why? What was in your mind as you pushed past Mr Thorne’s young lady and ran into the room where your brother was attacking him?”

  “He wasn’t attacking him,” Jack protested.

  “No?” Prosecuting Counsel asked smoothly. “ Then why were you in such a hurry?”

  “Because …” Jack broke off, realizing the trap that had been laid for him, but not knowing how to avoid it, and the prosecuting counsel followed up his advantage.

  “Dare I suggest, Mr Hall, that it was because you suspected your brother was likely to commit some violence on the deceased, and you wished to avert this if at all possible? Come now, you told us just now you are not given to lying. I’m sure in this small point we can expect the truth from a man of your integrity.”

  Helplessly Jack glanced towards the dock and saw his own futile anger mirrored in Ted’s face.

  “An answer if you please, Mr Hall,” Counsel pressed him. “You went to the office, did you not, in the expectation of trouble? Further, you went at the request of your mother, who was also afraid of the violence your brother might perpetrate …”

  “Objection!” Winston Walker was on his feet, but the prosecuting counsel was not to be put off.

  “If necessary, Your honour, I can call witnesses who will say the mother of the accused telephoned Bristol University, where Mr Jack Hall is a student, to ask him to intervene. But I am sure the truthful Mr Hall will verify this for us.”

  Jack nodded wanly. “ Yes, it’s true. Ted had a bone to pick with him.”

  “A bone? A bone to pick with him? Surely, Mr Hall, that is the most ludicrous of understatements? Isn’t it true that your brother was madly jealous of the deceased because he had become engaged to a young lady your brother fancied himself?”

  So that was the way they were going to make it look! Anger flooded Jack’s veins, and he looked at Ted again. Surely, now, he would have to come out with the reasons behind what had happened! He questioned him with his eyes, seeking permission to say more, but Ted’s mulish expression told him nothing that had been said had changed his mind. If anyone raised the true circumstances of Rebecca’s death, he would never forgive him.

  “Well, Mr Hall?” the barrister persisted, and Jack gesticulated wearily.

  “It wasn’t the way you’re making it sound.”

  “Oh, really? Then perhaps you would tell us how it was? Or perhaps his honour would prefer it if I steered you back towards the only thing you can really know about—what happened in Rupert Thorne’s office that fateful day. When you arrived, Mr Hall, when you pushed your way in, what was happening?”

  “They … they were arguing.”

  “Arguing—or quarrelling?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jack snapped. “What’s the difference?”

  The barrister smirked. “All the difference in the world, Mr Hall. An argument smacks of a friendly disagreement, while a quarrel—a quarrel is far more likely to end in violence, wouldn’t you say? Just as this one did! Now, as the argument—as you call it—progressed, did you hear the deceased threaten your brother at all?”

  “No, he … he just …”

  “Yes?”

  “He said he’d call the police if we didn’t get out.”

  “Hardly surprising, I’d have said. And did he attempt to throw you out himself? Use any violence on either of you?”

  “No, he …”

  “But you saw your brother use violence on him. In a completely unprovoked attack.”

  “Unprovoked!” Jack exclaimed, remembering all too clearly the insults to Rebecca’s memory which Rupert had used to taunt Ted. But under his brother’s warning gaze, he said nothing.

  “He only hit him once,” he said lamely.

  “And once, it seems, was more than enough!” Counsel turned dramatically to the listening jury, arms outstretched. “ Gentlemen of the jury, how much clearer does it need to be? With one blow, the defendant murdered an innocent and respected man, a man who had had the misfortune to fall in love with a girl the accused thought of as his own—quite mistakenly, as it happens. For some insane reason, he …”

  The judge stirred restlessly.

  “Thank you, Mr Scales, we will hear your summing up later, no doubt. Now, Mr … ah … Walker, do you have any questions to ask of this witness?”

  Winston Walker rose, doing his best to set the balance to rights, but with Ted’s insistence on keeping silent, it was a hopeless task. With all the skill of his profession, the barrister had succeeded in making Ted into a dangerous lout, and the jury, used to stories of the drunken rowdyism of the Hillsbridge miners, were all too ready to believe every word, particularly when the victim was a highly respected professional man like Rupert Thorne.

  When, at the end of Jack’s evidence, the court adjourned for the day, Winston Walker said as much, standing in the same corridor where Jack had waited this morning.

  “It’s hopeless,” he admitted. “Unless we can persuade Ted to tell them the truth behind what happened, they’ll not only find him guilty—which they’re pretty well bound to do anyways—but the judge is going to be damned hard on him. When I think of a bounder like Thorne it makes me furious, but if Ted won’t help himself, there’s not much I can do.”

  Jack nodded. After his grilling in the dock, he hardly felt like disagreeing.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rosa Clements standing uncertainly by the door, and excusing himself from the others, he went over to her.

  “Rosa, don’t run away. I’ll buy you a cup of tea.”

  As he said it, he wondered briefly if she might think he was trying to resurrect old relationships, but clearly she was too worried and too preoccupied for such a thought even to enter her head.

  “Oh, Jack, what are they doing?” she asked. “ They’re making it sound all wrong. I know Ted’s got a temper when he’s roused, but there must have been more to it than that.”

  “There was,” Jack said “Becky died because of an abortion that went wrong.”

  He heard the quick intake of her breath, and saw the stark pain in her eyes. “ You mean she was …”

  “Having a baby. Yes.”

  “I saw her, coming out of your house! She’d been to tell your Mam, had she? Was it Ted’s?”

  Jack shook his head. “ It was Thorne’s.”

  “Thorne’s? But she … she wasn’t that sort of girl.”

  “Exa
ctly. That’s why Ted went mad when he found out … that, and the rest.”

  “What rest?”

  “He gave her the stuff that killed her, something to get rid of the baby, only it went wrong. He admitted it to us when we went to see him. It’s no wonder Ted hit him. He just sat there, smug as you like, saying things …” Words failed him.

  Rosa’s hand was over her mouth, and her eyes were closed. After a moment she said, “He must tell them.”

  “He won’t. He’s too concerned about protecting Becky’s memory. He says he knows she would never have gone with that bastard willingly, but who else would believe it?”

  Rosa’s eyebrows made a fine dark line on her pale oval face.

  “I would.”

  “Why, did you know him?”

  “No, but I knew her. She was too much of a prig ever to …” She broke off, reddening. “ I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But I …”

  “I know,” he said softly.

  “It just makes me so angry. What’s the point of keeping quiet about something like that? The dead are gone. It can’t hurt them. But Ted … they can’t lock him up again! Not after what he’s been

  through! Oh Jack, I won’t let them …”

  Her voice tailed away, but before Jack could wonder what she

  meant, he was aware of Charlotte standing beside them, her eyes

  cold with dislike as they rested on Rosa.

  “Good afternoon, Rosa. Jack, are you going to take me back to

  the train, or shall we go and have a cup of tea somewhere first?

  Mr Walker has some work to do preparing for tomorrow.”

  He nodded. “All right, Mam, we’ll go for a cup of tea. Rosa…”

  But the sloe-dark eyes were veiled again.

  “No, thank you, Jack.”

  Then, without another word, she turned and walked away.

  “What did she want?” Charlotte asked suspiciously.

  For a moment Jack did not reply. Then, “You always knew the

  way things were with Rosa, Mam,” he said quietly.

  JACK SLEPT little that night. He tossed and turned in the narrow bed at his digs, the happenings of the day jostling in his mind.

  Ted was going to be sent to prison, there was no doubt of it, and he personally was aching to stand up and denounce the saintly Rupert Thorne to the entire court. It was more than infuriating to see the jury left ignorant in this way—it was a travesty of justice. But he was helpless to do anything about it. If Ted wouldn’t have the truth brought up, it was not for him to do it, and in a way he respected his broker’s reasons.

  What Mam was going to do if Ted was sent to prison was something else that worried him. She was upset of course, by the whole proceedings, but still touchingly confident that in the end justice would prevail. If Ted was found guilty—as Jack was becoming convinced he would be—she was going to take it very hard indeed. The thought of her son being branded a common criminal, and locked away, would push her to the limits, and Jack was not sure her health could take it any more. Once, maybe, but not now. Not since the pneumonia …

  Incensed by a feeling of helplessness, he pushed back the bedclothes, sitting up against the pillows, and for some reason he found himself thinking of his sleepless nights in hospital during the war.

  Musing, he found himself going back to those days, and in particular to Stella O’Halloran, with her sound common sense and the cheerful brand of good humour that had helped so many men through a crisis in their lives. In different circumstances, he thought, I believe we could have made a go of it, but it had all seemed so thoroughly impossible then. He’d been too busy feeling sorry for himself, and she’d probably never seen him as anything other than another patient.

  Where was she nowadays, he wondered. Maybe she had stayed abroad, married some other patient who had had the sense to sweep her off her feet.

  Jack shifted the stump that she had helped him to accept, and asked himself why he minded the thought of that so much now, when he’d scarcely given her a thought in two years. Because of the similarity of the situation, he supposed. Because of the way lying awake and worrying had brought it all back.

  The first soft light of dawn began to creep through the curtains and he got up, reaching for his leg and strapping it on. He’d go for a walk—anything rather than lie here thinking. He’d watch the city waking up, and then, maybe, things would come into perspective a little, and he would find some fresh resource of courage with which to face whatever the day brought.

  WHEN THE court reassembled for the day, later than the previous day, because of some legal nobody seemed anxious to explain, the whole atmosphere seemed hostile, and Jack, looking at the faces of the jury, felt sure that they had already made up their minds. Even the judge, sitting hunched in his throne-like seat above the well of the court, looked as if he deemed the result a foregone conclusion.

  Jack, having given his evidence, had been able to go in with Charlotte today, and Amy too had joined them to show family solidarity. Rosa was there again too, still sitting at the opposite side of the gallery, and not exchanging so much as a glance with any of the Halls except Jack.

  The morning began with the conductor of the omnibus which had brought Ted to Bristol that fateful afternoon giving evidence as to how he had sat stony-faced the whole journey and given the impression of being in a bad temper when buying his ticket. Winston Walker, who intimated to Jack that the prosecution had probably not realized Ted would be legally represented when they had decided to put the bus conductor in the box, managed to demolish his evidence fairly satisfactorily, but when the prosecution barrister came back for his re-examination the questions he put were so sharply slanted and so pertinent that Jack felt he had undone any good Winston Walker might have done.

  By the time the prosecuting counsel had finished, the case he had presented seemed so rational that it was almost impossible to believe that events could have happened any way other than that he described, and when he sat down, Jack was convinced that any last doubt that may have lingered in a juror’s mind would have been well and truly dispelled.

  Then it was Winston Walker’s turn, but it was clear that whatever he said, and however well he said it, without disclosing the mitigating circumstances there was no way in which he could defend Ted against the destructive case that had been built up against him.

  Jack felt his spirits sink lower and lower, and when they adjourned for lunch it was a dejected party who crossed the road for a bite to eat. Charlotte, for once, seemed to have nothing to say, and both Jack and Amy felt things were too serious for any trivial small talk.

  But, when they made their way back to the courthouse, Jack was surprised to find Rosa Clements deep in conversation with Winston Walker. There was a great deal of shaking of heads and waving of hands, but Jack could not hear what was going on, and at last the barrister came over to him, his pleasant face pink with anxiety.

  “That young lady—Miss Clements—was asking me if she could give evidence on Ted’s behalf. I’ve told her …”

  “What!” Charlotte demanded, finding her voice and using it to interrupt him. “ Rosa Clements give evidence for our Ted? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

  “What’s she going to say?” Jack asked.

  “It’s a character reference of some kind, I believe. She won’t say exactly what.”

  “You can’t let her!” Charlotte said sharply.

  Winston Walker spread his hands on the wooden dividing bar, pressing down until the knuckles turned white.

  “It’s unusual, I admit. I’m not even sure if the judge will allow me to introduce an extra witness at this late stage. But if he will, I believe we should let her do it. Our case is so thin, we need all the sympathy we can get.”

  “Hah!” Charlotte exploded. “She’s looking for a chance to twist the knife, if you ask me. And she’d have cause. There’s trouble between her and me—and the boys, too. There’s no telling what she’d say to get he
r own back.”

  “Oh, dear, and I was hoping …” Winston Walker began, and Jack laid a hand on his arm. Like the others, he was unsure of what Rosa was going to say, but unlike them, he was quite certain it would be nothing to harm Ted. He remembered her anxiety yesterday, and the expression in her eyes when she had said, “They can’t lock him up—I won’t let them.” Then, there was the fact that she was here. Charlotte might think she had come to gloat. Jack knew she had not.

  And lastly, there was her appearance. To Charlotte and Amy, she was still Rosa, the skinny urchin of doubtful parentage, looked down on by most folk in Hillsbridge. But Jack could see her as the jury would see her—and he knew they would be impressed. She was not only beautiful, she had an air of self-possession that would lend credence to anything she might say.

  “Let her go into the witness box, Mr Walker,” Jack said. “No, don’t look at me like that, Mam, I haven’t taken leave of my senses. Mr Walker’s right. Unless we do something drastic our Ted is going to go to prison, maybe for a long time. Do you want that?”

  “No, of course not, but …” “Then let Rosa go in the box. If she can.”

  THERE WERE consultations and wranglings, but clearly, the prosecuting counsel was so sure of having made out his case that at last he gave way, and it was agreed to let Rosa go into the witness box. She stood there, a slight, proud figure, chin held high, dark eyes challenging all those who looked at her with curious gazes. She took the oath in a voice that was low but firm. But she never so much as glanced in Ted’s direction.

  “Miss Clements, you have gone into the witness box to tell this court what you know of Ted Hall. Is that correct?” Winston Walker began, somewhat tentatively.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “You have known him a long while?”

  “All my life. He’s a very fine man.”

  “You sound very fond of him, Miss Clements. So as to put the record straight, I’d like to establish right away what is your relationship with the accused.”

  A muscle tightened in her cheek. “None. We were friends for a time. Nothing more.”

  “But you believe Ted Hall to be incapable of the kind of violence he is accused of?”