A Good Woman

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Paul is arguing that in all these cases the women were utterly unaware of what they were doing. They were as unconscious of their pregnancies as they were of the murderous act.

  ‘The child for them doesn’t exist,’ he says. ‘The birth is like stomach ache or vomiting or a period, a purely physical event, so they can flush or throw or wash its product away.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ I protest. ‘Of course they knew. And if they preferred not to know, someone would have pointed out the pregnancy to them. Stop behaving like a defence lawyer. We’re not in court.’

  His eyes leap and glow more vividly than ever in the warm light that billows from the airy lamp above us.

  ‘And you can stop behaving like a narrow-minded judge. Just try to understand for a moment. We’re talking of women who live in silence, surrounded by silence. Unlike most women they have no fantasy life about the child in the womb. It doesn’t exist for them as a visualized, imagined being. They don’t take its unborn presence in psychically. The child is never named in speech, so it simply isn’t there. And because it hasn’t been there before, it isn’t there after either, as a real being.

  I shake my head stubbornly. ‘I still can’t see it.’

  ‘Well then imagine the pregnancy as a cancer. A cancer can exist for years without your being aware of it. It isn’t there until it’s named.’

  ‘A cancer doesn’t protrude a foot in front of you, so that chairs have to be moved back, tables.’

  I gesture dramatically at where my stomach would be and catch a little lick of desire in his eyes. It vanishes at my icy glance.

  ‘So you tell yourself, if you tell yourself anything at all, that you’re putting on weight, that you’ll eventually go on a diet.’

  ‘But all these women lived with husbands, parents. Or they had boyfriends.’

  ‘And they were all complicit in the silence. Look, we’re not talking here about families, couples, who discuss problems. They avert their eyes and their feelings from one another. The seventeen year old had just been moved to a new school and a new parental set-up. She had no friends. The provincial woman had kept the humiliating, obviously traumatic, rape secret, even from herself. Silence about the rest was almost an inevitable progression. If any blame is to be attributed, it lies as much with the families as with the women.’

  He pauses, looks at me almost beseechingly.

  ‘I’ll give you that,’ I say. ‘But I still think that somewhere they know.’

  ‘Somewhere. But not somewhere conscious. Not somewhere that exists in words. If you don’t understand silence, Maria, you can’t understand half of what we call crime. Action, violent action, doesn’t happen in words.’ He stares at me for a moment as if he’s reading me. ‘I know. For someone who lives in speech and with an internal dialogue, the inner silence in which crimes happen is almost unimaginable.’

  ‘I don’t see why what you call silence should equal diminished responsibility.’ I am still adamant, unbending. I am so, I realise, because I understand too well what he is saying. I recognize it. But I judge it harshly.

  Paul raises his glass to me and suddenly chuckles. ‘I’m glad I haven’t got you on my next jury. Half of my work in a trial is to try to put into words what hasn’t been in words before. To make it comprehensible to the jury. To put words to the irrational. Obviously I’m not succeeding now. I bet your parents talked to you non-stop when you were little, aired problems, commented on each of your foibles.’

  ‘My mother.’ I correct him, because I want to argue every inch of the way. ‘There was no father.’

  ‘Oh? You never mentioned that.’

  I have unwittingly opened the way to a barrage of unwanted questions, so with an aggressive edge, I turn the tables on him, ‘Why are you so interested in murder, Paul?’ My life is not a subject I want to discuss with him.

  His face stiffens into a closed mask at my question. ‘It’s my work,’ he replies dully and concentrates on his plate.

  There is something in his posture which makes me feel remorseful.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m giving you a hard time,’ I mumble.

  He looks up at me and smiles a melting smile. ‘No, no. It’s important to argue these things through. That’s why it’s nice to have you here.’ He chuckles, ‘Half the time, I’m only trying things on.’

  I meet his smile. ‘I’ve noticed.’ I have. Paul is often most vociferous in arguing opinions which patently run counter to his own. I enjoy the play of it and the energy.

  I imagine Jennifer Walters did too, whatever the status of Paul’s English.

  -19-

  But for its copper dome topped by a gilt figure of justice, the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, has nothing of the grandeur of the Palais de Justice. Inside everything is grey shabbiness and pallid, furtive faces as if court and prison waiting rooms had doubled up to become one and the same. I remember having read somewhere that the huge Newgate prison was once a stone’s throw from here. Perhaps that has tainted my vision.

  The public seats in the courtroom I am directed to are all but filled. I squeeze in at the end of a row next to a plump woman in a bright turquoise suit and crimped blond hair. There is an overwhelming scent of cheap perfume coming from her. I am tempted to move, but she addresses me before I can do so.

  ‘This your first time here, duck?’

  I nod.

  ‘Mine, too. It’s ever so exciting. Poor old Martha, though, eh. D’you know her?’

  It takes me a moment to make out that she’s speaking of the accused and I shake my head.

  ‘No? Poor old thing. Right old sod, he was, beating her and the kids black and blue. Deserved it, he did. Still she oughtn’t to have cut him up like that, head ‘n all. Guess she weren’t in her right mind, like.’

  I warm to the woman. Change her accent, put in a few high-sounding terms and she would make an excellent expert witness. Even her perfume becomes beguiling. ‘Are you a neighbour?’ I ask her.

  ‘Used to be. Until he took her off. Didn’t like her having friends. Poor old thing.’ She shakes her head sadly.

  There is increased activity at the front of the hall and I make a quick note of the fact that the lay-out of dock and bench and jury seats and witness stand are unlike the French, but like what I know from American television. For the moment though, I would rather listen to my neighbour.

  ‘Are you a witness?’ I ask her.

  ‘Me? No way. Solicitor came to see me though,’ she says with a touch of pride. ‘I told him I weren’t no good at public speaking, but if Martha really needed me… I went to see her in the nick. Very quiet, she was. Too quiet, like. I offered to look after the kids. I liked them two brats when they were little. But they’d taken them off into care. Not right, is it, after how hard she tried to give ’em the best and keep them out of the old geyser’s way?’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘You foreign?’ she looks me up and down with sudden suspicion.

  I nod. ‘French.’

  This cheers her. ‘My eldest went to Paris last year, with her school ‘n all. Said it was beautiful. You know Paris?’

  I nod again, just as a voice from the front calls ‘The Court will rise.’

  This doesn’t deter my neighbour, ‘Like your blouse. And that pin. Just wait until I tell Cyn, that’s my eldest, I sat right next to a French women.’ She beams at me and I smile back.

  The entrance of the wigged judge, as resplendent as a cardinal, silences us. He sits down with regal slowness and nods at the room. A pair of spectacles sit at the end of his nose and he peers at us, like an ancient owl, then clears his throat. The jury is sworn in. I notice there are an equal number of men and women. Then a small pale woman appears in the dock. She is all jutting bones and wispy hair, looks fifty though I know her to be thirty-four and so frail that I can hardly believe she had the necessary strength for her act. A policewoman is holding her up. The handcuffs she unlocks seem utterly futile. The tension i
n the room mounts palpably.

  ‘Poor old Martha,’ my neighbour whispers again, shaking her head.

  I take out my notebook and try to jot down significant details, but at first there is so much legalese I haven’t quite assimilated yet, that the going is rough. The Prosecutor’s droning monotone doesn’t help matters and I wonder whether the jury can hear him better. What I make out most clearly are the ‘My Lord’s’ and ‘Learned counsel’s’. But then the witnesses begin to come in and things grow clearer. Unlike the French courts, the material witnesses come first. There is no primary attempt to establish the personality of the accused or the victim. We are in the realm of hard evidence: scene of crime reports, police testimony, the washing line rope which was used to tie the husband to the bed, the kitchen knife which pierced six times, the body stored in the cupboard for days and then dismembered and disposed of over the coming weeks.

  It is this last sequence of events which seems to count most heavily against Martha Roberts. Jennifer Walters bobs up and down, to intervene, to cross-examine, her voice as large as her frame is small. Her language is mercifully straightforward.

  ‘In your long experience, Inspector, could a woman of Martha Roberts’ stature have inflicted the blows we have heard described, unless she were in a state of frenzy, a state of acute mental stress which took her outside herself? Look at the accused please.’

  All eyes turn on Martha Roberts and the Inspector mumbles, ‘It does seem unlikely.’

  ‘Did the jury hear that?’ the judge asks, constantly solicitous of the jury’s well-being. ‘Might I ask you to repeat what you have just said, Inspector?’

  The Inspector dutifully repeats his words and is politely thanked.

  ‘Are you finished with this witness, Counsel? Then we’ll call a break until 2.30.’

  The court rises as the judge walks heavily from the room. My neighbour attempts a wave at Martha Roberts then turns to me. ‘Noticed a pub opposite. Fancy a bite?’

  I follow her to the pub, buy us two meat pies which would make a French chef hang up his hat for all eternity, and sip the lager my neighbour, whom I have now learnt is called Lorna Stott, has provided.

  ‘It’s ‘cause of the kids, isn’t it?’ she says to me.

  I don’t follow her.

  ‘‘Cause of the kids she did it. Didn’t tell, I mean. And cut him up and all. ‘Cause of the kids.’

  ‘You mean because he was doing horrid things to them?’

  ‘That too,’ she nods sagely. ‘But she knew if she told, confessed ‘n all, they’d take them away from her. So she said he’d gone on a trip instead. But then she couldn’t live with it like and she told in any case. Poor old Martha.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s right.’

  She looks up from the meat pie she has been swivelling round her plate and which she obviously finds as unpalatable as I do, and says brightly, ‘If my old Steve had treated me like that pig of a Tom treated her, I’d of left him straight off, I tell you. But she couldn’t. Beaten into the ground she was. Thought she loved him, too.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she insists when I give her an incredulous look. ‘He wasn’t so bad in the first month or three. Good- looking bloke in those days. And then the kids came and it was too late. Trapped, she was.’

  She chuckles in the midst of her mournful expression. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing mine went and died before he turned pig. You married?’

  I shake my head.

  She gives me a curious look. ‘You so good looking ‘n all. Don’t they go in for marriage in France then?’

  I laugh, ‘Some do. Some don’t.’

  ‘Ya well. Not what’s it made out to be, is it? What you doing here then?’

  I tell her and by then it’s time to troop back to the court room. What interests me in the course of the afternoon is that Jennifer Walters’ defence seems to be bringing us round to the same interpretation of events as my wise neighbour’s, who watches and listens as avidly as I do and pokes me with her elbow whenever she is particularly excited by a point.

  We hear from the friend whom Martha ultimately confessed to, some four months after the killing. Stanley Moore. He is a printer, a thin stalk of a man whose grey head seems too large for his body. His voice is nervous, but gentle as he describes how he met Martha at the local clinic when they were both waiting to see the doctor. They started going out for drinks together, an occasional movie, took the kids to the circus. Then one night, when he had mentioned how well they got on and perhaps they might think of hitching up, Martha started to cry. Unstoppably. And in the midst of tears, the story came out. Yes, he was shocked. At first he didn’t believe it. It was so out of character. She was such a quiet, sweet woman, so concerned for her children. He had had to convince her more than once that it was alright to leave them for a few hours in the care of a neighbour’s daughter.

  Then she had given him a vague picture of her marriage, no horrendous details, mind, she wasn’t a complainer, but he had got the gist, and then he had believed her, had understood she had been driven. He had told her to go to the police.

  ‘It was you who told her to go to the police?’ prosecuting counsel asks, but only to emphasize the point.

  Mr Moore nods and rushes on explaining that Martha had quickly agreed. One couldn’t live with something like that. But it was as if it were the first time she had thought about the whole thing since it had happened, as if it weren’t her who had done it, not the real her.

  ‘But it was Mrs. Roberts, by her own admission,’ the prosecutor quickly underlines.

  Mr. Moore nods.

  ‘Was that a yes, Mr. Moore?’ the judge nudges him.

  ‘Yes, your Lordship,’ Mr. Moore speaks his answer.

  Jennifer Walters bounds to her feet.

  ‘When Martha Roberts confessed to you, Mr. Moore, you had the impression she was talking about someone else, as if the person who had committed the crime were someone else. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So that although Martha Roberts knew it was she herself who had committed the crime, she could no longer imagine how she had done it.’

  Mr. Moore hangs his large head, then looks up suddenly.

  ‘That’s right. She had been beaten out of her right mind.’ He waves his hands about angrily.

  Jennifer pauses for a significant moment, then asks, ‘Do you still see the accused, Mr. Moore?

  Mr. Moore looks across the room into the dock as if he wants to catch Martha’s eye, but Martha has her gaze fixed to the floor.

  ‘I visit her every week,’ he says.

  Only when he leaves the witness stand, does she look after him. She has the air of someone who is drowning. I can almost hear the gasps in her breath and I imagine that her life is passing before her eyes and it is too late to unmake any of its limited choices. And the last hope, this gentle, chivalrous man, cannot save her from the waters.

  When we are called to rise, for a moment I cannot get to my feet. My neighbour has to prod me before I remember where I am and that this first day of the trial has come so quickly to an end.

  As I leave the Old Bailey, I look back at the gilded figure of justice - sword in one hand, scales in the other, a blindfold round her eyes. Why is justice blind, I wonder. The hope must be that differences between rich and poor, differences in status, colour, gender are invisible to her: she is utterly impartial. Her sword cuts straight down the middle. But her blindness can surely also make her arbitrary, capricious as random and mercurial in her choices as that other blind figure in the ancient pantheon - Cupid.

  Love and justice. Riddles I live through, but cannot solve.

  -20-

  At night the Thames acquires a magic which eludes it by day. Twinkling lights bring the shores closer together, build a second city in the waters depths, blur the squatness of buildings, illuminate the graceful arch of bridges.

  From our table in the Grill Room, while Robinson studies the wine list, I see it all. I also see how well th
e years sit on him. The deeper etching of lines on his face has done nothing but give it a greater austerity, a seriousness which seems truer to him than the lustre of hair and eyes, offset by the dark blues of shirt and linen suit. He has dressed for the occasion, in homage to the Savoy I imagine. So have I.

  Perhaps that accounts for the unease between us: despite the warmth of the initial embrace, we are as awkward with each other as adolescents on a blind date, tiptoing into questions across the tense hush of silences. It is unlike us. But perhaps, Robinson, like me, has something to hide. Or perhaps it is simply the weight of all those bedrooms above us which neither of us knows whether we want to share or not.

  ‘Will a Bordeaux do, a Chateau d’Issan?’ Robinson asks with all the earnestness usually saved for major questions.

  ‘Admirably.’ I try an ice-breaking smile which turns into a titter. ‘I’ll start, shall I? The yearly round-up - or is it more?’

  ‘More,’ he looks gravely into the middle distance.

  I rush on. ‘I’ve given up New York. Or rather it’s given me up. And I’ve changed jobs, you’ll be pleased to hear. I’m doing something a little serious for a change.’

  ‘None too soon, I’m sure,’ he grins and for a moment I have that old urge to argue with him about the relative merits of the profession I stumbled into. But I don’t. I tell him instead as wine is poured and grilled mushrooms consumed, about my new job, about the trial I went to today.

  Robinson listens with his usual attention, but his shoulders are still taut and he still hasn’t met my eyes. It’s like it was in the beginning. He prefers not to see me. Something I read - about the distance that separates people who prioritize seeing from those who hear - leaps into my mind and I lose my thread. Robinson is one of the listeners. Like a puritan iconoclast or ancient Hebrew, he rejects the image as mere superfice, a gaudy distraction, a shallow travesty of the pure inner and invisible truth, which can only come as voice. God’s voice to Moses on the mountain, loading him with obligations. Whereas I, whatever my mother’s admonitions, am a creature of appearances, heir to a Catholicism of incarnate gods, plump or lean, painted or hewn, but always visible.