The Loner, page 29
“I’m surprised there are five. A year ago there would have been none.”
“That’s not the point.”
Mark felt the ground fall from under his argument. His view of the World had taken so many shocks since he had come to Liverpool that he was beginning to question his own ideas, and to wonder where their questioning was leading.
“I suppose it’s all right if you’re intelligent,” he said hesitantly. “But w-what if you’re not? Students may be O.K. but what about the w-working classes?’
Fiona, who had been educated at a grammar school on the Wirral and had idealised notions about the working classes, now clearly understood that Mark was getting carried away with his peculiarly jaundiced ideas. She felt sorry for him, as he obviously needed help, understanding, and an explanation of how the real world worked.
“It’s true there will always be addicts,” she said calmly, trying not to sound patronising. “If you take away heroin, the addicts will die of addiction to something else – alcohol, meths! But nobody – nobody with any sense – will get addicted to hard drugs. You shouldn’t talk about the working classes. Everyone is a worker now – and even the dimmest moron has enough sense to avoid addiction. If what you say is true, whole cities will become ghettoes of addiction. Take Liverpool, for example; do you think that could ever happen in a city like this?”
And so she silenced him. Not even Mark could have foreseen a prospect as bad as that.
Some days later, Mark was busying himself with studying for his final degree exams in his favourite room in the public library. There was a lot to do, and time was getting short. It was the fifth time he had read through his notes on Land Law. A copy of Cheshire’s Law of Real Property lay open on his table.
He looked around. Fiona was not there that day, but the other regular users of the room were: the man with clothes stuffed with newspapers; the little man who disappeared behind the shelves every now and again to smoke some stale and evil smelling tobacco; and the others.
Then Mark realised that there was another tramp there who he’d never seen before – or had he? As Mark fixed his eyes on him to examine him more thoroughly, the man turned his eyes away, as if he was too ashamed to look Mark in the face.
In his smelly old clothes and shrivelled features, the man was hardly recognisable. And then to Mark’s absolute horror, he realised who it was. It was Tony, the former solicitor’s clerk, who had lived in the hostel not so very long ago.
Then a sudden sense of anger surged through Mark’s mind. He could not concentrate on his studies any longer. He had to get out of that room. He picked up his books and his notes, and left the table in great haste. He fetched his imitation sheepskin coat, and set out from the library, full of purpose and indignation. He strode up the road: through Rodney Street, along Catherine Street, until he came to the girls’ flat in Canning Street. He rang the bell furiously.
Fiona answered and opened the door to him. She noticed his enraged expression and tried to guess the reason for it. “Why, Mark, what’s up with you?” she asked. “Anyone looking at you would think you’d just had a religious conversion. You look so determined. What’s the matter? Has anyone been upsetting you?”
“Yes, you.” There was a fanatical gleam in Mark’s eyes, as he followed her upstairs.
“What? Me?” She ushered him into the flat, gasping with surprise. “Whatever have I done to upset you Mark?”
“It’s all those weird ideas of yours – about drugs and other things!”
Fiona shook her head sadly; Mark’s moods were so unpredictable. Susan, who was also in the common room, looked up from some knitting she was doing. “If you don’t like our ideas, you don’t have to come here,” she snapped icily.
Fiona was more patient. “I don’t understand you, Mark,” she said in a conciliatory tone. “You’ve been visiting us regularly for nearly a year now, and we’ve talked about all sorts of subjects, old ones, as well as trendy ones. You’ve never agreed with us – but you’ve never taken offence either. So what’s made you change now?”
“It’s the damage your trendy ideas could cause. I never realised before – but now I know.”
His voice had the confidence of a kind of unreasoning fanaticism she had never sensed before. Fiona decided to bring him down to earth by applying reason, as she had so often done before. “Why, Mark?” she asked, humouring him. “Why don’t you tell us what’s made you think this way?”
Mark told them the tragic story of his friend Tony, who had become a tramp.
Fiona was not convinced. “I can’t see what tranquilizers and medicines have got to do with recreational drugs,” she said coolly.
“Strikes me you should blame your friend’s shrink rather than the modern trend,” was Susan’s acid comment. “Anyone who goes to a shrink must be a nutcase anyway! So why should you care about your friend? His fate was probably inevitable – whatever drugs he took.” Sue did not, of course, know she was speaking to another patient of the same psychiatrist.
“But, can’t you see? Tony’s end has everything to do with drugs,” Mark insisted, bravely ignoring Susan’s last comment.
“Why?”
“It’s depending on something that’s not natural. That’s the point. Tony came to depend on those drugs – he couldn’t do without them. Now you and your friends want everyone to try drugs...”
“That’s not right,” Fiona corrected, taking a cigarette. “I don’t take drugs. All I’ve said is that some drugs should be available to everyone – like tobacco.”
“Well, anyway, if they’re available, people can end up depending on them.”
The girl lit the cigarette and sighed. “You’re exaggerating, Mark,” she said calmly. “Besides, nearly all students think the same as us. So do some lecturers – and lecturers at the University too. It’s the modern trend, Mark. There’s nothing wrong with it – even if the use of all the drugs we’re talking about is against the Law! There’s so many people who favour drugs, they can’t all be wrong.”
“It’s still unnatural,” Mark repeated. “All the lecturers and professors in the world can’t make something natural out of what’s unnatural.”
Fiona smiled. It was a faint, but condescending smile. “You know, Mark, you say you’re glad to be away from that awful school of yours. But, deep down, I reckon you’re a snob. All these old ideas of yours! I do believe your view of nature has more to do with Stoic philosophy and the British stiff upper lip, than things which are really natural. Why don’t you give them up, Mark? try to be trendy for a change; you won’t get on if you don’t.”
Mark suddenly became very angry. His face burnt red with rage. “I won’t,” he stormed. “I won’t. All your trendy ideas are weak. Weak!” He repeated the word with renewed fury. “If I’d fallen for them, it would be the end of me, as it is with Tony.”
The girl stayed very calm, and replied wearily: “Aren’t you confusing two different things, Mark? Your friend didn’t take drugs, because his ideas were trendy, did he? His doctor prescribed them.”
This distinction had no effect. “That doesn’t matter,” Mark rejoined excitedly, his words coming so close together that they were almost unintelligible. “It’s not what happened to Tony that makes me so angry, as what could happen to others who follow the trend. A trend which destroys people must be weak.”
Fiona watched him patiently, and postponed her reply until his anger and flow of words had died away a little. Then she said, with a sly and knowing smile: “And what about you Mark? You keep saying trendy ideas make people weak. So you don’t accept them. You’re a strong man, are you?”
Mark’s fury evaporated at once. His stammer reappeared, as if by magic. “Um – er – well I know I-I’m weak – but I want to be strong.”
Mark stayed only a short while after this conversation. When he had left, Susan wasted no time in making fun of him.
“I admire you, Fiona. I really do, “she remarked unkindly.” That friend of yours comes here; he insults us – is downright rude to us, while you sit calmly back, and coolly reason with him. Why do we bother?”
The other girl grinned.“I’ve told you before,” she said, “he’s harmless, and he’s interesting.”
“What’s the point of having him round here, when we’ve got so little in common with him?”
“You mean his strange ideas.”
“Exactly!”
Fiona giggled. “He could be right,” she said softly.
“Nonsense, Fiona, and you know it. You’re too patient and tolerant. That’s your trouble. You know he can’t be right. He’s just not trendy.”
“True, but two years ago, before we left school, didn’t we both have the same ideas as Mark Flitley?”
“So, he’s naive and immature, as well as ignorant, rude, misguided, embarrassing – and an MCP! You’re not defending the feller, Fiona: you’re helping me make my point.”
“There are many other people who think just like Mark – and they’re not naive.”
“Right wing conservatives, all of them – the sort who would have done well in Nazi Germany!”
“Well, whatever you say of his philosophy, Sue, at least it hasn’t led him to give up a perfectly sincere lover, and sleep around with crooks.”
Susan snorted angrily. “What do you mean?” she asked, with all the fury of an offended and guilty dignity.
“Your American friend, Sue.”
“He’s no crook! Besides he was nice. It was a casual relationship anyhow, and he’s gone back home now.”
“Not a crook, do you say? He sold heroin, didn’t he? That’s lethal stuff, isn’t it? You know, it’s no wonder someone like Mark thinks we’re twisted, when we have friends like your American. I like being trendy, Sue – I always shall – but that won’t stop me making Mark welcome here.”
CHAPTER 20
A Fresh Start
Of all Mark’s problems, it turned out that the least of them was his studies – or so it seemed. Mark graduated at the end of his third academic year, and did well enough in his exams to be permitted to go on the Law Society’s professional course.
It was the beginning of term again, but it was a strange beginning. It was the same college, but the old ramshackle canteen with its leaky corrugated iron roof was no longer there. A new wing had been built, and this housed a new restaurant with facilities which were luxurious by comparison. A hundred or so students were crowded into this comparatively spacious accommodation. It was not the number of students which was unusual, but the fact that they were nearly all total strangers to the College and indeed to the City. Most were university students, and this made Mark feel rather uncomfortable. It was not the fact that he was unfamiliar with university students which made him feel uneasy. After all some of his friends were university students – but then law students had never seemed to take any interest in potholing. The oddest feature about these students was that they were all graduates.
Mark’s contemporaries from the College sat on one table. As there was no room for him there, he joined some graduates on another table.
The other students were busy introducing themselves. One was from Sheffield University; another from London; some from Wales and Scotland, and not a few had come from Oxford and Cambridge.
“And where did you do your degree?” one of the Oxford students asked Mark.
Mark felt overawed in this company of law graduates who had all studied at more distinguished academic institutions than his own. “I did m-my degree here,” he stammered. “It was an external London degree,” he added quickly, so as not to lose face.
“That must have been hard work,” said the student. “However did you manage without the help of a tutor within the University?”
Mark avoided the question. “What was your dropout rate?” he asked instead.
“I’m not quite sure what you mean,” said the other. “How many of you started and didn’t finish the course?’
The Sheffield student looked rather puzzled. “I suppose there were one or two out of a hundred of us who didn’t finish the first year,” he said, “Not a significant number.”
“I can’t remember anyone dropping out of the Oxford course,” the Oxford student remarked in a puzzled way. “Why do you ask? Did your college have a failure rate?”
Mark frowned and screwed up his face in an expression of surprise. “Less than half of us finished with a degree,” he said.
They began to show more interest in him.
You must have been very lucky to be at this college,” declared one. “The Liverpool Law School professional course is very difficult to get onto. It must have been an advantage for you to have been at the college for your degree.”
“We were told not to apply unless we got an honours degree,” he said.
“Then you were treated like the rest of us,” another student said. “The Conkertons are very careful who they select for their course. They tour the universities regularly. I can tell a story about that. They’re famous.”
Someone asked what was the story he was talking about.
“Well they’re supposed to have gone to one university one year – I won’t say which university – to persuade the right calibre of student to apply. They said that any student with an honours degree should apply for a place on this course. The next year, after they’d analysed the exam results, they visited the same university again. This time John Conkerton said that no-one should apply unless he had an upper second. And I’ve just heard a rumour that, when they addressed that same university last year, John Conkerton advised that no student should apply unless he had a first class honours degree.”
Mark laughed loudly: the rest smiled politely.
“Who are the Conkertons?” Mark asked.
There was a kind of embarrassed silence. It was not that they all knew the Conkertons personally: they were, after all, mostly familiar only with the reputation of theses teachers of law. But to actually admit you did not know the Conkertons did seem rather naive. It was difficult to reply when you didn’t know them yourself, and no-one wanted to admit his own ignorance.
The silence was broken by a student who had not spoken until then.“You don’t know the Conkertons? You’ve never lived. They’re man and wife and they run this course, and some say they run the best professional law course in England.”
“But what do they look like?” asked Mark, as if this was important.
“Oh, well he’s very tall and very round: she’s tiny and very slim. But they both think alike. They like to categorise everything under titles and subtitles – and sub-sub-titles. They make it all clear using every alphabet and numeric system there has ever been – starting with large Roman numerals” He pronounced this phrase in the grand manner that was supposed to imitate the masculine Conkerton, “and ending with ‘little ‘a’ arabic’” – someone giggled as they recognised the feminine touch – “or even the Greek alphabet.”
“They say they use psychological warfare to get you through your exams,” said another student.
“That’s very true,” replied the other. “You see, I’m not a graduate like you. I’ve done my articles the hard way, and I had to do my Part Ones with the Conkertons instead of a degree. So I can tell you what it’s like. They’ll put the fear of God into you, and you’ll work harder for them than you’ll work for anyone. If they can’t get you through the professional exams, no one will.
“I’ll tell you something else about them. Their memory is phenomenal. Hundreds of students pass through their law school every year, but they’ll remember your face and your name for years afterwards.”
The restaurant began to clear. The articled clerk looked at his watch. “Nine O’clock,” he said smartly. “Time to go!”
Mark asked him what the talk they were going to would be about.
The articled clerk laughed. “It’s the pep talk,” he said. He looked at Mark in a pitying way. “It’s the first blow of the psychological war. You graduates have no idea what’s in store for you – you’ll see.”
John Conkerton stood on the stage of the College hall. It was a hall Mark knew well from the examinations he had sat there – full of stuffiness on a hot June day until someone would open the window and let in the roar of motor traffic from the two main roads which were right outside it! But now it was September, and summer was almost over. So the windows were shut, and the principal of the law school easily dominated the large body of students who were eagerly waiting to hear him speak.
He was tall and stout. There was humour in his eyes – an aggressive kind of humour which seemed to enjoy the sight of the hard work which his course demanded. There was a sense of understanding about him too, which seemed to empathise with their efforts. His wife sat by him and studied the new faces in front of her, as if searching them for the best means of recognition and motivation.
Most lawyers like to make speeches, and John Conkerton was no exception. His introduction went something like this: “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you to our law school.”
He introduced himself, his wife, and his staff, and then continued: “You are all, of course, very fortunate that you are sitting these professional papers now and not several years ago. Those were the bad old days, when you had to sit all the papers at once and pass them all at one sitting.
“That didn’t stop people passing if they were keen enough, of course – even if they had to sit the whole exam five or six times before they got through!
“Now, they’ll let you through if you pass only three of the seven papers in one sitting – provided you pass the others later on.
“You may ask: what is the difference between a degree and a professional paper? I’ll tell you; the difference is this: in a degree you can get away with only knowing part of the subject; in the professional exam, you have to know the whole of every subject backwards.
“In a degree, the number of subjects you have to study is limited, four or five a year, say, and you have a choice of four or five questions out of nine or ten to answer in three hours. In the professional exams, each three hour paper offers a choice of eight questions out of ten – and to make sure you know your work, two of those questions are compulsory, and each paper is divided into two parts; you have to answer three of the remaining four questions in each part.
