The Loner, page 47
Her remark hurt Mark. “It is a small firm,” he replied, ” but my boss is taking the case, and we’ve instructed one of the best counsel in town.”
“I don’t believe it – your boss can’t be any good.”
“Why?”
“No-one who’s any good would want you as an articled clerk!” she shouted in despair. “That’s called scraping the barrel!”
Mark sensed he was not welcome. “I’d better go,” he said, picking up his coat.
“No!” Fiona fixed her friend with a long, hard, cold stare. “Don’t go, Mark,” she said calmly. “Stay and tell us about it. Sue doesn’t mean what she says – she’s just worried about Bob.”
“I thought it was all over with Bob.”
“It was – sort of!” Fiona made no effort to conceal the sarcastic tone of her voice.
Susan began to cry. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “Don’t take any notice of me. But what happened?”
“They say he attacked a university steward.”
“Did he though?”
“He can’t remember. He was too drunk to know what he was doing, as far as I can make out.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“He’ll plead ‘Not guilty’.”
“What? Oh no!” The tears streamed down Susan’s face. She choked alarmingly.
“What’s the matter?”
Fiona took up her friend’s point of view.
“Mark,” she said slowly, “don’t you think it might go easier on Bob, if he were to simply own up to what he’s done?”
“Why should he if he can’t remember? It might not have been him after all.”
“Oh, come off it Mark: they wouldn’t have charged him, if he hadn’t done something wrong, would they?”
“You’d be surprised!”
Susan wiped her eyes. “What’ll they do to him if he’s found guilty?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Could he go to prison, do you think?” she sobbed.
“Prison? I er d-don’t know,” Mark faltered. “The offence is punishable with up to one year’s imprisonment – but it’s Bob’s career I’m worried about.”
CHAPTER 34
The BlackVelvet Band
“She was both fair and handsome;
Her neck, it was just like a swan;
And her hair, it hung over her shoulders,
Tied up with a black velvet band.”
Trad.
The Easter vacation came and Bob left Liverpool to stay with his parents in Leeds, and so the weeks went by without Bob or Susan seeing each other. Then one fine morning early in May, after the end of the vacation, found Robert Smith enjoying the sunshine on the steps of Liverpool’s museum. It was the day of his trial. He found it difficult to relax, in spite of the warm weather. He whiled away the time checking his watch, trying hard to look and act cool.
It was not his first court appearance: he had already attended a hearing when the police had formally handed over depositions on behalf of witnesses who did not attend.
It was a different Robert Smith who sat on the museum steps overlooking the great St. George’s Hall. His long hair had fallen to the barber’s scissors; the jeans, leather jacket and sweater had been discarded in favour of a brand new tweed suit. It was with a sense of sadness rather than pride that Bob reflected on his change to conventional respectability.
His watch showed the time at a quarter to ten. Ten o’clock he had to be at St. George’s Hall, he thought: he had better go. He was about to set off down the museum steps, when he observed an interesting daily spectacle.
A convoy of large black official cars with a motorised police escort advanced towards the Hall from Islington. This procession executed a “U” turn outside the building, while the police stopped the ordinary traffic. The official cars halted by the library, and their passengers, once alighted, resplendent in long grey wigs and shorter wigs and crimson robes, filed in crocodile into St. George’s Hall through the side entrance opposite the Library, which was at that time, the main public entrance. They were accompanied by gowned court officials holding long wooden rods, as well as by policemen. Bob understood that this ritual, repeated every morning during the court’s term, served as a quaint but orderly reminder of the links which bound the justice of a highly technological age with its roots in the past. Bob had arrived early, and taken his present vantage point so that he could see it for himself.
Bob followed the judges into the building. He had never been there before, and was most impressed by what he saw. The classical influence on the architecture was as evident internally as it was on the outside. Two long corridors flanked a large public hall with a grand Victorian court room at one end. The public hall was set apart from the corridors by huge polished marble pillars and a series of doors. There were marble statues in niches, an ornamental plaster ceiling with a Classical frieze set against a blue background, and even a stained glass window with a representation of St. George and the Dragon. Polished marble of different colours gleamed everywhere. It could have been the interior of a Roman basilica – not that Bob knew what a Roman basilica looked like: he just imagined it.
The tiled floor of the public hall was not visible. This was covered by wooden boards to protect it from the ordinary wear of daily use. There was an organ at one end, built into the superstructure, and with pipes resting on two giant stone heads. Corporation ladies sold tea and biscuits below the organ. There were tables and chairs everywhere, and a drab looking company of villains and jurymen, watched or advised by men in smart dark suits, and bewigged gowned individuals.
Bob’s solicitor had not arrived. So he made a brief inspection of the building. He found the offices which faced the Tunnel, and the additional court rooms on that side of the building. There were public rooms upstairs, but these seemed to have been converted into court rooms. Even a room labelled “Concert Room,” with a gallery supported by elegant plaster charyatids, and a grand piano, incongruous and set to one side, was in use as a court room. Bob was astonished that, apart from the large hall with the organ in it, the whole building was little more than an enormous court house, disguising, by its grand neo-classical facade, the vast size of the growing problem of the city’s crime and declining prosperity.
So this he thought, was the colossal edifice that had driven the citizens of Manchester to such a fit of envy that they had had to compete by building their own enormous Victorian town hall. Robert Smith would have been even more surprised if he had known that, by the nineteen eighties, the business of the courts would have outgrown the capacity of the Hall to such an extent as to justify the erection of a new home for the law, and the complete abandonment of the use of the entire older building, so that it could be mothballed like a nice old suit of clothes.
Bob wandered back to the main hall, and found Mr. Brief waiting for him.
“Sorry I’m late,” apologised the solicitor. “I’ve just been checking the list. There’s no hurry. The court office thinks it’s unlikely your case will be called before lunch – but please don’t leave the Hall in case you’re called before then. The list can collapse, you know.”
Bob blinked and tried to visualise a collapsing list. He was not sure he understood what Mr. Brief had been talking about – a new kind of musical instrument – like a concertina perhaps! He sat down and picked up an old newspaper.
As it turned out, Mr. Brief was right about the timing of Bob’s case. Bob took his lunch in the Art Gallery, and when he returned at about a quarter to two, the solicitor was waiting for him. He ushered him into one of the two main court rooms. Bob was not impressed. The room had all the grim features which characterised a Victorian court room. There was the raised dais for the judge, surmounted by Victoria’s coat of arms; the two elevated galleries, the one for the jury, and the other for the journalists; the well of the court where the solicitors sat, and, behind, in ascending tiers, the rows of desks and seats for counsel; the barrier which separated the lawyers from the rows of seats for the public, which rose behind the dock, and, in the centre of the room, at about the same level as the judge’s box, in splendid isolation, the dock itself – a semicircular enclosure surrounded with iron bars, two gates, and a door at the back. The place certainly had atmosphere, Bob thought, but the sociological and psychological associations of the majestic elevated status of the godlike robed and bewigged judge, and the terrifying position of the overawed defendant, surrounded by bars in such a central and humiliating situation as to be open to continuous and universal scrutiny, appalled him.
Mr. Brief ushered him into the dock. The policeman in attendance took charge of him. Bob had a moment or two to examine his surroundings. He looked at the door which was set into the back of the dock and asked the policeman where it led to.
The policeman rattled a large bunch of keys. “That’s the door which leads down into the cells,” he said gravely. “If you’re lucky, you’ll leave the same way you came in. If you’re unlucky, you’ll go down – that means down into the cells.”
This information did not encourage Bob to feel any the less uncomfortable. Nothing seemed to be happening. The suspense was intense. The judge had not arrived.
Bob tried to relax by looking round the courtroom. A wigged clerk occupied a desk just below and in front of the judge’s seat. He could see Mr. Brief on the front row of the lawyers’ seats. It was nice of Mr. Brief to take a personal interest in his case, he thought, rather than simply to send his articled clerk. Behind Mr. Brief there was Mr. Shannon, his bewigged barrister – the man who, as Bob had learnt, had once told Mark he’d never be found dead in Toxteth. Beside Mr. Shannon, there was another bewigged individual, who Bob assumed was the prosecutor. He looked up at the galleries; the jury were in place and waiting too. He turned round casually, and scanned the seats set aside for the public. Paul was there. He raised his hand to acknowledge him. Anne was sitting beside him, and next to her there was another girl. No! It could not be! But yes, it was Susan, dressed in her smartest outfit, with her long blonde hair tied up with a black velvet band. She smiled at him warmly. He frowned for a moment, and then smiled back.
Suddenly there was a loud rap from behind the judge’s dais, and a gowned official arrived, with wooden rod in hand, to announce the judge.
“All rise for his ludship, Mr. Justice Jolly.”
The name surprised Bob. Surely this could not be the man who had once given Mark a lift, he thought.
It was indeed the same judge.
Everyone in the room stood up as the judge, with full wig and crimson robe, entered the court from a door behind the dais. The judge bowed to everyone else, and they all bowed back. The afternoon’s business had begun.
The judge sat down, and fixed his eyes on the defendant. They were not exactly the eyes of an unsympathetic man. His majestic and elevated status in the courtroom might have suggested to a stranger that his lordship belonged to a higher order of being which was immune from mortal emotions. But beneath the silk robes and the wig, there was a human being who was himself a father.
As he read the depositions, the judge reflected on the dismal and disastrous failings of modern youth. There was his own son, for example – still at University; he was no different from the rest, he thought, his mind crammed full of radical politics, and strange ideas which challenged his own cherished ideals of what was right and just. Then there was his wayward daughter – he hoped she would grow up to see the error of her ways; not content with wild and unbridled behaviour which had earnt her expulsion from a certain well-known university, she had joined a dance band (a pop group, as she had called it) and was intent on making her fortune through the rhythms of a kind of music which he could never appreciate – if she did not first become deaf in both ears! And now here was this lad – a graduate too – perhaps not unlike his own adult offspring... Such natural paternal feelings had to be shut out of his mind. He would be failing in his duties, if he were to allow such thoughts to influence his judgement, and his duty was his highest ideal. It was his duty to see that the trial was impartially and fairly conducted, and if the accused were to be found guilty, to ensure that his punishment was no less severe than that of any other criminal convicted of the same offence and with similar antecedents.
The clerk stood up and presented the judge with the list of matters for the afternoon, and was heard to suggest to his lordship that now was the right moment to proceed with the contested case of Regina versus Robert Smith. He was a short man, and had to stand on his chair to address the judge. Bob could not help smiling with a wicked sense of amusement at the ridiculous predicament of this individual, with his breast puffed out with a certain sense of self-importance, wearing a spotless white shirt and the long black gown with its two long sleeves, like wings tapering down to a single point, perched precariously on his unseen, but probably uncomfortable hard leather chair, whispering to the omnipotent judge. Yes, he thought, standing on that chair, the clerk presented the perfect impersonation of a stuffed effigy of a proud paternal penguin turning on his egg and squawking at his mate!
“Call Regina versus Robert Smith,” the clerk called in a loud ringing tone, full of the sense of his own importance, in accordance with established legal procedure, and without the slightest regard for the fact that the accused was already waiting in the dock.
Bob tried to fathom the meaning of the word “Regina.” It sounded as though it had something to do with the Queen. The word was obviously Latin, but had a curious anglicised pronounciation – rather like the way medics say “Vagina.”
“Are you Robert Smith?” asked the clerk.
The solemn atmosphere of the court was so intense that, if his predicament had not been so desperate, Bob knew he would have shattered the pompousness of the proceedings, and reduced the scene to farce with a few irreverent legal-sounding phrases. He wished he had the nerve to shout out boldly in reply: “Vagina against Robert Smith – all ready and willing m’lud!”
“Are you represented?” the clerk continued, after Bob had nodded meekly in answer to the previous question.
Mr. Shannon stood up, and announced majestically: “I represent the accused, m’lud. My learned friend, Mr. Phipps, represents the prosecution.”
The respectful reference to Mr. Shannon’s learned friend rather surprised Bob, who knew nothing about the courts, except what he had seen of the histrionic and antagonistic relationship between advocates shown in the television presentation of the American Perry Mason series. The word “m’lud” grated somehow. An abbreviation carefully preserved from the eighteenth century seemed to have no place in the modern world.
Bob tried to concentrate on what was going on around him. The clerk was reading the indictment. The words “assault occasioning actual bodily harm” had a ring which hardly echoed the language of ordinary speech.
“Do you plead guilty or not guilty?” the clerk enquired, as the long rambling charge came to an end.
Mr. Shannon turned round and looked hard at his client, and mouthed the words: “Not Guilty.”
Bob was still getting used to the strange atmosphere, and wished once more he understood the reason for his counsel’s advice. He hesitated, and then did as he was told. “Not guilty,” he replied, in an unfamiliar detached tone.
He watched the jury being sworn.
The clerk bade the accused and his advocate sit down, while the prosecutor made his opening address.
He spoke of the night of the dance; how the accused Robert Smith, appeared to have had more than enough to drink, when he was approached by a steward, one Patrick O’Connor, who had politely invited him to leave the premises; how the accused had responded in a foul and abusive manner; how the accused, in resisting the steward’s reasonable attempts to restrain and eject him, had struck the unfortunate O’Connor on the chin and the face and broken his jaw and his nose; how the accused had ultimately been overcome with difficulty, arrested and taken to Risley Remand Centre, before being released without bail the next day, and finally, how the accused had discussed the matter after being duly cautioned, with a certain police detective.
“I call my first witness, Patrick O’Connor,” announced Mr. Phipps, after concluding his address.
The name of the witness was echoed by the ushers, and in due course, the unhappy O’Connor arrived in the witness box, complete with bandaged chin and a very bent nose. Once sworn, the witness gave his name, address and his occupation on the night of the alleged assault.
“Now then, Mr. O’Connor,” the prosecutor continued. “Did you see the accused on that night?”
“The accused? Ah, youz mean the feller as ‘it me?” He looked rather confused.
At this early stage in the trial, the judge decided to intervene. “Mr. O’Connor,” he said patiently, “Would you look around this room, and let me know if you can see someone who you say you saw on that night.”
The witness was more than a little bewildered. He scanned the whole court: from the judge to the jury; from the press gallery to the public gallery; from the advocates in their grey wigs to the two beauties in the public gallery – he spent longer looking at them than at anyone else! – from the ushers to the policeman, and the neat clean-shaven short-haired young man with the smart suit in the dock.
“No, sir. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone ‘ere before,” he declared uncertainly.
At this juncture, Mr. Phipps was perceived leaning over the shoulder of his instructing solicitor, and was heard to ask, in a loud, exasperated and embarrassed whisper, if he was sure he had sent him the right papers for the right case. The solicitor was seen to shrug his shoulders, and protest that indeed there could be no mistake.
The judge, who was not supposed to hear this alarmed altercation, began to shift in his seat in a way which advocates clearly recognise as a sign of irritation and vexation on the part of the bench.
“What is the purpose of the evidence of this witness?” he asked testily.
