Be Near Me (28 page)

A clerk of Kilmarnock Sheriff Court rubbed her eyes and looked past the tables of Court Number One. The pine tables themselves were autumnal, stacked with auburn volumes on Scots law. 'Are you David Anderton?' she said. A person coughed behind me in the public gallery and I was seized by either a moment's fear or a lifetime's quantity of doubt. 'Is that correct?' she said.

'Yes. That's correct. I am David Anderton.'

Sheriff Wilson appeared to be a rather tight knot of a man. From his position on the bench he looked over the
courtroom with disdain, preparing to find occasions both large and small for the display of his errant temper. People said he was an amateur expert in the writings of James Boswell: from the tilt of his wig, from the ruby flesh of his cheeks, to say nothing of the blue, meticulous eye with which he surveyed the shabby contents of the court, one could only assume that his amateur passions had come, over time, to weave themselves in with his professional concerns. One imagined him, indeed, coming into Kilmarnock each day from a house filled with the appurtenances of Boswellian admiration, the syllabubs, eighteenth-century drinking glasses and damp engravings that proved to such a man that there was once a more interesting time than the one he himself was condemned to inhabit. I'm afraid that's it. Sheriff Wilson had the pawky upper-class humour that makes very senior lawyers intolerable. He also had the claret-dimmed sense of his own grandness in a world of moral miniatures. I knew immediately he would have stuffed animals in his house and embossed invitations on his mantel for garden parties at Holyrood House. His hands were small and fidgety. His forehead was pallid. He took the trouble now to lower his half-moon spectacles and stare out at me, as if an entirely new manner of lowlife had appeared before him. 'I would ask you to speak with more volume,' he said. 'Your voice is of a tincture we don't often hear in this environment.'

'That will be fine,' I said.

'Sorry? Speak up.'

'That's fine.'

'Quite so,' he said. He hesitated over his notes. 'We gather you are a graduate of Oxford University?'

'Alas, not a graduate, Your Lordship. But, yes, I was a student there.'

'And which college?'

'Balliol, Your Lordship.'

'I see,' he said, before smiling, or showing a row of small dark teeth to the Procurator Fiscal. 'Never apologise, never explain,' he said. 'That's what Benjamin Jowett said, was it not?' He looked back at me like an over-rewarded schoolteacher. 'The head of Balliol.'

'Yes,' I said. 'The Master of Balliol.'

He took a handkerchief from a far corner of his gown, wiped his nose with it and waved it at the Fiscal. 'Proceed,' he said.

The clerk read out the indictment. 'It is alleged that in the early hours of 11 July 2003 you did sexually assault Mark McNulty in the chapel-house of the Church of St John Ogilvie in the town of Dalgarnock. How do you plead?'

'Not guilty,' I said.

Over the course of six hours, the Procurator Fiscal drew on the evidence of witnesses to point up my deceit, my cunning, my slow and cynical befriending of Mark and Lisa. It emerged it was well known in Dalgarnock that my attention was seldom on pastoral duties. His first witness was the music teacher from St Andrew's, Mr Dorran, who appeared in the witness box wearing a tie that looked as if it had been bought for the occasion. 'Mr Dorran,' said the Fiscal, 'how long have you been teaching at St Andrew's Academy?'

'Nearly twenty years.'

'And over that time, have you had much to do with the religious aspects of the children's education?'

'A great deal,' said Dorran. 'As a music teacher, I've always thought it important to help with hymns and that, to try and increase a child's faith if you like with the right use of music.'

'And so you would say you had the trust of the children and their parents when it came to religious education?'

'Oh, aye,' he said. 'I often work in partnership with the parents to improve the chances of the children getting a Catholic education.'

'And you have seen a number of priests in the parish, then?'

'Two or three, yes. Over the years.'

'And what did you think of David Anderton's contribution to your efforts in that regard?'

'Well, obviously, at first, he's well educated and that, so we were glad to have a parish priest who cared about teaching as a profession. He helped out very well at the school a couple of times. But Father David had what I'd call a character problem. Is it okay to say that?'

'Go on,' said the Sheriff.

'He had what I'd call a natural ability to wind people up.'

'A
what?
' said the Sheriff. 'He had what, did you say?'

'I said he wound people up, Your Honour.'

'I'm not Your Honour, I'm Mi Lord.'

'Sorry, sir. He wound all the staff up. He got snobby with them and made it difficult to get things done. Some of us thought he was having some sort of crisis during the year. He hardly wanted to talk about what you might call sacramental or pastoral issues. It was all food and wine with him or he'd be interested in talking about politics or whatever. We'd only ever had Irish priests in the parish before. They'd come in to take confessions.'

'And was that his worst crime, in your view?' said the Fiscal. 'Not bothering with Catholic care?'

'Not really,' said Dorran. 'That was just the icing. It was more noticeable the way he was with some of the pupils. My colleagues and I were aware of the fact that he saw some of them outside school hours. He seemed to cultivate the company of certain youngsters. They had a language. He was forever giving them CDs and presents. He took them on trips.'

'What sort of trips?'

'To places of interest. Castles and battlefields or whatever. Places that Father David decided were interesting. One time he took a group of them on a boat to Ailsa Craig. There was talk of drink being consumed.'

'The bird sanctuary?' said the Sheriff. 'Ailsa Craig, you say?'

'Yes, My Lord.'

'We will hear shortly from your colleague, Mr McCallum,' said the Fiscal. 'But in a statement to the police he said that he found it difficult to say no to Father David. Was that your experience also?'

'In a Catholic school,' said Dorran, 'it's always hard to say no to the chaplain. They have a kind of authority.'

The Fiscal walked in front of the bench and tapped his lips with a pencil.

'You say Mr Anderton had built some sort of relationship with these pupils. What sort of youngsters were these?'

'What you might call the more difficult element,' said
Dorran. 'The ones in the funny farm. I mean the remedial group.'

'And would you say these pupils are especially vulnerable as young individuals?' said the Fiscal.

My advocate, Hamilton, stood up.

'Objection,' he said.

'Please, Mr Hamilton,' said the Sheriff. 'Do you really want to go this way? We have a lot to get through and the question is actually quite legitimate, wouldn't you say?'

'I have no interest in holding up the proceedings, Your Lordship,' said Hamilton, 'but the question contains an inference that it is beyond the power of this court to prove or disprove. Children's vulnerability is something we might take for granted without a special point being made of it in this case.'

The Sheriff sighed and wiped his nose.

'Overruled,' he said. 'Please answer the question.'

'Could it be repeated?' Dorran asked.

'Would you say the pupils who make up remedial classes at St Andrew's could be described as being especially vulnerable?'

'Yes,' he said. 'I would probably say that. More vulnerable and more tough as well.'

Other witnesses appeared. Most of them were more hurt than angry, and I wished I could reach over and right some of the wrongs, maybe just by being more of a friend than I had been. But during cross-examination my advocate swept them up like a whale consuming plankton. Everything he said made my situation better but my feelings worse, and I
knew he had no sense in his dazzling Edinburgh cufflinks of the small ills that lead not only to crimes but the accusation of crimes. As always, the court officials, the lawyers, the Sheriff, though they seemed to power the move towards righteousness and good judgement, were actually just paid spectators to a very private set of personal disorders, about which they knew nothing and cared to know nothing.

'I call Mrs Anne Poole,' said the Fiscal.

I knew before God that I had a sin to answer to when I saw Mrs Poole make her way across the court. She had got worse in the weeks since I last saw her. She wasn't old but her face was changed by illness; you could see, as she walked, her struggle against the fraying of her personhood as the cancer moved to define her. When she reached the witness box she asked for a glass of water. I swallowed with her. Letting myself down had become a familiar way with me. I'd got so used to being equivocal and unsure and covering my life in caution. Yet as Mrs Poole looked up from the glass and caught my eye, I felt I was no good. She smiled. I am the servant of my own performance but she may have been one of its victims, and I wanted to say to the court that my innocence was academic next to hers. Our afternoons together had not been extra lessons for her—as she thought of them—but new lessons for me in how to bear the consequences of the past. Mrs Poole knew more about that than I might ever know. Her lips were trembling as the Fiscal looked up from his papers.

'Mrs Poole,' he said, 'thank you for coming to the court today. I gather you have not been in the best of health.'

She shook her head and gathered herself.

'Am I right in stating that you previously worked for David Anderton in the chapel-house at the Church of St John Ogilvie?'

'I worked there, yes,' she said. 'For Father David.'

'Right. And did you enjoy that work? I believe you cleaned the house and prepared meals and so on?'

'I enjoyed my work.'

'And are you a Catholic, Mrs Poole?'

'Yes,' she said.

'So you have the utmost respect for the clergy and believe they have a position of responsibility in their community? You would say that, would you not?'

'Yes,' she said.

'And you worked regular days, I believe?'

'Mondays and Fridays,' she said, before clearing her throat. 'And a half day on a Sunday.'

'A Sunday morning, yes?'

'That's right.'

'And would you be so kind, Mrs Poole, just in your own words, to tell the court what you saw when you arrived for work on Sunday 11 July?'

'I'd just like to say something first,' she said.

'Please answer the question, Mrs Poole.'

'Your Honour,' she said, looking up at Sheriff Wilson, 'I want to say something before I answer the man's question.'

'We don't allow statements here, Mrs Poole.'

'I know,' she said, 'but I just want to say an important thing before answering the man's question.'

'Please be quick,' he said.

'Father David is not a bad man. I don't think he knows
very much about people, and Dalgarnock was a strange place to him. He does not understand how they do things here and I just want to say that he is a good person underneath ...

'Mrs Poole,' said the Sheriff.

'He knows so much about other things,' she said.

'I must ask you to stop, Mrs Poole.'

'We didn't always agree about things,' she went on. 'I have always liked music and we disagreed about some topics. But Father David was good to me and I know he was to those kids, as well. They're no angels either.'

The Sheriff raised his voice.

'Mrs Poole! This is a court of law. I am sure you have very tender reminiscences of the accused, but we are here today to establish whether or not he committed a criminal offence. Do you understand what I am saying?'

'Yes,' she said.

'Well, please just confine yourself to answering this gentleman's questions.'

Mrs Poole's spirit rose with the severity of the Sheriff's counsel. She took a drink from her water glass and turned her shallow cheeks to face him, her voice like a smile inside a whisper. 'I'm not an uncultivated woman, Your Honour,' she said.

He fidgeted. 'I have no doubt...'

'No, sir. I was Father David's housekeeper. He paid for my work out of his own pocket. He paid for a great deal of things out of his own pocket, including the wine we would sometimes drink at lunch. He taught me something about how to choose it and how to taste it. I had been learning
French for some time before I knew him and then he helped me improve it with a little conversation.'

'Mrs Poole,' he said.

'I will not be shushed by you or by anybody else!' she said, and a certain palpitation entered the atmosphere of the court. 'I am a cultured person. And so is he, the accused. And perhaps you are too, sir. Are you familiar with the works of Robert Burns?'

'Yes, I am, Mrs Poole. As a matter of fact, I'm Chairman of the North Ayrshire Association of Burns Clubs. Now, listen...'

'That's good,' she said very quietly. 'Then you'll know very well I'm sure his "Address to the Unco Guid".'

'No, you don't!'
he said. 'This is a court of law.' And as she started to speak she smiled again and he raised his voice, saying, 'No.'

'About the Rigid Righteous and the Rigid Wise,' she said. 'The whole world is full of them now. These people running through the streets and outside this court today haven't a line of poetry between them and yet they would seek to destroy this man.'

'Mrs Poole,' the Sheriff shouted, 'I will have no hesitation...'

'The cleanest corn that e'er was dight,'
she said.
'May hae some pyles o' caff in.'

'...and I mean it, Mrs Poole.'

'There's yer Ayrshire wisdom,' she said.

Wilson brought his hand down on the wood and Mrs Poole went silent, and I never heard her speak like that again. 'Mrs
Poole,
' he said, 'if there are any more outbursts of that sort I will have no hesitation whatever in removing you from this courtroom. You are showing contempt for these proceedings, and I will not tolerate that. Am I making myself clear?'

'Yes,' she said.