Death Called to the Bar (19 page)

Now it was Saturday morning and Edward was standing close to the epicentre of his fears, the ticket office at Paddington station. He had conducted a brief reconnaissance and discovered that
there were four ticket clerks on duty that day. One kindly old man who looked as though he should have retired years ago. One sharp-faced young man who reminded Edward of a bookie’s runner.
One middle-aged man with very thick glasses. And finally another middle-aged man who smiled kindly at his clients. Edward was torn between the old gentleman and the smiling one. He looked around
for Sarah and checked his watch. The first train on the special offer left at twenty past nine. It was now ten past and they had no tickets. Edward wondered if he should try to buy them without
Sarah but knew that if all else failed and she was there she could take over. Then she was beside him, wearing a dark blue skirt and a lemon blouse. She had a raffish little hat on which she had
borrowed from a friend down the street. ‘Makes you look a bit special, this hat,’ her friend had said, ‘that should cheer Edward up.’ She had a basket on her arm with lunch
hidden beneath a pale green cloth. One look at Edward’s face told Sarah that there was anxiety about something related to speech, probably the tickets. There was no queue in front of the old
gentleman. Edward advanced slowly. He opened his mouth. The words wouldn’t come out.

‘Take your time, sonny,’ the old man said, ‘there’s no rush.’

Edward tried again. Still no words came out. He began to wonder about the piece of paper in his pocket. The old man smiled. Then Edward felt a soft touch on his hand. It was, he thought, one of
the nicest touches his hand had ever had. He opened his mouth once more.

‘Two day returns to Oxford on the special offer,’ he said, all in one go.

‘Enjoy your trip,’ said the old gentleman, handing Edward his tickets and his change. He had a grandson the same age. He hoped his grandson would find a girl as pretty as Sarah.
‘Platform Four,’ he called after them, ‘first on the left!’

They managed to find a compartment to themselves. Sarah put her basket on the luggage rack and Edward showed her the guidebook to Oxford he had bought at the station bookstall.

‘What’s in the basket, Sarah?’ asked Edward, full powers of speech now restored.

‘Well,’ said Sarah rather doubtfully, ‘I hope it’s going to be all right. There’s ham sandwiches and egg sandwiches and tomato sandwiches and apples and some hard
cheese and a bottle of lemonade.’

‘That’s a feast,’ said Edward happily and returned to his perusal of the guidebook. Sarah was remembering her evening session with her mother two evenings before when she had
told her mama about Edward.

‘Who are his parents, Sarah? What are his family like?’

Sarah had confessed that she had no idea about Edward’s family at all. She didn’t even know where he lived.

‘Really, Sarah, you do have to be careful, especially these days. What does he look like, this Edward person?’

Sarah had described him as just under six feet tall, very slim, with brown eyes and curly hair. And then she had made her big mistake although, looking back on it later, she saw that it would
have been worse if Edward came round to her house and had trouble speaking to her mother without her knowing about his difficulties.

‘He has trouble speaking sometimes, mama,’ she had said defensively, ‘but he’s usually fine with me.’

‘What do you mean, he has trouble speaking, Sarah? Is he some sort of defective person? Are you going to Oxford with a deaf mute?’

‘No, he’s not deaf, mama. He can hear perfectly well. I’m sure he’ll get over it.’

‘If it’s lasted this long, it’ll probably go on for ever. He may go to his grave with his mouth open and no sounds coming out. How does he manage in court?’

‘He doesn’t speak in court, mama.’

‘What do you mean, he doesn’t speak in court? You’re not going to win any cases if the judge and jury don’t know what you want to say, are you?’

‘I’m sure he will, in time, mama.’

‘How does he earn his living if he can’t speak and he can’t appear in court? What’s he doing in a barristers’ chambers in the first place, I should like to know.
Does he sweep the floors? Put the cat out?’

‘He’s a deviller, mama, you know, one of those people who prepares the cases for the barristers.’

‘I don’t need you to tell me what a deviller is, thank you, Sarah, I’ve known about them for a long time. But do you get paid? Or does Edward just get what the lawyers feel
like giving him? Is he a sort of charity case, really?’

‘No, he is not a charity case, mama. He charges by the hour, like the barristers charge their clients. Some people make a career of it, they never appear in court at all. Edward is one of
the best devillers in London, mama. He’s doing the work for the Puncknowle fraud case.’

Sarah thought this might have an effect.

‘Is he indeed?’ said her mother thoughtfully. ‘But you can’t become attached to a person who doesn’t speak most of the time. It’s like being one of those
actors who never have any lines but just carry spears around in Shakespeare. You can’t be serious about him.’

‘I’m not serious, mama, Edward is just a friend.’

Her mother muttered something under her breath.

‘Perhaps you’d better bring him round here so I can have a look at him.’

‘Yes, mama, I’ll ask him when we’re in Oxford.’

‘Why’s he taking you to Oxford anyway? Is there some sort of silent zone up there where the dons and the undergraduates aren’t allowed to speak?’

‘Not as far as I know, mama.’

‘Will he be able to speak to me, Sarah? Or will he just sit there, this Edward of yours, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish? I don’t know what I’m going to say to
Mrs Wiggins next time I speak to her, I really don’t.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Sarah, trying to be diplomatic, ‘that he’ll be absolutely fine as long as you’re not fierce with him.’

‘Fierce, Sarah? Did you say fierce? I wouldn’t know how to be fierce for a moment. You’ve never known me to be fierce, have you?’

‘Well,’ said Sarah, smiling at her mother, ‘maybe stern would do it.’

Her mother snorted and there the matter was laid to rest. And now it was Saturday morning, the sun was shining, their train had just reached Oxford station and Edward was reaching her picnic
basket down from the luggage rack. They had decided to go straight to the river and inspect Oxford later. At this time of year Edward was almost certain it would rain at some point in the day.
Their route took them into George Street and then right into Cornmarket. At the junction, they stared to their right at the buildings of Balliol, Trinity and St John’s, with the Ashmolean
Museum and the Randolph Hotel on their left. On their way down St Aldate’s they peeped into Pembroke College. Christ Church on the other side of the road looked too grand for words.

‘It’s virtually the same as an Inn of Court!’ exclaimed Sarah as they came out of Pembroke. ‘They’ve even got people’s names on the staircases just like
Queen’s Inn. Do you know which is the older, Edward?’

Edward looked up a section of his guidebook. ‘Pembroke is older than Queen’s,’ he said finally, ‘but I don’t know if the oldest Inn in London is older than the
oldest Oxford college, which is, according to this guide, University College, founded in 1249. So it’s over six hundred and fifty years old, Sarah.’

Sarah thought the boat keeper at Folly Bridge was probably about that age. He seemed to have only two front teeth left and he sat hunched over the desk in his little boat house like an elf or a
gnome from a different world.

‘Rowing boat or punt?’ he croaked. ‘If you haven’t punted before then I would definitely recommend a rowing boat.’

‘Punt, please,’ said Edward firmly. Sarah looked closely at him as Methuselah’s assistant, a mere youngster in his middle seventies with almost all his teeth, led them down a
little wooden jetty that led into the river. He installed Sarah and the picnic basket on the cushions in the middle of the boat and Edward took up his position at the end. With a loud grunt the old
man shoved the boat well out into the stream.

A punt is a long thin rectangular vessel with a faint resemblance to a Venetian gondola except the Venetian vessels have tapered ends. At one end of the punt is a covered platform well able to
accommodate a man or woman standing up. In Cambridge the punter stands on this platform. The opposite end has a rising series of slats. This is known as the Oxford end. The centre of the boat is
equipped with comfortable cushions and is, traditionally, the place for picnics and romance. The means of propulsion is a very long wooden pole with metal spikes at the end which grip the gravel at
the bottom of the stream. When the pole is dropped in straight, the punter then pulls on it so the boat proceeds along the river. When the pole has gone from being vertical to an angle of
forty-five degrees or so behind the boat, the punter pulls it out and starts again.

Edward was muttering to himself as he stood on the platform at the end of the boat. Stand at right angles to the boat, he was telling himself. Flick the pole up, don’t pass it up hand over
hand. Let it drop straight down into the river. Don’t hand it down into the water, just let it fall. Bend your knees as you pull on the pole. Twist it when you bring it up in case of mud down
below. He carried out a couple of decent strokes and steered the punt with the pole until it was proceeding happily along the right-hand side of the river.

‘Are you saying your prayers up there, Edward? I didn’t know you knew how to punt.’

‘I’m trying to remember the instructions of the man who taught me, Sarah,’ said Edward, flicking the pole up through his left hand.

‘Who was that?’

‘Oddly enough, it was Mr Dauntsey,’ said Edward. ‘We had to go to Cambridge one day last summer and he taught me how to punt then. He was a Cambridge man, Mr Dauntsey, Trinity,
I think. It took me half an hour to go from Magdalene to St John’s, which is less than a hundred yards, ten minutes to get from John’s to Clare, which is a couple of hundred yards, and
by the time we passed King’s I was getting the hang of it. Mr Dauntsey had very firm views about punting – he said you could never take any work out on the river or it would bring bad
luck and you had to be graceful while you were doing it.’

‘Well, you’re looking pretty graceful to me, Edward,’ said Sarah with a smile.

‘He showed me some of the tricks people get up to on the unwary.’ Edward was grinning happily to himself now. ‘There are a lot of bridges along the back of the Cam, Sarah, and
a person standing on them is about the same height as the pole of the punt at the top of its throw. Innocent tourists were often caught like this. A couple of people on the bridge would grab hold
of the pole. The punt, of course, keeps moving. The man holding the pole has to let go or else he falls in. Most people fall in to great glee among the spectators. Then there’s another
misfortune that sometimes causes confusion. The pole gets stuck in the mud at the bottom. Again the boat keeps moving. Sometimes, Mr Dauntsey told me, you can see people clinging on to the pole in
clear water while the punt carries on.’

Further up the river, by the other bank, they could see a party of two punts, travelling in tandem, with about a dozen people on board. The noise and waving of bottles indicated they had started
drinking at an early hour. Edward thought he could hear shouting and see fingers pointing.

‘What are those people saying, Sarah?’ asked Edward, bending his knees in the approved manner to send their punt skimming along the water. Sarah turned round, and looked slightly
alarmed as she faced Edward again.

‘I think they’re saying “Wrong end!”’ she said. ‘Then’, she looked rather apprehensive at this point, ‘I think they’re saying “Throw
him in!”’

‘Are they indeed,’ said Edward and his eyes began measuring distances between their two punts and his. ‘I’m punting from the Cambridge end, Sarah. In Oxford, for some
unknown reason, they do it from the other end.’

They could hear the shouts again now. Sarah’s original version was undoubtedly correct. Bottles were being waved in the air. And a ragged cheer broke out every time the punters pressed
their craft forward.

Edward, Sarah thought, was not looking at all alarmed. Indeed he seemed to be coaxing extra speed out of the boat, shooting the pole up through his hands and then dropping it down in one
continuous movement. Sarah also saw that he was making experimental movements with the pole as if it were a rudder, trying to see how fast he could alter course. Enthusiastic the Oxford-enders
might have been, but they were not very good punters. Their boats were travelling quite slowly, much more slowly than Edward and Sarah’s vessel.

When the punts were less than a hundred yards apart, Edward changed direction. He shot across the river at an angle of about sixty degrees into clear water.

‘Wrong end! Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The taunts continued.

At first Sarah had not understood what Edward was trying to do. There was a look of fierce concentration about him. Then she saw that they would intercept the Oxford-enders quite soon unless
Edward could stop or alter course. And she didn’t see how he could alter course in time at this speed. There was, she thought, going to be a most almighty collision.

‘Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The jeers went on, but then began to fall silent. For the Oxford men could see this other boat, many hundredweight of it, coming at them like some ancient
vessel from Salamis or Actium. They were going to be stove in amidships. Then Edward made a minor adjustment with his pole as rudder. A terrible silence fell over the Oxford craft as they saw their
fate hurtling towards them. The two punters, suddenly realizing that they might receive the full force of the other boat, jumped desperately into the water on the far side of their punts. Then
Edward dropped his pole to the bottom and heaved ferociously, not on a line parallel with the boat as he had been doing before, but towards himself as hard as he could pull. Just when a crash
seemed inevitable, the Cambridge boat turned sharply to the right, at a distance of only a few feet from the other punts, and then shot ahead of them. Edward turned round and shouted, ‘Wrong
end, anybody?’ There was a round of applause from the spectators watching from the bank. Even the vanquished Oxford boats joined in.