In Pursuit of the English (24 page)

We got off the bus and Dan said to Flo: ‘Now if you speak out of turn this time I’ll wring your blasted neck for you.’ Flo was subdued by this until the lawyer came to meet us. Her thoughts at once flowed into their usual channel and she whispered to Rose: ‘Now there’s a catch for you, sweetheart. A lawyer’s something like a husband.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Rose. The lawyer, who had heard this exchange, gave Rose a sympathetic wink and then took Flo’s arm. He was a brisk little man with the bloodless London look, a sharp raw face, and shrewd eyes. He handled Flo in an easy authoritative way she did not resent at all. But Dan resented it. He hated the way people responded to Flo, who talked and laughed in her frank, matronly manner with everyone. But they overlooked him, always, because when he was dressed in the ugly suit he was reduced to nothing, He was scowling savagely as we entered the building. It was gloomy, with its surfaces painted shiny brown or tea-coloured or mustard, as if the authorities had been determined to make the processes of justice as grim as possible. Our footsteps had a loud hollow ring.

The old couple were standing with their lawyer near the top of some stairs, and they turned their backs on us with an emphatic scornful movement; and our faces all wore the suspicious wary look people instinctively assume in Law Courts, We looked at each new group as if they might turn out to be enemies. Flo actually drew herself up and shot an angry glance at an astonished old woman before breaking into a ringing laugh – which she at once smothered by clapping a hand over her mouth – and whispered through the cracks in her fingers that ‘she thought that was a witness for the prosecution’.

‘Not prosecution,’ said the lawyer. ‘It’s not that kind of case.’

‘How was I to know? This law is too difficult.’

‘You’d better remember that,’ said Dan. Flo, protected by
the lawyer, defied him with her eyes for the pleasure of seeing him grow more angry.

Rose whispered: ‘Storm warning! Trouble tonight! I’ll come and we’ll have tea in your room and leave them to kill each other.’

The lawyer was nursing Flo because he remembered how at the last case she had ruined everything by allowing herself to be carried away by the spirit of truth at the wrong moment, Flo, he thought, was the weak point. But Dan did not understand this: he could not understand why Flo, who was so stupid, should get all this attention. He kept his heavy yellow gaze fixed on the lawyer’s face, and was looking for an opportunity to impress himself.

We went into the side room to confer with Counsel. It was a dull, yellowish, high-ceilinged room, like a station waiting-room, all the doors standing open, people drifting in and out with the bored yet expectant look of travellers waiting for a train. We had a glimpse, through a momentarily-opened door, into the court-room itself: an old man, the Judge, rested his head on his hand while he listened to black-draped lawyers arguing about some legacy.

As our Counsel entered. Rose dropped her eyes, put on a prim face, and whispered to me: ‘Look what’s come. Isn’t it a sweet little thing?’

Counsel was a willowy stripling, with smooth little-boy cheeks, spaniel eyes, and an assured upper-class manner that caused Flo to gaze at him with incredulous admiration and Rose to whisper again: ‘Don’t laugh now, but we’ll have a good laugh afterwards.’

Counsel’s voice was as smooth as milk; he was deferential and beautifully polite as he cross-examined Dan, who began staring suspiciously at him. As for Flo, she looked as if she might cry, and exclaimed: ‘I thought you were on our side, sir?’

‘But, madam, I am,’ purred the youth, who must have been so much older than he looked. He received the potatoes on the stairs, the filth in the basins, and the pepper on the tulips without a smile. Soon tears stood in Flo’s eyes, and in order to provoke him into some semblance of sympathy she
began repeating herself, raising her voice in the querulous appeal: ‘I do my best for the dirty old bastards, sir, and see what they do?’ And, as he patiently continued: ‘What happened next?’ she could only mutter: ‘Ask the neighbours, ask my witnesses,’ and lifted her handkerchief to her eyes, tears of real disappointment flowing down her cheeks. With a calculated loss of temper Counsel shouted: ‘Answer my questions,’ and this finished Flo altogether. She had to have a warm response from the people she thought of as friends, and now she sat, clutching at Aurora, both of them gazing with wounded eyes at Counsel.

Counsel, his exasperation checked only by the thought of the fees he was earning out of this ridiculous feud, made a helpless gesture and retired to the window to try and regain his temper. The lawyer tried to explain to Flo, for at least the tenth time, the processes of justice. She kept repeating, ‘But he’s not on our side, sir,’ while the lawyer patted her arm and said: ‘There, now, it’s all right.’

Then Counsel and lawyer attacked Dan, in an attempt to make him lie consistently. But Dan imagined they objected to the lies themselves, and at every point where his conscience troubled him, he began shouting justification, so that for the second time Counsel retired to the window to smoke and fume.

So far the witnesses had not been questioned; what was the use of satisfactory witnesses if the two main complainants could not be made to sound convincing? At last the lawyer, hot, anxious and amused, came to Rose, and said: ‘Perhaps you could explain to them?’

Rose faced Flo and Dan and said: ‘Now see here. You’re just being plain silly. You don’t have to get upset. It’s like this – they don’t mind your telling lies, see …’

‘Who’s telling lies?’ shouted Dan belligerently, while the two legal gentlemen exchanged ambiguous glances.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Rose. ‘Can’t you listen? These two gentlemen here are trying to help you.’

‘Are they, dear?’ said Flo doubtfully.

‘Now listen. What you’ve got to do is to tell the same lies at the same time, see?’ She looked for encouragement to the
men, who had turned their backs in order to leave the thing in her far more capable hands.

Meanwhile the old couple, who had finished conferring with their Counsel, sat in the next room through a half-opened door and could hear every word that was being said.

Rose continued: ‘What’s the use of Flo saying she lets the old people use the bathroom if Dan says he locked the door to keep them out?’

‘We didn’t do no such thing,’ said Flo virtuously, and Rose lost her temper and shook her by the shoulders.

‘You said so in your statement.’

‘Did I. dear?’ said Flo, ready to cry again.

‘Now listen. What you’ve got to do is to say that the dirty old things make such a mess in the bathroom and, anyway, she’s got filthy sores all over her legs.’

‘But she has,’ said Flo sullenly.

There was a parrot-like screech from the next room; Flo and Dan glared; the old people glared back; Counsel and the lawyer still had their backs turned.

‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’ said Rose. ‘You was protecting your tenants from disease, see? And every time they went into the bathroom, they made a mess, and you had to clean up after them, they made a mess on purpose, and you thought the old lady’s sores might be dangerous to other people.’

The legal gentlemen, standing side by side and gazing out of the window, permitted themselves to nod encouragingly. Point by point. Rose framed their case for them, shaking Dan and Flo into silence whenever they opened their mouths.

‘Understand now?’ she concluded. By now she felt quite sure of herself, ‘What you’ve got to get into your heads is this,’ was her summing up, ‘All this law business isn’t anything to do with right or wrong, see? You’ll just get everybody confused if you start thinking so silly. Nobody cares what really happened. All they want you to do is to tell a good tie and stick to it afterwards.’

The lawyer coughed, in a resigned way. Counsel’s left shoulder was observed to twitch. Flo and Dan, released by Rose, sat themselves down, in a heavy worried silence. The
lawyer came over, offered Rose a cigarette, and gave her a grateful smile. ‘You’re a smart girl,’ he said. ‘You’d do well in law.’

Rose was overcome, and blushed, saying: ‘Thanks, dear. But you need an education for the law. It’s true I know about it a little, because I had a policeman for a friend once.’

The lawyer and Counsel now tackled Flo and Dan together. At the end of half an hour, they had succeeded in getting Yes and No in reply to certain basic questions. Then they began work on us, the witnesses. After a few minutes, they gave Jack up, for every time they enquired: ‘And what happened next?’ Jack’s admiration for the physical strength of his stepfather, so much deeper than his resentment of him, caused him to break into descriptions of assault and violence which made Dan nod proudly, Flo sigh approvingly, and Rose to groan: ‘Lord help us.’ They told Jack he could go back to work, but as he had a day off he remained seated in a corner with a bunch of physical culture magazines, oblivious of the furious looks Dan was giving him.

Rose proved admirable but limited. When Flo said: ‘But. Rose, you said it was all right to lie,’ she replied, with an open contempt for everybody present: ‘I was just saying what everybody else thinks. I know what’s right and I’m sticking to it.’

As for me, it was decided that since I knew nothing of the old people but what I’d heard, it was no use putting me in the box.

Everything depended on the impression Flo and Dan would make when the time came.

Our case was low on the list. We could hear the Court official calling out names; and as the cases worked themselves through, legal men kept dropping into the room for a cigarette, or to remove their wigs and scratch their hair, or to hold hasty conferences with witnesses. The old couple still sat through an open door, quite silent, staring in front of them.

Dan was restless with suppressed belligerence. He needed to regain his position. He kept shooting glances of
resentment at the pink-cheeked boy who had humiliated him, and al Rose, who had treated him like a child. But the discovery that these guardians of morality not merely overlooked but encouraged a good lie had made him feel their equal. We were all relaxed by now out of boredom. Flo had unbuttoned her coat. Aurora was asleep. Dan was leaning his weight on the table in the easy way he would have used in his basement.

‘You wouldn’t remember the war, sir, would you?’ said Dan to Counsel, who flushed angrily. ‘I served right through the war. Perhaps you could tell the Judge that. It’s more than some can say.’

‘My good man, it has nothing to do with the case.’

‘I saved a man’s life. And now I can’t say who’s to live in my own house.’

‘Mr Bolt, I’ve already told you, it’s irrelevant.’

‘He was a Lascar. And what gratitude do I get, nothing!’

Rose hissed resignedly: ‘Oh, my God, that tears it, if he’s going to start. I hope he doesn’t forget to tell how he did six months’ hard for nearly killing a man in a bar.’ She took out her knitting, which she had brought with her in case of just such an emergency.

Counsel, the lawyer, and various knots of people in doorways or seated on the benches had their eyes fixed on Dan. Every one of them looked slightly irritated. It was the facinated irritation caused by a phenomenon we don’t understand. The fact was, Dan was holding their attention simply by sitting there, and they didn’t know why. The angry power of his body was not evident, muffled as it was in the commonplace suit. And his face expressed nothing but the desire to express – it was long, flattish, yellowish, and almost contorted with his frustration at not being able to communicate.

‘Yes, he was a Lascar,’ said Dan, aggrieved, ‘a black man if you like, but he was human, and I could have died.’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Counsel, Dan turned the hot beam of his eyes at him, and the boy became silent.

‘There I stood on deck,’ said Dan. ‘We had docked that day.’ He was remembering it so powerfully that although he
did not move a muscle, we stood on deck with him. ‘It was a black night and dead quiet. I heard a splash.’ He closed his eyes a moment. There was a silence. He still had not moved. His great hands lay in loose fists on the table before him, not moving. Yet we heard ripples flow out and break softly against enclosing dock walls. ‘I looked over.’ Dan stared ahead of him, not blinking. We saw him bent over a rail at a black cold sea. ‘There was nothing,’ he said. ‘But I had my duty. I climbed and jumped.’ Even Rose let her knitting lie in her lap, and became part of the story. ‘I went down and down, my arms above my head.’ Dan clenched his fist and the cloth of his sleeves bulged out. For a terrifying moment we watched him sink through the lightless harbour water under the black hulls of ships, ‘I saw him. I grabbed.’ Dan’s body stiffened slightly. His hand opened and the fingers flexed rigid on the palm. We saw the hand clutch at something slippery. ‘I pulled him to the surface by the hair. He was fighting, I hit him.’ Dan clenched his fists tight, his head went back, his chin came forward, he half-shut his eyes. ‘I shouted. No one heard. No one on deck. Everyone on shore. First night in harbour for six weeks. I held him and I shouted. I held him and I shouted again. Then I dragged him up the side of the ship.’ Dan gripped his teeth together and the veins swelled in his neck. We saw him heave the Lascar up the ship’s dark side. ‘I put him on deck and worked on him till he came round, ft was a Lascar. Drunk. Can you blame him, sir? The officers’ mess sent for me. Dan, have a drink, they said. Sir, thank you, I said. But I’ve had enough for one night. Ask me for a drink another night.’ Dan half-shut his eyes, and looked woodenly dignified. ‘The Captain came to me.’ Now Dan’s deliberate stupidity was an insult to all authority. ‘I won’t forget this my man.’ ‘Sir,’ said Dan, and he suddenly saluted, with a smart quiver. The shock of that movement was like being slapped: it was only when his hand quivered at his temple that we realized he had told the story without gesture, with no more than an occasional tightening of a muscle. It was with a sting of astonishment that we saw the man was still sitting on the bench by the table. He had come to himself, sitting loosely,
looking around dazedly, mouth open over prominent white teeth, taking in the bare dusty room filled with the fancy-dress gentlemen in their curly wigs and black robes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ Then he violently crashed his fist on to the table and shouted: ‘But that doesn’t help me, does it?’ I’ll never forget this, my man, the Captain said to me, and that’s the last I heard. Justice, they call it. Justice!’