Law and Peace (17 page)

‘I see.' He raised his eyebrows with amusement.

I smiled back and said, ‘The thing is. For the first time in I don't know how long I felt, well, free. Then last night I had the most vivid dream in which my mum and dad were together and we were all on a beach. I think it came from something I remembered for the first time in a long while yesterday. In the dream we were each building sandcastles and laughing and then suddenly the tide started to come in. At first we carried on laughing, thinking it would never reach as far as our castles. But then slowly, inevitably, it crept forward. My parents gave up and left me to it and I started furiously digging a moat and building huge walls made of sand. But of course they made no difference and eventually as the tide surged I tried to lift the sandcastles up with my hands. Then, just as soon as I thought I'd saved them they started to pass through my fingers and I woke up in a cold sweat.'

‘Like time itself,' murmured OldRuin.

We looked at each other in silence for a little while and then he said, ‘Believe it or not, BabyB, I used to be scared of so many things. Most of all that something terrible would happen to my wife.'

I looked at him and his voice dropped. ‘Then the worst happened and she was taken from me. There was nothing left to fear but I found that if I wasn't careful, my fear was sometimes almost entirely replaced by regret. Regret at the time we spent apart.'

OldRuin looked really sad now and bowed his head a little. ‘Regret at not being with her when she passed away. Despite my protestations, she'd insisted I go off to court that morning. Maybe she knew and wanted to protect me. I don't know. But when I arrived home in the late afternoon I found her. At peace.'

Then he looked back up at me. ‘So who am I to say anything?'

He raised his eyes upwards and looked slightly wistful. ‘The other day I discovered a note she had written to me many years ago. I'd never seen it before. She was always doing that. Writing love letters and then hiding them in silly places so that I'd find them, sometimes years later. Her “little love bombs into the future” she called them. She used to say they reminded her of the children's torn up letter in
Mary Poppins
which magically survived even the fire. Well, I found one of these sitting on top of a book from which we used to read to each other when we were courting. Charles Kingsley actually. But what has lingered with me in the last few days, even beyond the beautiful words of her letter, was the dust that had gathered on top of the book. Plain household dust. Which made me so terribly sad. The weight of time. Paths we never trod.'

I saw him suddenly light up, whilst at the same time his eyes became moist, as if he had been through some kind of catharsis. ‘But, BabyB, that's just it. It's the sadness and regret that carve out the depth of your soul.'

He paused again. ‘My old college's motto was
Garde ta foy
, BabyB, which is apparently old French for “Keep your faith”, though I have to admit that as students the alternative translation of “Watch your liver” always seemed more appropriate. Keep your faith, BabyB, and cherish those regrets. They're who you are and who you want to be.'

 

 

Monday 25 February 2008

Year 2 (week 22): Moldy moves

 

We have reached an agreement, of sorts, in the Moldy litigation, which could lead to some fireworks in the next couple of months. It happened at a case management conference today, which was unusually low key given that UpTights and OldSmoothie were facing each other down. As OldSmoothie and myself arrived he suddenly stopped talking. UpTights was there with TopFirst and they both watched us approach. Then like some sort of old-fashioned dance, OldSmoothie approached UpTights and asked if she might like to have a chat with him at the other end of the corridor. She nodded without anything more and followed behind as he led the way.

TopFirst and I ignored each other as we watched them discuss matters in what looked like a peculiarly friendly way. Then they returned and OldSmoothie said with a big smile, ‘All agreed.'

TopFirst and I stood there looking incredulous. One minute they're at each other's throats and the next they're the best of friends. Anyway, that was an end to even the possibility of any fights today and we all marched into the small courtroom and let OldSmoothie tell the Master what had been agreed. Basically, there will be a handful of cases that will proceed relatively quickly and with only three experts on either side. Whilst they won't strictly be formal test cases, they could end up being pretty determinative of the end outcome. OldSmoothie was obviously delighted with this as it means he will have to do very little work and then if all the others settle he'll probably somehow finagle a fee for each one.

However, I think the main reason the telecom company were up for this was that they are super-confident of winning and want to reassure their shareholders with a quick victory. Though I imagine another reason they were happy to agree to such expedition is that they think they control two of the cases going forward. So now all the opposing experts (neurological, psychiatric and telecom) will be chatting with their opposite number in the next week and after that it'll be set down for trial.

Needless to say that no sooner had the plan for trial been agreed than BigMouth the MP popped up on the evening news discussing the ‘crusade for justice' that he was leading against the big bad telecom company on behalf of his constituents. This, despite the fact we haven't even heard from him in over two months.

 

 

Tuesday 26 February 2008

Year 2 (week 22): In your dreams

 

‘I hate this job,' said OldSmoothie at chambers tea today. ‘Seems a far cry from my childhood dreams of becoming rich and then going into politics and becoming even richer.'

‘Such an idealistic youth you must have been,' said BusyBody. ‘Though I have to admit that running personal injury claims is hardly the civil liberty campaigner I saw myself as either.'

‘Oh, come on,' said TheBusker. ‘It's not that bad. Though granted, I'd take being a novelist or maybe a professional surfer given the choice.'

‘I just wanted to be captain of the England football team,' I admitted with a smile. ‘Though unfortunately that was, if you can believe it, even more competitive than trying to be a barrister.'

‘All I wanted to be when I was a child was a vet,' said UpTights.

Everyone looked at her with incredulity and her face stretched into a smile as she responded, ‘Though as you can imagine, fainting at the sight of blood and the fact that I hate all animals except cats proved to be insurmountable obstacles.'

Then OldRuin came forward and said quietly, ‘I know it might sound a little boring, but all I wanted to be was a barrister. Not a loud high-flying one or anything like that. Just a comfortably off one with a practice that could keep my family and bring me a few good friends along the way.'

That was enough to silence any more of our whingeing.

 

 

Wednesday 27 February 2008

Year 2 (week 22): On guard

 

Well tomorrow I'm against TopFirst in the case that was adjourned last month, and I reckon this probably has something to do with the fact that when I opened my post this morning I found ‘final bills' for my gas, electricity, telephone and council tax. Someone has clearly rung up all these firms and told them I'm moving out. You'd think that they'd have needed my own personal say so and a bit of serious ID to do this, but after spending the whole morning on the telephone untangling it all, the companies confirmed that all they need is for notice to be given over the phone. Incredible. And this was all made even more difficult by the fact that I had to keep explaining why it was my name on the bills when my mother owned the house. Let's just say it was not a good morning.

Anyway, why would I possibly think that this was down to TopFirst? Could it have anything to do with the fact that come late afternoon, when I finally got the chance to open my papers for tomorrow's case, I discovered that this time it's him who has made a last-minute application for an adjournment. He's quoting all sorts of law and he blatantly wanted to keep me out of the library to check through it all for as long as possible today.

So now I have a long night ahead of me.

 

 

Thursday 28 February 2008

Year 2 (week 22): Get out of jail free card

 

After finally getting to bed around 2 a.m., I was then woken up at about 4 a.m. by a minicab that had parked outside my house with its music blaring at full volume. Then the driver rang my doorbell and shouted, ‘Minicab for Mr BabyBarista.' Eventually I had to get up and explain that I hadn't ordered a minicab and that I could only imagine it was some sort of prank. Of course, this didn't go down at all well with the driver and finally, in order to keep the noise down, I paid him some cash to go away.

So by the time I got to court, TopFirst's little tactic of trying to unsettle me had, I'm afraid to say, succeeded. When we met, I said, ‘Pretty low down and petty, TopFirst. Haven't you anything a little more stylish to throw at me?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about, BabyB. Let's just stick to the case, shall we.'

The substance of which was that out of the blue, TopFirst had produced an expert's report that his client, who crashed straight into the back of our client's car, was suffering from what lawyers call ‘automatism'. Or to put it another way, a Get Out of Jail Free card. Simply, the client has a huge no-claims bonus riding on the outcome and the insurance company suggests that maybe he suffered a ‘blackout'? ‘You know, come to think of it, maybe I did.' Then off they trot, get an expert to say, ‘Guess what? I think your old client over there suffered a blackout,' and hey presto, my badly injured client gets nothing. Tough luck and all but blackouts just don't count. No one's fault. Just one of those things. Even if it wasn't a real blackout. Just how it works.

Well, I wasn't having any of it, particularly as I'd heard that this specific insurer had been taking this ‘tactic' on quite a few cases recently. Not that I don't accept that they'd been arguing the blackout excuse all along. It's just that now they were suddenly producing a brand spanking new expert who wasn't umming and aahing as most experts do, but was instead categorically saying it was automatism and that he was the best expert in the world, ever. So TopFirst now wanted an adjournment in order to call his new expert and he gave all sorts of spurious arguments as to why.

But then, despite all of this, I have to admit that my client is still AWOL. Not that I plan to tell TopFirst this. So after much to-ing and fro-ing in the negotiations I eventually relented on the basis that he pay all of my costs and agreed to another adjournment.

I just hope my client eventually turns up.

Chapter 6

 

 

M
arch
: W
histleBlower

Monday 3 March 2008

Year 2 (week 23): WhistleBlower

 

Received a curious letter today relating to TheMoldy litigation. Hand-delivered to chambers. It came from someone working within the telecom company we're suing and stated among other things that, ‘If you want to know exactly what the company knows about the detrimental health effects of their own higher-powered mobile signals, particularly on the elderly, then I suggest we meet.'

The proposed meeting place was the top of Chancery Lane and the date was tonight. To be absolutely frank (HeadofChambers would approve of my choice of words), without some sort of whistleblower evidence our case is pretty high risk at the moment so it'll be interesting to see what he or she has to offer. I mentioned it to Slippery who sounded excited I think, as much by the conspiratorial manner of the approach as by the potential content. So according to the instructions I'll be looking out for a man carrying a red umbrella at the top of Chancery Lane this evening.

 

 

Tuesday 4 March 2008