QB VII (28 page)

12

M
ILLIE BROUGHT IN THE
morning mail. Abe thumbed through the envelopes and smiled. There was a letter from Vanessa. He would save that for last.

He opened a letter from his French publisher, who moaned prolifically but enclosed a check for two thousand dollars to help defend the libel suit.

All of his publishers had now been accounted for. The first to come through with five thousand dollars had been his German publisher, a militant anti-Nazi who had been sentenced to death for his implication in the plot to kill Hitler and who cheated the gallows as a result of a bomb raid on Berlin, which allowed him to escape prison.

They all contributed something, except the Swedes. The smaller publishers beat their chests the loudest.

At last he opened Vanessa’s envelope.

Kibbutz Sede Baker

July 25, 1966

10 Morningside Lane

Sausalito

Dear Daddy:

You have been reading between the lines since you left Israel last winter. Yossi and I have fallen deeply in love. The summer in the desert has been hot and oppressive, yet it has failed to dampen our spirits or our feelings for one another.

I don’t know why this should make me feel sad except that taking on the commitment to him means ending a part of my past life. Yossi has another year to go in the Army and four years at the university. It is going to be a long pull and I don’t feel I ought to burden him with a marriage.

I dread having to write my next words for they say that I won’t be coming to America. With things getting worse again on the borders, I am reluctant to leave Israel even for a visit. The exception, of course, is to be with you in London during the trial.

Having shared with you the writing of
The Holocaust
I know what you will have to go through on an even more difficult new novel, and I feel as though I have let you down.

Ben asked me to write in his behalf as he will be on special maneuvers for a fortnight. He’s quite the Israeli officer, grown a large moustache, and is filled with sabra bluster and confidence. Ben’s not serious about any girl in particular but all of them in general. Rather like his father in that respect.

He will also try to arrange leave in order to be in London so let us know when the trial is due.

Yossi has never been out of Israel. I hope he can also join us.

Daddy, I hope I haven’t hurt you too much.

Your loving daughter,

Vanessa

August 3, 1966

My dearest Vinny:

I’d lie if I said I wasn’t disappointed, but I agree with your decision one thousand percent. The one thing we have never gone for is a daughter with a daddy hang-up. It’s at this time of life I feel some guilt about all the months and years I’ve had to spend away in my work, but I think we’ve made it up during our times together and certainly in our relationship.

The closer I come to starting the book the more I realize the less I know. I’m not
young
enough to know everything. Only college kids are young enough to have all the answers and they seem very very intolerant.

It amuses me that this massive anti-establishment of today will be the establishment of tomorrow. In a few years the red hots will have to cool off and take over. Despite a number of innovations they will basically fall in love, marry, have children, struggle to raise their families, and search for a moment of peace. Very same bag I had.

But what is going to happen when
they
inherit the establishment? Will they be as tolerant of beats, junkies, rebels, rioters, and God knows what’s coming up in the future. Well, I think they’d better start getting a little more tolerant of us old bastards who may have a little light to shed.

What I really wish is that they had a hero who wasn’t an anti-hero. Something to live and strive for rather than the “divine” mission of leveling everything to the ground. Something in this world like what you and Ben have found.

It appears that we won’t come to trial until spring. I hang on every news broadcast gravely concerned over what appears to be an inevitable second round with the Arabs. Well it’s the price of our Jewishness, yours in Israel ... mine waiting for me in London. Will they ever let us alone?

My love to everyone. Tell your Yossi I wrote him to be sure to attend to his homework.

Dad

13

M
ARY
B
ATES SLIPPED A
miniskirt over her panty hose, then zipped up a pair of knee-length boots. Terrence Campbell propped up in bed on an elbow. He loved watching Mary dress, especially when she sat before the mirror without her bra, combing out her long blond hair. Miniskirts were crazy, he thought. They went about with freezing bottoms but if they wanted to show it, Terry would look.

Mary came over and sat on the edge of the bed. He opened the covers to invite her in. “Love,” she said, “I can’t.”

“Quickie.”

“You are naughty. Up now. You’ll be late for your first class.”

“One little taste.”

She threw the covers back and bit his bare behind gently.

“Jesus Christ it’s cold,” Terry cried.

“Look at his poor little shriveled up thingie.”

“Wake him up.”

“Tonight.”

She spun off the bed before he could grab her and made to the tiny sink and stove on the opposite side of the room. It was only one room and a sort of bath, but Mary had managed to doll it up with odds and ends and clever sewing. Anyhow, it was theirs. After a year of Terry coming down from Oxford and making love in parked cars, on living room couches, and in cheap hotels at last they had some privacy.

The room was in a turning off the Old Kent Road, within walking distance of Guy’s Hospital and Medical College, where Terry had begun his studies.

Terry shivered at the breakfast table. Mary was a lousy cook. It would be nice if Mary and Mrs. Kelno would become friends and she would learn to cook.

“We have a bloody uncivilized country,” Terry grumbled. “Here in the middle of the twentieth century in an advanced Western nation you’d think the bloody flats would have hot water and central heating.”

“Well have it someday,” she said

Young love can overlook a lot of discomforts and they were strong for each other after more than a year.

“I’ll be going straight from school to the Kelnos,” he said. It was a weekly ritual he looked forward to. A hearty augment to their thin diet “Will you be coming from work?”

“Can’t come tonight, Terry. I talked to my sister yesterday and we made a date to take in a flick.”

Terry pouted. His toast was like a board. He broke it, smeared it in the egg yolks, and crunched it. “This will make three weeks in a row you haven’t been to the Kelnos.”

“Terry, let’s don’t get into an argument now.” Then she sighed and took his hand. “Love, we’ve been all over it a thousand times. My family has disowned me. Sir Adam doesn’t like me or our living together.”

“He’s going to damned well respect you, Mary. I’ve written my father about you. Hell, he and mother had two children together before they were married and God knows they loved each other. Now, you just call your sister and break your date.”

“We haven’t got a phone.”

“Call her from work.”

“Terry. What Sir Adam is really afraid of is that I
will
marry you. I’m just a plain little shop girl, really not good enough.”

“Rubbish.”

Or was it, Terry thought. A lot of their friends had the same arrangement. Students at Guy’s. Their girls supporting them. When he graduated from Oxford and came to London they decided they weren’t going to yield to the hypocrites, and they’d live together. The families of the girls invariably wanted marriage. Marriage meant respectability. An outdated notion of respectability.

The parents of the boys felt their sons could do better. After all, what kind of a girl would just leave her home and live with a student in a walk-up room? Not the kind they would want him to marry.

And all of the girls, despite their declarations of independence, really wanted marriage. So, in defying tradition they actually sought it.

Mary wanted to marry Terrence Campbell more than anything in life. There really wasn’t much novel about it at all.

Dinner was late. Sir Adam Kelno attended a cocktail party in his honor. In the past six weeks there had been as many luncheons, dinners, and parties. The old Polish community of London was suddenly alive with a cause and even though they were permanently settled in England, they would continue to dream.

The libel case was a matter of Polish honor. His supporters were liberally sprinkled with high-standing British sympathizers. Adam silently gloried in this hero’s role.

“I do hope,” Angela said, “Mary knows she is welcome here.”

“I suggest you give her a call and tell her that,” Terry said.

“And teach her how to cook,” Adam said. “You look like a scarecrow.

“All medical students look like malnutrition victims,” Terry said. “Remember?”

After dinner, things calmed. Adam had lectured at Guy’s and was vitally interested in every aspect of Terry’s studies. For the first year student it was mostly a concentration of chemistry, physics, and biology. Nothing really meaty for him yet.

Adam attempted not to bring up the subject of Mary Bates but instead made a general attack on the younger generation.

“Who,” he asked Terry, “has to clean up the mess from overdoses of LSD and attempted abortions and venereal disease? I do. I have a clinic full of them. There is no morality left.”

“I have to get home now.”

“I don’t understand Stephan, either. I don’t understand any of you.”

14

O
NE OF THE PRIME
movers of the British legal machinery is the Master system. Masters are a kind of assistant judges or referees. The Master has been a barrister ten years or more before his appointment and sets the mode and preparation of a trial. They sit in chambers in the Royal Court of Justice doing away with much of the legal boondoggle that lawyers use to plague courts in other parts of the world.

The Master will make rulings on the number of witnesses permitted, the approximate time a case should be scheduled, the pre-questioning of witnesses, rulings on amendments to complaints and pleadings, and issuance of orders to produce documents.

In certain instances the Master will try a case.

His rulings are quick and concise, accurate to the application of the law, and rarely overruled later in court.

The Masters Chambers border a large room called the “Bear Garden” where solicitors gather to make an appearance. They come in pin stripes, young hopefuls, tired old shabby ones, long haired, short haired.

The Master is seated behind a counter-like affair, calling opposing solicitors before him every several minutes. He scans their briefs.

“Well, what is it you want?”

The solicitors argue. Often an astute Master will say, “Some things are so clear they shouldn’t be argued.”

At that point the solicitors retreat to the Bear Garden having been subtly warned that one side is wasting his client’s money and the court’s time. An agreement may be made on the spot and a lawsuit stopped dead.

Before a lawsuit appears in court, the Master will have clearly set down the rules of verbal combat.

For an important trial such as the Kelno versus Cady affair, Master Bartholomew will take up the matter in his private chambers in deference to the appearances of barristers of the eminence of Thomas Bannister and Sir Robert Highsmith. In the chambers of Master Bartholomew came the first probings concerning the admissibility of certain witnesses and documents.

In the winter of 1966–67 formality was chucked. Tom Bannister’s chambers and apartment were often too busy with political callers. Alexander’s office in Lincoln’s Inn was an impossible place of nooks and crannies unable to accommodate the mass of data flowing back from all over the world. There was a unanimous feeling that Shawcross’s fabled library should become the command center. In an unusual move they gathered every several days to fine-comb the correspondence, discuss strategy, and make the decisions.

The first bridge was the selection of a junior barrister. Traditionally the solicitor selected a junior but because of Bannister’s eminence they casually waited for him to drop a name. That name was Brendon O’Conner; a flamboyant, brilliant, sentimental idealist. O’Conner and Bannister represented different styles of advocacy but the junior was an incredibly tireless worker and the soundness of his appointment became apparent very early.

Libel was one of six non-criminal categories in which either party could call for trial by jury. It was extremely rare in civil matters. The jury or not the jury has baffled lawyers since the inception of law. They could be astute or extremely dull or compromise poorly in the pressure of the jury room debates. Again, they yielded to Bannister, who said that twelve Englishmen could not be fooled, and the Junior applied to the Master for a jury. The application was automatically granted.

The list of potential witnesses grew. In the hands of Bannister and O’Conner a weak case could be turned into a strong case. The flaw, obvious to the astute observer, was only a single eyewitness, Dr. Mark Tesslar, who was highly vulnerable.

Pieter Van Damm held a mighty answer, but they remained under rigid instructions by Cady that he was not to testify.

There was a long shot that could bail them out, if Egon Sobotnik, the medical clerk at Jadwiga, were still alive, and if he could be found, and if he could be convinced to testify. If, if, if, if, if. All trails to find Sobotnik went cold. Even the dogged hunter Aroni, who was now putting his full time on the project, was unable to piece the clues together.