A Personal History of Thirst Page 8

  I held my hands up helplessly. “It’s a no-win situation. If I tell her to shut up, it’s a classic case of male dominance.”

  “You bet,” Daisy said.

  “I would not suggest that Daisy shut up,” Hogg said. “I thought that what she said was very…”

  “Very?”

  “Very witty.”

  “Thank you, Padre.” She bared her teeth at me. There was an awkward silence before I stood up to go to the toilet.

  The men’s toilet at this particular pub was famous for its graffiti. I searched the walls for something new and witty to cheer me up but found only the same old jokes. The one I liked best was a diagram of two cubes bearing the legend “Balls by Picasso.” Another scrawl said, “Life on earth is a cure for all those diseases you caught in space.” I wondered if women would think up some good jokes for their walls now that they were liberated.

  When I forced my way back through the throng, they’d bought more drinks.

  “Guess what, the reverend’s father was a power freak just like mine, and he hates his too.”

  “I didn’t say I hated him.” His blushes were as predictable as a church bell by now. “He was a colonel. The British officer mold is a good two hundred years out of date.” He looked at me earnestly. “It’s so uncompromising, you see—black or white, good or bad, accept or reject. It’s essentially…well, un-Christian.”

  “So did you accept or reject?”

  “His father wanted him to be a chaplain in the army, but he told him where to shove it.” She sounded excited.

  Another blush. “I…well, if you want to know, I went through something of a crisis. I was being trained to be a kind of apologist to God for the officer class and a father figure to the troops. But except in Belfast, it seemed to me…well, even the sergeants had new cars, semidetached houses. I wasn’t there to relieve suffering; I was there to relieve guilt. I wondered if guilt wasn’t the only Christian thing we had left. I asked myself where Christ would have worked if he’d been born in modern England.”

  “And the answer was Southeast London?”

  He frowned. “Sorry, it’s very self-indulgent of me to talk about myself. I came to talk about Oliver.”

  “How well did he say he knew me?”

  “He said you were his only friend.”

  “I met with him socially twice—once after I got him off a criminal offense of which he was clearly guilty, and once when he telephoned me in chambers and we went for a walk over Waterloo Bridge. We only got halfway. He stormed off in a huff because he didn’t like the advice I gave him.”

  “What advice was that?” Daisy said. “Pull your socks up, Carruthers, and remember you’re British?”

  Just as I was about to lose my temper, Hogg intervened. “He didn’t say he knew you well; he said you were his only friend. Look, I’m obviously not handling this very well. He’s not…well, it doesn’t seem to me that he’s asking very much. You don’t have to put him up or guarantee his overdraft or anything of that sort. A lot has happened to him in Wormwood Scrubs; he’s had a rough time. He was raped, he got syphilis, the other inmates think he’s a grass, and you know what that means—I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. People of his background get trapped. The only people they know are other criminals. To walk across the no-man’s-land between their world and ours, they need at least one hand reaching out from the other side.”

  “Grass?” Daisy said. “I learned that once. It’s a verb, too, right? I grass, you grass, etc.?”

  “Police informant,” Hogg said.

  “I love crookspeak,” Daisy told Hogg.

  “So what does he want?” I said.

  “Well, there’s this other silly offense hanging over his head—he used a phony check to buy a pair of trousers. Of course it’s not the sort of thing he would ever go to jail for, but if his conviction stands he’ll never get parole.”

  “So what can I do?”

  “He wants someone clever to think up an argument for an appeal. He says all the other criminal barristers he knows are just hacks. They only go through the motions; with you he might have a chance.”

  I felt Daisy’s eyes on me. Angry that she thought she had the right to regard this as a test, I found myself saying the things she was most likely to loathe in exactly the kind of voice she was likely to detest.

  “I’m afraid it’s quite out of the question—I have my career to think of. A barrister can’t be seen befriending convicted criminals and then representing them as a favor. Our reputation is everything. How could I have any credibility in front of a judge if I started making friends with crooks?”

  “But you did, didn’t you?” he asked, seething with compassion. “When you went for a drink with him the first time, then when you agreed to meet him at the temple? Was that not motivated by sympathy, kindness?” His eyes gleamed.

  “No, it wasn’t. Neither of you understand, and you never will. Guilt is a middle-class vice and do-goodery exists to relieve you of the discomfort of guilt. Not to help anyone. I don’t have class guilt. We’re practical people, us working-class lads, and guilt has no practical value. If you weren’t both living in some guilt-ridden fairy tale, you would realize the enormity of what Thirst needs. He doesn’t need to get out of jail one month early; he needs to be relieved of twenty years of programming. To be convinced that the description of the world he’s been learning since birth is fundamentally wrong, and that your white-collar toy town is the real thing. Don’t you see? His whole problem is that he sees the world more accurately than you. He knows it’s rotten and hostile and corrupt. One little drop of sugar-coated kindness isn’t going to change that. Prove to me that he’s got it in him to amputate his past—like I did. Can you do that? And if he does, will the result be all that much of an improvement?”

  “If you think that, why did you meet with him?” Daisy demanded.

  I turned to her. “The same reason What’s-his-name looked back at Hades—the fascination the one that got away feels for the others still squirming in the pit.”

  The rest of that evening is a blur to me. Hogg left soon after my harangue, saying he was not as clever as me, just a humble clergyman. He was sorry to have upset me.

  Daisy demanded another pint of beer, which she drank very quickly before telling me what a disappointment I was to her. Male insecurity made all men sell their souls for power and status. She had thought I was different. What had happened to me? Didn’t I care anymore? I had a real chance to help a fellow human being, and all I could do was worry about what some pompous geriatric judge would say.

  By the end of the pint she was comparing me with her father. I was turning into an English replica of him. If I thought she was going to slave and kowtow for the rest of her life like her mother, I needed to have my head examined.

  The momentum of her mood forced her to end on a high note.

  “You’ve blown it, baby. I hope your goddamn career is enough for you, because there isn’t room for me and it both.”

  I was upset and drunk and yelled back. “Look at you. You think it’s a showdown at the O.K. Corral. Grow up, Yank, for God’s sake.”

  The only scene left to her in the theater of tantrums was to storm out of the pub, which she did. I finished my beer slowly and followed, ignoring amused stares from the other drinkers.

  I found her a hundred yards down the road, sobbing against a lamppost. I put my arm around her. She pulled me against her and covered my face with tears and kisses.

  “Oh God, Jimmy, what’s happening to me—us? I don’t want us to lose it, Jimmy. I really don’t.”

  I held her tight. I wanted to say that I loved her for her madness as well as her wisdom, that I loved every inch of her. As it was, I said something quite different.

  “I don’t know, Daisy. Every time you come back from that women’s group, you want to pick a fight. Don’t you think you might stop going?”

  “If you stop going to El Vino’s.”

  We walked home in a
state of exhaustion. I insisted on making love, which she did obediently and passionlessly.

  “Anyway, What’s-his-name didn’t look back to see the others still squirming in hell; he looked back to make sure What’s-her-name was okay. They weren’t too hot on the classics at your wonderful British concrete comprehensive, were they?” she said before turning over and falling asleep, apparently instantly.

  I also fell into an alcoholic doze, until the buzzer in our room woke me, a signal that I was wanted on the phone in the hall. I pulled on a sweater and jeans and stood shivering while Hogg, tense and apologetic as ever, tried again.

  “I telephoned to apologize. It wasn’t very clever of me, just putting it to you like that in front of your girlfriend without any thought for your career. I’ve been thinking about it. What’s so special about Oliver Thirst is the obvious question you must be asking. Why stick our necks out for him and not somebody else?”

  “I know, I know, an IQ of 140 and a terrible childhood—”

  “No, no, that’s just it, the point I so stupidly failed to make is this: you said can I prove that he will change? Well, of course I can’t prove it, but I’ve spent a lot of time with prisoners, and I’ve never seen anyone so determined to get out and stay out in all my life.”

  “Reverend—”

  “No, please. I think I realize where I went wrong. The last thing you want in this situation is the personal connection, am I right? A prison chaplain contacting you on behalf of a prisoner without going through a solicitor is a breach of your rules of etiquette?”

  “Well…”

  “So suppose Oliver’s solicitors formally asked for you to conduct the appeal, and our little conversation tonight is totally forgotten—wouldn’t that be acceptable?”

  “Well…” I tried to think. It was against the rules to represent a friend, but Thirst wasn’t that. Hogg sensed victory and kept talking.

  “I mean, I expect it would enhance your career, wouldn’t it—at your stage, to have solicitors asking for you to do an appeal? It would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it, if you refused? In those circumstances, I mean?”

  He had a point. Much as barristers affected to look down on solicitors, we depended on them entirely for work. If one was asking for me personally to do something difficult and challenging like an appeal, it could help my marketing.

  “Possibly…”

  “Then you’ll do it?”

  “If the brief is properly delivered, I’ll consider it, if I have no other engagements. I’ll have to get a leader, of course. I’m too junior to do it all on my own.”

  “Whatever,” Hogg said. “I’ll tell Oliver. It’ll all be on legal aid, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  14

  Within days a clerk from a firm of solicitors I had never worked for arrived with the brief for Thirst’s appeal. I happened to be in chambers, and my own clerk rang me in my room.

  “It’s from a firm we don’t normally work with, sir, and it’s an appeal. The brief has your name on it.”

  I walked down the creaking old corridor to the clerks’ room. Michael, my clerk, wore a queer look on his face.

  “This is Mr. Drew from Southall, Baines and Low.”

  The solicitor’s clerk wore no tie or suit. He was unshaven. His eyes darted.

  “I was told you’d agreed to take the brief,” he said.

  “Impossible—surely you know it all has to be arranged through my clerk?”

  “Oh—yeah.” He gave a long wink to Michael, who looked away.

  I beckoned Michael out of the room. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s rather odd, sir—we’ve refused work from that firm in the past.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re a bit notorious, sir. That clerk’s done time, and the senior partner only just escaped being struck off the roll last year—a suggestion of fraud. Some chambers have banned them altogether, though they’re quite popular with heavy villains.”

  “Shall I refuse the brief?”

  “It’s up to you, sir. I suppose just once wouldn’t hurt—it would be good for you to have your first appeal under your belt, get you into a bigger league.”

  “I’d better have a look at the brief. Will you fetch it for me?”

  Michael brought the small bundle of papers. It was properly done up in red tape, but most of the documents were not typed at all. They were written in black ballpoint in a childish hand and full of misspelled words. There being no logical order to the narrative, I had to spend ten minutes working through them before I was clear about what had happened. Thirst had bought a book of stolen checks from his co-accused, a young man named Spoke, for thirty pounds. Both had been staying in a dormitory in a Salvation Army hostel at the time. Doubtless Thirst had used a number of the checks for his fraudulent purposes, but he had been convicted on only one count. He had written a check for fifty pounds to buy a new pair of Levi’s and some other articles of clothing. I noticed, with a little twitch of excitement, that the shop assistant had been an accomplice, although the shop had not pressed charges against its employee—out of fear perhaps. Shop windows are easily smashed.

  I took the papers to my room. A winnable appeal was considerably more tempting than one which simply went through the motions. When Hogg spoke to me that night, it had not occurred to me that Thirst might actually have a chance, albeit on a technicality. People remembered junior barristers who won cases in the Court of Criminal Appeal. A good Queen’s Counsel could build an argument out of that shop assistant. So could I. I picked up the phone.

  “Michael, tell that clerk to go. I’ll think about doing the appeal and let him know by four this afternoon.”

  I looked at my watch. It was lunchtime. Daisy, who had Wednesday afternoons free, came into town to have lunch with me when I wasn’t in court. I put on my jacket, looked into the clerks’ room, told Michael I would be a couple of hours.

  “I know, sir—Wednesday.” He smiled. The last time Daisy had been in chambers, she had made an outrageous joke that Michael and the other clerks laughed about for days. “Terrific tits and a sense of humor,” I overheard one of them say.

  “These Yanks have fantastic appetites, too, they say.”

  “No wonder he’s so skinny.”

  “That’s enough, you lot,” Michael had said.

  —

  I always looked forward to these lunches, even when I knew we were going to argue. Law can be a monochrome pursuit. Daisy, with her moods of many colors, chased away the feeling of mental arthritis that came from too much law.

  I walked across the open quadrangle with its large flagstones, around Temple Church, where crusading knights were buried, past the news vendor on the corner of Fleet Street, and up Chancery Lane. The whole area was teeming with lawyers in search of lunch, mostly barristers in smart three-piece suits, some with wing collars. The women barristers, sensitive to any accusation of professional coquetry, wore severe suits, white blouses buttoned up to the neck. I often marveled at the way even beautiful women could extinguish their sex appeal when it suited their purposes. I admired them, too, for competing in a very male profession where the odds were stacked against them. It would have been so easy to manipulate through sex, but so far as I knew, they usually resisted the temptation.

  Daisy was already waiting in our favorite Italian restaurant, saving our usual table by the window, since no reservations were accepted at lunchtime. She wore a bright-yellow silk scarf loosely knotted around her neck. Soft cotton dresses with large floral patterns were part of the latest neo-Victorian phase. Daisy’s dress was one she’d been talking about for weeks and must have bought earlier that morning. It fitted closely around her torso like a bodice, was white with enormous crimson roses that clashed, I supposed deliberately, with the scarf. As she twisted around in her seat to kiss me, it was obvious that she was not wearing a bra.

  “Thank God you’ve arrived—they’ve been hassling me about keeping the table.”

  “Italia
n waiters hassling you? Dressed like that, I’m surprised they didn’t offer to clear the whole place.”

  “D’you like it?”

  “Actually—yes, very much.”

  “You don’t think it’s too over the top?”

  “Of course it is. That’s why you’ve chosen to wear it in a restaurant you knew would be filled with members of the world’s most conservative profession.”

  She leaned forward. “Well, a touch of color won’t do them any harm.”

  People—the women as much as the men—stared at her as they entered, passersby in the street did a double take through the windows. It was impossible to avoid her, like a candle in an otherwise dark room. I felt immensely proud and faintly mischievous.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I doubt that there are ten other women in England who could wear that dress and get away with it. Especially with that scarf.”

  She fluttered her eyelashes. “Well, maybe the scarf is a bit much.” She unknotted it, tossed it carelessly on a seat beside her. More roses bloomed.

  “What shall we order—the usual?”

  “I think so. And first things first.”

  I ordered a bottle of Chianti Classico. Daisy ordered insalata caprese followed by lasagna, I wanted prosciutto with melon and then spaghetti.

  “You always order spaghetti.”

  “Reminds me of the first meal we had together.”

  “Brenda.”

  “I wonder what happened to her.”

  “I saw her in the street a while back—she pretended not to recognize me. Very short hair, back and sides, very fierce-looking.”

  “Political lesbian?”

  “Probably—but I doubt that it’s purely political. Remember that sort of breakdown she had when I moved in with you?”