Apple Tree Yard

by Louise Doughty

  ‘I think, in your case Yvonne, it’s a little more than that.’ Jas is gazing at me and I realise he thinks me guilty of false modesty. No, no, I want to say, you’re quite wrong. My modesty is 100 per cent sincere.

  ‘As you’re a scientist,’ he says, ‘maybe there’s something you can help me with. There have been lots of experiments with chimps, haven’t there?’

  ‘Thousands,’ I say, ‘they are our nearest genetic cousins, 98 per cent of our DNA.’ I take a sip of water, and Jas does the same. ‘Mind you,’ I add, ‘we share 70 per cent DNA with fruit flies.’

  Jas doesn’t smile. ‘Almost human, some people say. I suppose that’s why people get so upset about experiments on them.’

  I realise he’s driving at something that will turn out to be relevant to the matter in hand, my criminal defence that is, and that this something has been prompted by Guy’s leaving the table.

  ‘You might know about this particular experiment I’m thinking of,’ Jas continues. ‘I read about it in the papers, years ago, and it has always stuck in my mind because it’s a particularly cruel one. Quite upset me. My wife and I, we’d just had our first child, our son, and of course you have children yourself, so you know that feeling, the feeling we all have, that we would die for them. You look at this baby and know you would walk into a pit of flames.’

  Who would have thought my solicitor could be so confiding? On our brief acquaintance so far, he has struck me as a likeable but chilly, organised sort of person – but I know there is a point coming. With legal people, there is always a point. I glance towards the back of the restaurant but there is no sign of Guy.

  ‘It’s love, isn’t it?’ he says thoughtfully. ‘Pure altruism. Am I right in thinking that scientists have never really been able to explain altruism?’

  I shrug, ‘A lot of scientists will tell you that altruism is very easily explained by the survival of the species. You’re genetically programmed to feel you would walk into a pit of flames to protect your son.’

  ‘Yes but I’m not really sure that explains romantic love between adults…’ he says.

  I cut across him, ‘The propagation of the species requires…’

  He cuts back, ‘But simple lust would do that, yet adult love does often involve self-sacrifice, even parents whose children have long since grown and fled the nest still feel profound and self-sacrificing love for each other.’ He pauses, a telltale pause. ‘And even couples, quite unlikely couples, can fall in love. And even when they don’t have children together, and can never have children together because of their ages or because… because they are both married to other people, even people like that can come to feel a deep and profound love, a desire to protect one another, a capacity to sacrifice themselves in order to protect the other.’

  Now I understand why this conversation is only possible because Guy has left the table. How clever and tactful you must be to be a solicitor working in criminal law, I think.

  ‘The thing is,’ Jas continues, ‘what this particular experiment, the one I have never forgotten because it really did quite upset me, what it demonstrated, is that even the most altruistic or self-sacrificing love has its limits. It implies that there comes a point when everyone puts themselves first.’

  Jas glances at the back of the restaurant as well. We are both wondering why Guy is taking so long, I think. Jas speaks softly and slowly, without looking at me as he does. ‘It was a real experiment, this one I’m thinking of. Some scientists took a chimp, a female chimp, along with her newborn baby chimp, and they put them both in a specially prepared cage. The floor of the cage was made of metal, and it had filaments in it, and gradually, they turned a dial and the floor of the cage became hotter and hotter. At first, the chimp and her baby leap about a bit from foot to foot, then of course after a short while, the baby chimp leaps into its mother’s arms, to be protected from the hot floor, and for a bit longer, the mother chimp continues leaping around the cage, trying to get away from the hot floor, trying to climb the bars that can’t be climbed, but eventually, and they did it several times and found it was always true, eventually, every mother chimp does the same thing.’

  He looks at me, and all at once I wish he wouldn’t.

  ‘Eventually, the mother chimp puts the baby chimp down on the hot metal floor, and stands on her baby.’

  ‘The marinara?’ The waitress has appeared in front of our small table, two pizzas in her hand and a third balanced improbably on her forearm. She puts them down, one by one. I look down at my choice, the name of which I have already forgotten. It has an egg congealed in the middle, surrounded by a limp drape of spinach leaves and white lumps of cheese that I know will make my teeth squeak when I chew them.

  *

  The arrest was difficult, the hearings were difficult; the endless legalities and meetings and discussions that followed over the months I was on bail were difficult too – but nothing was as difficult as the visit from my daughter that weekend.

  Carrie: how to describe her? The straight brown hair cut in a neat bob, the immaculate handwriting – she was the kind of child who emptied the shavings out of her pencil sharpener – that was Guy in her. From me she inherited her short, square physique and large eyes. She baffled me, then and now. What happened to the door-slamming, the screaming, the teenage irrationality and eye-rolling? It was only later, as we lifted our heads from the slow tidal wave of Adam’s illness that we realised – she had always had to be the good one.

  So my daughter comes to visit the weekend after I have been arrested and bailed and she and I end up watching television together and discussing the extent to which female newscasters have their appearances sculpted and moulded. She sits there on the sofa perpendicular to mine, her legs tucked underneath her, poised and careful as a cat. I don’t think I have ever seen my daughter slump or lounge.

  During the weather report, I pluck up the courage to say, ‘Dad’s told you about what’s going on.’ Guy is not in the room because he is spending all his time fielding phone calls and emails from friends and relatives. I’m not allowed to discuss the case with anyone, of course. Guy has become the wall between the outside world and me.

  Carrie is holding a mug of green tea, a very large mug in the shape of the traditional American diner coffee mug, but huge. She bought it as a present for me when she and Sathnam went to New York, from a famous deli, but I never use it – it’s too chunky for me. I save it for her when she comes home. My daughter takes a sip and then looks at me with her large eyes as she lowers the mug and says, ‘Yes, he’s told me.’ And then she removes her gaze from mine slowly, peeling it away with all the care she might use to peel a plaster off a patient’s arm. She looks back at the television, raises the mug again.

  All mothers feel judged by their daughters: it is unavoidable. As they are coming into sexual maturity, emerging from the chrysalis of childhood, we are at the other end of the reproductive cycle, sagging and desiccating. What teenage girl would want to turn into her middle-aged mother? Everything we do or say, every dress we wear or new nail varnish we apply is disgusting to them. We are what they will become when it’s all over.

  I have had many failings as a mother – but in my favour I would point out that the one discussion I have never had with my daughter is the one that goes, Have you any idea how much harder it was for my generation? Have you any idea how derided and undermined we were for even thinking we could enter the world of science? I have never said that to my beautiful, high-achieving daughter. I have never presumed to know her inner life, or accused her of taking the freedoms she has for granted. I love her so much, and I’m so proud of her. I know she loves me too but there is something about family emotion that she can’t bear after everything we went through over Adam. I lift my legs on to a footrest in front of me and my trouser leg slides up and I see her glance over and notice the electronic tag on my ankle, a hard plastic manacle that I will never get used to. She looks quickly away.

  Later Guy says he thin
ks she and Sathnam were considering marrying next summer but because of our crisis have put their plans on hold but when I ask him for evidence of this, he changes the subject and I go and lock myself in the bathroom and brush my teeth furiously and glare at my reflection in the mirror and spit in the sink. I decide we won’t ask her and Sathnam for Christmas, as we usually do – we won’t have friends over either, well maybe just Susannah, who has been phoning twice a day, but even her – maybe even to her we will say, We would rather it was a quiet one this year, just us, it’s difficult.

  *

  In the New Year comes the news that the trial date is set for March. Then there is the inevitable delay, and another date set, June this time. Four weeks before the trial, Guy arranges for me to have three sessions with a barrister in order to prepare me for what I might face in court – this isn’t my defence barrister, Robert, but someone who specialises in coaching witnesses. He does a lot of work with the police and public officials too, we are told. I am sitting in the bay window of the sitting room when he arrives. I have spent a lot of time on that window seat of late. I have piled it with cushions. As I have scarcely left the house for months on end, staring out of the window is an important activity for me.

  The barrister whizzes past in his car. I guess it is him because the car is a sleek black convertible, its bodywork glossy, the soft-top matt. I don’t know the make; I’m not good with cars. The car is going too fast for me to see who is driving but I am in no doubt. It has to be him. He must have gone round the block because a few minutes later, he comes back from the same direction as the first time, but more slowly, as if he is casing the joint. He pulls up at the kerb, parks, and from my vantage point I can see him bend sideways, open the dashboard and extract a small dark bag. I lean back slightly against the edge of the window, so that he won’t see me if he looks towards the house. From the small bag, he takes out a compact mirror, an old-fashioned one like my aunt used to have, with a gilt lid. He checks his reflection, smooths his hair.

  This first session will take place in my own home, I have been told, the next two at his chambers. He hasn’t said as much but I am guessing that he wanted to come and see me in my natural habitat. It will be the next two sessions when he gets rough with me, puts me through my paces, tries to prepare me for intimidation.

  I stand in the sitting room for a bit, until I hear the doorbell, then go out into the hall. Guy emerges from the kitchen at the same time and as he does he gives me a steady look, as if to say, we’re paying a lot for this. He knows my tendency to become competitive with professionals in other fields, to behave as though I’m thinking, I could have done your job if I had wanted to, I just chose mine. I look back at him. I know, I know.

  The barrister is young, toothy, with sleek dark hair and glasses. He has his smile all ready as we open the door.

  *

  We sit at the kitchen table, the barrister and I, while my husband boils the kettle and fills the cafetière and I try not to think that I am about to drink what is, without doubt, the most expensive cup of coffee of my life.

  The barrister continues smiling as he stirs the sugar he has added to his coffee with our thin, silver coffee spoons, then looks up from his cup and says to me, lightly, ‘So Yvonne, are you guilty?’

  I resent him beginning with a trick but I have promised my husband I will be cooperative. I look right at him and say in a voice both mild and firm, ‘No, Laurence, I am not.’

  Laurence the barrister smiles at me, glances at my husband, looks back at me and says, ‘Well that’s a good start, isn’t it?’ He taps the spoon on the edge of the cup, puts it down. ‘I want that in court. Firm but polite and without a hint of doubt, OK? That’s a very good start.’

  We talk in general terms about court procedures and he gives us some depressing statistics. Research done at Harvard shows that people receive messages about other people in different ways. They have done pie charts. When you are talking to someone, you receive messages from them in the following proportion: 60 per cent through how they look, 30 per cent through how they sound and only 10 per cent through what they actually say. As a scientist I am sceptical about statistics and the small, chippy part of me thinks of you, and wants to say, But what about how someone feels and smells? I allow myself to think this only briefly. I cannot afford to think of you. While I am drinking cafetière coffee – my favourite Guatemalan blend – in my kitchen, sitting at my own table with my husband and a sympathetic barrister, you are in a cell in Pentonville. I permit myself a brief image of you in prison garb, lying on your back on a thin mattress, hands behind your head, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘What should she wear to court?’ My husband cuts to the chase. He knows that we are not paying this clever, callow boy four hundred pounds an hour to drink our coffee and suck up my sarcasm.

  ‘Smart but not too businesslike,’ Laurence replies, ‘we do want the jury to see her feminine side.’

  ‘Oh Jesus…’ I whisper under my breath. If he hears it, Laurence shows no sign. Guy sends me another look.

  ‘A blouse with a bit of embellishment, say?’ Laurence smiles at me again, all teeth.

  No one will be advising you to wear a blouse with a bit of embellishment, my sweet. What is the male equivalent? Perhaps there is no equivalent. Perhaps there is only male.

  ‘I’m not sure whether the prosecuting counsel will be a man or a woman,’ Laurence says, ‘but if it’s a man then it’s likely that the junior assigned to him will be a personable young woman and that she will be in charge of questioning you.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Guy asks.

  Laurence shrugs. ‘Same reason they always use female defence barristers in rape cases – so the jury thinks, well if that pretty young woman is defending the bloke in the box then he can’t be all bad otherwise she wouldn’t be doing it.’ He takes a sip of coffee. ‘It’s a remarkably successful strategy, I have to say.’

  I am unable to keep the ice out of my voice. ‘And if you know this, and everyone in chambers knows it, then presumably the young pretty barristers also know it when they are assigned to defend rape cases?’ I take my own sip. ‘That doesn’t bother anyone?’

  Laurence’s stretches an apologetic smile over his toothiness – he is not here to fall out with me. He speaks carefully. ‘Well even rapists deserve a defence…’

  ‘Even if it depends on…’

  Guy cuts across me, ‘So the jury is more likely to think Yvonne is guilty if she’s being cross-examined by a woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I let out a short exhalation and look to one side. My husband and Laurence fall silent and I know they are both looking at me. Why have they sent me this boy? Later, I will be told sternly, he’s the brightest advocate of his intake, razor-sharp.

  After a short pause the brightest advocate of his intake says, ‘Shall we take a break? I’m sure this isn’t easy.’

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ I say, lifting my head from my hands. ‘You two carry on, I’ll be back in five minutes.’

  I rise from the table. Laurence smooths back his hair. Guy watches me as I leave the room. As I mount the stairs, gripping the wooden rail, I hear him get up and go to close the kitchen door. Their voices are muffled but I imagine my husband is saying something like, She’s under a huge amount of stress at the moment. Laurence will be nodding in sympathy.

  In the bedroom, I go to the bed and lie down, flat on my back. After a moment, I put my hands behind my head, staring up at the ceiling.

  *

  I go back down after ten minutes or so. Guy is grim-faced when I enter the room. I look from him to Laurence. Laurence is sitting very still and looking at the table. As I sit down again, he looks up. ‘Your husband has, ah, Yvonne, he has given me a few more details.’

  ‘I told him a bit more about what that man did,’ Guy says, without looking at me.

  Laurence looks at me sympathetically. ‘I hadn’t quite realised it was quite such a violent, er, such a… well…’r />
  ‘You thought it was just…?’ I stare at Laurence, and then I decide to let the point go. ‘In your view, does that make my situation better or worse?’

  Laurence glances at Guy. ‘I was just explaining to your husband that legally speaking it makes it rather worse. It gives you motive. Of course, it doesn’t really explain why your co-defendant behaved the way he did, given you were just friends. You hadn’t know each other for that long, had you?’

  ‘No,’ I say. The number of things that don’t add up is so huge that the air is thick with them. The things not being said are like giant bats flying around the room – we all know it, but no one is going to say. Even Guy, my own husband, has not questioned me about the nature of the relationship between me and you. He has taken me at my word.

  ‘And of course, it’s hard to know how the prosecution will play it at this stage,’ Laurence adds. ‘They could go hard on how brutal Mr Craddock was in order to increase your motive or they could try and claim that you were lying about the whole thing, that you had consensual sex with Mr Craddock and lied about it in order to get him into trouble.’

  I stare at Laurence, knowing that he will not recognise the dangerous quiet in my voice. ‘Why would I do that?’

  Laurence shrugs, ‘Who knows, you were annoyed with Craddock because he didn’t call you afterwards, or something. That one comes up quite often.’ It is his lightness of tone that I find so offensive, his familiarity with all this – his easy and constant generalising of what happens in these cases. I am not general, I want to say. I am particular.

  At this point, even this unintuitive boy recognises the look on my face. He tries to row back, a little. ‘I’m only playing devil’s advocate, trying to talk through all the possibilities. If we’re going to prepare you, then you need to be ready for everything that could be thrown at you and who knows, that’s one angle they might take. The big problem in prosecuting sexual assault cases is the women never seem to fight back.’ Unforgiveably, a note of genuine bafflement enters his voice. ‘It does make our job rather difficult.’