The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  He felt the rush of air even before he heard the thud when Shoana, two steps below him, stumbled and fell. Everything seemed to be happening both at once and in slow motion, as his mother tore herself from his arm and leant over Shoana, trying with the aid of his cousin Alice to pick her up. ‘No,’ Shoana screamed, clutching her stomach and doubling over, the darkening patch on her skirt a stark reminder of the baby she was powerless to protect. Meanwhile, the congestion on the steps had caused panic in the crypt.

  ‘Ring for an ambulance!’

  ‘Someone call a doctor!’

  ‘Give us some air!’ Aunt Helena cried, stifled by the fusty presence of her ancestors.

  While the bishop produced a phone from his cassock, Clement ran into the nave and, seeking to drown both the echoes of Roxborough and the thunder of the organ, appealed for a doctor, at which three, the local GP, his father’s oncologist, and his mother’s friend, Jacob Murr, leapt up to offer their services. He watched helplessly as the two elderly specialists deferred to their junior colleague who, after the briefest examination, insisted on taking Shoana straight to hospital, without waiting the twenty or more minutes for an ambulance to arrive from Oxford. Calling on the oncologist’s help, he lifted her up the steps, where Clement absorbed the full horror of her agonised face and bloodstained skirt. As her body went rigid and Jacob vetoed any notion of squashing her into a car, he heard himself suggest that they take her in the hearse. He expected to be shouted down, but the only protest came from his mother and was quickly overruled by Jacob. The two doctors carried Shoana through the church, where the bemused mourners looked aghast at the trail of blood. Clement stood stupefied, while the rest of his family hurried up from the crypt, leaving Mike to pull him back to the present and out to the porch.

  He watched as Shoana was laid out on the bier and Marta, brooking no objections, crouched by her side. Carla and the GP joined the undertaker in the front, and the vehicle sped off like a getaway van. Clement returned to the house, where he broke the news to Zvi, whose impassive reaction chilled him.

  ‘I must go to her. The Radcliffe hospital, you say?’

  ‘It’s in Headington.’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Clement asked tentatively.

  ‘No…! No, thank you. I’ll be fine,’ Zvi replied, striding out to his car.

  Clement walked into the dining room and contemplated the table laden with food for three hundred people. In the event there were seventeen. Mrs Shepherd, reluctant as ever to blur boundaries, put on an apron and chivvied the waiters who, ignorant of the reason for the over-catering, thrust trays of sandwiches at the handful of intrepid guests. The only taker was Bill Mullins, home from a tour of duty in Iraq and looking self-conscious in a suit.

  By seven o’clock, when his mother and Carla returned, all the guests had left, his aunt carrying bagfuls of food that he had earmarked for the caterers.

  ‘Your sister’s had a miscarriage,’ his mother said, although her face had anticipated the announcement.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Clement said lamely.

  ‘They’re keeping her in overnight. Zvi’s with her. He looked so lost.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I asked how she felt – such a stupid, stupid question – expecting her to say empty, but all she said was “I don’t feel; I don’t think I’ll ever feel anything again.”’

  Clement, desperate to blot out the phrase blessing in disguise, asked if she would still be able to have children.

  ‘I don’t know that either,’ his mother replied. ‘It may be too soon to say.’

  ‘Or too cruel,’ Carla added.

  ‘It’s so strange that it should happen then… that it should happen there,’ Clement said. ‘It’s as if there were some outside force, some pull from beyond the grave.’

  ‘Don’t go there!’ Mike said. ‘It was pure coincidence.’

  ‘Tell that to Shoana and Zvi! In their world there’s no such thing. All that happens is the will of God.’

  3

  Clement listened while Lloyd urged him to plead guilty to the secondary charge of attempted murder, as casually as Gil might press him to accept a reduced fee for a prestigious commission. Standing firm, he asked him why, having taken on the case, he was now so eager to be rid of it.

  ‘Not at all. Believe me, I’m happy to go the full twelve rounds, but my job is to serve your best interests. Think of the Law as like your dear old nanny, utterly sound and on the whole very wise, but not at her best when dealing with anything morally ambiguous or complex, which the Granville case undoubtedly is.’ Clement wondered whether to be more disturbed by the metaphor or the abstraction. ‘If we go with murder, there are only two possible defences: diminished responsibility and provocation. Diminished responsibility doesn’t automatically mean that you’re potty. It may be a temporary state brought about by specific circumstances, say witnessing your father’s suffering. But the psychiatric reports don’t give us much help on that score. In fact you appear to be alarmingly sane.’ Clement smiled politely. ‘As for provocation, the strict definition… Let’s go to Archbold… Bear with me a moment. Yes, here we are: Some act, or series of acts, done or words spoken by the dead man to the accused which would cause in any reasonable person… blah blah blah… a sudden and temporary loss of self-control… blah blah blah… as to make him or her for the moment not master of his mind. Another no-go area, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So I’m sunk?’

  ‘Not necessarily. We’ve now received most of the prosecution evidence. The key point at issue is the precise cause of death. And I’d say we’d hit on our defence here, where the pathologist states that, although he found an excessive amount of morphine in your father’s blood, it’s impossible to determine that he died of that rather than the natural disease process.’

  ‘So why not stick with “Not guilty” to murder?’

  ‘There’s the small matter of your confession.’

  ‘Can’t we claim it was extracted under duress?’

  ‘And several public statements to similar effect.’ Clement felt his hopes sink as rapidly as they had risen. ‘But I’ve had a quiet chat with my opposite number, who’s hinted that the Crown may be willing to accept the lesser charge.’

  ‘Which means what exactly?’

  ‘Well, the irony is that attempted murder involves a greater degree of intent – the intent to kill – than murder, which may only involve the intent to commit GBH. But there’s no mandatory life sentence and the judge can exercise his discretion.’

  ‘I was hoping to give the jury a chance to exercise its humanity.’

  ‘Humanity comes in all shapes and sizes. Not just the happy-clappy fruitcake, but the retired nurse, the librarian who gave up her job to care for her bedridden mother, the cab driver working nights to support his autistic son. It’s one hell of a gamble!’

  Clement promised to consider his options over the weekend and give Lloyd an answer on Monday. He spent hours on the phone canvassing opinion but, even when he downplayed the pathologist’s report, his friends all said the same. So first thing on Monday morning, he rang Lloyd to authorise the negotiations. The barrister expressed relief but, as if to obtain full credit for his strategy, insisted that a successful outcome was by no means certain. Three days later, he phoned with the news that the Crown had agreed to the compromise. To Clement’s surprise, the trial would go ahead as planned, but there would be no jury, no calling of witnesses and no testing of evidence.

  Clement spent the next few weeks putting his affairs in order, even though Mike, whose motto might have been Be Prepared were it not for the precedent, counselled against defeatism. On the tenth of March, accompanied by Mike, his mother and Carla, he arrived at the Old Bailey, protecting himself from the massed ranks of reporters and photographers by picturing a red-carpet premiere. The anomalous nature of the case meant that his family, who would have been confined to the public gal
lery as relatives of the accused, were admitted to the whole building as relatives of the victim. So they entered by the main door to be met by Gillian, who escorted them through the security gates and up a short flight of stairs to the lobby. There they found Lloyd studying the Court Lists.

  ‘Just checking there are no last-minute changes. We’re in Court One,’ he said, as proudly as if it were the Centre Court at Wimbledon. ‘Before the Honourable Mr Justice Wellingsley. He’s the senior judge sitting so – and this will interest you, Mrs Granville – he has the right to the Old Bailey sword above his chair.’ Clement watched as his mother, whose only concern was the safe release of her son, thanked him for that nugget of tribal lore. Lloyd then directed his junior, Alex, to take them to the canteen, while he went to consult the prosecution counsel in the Bar Mess.

  ‘It’s like the two front benches hobnobbing in the Commons tea-room before trading insults in the Chamber,’ Mike said, as they went up in the lift.

  ‘Maybe that’s why so many MPs are lawyers,’ Clement replied.

  Walking into the busy canteen, he spotted a section partitioned by a grille. ‘Is that where defendants have to sit?’

  ‘No way,’ Alex said, with a grin. ‘That’s for the staff.’

  Mike and Alex ordered coffee, while Clement grabbed one of the drab Formica tables. He sat between Carla and his mother, who took hold of his hand without speaking.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ma. Everything’ll turn out fine.’

  ‘Your father would be devastated. He’d have put up with any amount of suffering rather than see you go through this.’

  ‘I’m sure the judge will understand,’ Carla said. ‘He’ll let Clement off with a caution.’

  ‘I should have done it. My life’s over. I’m an old woman.’

  ‘Rubbish, Ma. I wish I had half your stamina.’

  ‘It’s gone, darling. First your father, then Shoana, now this.’

  Clement looked at her lined face and liver-spotted hands as if for the first time, and shivered.

  Mike and Alex returned with the coffee and they whiled away the wait with a game of Spot the Journalist, scoring double for distinguishing between tabloid and broadsheet, until they were silenced by a request on the tannoy: ‘All the parties in Granville please proceed to Court One.’

  Clement was unsettled by the general exodus. Leaving the others to take the lift, he and Mike walked down the stairs, enjoying a rare moment of calm.

  ‘I know you don’t want to think about it,’ Clement said, ‘but I may be sent to jail.’

  ‘You must try to be confident.’

  ‘But not naive. You won’t – I may be paranoid but I need to say it – you won’t find someone else?’

  ‘Oh Clem,’ Mike said, oblivious to the throng as he stopped to give him a kiss.

  ‘I won’t mind… that is, I’ll understand if you want to relax the “three strikes and you’re out” rule or bring somebody home.’

  ‘Never. No matter how lonely it gets.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll have the opposite problem. Enforced intimacy.’ He baulked, as dimly remembered scenes from a French porn film filled him with foreboding.

  ‘You’re a strong man, Clement, whatever you may think. And if the worst should happen – not that I’m saying it will, of course – then you’ll learn just how strong. It may be a different kind of strength to the other guys, but they’ll recognise and respect it, I swear.’

  Clement squeezed his hand, fearful that words would betray him, as they entered the Italianate splendour of the Grand Hall. Clusters of lawyers sat around tables and stood beside pillars, while a gang of journalists gathered at the courtroom door. Lloyd, bewigged and gowned, directed them to a bench, where Clement perched between his mother and Gillian and studied the overhead fresco. Glimpsing the legend Moses Gave Unto The People The Laws of God, he stood up and moved away.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Gillian asked.

  ‘Not at all. I’m just tense,’ he replied, finding a more congenial canopy in Poise The Cause in Justice’s Equal Scales.

  An usher opened the courtroom door and Lloyd escorted Clement to the dock, where a security guard led him down a small flight of stairs and subjected him to a rigorous body search.

  ‘Again? I was searched twice on the way in.’

  ‘We don’t want you throwing stuff at the judge now, do we?’

  ‘Like what? Bread rolls from the canteen?’ Clement asked, eliciting no response. He stood uncomfortably close to the thickset man with round-the-clock shadow, listening to the muffled sounds of the court filling up above.

  ‘Shouldn’t I take my place?’

  ‘Not till after the judge’s entered. He bows to the court, see, and he wouldn’t want to bow to you now, would he?’

  Clement shrank from the graphic illustration of his inferior status, hidden from view until the usher’s booming ‘All rise!’ and the ensuing rumble confirmed that it was safe for the guard to lead him up. He entered the vast dock and surveyed the scene. The judge sat in front of him, gazing inscrutably at a pile of papers, beneath the sword which, in a perverse way, honoured them both. The clerk sat directly below, with the lawyers in the well of the court: Lloyd and his opposite number on the front bench; their juniors on the second; Gillian, Dunstan and two Crown solicitors on the third. His family, partially obscured, sat behind them, while, in the public gallery, confounding fears of a crowd of latter-day tricoteuses, he spotted several friends: Robin Barford and three neighbours from the studios; Douglas, a fellow volunteer from the immigration helpline; Jimmy Naismith and his wife, Julia; Anita, playing truant from school; and, particularly welcome, Christine from the Welsh retreat, who had been out of touch for over a year.

  He stiffened his resolve by twisting round to inspect the press pack, hungry for blood. Only the jury benches remained empty, apart from a solitary artist who picked up her pad the moment he appeared. He was both comforted and confused by her presence, wondering whether she knew and even admired his work and, more urgently, whether her sketch might be the one thing in the court to do him justice.

  He stood to confirm his name and enter a plea of guilty, before sitting on one of the green leather chairs with backs so cracked and seats so warped that he presumed they must have been preserved for their historic associations. The prosecution counsel opened the proceedings, outlining the case for attempted murder, based on the evidence that would have been presented had there been a full trial. Instead of the word-spinning that would have followed a ‘not guilty’ plea, he soberly set out all the mitigating circumstances, including testimonies to the victim’s wish to die and various medical statements, regularly referring the judge to the copies in front of him. After little more than an hour, he sat down and Lloyd rose to offer further grounds for mitigation, notably Clement’s close relationship to his father, his unstable health and its effect on his state of mind. To Clement’s chagrin, he had ruled out the prospect of calling him, claiming that it would raise the emotional temperature without advancing his cause.

  The judge ordered a brief adjournment, and Clement joined his family and lawyers in the poky conference room that Lloyd had booked to evade the attentions of the press. Carla and Alex fetched food, which his mother and Mike urged on him with the clear subtext of ‘who knows when you’ll get your next decent meal?’, but he was unable even to eat the sandwich he had taken to appease them.

  ‘It’s odd,’ he said, ‘when I was young, during the panic over Section Twenty-Eight, it seemed quite possible that, as a gay man, I’d end up in jail. Then, in the early days of AIDS, there was all the scaremongering about HIV positive people being sent to camps. The one thing I never bargained on was this.’ Having plunged them into gloom, he sought to lift them out with a series of comic reflections on the judge, prosecution counsel and security guard, which fell so flat that, despite the uncertain outcome, the summons back to court came as a relief.

  The judge resumed proceedings with a short statement. ‘This
is a sad, indeed a tragic, case. There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re dealing with a genuine mercy killing, prompted by exceptional circumstances. But, just as we cannot be allowed to take justice into our own hands, neither can we take mercy. The defendant is a man of honour and integrity. There’s no risk of his re-offending, nor does he pose any threat to the community. On the contrary, the community will be diminished by his exclusion. It is plain that no purpose will be served by keeping him behind bars for any undue length of time.’ The elation Clement felt at the beginning of the speech evaporated. ‘I have it in mind to recommend his release at the earliest juncture consistent with the need to discourage the public from assisting a suicide.’ He addressed Clement directly. ‘I therefore sentence you to a period of three years imprisonment.’

  As the Court rose, Clement’s one thought was to keep his knees from buckling until he was out of sight of his family and friends. He fixed his eyes on the ground for fear of encouraging the gallery’s cries of ‘Shame!’ Three years of his life had been obliterated in seconds. He needed time to adjust, but it was already being snatched away, as the guard grabbed his shoulder and marched him out. He felt intensely cold, not sick or shocked or scared or any other expected sensation, but physically frozen. His teeth chattered; his arms shook; his whole body quaked. He longed to ask for a blanket, but he was afraid of being rebuffed. From the moment he descended the stairs, he felt his treatment change. He was led to a desk in a low-ceilinged hall where a reception officer brusquely asked his name, before ordering him to empty his pockets and take off his belt and tie. As on the night of his arrest, he was most distressed by the confiscation of his watch.

  ‘Aren’t we allowed watches in prison?’ he asked, trying at once to steady his voice and conceal his ignorance.

  ‘Is it gold?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then it’s worth more than £50.’