by Will Self
‘Sorry I’m late. Got stuck in the lift. I had to wait for an hour before they let me out.’
Just at that moment the swing-doors from the courtroom swung open and a small throng appeared. The hepatitic barrister pressed through and I saw her lean over and talk to the clerk. I turned to Jim. ‘It looks like we’re on.’ We passed through and into the courtroom.
Jim took his place in a rather long dock to the right of the courtroom. In fact the dock stretched the whole width of the room; there was enough space in it to contain terrorist and stock market multiple defendants. Carol and I took our place at the back of the four rows of tip-up seats immediately to the right of the door we came in by. Together, the seats and the dock faced off two sides of the court. Opposite the dock was the bench; and in the main area, the pit of the court, were rows of desks for the lawyers. The whole place was well lit by flat, flickerless, strip lighting. Every surface – the front of the dock, the lawyers’ desks, the witness box, the bench – was fronted with a light varnished wood. It reminded me of the Old Lecture Theatre at Houghton Street, except that there, all was dark with obscurity. Here, everything was light: truth, the panelling seemed to say, albeit of a particular, restricted, keyline-boxed variety, is about to be pursued.
The presiding judge gave a diffident tap with his little mallet and the court was in session. The clerk of the court rose and read the charges:
‘… that you on the 21st of August did wilfully cause damage to the vehicle belonging to Mr Takis Christos of 24 Rosemount Avenue, Crouch End; that you did thereafter assault Mr Christos; that you did fail to report the accident or to stop after the accident; that you did assault a police officer who came to interview you concerning the accident on the 22nd of August at your place of work. How say you to these charges, guilty or not guilty?’
‘Guilty.’ Jim sounded like a large plastic doll, the word ‘guilty’ wheezed out of him in a breathy, strangulated voice about an octave higher than I’d expected. It was clear that all his bravado had deserted him, he was frightened. A sharp toothpick of compassion entered my heart. My friend was on trial. It was painfully ridiculous.
‘Mr Stonehouse.’ This was the judge, a dormouse figure perched up on his high chair. He was little and pink; a quivering snout quested out from under his wig, his pink eyes blinked as if they had been recently washed in tea. ‘Can you tell the court why you were late arriving here this morning?’ The judge had an incongruously weighty and judicial voice. Imposing and threatening in equal measure, he must have practised a lot when he was by himself.
‘I got stuck in the traffic, your Honour.’
‘I see. Where were you coming from?’
‘Acton, your Honour.’
‘And at what time did you set out?’
‘8.30, your Honour.’
‘I see. It took you nearly three hours?’
‘There were extremely bad road-works in Hackney, your Honour.’
‘I see, I see.’
The prosecution counsel came to Jim’s assistance.
‘There were indeed bad tail-backs through Hackney, your Honour, I was caught in them myself.’
‘All right, all right. This is a court of law not an AA incident room, let’s get on with it.’
The prosecution set out its case. Counsel, the policemen and even Mr Christos kept things brief and to the point. I sensed from the manner in which they gave their evidence that they all believed that Jim was cracked and didn’t really want to see him go down. There was little vindictiveness in the way they spoke about him, it was rather that they were all playing their part as subsidiary cogs in a well-oiled machine. At each juncture the QC asked the judge if he wanted to ask further questions – the only time he did ask one, it was addressed to Mr Christos.
‘I have a note here from the police saying that you have been unable to present your own licence and insurance documents, Mr Christos. Is that correct?’
‘It is true, yes, but I have them, but in the post like I say to them, from Swansea, like I say.’ Mr Christos was a very short individual, globular with tufts of hair protruding irregularly from a balding scalp. It was very difficult indeed to visualise him as a representative of that great, quiescent multitude which Jim believed to be awaiting the onset of the millennium in a lather of spiritual anticipation.
‘See that you present your documents as soon as they become available.’
‘Of course, of course, like I say …’ The judge cut him off with a paw gesture. The fruitier rejoined his friends who were sitting in the row in front of me. They were a couple of sharpish young men who looked like estate agents; and a plump woman in late middle age wearing elephantine slacks and a CND sticker on her raincoat.
I had no time to consider the implications of this. The hearing rolled forward. Jim’s hepatitic barrister got to her feet and looked yellowly around the courtroom, checking no doubt that all her witnesses were in place. The witnesses turned out to be me and a Dr Busner from Heath Hospital. Busner was the psychiatrist who had been charged by the Highgate magistrates with the job of assessing Jim’s state of mind. Busner took the stand.
‘You are Dr Busner, a consultant psychiatrist at Heath Hospital?’ There was a pause. Busner was an ageing hippy with grey, collar-length hair. He wore a striped poplin suit and a tie like a rag. I vaguely recognised him, but couldn’t pin down the recollection. I’d never seen him in the flesh before, of that much I was certain, but perhaps on television. He’d have to be a pretty damn good witness to justify turning up in court in that rig. If I was the judge I would have sent Jim down just on the basis of his expert witness’s apparel.
Busner stroked his chin, and for a ghastly minute it looked as if he was going to launch into some philosophical analysis of the question of his own identity, but he pulled himself together and answered, ‘I am.’
‘Would you like to give the court your professional view of the defendant’s mental state, insofar as it relates to the plea of mitigation on grounds of diminished responsibility.’
‘I have seen Mr Stonehouse for three hour-long sessions over the past month. During that time I have built up a fairly comprehensive picture of him as an individual. He has spent most of these sessions expounding in great detail a series of views he holds concerning the probable impact of the millennium on our society. Views he characterises as “Immanence and Imminence”. It is Mr Stonehouse’s contention that the two assaults on Mr Christos and PC Winch, and the damaging of Mr Christos’s van, were necessary revolutionary acts in terms of the propagation of his ideas.’
Busner paused again. At least it seemed like a pause to begin with, but after the pause had run on for a while it became clear that that was all he was going to say. A susurration of unease ran around the courtroom. The policeman Jim had hit, and who had already given his evidence, began whispering, quite audibly, to one of his colleagues. The judge, who was scrutinising Busner’s written assessment, didn’t notice that Busner had stopped speaking.
Jim’s barrister was obviously taken aback. Eventually she pulled herself together. ‘Is it your view, therefore, Dr Busner, that Mr Stonehouse was in full possession of his faculties when he committed these crimes?’
‘It’s difficult to say; either he’s right in what he says, in which case he was fully compos mentis, or else he is the victim of an extremely complex delusionary state, in which case he is clearly not morally responsible for his actions.’
The judge started at the words ‘morally responsible’ and began to pay attention to the proceedings again.
‘Well, is he or isn’t he?’
‘What, your Honour?’ queried Jim’s barrister, sensing that the battle might be lost.
‘Is he morally responsible?’
‘We think not, your Honour.’
A long sigh from the bench.
‘Mr Stonehouse, we have gone to considerable lengths to hear all the evidence in this case. We have heard from Mr Christos how you drove into his van and when challenged by him lau
ghed and said,’ the judge scrutinised his notes, ‘ “I’m fed up with waiting.” We’ve heard from two police officers how you exhibited the same contempt towards the law when they came to interview you as you showed to Mr Christos’s possessions and person. All in all your behaviour has been reprehensible, immature and criminal. However, I’m swayed by the arguments put forward by … by …’
‘Dr Busner, your Honour.’
‘Dr Busner – and it is to him that I will entrust you for further psychiatric assessment and treatment if applicable. I will defer sentencing for three months pending reports. Mr Stonehouse, is there anything you wish to say?’
This was Jim’s opportunity to really louse things up for himself. I waited for him to take it. He stirred uneasily in the dock; his mechanical arms reached out and grabbed hold of the top of the barrier in front of him; he swept a lock of hair back from his forehead.
‘Only that I’m grateful to the court for giving me the opportunity to sort myself out for a while. I really have been under a lot of pressure recently.’
Only Carol and I and possibly Clifton and Busner could have known how unnatural Jim’s voice sounded when he said this. As far as the rest of the court was concerned it was an honest statement. But I knew that voice, Jim was bullshitting.
The court rose and we went back out into the antechamber. I walked over to where Clifton stood with the barrister, at the plate-glass window, looking out over the car-park.
‘Congratulations, that was quite a result, and you didn’t even need me to say my piece.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry you had to take the trip.’ Clifton brushed the tangle of hair on his lip with the top of a stack of papers. ‘But I’m afraid it really had nothing to do with us. Snape can’t afford to send anyone else down this session. Mr Stonehouse has evaded imprisonment because there isn’t enough room in it for him at the moment, not because of the merits of the case.’
‘Well, I hope you don’t tell him that. Hopefully this whole experience will help him to see some sense.’
From where we stood I watched as Carol came out of the main door of the court building and began to work her way across the car-park, threading her way in between the parked cars. As I watched she gained the outer edge of the tarmac, moved on to the grass to avoid a gaggle of motorcycle couriers who were standing around their machines smoking, and headed off towards the main gates. I turned away from the window.
Jim came up to me, pulling off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. He was grinning broadly. He took in the group of us – Busner had now idled over – and launched into a rant.
‘Well, that fixed them. I thought about it and decided that what waiting had to be done could be done more profitably out here. I will go to prison eventually, but for the moment it’s more important that I improve my knowledge. For this opportunity I thank you all…’ He began to bow stiffly from the waist, but paused in mid-salaam, and looked round at us. ‘Where’s Carol, didn’t she come out with you?’
I glanced down into the car-park again. Carlos was looking up at me. His pink head was glowing faintly in the flat sunlight. A withered roll-up dribbled from his lip; his vinyl tabard rode up around his shoulders. I turned back to Jim. ‘Yeah, she was here Jim, but I think she got fed up with waiting.’
Footnotes
1 British Journal of Ephemera
2 British Journal of Ephemera
A Note on the Author
Will Self is the author of four collections of short stories (the first of which, The Quantity Theory of Insanity, won the 1992 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award), five novels (of which How the Dead Live was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year in 2002), and four non-fiction works. He is a regular broadcaster on television and radio and as a journalist a contributor to a plethora of publications. He lives in London with his wife and four children.
By the Same Author
FICTION
Cock & Bull
My Idea of Fun
Grey Area
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis
Great Apes
Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys
How the Dead Live
Dorian
Dr Mukti and Other Tales of Woe
The Book of Dave
NON-FICTION
Junk Mail
Sore Sites
Perfidious Man
Feeding Frenzy
First published by Bloomsbury Publishing 1991
Copyright © 1991 by Will Self
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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ISBN: 9781408838471 (e-book)
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