In Jude Davis’s stable there was one absentee. The boxing world had closed over Little God, and soon he might never have been. His name disappeared from the ranking lists and Goodfellow’s, after two meritorious wins, took its place. Jude Davis never talked about him, Prince sometimes missed his arrogant good humour the way one misses a thorn in one’s shoe. Only Bushey referred to him often. ‘Godfrey. Remember Little God. Man, he was a type. He might not have been everybody’s favourite, but he was go, go. You won’t see another like him.’
Perhaps it was a suitable epitaph. The only other person who had ever been close to Little God, if she had heard Bushey’s comment, would have bitterly, fervently, sadly agreed.
The trial of Wilfred Angell for the manslaughter of Godfrey Brown came on on the 9th October, which was a Thursday, at 10 o’clock in the morning, before Mr Justice Smedley. It had been arranged that the case should be heard before Smedley, as he and Angell were completely unknown to each other professionally.
The police were scrupulous in the evidence they offered and the way it was presented. No bias, no prejudice appeared in Prosecuting Counsel’s voice as he told the tale and examined the witnesses. Eric Bergson, Q.C., and Mr Evan Roberts for the defence were equally courteous and impartial. Bergson called only four witnesses for the defence: Fred Heath, the chauffeur, Dr Amersham, Pearl Angell and the accused. Mr J. C. Harvill, Q. C., for the Crown established the fact that Heath had not actually seen the attack on the accused, and from Dr Amersham he elicited that Angell’s injuries on that occasion had been superficial.
After Pearl had gone up to the box and taken her oath a heavy-jawed man at the back of the court whispered: ‘ Holy Moses, I know where I seen her before!’ ‘Where?’ asked Jude Davis, sitting beside him. ‘I seen her at the gym one day. She came in and asked for Godfrey. Round about last March it was, not long after his fight with Kio.’ ‘ Well, didn’t you see her photo in July?’ ‘ It didn’t look like her then. Honest to God, you wouldn’t’ve known.’ Jude sighed and rested his chin on his hands. ‘So what? So what, Pat? Maybe they were up to monkey tricks, her and Godfrey. It would be like Godfrey to be up to monkey tricks. But it wouldn’t change anything now if you stood up and said so.’ ‘Holy Moses,’ said Prince. ‘From the photos I’d never’ve known.’
In the box Pearl was taken through her story and presently was faced by a deferential and kind Mr Harvill. He, it seemed at first, was only anxious to spare her the distress that her present ordeal was giving her. It was only after a while that some of his questions were barbed so subtly that she wondered if the jury understood them. She would not have understood them herself had she been as innocent as she claimed, and for a few minutes, until the judge stopped him, she walked upon a dizzy tightrope not knowing if she would fall.
When Wilfred went up he gave his evidence in chief with a quiet candour and composure that surprised her and clearly confirmed the jury in all they had so far been led to believe. She had not quite realized that Wilfred was so much on his home ground. Nor would he be rattled by Mr Harvill in cross-examination. Yes, he recognized the revolver that was in court. No, he had never seen it before the evening of the 22nd July. No, he had never owned a revolver, not even during the war. They were not issued to non-commissioned ranks. No, he had never handled one before. No, he did not know where the safety catch was. Yes, he saw it now, but it must have been already lifted when he seized the revolver. No, he had only pulled the trigger once. Oh, yes, he was certainly in fear of his life; the young man appeared to him to be insane with rage.
Angell was asked to describe again how he had wrested the revolver from Brown and how Brown had jeered at him that the revolver would not fire. No, he had no personal reason for disliking Brown. Brown had never wronged him in any way. No, neither physically nor morally. He feared him because he feared personal injury and even death; he also feared for the safety of his wife. No, his act of pulling the trigger was simply an act of self-preservation.
During all this Mr Justice Smedley had been growing impatient, and in the end he cut Mr Harvill short as he had done during his cross-examination of Mrs Angell. The closing speeches were brief and the judge instantly began his summing up, as if he had been waiting for this moment.
‘Members of the jury, you have heard the evidence in this case, and I will not detain you long. We have before us a man accused of manslaughter and rightly standing his trial. He has admitted that he fired the bullet which killed Godfrey Brown so these facts are not at issue. No man may take the life of another without suffering the full examination of the law.
‘The accused man, as you know, is a solicitor, well known, respected, and the head of his law firm. His character all his life has been of the highest.’ The judge lifted his body off its plush seat and lowered it again, frowning his approval of Angell’s character. ‘He served during the War with distinction in Europe and in Africa. But by choice he is a man of peace and of refined tastes. Into his life came a young man, brought up in an orphanage – though no worse for that – but with a record – not a police record, but a history nevertheless – of violence and intimidation. A boxer by choice, he had served one sentence of suspension by the British Boxing Board of Control for attacking his manager in a fit of temper.
‘Mr Angell, the accused man, in the nature of his profession, must tender advice from time to time, and last year he advised a sick woman – since dead – that she was being deceived and imposed upon by this young boxer, Godfrey Brown. As a result of this advice – or so at least Brown thought – he did not come in for the legacy he expected when the sick woman died. So he built up in his own mind a resentment and a bitterness against the accused for giving this advice, and resolved to revenge himself as best he could.
‘You have heard of how he attempted to do this – by threats and later by actual assault – so that Mr Angell, a man in middle life following the sedentary occupation of the law, was knocked about by a trained and vicious assailant twenty-five years his junior.
‘Now let us come to the evening of Tuesday the 22nd July of this year. Brown, arriving at Angell’s house directly from a fight in which he broke the nose of an opponent – though this I understand was only in a training bout – forced his way into the house in which Mrs Angell at that time was alone. He terrorized Mrs Angell, and might well have done her injury had not Mr Angell then returned. Mr Angell, hearing the commotion upstairs and not knowing its cause, went up and discovered Brown in his wife’s bathroom breaking up the mirror glass …’
It’s all right, thought Pearl, he’s on our side, he’s accepted our story, hook, line and sinker, he is as good as retelling it from our point of view. It’s all right. She glanced at Wilfred. It’s all right, Wilfred, after all these months. She glanced at him sitting in the dock, sitting with hand to chin, fingers touching the heavy lips, his face more haggard than she had ever seen it before – not as puffy or as flabby as at the time of Godfrey’s death; stress had refined it, made it more human; over the cheeks it had narrowed, become overcast with shadows. He was better looking for it; his hair had not greyed; she could see his distinction, could see how it impressed judge and jury. She knew that distinction was very real, but she felt certain that nothing in this harrowing experience would fundamentally change him. It’s all right, Wilfred, my lies, our lies have come off. Do you already know it? Are you already breathing free air?
‘Counsel for the Crown has cast some doubts upon the accused’s story of his struggles with Brown. How did Mr Angell wrest the revolver from Brown – a small man but one of great strength – and retreat sufficiently far from his attacker to fire the revolver at a distance of about six feet?’ The judge half stood up and lowered himself again, as if ready for the break that soon must come. ‘ I think you will find, however, that Mrs Angell in her evidence has said that she diverted Brown by trying to reach the telephone, and that it was at this moment that the accused, driven to extremities of force by fear for his own life and the safety of his wife,
snatched the revolver and backed away. The prosecution has been unable to bring any evidence to disprove this explanation. It is for you, members of the jury, to decide whether you accept it.
‘Now, members of the jury, you have to decide the facts and I have to direct you as to the law. The prosecution has to prove the guilt of the accused, and the standard of proof required is that you should all feel sure that his guilt has been established. The defence here is self-defence. A man is entitled to defend himself and his wife if attacked or under real apprehension of imminent attack. The real test of self-defence is that a man who is genuinely defending himself does not want to fight. The force he uses must be in reasonable proportion to the violence being offered against him. He has a duty to retreat if possible, in order to escape his assailant; but if in a confined space he can retreat no further, he is entitled to act in his own defence. The plea of self-defence having been put forward here, it is for the Crown to disprove it. If you think that it either is or may be the case that when Mr Angell snatched the gun from Brown and fired the fatal shot he feared for his life and safety or that of his wife’s, he is entitled to be acquitted. It is only if the Crown satisfies you so that you feel sure that that was not the case, that you should convict.’
Mr Justice Smedley looked at the clock. ‘ It is now one-fifteen. I will keep the court in session for fifteen minutes more. If at the end of that time you have not arrived at a decision you will please inform my clerk and I will adjourn until two-thirty.’
The jury were out ten minutes. During that time Angell was taken below but Pearl would not move from her seat. ‘Come outside for a few minutes, Mrs Angell,’ Mumford urged. ‘It passes the time; moving about is always a help on such occasions.’ She shook her head. ‘When this is over,’ said Esslin, ‘ take him away for a long holiday. We are over-worked anyway in the firm so a little more will do no harm. He will need the change.’ She nodded without speaking.
‘Holy Moses,’ said Prince. ‘I only seen her that once, but when the coppers showed me their picture it didn’t look like her at all. An’ any road Godfrey’d always got some girl or another hanging around.’ ‘He’d always got some girl or another,’ said Jude Davis. ‘So what the hell. That was his undoing. He’s dead.’
‘I’m by no means an expert,’ said Mr Friedel, ‘ but I thought it a very fair summing-up. I thought the judge was very impartial. It makes one glad to be in England. Ah, I see they’re coming back.’
They were coming back. Unanimously they found the accused not guilty. The case had taken just three and a half hours. At one-thirty Angell was discharged. He immediately collapsed and it was two o’clock before he could be helped to a waiting taxi. Pearl and Mr Friedel took him home. Later in the afternoon he was able to eat a satisfactory lunch.
Chapter Fifteen
They did not take Esslin’s advice until January.
They had stuck together somehow, more from the centripetal forces of routine than from any stronger motive. And lacking, after this long enforced period together since Godfrey’s death, the new disruptive moment. The hatred and loathing of those first days had passed. They were used to each other again. Angell worked hard and prospered greatly. The Handley Merrick scheme was going to make him richer than he had ever been before. The strains and stresses he had been through had left no appreciable mark except that thinning of the face. He returned to his club and soon overcame its embarrassments when members wanted to talk to him about it. In a little while he found it not altogether displeasing to have had his moment of notoriety. In his own eyes he was quite willing to see himself as the brave householder of Pearl’s tale, not the wronged and cuckolded husband but the simple Englishman defending his life and his wife and his property against a little thug. Only once he bore a whiff of this attitude home, but Pearl’s reaction was instant. ‘Never, never talk about it to me. And never, never, never in that way.’
So at home he held his tongue – as he had learned to hold his tongue about so much. There were so many areas in their lives now in which silence was the only preservative.
Yet their life together was by now not entirely an unpleasant one. Their interests, which had often seemed similar in the early days of their marriage, continued to develop. Pearl was learning all the time about art and architecture and furniture and silver and glass. She often prospected in antique shops and told Wilfred what she had found, and they would go along together and see it and possibly buy it. They were frequently at the salerooms together, and sometimes Wilfred considered withdrawing a day a week from his firm to have more time for his enthralling hobby. Pearl still enjoyed being rich and cultured, and found this way of living better than any she had previously known. She was a good cook and enjoyed her own food. He enjoyed it too.
In December he began to sleep with her again, now at regular intervals of ten days, which he found suited him best. Sometimes she was passive, calm, acquiescent, as she had been in the early days, sometimes over-passionate and demanding. These times put a strain on his health, but in retrospect they flattered him.
A new warmth – like the sun they found – came into their relationship on their holiday. They went in late January for three weeks to Tenerife. For Christmas he had bought her two more pieces of jewellery, and because of this and the early Georgian silver they had acquired he said they could not afford to be too extravagant, so they took a package deal, flying on a slow turbo-prop and getting a slightly inferior bedroom at the modern steel and concrete hotel. Otherwise it was all the same at half the price.
They sat by the swimming pool each day garnering a sun denied them in England. Wilfred, because of his size, did not like to sun-bathe – he described it as the new mindless religion – but he sat under a parasol reading his art books and was content.
Pearl, having scarcely believed it possible to find such warmth in February, gradually unfolded herself like a crumpled flower, to lie stretched all day in a very small bikini, browning and receiving the admiring glances of the male population of the hotel. Lunch could be eaten either in the hotel or at a buffet by the pool, and Wilfred discovered that, while second helpings were not quite the thing in the restaurant, at the buffet table one could pile one’s plate as high as the fourteen storeys of the hotel for all anyone cared, and even then go back for more at no extra cost. So every day they ate by the pool, Pearl discreetly, knowing that she had put on seven pounds since Godfrey died, Wilfred ravenously, pushing food into his mouth like a nervous householder stockpiling before a siege.
In the evenings Wilfred found friends to play bridge with, and Pearl, soaked with sun and air, was happy to retire with a book to bed. Life was easier now, quieter, undisturbed by violent sexual demands. Godfrey’s death had left a terrible vacuum but also a sense of peace. One drifted along pleasantly enough, easily, respectably, Mrs Wilfred Angell. A rich solicitor’s wife, with a place in the world, a position to maintain. One could become concerned about the quality of the Spanish wines, the temperature of the pool, the availability of chairs, the demand for tables at dinner. One did not argue about, or even consider, being treated like a chattel, being dragged by the arms naked across a bed, being summarily ravaged by a wild little man and summarily dismissed. Nowadays one had one’s position to think of, not the savage excitements of last year.
The clientele of the hotel was cosmopolitan: a high percentage of English, Germans and Swedes, together with modest numbers of Danes, Norwegians, Italians and French. There were even a few representatives of the proud and stiff-necked country which owned the island. One day when it was very cloudy and rather cool, Wilfred and Pearl took deck chairs strategically near the luncheon table, and there arrived in the next two deck chairs two Frenchmen of inimitable appearance. They were in their thirties, muscular, assured, hair en brosse, well bred, monied, sophisticated. They gave off the impression which Frenchmen often give, of knowing more about food and women, and how to enjoy both, than anyone else in the world. The taller of the two, who was addressed as Gaston, c
elebrated his arrival by doing some extraordinary gymnastics on the arms of his chair: raising himself bodily upside down apparently by the strength of his wrists; and this he did, as no person of another nationality could, as if he were alone in the world, as if other deck chairs, other people, other watchers did not exist. It was unselfconscious, yet arrogant. After it was over he lowered himself and smiled encouragingly at Pearl. She glanced quickly away. Now and again during the morning the smell of Gauloises and Ambre Solaire drifted across.
Wilfred had hired a car in the afternoon and they drove up to Tiede, breaking through the cloud barrier at 2,000 feet and coming into brilliant sunshine. They explored the great craters of the extinct volcano and returned to the hotel at seven.
At dinner Wilfred ate more lightly than usual. Pearl looked surprised and he said: ‘I have been thinking, my dear, I owe it to myself, I perhaps even more owe it to you, to bring down my weight again. I’m still in my prime, and some discretion in middle life is probably a good thing. D’you know. An active life such as I lead, and such as I hope to lead for many years to come, makes demands on one’s fitness, and I would be no worse for being half a stone lighter.’
‘Oh,’ said Pearl. ‘Yes, well, I need to watch my weight too. Perhaps we can help each other.’
‘You?’ said Wilfred gallantly. ‘Oh, no, not at all. You’re so young, and a fraction of added fullness lends an extra attraction.’
Pearl sipped her wine. ‘Well, that’s nice of you, but I think I need to watch myself.’
They ate in silence and with new-found dedication. Wilfred said: ‘The Wests and the Rowlands have asked me to play bridge at nine-thirty. They’re good players but not as good as I am. And the stakes are modest. Will you come and watch?’
Angell, Pearl and Little God Page 45
