by Mark Lawson
‘Workplace Harmony,’ she explained. ‘We used to be People.’
‘Many of your employees would feel the same.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Both women sat down, in front of opened laptops, at a wide glass desk. Disconcertingly, they continuously typed, like court reporters, whenever Tom was speaking, stopping only for questions, which, at first, were always asked by Traill.
She began with general inquiries about the department. Was it a good place to work? Tom riffed about the definition of good, resisting the temptation to discourse on some of his colleagues’ interpretation of work. Had he ever experienced difficult relationships with colleagues and / or customers?
‘The artists formerly known as students?’ he checked. The guardian of Harmony stiffly nodded.
Here was the biggest dilemma of his testimony. He heard, as clearly as if it had been spoken in the room, his long-dead father’s warning, when he had attempted to indict his brother for some infringement of the table football rules, don’t tell tales. And a memory from prep school, informing the house master of the rude words that Felix Gonzales (an embassy kid, a rare exotic foreigner in those days) had used in dorm, and Dr Gore-Balls replying: Maybe leave the policing to the teachers, Pimm. Tom Pimm the snitch and, by contemporary standards, possibly a racist one as well.
‘Well, look, I’m not really comfortable about dobbing people in.’
The tapping fingers paused at the participle and the two women glanced at each other and then entered their best guess. Tom imagined the transcript holding a sudden equine reference: Dobbin.
‘Everything said in this room is confidential.’
‘Er, yeah.’
Although the snort was intended to be sceptical, it came out more dismissively than he intended.
‘I am giving you my word on that,’ Traill said.
‘I don’t doubt it. But, at roughly the time they rebranded HR as People, the joke in our quarters was that History should be renamed’ – Tom’s actual gag had been Bitchery – ‘Hissed Stories. If I say anything to you about anyone, you presumably then raise that with him or her and then he or she immediately thinks: that fucker Pimm has snitched on me.’
They flinched at the expletive and Tom wondered if they typed it in full or, as in the Watergate tapes, put [expletive deleted].
Traill switched again from stenographer to inquisitor. ‘So you would say that you have quite a combative relationship with colleagues, then?’
He thought of the stories he could tell. Daggers, with his unstoppable bonkers monologues in that batty vernacular. Quatermass’s refusal to make eye contact or, since the advent of electronic communication, any human contact at all, conversing only by e-mail even with people sharing his office or sitting next to him in meetings. And Horny, whose escalating mental-health problems and the medication prescribed for them had caused a fogging of knowledge that resulted in students being taught a timeline of English history in which royal children were born before their parents, or battles were fought long after all the combatants were dead. As Tom had once commented to Ned, becoming vague about dates may be a common trait of ageing but can be a more serious symptom in a professor of history. And, then, the unfathomable mystery of the constant expansion in the responsibilities and income of Special, who, outside of the department, would surely struggle to hold down a paper round.
In this quasi-legal setting, though, such complaints felt petty, anecdotal, standard office politics. ‘Look,’ Tom said, ‘stuff happens. But has there ever been a work-place where it doesn’t? My mate Professor Ned Marriott – as seen on TV – is a left … a Catholic and he was saying the other day that the first thing this new Pope pledged to do was sort out the Vatican bureaucracy. I mean, first, even before the paedophilia.’
Tom inadvertently reproduced the ironic smile with which Ned had made the comment.
‘Do you find child abuse amusing?’ Goswani asked.
‘What? No, of course I don’t. I was making the point that even Il Papa has bad days at the office. Look, my colleagues drive me berserk sometimes, and I’m sure that I do them. I’ve screamed at them occasionally; they’ve screamed at me. But, as my teenage daughter likes to say, sometimes you just have to grow a pair.’
Goswani looked bemused – Tom imagined the word being recorded as pear – while Traill’s expression was disapproving.
‘Could you look at this please?’ she asked, sliding a small piece of laminated card across the table. His first assumption was that, in another parody of legal process, it was some sort of oath.
In antiquated capitals, a digital echo of the laborious ink marks of mediaeval monks, were printed the words: ‘We respect and are courteous at all times to all our colleagues and customers, regardless of who they are and what they say or do. We aim at all times to avoid giving offence to anyone by words, by silence, by action, by inaction, by confrontation, by avoidance, by unwanted intervention or by failing to intervene to meet their needs.’
The rhythms and repetitions of the words held a distant reverberation of the prayers – if I have offended You by my thoughts, by my words, or by my deeds, a memory from school chapel – for which they were a humanist substitute. Once the prospect of eternal damnation kept people in line; now it was the threat of a formal disciplinary letter.
‘What do you think of that?’ asked the Snitchfinder General.
Tom censored his thoughts considerably, though not completely. ‘Well, I suppose, for me, the key word is aim.’
‘Do you want to say more about that?’ asked Traill.
‘Well, they’re admirable ideals but perhaps a little impractical and contradictory in an actual working environment.’
Goswani intervened with a sharpness of tone that startled him. ‘In what way?’
‘Look, I see where you’re going with all those sentiments. And obviously colleagues should be respected regardless of who they are. But regardless of what they say or do? I mean, what if they call you a fat Jewish queer?’ The fingers of both women froze above the keyboard, then, after a nervous shared glance, played a short chord. ‘What if they give a Nazi salute or rape a student?’ Another stutter in the transcription. ‘Under a strict reading of that varnished sheet of card, the university was right to let Professor Allison carry on being a rapist for so long and would have been wrong to intervene because he presumably didn’t want them to. And, for example, Ms Goswani’ – she seemed to flinch at the prefix, but what else could he have risked? – ‘just intervened to ask me a question. But how can she possibly know whether her intervention was unwanted or was meeting my needs?’
‘I think we probably don’t want to get trapped in semantics,’ said Dr Traill.
‘But the mission statement on manners you just showed me is an exercise in semantic acrobatics. You print a list of antonyms and then tell people to avoid all of them.’ He stopped and breathed deeply, suddenly worried that they were trying to trap him into losing his temper. ‘And you talk of giving offence by silence. But I have a colleague who will only communicate by e-mail, even if you’re sitting next to them.’
‘Really?’ queried the deputy interrogator. ‘Who is this?’
‘No, I’m not going to tell you. Because I’m not trying to lose anyone their job. That’s why, although I resolutely disapprove of the unisex pronoun them, I used it. And, as I said, sometimes, you just have to’ – this time, he self-censored the genital reference – ‘get on with it.’
‘How well did you know Padraig Allison?’ Traill asked him.
He noted the loaded premise of the question and was concerned that the phonetic pronunciation of the jailed professor’s first name (to rhyme with mad taig, Christ, don’t say that out loud) rather than the correct porrick might reflect a lack of preparation, suggesting that she knew about the Allison case only from last-minute printed or online references.
‘We were members of the same department,’ Tom said, ‘but weren’t friends and never taught on the same course.�
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Goswani made a puzzled face. ‘Oh, but surely there must be an overlap between the American and Irish syllabuses? I mean, given the historical links.’
Pimm laughed. ‘Well, I don’t know what it’s like in Geography.’ Traill looked offended. ‘But, in our building, every course has fiercely defended borders. The American and Irish modules are more like, well, the Irish Civil War than Ireland and America.’
‘So cooperation with colleagues isn’t a high priority for you?’
Too late, he realized he had rolled his eyes at Traill. ‘It takes two not to tango, as I often say.’
‘Often?’ echoed Goswani, then asked: ‘You described Professor Edmund Marriott as your mate. Do you commonly divide your colleagues into those who are friends and those who are not?’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘What I asked was whether you do.’
‘I think History is like any other business. Some people in the office like some people more than they like others. There are groups who go to the pub together, or to Pilates or to book group, or to Sicily. There are people who sleep together …’
‘That’s a serious allegation,’ said Traill.
‘Is it?’ Tom replied.
‘Or a serious admission,’ the deputy interrogator added.
‘Isn’t it just life?’
‘Are you prepared to name names?’
‘Of who is sleeping with who? Sorry, whom.’
They did not seem to type the grammatical correction.
‘If people are alleging misconduct, I am asking them to name names,’ said Traill. ‘Under the protection of anonymity, of course.’
What? ‘I’m sorry, am I being thick? But you know who I am … Oh, I see. The alleged offenders are named but the accusers are anonymous?’
‘Yes. Would you be prepared to identify individuals under that protocol?’
‘No. No, I won’t.’
‘Do you want to tell us why?’
‘You say I was making an accusation. But I was describing a situation. It’s a little bit, Sharia law, isn’t it, the naming of adulterers?’
Goswani typed one entry – presumably the Islamophobia – with a shivery frisson, then glanced at an A4 sheet beside the laptop. ‘How close are you and Professor Ned Marriott?’
‘What? Well, we’ve never slept together, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘I strongly advise you to take this process seriously, Dr Pimm.’
‘I am certainly trying to, Ms Goswani.’
‘I’m pleased to hear that. Would you describe yourself and Professor Marriott as a clique?’
‘Well, I’m not completely sure you can have a clique of two. But, as Dr Traill said, let’s not get hung up on semantics. I think Ned and I are colleagues of the same generation who probably wouldn’t have met, except through education, but, because of it, did. I’d describe us as friends, friends through work. Of which there are many other examples in the department.’
‘So you are saying that History is a cliquey place?’
He thought of deliberately confusing the department’s subject with the entire past of the world but regretfully conceded that his joke reflex was probably not helping him. ‘No, Ms Goswani, I’m saying that it’s a place where – because it probably isn’t practicable for everyone to have a picnic and a softball tournament together every day – people form into smaller, more manageable groups.’
‘Which some might see as cliques?’
‘If they do, they kept me out of the loop on it.’
He would die for his jokes, his wife often told him. His interrogators surlily conferred.
After whispering briefly to her colleague, who nodded, Traill said: ‘Well, Professor Pimm, that’s everything we wanted to cover. Is there anything you want to ask either about today or the process in general?’
‘Well, though I know it’s not your intention, the mere existence of the investigation is making the department an unpleasant place to work. People are suspicious and twitchy, wondering who’s saying what about whom.’
‘Yes.’ Dr Traill moved her chin up and down twice. ‘I hesitate to invoke McCarthyism to a teacher of American history. But, yes, we see that risk.’
He elected not to mention that his daughter was taking a production of The Crucible to the Edinburgh Fringe.
‘Less Senator McCarthy than the Stasi,’ he suggested. ‘Everyone wondering if their neighbour is a secret informer.’
At the mention of the East German secret police, Goswani made a mouth-twist of seeming disapproval and crisply touchtyped for a few seconds.
Traill continued: ‘That’s why we plan to report as quickly as possible. Until then, I remind you that everything said in this room is considered confidential.’
But the weakness in this secrecy agreement was that the inquisition, through either time pressure or naivety, had not scheduled gaps between sessions, so that witnesses, as they left, crossed over in the waiting area with the next testifier.
Weary and depleted from the effort and menacing ambiguity of the proceedings, Tom fumbled the door open to reveal Daggers, who said, from the waiting bench, with a wide-eyed clown’s grin: ‘Wotcher, Cocker!’ His adopted accent, on this occasion, was somewhere between Cockney and Cornish. ‘I felt me old ears burning! Now I knows why!’
Tom levered his lips into a smile. His colleague’s chainsaw guffaw rang across the otherwise empty floor. As Tom retreated down the corridor, he passed posters, peeling from the walls where union reps had stuck them, protesting against planned cuts in teaching staff, and then a board holding yellowing, curling-edged notices from the building’s earlier purpose, advertising talks and debates – ‘A Sermon and a Salmon Sandwich’ and ‘Controversy in the Crypt’ – on subjects including The Sex Factor – Pastoral Counselling in the Age of Eros. And Get Over It – Has Offence Become An Industry?
Walking back to History, he was struck by the peculiarity that the word ‘deposition’ covered both a legal submission and the removal of someone from office.
Sexual History
On the anti-erotic bed in his cell, failing to find a sitting or lying position that didn’t send sciatic spikes down his spine, Ned completed his mental list of sexual partners. Seventeen women. Although, without getting too Clintonian, it depended on what your meaning of sex was.
He had never penetrated (flinching at even thinking the word) Marie Finch for religious reasons and Alex Crumley-Smith because (or so she said) of menstruation. But Ned had read enough of the Operation Yewtree or related trials to know that definitions had broadened to include, for instance, ‘sexual assault by touching’ and he had certainly touched Marie sexually during his schooldays and also Alex after that Freshers’ Week party. But those had been (how silly and childish the word sounded) snogs and would a woman suddenly call in the cops about some (this word not much better) cuddle after forty years or more? (In Ned’s mind, a voice – a paranoid and misogynistic tone he had not heard before – answered yes.)
That left fifteen. His four longest relationships (but wasn’t the charge most likely to have arisen from a brief liaison?) were Emma (fourteen years so far), Jenny (twenty-one years married, lovers for four years before that, although not the final two before the divorce), Lucia (three years, including college and after), and Kathy (eighteen months).
He immediately ruled out Lucia, one of the nicest and kindest women he had ever known; they had attended each other’s weddings, were mutually god-parents, and Toby’s dog, Aguero, was the son of Lucia’s Fred. He was sure they would have married if they had met later. (And if she had not found out that he had slept with Kathy.)
The most obvious suspect, he supposed, was Jenny, who had a clear psychological motive for getting back at the husband who had left her, and for using poisoned sex to do so. Not, however, a financial inducement: damaging his earnings, an obvious risk of such an allegation, would reduce his ability to meet his obligations to her and their daughters.
Kath
y, then. Apart from Jenny, Kathy was the woman whom he had most consciously hurt because, ironically, he had left her for Jenny. But Kathy he remembered as gentle, clever, diffident; he might have married her if it had not been for the thunderstrike of love for Jenny. He remembered – now that he was forcing himself to do so – that sex with Kathy – both frequency and, what word to use, variety – had been more of an issue than with others, but surely he had never forced her, and that was 19 … 1980 (he remembered watching Reagan’s election on television with her in the Brixton flat) and so why wait until now to complain? (Because, the sniping voice in Ned’s head said, since the post-Savile sexual witch hunt, people were being encouraged to reinterpret heartbreak as violation.)
There had also been (if it was possible to think in a whisper, then he did so now) a number of one-night or few-week flings and (so far under the breath as to be soundless) one longer involvement.
It was not the first time he had constructed this catalogue, or at least large parts of it. But he had always previously done so in the service of congratulatory nostalgia or / and orgasm. Never had it occurred to him that he would one day revisit these memories to completely detumescent effect.
People questioned on fraud charges, Ned thought, are presumably still able to spend money. But could someone whose sex-life was criminalized ever have sex again?
He stopped his self-interrogation, deciding to wait until a name was mentioned. Because he suspected, feeling like a character in a spy thriller, the most dangerous enemies were those who could not easily be guessed.
WWID?
Emma’s alleged tendency to read novels autobiographically – and to buy them, both professionally and personally, on that basis – was one of the things that Ned enjoyed teasing her about. When asked for an opinion on a particular publicized or popular book, her answer, she freely admitted, would often be along the lines of, ‘I’m still trying to decide if I would have slept with a concentration camp commandant to save the life of my child,’ or, ‘If I found a diary under Toby’s bed revealing his plot to assassinate the American president, I’d jolly well say something, not follow him at a distance to the White House on the day.’
