by Mark Lawson
Recovered Memory Syndrome
She was watching a discussion on Newsnight about the future of the Liberal Democrats. One of the guests turned out to have a stammer. Poor man, she thought, watching him panic and start constructing his answers to avoid consonants that might block him.
And then – which must be how this worked – it was as if her mind cut away from BBC2 to a picture of two people on a grotty sofa. And. And. Of course.
When her solicitor answered the phone, she said: ‘It’s Billy Hessendon Castle. Do you know what? I think I may have narrowed it down a bit.’
The Opposite of Schadenfreude
Until now, when some unfortunate person became the latest quarry of the mob – the politician who made a ‘gaffe’, the footballer whose nightclub lover kissed and told, the bureaucrat with whom the buck stopped for tragedy or corruption – Ned would follow and enjoy their suffering as much as everyone else. The only possible mitigation was that his participation in the gleeful momentum that called for the miscreant’s resignation, sacking or exile took place at dinner parties rather than on Twitter, a bonfire of inanities that he had always refused to feed for fear of its flames being turned on him.
He had touched on this cruel human instinct in his last, latest, TV documentary – a compendium of political scandals to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Profumo affair – although the link had been rewritten because Dominic Ogg said that C2 and DE viewers wouldn’t understand the word schadenfreude. Beyond the usual dismay at editorial infantilism, Ned’s fury was increased by the lack of any satisfying equivalent single word in English. All of the alternatives were phrases. The Australians spoke of ‘tall poppy syndrome’, the desire to scythe down the asymmetrical stalk, and the Japanese of the highest nail being hammered back into place, while Ned had picked up an evocative expression from upper-middle-class English. ‘He’s fallen off his mighty perch,’ Emma’s mother would say with relish of the newly disreputed.
Since his fall, however, Ned felt the opposite impulse when watching the parade of the disgraced: the cabinet minister accused of calling Downing Street coppers ‘plebs’, pop stars who contrive to pay less tax than fans who spend their PAYEdeducted salaries on gigs and records, the unknown who become globally notorious within minutes by posting a tasteless comment or photo, the doctors or social workers who missed the warning symptoms so glaringly obvious to phone-in callers and columnists, the forgotten disc jockeys, comedians and presenters arrested by Yewtree and Millpond.
Now, Ned wanted them all to be innocent victims of conspiracy or misunderstanding or, if not, forgiven, retaining their careers and character. Immediately imagining conversations they were having with their families and the state of their bank balances, gastro-intestinal tracts and sleep patterns, he needed them to get through it as proof that it was possible to do so.
Did the Germans have a word for that?
Nup
Claire had been to some bleak weddings, including the expensive ceremony of a client who she knew was gay and whose divorce she was retained to negotiate within eighteen months, and another where she herself had slept with the groom for the last time (or what, to be legally precise, they intended to be the last time) forty-eight hours before the ceremony. She was convinced she had blushed at the question about just cause and impediment. That marriage had endured, although so, intermittently, had the affair.
But those services were ecstatic and sacramental in comparison with the union of Professor Edmund Horatio Marriott and Emma Jane Humpage, held at Aylesbury Register Office at 11am on an unseasonably wet August morning, witnessed by Ms Claire Ellen, Mr Tom Pimm and Mrs Helen Pimm.
Tom, the sort of man who seemed to see everything as a set-up for a joke, kept referring to Claire as ‘Cupid’ and it was true that the marriage was happening because of her. When she had advised Ned to transfer the house into Emma’s name as a precaution against civil actions from the complainants, she had mentioned that there would be advantages for him in being married, although, anti-romantically, these would apply mainly if the couple ever split up. She assumed that Ned’s proposal had not actually stated that it was better to get married in case they ever divorced or he went to jail, but the offer had been accepted. Due, though, to the bureaucratic motives of this matrimony, they had excluded all relatives, including Toby, who had been sent to stay with Ned’s mother. Claire had also advised her client that it might be better to tell as few people as possible. ‘Oh, fuck,’ Ned had said. ‘You’re saying there’ll be women chained to railings, holding up placards saying “Don’t Marry A … ”?’ Claire had replied: ‘I’m not saying that.’
The Registrar – a large woman, who looked Nigerian to Claire – wore spectacles with bright red frames, suggesting an habitual jolliness, but, behind her novelty eye-wear, looked wary. Claire guessed that the official had picked up on the strained mood of the group – she was used to couples who were, however briefly, in love – but could find no visual evidence to suggest the likeliest explanations of an arranged or passport-chasing marriage. When, just before the ceremony, Ned discreetly swallowed a small yellow pill (presumably a tranquillizer), she visibly relaxed, perhaps intuiting the third reason for an overshadowed marriage: that one of the couple was terminally ill.
Ned and Emma had written their own vows, which was a relief to Claire, as she could only imagine what Tom’s eyebrows might have done during the traditional bits about for richer or for poorer.
Reversing the church order, Emma had chosen to speak first: ‘I, Emma Jane Humpage, ask you, Edmund Horatio Marriott, to be my husband. Do you promise me that, on every day we are together, we will trust and support each other regardless of what troubles may come?’
‘I do,’ Ned replied. ‘Do you, Emma Jane Humpage, accept my promise that I will never again do anything to hurt you?’ As a human, Claire was moved by the honesty of these words; as a lawyer, alarmed. ‘And that I will always prove myself worthy of your love and loyalty?’
‘I do,’ Emma said.
‘I’d get it in writing,’ Tom called. The witnesses stood in a curve behind the couple, like antiquated bridesmaids.
‘Congratulations,’ the Registrar said. ‘You can kiss now if you want to.’
It was a cousin’s pucker, Emma angling her cheek for her new husband to peck. When no-one took photographs during the signing of the register, the Registrar looked panicked again, possibly now suspecting that they were suicide bombers.
The wedding breakfast consisted of coffee and dunked Italian biscuits in a nearby branch of Nero, with Tom joking about the honeymoon being in Winslow. Though it was absolutely none of her business, Claire found it hard to imagine this union being consummated.
Millpond
Since the day he came under suspicion, Ned had avoided answering unknown number calls, assuming them to be a journalist calling from a newsroom. He also ignored numbers that failed to match to a name in his contacts and so might be the mobile of a more canny reporter. So, when the same strange 07801-number had shown several times, Ned, true to his precautions, let it ring out, the failure to leave a voicemail seemingly confirming his concerns. But when an e-mail from Ciara told him that Terry Basham had contacted the department trying to get hold of Ned, the number she gave was the one he’d been avoiding.
He clicked the blue numerals in the message. A male snarl, warning callers they had better have good cause: ‘Yeah.’
‘Oh, er, Terry, it’s Ned Marriott.’
‘Teach! When are you gonna start calling me Bash?’
Whereas Tom’s nicknames were at least inventive, Ned had always struggled with the baptismal wit, imported from professional sport, that simply cut someone’s name in half or stuck the letter y on the end. Probably because Marriotty would have sounded distractingly Italian, Ned had blessedly been allotted something more resourced.
‘Teach, how you doing?’
‘Well, you can probably imagine.’
‘Sure. But you’re not gonna top yourse
lf?’
Did anyone ever answer yes? ‘No.’
Terry Basham, retired CID, had been Ned’s ‘investigating officer’ on a documentary called The Princes in the Tower – Case Re-Opened. Ogg and his producer had clearly hoped the co-presentation would bring class war – encouraging ‘Bash’ to keep apologizing for failing History O-level and Ned to bring up two unsolved London murders on the detective’s file – but they had quickly bonded through the usual masculine glue of drinking and football, although these had not been enough to sustain a friendship after filming.
‘How much do you know?’ Ned asked.
‘Enough to know that a lot of the people twattering about it know fuck-all. This is Millpond?’
‘Er, yes. Richard Dent and Heather, I think, Walters.’
‘Don’t know her. Denty’s classic fast-track bastard. Not a bad lad, though. Spare me the ins and outs but have they got anything except old verbals?’
Simultaneously translating as historical and anecdotal, Ned answered: ‘No.’
‘And your defence is two consenting adults?’
‘Well, yes, and that one of them wasn’t really even sex …’
‘Good luck with that one. It didn’t go a bundle for Old Billy Clinton. And how many women? I’m assuming it is women?’
‘Oh, er, two, but at least one is …’
‘Two,’ Basham cut across him. ‘And how close are the dates of the claims?’
The maths was part of the stuff he had tried to deny and so he struggled with the sum: ‘Er, twenty-nine years apart.’
‘Can they claim a pattern of behaviour?’
Ned forced himself to replay the mental tapes again. ‘I … don’t think so … they were very different situations …’
‘And the complainants are more or less from your neck of the century?’
Basham asked all the questions you didn’t want to answer; his two uncaught murderers must have celebrated when he retired.
‘The first one is. The second …’ Twenty-five years. ‘There are a couple of decades in it …’
‘And I’m guessing she wasn’t older than you? Location thing? Missy clipboard?’
‘Something like that. It happens, as you know.’
The weighted pause of two men who have stuff on each other.
‘Can you be reasonably confident no more’ll come forward?’
‘Well, I never expected these.’
‘Okay. The threshold for a cluster prosecution is ideally nine, seven minimum. I think, if nothing else drops, you’re looking at the difference between being a criminal and being a sleazebag …’
Though now a defendant, Ned retained the self-righteousness of the innocent: ‘Well, thank you very much.’
‘You know me, Teach. I call it how I see it. And the line I’ve drawn keeps you out of court. What’s your brief reckon?’
‘She’s getting together a stack of character references and some inconsistencies in the complainants’ statements.’
‘Yeah. Well, that’s not going to make any difference.’
‘Really? I sort of hold to the idea that, at some stage, I’m going to be allowed a defence.’
‘Mate, I’ve warned you about reading the Guardian. Denty’s straight. But Millpond are acting on orders from the top. They’re playing Yewtree Rules. Automatically accept what the victims’ – sceptical tremor in the word – ‘tell you. Believe it even more if they’re bawling when they say it. Because they didn’t fix Jim, the Met and the CPS are under pressure to get convictions and they want it to be faces.’
A memory of slang from gangster movies. ‘You mean criminals?’
‘Wha? Nah. Famous faces. I feel for you, mate, which is why I got in contact, but this is how the force works. Do bugger-all about something for forty years, then bugger everything for twelve months.’
‘Yes. Well, it may not be the only place that happens.’
‘Look, I have channels to Denty and I’ll find out what I can. But I fear it’s a waiting game now.’
The question that haunts medicine and law: ‘How long do you think it will be?’
And the same answer: ‘It’s impossible to say. You’ve clocked up the air-miles a bit, have you, over the years? The documentaries, posh holidays.’
‘I suppose so. Why?’
‘I’m afraid, in my experience, coppers will never willingly give up a case that involves the possibility of foreign travel. If they get a tip-off from the Maldives, or anywhere else with a decent beach, you could be looking at three years on bail.’
Ray (3)
There had always been a sort of war between the boarders and the dayers. They talked in different ways about different things: home and sisters and dogs and being able to watch football matches on Sky Go in their bedrooms, or dorm and who did the most inhuman farts and who definitely couldn’t be Jewish and playing midnight games of cricket with a rolled-up sock and a folded Four Four Two.
But at least you knew which side you were on. The boarders talked about who had the biggest willy, the dayers about whose family had the biggest car. That was what you got to know, depending on whether you were among the ones who went through the dark brown double doors after Prep or Activities, or the ones who went out onto the gravel where the nannies or mummies were waiting. There was almost never a daddy, except for Stirling’s, whose was so old the boys thought it must be his grandpa until he told them although, once he had, people kept forgetting and asking him again. Now Toby’s own daddy – who wasn’t as old as Stirling’s, but still older than most of the others – picked him up a lot of evenings. Toby wished he didn’t because it only made things worse.
It was one of the reasons he hadn’t minded at first when Mummy suggested that he flexi-boarded once a week. Ellis said it was because his folks wanted him out of the way while they made him a little brother or sister, which was, like, ew, but, anyway, everyone knew Ellis was a bully. Now it was two nights some weeks because Mummy said it was all stops out on a big book that was going to make them all a lot of money. Ellis said that probably meant his rents were getting divorced.
But now it was like Uncle Tom said sometimes happened if a footballer went from one of the big London or Manchester or Merseyside teams to their deadly rivals. The boarders didn’t think he was a boarder and the dayers didn’t think he was a dayer. In break-time games, he’d always played for what was known as the go-home team against the home team but now the dayers sent him over to the boarders, who didn’t pick him either.
The dorm, though, was the total nightmare. He got put in with boys from his year and Oscar Thomas, who had always been one of his mates, was a boarder now, so it should have been okay. But Oscar, it turned out, now thought of himself as, like being Manchester United till he died, and Toby of being, well, Man City. Sometimes it was fine, if Seb Landrose was flexiing as well, but, if he wasn’t, Oscar ganged up on him with Langton and Sweetman, led by Ellis.
‘Give me an R!’ he chanted, then, when he got it, the same for A and Y. ‘What have we got? Ray!’
The others joined him in the chorus: ‘Ray! Ray! Ray! Ray!’
Alice in Custody
No Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland in the library, or adaptations of either at the theatre, where Entertaining Mr Sloane can also no longer be seen; opera listings lacking Billy Budd and Death in Venice, and a space on the wall where The Swing should have hung in the Wallace Collection and Caravaggio’s John the Baptist would have shown in the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome.
During one of his three-hour stretches between drugged sleeps, Ned compiled a mental list of the cultural figures who could be judged lucky to have lived before the internet and the post-Savile investigations.
Art historical gossip, hardened into history, was that the Caravaggio painting of Christ’s herald was based on a boy the artist was fucking. Such research methods in the twenty-first century would have brought a knock on the studio door and possibly imprisonment, so could the statute be back-dated to the seventeenth ce
ntury? It is obvious from the diaries and biographies of Joe Orton that he made prodigious use of rent-boys, in Leicester, London and Tangiers, and that this experience informed characters such as the cock-artist Sloane. So should the play now be banned in case the royalties from it constitute immoral earnings? And the comedian and anecdotalist Kenneth Williams accompanied Orton on some of his African holidays, so should repeats of Just a Minute be censored, just in case?
Lewis Carroll and J. M. Barrie clearly had – to put it as neutrally as possible – a fascination with children as fictional subjects and social companions. Taking advantage of the visual mementoes available to him at the time, Carroll was a keen photographer of children (some attribute to him a nude picture of a pre-pubescent girl), so what possibilities might later technology have given him? Can you imagine the hard-drives of Carroll or J. M. Barrie? Or what might have happened if they had appeared on Jim’ll Fix It to fulfil the dreams of some young fan of Peter or Alice? And which websites might now feed the fascination with what lay beneath a young girl’s skirt that is hinted at in Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing?
Benjamin Britten commissioned operatic libretti on subjects featuring a sodomized young man (Billy Budd) and an old man obsessed with a beautiful adolescent (Death in Venice). He invited certain boy sopranos to private lessons and solo auditions and admitted to attending evensong to enjoy the aesthetic beauty of choirboys. No associate has ever gone on the record with allegations of sexual assault but even the best biographer is less assiduous with their inquiries than the Sex Crimes detectives and investigative journalists who would be on his case now.
The best defence of these cultural suspects was being dead but so, at the time of his exposure, was Jimmy Savile. The others had been dead much longer than him, which might invoke a posthumous statute of limitations on sexual suspicion, though not according to some journalists. A TV documentary had asked whether Carroll was a ‘Victorian Jimmy Savile’ and, though never answering the question, had left it hanging. Britten had been described by a distinguished music critic as ‘a paedophile at least in his mind’.
