by Mark Lawson
‘Another advantage of leaving the door open, I suppose,’ Tom said.
‘Is that your only comment on this charge?’ Goswani asked.
‘No. I have others. For example, did the student actually describe herself as a customer or do you lot Newspeak it later?’
‘I hardly think that’s important.’
‘But it’s interesting textual evidence – sorry, this is what I used to do for a living – of whether the statements are genuinely verbatim or she was rewritten later.’
‘With respect, you don’t know the gender of the victim as the evidence is anonymized.’
‘With rapidly decreasing respect, I do know because I remember this student. Her essay was unforgettable. She attributed the New Deal to Theodore Roosevelt rather than FDR and, as for LBJ, was under the impression that he had entered the White House following the assassination in Dallas of President Nigel Kennedy. And don’t get me started on the historical consequences of Martin Luther having been shot on a hotel balcony in 1968 rather than dying of natural causes in the Holy Roman Empire in I think – forgive me, my medications sometimes make me muzzy – 1546.’
Goswani, who had not bothered to type any of this, said: ‘Do you accept that you made her cry?’
‘No.’
‘So you are saying the customer lied?’
‘No. You are saying the student may have cried. But that doesn’t mean I made her cry. One of the things we try to teach the students is the difference between consecutive and consequential. Roosevelt – the one called Franklin – died two months after the Yalta peace conference. But that doesn’t mean he died because of it. However, the outcome of the conference may have been affected by his infirmity during the negotiations.’
‘Well, I don’t think we need to get bogged down in history.’
‘I fear it may be too late for me. Look, I’m sorry for inflicting this lavatorial detail on you but I was physically sick – from tension, incidentally, not guilt – twice this morning before this meeting. But would it be fair, Ms Goswani, to say that you made me vomit?’
‘I fail to see how I could have done as the meeting hadn’t yet happened.’
‘Okay, if I have another chunder afterwards, will that be your fault?’
‘These exchanges are possibly becoming a little emetic,’ said Gibson. ‘Should we leave that one there?’
Prompted by his recent research into the possible motives of accusers, Ned cut in: ‘Do we happen to know what grades Dr Pimm ultimately gave to V6?’
‘I fail to see what relevance the victim’s academic performance would have.’
The two History teachers exchanged a sceptical look, in which they then tried to include Gibson, but his head was down as he prepared the next question.
Goswani turned the third MacBook towards her, did a quick double-tap and angled it towards the defence bench again. A stilled video showed Tom in lecture pose, mouth open.
‘On a number of occasions,’ the lead prosecutor said, ‘you mocked the religious or spiritual affiliations of your customers.’
‘Now there’s a cross to which I never expected to be nailed,’ Tom said, ignored by Goswani as she clicked the pictures into motion.
On film, Tom, closing up his laptop as the students in the foreground could be seen ducking and shuffling for coats and bags, said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. I’ll see you next Wednesday at 9am then, Inshallah.’ The clip folded and scrolled into him performing the same actions, although in different clothes, and beginning this time in mid-sentence: ‘ … see you next Wednesday at 9am then, Deo Volente.’ The clip, it became clear, was a sort of Vine, with similar clips edited with escalating tightness, so that Tom paid off in quick succession: ‘day at 9am then, Buddha allowing … 9am then Darwin willing … then by the grace of Dawkins … if L Ron Hubbard permits.’
All four people in the room looked away from the black screen as Goswani asked: ‘How would you attempt to defend those comments, Dr Pimm?’
‘Er, I’m not clear of what I am being accused?’
‘Please. I think you know.’
‘Ah. When, at the start, I said “ladies and gentlemen”, should it have been “ladies, gentlemen and trans-gender customers”?’
Gibson did a big, slow blink, removed his spectacles and polished them with the paper napkin that had mopped up his slopped coffee. His colleague was no longer attempting to hide her anger: ‘As you clearly must see, you are charged with giving offence to a person or people of faith.’
‘Yes, I thought that might be the area we were in. Could you tell me if it was a person or people? And whether he, she or they represented Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, Buddhism, creationism, atheism, Scientology, or Anglicanism?’
‘As you will understand, within the limits of anonymity, I can only tell you that a person of one faith raised concern on behalf of those within their own belief system, others and none. Come on, Dr Pimm, surely you can see why those comments offended people?’
‘I thought you just said it was one person?’
‘Representing others.’
‘By petition or by self-election?’
‘Can I take it that you are not entering a defence to this charge?’
‘Well, clearly I never expected to be reviewing a showreel of my own lecture theatre sign-offs. But now that I am, the clips in question would seem to me to show either someone furiously but confusedly seeking a meaning in life, veering on a weekly basis between different theisms or atheisms. Or – alternately – a teacher attempting to employ what I believe – if I dare use that word – is described in your guidelines as inclusive language.’
Ned, watching, felt like a soldier’s mother in the Second World War, intellectually accepting that the battles had to be fought but horrified by the prospect of the bloodshed reaching so close to home.
‘But, Dr Pimm, what has caused offence is that you were clearly “sending up” these faith systems.’
‘Was I? Would you have been happy if I had ended each lecture with the word goodbye?’
‘I don’t think I can see any objection to that.’
‘But the word is a secular conflation of the Christian valediction God be with you. I suppose, if anything, I was riffing on different faith-related ways of saying farewell. Although I can’t claim to have thought about it that deeply.’
‘Indeed. Dr Pimm, what so offended V7 was the suggestion of equivalence – as if Allah and L. Ron Hubbard might have the same weight.’
Tom released the noisy out-breath – ‘Ha!’ – which, Ned knew, was a sign that the other speaker had lobbed up an argument that asked to be smashed into the empty court. ‘But, Ms Goswani, as I understand the university’s non-discriminatory policies, I must treat a Muslim and a Scientologist entirely equally?’
Gibson wiped his mouth with his hand, but not quickly enough to cover a smile.
‘I notice,’ Tom went on, ‘that you omitted from my anthology of see you next Wednesdays the week when I ended May the Force Be With You. I don’t have the precise current figures but, last time I checked, around 2 per cent of the student population self-identified as Jedi Knights.’
Goswani finally spoke: ‘I advise you not to try to be clever, Dr Pimm.’
‘If restored to the academic staff, I will bear that in mind.’
‘The point is that disrespecting all religions equally, Dr Pimm, is not the same as respect. It seems to me that crucial to this is the question of where, as it were, you were coming from. What are your own religious beliefs, if any?’
‘Oh, now …’ Gibson began to interrupt but Tom in turn cut in on him: ‘I decline to answer on the grounds of privacy and conscience.’
‘But it is a matter of public record, Dr Pimm, that you have been prominent in opposing gestures of support for Palestinian intellectual freedom.’
‘Well, I saw it more as supporting the right of academics from Israel to teach or speak here. Oh, I see why you’re heading into this disputed territory. I t
ook the stance I did because – call me old-fashioned – I believe that universities should be places of free debate. I’m not, in fact, Jewish, as I could prove to you with a simple visual gesture, although one that might easily, in the present climate, be misunderstood.’
Goswani’s mouth fell open but Gibson raised a hand to advise that no words should emerge from it.
‘I think we should perhaps move on,’ the novelist said. ‘It is also alleged,’ – he spoke in a colourless tone that could be taken as either neutrality or contempt – ‘that’ – speech now entirely bleached of meaning – ‘while lecturing you told a joke about Jimmy Savile.’
‘You wouldn’t happen to have a year or a subject to help me narrow it down?’ asked Tom.
‘Individual allegations are not dated,’ Goswani explained. ‘But it is my understanding that the investigation covered a period of around thirty years.’
Instinctively developing juridical instincts that he hoped were a final performance rather than a rehearsal, Ned shook his head with arthritic deliberation and eye-flashed incredulity. Sensing the reaction, Tom turned the mime into a duet, which he broke to say:
‘Even within such a wide range of dates, it’s hard to imagine the circumstances in which such a quip would have arisen.’
Blank-faced, Gibson skimmed another witness sheet, headed V8. Tom speed-read it, sniffed explosive derision. ‘Okay. In a lecture on US–UK relations in the middle 1970s, the fact that the prime minister at the time was James Callaghan and the president was Jimmy Carter led me to remark that, as it turned out, neither country benefited from a Jim’ll Fix It effect. I apologize.’
The first smile from the personnel expert. ‘That’s good to hear, Tom.’ The virgin use also of his first-name. ‘To V8 only or to all the victims?’
‘No, for the pun. Obviously, it’s embarrassing to be confronted with a lecturer’s lame attempts to keep the attention of a few more freshers. But, in my defence, I never expected to be put on trial for my wordplay up to two decades later.’
Gibson reached out and recovered the witness statement, wriggled bifocals around his nose as he checked some sentences low down. ‘Ah, yes. On the occasion cited, the gag does perhaps extend a little further.’ Expressionless recitative again. ‘In fact, Dr Pimm went on to say, it can be argued that both Jims did to their countries what the other one is alleged to have done to so many unfortunate young people. So, Tom, that seems to make it more recent?’
‘Okay. Kill him for his bad jokes! But why would that be … be … an example of what I am accused of?’
Goswani apparently suffered sudden gastroenteritis. ‘I wonder if you would explain the humour in your comment to me, Dr Pimm?’
‘I think, with jokes, you either get them or don’t?’ Tom said. His questioner, luckily, didn’t seem to catch that one either.
‘You were suggesting, were you, that the politicians in question had – what? – had abused the countries, had interfered with them?’
‘You know what I was saying.’
‘I am not sure that I do.’
She was goading Tom to make a comment at which she would then express horror.
‘Well, if you want me to say it, that they had fucked them, fucked them up.’
‘And is that appropriate language to use in front of students who may be eighteen years old?’
‘But I didn’t use it! The whole point is that I avoided using it!’
Ned touched a hand to Tom’s back, as if to find a dial there to turn down.
‘Would it ever occur to you that V8 might have been a victim of child abuse?’
‘What?’ The agreement in coaching that Tom must not lose his temper was now broken. ‘For fuck’s sake, what are you suggesting?’
Ned placed a firm hand on his friend’s arm. ‘Tom, I don’t think there was any suggestion that the student was abused by you …’
‘No, indeed,’ Goswani confirmed.
‘Just that HR, er, WH thought he or she might have been offended by the comment because …’
‘Of him or her being a Survivor. Yes, indeed,’ the interrogator agreed.
Tom did now take some calming breaths, but there was heat in his cheeks when he spoke again. ‘When you mention the Great Fire of London, you can’t worry about whether one of the people hunched over a ring binder once lost a significant other to arson. Does an historian of the High Middle Ages not mention the Crusades in case a Muslim student is offended?’
‘Such a policy should surely at least be considered,’ Goswani argued. ‘No business sets out to give offence to its customers.’
‘Well, we can argue about business and customers another time. But, on the broader point, I don’t believe we can treat everyone we meet as if they’re an intolerance-bomb waiting to go off.’
Having recorded those thoughts on her laptop, the Harmonic representative said: ‘Why, Dr Pimm, did you refer, in your joke, to the crimes of Jimmy Savile merely being “alleged”?’
Tom opened his mouth, as if to speak, but released only a wheeze. Ned, although he had agreed that he would not give the first answer to any question, felt compelled to address this one. ‘Because, being dead, he is unable to answer to his crimes or be tried for them. So they remain allegations. It is a fundamental principle that people are innocent until proved guilty.’
‘Thank you, Professor Marriott,’ she said, and, for a moment, there were two defendants in the room. Ned assumed that there had been meetings at the university before his own suspension. A picture of Special and Goswani competing to carry out most unthinkingly the bidding of those above them.
‘A final question from me, for the moment, Dr Pimm. Would it be fair to infer from what we have just witnessed that you have a tendency to lose your temper?’
A laugh so loud that even the studiedly unruffled Gibson started slightly. A sardonic undertow remained in Tom’s voice as he said: ‘There’s always a risk of generalizing from a small piece of evidence. If you see me running in the street, am I an athlete? If you see me at a roadside motel with Professor Marriott in the afternoon, are we having a homosexual’ – correct Grecian pronunciation, hommo-sexual – ‘affair?’
This was what Tom was like in argument: fluent, infuriating, inventive in language and fact. But for him to speak in such a way in this place, Ned feared, was equivalent to a murder suspect answering the door with a red, wet knife. Goswani bang-typed enthusiastically at length and then deferred to the meeting’s leader.
Gibson waved several stapled sheets of paper. ‘As the given designation suggests, the largest number of complaints comes from V1 …’
‘Yes, well, this is Professor Desmond Craig-Jones,’ Tom interrupted.
‘You don’t know that,’ Goswani said.
Ned looked past her to the novelist. ‘Professor Gibson, it does seem to me that there’s a procedural problem here. If Tom is accused of behaving in a certain way to certain people, then how can he give his side of the story without being allowed to identify the person?’
Goswani, quickly: ‘If he did it, he did it. It’s irrelevant who he did it to.’
Gibson, after thought: ‘I inherited, rather than invented, this process. I imagine a parable. A is telephoned at home and asked if he thinks it possible that he may have walked past someone without noticing them.’ The present-tense, parabolic, Kafkaesque voice of Gibson’s later fiction. ‘A replies: “I was deep in thought on Friedrichstrasse this morning. Might it have happened there?” But the investigator responds: “I can not tell you where it might have been. And did I say it was this morning? I am simply asking you if you have ever walked past someone without noticing them.” I can see you have something of A’s difficulty, Tom.’
Goswani appeared to be considering if the process allowed for the tribunal chair to be put on a charge. ‘This is a robust process, based on best practice in equivalent businesses. The process is fit for purpose.’
Ned tried to play peacemaker: ‘Could we set on record both Tom’s c
ontention that he knows V1 to be Professor Craig-Jones and Ms Goswani’s insistence that he doesn’t?’
‘I will include this point of dispute in my report,’ agreed Gibson.
‘Thank you,’ said Tom. ‘Then, if V1 is who I think he is, his complaints focus on my alleged refusal to take his advice and alleged reluctance to spend time with him. If so, then the latter was because, though I make no claims to be a qualified psychiatrist, he was someone who had a disturbing – and, in my view, disturbed – personal manner. If I failed to use him as a “sounding board”, in the way that he desired, then that might be because he was, in my experience, not only batty but inaccurate and incompetent.’
Goswani reacted as if he had used another swear word. ‘Can I suggest we park incompetency for the moment? This isn’t about incompetency.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Tom challenged her. ‘If he’d done his job properly, we wouldn’t have clashed as often.’
‘So you admit you clashed?’
‘Yes. Over his supernaturally low standards and increasingly bizarre contributions to departmentals.’
‘That may be your view. But while the university has no policy on competency, it does have one on bullying. That is the point.’
Tom showed astonishment; Ned spoke it. ‘You have no policy on incompetency?’
‘There is no formal code – no.’
‘That’s fascinating,’ said Tom. ‘If V2, as I believe, is Dr Henrietta Langham …’
Goswani leaned forward to object, but Gibson said: ‘Let him.’
‘Then,’ Tom went on, ‘I am surprised because I have had very little contact with her. Her complaint, as far as I can tell, is that people said to her that I said something to people about her teaching. Leaving aside reliance on hearsay …’
