by Mark Lawson
‘Yes,’ he said. He knew that this assertion was probably disbelieved – a consequence of the terrible transgressions by his brothers, and their cover-up by the Church.
‘But many of your colleagues fail to restrain themselves,’ Ned said. ‘As do many people who are under no professional obligation, which is why there are so many unwanted pregnancies and, we have to assume, unwanted sex. I think, if you interviewed very many couples post-coitally, you’d get two different stories about what people wanted and got. I accept that. What I question is whether those competing versions can be settled in court – especially many years later. If you look at what juries are doing – Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall, Max Clifford, those DJs and prep school teachers – they’re convicting if it obviously involved kids, stalling if it was over-age and it was he said-she said. I think, in the absence of forensic or documentary evidence, most of us would do the same, wouldn’t we?’
Freed from the sacramental framework – not required to assess the severity of the sins and calculate the proportionate penance – Tony luxuriated in the lesser responsibility of a psychologist. ‘Ned, I think – I’m not talking legally or even penitentially – but I think that’s what we would describe as a partial admission?’
Cooling tea savoured as slowly as wine. ‘Seal of the confessional?’
‘Yes.’
‘I treated women badly. Not criminally, I would insist, but thoughtlessly, stupidly. I learned to treat them better. I think, for the last decade, I’ve been, as they say, clean. I hope to get across to my son that you have to be beyond sure now that someone wants to. But, then, this awful word: historic.’
‘Obviously, Ned, I’m not comparing you to a Nazi war criminal …’
‘Well, I am known as The Hitler Man …’
‘Really?’
‘Office joke. No, I understand what you’re going to say. We can’t expect to escape our past – not even if we’re ninety-six and living in Bolivia, not even if we’re very sorry and haven’t herded anyone into ovens for seventy years. But, A, I don’t think this is quite in that league and, B, I realize I’m straying into your territory but what about redemption or forgiveness? The Americans speak a lot of guff but that phrase about the god of second chances makes sense to me.’
‘And – some would say – that absolution – let’s use that word in a secular sense for the moment – can only follow penance, punishment …’
‘I have punished myself.’
‘Yourself.’
It was a standard pattern in penitents: the desire to be forgiven without quite confessing.
‘The last year has been my penance. I have had condemnation without the possibility of any real absolution.’
‘Yes. I see that. Ned, I can still, if you wish, make this a formal confession.’
‘A part of me wants to …’
‘And would it be trite to call that part your soul, your conscience?’
Ned grimaced. ‘Yes, actually, I think it would be.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I forgive you.’ Ned started a laugh, which Tony echoed. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t resist that. Look, if you could absolve me and then ring my poor mum and tell her, that would be great. But, by definition, you can’t. And anything you say wouldn’t apply on Twitter or Google. One of the obligations on people in my line of work is to come up with adjectives for the decades: Roaring Forties, Nervous Nineties, and so on. And I think the only word for the one we’re in – the Twentytens or whatever – is censorious. Someone takes offence at anything anyone says. One comment can lose you your job, your life. Excuse the sermon.’
‘I’ve preached a version of it myself.’
‘Look, actually, Father, Tony, there is something I want to tell you …’
Doctors said the same – that the real revelation often came late in the consultation.
‘I’ve told you, Ned. Anything you say stays with me.’
‘People knowing that I’ve hurt them is bad enough. But there’s someone who doesn’t know what I did to them.’
‘Some would say that’s better.’
‘Yes, and I see that. But I know and – I see that it sounds as if it’s all about me – find it hard to live with …’
One of the few useful things Tony had learned on ministerial refresher courses was the power of leaving a silence. He forced himself to say nothing.
‘I betrayed – I suppose is the word – my best friend, who has been so good to me through all this …’
‘Sexually?’
Pause. ‘No. No.’
But the hesitation and then the repetition probably meant yes; a priest became as attuned to the tells of deceit as detectives and journalists presumably did. Ned’s hands on his lap were twisted into entwined fists, fingers flushed by the tightness, at which tangle he stared as he spoke.
‘What happened was – I gave evidence against him. There was some Savonarolan crackdown at work and I gave them stuff on him. The last thing the authorities would want would be for him to know it was me, so I’m safe in that sense, but I had to sit beside him while he read the stuff I’d said, hidden under a code-name … but Jesus …’ It was a sign of how deep he was going that Ned did not apologize for the blasphemy. ‘Or, more appositely, Judas …’
‘Do you know why you did it?’
‘Yes, I think so. Probably. Because, by the laws of both gratitude and statistics, it reduced the chances of the bastards coming for me. And because there’s some awful human instinct to tell the soldiers what they want to know. We often think the really revealing historical what-if is: would I have been a Nazi? Or: would I have hidden Jews in my attic? And those are good enough tests. But I think the hardest one is: would I be an informer? Because it’s something you can do – if you want to be any good, how you have to do it – without anyone knowing, unless there’s a revolution later on and the filing cabinets are tipped out in the market square. I have raged in my head – obviously – about the people who spoke to the cops about me and the moral imbalance that must have driven them to it. But, the minute I got the chance, I – this word dates me – grassed on my best friend. From professional scruple, I’m always wary of the more explosive historical comparisons but let’s say that, as certain leaders in certain periods have calculated, there’s an almost genetic desire to be helpful to the authorities. It makes us feel useful, wanted, pure.’
‘Have you thought about telling your friend?’
‘Slightly. But I convince myself – as people probably did in those countries at those times – that the authorities would have done what they did to him anyway. I doubt my tittle-tattle tipped the balance.’
‘I think that’s a sensible way of looking at it. And can you do anything to help him now?’
‘I try to be a better friend. I can’t help him much because I’m damaged goods myself.’
It had become common for priests to describe confession as free therapy. Tony disliked the conceit because it was a cliché and because his suspicion was that the traffic went mainly in the other direction; people were drawn to therapy because it was confession free from the judgement of God.
‘Ned, I still sense that you don’t want the forgiveness I can give you?’
‘No. No, I don’t think I do.’
‘But, from what I’ve heard, I can tell you that, over what you did to your friend, I sense genuine contrition. And so I think you can forgive yourself.’
Ned looked up and smiled. ‘Thank you. You’re good at this.’
‘But you say we live in a world that’s too unforgiving?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Well, can you forgive the women who accused you?’
‘Ah. Of course. I should have seen that coming. You’re too good at this. What I’d say is that I understand that I have to try to.’
Why Them?
During unsuccessfully drugged nights, Tom tried to reconstruct the plot of his fall.
As the historian he was – was in two senses, had been –
he re-examined conversations, documents, gossip. Special had pulled the trigger, but he had always seemed a natural patsy, someone else’s heavy. So whose? The Vice Chancellor? Workplace Harmony, or Jolly Jobs, or whatever they were called this term? He imagined counter-histories in which he had beamed supportively through departmental meetings, or in which Professor Padraig Allison had been removed the first time that he abused a student. But each speculative route came back to the dead-end that it had somehow suited someone somewhere in the institution for him to go. Why, though, had they knocked on his door when more obvious culprits were left undisturbed? Tom feared that, ultimately, like Josef K, he would never know why They had come for him. Someone must have been telling lies …
Cuttings (8)
THE MOLE
Perverse Prof Strictly Off Limits
After learning that cops will take ‘no further action’ over two historic allegations of sexual assault against women, top TV historian Ned Marriott, 61, must have been keen to get back on the screen.
But The Mole hears that ‘Professor Perverse’, as the argumentative academic is called for defending Hitler and attacking Churchill in his work, has suffered a blow to his hopes of resuming his career. Widely tipped to be a contestant in the next series of Strictly Come Dancing, he has now apparently been dropped from the shortlist after concerns were expressed by some of those working on the ratings-buster BBC1 series.
A show source says: ‘Everyone accepts that he is legally innocent but it’s quite another matter to ask dancers to be pressed up against him in a waltz or samba. There was a feeling it would be tough for him to achieve the rapport and trust that a dance duo needs.’
Although legally in the clear, the presenter has faced separate controversy for having chosen, as one of his favourite pieces of music on Desert Island Discs, the pop song ‘Delilah’, in which a man celebrates having killed his lover for her infidelity. The academic was also involved in an earlier scandal after admitting to stealing a section from a history book by another writer and passing it off as his own work on TV and in a book.
Divorced Marriott, who has a 9-year-old son by his partner, 41-year-old literary agent Emma, has not been seen on TV since the sex investigation by Scotland Yard’s Operation Millpond began. His legal representatives issued this statement last night: ‘While there is no legal or other reason why Ned Marriott should not appear on any programmes that he wants to – and he is currently discussing a range of projects with different broadcasters – he has never been involved in any approach to or from this particular series and, although he enjoys watching the series, would never imagine himself appearing on it.’
A BBC spokesman said: ‘It is our policy never to speculate on Strictly line-ups in advance.’
Pendulum
‘How many times,’ Ned asked Tom, ‘have you – as an historian – struggled to avoid the metaphor of a pendulum? But the reason it’s so tempting is that it’s what always happens. We’ve gone from automatically disbelieving allegations to unquestioningly accepting them. Eventually, we’ll settle in the middle with rigorous but sensitive investigation. But pity the poor buggers who get hit by the pendulum at either end of the swing.’
Cuttings (9)
MET CHIEF BACKS MILLPOND
‘Operation Millpond’ – the controversial police squad set up to investigate sexual allegations against celebrities – has been defended by London’s top cop.
All of those quizzed by Millpond so far have been cleared without charge, and, after a two-year investigation, detectives admitted to finding ‘no evidence’ of a Satanic sexual abuse ring that one complainant claimed to involve senior politicians and clerics.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner insisted in a speech yesterday: ‘Millpond was fit for purpose.’
However, he announced the setting up of an independent inquiry into the perv probe, which will be headed by Sir Richard Agate, an education expert and business chief.
Transcript for Legal – Strictly Confidential
[NB: bleeped speech will also be pixelated to prevent lipreading]
Narrator: Day 8 in the Big Brother House. 1.15am. Ned and Cassie are in the living room.
Ned: Do you want me to top that up for you?
Cassie: Say what?
Ned: The wine.
Cassie: Sick. So I’m gonna be, like, okay, right, here with you?
Ned: In what way?
Cassie: Well, no offence I don’t like read the news and shit but Alex tell me in the hot tub you was like a [bleep]
Ned: No. No, I am absolutely not a [bleep]. Seriously, this is important. There were allegations but I was cleared.
Cassie: Yeah, well, so was [bleep bleep] but Alex says the judge just fancied him and shit.
Ned: Yes, well, I’m not actually sure that the legal system … anyway, my case never even went to court.
Cassie: Sure but Alex say that just because you knows people.
Ned: Cassie, I think you’re a really sweet girl, person …
Cassie: Woh, grandad! Hope you aint gonna [bleep] me?
Ned: Oh, look, please. This is completely unfair.
Cassie: [imitation] ‘Oh, look, please. This is completely unfair.’ Sorry, Lord Grantham.
Ned: No, look we need to get this straight. Allegations were brought – as could happen to anyone, especially these days – but they were thrown out. I was never even charged.
Cassie: Well, half the cast of [bleep bleep bleep] aint been charged with doing blow but they was putting it in every hole when I was in it. Just saying.
Cassie: Aaaaargghh! What the [bleep] was that? Someone just touched my [bleep]
Narrator: Ned and Cassie realize they’re not alone
Dave: Christ [bleep] me, I’m [bleep] [bleep]. Hello, darlin.
Cassie: [bleep], mate. Was you under those [bleep] cushions all the [bleep] time?
Dave: Yeah. But I was totally [bleep] out of it. Evening, Lord Grantham.
Ned: Hi, Dave. Should I pour you some wine?
Dave: Solid. Why you never drink, mate? You an alkie or is it antibionics [sic] or summat?
Ned: Neither, in fact. I just think I’m better without it, especially in some situations.
Dave: You mean like what you did to them girls? No offence.
Ned: Well, as it happens ‘no offence’ is the mot juste.
Cassie: Juiced? Is that like a drink?
Ned: Just to be clear, I was cleared of doing anything to them – or, as I’d say, those – girls, women actually.
Dave: No smoke without fire, though. Just saying.
Cassie: And them dancers on Strictly didn’t want nothing to do with you.
Ned: Look, if someone from the company is watching, I really hope this isn’t going out. I warn you I have very good lawyers.
Dave: [imitation] ‘vair good lawyers’ [sings] You’re just a posh [bleep bleep]* You’re just a posh [bleep bleep]*
Ned: Oh, for [bleep] sake. This is ridiculous.
Tannoy: Ned, will you come to the diary room please?
*Jimmy Savile
Shaky
Children, as their sense of identity develops, often want to know what other names they might have had. Dee, at eight or nine, once grabbed Ned’s edition of Tales from Shakespeare (originally his dad’s and so a treasured memento) from the shelves, ran to her room and at length returned to demand why she could not have been Olivia, Viola or Helena instead. Although Ned didn’t tell her this, she might, if a single birth, have been Hermione and so had been spared immersion in the post-Rowling torrent by being a twin, which had led Ned to a chiming pair from Hamlet and King Lear.
Jenny, although she had agreed to carry on the Marriott tradition of Shakespearean naming, asked, hazily post-natal, ‘Don’t both of those, er, die at the end?’ but he told her that the baptisms weren’t meant literally. Edmund, after all, was a bastard in both the literal and metaphorical senses, but Ned’s dad had presumably not intended either a confession or a prediction of his p
ersonality. Dee, later, set at A-level the play from which her name came, had raged on an access night, ‘In this fucking boring play, you order me to be hanged. Thanks for that!’ unrelenting when her father pointed out that Edmund changes his mind and tries to reprieve Cordelia. It seemed bad luck then – even more so now – to mention that their namesakes’ attempted reconciliation comes only on the brink of the man’s death, although, as he kept telling himself and relatives, the christenings were not predictions.
His brother, Timon, admittedly, had ended up a wealthy financier, though not in Athens but Australia with its large Greek diaspora. Emma had readily accepted Toby, one of the most secular male names in the canon, reassured by Googling, that, if they were condemning their son to anything, it would merely be mischievousness and indigestion.
Now, however, estranged from Cordelia and having betrayed Poor Tom, Edmund sometimes wondered if the superstitious had a point. He thought back to teaching his daughters to swim and feared that Phee had been the weaker.
Your Love Always (2)
Dear Ms Humpage, I am sorry to inform you that we will not now be licensing you to handle the European rights of Your Love Always. Melissa Plunkett-Grundy is a president of Safe Spaces and a trustee of POD (Protect Our Daughters) and, while making no judgement on your situation, fears that your involvement could create a distraction from both her novel and her pro bono activities.
Lessons from Recent History
The crowd of students protesting against Macaulay’s racism was small but forceful, so it was a relief to reach the ticketed environs. There were inevitably flashbacks to Daddy’s sixtieth, the night before it all began. Many of the same people were present. Looking through the door into the council chamber, she knew, from their faces or silhouettes: Emma, Tom and Helen, Granny and Grandpa Jack, the guy from the publishers, nice Ciara from the university.
