Quite Honestly

by John Mortimer

  ‘I thought he gave me all the right answers but he didn’t mean them. Now I know he’s changed. He’s particularly anxious to stop a friend getting into more trouble. Terry’s a fine example of the way that prison works.’

  Mr Markby, whose paper crown was now a bit askew, raised his glass to that, and I didn’t argue. The fact that I’d come a long way from my sort of home with my Aunt Dot and Uncle Arthur, who was continually away, to the Markbys’ Christmas dinner was, I thought, a bit of an achievement. So I told them that I was grateful for what Mr Markby had done for me, and I suppose I meant it. All the same, I went and got a bit drunk in a pub down the Goldhawk Road the next night. All I’d done to keep my friend out of trouble had got me no further than Christmas dinner with the Markby family.

  More time passed and I found myself in another public gallery, this time in Number 2 Court down at the Old Bailey. Mr Bethell had told me the date of Lucy’s trial, and that it was going to be a pretty short story as my ex-girlfriend had made up her mind to plead guilty and ‘Counsel and I couldn’t persuade her to make a fight of it.’ Lucky for Lucy it wasn’t Judge Bullingham, who had seen me off for four years the last time I visited the Old Bailey. It was a small, neat, pocket-sized judge called Springer. From the way he handed out prison sentences in the guilty cases before Lucy he seemed a polite sort of person who always said, ‘The least sentence I could possibly pass in this case is . . .’ unlike fucking Bullingham, who not only gave out what seemed to be the maximum but was bloody rude with it.

  When the turn came to ‘Bring up Purefoy’ I craned forward in my seat, to see Lucy looking round the court as though she was already bored with the whole proceedings. Whether that was what she really felt or she was just putting on an act I didn’t honestly know, because I’d got so far out of touch with Lucy’s feelings. She had a sort of uninterested look on her face, and didn’t even give a glance up to the public gallery although I was staring at her so hard that I thought she must have felt it, however far away she was.

  The prosecution told the story you’ve heard often enough of the stolen picture and then the brief Mr Bethell had landed Lucy with got up to make his speech. He was a tall, lanky sort of person who didn’t seem able to control his giggles.

  ‘Your Lordship,’ he started off merrily enough, ‘may well feel there is a good deal of comedy about this particular case.’

  ‘I find it difficult, Mr Frobisher,’ the judge told Lucy’s brief, ‘to see a comic side to burglary.’ This ought to have given the lanky brief a fair warning, but he went on doing his stand-up stuff.

  ‘The whole business was such a disaster that I must say I find the facts as they have been outlined by my learned friend who appears for the prosecution most amusing.’

  ‘Do you indeed?’ Mr Justice Springer looked determined to be serious. ‘May I remind you that the purpose of the Central Criminal Court in England is not to amuse you, Mr Frobisher.’

  Even this didn’t wipe the grin off Mr Frobisher’s face. ‘She undertook this picture-stealing operation having first alerted Detective Sergeant Macdonald, who was able to guess that she had some such ridiculous enterprise in mind.’

  ‘Are you suggesting, Mr Frobisher,’ the judge asked, ‘the inefficiency of a burglar should lead to a shorter sentence?’

  ‘Let me put it this way, My Lord,’ Mr Frobisher invited the judge to enjoy what he clearly thought was an excellent joke, ‘Lucy Purefoy was helping the police with their enquiries.’

  The judge didn’t join in the fun. He didn’t even crack a smile as he said, ‘It seems clear that she arrived at the scene with some more professional accomplices and she has refused to name them. That was hardly helping the police with their enquiries, was it, Mr Frobisher?’

  ‘May I remind Your Lordship that they had disappeared before my client started to remove the picture?’

  ‘I am also reminded that they disappeared with a selection of Mr Thirkell’s silver cutlery. Have you any further submissions to make, Mr Frobisher?’

  Mr Frobisher hadn’t. He sat down with his jokey smile turned to a look of some anxiety.

  Lucy, who had been sitting unsmiling through all Mr Frobisher’s jokes, was told to stand. She did, and I can still hear what the judge said to her now. There wasn’t a single laugh in it.

  ‘Lucinda Purefoy, you entered a house by night and were caught in the act of stealing a very valuable picture from a friend to whom you stood, to some extent, in a position of trust. I utterly reject Mr Frobisher’s speech in mitigation. Although ill-conceived, it has done nothing actually to increase the sentence I am about to pass. You will go to prison for three years. Take her down.’

  I thought that Lucy would at least glance up at the public gallery to see if I was there before she went, but she did nothing of the sort. She went towards the steps down from the dock to the cells as though she couldn’t wait to get away from the whole courtroom, including me if I happened to be there. I didn’t see her again for some considerable time.

  36

  After my so-called trial, Mr Bethell and that ass of a barrister he found for me came down to the cells, I suppose to say goodbye. They were both angry with the judge, not because of my sentence, but because he’d ticked Mr Frobisher off for his so-called comic speech. ‘Speaking to learned counsel like that in public and in front of the client too. It’s not what we expect of Her Majesty’s judges,’ was what Mr Bethell said.

  ‘I think my back is broad enough to bear anything Judge Stringer might have to throw at me.’ The jokey Frobisher was still grinning and apparently felt that he’d been very brave in court, at which point Mr Bethell seemed to feel that, although I hadn’t been treated so badly by the judge as his barrister had, I might need a little consoling too. ‘Three years doesn’t really mean three years,’ he told me.

  It turned out that I’d get a third off for good behaviour and that the time I’d been in prison waiting for a trial would be taken into consideration, so I should be out early next year.

  ‘So that’s not so bad then, is it?’

  I had a strange feeling, a sort of dread at being let out to join the world again, but I said nothing and Mr Bethell changed the subject.

  ‘I told your friend Terry Keegan the date of the trial. He was there in the public gallery. Did you notice him?’

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t notice him at all.’

  And so far as I could tell, I was never going to notice him again. Not so long as I lived.

  I should have made it clear that my dad was visiting me all the time I was in Holloway. He was lovely of course and kind, but so anxious not to appear what he called ‘judgemental’ that he did not have anything really valuable to say. In fact at first I had to spend the time trying to cheer him up and comforting him because of the mess he’d undoubtedly made of my bail application when he asked the DPP’s man if he enjoyed prawn cocktail.

  ‘I’m still not altogether sure about why you wanted to take Robin’s picture,’ he said when we finally got round to a discussion of the subject.

  ‘You could say I did it for love.’

  ‘Indeed? People do strange things for love. Very strange things indeed.’ And then he returned to the subject that really excited him, his possible promotion to be Bishop of London. ‘It’s caused a great deal of controversy. In the newspapers, on the radio and television. It’s regarded as one of the most controversial issues that’s faced the Church for generations.’ He was glowing with pride. ‘I think Canterbury’s for it, he doesn’t want to go down in history as an old fuddy-duddy.’

  ‘Mum’s against it,’ I reminded him. ‘She loves the scullery in the palace at Aldershot.’

  ‘Who knows? We may find our own better scullery in London. The progress of the spiritual life can’t be entirely decided on the convenience of sculleries.’

  ‘She thinks it’d be too much of an upheaval.’

  ‘The history of our Church is one of continual upheavals.’

  ‘Yes. Bu
t Mum doesn’t feel she has to be part of the history of the Church. I mean, she’s not going to be Bishop of London, is she?’

  ‘That’s true.’ Robert was giving this new thought fair consideration. ‘It’s very true.’

  ‘She’s praying to God you don’t get the job.’

  ‘Is she really? She’s not the only one, I can tell you.’ My dad seemed flattered by this attention. ‘There is a whole new movement within the General Synod opposing my promotion! Can you imagine that? They call themselves the Play It by the Rules Movement. They’re dead against gay marriages and homosexual priests and one-parent families. They say . . .’ now Robert was chuckling with delight at the idea of a new controversy, ‘that the Church of England has certain age-old, always respected rules, like sport. I mean, you mustn’t punch below the belt in boxing, you mustn’t trip people up in football, you mustn’t bowl at their bodies in cricket. So you must play it by the rules in Church. No same-sex marriages etc., no gay clerics, because that would be hitting below the belt. I tell you, Lucy, the movement’s attracting a lot of supporters and they’ll make quite a lot of fuss at the synod. Of course, you’ll never guess who their leader is.’

  I told him I never would.

  ‘Who else but my former chaplain, Timbo. Of course he knows all about sport.’

  Timbo, I remembered, who tried to start a fight with Terry and, instead, started another chapter in our lives. Timbo, who had emerged once more from his corner to fight my dad. I didn’t wish him any luck at all. ‘How are you going to deal with him?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘By trying to point out that there are considerable differences between religion and cricket. That’s quite a hard point to get across in England.’ And having thought of this line, my dad hurried off to give it to the press.

  I remembered Robert coming over after I’d been sentenced and looking at me sadly and asking, I thought a bit pathetically, if there was anything he could do to help. So, rather to his surprise, I said there was.

  Then I told him about Martine’s baby, Nick, who we all loved, and was going to be taken away from her when he reached nine months old.

  ‘What can I do about it?’ Dad asked with what I thought was rather a helpless smile.

  ‘I don’t know. Do some knee work. Get God on the case. Put it in your friendly newspapers. Ring the Prime Minister, get the Archbishop of Canterbury to say it’s a major sin to part mothers from their children.’

  Dad considered this and then his eyes lit up. ‘Suffer the little children,’ he said. ‘It might make quite an effective “Thought for the Day” on Radio 4.’

  ‘Do it,’ I told him. ‘Do it as soon as you can.’

  Nick had just reached his nine-month birthday when they came to take him away. Martine couldn’t satisfy them she had a respectable home for him. Her mother was rubbish and back on drugs, her father was unknown and her friends not particularly reliable. They didn’t hang about, the so-called Welfare Services didn’t. They came and took Nick away to put him in so-called ‘care’.

  Martine came back to our dorm from the mother and baby unit when she lost her child. It was as though Nick had died on her. She didn’t say much about it, but at night she cried. She kept us awake with her crying but no one complained of that because by now we understood her. We’d loved Nick too, but of course not in the way Martine had. I was glad I was still in Holloway to help her.

  We were all on Martine’s side and we all hated the Welfare Services for what they had done more than we hated the police or the judges or even ‘Hell’ the screw, who was continually pestering me with her attentions although I tried to make it clear to her that I had no intention of becoming ‘prison bent’ or bent in any way at all.

  So we fed Martine with hopes that she’d manage to find Nick when she got out and get him back because she’d get a job and make a good home for him which even the welfare people would approve of. She presumably didn’t believe this any more, deep down, than we did. But it kept her from crying so much at night, except on important days, like when Nick would have been one year old and she had no idea where he was or what had happened to him.

  Of course, I had alerted Robert when it was about to happen and he did a ‘Thought for the Day’ about it which someone heard on the radio and said it was very good and effective. It made absolutely no difference at all.

  37

  They certainly don’t make giving up crime easy. Mr Markby had some idea of me ending up in a university, but no university was going to take me with a criminal record. There were better jobs going than helping out in the Notting Hill restaurants, but I had to fill in a CV and Mr Markby told me then I had to mention all my form because they’d check with the police records anyway and the result was that I never got any of the jobs concerned.

  When Lucy stepped down from the dock and never even looked at me, I knew it was well and truly over. I supposed she’d come out of Holloway eventually and go back to her dad’s palace or somewhere like it, and maybe end up by marrying that old boyfriend Tom she dumped what seemed like years and years ago. So I decided to forget her, but it was hard. Just as hard, it seemed, as getting into university or a decent job. But I needed a new life, that was what I needed.

  One of the restaurants I worked in was called Il Deliciosa in Westbourne Terrace. No one who worked or cooked in it was at all Italian. Alysia was the manageress, a tall dark-haired woman with greenish eyes that were always wide open in surprise at finding a dirty ashtray or unswept crumbs on any of the Deliciosa’s tables. She definitely ruled the place, and most of them in the kitchen and all the girls who did temporary waitressing to pay their university debts were scared stiff of her. I wasn’t scared because I got the feeling she fancied me, and I thought she wasn’t so bad with all the flashing eyes and dark hair she pushed away from her face when she was really angry. One day when we were in the kitchen she said, ‘We ought to have a date. I’ll take you dancing.’ It seemed a sort of order, like, ‘We’ll do Italian meatballs or stuffed aubergines for the special tonight.’ So I agreed to go dancing with her on a Monday night when the restaurant was closed.

  ‘I’m going to take you real dancing,’ she told me, ‘not this present-day rubbish where you just wiggle your bottom and wave your fists in the air. None of that at all. Strictly ballroom. You’ll be able to do that, won’t you, Terry?’ At that time I had no idea how strict the ballroom was going to be.

  We met at a bar in Shepherd’s Bush. Alysia had high-heeled shoes and a skirt full of pleats and she was clearly excited. I was wearing the only suit I’d been able to save up for. Alysia took me to a place called the Palais Glide off Hammersmith Broadway. At first I looked round in astonishment. There was a small three-piece band playing tunes I didn’t recognize and couples like us in suits and pleated skirts with their arms round each other’s waists and holding up each other’s hands so that they were in close contact gliding, or sliding or sometimes just walking round the floor. I suppose my Aunt Dot and my Uncle Arthur might have danced like that some time, but it wasn’t anything I knew about.

  Before I could draw breath, Alysia had grabbed me and had me joining in. She was going backwards but she led me definitely. She occasionally leaned right back and made me lean over her. Then she pushed me back and leaned over me. She called out for me to do something called ‘chassé at the bends’, and I gave a little hop because I had no idea what she was talking about. We went on dancing for what seemed like hours. I was pulled this way and that way, I was told to lean over and lean back by Alysia, her eyes shining with excitement.

  There was no licence in the Palais Glide so from time to time we stopped for a Diet Coke. In one of these rest periods Alysia asked me where I lived and I told her over the sushi restaurant. It was then she asked me if I had a big bed.

  Well, by now you’ll have guessed what happened, and at midnight Alysia got out of my bed, which isn’t as big as all that, and started to put on her clothes. When I asked her what the matter was she told me. ‘Yo
u’re no good at ballroom and when were in bed you were thinking of someone else. Go on! Admit it.’

  I should never have done it, I suppose, but I’d got in a way of trying to be honest. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘quite honestly I did sometimes think of her.’

  ‘Sometimes! Who was she anyway?’

  ‘Someone I knew. She said she wanted to do some good in the world when I met her.’

  ‘Do some good!’ The green eyes were very angry, which I knew was only to be expected. ‘How very disgusting! What’s she doing? Feeding the starving Africans, I suppose. What is she, a missionary or something?’

  ‘No, she’s in Holloway Prison. She’s doing three years for burglary.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ Alysia couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Quite true.’

  ‘How disgusting!’ She was buttoning up as though she couldn’t wait to get out of my place.

  ‘Not too disgusting. I think she wanted to be like me.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t done three years for burglary, have you?’

  ‘Not really. The last time I was inside I got four.’

  She was still then, very still. Then she said, ‘Does Geoffrey know that?’ Geoffrey Parsons being the owner of Il Deliciosa.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You never told him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It was one of the jobs where I didn’t have to produce my CV. That’s why I took it.’

  She was out of my place like a flash. It was the end of our conversation and the end of my job too, because Mr Geoffrey Parsons gave me the sack. I knew I had no one to blame but myself. I should never have gone dancing.

  ‘I was trying to be honest,’ I told Mr Markby when I next saw him. ‘That was a mistake, wasn’t it?’