Remedy is None

by William McIlvanney

  But not our Charles. He had to go around blaming everybody else. He couldn’t face it, He couldn’t face anything. Some character. His psyche must be in a worse state than the Congo. Freud might have had one or two things to say about him. He would have made Oedipus look like an All-American kid. No, Charles couldn’t face up to what everybody else faces up to every day. So instead, he stamps his foot and smashes a man’s life like a toy. Naughty Charles. You’ll have to be punished. All the grown-ups have sent you to stand in a corner while they decide what’s to be done about you. Any minute now. You’re due to be spanked. The spanking of a lifetime, so to speak. Any minute now.

  He looked at his watch again. He wished they would hurry up. All this waiting. And for what? It wasn’t as if he was even getting a good story out of it. It was all too clear-cut. No controversy. No drama. A dry courtroom exercise. He had thought he might do a human-interest piece. But he couldn’t be bothered. The bastards would sub-edit it to death, anyway. It was always the same. He would be given a quarter of a column, buried somewhere in the middle of the paper. Probably beside an advert for toilet-paper. ‘You can’t compete with Delsey . . .’ he thought, and paused, trying to finish his advertising slogan: ‘You can’t compete with Delsey, it’s always in there at the end.’ He groaned to himself, wondering if too much hanging around could damage the brain. To hell with it, he thought. He would scribble out something and phone it in. Then grab a few drinks and forget the whole thing. What did it matter, anyway?

  He lit another cigarette and watched Sid Mellor of the Sun come along the corridor towards him, wearing his Sefton Delmer hat. Evans wondered if he had got it for his Christmas, perhaps along with a brand new toy-reporter set. Mellor was incorrigibly romantic about newspaper-work and he reported everything from murder to a meeting of the Women’s Rural Institute with the same melodramatic urgency, as if the world was breathless for his words. He had come into journalism late, and he looked upon Evans as a sort of high-priest of the cult in which he himself was a novitiate of dazzling promise. Evans couldn’t stand him, but he was almost glad to see him on this occasion. A spot of Mellor-baiting might help to pass the time.

  Mellor stopped at his side, panting into his face like an obedient newshound, his breast-pocket bristling with as many pens and pencils as would have seen him through a detailed report of World War II, and still left a few stubs for Korea.

  ‘I was watching you coming along the corridor there, Sid,’ Evans said. ‘You were walking with a pronounced scoop.’

  ‘What’s that, Ron?’ Mellor’s face was bright with emptiness, a perspiring moon.

  ‘Skip it. I haven’t time to draw the illustrations just now,’ Evans said affably. ‘Did you get your stuff phoned through all right?’

  ‘Eventually.’ Mellor’s wry expression told of the lonely tribulations of the newshawk. ‘That’s some phone they have through there, though. Must have been installed by Bell in person.’

  Mellor gave his Worldly Wiseman laugh.

  ‘Did you get them to hold the front page for you?’ Evans asked.

  ‘Not quite. Why? Will yours be on the front page?’ Mellor was genuinely interested.

  ‘I don’t know, boy. It’s a toss-up between that and Children’s Corner. If I play my cards right, I might even make the stop-press. Of course, that’s always assuming I make the paper at all. On the other hand, I might die on the sub-editor’s desk. A martyr to the Philistines. With those bastards, who can tell?’

  Mellor laughed appreciatively. This was hard-bitten newspaper-talk, the idiom of the insiders like himself. It didn’t occur to him that he might be the butt of it.

  ‘No word from in there yet?’ he asked with professional interest, nodding towards the courtroom.

  ‘Well, we all know what the word is, don’t we?’ Evans said, abandoning irony to speak ex cathedra. He couldn’t resist the chance to pontificate to one of his disciples. ‘We’re only waiting for them to get round to stating officially what we all know already. That’s all that’s lacking. The ex officio bumbles.’

  ‘You don’t think there’s any chance, then?’

  ‘For God’s sake, man. Where’s the get-out for him? Unless you can prove that his hands belonged to somebody else.’

  ‘But why are they taking so long?’

  ‘Juries, my friend. Juries. They’re all the same. You’ll get used to that. Think it out for yourself. There are fifteen people in there who want to have something to go home and tell their families. They’re going to make the most of it. It’s a good thing to have in reserve, when you want a bit of conversational attention. My life as a juryman. Man, they’re enjoying it fine. Spinning it out as long as they can. I’ll bet they’ve been taking chances each at being Perry Mason.’

  Mellor laughed. Evans really had it taped. As if to show his appreciation, Mellor took out his cigarettes and offered one to Evans. Evans shook his head.

  ‘And you can save yourself the trouble of lighting one as well,’ he said. ‘It’s not worth your while.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You won’t get the chance to smoke it.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because it’s high time the jury got home for their tea. The fun’s over. Time to return the verdict they could have returned without retiring at all. Guilty of non-capital murder. Sentence: Life.’

  ‘How can you be so sure they’ll wrap up now?’

  ‘Because I’m psychic,’ Evans said, his hand raised in a gesture of mock command. ‘Sh! I can see them clearly now. The foreman is chaulkered to the eyeballs. He is asking round the table for any dissentient voices. There are none. The verdict is unanimous. Now he crosses to the door and informs the macer of his decision. The court is to be re-convened. We should be summoned about. . . Now!’

  They waited expectantly for a moment. Nothing happened. Mellor laughed.

  ‘So much for spiritualism,’ he said, striking a match.

  Somewhere a bell rang.

  ‘I shall expect an apology in writing,’ Evans said.

  ‘Hell. That’s it,’ Mellor said, putting the match out. ‘Come on. Come on. We’d better get in.’

  Evans let him go on ahead. He noticed that some of the people who had been standing in the corridor had gone away, bored with waiting. He was tempted just to hang on out here and get the decision from Mellor. It was a formality, anyway. But after a moment he thought better of it. He would go in, just in case. You never knew. Charles Grant might yet do something that would give him a story. He might throw another tantrum. Attack the judge. Or try to hang himself in his braces from the dock. That would be nice.

  He slipped into the courtroom and sat behind Mellor, near the door. Convenient for a getaway. He didn’t feel like having Mellor’s company over a drink. The court was assembled, only waiting for the judge. He was probably asleep, Evans thought. He looked at the jury, sitting staunch and upright, full of self-importance. He glanced from them to the dock. There he was, Charles Grant. Self-appointed representative of the archangels. Evans wondered how grand he felt now, sitting there in isolation. He didn’t look very impressive. Only pathetic. Was this the grand finale he had envisaged for himself when he took on the role of the purifier of society? Some finale.

  Evans looked round the public gallery. A couple of old women, passing sweets and pointing out the elaborate cornices to each other. A few old men who were probably here in preference to feeding the ducks. A young ned in a leather jacket, busy doing his Narcissus, stroking his sideburns. A few more very odds and ends. The others who had been here earlier had gone home. Tea was more important than this lot. Some audience. They were the only ones society could spare to take any notice of Charles Grant. The others had more important things to do. This was strictly B-picture stuff. Of very little interest. So much for the great prophet of purity. Charles Grant, this is your life.

  ‘Court!’ a voice suddenly called.

  Everybody rose, and Evans dragged to his feet like a relu
ctant afterthought. The judge came in and took his place and Evans sat down in time with him, followed by everyone else.

  Evans listened impatiently as the formal questions were put to the foreman of the jury, all the legal rigmarole that culminated in the foreman’s final statement, declaimed with a sonority befitting society’s spokesman: ‘Guilty as libelled.’ Hear, hear, thought Evans. Now it was the judge’s turn. ‘It is the decision of this court . . . blah, blah and blah . . imprisonment for life.’ Which would really mean about a dozen years or so. Scottish courts seemed to make a very canny assessment of life expectancy.

  Evans slipped out of the court with a wink at the usher, leaving Mellor to take down every cough and comma. He hurried quietly down the corridor and was glad to get out into the street. He was making straight for the pub. He would get it written out there and then see what was doing in the way of unattached women. He felt like a bit of field work tonight. In memory of the late Mr Whitmore. But a few drinks first. He had to reach the stage where the words fell into place without too much thought. This lot didn’t bear much thinking about. Just as long as he could get something written about it. Anything to fill a space. What difference would it make the day after tomorrow, anyway? By that time his deathless prose would be holding a fish-supper or hanging in a toilet. That was society’s final comment on Charles Grant. That’s the way it goes, dear Charles. Your noble gesture will serve a social purpose after all. Perhaps not quite the one you had imagined. But things have an awful habit of not quite turning out as we had wanted. It’s the way of the world. It happens to all of us. Just as it’s about to happen to you. And it couldn’t happen to a better fellow.

  And so say all of us, thought Evans, pushing open the door of the bar.

  Chapter 24

  THE TWO DOORS, ONE AT EACH END OF THE LONG room, were closed, hyphenating this time between the separate progressions of their lives, putting this place in parenthesis. Beyond one door lay the city with its streets where traffic moved and people shopped and went about on private errands. Beyond the other door were the long corridors, the bare cells, the dull sheds where men laboured to futility. With a grille between them, the two of them sat on opposite sides of the table that stretched from end to end of the room like a no-man’s-land. Beside the inner door, a warder stood sentry to their meeting. His face showed no interest in what they were saying, but his presence muted their voices.

  ‘How are ye gettin’ on then, Charlie?’ John said.

  The cliche, which grew naturally out of casual street-corner meetings and bus-stop conversations, shrivelled to meaninglessness when transplanted to this barren sliver of a room. But John had nothing else with which to mitigate the silence that lay between them like a huge slab. If he couldn’t shift it, he could at least cultivate the crevices.

  ‘Ah’m okay, John,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s no’ so bad at all now. Ah’m gettin’ work tae dae. It breaks up the day. An’ ye’re with other blokes an’ that. It’s a lot better. Ah’m all right now. Really.’

  The reassurance was more saddening than any complaint could have been. John felt grief to realize how much of Charlie had been lost already, how soon he had learned the limits of his cage. He was all right now. He was here for as long as they kept him, occupying his hands in accordance with their commands, his body controlled by a mind that wasn’t his, while they fed him and allowed him to relieve himself and exercised him like a dog. But he was all right now. Because now they were allowing him to work, whereas before they had left him to the solitary occupation of his thoughts. Now they were letting him be among other men, whereas before they had given him only himself for company. It was simple psychology. Beat a dog with a cudgel, and a kick will seem a kindness. Already, Charlie had learned to find solace in variations of agony. Through the years ahead, he would discover content as merely a permutation of misery. Custom would wear to comfort.

  John looked on helplessly at the figure on the other side of the mesh that hemmed him like a cage. The warder leaned casually against the wall, looking innocently at his fingernails, not present as a person so much as a reminder of official regulations, like a prohibitive notice. Please don’t feed the animals. Charlie sat waiting for John to say something else, like a patient bear waiting to be fed. His eyes were blank, and, with the loose-fitting clothes they had given him and the faint stubble of beard and the rumpled hair, he looked as innocent and stupid as a clown. Not like a criminal at all, but like someone they had dressed up in their cast-offs to be the butt of a sinister joke. John tried to recognize the person he had known. This was his brother. He had known his laughter and his talk and his happiness and his fantastic ambitions. He could have done so much, filled so many rooms with laughter, loved women, made happiness. He could have been important to so many people. Who said it wasn’t to be? Who had the right to take it from him? Why did he have to lose it? Because he had killed a man. But never before had he at any time come close to such an action, never before had he hinted at such a capability in himself, never before had he seemed in any way different from the millions of others who walked about free outside. What had happened to make him become different? This was not his own action as he had shown himself. Not his more than any other’s. Then whose was it? Why had it happened? John did not know. But he knew one thing. He knew that the answer wasn’t here in this room. This was no solution. This was a travesty of truth. Nothing was answered by dressing a man in these trappings and making him a mummer of guilt in this pagan ritual of expiation. On whose behalf was the expiation? The warder shifted his stance noisily, underlining his presence. John cast about desperately for some comfort he could share with Charlie.

  ‘Elizabeth sends you her love,’ he said. ‘An’ Margaret. Everybody misses you.’

  ‘Tell them Ah’m askin’ for them. Are Elizabeth an’ Harry still all right? Ye know what Ah mean.’

  ‘Aye. That’s all right. They’ll be getting engaged some time. Ah don’t know when. It hasn’t been mentioned just recently. But they’ll be doin’ it all right. Some time.’

  ‘That’s good. They’ll be all right for a house, anyway. Elizabeth will get the house, won’t she?’

  ‘Aye. She should do. If she wants it. They’ll have the house. That’s something these days.’

  ‘Aye. You had tae wait quite a while for yours, you an’ Margaret.’

  ‘Quite a while, aye.’

  ‘An’ Margaret’s all right, is she?’

  ‘Fine. Margaret’s just fine. Really fine.’

  ‘An’ the wee fella?’

  ‘John? Champion. Fit as a fiddle. An’ a damn sight noisier.’

  ‘He’s a great wee boy.’

  ‘He’s got a new dodge now. He was at it just before Ah came oot. His mother always leaves his pram just outside the front windy. So that she can keep an eye on ’im, ye know. An’ he’s got this caper now. He can actually pull himself up by the sides of the pram so that he’s keekin’ round the hood. Laps it up, too. Thinks it’s very clever. Squeals like a banshee at everybody that goes by. Ah don’t know how many folk have come in the path tae blether to ’im. He just lies back there an’ goos at them. Holds court like a nabob. Ridiculous. We’ll definitely need to do something about ’im.’

  ‘That’s great, right enough.’

  Seeing his own enthusiasm reflected automatically in Charlie, but distorted by his clown’s garb and the horror of his situation, John realized how grotesque his words were in this place. He had almost forgotten Charlie for a moment in his own petty pride in his son’s ability to raise himself a few inches from the horizontal. He was disgusted at the callous fertility of life which in the presence of such terrible waste and destruction will still wantonly spawn pleasure in so insignificant a fact. To offset the waste of so much human life, a child gurgling inanely in his pram. A nice equation. All they had to balance the destruction was an idiot pleasure in the gradual means of that destruction. He felt terribly guilty that the only contributions he could make to Charlie’s l
onely hunger were such scraps from his own content. Yet Charlie seemed satisfied with that. He sat as docile as any animal, accepting these leftovers from other people’s lives that John had brought him. John couldn’t bear to witness it, refused to acknowledge that Charlie had come already to accept this as all that he was due. John wanted somehow to glimpse again the person Charlie had been, to waken in him some response of anger or hate or some sense of injustice that would contradict this subservience. He wanted to stir in Charlie some reaction that would show that he had at least been a man of such intensity as made him dangerous to others. He felt compelled to move him somehow, just as people find themselves striking the bars of the lion’s cage, trying to resurrect even for a moment the fire that is supposed to sleep within the glazed eyes, the ferocity in the indolent paws, the power they are told is hidden beneath the mangy hide.

  ‘Charlie. Ma mother was back through tae see Elizabeth. Ah saw ’er when she was through.’

  John waited for the hate or the fury or whatever it was his words would elicit. Nothing. Only a minute gesture of contraction, a weary withdrawal, as if the lion was half-heartedly trying to get out of range of the probing stick.