Judge Savage

by Tim Parks

  Driving to the pub, Daniel couldn’t fathom this conundrum yet knew it was typical of the way he had always behaved with Martin. Their friendship had enjoyed its most recent flowering when Daniel had sought help during his crisis with Hilary. A stern defender of monogamy, Martin’s performance on the snooker table was ruthless then, always insisting that for consistency’s sake Daniel must leave home. You love another woman, so leave! Undoubtedly the best performer chambers had, everybody said of Martin. He slid his cue back and forth with great assurance and was never short of a learned quote. Mauvaise foi! He dispatched a colour. What I choose for myself, I choose for the whole human race. Sartre. You can’t want the whole human race to be with one woman while loving another, he demanded, can you?

  Daniel’s hands had trembled then, fluffing every shot. If Martin was the best lawyer, Jane was certainly the youngest and prettiest. But Martin never talked about women. He wasn’t the person for that kind of conversation. He never talked about children either. They had chosen not to have children, he would say. He had a sort of easy austerity. A lean, almost gaunt man. Certainly he had destroyed Daniel at snooker those difficult days at the Cambridge Hotel. Yet this brilliant lawyer and first of friends had seemed excessively disconcerted when Daniel’s marriage got back together. Jane had moved south. It was as though he had lost some easy case for reasons he couldn’t understand.

  Had that been the first time Daniel didn’t take his friend’s advice? In any event, they hadn’t played snooker since. Or tennis. They had barely spoken alone since that moment of unpleasantness at the chambers party given to celebrate Daniel’s appointment to the judiciary. The only one of us, Martin had said, who really is one of us, but with . . . Oh, Mart! Christine shrieked. Really! It had been a long deep kiss, years before. Chromo-somatism! Not long after the Shields had married in fact. In their garden after a party. Martin laughed. Please! she objected. Please! And she had been quite desperate on the phone Monday morning: We’re lost Dan, she told him, I don’t know. Martin’s so strange, so changed. I’ve no idea what to do or what will happen. So now, instinctively, Daniel, who really hadn’t minded that famous remark at the party, was presenting himself to his old friend not as the winner, the happy and successful man, but as someone in difficulty again, someone vulnerable needing an old friend’s help; no sooner were they set up at their table than he pulled out the scrap of paper that had come with the post at court five days ago. Your learned counsel, Mr Shields, he asked, if you please.

  Martin played listlessly. Something in the limp way he held the cue, dispatching his shots rapidly and ineffectively, without comment, suggested that it was important to him to show that the game was not important to him any longer. He wouldn’t take it seriously. His shirt was soiled, the small waistcoat egg-stained. Daniel grew irritated. A year ago, at the height of the crisis, he had been desperate to immerse himself in the game, but unable to do so, overwhelmed as he was by the decision he must take, the awesome process of becoming this person or that, the man who left his wife, the husband who stayed. They were very different lives. Sometimes he’d felt the choice was between a prison cell and a bare, uninhabited planet. Now in contrast he was knocking the balls down with uncanny efficiency, but against no opposition. He couldn’t get his friend either to engage with the game or to talk.

  Had Martin suffered some fatal knock in that car accident, he wondered? And why is he buying our flat? A simple duplex was not the thing for the mighty Shields family. If they wanted a pied-à-terre, they could have bought a pied-à-terre, right in the centre. And surely, Daniel thought, finding once again that he had a shot perfectly lined up for him – surely an odd anonymous letter was something that could be relied upon to jumpstart an old intimacy. But Martin had made no comment, just read the thing and put it down. Still lying on the table beside their drinks, a childish scribble of capitals announced: AND THE MAN THAT COMMITTETH ADULTERY WITH HIS NEIGHBOUR’S WIFE, THE ADULTERER AND THE ADULTERESS SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH.

  Nutty stuff! Daniel laughed. He was more disconcerted by his friend’s silence, he decided, than by this practical joke in dubious taste. Nothing to do with Minnie, he felt sure. The old left hand for disguise, the capital letters, the torn loo paper. A schoolboy prank. Must be the Bible, I suppose. Martin only grunted, fingers in his beard. He was growing a blond beard, the usually lean face was puffy. It was part of his depression, Christine had said. Not shaving. Not looking after himself. On the phone, her generous voice, always intimate and breathy, had skated back and forth between the resigned and the frantic.

  Almost at once Daniel was annoyed that he had shown his friend this stupid note. Why did I do that? At Rugby Martin had been the older boy who kindly befriends the younger, non-white and adopted to boot. Befriends and defends him. From elder brother Frank most of all. Daniel had been grateful. Frank was finally expelled, sent away. And at Oxford too, Martin had always been ready to play sage and tutor to the other’s crises. He was clever, likeable, lean and athletic. He encouraged his younger friend in every way. Crucially it was Martin who had got Daniel into chambers, had pointed out to his superiors the advantages of having a non-white tenant. Half the defendants were blacks, were they not? Who better to prosecute a black than a black? And all the better if Daniel wasn’t that black. More a sort of honourable gesture at blackness. Daniel was grateful. But there had been no way he could return the favour. Martin’s Uncle Piers was a QC. One grandfather had been a lawlord. Both Christine’s parents were magistrates. And twenty years later it seemed there was still no question of reversing the roles in such an old alliance, despite Martin’s apparent loss of direction, the sudden scrubby beard, the inexplicable accident – over a hundred mph, going no one knew where – and now this odd collecting business: the funguses, the moths. Their relationship had a pattern that couldn’t be broken. As fixed as the black and the pink, Daniel thought. I’ll break left-handed, he announced. Perhaps that way he might lose.

  He broke, then immediately went on to talk about the anonymous phone calls. Somebody keeps calling and hanging up, he said. Again he was irritated with himself. After all, it wasn’t even true now. Minnie no longer called and Daniel no longer thought of the previous calls as anonymous. Magically, even left handed, the balls were going down.

  Finally, Martin said: There was an anonymous letter on Twins last week, you know. His fingers were twisted into his beard. Daniel couldn’t get used to that beard on his clean-shaven friend. Rachel, you know, his voice was low and toneless, gets this note saying Nikki, that’s her twin, is seeing her husband. It was when he started watching soaps that I knew there was something seriously wrong, Christine had confided. Soaps! Martin! And is she? Daniel asked. For the first time it struck him that his friend might actually be mentally ill. The accident had brought on dementia. He watches all of them, Christine complained. There was a childish awe in her voice, and a sort of frustrated petulance: Dan, I’m telling you, he spends the whole day on the sofa.

  Not exactly, Martin said. He paused to concentrate. Nikki, you know Nikki? The one with the short blonde hair. Well, she is flirting with him, Rachel’s husband – Daniel had never seen the programme – but Troy, the husband, is a paragon of virtue. In fact Nikki is evil because Rachel and Troy are good. Get me? He spoke in a low quiet voice. And vice versa. The more one is one thing, the more the other becomes the other. Do you see what I mean? With great deliberation Martin cued up and missed another shot. Quite cleverly done actually. Someone steps on someone else’s territory, so they have to become someone different. You’re good, but someone else’s being good makes you evil. It was his first faint smile of the evening. As a result of course, neither goodness nor evil can really be said to mean anything, if you follow, though in the meantime the letter makes Rachel unhappy. That is, it gives her something to live for.

  You’re not trying, Daniel accused his friend. The shot had been the simplest of straight lines to an unencumbered corner pocket. Martin had appeared to take his t
ime. Perhaps the sensation that irritated Daniel most was when he didn’t know how to behave, couldn’t see quite what sort of story he was involved in. This had happened frequently in the old days with Hilary, as if neither were quite sure whether they were man and wife or not, or what that might mean. Now Martin insisted on playing, but refused to take the game seriously.

  What should I do? Daniel demanded. Take the blue of course. There was a wry obtusity to his friend’s voice. Did he know that the evening had been set up by his wife? I mean about the letter, Daniel said. I want you to give me one piece of straight honest advice about this weird letter. Like old times, he added.

  Old times. Martin rested his scrubby beard on his cue. His eyes were fixed on the table. Finally he said: What I don’t understand, Dan, is why you went back to Hilary if you’re still going to go on screwing around. With someone close to home too, if ‘neighbour’s wife’ is anything to go by.

  But I’m not, Daniel laughed. It hadn’t occurred to him that Martin would imagine the crazy letter referred to anything recent or real. That’s the wonder of it, he insisted. I’m behaving like a saint. Really. I’m even happy to be behaving like a saint. You don’t believe me. Then I get this letter. Martin said nothing. To keep the conversation alive, Daniel went on: In fact, if anything the person acting suspiciously these days is Hilary. Keeps having this handsome young bloke round for lessons. Jewish. She hasn’t given private lessons for years. He’s there tonight.

  This time Martin skewered the white down. Could he be on some anti-depressant? Daniel knew his friend hadn’t been in court for almost a month. I’d be lying, Christine had confessed towards the end of Monday’s call, if I pretended there wasn’t a financial problem with his not working. It can only go on so long, she said. There was a squeak in her voice, an indignant resistance to raw emotion. The moment the receiver was down, Daniel had picked it up again to phone Hilary. They should have had children, his wife immediately said. Hilary had never approved of her husband’s submission to this clever man. Now she seemed quite excited at the extent of Martin’s collapse. Isn’t he working at all? she asked. No.

  But you must have done something, Martin was saying, otherwise why would they write? People don’t write unpleasant letters completely out of the blue, do they? Nothing, Daniel insisted. I don’t know what on earth it’s about. Well then, consider it a blessing, Martin told him. He suddenly put the cue aside, mid game, as if snooker were not a thing that required a beginning and an end. He stood the stick in its rack and sat at their table. Yes, a blessing, he said, rubbing his hands. His gesturing was odd, Daniel thought, oddly troubled, oddly condescending, and at the same time, animal like. He has the nervous gesture of the alert animal.

  The letter gives you the impression, Martin began to speak, that you’re in danger, you know, and so the illusion of having something to live for. You call old friends, as one does in such circumstances, and start talking it over. It keeps the mind busy. A good old threatening letter. What more can one ask? Everybody should get one.

  Pulling out a chair opposite, with no protest about the abandoned game, Daniel said he didn’t need such stimulation. His mind was kept busy enough trying to decide how long a bloke should go to gaol for for a third car theft, or what to do about his daughter who was now telling him God didn’t want her to go to university. It’s not the same, Martin objected. Those things don’t put you personally in jeopardy, so your mind never engages with them entirely. They don’t threaten to rearrange the landscape. We’re sending her to Italy, Daniel said. For the summer. Give her a different perspective. Then he protested: But the person who wrote the letter wasn’t thinking of the need to get my mind engaged, was he? Martin chuckled. That’s the beauty of it. It’s for real. Only a real nut would write something like that.

  For the first time that evening, the two men made eye contact. The old relationship has been re-established, Daniel thought. He felt relieved. His friend was playing mentor again; the familiar, school-masterly tone was creeping into his voice. But Daniel’s brief from Christine had been to tackle Martin on the problem of his depression, his not accepting briefs from solicitors; and his instructions from Hilary were to get some definitive reassurance about payment for the flat. The last thing they needed was to find their buyer had money troubles. I’m to consider myself lucky then, Daniel asked, if someone chooses to worry me to death? Of course, Martin smiled. Under threat, the status quo becomes more precious. Your life seems more worth living because it has to be struggled for. Daniel leaned forward: In that case, would it be wrong of me to submit, Mr Shields, he raised a comic eyebrow, that six months ago you drove off the motorway at terrifying speed in order to make your life more intense, thus reminding yourself the status quo was worth defending?

  Martin shifted his eyes elsewhere. The pub’s carpeted spaces and sham decor were so familiar, yet the two friends were completely estranged. Daniel drew back. Only fielding an idea, he remarked. Two other men had taken up the snooker balls, in complete ease, laughing, concentrating. After an uneasy silence, Martin asked: Do you still care about what happens in court? I beg your pardon? For a moment his friend said nothing, then remarked: I hear you sent down a Colombian woman for eight years last week. Daniel nodded. Crack courier, he said. So actually your sentencing is the same as everybody else’s. Why shouldn’t it be?

  Martin shook his head. With peremptory earnestness he leaned across the table: About six months ago, I defended a bloke on dangerous driving – he’d killed a cyclist, a little boy. Anyway, at a certain point, perhaps because of the way this man looked in the dock, I don’t know, I was just watching him sitting there, he was completely bored, unable to follow the court rigmarole – at a certain point, as I said, I had this, I don’t know, I can only call it a revelation. The word carbon came to my mind. You know? Carbon. Do you ever get words like that? It suddenly sang in my mind. We are all just a certain proportion of carbon material and water. It doesn’t matter. Or rather, it’s only matter, it soon dissolves. Whether I won the case or lost was quite irrelevant. If I died this minute, it wouldn’t matter.

  Martin sat back. Daniel was puzzled. I’m not talking about an intellectual argument, Dan. You follow? It’s not a book I read. I long ceased to be convinced by books. It was a revelation. A relief really. Suddenly I knew it. I just heard that one word blocking out everything: Carbon. The man’s just carbon, I thought. No, I knew. The boy he killed too. I kept thinking it for weeks. His body composition. You know that coffin they have in the British Museum with the various substances of the human body. A few little bottles lined up on the bottom. Carbon. Chemicals. And then on top there’s this farce, this veneer – no I don’t mean veneer – this sort of sticky surface, if you like, this cocooning film, wrapping round and round. Of parody. Our lives. What else can you call it. Parody. Irony. Soap. Cloaking the basic matter. It’s hard to take seriously, isn’t it? The way the stuff manifests itself. You must have noticed, Dan. You must have seen how nothing can really take itself seriously any more. Nobody does. Do they? Not really. Though the more you can’t, the more everybody insists on pretending. Do you follow? The harder everyone tries. That’s why everybody’s so loud these days. Everybody’s so shrill. It’s so hard to convince yourself. Wasn’t that the case with you and Hilary after all? You try to take life seriously and do the proper thing, split up. Then you suddenly realise there is no need. Why make the effort? It’s just carbon.

  Martin put his beer-mat on the edge of the table, flicked it into the air with the back of his hand, missed the catch, shook his head. I won the case of course. He laughed. But then the funny thing is – suddenly he was excited again – they make you a judge, Daniel Savage, fast-track promotion, their high-visibility policy of showing sensitivity to the victims of discrimination, the ethnic minorities, and sure enough along comes a Colombian woman who’s been doing nothing worse than supplying the British middle classes with the thrill of an illegal substance, a game they’re playing with their vacuous m
inds, and you, the new judge, the solemn black judge, steam on regardless, and send her down for eight years, though you know of course that she would have been operating under her men-folk’s orders, and you know that people who want cocaine will always find someone silly enough to risk getting it for them. For all I know you take it yourself from time to time. In short, your sentence was perfectly in line with the norm, the great charade. You’re an instrument of the charade, Dan. No, listen. Don’t be upset. I’m not criticising. Because the hilarious thing is – try to see it from my point of view – that now you make a big show of wanting advice from me about some silly anonymous letter because you’re screwing around again, pretending to fall in love here and there, no doubt, to cheer life up, while at the same time pretending to be married, and somebody else is pretending to bother you about it, but not doing a very good job of it. You’re ludicrous, Martin was suddenly exclaiming. Ludicrous! But we all are. I’m not criticising. The mad thing is not that we wear wigs, Dan, you know, but that anyone wants us to take them off when we leave the courts!

  Daniel was astonished. For a moment he stared at his old and very English friend. He had always thought of Martin as older and very English. Instinctively he objected: Mart, you wouldn’t be talking like this, if they’d made you a judge.

  At once Martin nodded: That is absolutely true! I’ve often thought that that’s exactly what responsibility is for. You’re right. We need more and more power and respect if we’re to stay in harness. That’s why older people are given more responsibility, not because they’re more expert, please, but because if you don’t give it to them they’ll start treating life as the farce they’re always in danger of discovering it is. They get bored, they start playing. Okay then, give them the thrill of power. That way the pretence can go on a little longer. It’s really the only explanation why the young would let their lives be run by the old.