by C. J. Driver
“He’s an executive in Rufus and Wyard; you know, the corporation.” I nodded to show I knew about it. “I don’t remember his exact title; I think he’s called an accountant—really what he does is to check efficiency in their subsidiaries. He travels a lot. I’m told he’s very good … at his job, I mean.”
I nodded again; what else could I do?
“And … well, it’s a peculiar marriage, I suppose. All my instincts are towards the arts—to un-material things; I don’t think my husband has ever listened to a piece of music voluntarily in his life, or looked at a painting. My father was an artist, you see, Mr. Grace: you probably haven’t heard of him—his work isn’t very popular any more. Charles Lorraine.”
I hadn’t heard his name before. I gestured to the paintings on the wall above her desk. “Are those his?”
“Yes,” she said. “And there are more in the dining-room and in the hall.”
I peered at the nearest of the paintings; it seemed to me a pretty amateurish thing, a sub-impressionist version of three fishing boats in harbour. “There were some critics who said he was going to be a great painter.” There was once again a note of pride in her voice which contradicted the apparent humility of her words.
“Is John like your father?”
“He looks very like him. There’s a self-portrait my father painted in the hall. Would you like to see it, Mr. Grace?”
“Very much,” I said, moving away from the window. She stood up and led me through the dining-room into the long hall. Even before she turned the lights on, I saw the portrait.
If there was any doubt left in my mind that John was Mrs. Henderson’s own son, the painting removed it, for there was no mistaking John in that face—the same mass of dark wiry hair, the same pallid skin, the same line of jaw and chin, the same darkly intense eyes staring out at me. It could have been a portrait of John himself.
“He was very young when he painted that,” said Mrs. Henderson. “Before I was born. I don’t think he was even married then. My mother was his second wife.”
“I see why they said he could have been a great painter,” I answered her. There was so much life in it, an intensity of life that reached over the years as if the paint was still wet on the canvas.
“He wasn’t a happy man; he drank too much. He died in an alcoholic’s home in the end. That was after my mother was dead.”
“I see,” I answered uselessly.
“I think Richard gets some of his … his instability from his grandfather. I always thought he might … you know, like my father, turn into an alcoholic. But I suppose it’s drugs now, like those people in America.”
“Your son’s not a drug addict, Mrs. Henderson.”
“Isn’t he? I suppose I should be glad. But it would be easier to understand then.”
“No, it’s not drugs.” I was still staring at the portrait.
Suddenly she reached out and touched my arm; it was a gesture so out of her controlled character that I started. “Mr. Grace,” she said. “You know John. Do you know what went wrong? What’s made him like this? What made him turn to this wickedness? Is it the devil, Mr. Grace? Has my son sold himself to the devil?” She was struggling to hold hysteria in check.
“I’m not the right person to answer that for you, Mrs. Henderson; but I’d say …” What could I say? That I did not understand myself? That the explanation lay in a household where an only son was watched every moment of every day for evidence he would repeat his grandfather’s weaknesses, where his father did not care for his wife or son or home, where every time he walked down the passage he saw his drunkard of a grandfather staring with ironic intensity down from the wall while he waited for his grandson to join him in weakness. “I’d say your son was an idealist, like you are perhaps; only his ideals got muddled up in political action …” It was a lame lie, and I suppose even she must have known that, for she did not answer.
Without waiting for her I walked back to the small sitting-room; when she joined me, a minute later, she was back in control again. “Would it be possible for me to see Mr. Henderson?” I said.
“If you care to go to Brazil. He’s out there for a month, or two, or three. He’s fixing one of the corporation’s subsidiaries: he’ll close it down, or sack the managers or the workers, or he’ll change it from producing linoleum to producing rum—anything as long as his books show a profit. He has great power in the corporation.”
“You don’t travel with him?”
“To sit in a hotel room somewhere? While he works eighteen hours a day and spends the nights muttering figures? No, Mr. Grace; I have more important things to do—a house to keep; and I have my work for the church …”
Did she want me to ask what work she did for her church? I thought so, but did not ask. “When will your husband be back, Mrs. Henderson?”
“When the factory is making a profit. And you needn’t think he’ll come back because his son is on trial for murder, Mr. Grace. Richard has never made a profit for the Corporation, you see.” The bitterness in her voice would, you would think, have brought the walls of the house down around our ears and withered the early March buds in the garden.
I kept my eyes away from her, staring across the room at the satin curtains. After a moment or two, she said, “Is there anything else I can tell you, Mr. Grace?” I shook my head, still without looking at her. “Can I ask you something then?”
“Of course.”
“What’s going to happen to Richard? You don’t mind my calling him that, do you?”
“Of course not. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. I’m going to do my best to get him acquitted …”
“Even if he did it?”
“We don’t know he did it yet,” I answered in my best lawyer’s voice.
“But if he’s found guilty, what then?”
“The police have a lot of evidence, Mrs. Henderson; I won’t deny that. If he’s convicted … well, it depends. There may be extenuating circumstances, something like that. But it’s usually a life sentence for killing a policeman.”
“Was the man he killed a policeman?”
I nodded.
“Do you think my son’s mad, Mr. Grace?”
“I don’t know who’s mad and who isn’t, Mrs. Henderson. What happens depends on what the law thinks.”
“I see,” she said; her voice was cold with control again. I doubt if you do see, I thought; I doubt if you can see what I may have to do.
“There’s one thing you could do for me,” I said. “I’d like a copy of his birth certificate. Could you get one for me?”
“I shall have to look for it,” she answered. “Would you care to stay to lunch, Mr. Grace?” Her invitation was unenthusiastic; but even if it had been otherwise I would have refused. I wanted release from that house and that controlled unhappiness.
“No, though thank you,” I answered in my best middle-class deceit. “I have to be back in my chambers this afternoon, and I must catch a train soon. Do you think you could post the certificate to me? If I leave my address?”
“Of course,” she answered, and stood up. “If you will wait a moment or two, I shall get the chauffeur to drive you to the station; I don’t drive myself.”
“That would be kind,” I said, bowing. Any escape, so long as it was quick.
She was back in two minutes, and we stood in silence until we heard a car crunch on the gravelled drive. She came with me to the front door, we shook hands, and I made polite noises of thanks to her.
“Thank you for trying to help Richard,” she said, and then, as if what I was doing was nothing compared to what she did, added, “I pray for my son morning and night, Mr. Grace.”
“Of course,” I muttered, looking away from her.
“I shall pray for you too, Mr. Grace, when I pray for my son.”
“Don’t bother, Mrs. Henderson.”
“It’s no bother, Mr. Grace; everyone needs God’s help.”
I did not look back at her as
I opened the door of the car and got in, nor as it swept me away down the drive.
“It’s the station you want, is it, mate?” said the driver.
“Yes, please,” I answered. What sanity there was in that ‘mate’! “And a quid if you can get me there to catch the 1.30 to Euston.”
“You keep your quid, mate,” he answered. “I’ll do it for God.” His voice was heavily sarcastic. I suppose he thought I was one of Mrs. Henderson’s religious friends. I did not talk to him again, nor did I give him the promised pound when we got to the station five minutes before my train was due to leave. No one was going to put me with Mrs. Henderson.
*
Then there was Bob Henderson. When I phoned him, he tried to get us to come to dinner. “We can talk over brandy and a cigar,” he said, “and the ladies can retreat to the kitchen.”
“No, Bob, I want to see you in your consulting rooms.”
“Professionally?” He was, I think, mocking me.
“As a psychiatrist who has looked after a client of mine.”
“All right, if you insist. I’d rather do it as a friend.”
“As a psychiatrist.”
Silence, then, “All right. I suppose you want to do it tomorrow morning. You can’t wait until Thursday, can you?”
“I’d prefer tomorrow; I haven’t much time.”
“Very well—would 9.00 suit you? I’ve got a cancellation.” He knew damn well that 9.00 was too early for me; but I let it be.
“That would be fine,” I said.
*
We sat in his consulting rooms; Bob had ensconced himself behind his broad desk and I sat in the leather armchair opposite him. He had obviously decided to play by my rules.
“I went to see Mrs. Henderson—John’s mother—yesterday morning,” I said.
“Oh really.”
“Has he told you this business about being adopted?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know it’s nonsense; I haven’t got it yet, but by tomorrow I’ll have a birth certificate to prove it …”
“I’ve come across adoption fantasies before.” His tone was unchanged.
“If you knew, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you weren’t then defending Buckleson on a murder charge, Tom. Have you heard of the Hippocratic Oath?”
“Does it say you’ve got to acquiesce while your patients are sent to gaol for thirty years?”
“Be fair, Tom; in this situation I’ve got to tell you what will help John. But I had to be asked first. I’m bound to him just as much as you are.”
“All right. Then let me ask you this? In your professional opinion, is John Buckleson mad?”
“‘Mad’ is not a word psychiatrists use any more, Tom.”
“It’s a word lawyers use.”
“The ridiculous McNaghton, you mean. I thought it had been changed.”
“Adapted,” I answered. “But the onus is on the defence to prove insanity. Is John mad?”
Bob looked at me in silence. “That’s how you’re going to try to get him off, are you? To plead insanity?”
“What else can I do?” I spoke more loudly than I meant to. “What the hell else? If I use all this—the breakdown, the change of name, the business of saying he was God, the adoption fantasy, the unspeakable home, your evidence, all of that—I think I may be able to get through a plea of insanity, temporary or otherwise. Diminished responsibility at least.”
“Broadmoor?”
“Perhaps. A psychiatric prison. For treatment—and then perhaps he could be out on probation in ten years, five years even, as little as that. The other way is thirty years; even with remission, it’d be twenty at least. You don’t know how much they want to get John, Bob; they want his blood, and since they can’t get that, they want as much of his life as they can get.”
“Have you talked to John about this?” He is behaving as I did with Mrs. Henderson the day before; he will not look directly at me.
“No, of course not. For God’s sake how can I?”
“The prosecution not going to do this for you?”
“They don’t want to show he’s insane; they want him convicted as a sane revolutionary. They’ll do everything they can to make out it’s a cold-blooded, logical, planned exercise in revolutionary violence—my God, I could almost do the summing-up for the prosecution myself right now.”
Bob still will not look at me. “And so you’re going to call me, and John’s parents, and some others, and you are going to put John in the stand, and get him to say he’s adopted, and then you’ll produce the birth certificate; and the jury will think, ‘Well, maybe he did kill the copper, and plan to blow London to little bits, and maybe he planned to use violence on me and my family, but—poor bugger—he’s a right nutter.’ So extenuating circumstances; then even if they can’t acquit, treatment …”
“What the hell else can I do. Do you understand how strong the prosecution case is? There’s not a single hole in it anywhere, not even a pin-hole.”
“What about the others? What’ll happen to them?”
“You mean the people on the other charges.”
“Yes.”
“They’ve got their own counsel; and anyway it’s John who is the ringleader. It’s him they want to get—the others are peripheral; they may even get off on the main charge. And anyway if we can get the jury sympathetic to John, they may treat the others less harshly.”
Bob got up from his chair and walked to the windows. Even though it was morning, the curtains were drawn, I suppose to stop people outside from seeing who Bob had in there. Carefully he pulled the curtains apart.
“I’m a doctor, Tom, not a lawyer; and if you call me to give evidence, I’ll say what’s got to be said—I’ll hedge it round with the parlance of the consulting room, but I’ll say it. All the same, I think you maybe wrong.” He was being very serious and slow.
“But why on earth …? What else can I do?”
“You can fight the issue that really matters; you can deal with the ideas, not the health of the mind that believes them.”
“You don’t know juries, Bob. They aren’t interested in ideas, at least not in John’s ideas. There are two things that matter to them: one, are the facts right? Two, have they any sympathy for the person?”
“Can’t you get them to be sympathetic to his ideas?”
“Not a chance; it’s a court of law, not a debating chamber.”
“And because John is—in your terms, not mine—insane, a ‘nutter’, the ideas will be discredited? And so the means of achieving them will seem unimportant?”
“And John may be treated as a sick man, not as a murderer.” I was being more fierce than I meant to be.
“And what then, Tom, what then?”
“I’m not a seer.”
“Aren’t you? Don’t you see the ideas? Don’t they matter to you?” He looked at me at last, turning back from the window that faced out on to the street.
“John’s told me his ideas; and he told me once you understood them better than anyone he’d ever met. They do matter to you, don’t they?”
“Ideas like that you get anywhere by killing a blindfolded policeman? Ideas like starting a revolution by throwing a hand-grenade at a crowd of sightseers outside Parliament?”
“No. The City, Tom, the City; John’s City. I don’t believe in it; but it’s your City too, isn’t it? You could explain; and you can get John to explain too, because you understand.”
What was the phrase I had used to myself? The City died on a garage floor. Yes, that was it. Was that true? Was Caister more important than that? Had I stopped believing in the City? Did it matter any more? But I was not going to capitulate that easily. “I’m talking about the law, Bob, the law as it happens in a court; I’m not going to be able to talk about an idea, especially an idea about some mystical and mythical City that no one believes in except a couple of half-mad people.”
“But the idea does matter to you, doesn’t it
; if it doesn’t, I don’t understand you at all—and I think I do, partly at least. And if it does matter, you could make it matter to a jury too. The psychiatrist and the lawyer aren’t all that different, Tom.”
“You say that in a court and see what the judge says to you.”
“All right,” he smiled at me. “All right. But aren’t I right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know whether it’d do John any good.”
“But that at least is my home-ground, Tom; and I can tell you that hearing you and me and his parents and the jury and the judge say he was mad might make him mad, really mad—in a good old-fashioned way.”
“He’s stronger than that, Bob,” I answered.
“Don’t you believe it,” he answered; there was no doubt or hesitation in his voice. I am always the chameleon and his certainty had worked as hard on me as the misery I had found in Pleasaunce House; but he went too far then, and I drew back from capitulation.
“It’s all right to talk like this here,” and I gestured to the four walls. “In a court it’s different; there it’s the law, and the barristers, and the judge, and a jury—and above all it’s thirty years sitting there on the judge’s shoulder like a bloody great crow ready to pluck out the prisoner’s eyes.”
“Yes,” said Bob; he had shut his eyes almost as if he were afraid that my judicial crow would attack his own eyes. “Yes, I see that; but …”
I interrupted him. “But I understand what you say, Bob. I do. You must understand that.” I stood up. “I’m very grateful to you; you’ve widened the choice at any rate.”
He nodded and then stood up. “Yes, there’s that at least. I’ll come to the door with you.”
But he wasn’t finished with me yet. At the front door of his house he stopped me and said, “Tom, do you know why he chose the name John Buckleson?”
“No, I don’t.” It was not a question which had crossed my mind. “I suppose ‘Henderson’ and ‘Buckleson’ aren’t all that far apart.”
“I’ll tell you,” Bob said. “I think you could use it either for your defence or mine. Find out about a chap called Jan of Leyden. There are quite a lot of books about him; almost any history of Europe in the Middle Ages will tell you. I used to have a book about him—it was actually called Jan of Leyden.” I looked at Bob in astonishment; he was smiling. “The funny thing is that I gave my copy to John when he was still Richard Henderson, oh, seven or eight years ago now; it never came back. In a way, I suppose I baptised him. You’ll understand the irony of that when … if … you find out about it.”
