Felix in the Underworld

by John Mortimer

  ‘Was that good fun?

  ‘Marvellous! In Edinburgh she tried to get the manager sacked because there were no white lilies in her bedroom. In Dublin she wanted me to shoot vitamins into her bum with a hypodermic syringe before she’d go on the Gay Bums show. In Manchester she threw a pair of shoes at me and said, “Get these mended, girl!” And in Cardiff she wanted me to organize a male voice choir to carry her on their shoulders to a signing session. It wasn’t good fun, exactly.’

  Felix, who hadn’t had many compliments lately, fished for one now. ‘Was it more fun with me?’

  ‘Yes, Felix.’ She was being patient with him. ‘It was more fun with you.’

  ‘Not half as much fun as it’ll be when we go abroad.’

  ‘If I were you I shouldn’t think about that.’ She was being deadly sensible.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I suppose because you’re not going to be in a position to travel. Not for some time.’

  ‘Do you think I did it?’ For the first time Felix sounded depressed.

  ‘No, I’m sure you didn’t.’

  ‘I wish I was.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘After all that’s happened, I’m not really sure about anything.’

  ‘Who’s defending you?’ She came down to practical matters. ‘A pretty ghastly solicitor called Septimus Roache who has hair growing everywhere and smells peculiar and a rather unbearable young QC called Chipless Warrington.’

  There was a silence while Brenda absorbed this information. Then she said, ‘Why Chipless?’

  ‘Because his father was a rubbish collector in Bermondsey and he went to a South London Comprehensive but he’s got no sort of a chip on his shoulder. He’s very democratic and behaves just as though he went to Eton.’

  There was a long pause and she said, ‘Cleansing operative.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what they call rubbish collectors nowadays. Have you got faith in him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This Chipless?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s difficult to have faith in anything much in here. Only the Moslems seem to manage it. Perhaps I should ask to see the Imam. Oh, there was a time when I began to believe in miracles.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘When I thought I saw Gavin rise from the dead. I saw him three times, you know.’

  ‘Felix’ – Brenda was now at her most severe – ‘I’m not going to bother with you if you’re going dotty on me.’

  ‘I thought you’d probably say that.’

  ‘I’ve got quite enough of all that with Sandra Tantamount.’

  ‘I suppose it could have been a mirage. Not that they have many mirages on the Thames Embankment.’

  ‘You’ve got to pull yourself together and get out of this mess. Someone’s got to help you, even if this barrister of yours is several chips short of a take-away.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who’s going to help me?’

  ‘Well, I will. Within reason,’ she promised him unexpectedly.

  He asked her for a favour to start with. ‘I’m wearing these clothes because there’s no one to bring in my other stuff, or to see it gets cleaned occasionally.’

  For the first time she noticed that he was in a blue striped shirt and a pair of trousers that looked as though they had been cut from a grey army blanket. She then agreed to go to Coldsands, find his cleaning lady and bring up clothes to London, including a best suit for his day in court. He looked at her with as much gratitude as she might have deserved if she’d organized his instant acquittal.

  ‘Whatever you say’ – he told her – ‘I shall think about our going abroad together. In the end.’

  ‘I suppose there’s no harm in thinking about it. If you need to.’

  ‘I can’t help it. Oh, if you come again . . .’

  ‘I shall come again,’ she promised. ‘I’m not leaving you to Chipless.’

  ‘. . . Chekhov’s The Complete Plays. On the shelf over my desk.’

  ‘I’ll bring it,’ she said, ‘together with the y-fronts.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Boxer shorts. It’s true. You never found out.’

  ‘Quarter of an hour,’ the screw with the jangling keys came up and told them. ‘Do you want another fifteen?’

  ‘No,’ Brenda said firmly, ‘that’s quite enough to be going on with.’

  The proceedings at the Magistrates’ Court had been extremely brief. Septimus sent down a clerk and Chipless’s junior. This was a young barrister called Quentin Thurgood who had been to Eton and was decidedly chippy about it, forever fearing that the best briefs in the really highly paid cases went to ruthless women barristers of Ugandan descent or to the products of North Country comprehensives. He would carry on for hours about snobbery at the Bar and deep-rooted prejudices against white, upper-class males, but he had very little to say on the subject of bail. ‘I’ll ask for bail if you like,’ he told Felix in the cells, ‘but it’ll be bloody useless.’ He did and it was. Felix was remanded in custody. For the short trip from the court to the bus, a security man was good enough to lend Felix a blanket to put over his head. Recent events had promoted him to the status of famous author, liable to be photographed at any and every opportunity.

  Getting into prison was an endless process of form-filling by large men with very white shirts and jangling keys. Felix was taken behind a screen, stripped naked, showered, pushed and prodded in various ways, and examined by an exhausted young doctor who seemed to have emerged from medical school with his confidence shattered. Through most of this process Felix did as though he was at the dentist or having his hair cut; he kept his eyes shut and tried to recite to himself the poem Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson which he had leand at school. He had just reached

  Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

  Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

  For ever and for ever . . .

  when a voice shouted in his ear, ‘You got anyone near and dear to bring you in clean clothes and keep them washed and tidy?’

  ‘What? Oh well, not really.’

  ‘Right then.’ And the voice called to another distant screw, ‘Prison clothing!’

  So Felix had put on the regulation underclothes, then the shirt and the trousers which were so stiff and scratchy that they might have been left to stand up by themselves. When his few possessions had been locked up and signed for (only to emerge at the time of his release), when his money (one pound twenty-four p) had been carefully counted in his presence and removed, he was led through endless doors which had to be ceremoniously unlocked, past a yard where a few prisoners were playing basketball and into a building of high balconies with iron railings and nets stretched between them to catch those prone to suicide. He was surprised by the sullen quietness of the place, broken only by the click of balls on the ground-floor ping-pong and snooker tables, the murmur of voices on the prisoners’ telephones and the eternal clanking of keys when the warders – a few of whom were women with elaborate hairdos – made the slightest movement. The yellow paint on the stone walls was an attempt at cheerfulness, like the laughter of lawyers in the corridors of the Magistrates’ Court.

  ‘You share a cell here till we can assess your conduct,’ the thin screw with glasses told him. ‘If you keep your nose clean, you may get enhanced to A block.’

  Most of the prisoners were out of their cells and the door of Felix’s future home was open. The cell seemed to be filled with two huge objects: a lavatory with a seat and cistern to replace the old-style chamber-pot, and a man lying in the shadows of the top bunk who was doing absolutely nothing. The screw departed and Felix, edging his way into the cell, sat down on a small chair at a smaller table near the door. A Scottish voice spoke from above his head saying, ‘So, you’ve turned up again.’

  He had only heard the man speak rarely but peering upwards he recognized Du
mbarton. ‘I thought from the way you carried on in the street you’d soon be in trouble.’ The tall young Scotsman was far more loquacious in prison than he was under the arches of Shell Mex House.

  ‘Dumbarton! What’re you here for?’ Felix didn’t know whether to count himself lucky in his cell mate.

  There was a long silence, then Dumbarton said, ‘They got Esmond.’

  ‘You mean the police got him?’

  ‘No. Party-goers got him. Pubbers got him. Evening-outs got him. They kicked his head in. He’s dead.’

  Gentle Esmond, who posted his keys back through his front door and rejected the world, dead? Who else? Who now? Felix said, ‘He was kind to me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ah. But I paid them back for it.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I killed one.’

  ‘One of them that did it?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell that. All I know is he was a pubber. And he had drink taken. And he was coming down the steps where Esmond was done. So I knocked him down and kicked his head in for Esmond’s sake.’

  ‘You killed him?’

  ‘Thoroughly.’

  ‘But he might not have been one of them that did for Esmond.’

  ‘Maybe not. But that was no concern of mine. Or of Esmond’s either.’

  There was another long silence and then Dumbarton said, ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I’m on remand. Accused of a murder I didn’t do.’

  ‘Like all the rest of them in here!’ Dumbarton spoke with undisguised contempt. ‘I’m the only one in here for a murder I did do. You’ll not use that toilet in here. Not ever!’ He’d been talking in a quiet, deliberately controlled Glasgow accent and his final command was yelled out like a parade ground order.

  ‘Why? Doesn’t it work?’ Felix found the courage to ask.

  ‘Of course it works! It’ll take the place over if you let it. We’ve not got a cell with a toilet in it. We’ve got a toilet with a few inches of cell round it. I’ve got to eat my dinner in here. I’ve got to think my thoughts. If you want to go, you go when you’re out of the cell. Just remember that!’

  ‘All right. But what’s it like in here?’ Felix, already feeling queasy, was anxious to change the subject.

  ‘It’s good. Very good. They tell you what to do. Like the army. No worries if they tell you what to do. I never got on well down the Embankment. It was all up to you where you went for breakfast. It’s better here or in the army. Give me a bit of quiet now, and don’t dare use the toilet.’

  That night Felix lay entombed on the bottom bunk, conscious of the inconvenient stirrings in his stomach and listening to the heavy breathing of the young giant who, it seemed, killed at random.

  Weeks later, he was told he had a visitor. He combed his hair carefully in the little square of a mirror and, doing his best to look cheerful, went off to his date with Brenda Bodkin.

  She stood looking at his desk, empty and waiting for him, and was struck by his sense of order. Hers was always piled high with books, shoes, ashtrays, half-drunk mugs of tea and coffee, opened packets of biscuits, letters, photographs and ideas for point of sale publicity. On Felix’s desk the long, ruled sheets of paper were lined up in a neat block, the clock and the metal duck stood like sentries on each side of the photograph of Chekhov, lolling on a verandah in the sunshine with his dog – a smiling writer with tired eyes on his way to death. She pulled down the fat paperback collection of plays and put it in the bag in which she collected shirts and trousers, socks and boxer shorts, and the suit for Felix’s day in court.

  She had called on Mrs Ives in Mermaid Crescent, the cleaning lady, who had handed over the key in response to Felix’s note with a trembling hand and a look which meant Good luck, Miss. Rather you than me! Mrs Ives hadn’t been in to clean since the arrest. What, Brenda wondered, did she expect to find? Dead bodies, severed limbs, floorboards tom up for the concealment of butchered victims? She said she’d make sure everything was in order and that she’d see Mrs Ives got paid for regular visits and for keeping his place as no doubt Mr Morsom would have wanted it kept. She got to the flat and blinked at the lightness of it, the low autumn sunlight bouncing off white walls and the tidiness everywhere. She went into the bedroom and, opening a cupboard, found the stack of clean shirts, kept in order by a man who was interested in laundry.

  She zipped up the bag full of Felix’s possessions and looked round his writing-room as though to say goodbye to it. The window in front of the desk was filled with his view of the sea: a greenish colour with a gold burnish where the sunlight struck it. She looked at the shelves, the neat row of box-files and notebooks, and the press-cutting albums in which Felix pasted his good notices. (He could smell out the bad ones almost without reading them and destroyed them rapidly.) There was a shelf for tapes and compact discs, under which stood the black box which was the centre of his Orpheus sound system. On top of the box lay a tape, unmarked but perhaps recently played. What was it? Some favourite piece of music? The tune he’d take to the desert island if he were only allowed one? She was in no hurry and so far the flat hadn’t divulged any secrets about an author who had managed to land himself in such sensational trouble. She slotted in the tape and pressed a few buttons. A red light glowed, the Orpheus hissed and Gavin spoke.

  ‘They told me to get in the motor. I would describe their manner as peremptory. They were hostile. You might say unpleasant. . .’ Brenda was listening so intently that the cigarette between her lips was unlit, the lighter with its flame was flickering in her hand, as Gavin continued, ‘. . . The police cell was by no means spacious and a great deal of room in it was taken up by a man wearing a crumpled blue suit and a number of heavy rings. On one of them I noticed was a sphinx’s head which might have come into use as a knuckleduster. I do not exaggerate when I say that he smelled like a bar parlour on the morning after. I noticed in particular that his hands were not clean and his fingernails were what my mother used to call “in mourning for the cat’s mother”. By this time I was in considerable distress and I asked if he objected to my making use of the very inadequate toilet facilities provided. His words to me, spoken in a slurred voice, were, “Be my guest, sunshine.” It was while I was relieving myself that my cell mate approached, pulled down my clothing and bent me over the toilet. The next thing I was aware of was a sharp pain in my rear passage and a feeling of resentment.’

  Brenda lit her cigarette and listened until the voice said, ‘I shall watch your future career with interest.’ Then nothing could be heard except another faint hiss. She remembered the Sentinel literary lunch and the drink in the bar where she had noticed the heavy, silvery ring with the plump face of a sphinx. It was on the hand of Terry, the missing rep, and no doubt it would come in useful as a knuckleduster.

  Lying in the bunk under Dumbarton, who had now sunk back into silence, Felix read Uncle Vanya. He was disturbed by the depths of despair and the cruel depiction of life by an author whom he had come to regard, he now realized quite mistakenly, as gentle. He closed the book, turning away from such remorseless creations and, when let out of his cell, joined the other prisoners in watching Australian soap operas on the big television set at the end of the gallery. He sat enthralled by their undemanding plots. The next time he visited the library he took out Grand Slam by Sandra Tantamount.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Roache, if the chent appreciates. . .’ Chipless Warrington, QC was tall and sturdy, the descendant of a long line of dustmen who had carried overflowing bins of rubbish. His yellowish hair toned with the colour of his skin and flowed gently over the top of his ears and down to his collar so that he looked more like a trendy banker or a person in advertising than an Old Bailey hack. He had a prominent, fleshy nose, a generously rounded chin and the sharp, white teeth of a carnivore. He spoke in the upper-class drawl in use when Lord Curzon, whom he somewhat resembled, was Viceroy of India – and he managed to avoid speaking to Felix or looking at him directly. ‘. . . I mean,
I don’t know if the client fully understands that if we establish provocation we might reduce it to manslaughter?’

  ‘I think you can take it,’ Septimus Roache assured him, ‘that the client understands absolutely nothing whatever about the law.’

  ‘If the chent were to tell us – and I do say if – that he went round to see Piercey to stop him giving the tabloids the story about his bastard child, and if – and, once again, I must stress this if – the client should tell us that, when he saw him in his van, Piercey was abusive and then started to blackmail him, demanding, shall we say, twenty or twenty-five grand as his price of silence, and even if – and again I lay stress upon the if – we should be instructed by the client that Piercey upped the ante and asked for, well, let us suppose thirty grand, or that he’d tell the papers quite untruthfully, of course, that the client raped the infant’s mother or gave her a transmittable sexual disease, if as I have quite clearly said, those are the instructions from the client, well, then, bingo, Piercey becomes a blackmailer and juries don’t at all mind blackmailers being bonked on the head with spanners.’

  ‘What would be the tariff?’ Septimus wondered. ‘If we reduce it to manslaughter?’

  ‘Five years. Maybe four, given a fair wind and a soppy judge. I understand the client is of good character.’

  ‘He was nominated for the Booker Prize.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that’s a criminal offence?’

  They laughed, Chipless and his junior, Quentin Thurgood, and Septimus Roache. They were grouped round a table in the glass-walled prison interview room. Felix, looking at them, thought they were as remote and patendy artificial as the characters in Australian soap operas.

  ‘I just don’t see it,’ Chipless’s junior said when they had stopped laughing. ‘I just don’t see manslaughter.’

  ‘All the same, perhaps we could get them to accept a plea to it.’ Chipless was still jovial. ‘Who’s prosecuting?’

  ‘Marmaduke Pusey,’ Septimus told him.

  ‘Dear old Marmalade! There was a girl in his chambers pestering him and I took her off his hands. Marmalade owes me a favour.’ But Quentin Thurgood still didn’t see it at all. ‘Provocation,’ his junior told Chipless, ‘has to be instant, on the spur of the moment. You know the law.’ Chipless conceded, ‘One relies on one’s junior for that.’