This is the Life (28 page)

What about your desk?

My desk? Well, it is a large Georgian walnut secretary.

Its cost?

Well, I don’t know; about
£15,000,
I should have thought.

Do you belong to any clubs, Mr Jones?

Only three; the Garrick, the Wig and Pen, the MCC.

Are you married, Mr Jones?

I am.

Do you have a photograph of your wife on your person?

Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do.

(He takes a snapshot of Mrs Jones out of his wallet and passes it to me. A gorgeous, raven-haired, soft-eyed woman is depicted. I raise the photograph for the jury’s inspection. After they have settled down I shuffle my papers and clear my throat for effect. Then I wait. I wait for absolute silence before I continue my questioning.) Mr Jones, do you actually exist?

No, I’m afraid to say I do not.

Then who, or what, are you?

I am the person you would have been had events taken a different course.

Let me see if I understand you, Mr Jones: you are the person I would have become had I been taken on by 6 Essex?

Correct.

I see. Mr Jones, the court will have noticed the difference, indeed the gulf, if I may describe it that way, between you and me – you are successful socially and professionally, you are blessed with a wonderful wife and so forth. I am none of these things. Can you be sure that, had I been taken on by 6 Essex, I would have gone on to become like you?

Yes. You undoubtedly possessed all the talent and determination necessary to succeed as a top commercial and international lawer. You were cut out for it, Mr Jones, you were meant to be me – Mr Jones, I am the real you.

Thank you, I have no further questions. Mr Donovan?

A flabbergasted Donovan shakes his head. No cross-examination.

Now it is for Donovan to present his evidence. He has only one witness: himself. He puts himself in the box and takes the oath.

He can say nothing. He stands there in silence, tongue-tied. Well, Mr Donovan? the judge asks. Aren’t you going to say anything?

Yes, I … says Donovan.

The judge raises an eyebrow. You are unable to speak, Mr Donovan?

Donovan says, Well, I … He stops again. Then, after a pause, he says, I have no evidence to give, my lord. I have nothing to say. He steps out of the box.

Just a moment, Mr Donovan, I say dramatically. Everybody looks at me: suddenly I am the centre of attention. You forget, Mr Donovan: I have yet to cross-examine you.

What happens next does not bear transcription. I tear Donovan apart. I do a Donovan on him: I pin him to the ropes and sock him with body-blow after body-blow. I cut him and
outpoint him, I mash him in and knock him out: I Tyson him. The admissions come spilling out: Yes, it is my fault that you are not the James Jones you should be, the James Jones you were meant to be; yes, I take the blame for what you are presently suffering, I should have put chambers in touch with you in November 1978; yes, I have acted in a selfish and uncaring way towards you. I have been cruel, I admit it. I have ruined your life.

I let Donovan go. He is in pieces, and reels dizzily to his seat. I stand to address the jury.

You have just heard the Defendant, Mr Donovan, admit liability in this matter. There remains only one thing for you to deal with: the quantum of damages. Members of the jury, I want compensation for dismemberment, for that is what we are talking about here. This may sound heartless to those who have lost real legs, but I, too, feel as though something has been chopped off. I am attacked by impalpable pains in regions I cannot locate, pains like the pains amputees are said to feel in the thin air their hands once would have occupied. Members of the jury, let me make plain what I am saying. Let me explain what has been sundered from me.

Before Donovan came along (and it must never be forgotten that he was the one who entered my life, that he made the first move), I lived happily from day to day. I had no regrets, and if I looked forward at all, members of the jury, it was to more of the same. I was at peace with myself.

Then he showed up – Mr Donovan, the man you see sitting over there. It was not me he wanted, it was a solicitor – a solicitor he could manipulate and dominate. He did not care about the effect he might have on me, the disturbance he might cause by suddenly reappearing in my life. And what was the effect of his come-back? I will tell you. He dug up my old future. Not my recent future, ladies and gentlemen – not the times awaiting me at Batstone Buckley Williams – but my old future, the one I looked forward to as a young man: the James Jones, international lawyer, scenario. And the hopes which this future contained, hopes which until then were
safely underground, suddenly came to light again, more vivid than ever.

These hopes were dashed, members of the jury. Of course they were; how could I, now, at this stage of my life, ever fulfil the desires of my youth? I did not have a hope of becoming an international lawyer or of writing a learned book, of taking part in the bright swirl of history: and yet I hoped. Because of Donovan, I hoped.

What do I mean, when I say that my hopes were dashed? Let me tell you: I mean that they were severed from me for good. Yes, severed, as though an axe had been put to them: because these kinds of dreams, these youthful skylines, they are connected bodily to you, members of the jury, they are hooked deep into your insides like anchors jammed in rocks: move the anchor and you move the rocks. And this upheaval, ladies and gentlemen, this rumbling of hearts and guts, is painful. Especially when, as in my case, it is unjust – I could have been, I
should
have been, an international lawyer and learned author. But I am neither of these. I have been deprived of what I had coming to me, a deprivation I can lay at the door of Mr Donovan. If the Defendant had not been so self-centred, he would have alerted his chambers to my whereabouts at Batstone Buckley Williams, and I would now be a different man with different horizons. But I am not. The old me-to-be, the man of my dreams – you heard him giving evidence earlier, members of the jury, the other Mr Jones – he and I have split up for ever. It is over between us, it is over between my real self and me – for there can be no doubt, members of the jury, that the person I now am, and the life I now lead, worthy as they might be, are not the real thing. The real life, lustrous and significant, has been lost to me, and that is as bad as losing a limb. Anyone who thinks that I am going too far is wrong. I would give my right arm for those vanished years, even now.

(I stop there to let the jury take in what I have been saying. I look over at Donovan. He is sitting silently, in a daze. I know what he is thinking; not, My, how selfish I have been, but, My
God, James is good –
really
good – how stupid I was never to have spotted his talent when he was my pupil! I resume.)

Members of the jury, Mr Donovan himself has admitted that he has ruined my life. It happened a long time ago, it is true, over a decade ago – but it happened. He deflected me from my rightful path. It may be that you think that I am feeling a little too sorry for myself, that I should show more backbone and face the future like a man, and you may be right to feel this. Perhaps I am not as strong a man as I should be and perhaps, in this sense, I have contributed to my loss. That may be so. But Mr Donovan here, he should have known that before he started to ruin my life. He should have realized what stuff I am made of, he should have realized (he is a lawyer, he is familiar with the eggshell – skull principle) that I was a vulnerable party. Members of the jury, I ask not just for a compensatory award, but for exemplary, punitive damages. I ask for justice.

I sit down. Donovan has nothing to add. While the jury deliberates, I finish my bottle of wine. I see that it is 8 a.m.

I never heard what the verdict of the jury was. The next thing I knew I was waking up on the sofa in the mid-afternoon with a hammering dehydration hangover, my rashy face hanging pale and swollen in the mirror on the wall. It sounded, from the gurgles and rumbles that tremored down my chest to my stomach, as if trains were running through my body’s tunnels.

Sweating a little, I lit a cigarette and glanced around me, at the living-room. It did not look good. Empty wine bottles, junk food cartons, newspapers, fat-crusted dishes, socks, cigarette packs, underpants, rotting flowers and garbage of all kinds stood out in the harsh daylight. Dust particles swam around in the air and a big bluebottle jangled against a windowpane. I stubbed out my cigarette: my throat was too sore to smoke it down to the butt.

Then, after I had guzzled at a stream of lukewarm tapwater in the kitchen, I made a discovery. I felt lighter than I had done for days; I felt as though some freight had been unladen from my body.

I felt all right.

I pushed my feet into shoes and headed for the door. I had no special destination in mind, I just needed to get out. I did not bother to change, or to shave or wash. I just stepped out of the house the way I was.

I caught a bus. I sat on the top deck and smoked a cigarette. It was yet another cloudless, sunshiny day, and when, at the Elephant and Castle, the bus stood still for ten minutes in a
tangle of traffic, it came to me that, yes, I was not mistaken, I was feeling better. Down below throngs filled the pavements and two guys in sunglasses in an old purple sports car were blasting out opera and setting everything to music. It was a shot in the arm, and for the first time in a while I envisaged being part of all that action down there.

Then a small smile visited me: something struck me: all at once, on top of this bus, I was seeing daylight. The knots and kinks that had roped and snarled up my mind had ravelled out, and suddenly the whole of the Donovan business looked different. I was seeing it in a new way, from a distance, from the vantage point of someone looking back. It looked as though I had moved on: moved on from the Donovan part of my life.

Yes, I thought. What Donovan saw in Arabella, why he had collapsed in court, why he had burned his manuscript, why he had not contested the divorce, why Arabella had left that message on the ansaphone, why his father had come and suddenly gone, why he had cried on the golf course – who cared? Not me, that was for sure. Me, I had lost interest. Whether Donovan threw himself off a cliff or scaled great heights, it was all the same to me. Good luck to him. During the boiling, therapeutic night I had disentangled my life from his, and that was that. This was not a case of forgive and forget: this was just a case of forget. Anyway, there comes a moment when forgetting
is
forgiving – amnesty, after all, flows from amnesia.

Yes, I was letting it pass, all of it. Bygones were bygones. I knew that if I looked long and deep enough into the vehement events of the past year – events which had, as far as I could see, expired suddenly and inexplicably – they would no doubt yield profound and interesting meanings, illuminations of the downfall of genius and of the mysterious causalities of history. But I did not want to know. I had cut the cord, and that was that.

The bus freed itself from the traffic and sped off. I lit another cigarette and settled back in a tingling frame of mind. I felt
quickened, the window-framed scenes outside flitted by like a strip of film. We swerved up to the Strand via Trafalgar Square and the crowds, the jetting water, the flocks of pigeons; my cheek flattened against the window, I watched a baby in a pram, a policeman giving directions, a teacher waist-deep in schoolchildren and a couple holding each other and laughing, the woman tossing her head upwards and backwards in my direction.

It was Arabella, and the man – I had to lean over to check – was Michael Donovan.

At first I did not respond. Then, as the bus was stationary, I left my seat to look at them out of the rear window.

They were still there, walking along holding hands and kissing each other. They looked delighted. They could have been celebrating something, they looked so happy.

The bus started up and left them behind, amongst the crowds.

I could not believe it. They had got back together. Whether or not Donovan had dissuaded Arabella from finalizing the divorce, whatever the details of the matter were, one thing was clear: they were back together again. The Donovans were reunited.

Well, I said to myself, that was a matter for them. Me, I was not going to spend any time working out the hows and whys of their reconciliation. I had fish of my own to fry.

But when I returned home I had a small argument with myself. One part of me said that I should forget all about what I had seen, that it made no difference anyway, that I did not want to risk becoming involved with Donovan all over again. The other part said, Why should I dismiss the incident? Why shouldn’t I think about it? I would put my mind to it in the same way as I might mull over any other item of curiosity. There was no need for me to apply special prohibitions or security measures vis-à-vis Donovan; now that I had said boo to his ghost, I was able to contemplate him on equal terms, man to man.

The second part of me won the argument.

How had Donovan done it? How had he managed to turn Arabella? What kind of offer had he made?

No sooner had I asked myself this last question than something hit me, something slapped me across the face. It was not an offer that had won Arabella, it was an offering: he had burned the manuscript of
Supranational Law
for her.