Tim Vicary - A Game of Proof

This was not unusual. Barristers prided themselves on assimilating large amounts of complex information swiftly. They were used to it. It was how the system worked. It was clients, rather than lawyers, who were unhappy with it.

She explained all this to Simon, who began to sway his head from side to side, in a panic.

‘You mean, they still don’t know shit about my case? They’re going to read all this stuff that you and mum have spent months on in just three days ?’

‘They’ve already read some of it, Simon, obviously. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to talk to you about it last week.’

‘He didn’t talk to me, the ponce — he told me to plead guilty!’ Simon got up, walked to the window, and rested his manacled hands on the bars. The guard peered in anxiously. ‘Christ! The miserable sod advised me to plead guilty and he hadn’t even read the case! I thought at least he’d done that!’

‘Simon, he knew the main facts …’

‘Sod the main facts! He’s supposed to know everything about it, isn’t he? Specially if he tells me to plead guilty!’

Panic was clear on his face. ‘This is the guy you chose to defend me? Mum? Lucy? Why? ’

‘Because he’s a top criminal QC, Simon,’ Lucy insisted. ‘We were very lucky to get him.’

‘And that’s your idea of luck, is it? A guy who tells me to plead guilty before he’s read the papers? A guy who wants me to rot in here for four long years?’ He gazed for a while at the windblown clouds racing freely over the rooftops. Then he took a deep, sobbing breath and turned back into the room. ‘Well, I don’t want him.’

‘What?’

‘You heard, I don’t want a turd like that defending me. I’d rather defend myself.’

‘You can’t do that, Simon,’ said Sarah coolly. ‘Be sensible. You don’t know the first thing about the law.’

‘Maybe not.’ He focussed on her for the first time. ‘But you do, don’t you, Mum. Why don’t you defend me?’

‘ Me? I can’t, Simon.’

‘Why not? You’re a barrister, aren’t you? And at least you know about my bloody case. You know everything about it, you do. You even saw Jasmine’s body.’

‘Which is exactly why I can’t defend you. I’m too closely involved. I’m your mother, after all …’

‘True. And you believe I’m not guilty, as well.’

‘Yes.’ If there was a hesitation in her voice it was the tiniest possible one, so tiny that Sarah hoped only she herself heard it. ‘Yes, I believe you’re not guilty.’

‘Well then. That’s a thousand times better than Sir Richard Pissface. You should do it.’

‘I understand why you think that, Simon, but I can’t. I told you, I’m too closely involved. The whole point of hiring a barrister is to hire a professional, an expert in the law who can put forward your arguments in the best way possible without the liability of ….’

She hesitated, words unexpectedly failing her for a moment.

‘Without what, mum? Without the liability of actually caring one way or the other, is that what you were going to say?’

‘Something like that, Simon, yes. It’s how the system works.’

‘Then the system stinks. It’s a load of shit.’

For a while no one said anything. The three of them thought hard. Simon’s eyes were locked on Sarah’s. Lucy watched, afraid to speak. This wasn’t just a matter of legal advice now, she thought. It was between Simon and his mother.

‘Is that true, mum? You’re not allowed to defend me, really? There’s a law against it?’

Sarah’s mind was racing — through everything she’d learned since she began to practise law. Simon had raised a question which, in all those years, had never actually come up.

‘I don’t think there’s a law against it exactly, Simon,’ she said falteringly. ‘It’s just the way it works.’

‘And you’re happy with that, are you?’

‘I didn’t say I was happy with it …’

‘Mum, listen to me. All the time I was a kid, you were studying. You couldn’t go swimming with us, you couldn’t play football, because you had an essay to write or a book to read. Always. Then when you passed your exams and we thought it would get better, you got more exams, more essays. Remember? You were away for weeks, months on end. Study, study, study, that’s all you ever did. I never saw you. Your studying was more important than games and housework and cooking, you said, I’d understand that some day. You’d be a lawyer and I’d understand.

‘Well now you are a lawyer and I’m stuck in this stinking cesspit of a gaol, accused of a murder which I didn’t do — and I don’t understand. Not at all, not a bit of it. Why can’t you defend me? You’re a barrister, aren’t you — just as good as Sir Richard Filthy Ponceface — and you actually know all about my case, which he doesn’t and no other barrister does. I’m just asking you to use what you know. And you say you can’t because you’re my mother. Christ!’

He turned away, gazing blindly at the clouds outside the window. Sarah was shocked. It was the longest speech she had ever heard him make.

‘That’s just cruel, Simon,’ she said faintly. ‘I didn’t abandon you when I studied. …’

‘You may not have meant to, Mum …’

‘I didn’t mean to and I didn’t do it! You know I didn’t! You were fed, you were clothed, you had friends and a father — Bob, he spent hours with you …’

‘So why did you always have your nose in a book, then? Why?’

‘Because I wanted to get out of the filthy slum where we lived. That’s why. Because I wanted to make a life for myself and for you and all of us. A life in which we could be proud to hold our heads up and not scrounge around like victims blaming society for everything. That’s why, Simon. And I did it, too, didn’t I? Only you …’

‘Only I what?’

She shook her head, despairingly. ‘Only you didn’t understand, Simon. You still don’t understand, do you? I wasn’t doing it just for me, I was doing it for all of us, for you most of all! And now look…’ She waved at their drab, dirty surroundings. ‘What are we doing here, Simon?’

‘Do you think I want to be here, Mum?’

‘No, but you got us here. No one else …’

‘Well, now I want you to get me out! That’s what I’m asking, Mum. Please. You know how to do it, no one else does.’

‘You shouldn’t have such faith in me, Simon …’

‘Why not? I’ve seen how hard you work. What else was it for, all that study?’

‘God!’ She slammed her hand hard on the table. ‘You still have no idea, do you? If only you knew, if only you understood what it was like having you there all the time. Holding me back, and yet being the reason, the only reason I did it all …’

‘So are you saying you can’t do it because the law won’t let you? Or are you saying you won’t do it because you don’t care? Which is it, Mum? Tell me.’

Sarah’s anger left her as suddenly as it had come. She couldn’t answer; she didn’t know what to say. She looked at her tall, desperate son, his hands manacled in front of him, and was struck dumb.

‘Or did you do all that work, all that study, just so you could defend druggies and burglars who you don’t know and don’t give a shit about? Is that it, Mum? Is that your great profession which you studied so hard for all these years, to get us out of the slums?’

‘Simon, you don’t understand!’ She reached one hand tentatively towards his. ‘You need a cool head to defend you, not someone who loves you and …’