Tammy Baikie - Selling LipService

‘Let us bear in memoriam , this heinous act of crimen fals i, knowingly committed…’ says the procurator, before being interrupted by the witness.

‘Are you not interested in the patient match?’

‘ Quaestio is the sole preservative of the court,’ reprimands the judge.

‘Veritably, veritably,’ says the flushed procurator.

‘Schizophasic cretins,’ says Bromide softly. He is seated just behind my right shoulder and my restraints Chinese-bangle my skin as I turn to see if anyone else heard. He holds my gaze and raises his fingers, which are curled together like the legs of a dead spider as he carefully licks each one. I don’t know what this message means, but seeing him use a form of mute point condenses like the horror and stench of a stranger’s breath at your neck in the night.

The procurator is trying to pick up on his wavering line of questioning. ‘And what would you say, doctor, is per definitionem the composition mentis of the defendant?’

I don’t care to hear about my state of mind, and neither does she that’s not me, who is sitting spinning in circles on the polished parquet floor. I slump and let the backrest of the wheelchair strike a blue to my head as I rush for the dome of sky. If I could sink my arms elbow-deep into that ether, how would it taste? Of absinthe and ease, louche clouds. This is what I’ll take back to the cell. I’ve managed not to think of it before. But now it clangs dinner slot, breakfast slot. Time slot. Under the thumb of the dust beneath the bed. Still humming electric even though the wiring is definitely loose.

‘ Silentium! Silentium! The defendant is vox nihili . Any further disruptionem and sedation will be required. This is the Ether Jar.’

Luckily the humming stops. Looking around for the source, I find the proxymate in the audience again. She-me flicks a lighter, singeing the hair of the woman seated in front of her. The filament snake-dances in the flame before coiling up into a fiddlehead fern. How can I possibly see this from metres away? I am not her. I am not the one who sets heads ablaze, even if I had hoped to.

Petula Ormod is called to cross-examine Dr Bromide the next day. She stands and I notice that she has no shoes on, only stockinged feet. Blazing bunions, undimmed even by the haze of hose, apparently explain this. I’m afraid Petula Ormod is a woman always before a hump. The condition of her jacket remains unchanged. ‘ Nolo contendere – there is nothing to contest,’ she begins. ‘Nevertheless, I argue that the doctor must conceit, credo quia absurdum est . The defendant’s innocentia is shelf-evident because it is absurd. Can you deny this, Doctor?’

Bromide makes a strange spitting noise and Petula pirouettes back to her seat.

Most mornings the wheelchair comes for me and I sit in the courtroom. I try to listen but the words circle like water-bloated food in a blocked sink. Sooner or later I etherise into the upper reaches of the dome. The light changes. There is the occasional passage of birds, a plane. Clouds accumulo and nimbus. Down below, the words swill round and round.

After breaking for lunch, the procurator calls a new witness.

There’s a sound like a body bag being moved. Mother appears wearing a red-trimmed, transparent pink raincoat over a knee-length black shift dress. Red manicured nails hold the edge of the hood over her head as if a sudden sousing gust might blow it back. Mother knows how to make an entrance. The bare skin of her arms simpers through the rose-coloured PVC. She sits in the witness chair behind my right shoulder. I refuse to turn and look at her.

The bailiff orderly swears her in: ‘Do you swear on the power of speech invested in the transdermal and pains of a second cerebral haemorrhage to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?’

‘I do.’

‘Madame,’ says the procurator, who hasn’t been nearly so gracious in addressing previous witnesses, ‘you are the defendant’s mater familias , correct?’

‘Yes,’ she whispers in her most tragic voice.

‘Perhaps you could provide a dictum about the lapsus linguae inflicted on you?’

‘Oh sir, I’m afraid you’re going for the absolute opaques and leaving it all to the imagination.’ I don’t need to look to know she’s producing a full ingénue’s blushfulness.

‘The unbranded LipService in flagrante delicto ,’ explains the procurator.

Mum fatale has told them about how I tried to get her to use unprogrammed LipService.

‘Oh, yes. There’s no merrywidow with her, it’s all boxer nastiness. My daughter is ill fitting and rides up my back because of it. It was chest-bindingly cruel to force that unbranded pastie onto me. I would never go commando, I always wear my Frisson Froufrou. But do you think I sagged a bit? No.’

The procurator is standing just in front of me, bordelloed over. I don’t think he understood a word but he’s rushing over to her. My neck snaps round to follow him and for the first time I look at Mother sitting in the witness chair with the procurator on his knees to her right, clasping her hand. On her left the judge crouches, clutching her other hand. The light from the dome above illuminates the rose raincoat and Mother is transfigured into the madonna of the sunset corona. She’s a woman on fire, and through the glow I swear I see she-me standing behind Mother, arms over head, holding the lighter aloft. Mother is the brand made flesh, Frisson Froufrou incarnate. The men of law are weak-kneed before her.

Petula stamps her foot but it makes no sound in its hushed-up hose. ‘ Objectio, objectio! ’ The judge hurls the reflex hammer at her but it glances off her bunched shoulder pad. I start laughing. It’s an ugly sound, but I can’t stop.

When order is finally restored and the adorers have regained their feet, the procurator says, ‘The testimonium of this charming gentlewoman is lux in tenebris , a great illuminator. For what does it reveal?’ He pauses uncertainly.

I see them all waiting on the gallery’s hard wooden benches, waiting to understand and participate in the court’s catharsis. For once they aren’t all looking at me, and I search the rows for Stillwell, but he’s not there.

‘What does it not reveal!’ he declares triumphantly.

With that court is adjourned for the weekend.

In my cell, I lie on my bed, digesting the yoghurty tasture of the sheets. It’s proof of life when I’m starting to feel unreal. Language in the Ether Jar sublimates into gas, increasing the empty spaces between atoms of meaning. I am that void, the unspoken, the rapidly dispersing significance of these speech particles.

Words fail me. They do me no justice. Not because I am innocent, but because they can’t give offense – least of all mine. What does the procurator or Judge Mannix or Petula Ormod or Dr Bromide think my patch prose was like? What does the unspeakable mean to those who have never heard it – like the mob eager to lynchpin it on me? Do they even know what it is? In LipService there is rhyme but no reason.

There is someone who could tell everyone what LitService was really like, who knows what it’s like to face a dead wall of language. And when I return to the Ether Jar on Monday, he is called to testify. I can tell from the crease in his trousers that he has returned to the fold.

‘Copywriter,’ says the procurator, ‘you are the provisor of panem et circenses to the plebeius …’

‘Bread and circuses!’ interrupts Wordini. ‘Who writes your Arguendo? That is just too ah-cute.’