Joseph O'Neill - This is the Life

Now, normally speaking, I would be the first to agree with this. I myself am quite happy to wrap up a case in ill-fitting paper and leave it bulging and unwieldy — as long, that is, as I am satisfied that the case is wrapped up. This is what worried me about Donovan v. Donovan. Much as I might have wished it to be over, I had a feeling that we were not yet out of the woods — that matters would not, indeed could not, end there. Surely the case, surely this whole affair, could not simply fizzle out in this way? It was all too lopsided: Donovan’s theatrical breakdown, his father’s dramatic arrival from Ireland, the eerie diaries, the scene at the pre-trial review, the tears on the golf course, the fast-approaching trial: surely all this momentum, all this mass times velocity, could not just evaporate — could it? The physics of it was all wrong. What is more, I still picked up that roar in the air, a roar getting louder with every moment. Something told me that we were still on the river with the waterfall ahead. Something told me that the cameras were still rolling.

I did not dwell for long on the Donovan settlement, at least not immediately. I was not able to, I had to get on with my other work, of which there was plenty. I am, it must not be forgotten, a junior partner. Whatever denigrations I may have heaped on it, it is not a negligible position. It is we junior partners who really keep the firm going. While the senior partners are on long lunches with clients, back in the office myself and my contemporaries have our shoulders to the wheels. Our clients may well be small people with small problems, but they are numerous and their hundred and one demands must be dealt with efficiently. That is the challenge, to dispose of as many of these pint-sized cases as quickly as possible. It is not as easy as it looks. They can pin you down, these lilliputian chores, and you have to watch yourself; otherwise you wake up one morning and find yourself guyed down and tied up by hundreds of unattended tasks that have crept up on you while you slumbered.

So the next time I gave the case my full consideration was 25 January 1989. I received, out of the blue, a fax from Donovan. He was still in Rio de Janeiro. The fax said: James, as you probably have gathered I am consenting to the petition. Participate in any consent proceedings on February 2nd. Instruct junior counsel. Copy of settlement agreement attached. M.D.

So. On 2 February consent proceedings would take place. The judge would be asked by Arabella to pronounce a decree nisi, and we would not oppose the application. It was cut-and-dried stuff. I glanced at the settlement: nothing noteworthy, the payment of a lump sum in three instalments. From a legal point of view the case was no longer special. From now on it was simply a matter of administration.

The morning of 2 February was freezing cold. The wind scorched my head as I tramped down the Strand and by the time I reached the court my ears were bright red and hurting. I met up with the counsel I had instructed, a young woman called Rebecca Gibbons, and we wandered over to speak to Philip Hughes and his counsel, a Mr Brooke Sulman. Hughes handed me a copy of an affidavit sworn by Arabella wherein she detailed what she had suffered at the hands of Donovan. It was an unusually bland statement which could have been made by anyone. It added little to the Petition. Arabella complained of loneliness, lack of communication between herself and Donovan, his indifference (an example was given of a time when he had gone away for two months without so much as telephoning her) and so forth. It was a terribly ordinary affidavit which made terribly ordinary points. An uninformed reader would have never been able to guess at the dramatic subtext, that history was moving through those stilted paragraphs.

The judge pronounced the decree nisi in record time.

The marriage was as good as dead. In six weeks Arabella would apply for a decree absolute and that would be that. One stamp from the court office and no more Mr and Mrs Donovan.

When I arrived back at the office I made a little scene of blowing my hands and stamping my feet. By the time I sat down at my desk I had a cup of steaming coffee and a digestive biscuit waiting for me. Whenever June sees me come in shivering in my overcoat with my red ears, she always puts the kettle on and brings me a boiling brew. There,’ she says. ‘Drink that. It’ll make you feel better.’

‘June,’ I say. ‘You shouldn’t. That’s not your job. You’ve got enough on your plate as it is. You shouldn’t, June,’ I say.

I pick up my cup happily and June purses her lips and looks all business. I feel her standing there as my eyes dip down to my cup. Her shoulder leans against the jamb and she is regarding me, making sure that all is well, that there is nothing she can do for me. My June. My summer month. I would be lost without her.

(I wonder what she is doing now? The poor thing probably spends her days deflecting inquiries from irate clients, cancelling meetings, securing time extensions, re-distributing my work. If anyone will clear up the mess I have left behind, it is June. She will know that I am in some kind of trouble. She will have recognized the symptoms. All the same, I feel guilty at having burdened her with the consequences of my actions. I must remember to get her some kind of present when all of this is over, some token of my appreciation.)

When I came back from court and sat back with my coffee, I pushed at my iron desk with my feet and swung around to look up at the sky. Seeing nothing but the sky makes me contemplative, and on this occasion I began meditating upon the consequences of Donovan’s divorce. By now I had become used to the idea and had overcome my dismay at not having been consulted; and although the sudden and mysterious end to the matter still left me uneasy, I had pushed all of that aside. I had also got over the feeling of anti-climax mixed, it must be said, with regret. I knew that the end of the case did not mean the end of me and Donovan. Quite the contrary. Now we were only just at the beginning. Now our futures looked more closely bound than ever.

Let me explain. It came to me, sipping my coffee that morning, that the divorce would benefit Donovan. Now his time would be his, from now on he would be free to finish Supranational Law in peace. And the more I thought about that book, the more excited I became. If ever a book was made for its time, this was it. The frazzled world was crying out for a jurisprudence to cope with the environmental crisis, it was crying out for someone to step into the breach. Donovan would be that someone. In Supranational Law he would supply that jurisprudence. When the historians of the next century came to look at the factors that turned around the present crisis, they would dwell long and hard on the name of Michael Donovan. They might even (my God, if only this were true! If only!) feel compelled to read Michael Donovan: An Appreciation , by James Jones.

Yes, gazing up at that white, foggy sky, I saw the situation growing rosier by the minute. When Donovan’s Supranational Law , with its brand new regime for the critical resources of the planet, came to fruition, then the parallels I had drawn with Hugo Grotius would become irresistible. My thesis would take off. Just as Grotius provided the much-needed concept of the High Seas in Mare Liberum back in the seventeenth century, a concept which lasts to this day, so Donovan would provide its modern-day equivalent. It was all so neat, it all fell so spookily into place, that I sprang to my feet, shivering. Yes, I was destined for greater things! There could be no more doubt about it, not now, not after everything that had happened: Donovan was heading for the history books and so, on his coat-tails, was I. My pupillage with Donovan at 6 Essex, my years of research thereafter (only made possible, it dawned on me, by my failure at the Bar), our reunion through his divorce, my uncanny discovery of his manuscript, all of these pointed to one thing: Donovan and Jones were in this together. The two of them were going places.