Zadie Smith - NW

118. Emergency consultation

Leah Hanwell arranged to meet Natalie Blake at Chancery Lane tube. She was working close by, as a gym receptionist on the Tottenham Court Road. They walked to the Hunterian Museum. It began to rain. Leah stood between two huge Palladian columns and looked up at the Latin tag etched on gray stone.

“Can’t we go to the pub?”

“You’ll like this.”

They made their tiny donations at the desk.

“Hunter was an anatomist,” explained Natalie Blake. “This was his private collection.”

“Have you told Frank?”

“He wouldn’t be helpful.”

With no warning Natalie prodded Leah into the first atrium, as Frank had done to her a few months before. Leah didn’t scream or gasp or cover her hands with her eyes. She walked right past all the noses and shins and buttocks suspended in their jars of formaldehyde. Straight to the bones of the Giant O’ Brien. Put her hand flat against the glass, and smiled. Natalie Blake followed her reading from a leaflet, explaining, always explaining.

119. Cocks

Thick and squat and a little comical, severed a few inches after the head, or perhaps simply shrunken in death. Some circumcised, some apparently gangrenous. “Not feeling that envious,” said Leah. “You?” They moved on. Past hipbones and toes, hands and lungs, brains and vaginas, mice and dogs and a monkey with a grotesque tumor on its jaw. By the time they reached the late-stage fetuses they were a little hysterical. Huge foreheads, narrow little chins, eyes closed, mouths open. Natalie Blake and Leah Hanwell made the Munch face at each other, at them. Leah knelt to look at a diseased piece of human material Natalie could not identify.

“You went to the pub.”

“I sat there for twenty minutes looking at the grain of the table. They talked about the case. I left.”

“You think he did the same with this Polly girl?”

“They had a ‘thing.’ Maybe it started the same way. Maybe he does it to everyone.”

“The plot thickens. I hate plots. The gym’s the same, full of cocks making drama. Drives me insane.”

“What’s that bit? Cancer?”

“Of the bowel. Dad’s kind.” Leah moved away from the jar and sat down on a little bench in the middle of the room. Natalie joined her and squeezed her hand.

“What are you going to do?” asked Leah Hanwell.

“Nothing,” said Natalie Blake.

120. Intervention

A few weeks passed. Dr. Singh cornered Natalie Blake in the pupils’ room. It was clear she had been sent as a sort of emissary. Some people upstairs — unnamed — were “concerned.” Why had she stopped participating in the social life of the set? Did she feel isolated? Would it help to talk to someone who’d “been through it”? Natalie took the little card. Without realizing it she must have rolled her eyes. Dr. Singh looked wounded, and drew a finger under a line of letters: QC, OBE, PhD. “Theodora Lewis-Lane was a trail-blazer”—this was meant as an admonishment—“no us without her.”

121. Role models

A fancy cake shop on the Gray’s Inn Road. Natalie was fifteen minutes late but Theodora was twenty, demonstrating that “Jamaican Time” had not quite died out in either of them. She was fascinated by Theodora’s chat-show weave (having recently abandoned her own, upon Frank’s request), and the subtle, glamorous variants she bought to the female barrister’s unofficial uniform: a gold satin shirt beneath the blazer; a diamante trim to the black court shoes. She was at least fifty, with the usual island gift of looking twenty years younger. Surprisingly — given her fearsome reputation — she was no more than five foot two. When Natalie slipped off her chair to shake Theodora’s hand she looked disconcerted. Sitting, she reclaimed her gravitas. In an accent not found in nature — somewhere between the Queen and the speaking clock — she ordered a tremendous number of pastries before proceeding without any encouragement to tell the story of her gothic South London childhood and unlikely professional triumph. When this tale was not quite finished, Natalie Blake took a fastidiously small bite of a croissant and murmured, “I guess I just really want my work to be taken on its own merits…”

When she looked up from her plate, Theodora had her little hands folded in her lap.

“You don’t really want to have a conversation with me, do you, Miss Blake?”

“What?”

“Let me tell you something,” she said, with a sharpness that belied the fixed smile on her face, “I am the youngest silk in my generation. That is not an accident, despite what you may believe. As one learns very quickly in this profession, fortune favors the brave — but also the pragmatic. I suppose you’re interested in a human rights set of some kind. Police brutality? Is that your plan?”

“I’m not sure yet,” said Natalie, trying to sound bullish. She was very close to tears.

“It wasn’t mine. In my day, if you went down that route people tended to associate you with your clients. I took some advice early on: “Avoid ghetto work.” It was Judge Whaley who gave it to me. He knew better than anyone. The first generation does what the second doesn’t want to do. The third is free to do what it likes. How fortunate you are. If only good fortune came with a little polite humility. Now, I believe this place does wine. Will you have a little wine?”

“I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m sorry.”

“It’s a good tip for court: don’t imagine your contempt is invisible. You’ll find out as you mature that life is a two-way mirror.”

“But I don’t have contempt—”

“Calm yourself, sister. Have a glass of wine. I was just the same at your age. Hated being told.”

122. Theodora’s advice

“When I first started appearing before a judge, I kept being reprimanded from the bench. I was losing my cases and I couldn’t understand why. Then I realized the following: when some floppy-haired chap from Surrey stands before these judges, all his passionate arguments read as “pure advocacy.” He and the Judge recognize each other. They are understood by each other. Very likely went to the same school. But Whaley’s passion, or mine, or yours, reads as ‘aggression.’ To the judge. This is his house and you are an interloper within it. And let me tell you, with a woman it’s worse: ‘Aggressive hysteria.’ The first lesson is: turn yourself down. One notch. Two. Because this is not neutral.” She passed a hand over her neat frame from her head to her lap, like a scanner. “This is never neutral.”

123. Bye noe

hi finally

that wasn’t so hard now was it

just don’t like downloading things

me no like computerz

from the internet at WORK. Weak gov computers. One little virus

me fear the future

and they die innit

is it

shut it blake.

That’s just so fucking FASCINATING

Hello hanwell DARLING. What brings you to the internets this fine afternopn

noon

woman next to me picking nose really getting in there

tried to call but you no answer

delighteful.

cant take private calls in pupilf room what’s up

big news

You got cat aids?

free may sixth?

You catch cat aids may 6th? I am free if not in court. I big lawyer lasy these days innit

Big lawyer lady jesus

shit typer

lady jesus I am getting married

!!!!!?????

on may

that’s great! When did this happen???

Six in registry same like u but irth actyl guests