4
The Wait
The day after I returned to London, I was charged, and my sense of renewal disappeared in an instant. Inevitably, the photographers had prior warning of my appearance at the police station. One of them broke his ankle in the scrum. I was deemed not to be a “flight risk”; bail was set at a minimal two thousand pounds, and the trial date was set for August 21st. Four months. Four more months.
So, like a crab, I retreated back into my hole in the mud. I grew the beard even longer, and I sat for hours, unfeeling and unthinking, watching images flicker across the TV screen. I tried to read some books, but the mental focus was not there, so I found myself re-reading the same paragraph over and over. Looking back at that period, I find it very hard to separate out any real memories. Life defocused into a blur. One episode, though, does manage to poke through, like the outline of rocks in a fog.
My solicitor, Graham, came to my house for a meeting, stayed for a drink, and then another and another, and then started telling me things that I didn’t want to know. The first was the break-up of his marriage. All his fault, apparently. He had been too clingy, so she had left for Australia. Then he moves on to my case.
“The thing is, Kevin,” he says, tapping me affectionately on the knee, “the thing is – and don’t tell Nina I said this – but there is another option you should keep open for yourself…y’know…in the great scheme of options.”
“Another option?”
“Yuh…a very valid option.” He puts his whisky glass down on the table with exaggerated care and then looks me hard in the eyes. “You could cop a plea. Plead guilty to assault. Accept the sentence, it’ll be short, might even be suspended, and then move on, and get on with the rest of your life.” He leans back in his chair. “I’m just throwing that out there.”
“Oh fuck off, Graham.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’m not pleading guilty to something I didn’t do. Why the fuck should I do that?”
“Just laying out the options.” He picks up his whisky again. “Just examining the realities.”
I know Graham is pissed so I shouldn’t take him too seriously, but the word “realities” buzzes in my mind.
“Realities? What realities?”
He leans forward conspiratorially. “The reality…that we have to work with…which is that juries no longer like celebrities. They used to. In the good old days, you used to go to court with a celebrity and the jury would go ‘oh that’s old so-and-so off that TV thing set in the hospital, we like him, he can’t be guilty. He swims things for charity!’ Always. Celebrities. People believed in them. Juries believed them. But then…” He pauses to burp. His voice gets louder: “But then…along comes Mister Jimmy-fucking-Savile and now if you’re a celebrity you’re guilty – guilty as sin – from day one. Juries think all showbiz people are kiddy-fiddling, tax-avoiding rapists or worse. So, one option open to you is not to risk getting in front of a jury…I’m just saying…don’t mention this to Nina. She hates defeatism.”
At this point, I decide to call Graham a taxi. But he hasn’t finished his observations.
“We’re living through a witch-hunt. And once someone points at you and shouts ‘witch’, that’s it…on the bonfire with him, whoosh! The justice system…out of the window.”
“Graham, are you seriously suggesting that I can’t get a fair trial because of Jimmy Savile?”
“And Rolf Harris…and Stuart Hall…and that disc jockey…and the other one, with the hair.”
I steer him back on to the subject of his failed marriage just to shut him up until, at last, I hear the toot of a car horn and I lead him out into the rainy night and fold him into the back seat of a taxi. As the cab starts to pull away he leans out of the window and hisses: “Ignore me, I’m a bit pissed.”
And then I sit in the darkness thinking about what he said. Savile was a devious psychopath – an exceptional, obscene monster – he had nothing to do with my case. Only an idiot would lump me in with him. The public weren’t idiots, even if some of them did occasionally confuse me with a fictional character. No, I had to believe in people; I had to believe in the law; I had to remember the ones who had been vindicated – Paul Gambaccini, Jim Davidson. There were others, but I couldn’t remember them. No, the whisky in Graham had made him exaggerate and generalise. Don’t fret over the words of a drunk.
The next time I see Graham no reference is made to our conversation. We are in a meeting with my barrister, who looks like a barrister, rotund, with slicked-back hair. He even wears a waistcoat, for Christ’s sake. His name is Seymour and he has a rich, deep voice which he seems rather proud of.
“Now then, Kevin, I’m afraid I’m about to ask you a lot of questions which may strike you as rather tedious, but they’ll prove very useful for me when I have to paint a picture of you to the jury.”
In the corner of the room, Nina Patel starts tapping notes into her tablet.
“Why do you need to paint a picture of me?”
“Well…” he gives me a smile that drips with condescension, “that’s because, to help their deliberations, I’ll need to give them a sense…a fully rounded sense of what kind of a chap you are.”
“Will they need that? The case is about the facts, isn’t it? The facts speak for themselves.”
A look shoots between Graham and Nina. They think I am being difficult.
“The facts,” Seymour booms, “of course the facts will be our guiding stars, but, in my experience, people also like to understand the people in a case, so part of my task is to give a favourable impression of your character and, if possible, taint the character of your accuser.” He glances at some notes. “Tawdry, I know, but this isn’t tiddlywinks. Now then, you were born in…?”
“Stoke Newington.”
“OK, and your parents are…?”
“Both gone.”
“I see…Father’s occupation?”
“Postal worker.”
“Did your mother work?”
“She was a dinner lady.”
He pauses, as if to picture them.
“So…working-class, then.”
“Yes. Is that good?”
He ignores the edge in my question.
“So how were things for them financially?”
“Tough, I suppose…I think they put pretty much every penny towards me.”
“Only child?”
“Yes.”
“Any childhood illnesses?”
“Are you serious?”
He doesn’t even bother to look up.
“Any childhood illnesses?”
“Yes, I lost an arm in some factory machinery.”
Nina Patel leans across to tell me to stop being a dickhead when people are trying to help.
“I’m looking for an element of heroism, Kevin,” Seymour intones. “I’m looking for a way of presenting you as the little guy who battled through, even though the odds were stacked against him.”
“But they weren’t.”
He lets out a sigh.
“I’m not going to turn you into a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel, I am merely looking for something people can connect with…When did your parents die?”
“Erm…Dad in ’89…Mum six years ago.”
“Natural causes?”
“Dad, liver failure…Mum, cancer.”
“You’ve been married.”
“Yes, Sandra, didn’t work out, but we remain friends.”
“And she is testifying on your behalf.”
“That’s right, yes.”
“She’ll say nice things about you?”
“She’ll say true things.”
He peers at me for a few moments. “I think it would be worth a meeting with her,” he says to Graham and Nina, casually. “Now then, Kevin, we’re going to practise thickening up that skin of yours. Do you think you’re up for that?”
“Is this necessary?”
“First off, I think it’d be really useful if you could unlearn this habit of answering every question with a question. That won’t play well, I’m afraid. Second off, I’m presuming that the beard is going to go soon…?”
“Yes…the beard will come off.”
“Splendid. A plain suit on the day, please. Something you’d wear to your granny’s funeral. Now then, imagine you’re in the witness box and that I’m the prosecuting counsel…are you ready?”
The rehearsal lasted about forty-five minutes. It reminded me a little of being on set as they gave me various playing notes. Part of me wondered whether it was dangerous to prepare an actor in this way. What if the jury started to feel I was giving some kind of performance?
There was only one of these sessions, thank God, so the weeks limped past me in my mud-hole until, at last, the big day arrived. August 21st. My Mum’s birthday.