Most Friday nights after court I meet up with Ed and Johnny, two old university mates, at the Erskine Pub near chambers. After a few pints and the stress of the week waned, we reminisce about our happy student days. We all studied law at Leeds – oh how wonderful it was to be a student: Thursday nights at the Students’ Union Bar dancing to Oasis and Blur and trying to tap off with girls, failing, then watching the fights break out at the kebab shop and trying desperately hard not to look like a student, because the students usually got their heads kicked in. Days missing lectures, and trying to understand contract law and dreaming about our futures as brilliant barristers.
Most of the students on our course wanted to be solicitors, so we were drawn together as aspiring barristers. In our final year we came down to our Inn in London together to do our dinners. Dinners, or dining and the Inns, are another little secret of the strange world of the Bar. It works like this: once you have completed your law degree and decided you want to become a barrister, you have to join an Inn. There are four Inns: Middle Temple, Inner Temple, Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn.
Once you have joined your Inn you have to do ‘dining’. That is, you have to go to your Inn and have a meal in the company of other barristers and student barristers. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, it doesn’t matter if you are Plutarch, Petrocelli or Perry bleeding Mason, if you haven’t done the dinners, you won’t get called to the Bar and you won’t be able to practise as a barrister. And it’s not just one dinner, oh no, there are twelve dinners. So there you have it, a pre-requisite to becoming a barrister is eating food.
Ed, Johnny and I decided to join Gray’s Inn. I can’t remember why now, I think the dinners were probably the cheapest. Once we had joined the Inn, every couple of weeks we put on our best clobber and went down to London. I have to say that at first it was exciting to go down to the Great Hall of Gray’s Inn. You got to wear a robe and, occasionally, sit next to a proper Queen’s Counsel or High Court Judge, who were, on the whole, quite kind and encouraging. One even offered me snuff (which caused a bit of confusion as I thought he was offering me marijuana, which probably isn’t a mistake I’d make now).
The three of us were state-school boys; my parents were old-fashioned socialists. I wasn’t used to this kind of pomp and ceremony, so wearing your best suit, listening to Latin prayers, drinking too much wine and port and then going on for a few beers at a London club with girls called Prunella, Jemima and Beatrice was new and fun.
But, some time around dinner number six, things started to become a bit tiresome. There are only so many times you can listen to some crusty old Silk tell you how difficult it is for young barristers; or even worse, some chinless, limp-coiffed, posh boy called Giles tell you he has got six different offers of pupilage and he’s not quite sure which one to take, when you’ve been turned down by every set you’ve applied to.
Still, it was a rite of passage and afterwards the three of us moved to London together and shared a flat in Catford. It was great. We were all in different chambers with different people but we came back each night and sat around drinking, eating takeaway curries and talking about our days, our cases and our clients. We felt we’d done well. We’d worked hard, we’d passed our exams and we felt we’d achieved. Getting to the Bar. Becoming a professional. Mixing with the privileged and the clever and those who were clearly destined for great things. It felt like we had a covenant with the state and society. We’d done the work and now we hoped that we’d be rewarded for our efforts.
For the three of us, it was all so easy, so straightforward; our dreams were being fulfilled, our expectations achieved, we would become the barristers that we had aspired to be.
After a couple of years Johnny moved out to live with Fiona, so we replaced him with this weird guy called Vikram, which didn’t really work, as he was a nurse who kept some odd hours. And then Ed met Joanne and he moved out, then Vikram moved out – and me, well, I moved into my own flat.
On my own.
Which, actually, I don’t mind at all.
I think.
Anyway, Johnny is at the Criminal Bar in a set similar to mine, and Ed works at a specialist Chancery set.
As I’ve already alluded to, the Chancery Bar is very different from the Criminal Bar. It is full of particularly clever, academic types who rarely talk to one another and make a load of money. They all seem to be called Rupert or Henry. I’m not sure that Ed fits in. He tells us he works for oil companies and multinationals, but I’m never really quite sure what he actually does. Unlike criminal barristers or family barristers, he doesn’t tell you about his cases, in fact the only time he did, we had to tell him to stop because it was just too boring.
Johnny, on the other hand, doesn’t stop telling you about his cases. He has a natural and infectious enthusiasm – if he were a dog he would have a constantly wagging tail.
On this particular Friday night, they were already there when I arrived, standing by the bar.
They greeted me with the universal hand gesture for ‘what do you want to drink?’ and I replied that I’d have a glass of stout.
‘Well, gents,’ said Johnny, pausing only to take a large glug of beer from his glass, ‘I’ve got some news.’
I assumed that he was going to announce that he and Fiona were having a baby. They’d been married for a year (or is it two?) so it seemed kind of logical that they were going to start a family. But I was completely wrong.
Johnny took a deep breath. ‘I’m leaving the Bar,’ he said.
We both looked at him.
‘What?’ said Ed.
‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘I’ve had my fill. I owe a ton of money, I’m being paid bugger all for working every hour, there’s no chance of career advancement – so I’ve decided: I’m getting out while I’m still young enough.’
At this point a rather strange concoction of emotions filled my mind – first, there was an evil streak of pleasure, Johnny leaving meant one less criminal barrister to compete with; then there was jealousy, at his luck at having something else to go to; then there was respect that he had the balls to get up and do something else; finally, there was sadness, the old team was being broken up.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ed.
Johnny took another big intake of breath. ‘I’ve got a job as a croupier in a hotel in Dubai.’
We both exclaimed, ‘What?!’
‘Yes. I start next month. The salary is ace. More money per month than I can earn prosecuting burglars and bottom pinchers, I can tell you.’
Now my main emotion was jealousy – a croupier in a hotel, for a ruck of money, it’s genius, why didn’t I think of it?
‘What does Fiona think?’ I asked.
‘She’s mad for it. She’s got a job in the same hotel.’
Ed shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, you must be bonkers.’
‘Look,’ argued Johnny forcefully, ‘what’s the point; we’re both lower-middle-class kids who went to university because we were told it was for the best. We got good jobs, in good professions, because we were told that was what we had to do, and we got riddled with debt for the privilege. Now, we can’t afford a mortgage, can’t afford a pension, can’t afford to start a family. It’s a joke.’
Johnny had clearly rehearsed this argument before. I imagined him putting it to his parents and in-laws. Leaving the Bar will have made no sense to them, but it made perfect sense to me.
‘A croupier,’ said Ed with unconcealed contempt, ‘come on, you’re having a laugh.’
‘It’s okay for you, Ed,’ I said, ‘but Johnny’s right, for us it feels like we’re banging our heads against brick walls. We’ve not had a pay rise for years, in fact it just gets harder and harder to make a living.’
‘Yep,’ continued Johnny, ‘you boys at the Chancery Bar have got no idea, I was talking to Shanna earlier, you know, from my chambers?’
We both nod and Johnny continued, ‘She’s about five years call, and this week she went to the Magistrates Court for a firm of solicitors to do a trial in the Youth Court, and do you know how much they paid her? Her bus fare, that’s what. They knew she’d do it because she wanted to impress them, in the hope of getting more work. I tell you, fellas, it’s a joke, and I’ve had enough.’
Ed looked at us both, his lips thinned. He knew there was something in what we were saying, and what Johnny was doing.
After a while he turned to me. ‘What are you going to do then, Russ? You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll get a job as an exotic dancer in John’s hotel.’
‘Seriously,’ said Ed, ‘what would you do if you weren’t a barrister? What would you do if you could do something else?’
And that was the thing. I didn’t really want to do anything else. Okay, I am pissed off about the fact that our work was being farmed out to others, and that our pay was being cut, and that we were seen, wrongly, as immoral money-grabbing bastards who would sell our grandmothers for a brief, an acquittal and a bag of cash. I am pissed off with all of this, but – and call me a soft-centred lily-livered old whoopsie if you want – I still see it as a privilege to get up in court and represent people in their time of need. I want to be a barrister, just as I had when I’d sat down with my parents and watched, enthralled, some TV drama where a wonderfully erudite and maverick QC was winning the case against all the odds. That was still what I aspired to be.
‘Come on then,’ said Ed, repeating his question as if he was cross-examining a witness. ‘If you could do something else, what would you do?’
I took in some breath, chewed my bottom lip a bit, shrugged mournfully, then answered, ‘I dunno, maybe write, I’m not sure.’
‘Well,’ said Johnny, thankfully ignoring my suggestion of an alternative career, ‘I’m sure I can put a good word in for you at the hotel.’
I thanked Johnny for his offer of assistance, and suggested that it was my round.
Then I saw her.
Kelly Backworth.
The unsmiling, unfriendly Judas who had failed to defend me in any way to her boss when the issue of my conduct in the Porky Phi case was being discussed and had sat there, with a face as unfeeling as a wardrobe, as Mrs Murdoch and my clerk had declared me a barrister persona non grata – NIHWTLBOE.
I looked over at her. She was with a friend. And she was smiling. Oh yes, she was smiling now, great big, happy, unicorn-frolicking rainbow smiles. That was what she was doing now, away from court, away from me.
And what a smile it was – lovely glistening teeth, sparkling behind full lips that were now freed from the shackles of the Family Court and glossed by a shimmering lipstick.
I felt something shout at me from within my consciousness.
Then I walked over to the other side of the bar to where she and her friend were sitting. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. As I approached, she spotted me and, in an instant, the rainbow smile disappeared behind a cloud, the unicorns went back into their shed and the slate-grey misery that she had shown in court returned.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ she repeated, then turned to her friend (who was smiling at me with a weird interest), ‘this is Russell Winnock,’ said Kelly, ‘he’s a barrister from Gray’s Buildings.’ I smiled at the friend, and shook her hand. ‘I’m Beverley,’ she said.
‘So,’ I said, and turned to the miserably beautiful Kelly Backworth. ‘Kelly, what happened? I thought we’d done a good job for Mrs West. Then, whoosh, I’m getting both barrels from your boss.’
Kelly looked down for a second. ‘Yes,’ she said, quietly, ‘I’m sorry about that – she can be a bit of a cow.’
‘A bit of a cow,’ I exclaimed, ‘that’s an understatement. I don’t know who would come off worse in a fight, your Mrs Murdoch or Phi, the psychopath we were representing.’
A small, barely noticeable smile flickered across Kelly’s mouth. Not rainbows, not frolicking mythical beasts, not teeth – but the hint of a smile nonetheless.
‘Seriously though,’ I continued, ‘Mrs West got a great deal, there’s every chance that if we hadn’t settled things, she’d have left court with nothing at all.’
‘But you were instructed to get an injunction,’ she said to me, her voice strong, yet friendly. And at this point, I confess, I really, really fancied Kelly Backworth.
‘We wouldn’t have got one though,’ I said. ‘You should have seen the burn mark Porky Phi had branded into Mr West’s chest.’
‘That’s the thing, Mr Winnock,’ said Kelly, ‘I didn’t see it. If you’d have shown me, I would have been able to defend you to Mrs Murdoch.’
She was right. Bloody hell. Kelly was completely right. In my enthusiasm, in my desire to sort out the case, I’d forgotten to include my instructing solicitors in the process. And that, more than anything, was why I’d been given such a roasting. I understood it now. I got it. You see it’s not all about the barrister, it’s not all about the person who stands up in court, the relationship with a solicitor is just as important, and I had neglected it.
I looked at Kelly.
‘Please,’ I mumbled, ‘call me Russ. Mr Winnock makes me sound like the maths teacher everyone hated.’
She smiled again. This time it was a definite smile. There were teeth and everything.
I thought about offering to buy them both a drink, but before the thought could become an offer, Johnny was shouting at me from the other side of the bar, ‘Oi, Winnock, are you brewing those beers or what?’
I looked at Kelly. ‘I’d better go,’ I said, and she nodded.
‘And, yes,’ I added, ‘you’re right, sorry, I should have brought you with me to see Mr West’s chest.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘we had a phone call from Mrs West today, she thought you were the dog’s bollocks.’
Now my face broke into a deep grin. ‘Really?’
Kelly smiled again, ‘Yes.’
A couple of hours later, I staggered from the pub out into the cold air.
I looked up and contemplated the vastness for a few seconds, then made my way to the bus stop.
I felt sad at the fact that Johnny was leaving the Bar. I remembered us all going to lectures and stressing about assignments and trying to get jobs, and practising our speeches on each other for our mock trials and Bar Finals. I remembered how chuffed we were on the day we were called to the Bar, declared an ‘utter barrister’. Allowed to practise and call ourselves Learned, wear a wig and gown. It had all been so exciting. It had meant everything. And now Johnny had given it all up. And that somehow seemed a massive waste. I wouldn’t be giving up though – no way. I wouldn’t be giving up, because I knew I could do it, succeed, and what’s more, Mrs West knew it as well, which is why she’d said I was the dog’s bollocks.