36
After my so-called trial, Mr Bethell and that ass of a barrister he found for me came down to the cells, I suppose to say goodbye. They were both angry with the judge, not because of my sentence, but because he’d ticked Mr Frobisher off for his so-called comic speech. ‘Speaking to learned counsel like that in public and in front of the client too. It’s not what we expect of Her Majesty’s judges,’ was what Mr Bethell said.
‘I think my back is broad enough to bear anything Judge Stringer might have to throw at me.’ The jokey Frobisher was still grinning and apparently felt that he’d been very brave in court, at which point Mr Bethell seemed to feel that, although I hadn’t been treated so badly by the judge as his barrister had, I might need a little consoling too. ‘Three years doesn’t really mean three years,’ he told me.
It turned out that I’d get a third off for good behaviour and that the time I’d been in prison waiting for a trial would be taken into consideration, so I should be out early next year.
‘So that’s not so bad then, is it?’
I had a strange feeling, a sort of dread at being let out to join the world again, but I said nothing and Mr Bethell changed the subject.
‘I told your friend Terry Keegan the date of the trial. He was there in the public gallery. Did you notice him?’
‘No,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t notice him at all.’
And so far as I could tell, I was never going to notice him again. Not so long as I lived.
I should have made it clear that my dad was visiting me all the time I was in Holloway. He was lovely of course and kind, but so anxious not to appear what he called ‘judgemental’ that he did not have anything really valuable to say. In fact at first I had to spend the time trying to cheer him up and comforting him because of the mess he’d undoubtedly made of my bail application when he asked the DPP’s man if he enjoyed prawn cocktail.
‘I’m still not altogether sure about why you wanted to take Robin’s picture,’ he said when we finally got round to a discussion of the subject.
‘You could say I did it for love.’
‘Indeed? People do strange things for love. Very strange things indeed.’ And then he returned to the subject that really excited him, his possible promotion to be Bishop of London. ‘It’s caused a great deal of controversy. In the newspapers, on the radio and television. It’s regarded as one of the most controversial issues that’s faced the Church for generations.’ He was glowing with pride. ‘I think Canterbury’s for it, he doesn’t want to go down in history as an old fuddy-duddy.’
‘Mum’s against it,’ I reminded him. ‘She loves the scullery in the palace at Aldershot.’
‘Who knows? We may find our own better scullery in London. The progress of the spiritual life can’t be entirely decided on the convenience of sculleries.’
‘She thinks it’d be too much of an upheaval.’
‘The history of our Church is one of continual upheavals.’
‘Yes. But Mum doesn’t feel she has to be part of the history of the Church. I mean, she’s not going to be Bishop of London, is she?’
‘That’s true.’ Robert was giving this new thought fair consideration. ‘It’s very true.’
‘She’s praying to God you don’t get the job.’
‘Is she really? She’s not the only one, I can tell you.’ My dad seemed flattered by this attention. ‘There is a whole new movement within the General Synod opposing my promotion! Can you imagine that? They call themselves the Play It by the Rules Movement. They’re dead against gay marriages and homosexual priests and one-parent families. They say . . .’ now Robert was chuckling with delight at the idea of a new controversy, ‘that the Church of England has certain age-old, always respected rules, like sport. I mean, you mustn’t punch below the belt in boxing, you mustn’t trip people up in football, you mustn’t bowl at their bodies in cricket. So you must play it by the rules in Church. No same-sex marriages etc., no gay clerics, because that would be hitting below the belt. I tell you, Lucy, the movement’s attracting a lot of supporters and they’ll make quite a lot of fuss at the synod. Of course, you’ll never guess who their leader is.’
I told him I never would.
‘Who else but my former chaplain, Timbo. Of course he knows all about sport.’
Timbo, I remembered, who tried to start a fight with Terry and, instead, started another chapter in our lives. Timbo, who had emerged once more from his corner to fight my dad. I didn’t wish him any luck at all. ‘How are you going to deal with him?’ I wanted to know.
‘By trying to point out that there are considerable differences between religion and cricket. That’s quite a hard point to get across in England.’ And having thought of this line, my dad hurried off to give it to the press.
I remembered Robert coming over after I’d been sentenced and looking at me sadly and asking, I thought a bit pathetically, if there was anything he could do to help. So, rather to his surprise, I said there was.
Then I told him about Martine’s baby, Nick, who we all loved, and was going to be taken away from her when he reached nine months old.
‘What can I do about it?’ Dad asked with what I thought was rather a helpless smile.
‘I don’t know. Do some knee work. Get God on the case. Put it in your friendly newspapers. Ring the Prime Minister, get the Archbishop of Canterbury to say it’s a major sin to part mothers from their children.’
Dad considered this and then his eyes lit up. ‘Suffer the little children,’ he said. ‘It might make quite an effective “Thought for the Day” on Radio 4.’
‘Do it,’ I told him. ‘Do it as soon as you can.’
Nick had just reached his nine-month birthday when they came to take him away. Martine couldn’t satisfy them she had a respectable home for him. Her mother was rubbish and back on drugs, her father was unknown and her friends not particularly reliable. They didn’t hang about, the so-called Welfare Services didn’t. They came and took Nick away to put him in so-called ‘care’.
Martine came back to our dorm from the mother and baby unit when she lost her child. It was as though Nick had died on her. She didn’t say much about it, but at night she cried. She kept us awake with her crying but no one complained of that because by now we understood her. We’d loved Nick too, but of course not in the way Martine had. I was glad I was still in Holloway to help her.
We were all on Martine’s side and we all hated the Welfare Services for what they had done more than we hated the police or the judges or even ‘Hell’ the screw, who was continually pestering me with her attentions although I tried to make it clear to her that I had no intention of becoming ‘prison bent’ or bent in any way at all.
So we fed Martine with hopes that she’d manage to find Nick when she got out and get him back because she’d get a job and make a good home for him which even the welfare people would approve of. She presumably didn’t believe this any more, deep down, than we did. But it kept her from crying so much at night, except on important days, like when Nick would have been one year old and she had no idea where he was or what had happened to him.
Of course, I had alerted Robert when it was about to happen and he did a ‘Thought for the Day’ about it which someone heard on the radio and said it was very good and effective. It made absolutely no difference at all.