Arthur Skelton, barrister-at-law, 39-years-old, pebble-glasses, face like a pantomime horse, wing-collar, grey homburg, thick overcoat against the chill, woollen scarf his mum in Leeds had knitted wrapped three times around his neck, gave some thought to the stone pier at the bottom of the steps outside Marylebone Police Court. He knew that sitting on cold stone was supposed to give you piles. Then there was the actual act of sitting down and getting up again to consider. He was six foot three, most of it spidery leg, and had been born with a displaced hip which still gave him trouble.
On the other hand, he needed somewhere to smoke and brood for a few minutes, so, throwing caution to the winds, 16he sat down, filled his pipe and read the advertisements on the passing buses.
Dewar’s Whisky. Aaah, Bisto. Player’s Weights. Daily Graphic for the BEST pictures.
He was fed up.
Usually, winning a case would be cause for at least a bit of a spring in the step and a glow to the complexion, but the morning’s proceedings had left a nasty taste.
On the previous Saturday, Giles Gordon Ewers, 19, a student up at Oxford, having just scored the winning try in a college rugby match, was driving back to London in his AC two-seater. Drink had been taken. Feeling boisterous, he had dangled a walking stick, the sort with a duck’s-head handle, out of the side of the car, in the manner of a polo mallet, and knocked down a lamp and the guard rails around some roadworks.
Two cyclists on a tandem, riding close behind, unable to stop, had collided with the guard rails and overturned. One of them sustained a head injury that left him momentarily unconscious, the other a leg injury, which had required twelve stitches.
Mr Ewers, though clearly aware of the accident, failed to stop and instead accelerated away.
All of this was observed by a motorcyclist who, having ascertained that other passers-by were attending to the injured cyclists, had given chase. Further along the road he stopped a police constable, who had jumped on the pillion. After giving chase for a couple of miles or so, they caught 17up with Mr Ewers, who stopped when ordered to by the constable and allowed himself to be taken into custody. He had spent the rest of the weekend in a police cell.
On the Sunday morning, the boy’s father, General Sir James Ewers, had disturbed the leisurely breakfast being enjoyed by his solicitor, Aubrey Duncan, and insisted he get the best barrister available down to the police court first thing on Monday to make sure the boy was released, ideally with an apology from the police for making such a ‘fuss’ about a ‘boyish prank’.
Since the General, a litigious man, was one of the solicitor’s more lucrative clients, Duncan had disturbed the leisurely lunch of Arthur Skelton. And since Skelton and Duncan had worked together on many cases in the past, and since Skelton’s chambers were practically next door to Duncan’s offices, and since the fee being offered was breathtaking, arrangements were made.
A weekend in police custody usually left people looking seedy and unwashed. Giles Ewers seemed shiny, well-breakfasted and smiling.
‘Lord bless us,’ Ewer said, adopting the fake cockney accent favoured by bright young things, ‘The guvnor’s sent a proper brief. What’s it going to be? Five quid and a wigging from the beak followed by a worse wigging from the guvnor?’
Young people of a certain class, Skelton had come to realise, had too often had their understanding of criminal law guided by the works of Mr P. G. Wodehouse, whose hero, Bertie Wooster, often told tales of having to pay a fiver to 18a magistrate for knocking off a policeman’s helmet on New Year’s Eve, or getting a ‘wigging’ from some dowager aunt for burgling her house.
He glanced at the charge sheet that had been handed to him on his way in. There were several.
‘I’m afraid the first charge alone,’ he said, ‘that of dangerous driving, could attract a two-year sentence.’
The boy smiled, ‘But surely …?’ He leant slightly to one side, as if the thought of prison had literally sent him off balance. ‘You haven’t got a cigarette, have you? I ran out.’ He held up his empty cigarette case and let one of the sides flap down.
‘Pipe man, I’m afraid.’
‘Could you perhaps send one of the chaps out to get some?’
‘Court ushers are not employed to run errands for the accused.’
The boy sat up and sulked.
‘Shall we get on with it?’ Skelton said. ‘Now, first of all I would advise against pleading guilty. Given the nature and number of the charges, the magistrates would have little option other than to send you to prison. You have already admitted to taking drink after the rugby match.’
‘Yes, but, only a couple of pints.’
‘Mild?’
‘Bitter.’
‘And in your experience, after a couple of pints, are you a competent driver?’ 19
‘Sharp as a knife.’
‘But on this occasion, you seem to have driven erratically, not to say recklessly.’
The boy was silent.
‘Do you have a mechanic who takes care of your car?’
‘The guvnor’s chauffeur usually has a look at it when I’m in town.’
‘And is it in generally good condition, brakes, steering, tyres and so on?’
‘He said it was making a bit of a racket, but I said I like it like that.’
‘A problem with the silencer, perhaps?’
‘She’s a rust bucket, but I do love the old dear.’
Skelton remembered a case from a couple of years earlier – not one of his – in which the defence had claimed that the driver appeared to be drunk but was actually suffering from inhalation of fumes, which were escaping into the car from a defective exhaust. There was obviously no time to get expert testimony and mechanical inspections before the trial today, but it might be enough to secure an adjournment. It was something, anyway.
He told the boy how to behave himself in court. Head down, look ashamed, no smiling, speak when you’re spoken to, answer the questions with one-word answers if possible. Then he provided him with pen and paper and dictated a letter he could send to the couple on the tandem, expressing his heartfelt apologies and offering them, by way of compensation, twenty-five pounds to cover repairs to the bicycle and medical 20expenses. This meant that in court, to further demonstrate the boy’s contrition, Skelton could say, without perjuring himself, ‘Mr Ewers has already written to …’
On the way into the court, he saw Charlie Perry, one of the ushers, and stopped for a word.
‘What happened about Fulham?’ Skelton asked. The last time they’d spoken, some weeks earlier, Charlie had told him that his son, Bert, had been invited to try out for the Fulham boys’ team.
‘He’s played, three games,’ Charlie said. ‘Hasn’t exactly shone in any of them but he keeps his end up and they haven’t sacked him yet.’
‘You get down to see him?’
‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away, Mr Skelton,’ Charlie said. ‘You doing the Ewers boy?’
Skelton nodded glumly.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’ve got much to worry about. Mr Mariner served under the General at Cambrai.’ Mariner was the Chairman of the Magistrates.
Skelton sighed. To claim that the link would compromise Mariner’s eligibility to have anything to do with the case was, he knew, pointless. Half a million men served under General Ewers at Cambrai. The fact that Mariner – a senior officer, no doubt – would most likely have messed with him, passed him the port and met his good lady wife, would be considered irrelevant. And besides, whenever a representative of the wealthy and privileged classes came to court it was inevitable that the accused and whoever was 21on the bench, if they didn’t have a school, college, regiment or club in common, would be married to each other’s cousins, would have met weekending at Binkie and Gloria Shoebridge’s, or would have attended their respective daughters’ coming-out balls.
In court, the first time Mariner used first the phrase ‘this regrettable example of youthful exuberance’ then ‘ebullient high spirits’ Skelton knew he was wasting his time. Whatever he or anybody else said in court, the result, just as the boy had predicted, would be five pounds and a wigging.
And so it was.
Charlie came out onto the steps and saw Skelton sitting on the pier. ‘All right, Mr Skelton?’
Skelton said something vaguely cheerful, but Charlie could tell by his face that he was not all right at all and had a shrewd idea of why he wasn’t all right. He stood in front of Skelton and held up his left hand to show that he was missing the first joint of his little finger.
‘See that?’ he said.
‘Oh, dear.’
‘Russian revolution.’
‘You were in Russia?’
‘No. Black Lion Yard, off the Whitechapel Road. This was the ’05 revolution, not the ’17 one. Lot of Russians live down that way, and when the news came through about the Tsar’s troops shooting people, there was a degree of upset, some people saying one thing and some saying another, mostly in 22Russian, so I couldn’t follow a word of it. Then fights broke out and I got knocked over. Fell against a cart, caught a nasty splinter in there. It went septic and in the end they had to amputate.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘I like to think of it as an injury sustained fighting for a noble cause.’
‘Which side were …?’
‘Bolsheviks?’
‘Do you still …?’
‘Card carrying.’
Skelton had his pipe going nicely now. ‘Is that allowed? Working here?’ he asked.
‘I’m undercover.’
‘Not now you’ve told me, you’re not.’
‘You can be trusted, though, Mr Skelton. I don’t know nothing about your politics, but I know you’re an honest man. You can be trusted.’
‘It’s very nice of you to say so, Charlie.’
‘And I can promise you, when it comes – the revolution – General Sir James Ewers will be first up against the wall.’
‘Sounds a bit extreme.’
Charlie grinned. The clock on St Mary’s church struck the hour and Skelton tried with difficulty to stand. Charlie gave him a hand, which turned into a warm handshake.
‘Give my best to your lad,’ Skelton said.
There were no cabs to be had on Marylebone Road, so Skelton took the underground to Charing Cross, looking forward to a walk along the Victoria Embankment.
Curiously, as he came out of the Tube station, he found himself flanked by crowds of people, all moving in the same direction. He asked a woman with a fox fur and a child grasped firmly by the hand where everybody was going.
‘It’s the Lord Mayor’s Show,’ she replied, as if to a lunatic.
Of course it was. He’d been reading about it in The Times on the train into town that morning. To avoid it, he tried turning up Savoy Street, but the crowds up there seemed even thicker. At Temple Gardens, he gave in and decided he might as well watch the procession along with everybody else, standing five or six deep now, on either side of the road.
Skelton, a head taller than most other people, placed himself at the back so as not to impede anybody’s view and found himself next to a man, almost as tall as himself, with a boy of seven or eight sitting astride his shoulders. They exchanged a friendly nod.
Behind them, a boat on the river hooted. Somebody nearby shouted, ‘Better out than in.’ People laughed. Then they stiffened as, in the distance, they heard the first notes of a military band. First just the drums, then the brass and woodwind.
The players, on horseback, came into view, the drummer in the lead pounding two kettle drums, one on either side of his horse, with great flourishes of his sticks, followed by tubas or something like it, then saxophones and trumpets. 24
Skelton had seen pictures of mounted bands before and had wondered, but, in the flesh, the full absurdity of the phenomenon came clear. Playing a musical instrument was difficult at the best of times. Playing a musical instrument with both hands, while simultaneously controlling a horse with the reins wrapped around one arm seemed unnecessarily complicated, like underwater clock repair or surgeons on skates. Why do it? Why not, say, put them in carts pulled by horses, so that they could concentrate on doing one thing really well.
The lad on his dad’s shoulders seemed to be thinking along the same lines.
‘Are those men soldiers, Dad?’
‘Yes, son.’
‘Where are their guns?’
‘I think they must have left them at home, son.’
The band was followed by more soldiers on horses who seemed to have neither guns nor musical instruments, which made them more pointless still.
Then came various lorries decorated to represent this and that. One that was, according to the banner that preceded it, something to do with St Bartholomew’s Hospital, was done up like a mediaeval castle with people dressed as characters from Robin Hood standing on the battlements. They waved.
‘What’s that, Dad?’
‘Dunno, son.’
‘When will the exciting stuff happen?’ 25
Another, promoting Australian imports, had a chef stirring a huge pudding bowl. This provoked no comment from the lad at all. Skelton checked to see whether he might have gone to sleep.
After a moment’s hiatus, the boy started bouncing and his dad had to hold his feet tight to stop him falling off.
‘I CAN SEE ELEPHANTS!’
This was the exciting stuff he’d come for.
Skelton could see them, too. Four real elephants were lumbering down the road, attended by mahouts with canes and feathered turbans. The front two, side by side, had howdahs on their backs. They were followed by two more in single file, the one bringing up the rear holding the next one’s tail in his trunk.
‘Dad, can you see the elephants? Dad, they’re real elephants. Dad, they’re elephants. Elephants, Dad. Dad, look, look, it’s elephants!’
Something was wrong.
The elephants seemed alarmed. The front ones veered off course. The others followed. They hurtled into the crowd. Some people fell, others tried to rush away. There was a crush. Skelton, the man and the boy fell, with Skelton breaking the boy’s fall. His hat and glasses went flying. A bony woman fell on top of him, their faces uncompromisingly close. He couldn’t breathe, not just because the woman’s hat was covering his face and nose but because there was too much pressure on his chest, and something sharp digging into his ribs. Something hit his leg and turned his foot back. 26
The pain eased gradually as those who were still standing managed to move away and those who had fallen began to stand. The sound was different. Where a few moments earlier there had been cheering and chatter, now there was silence broken by groans and, somewhere up the line, a scream of pain.
The thin woman managed to stand. She muttered a few words of apology. Skelton was about to ask whether she was all right, but she’d gone. His head hurt, his foot hurt, his ribs hurt. Worst of all was his leg. He’d spent his childhood in and out of hospital, enduring operations, manipulations, one sort of brace after another trying to sort out the displaced hip he’d been born with. Nothing had ever worked. Still he walked with a limp. Now it hurt more than it had for years.
‘No, I’m fine, Dad,’ the lad was saying. ‘I fell on that man and he had his hand over my head so nobody could fall on me.’
The boy’s dad, who was standing, apparently unharmed, stood over Skelton and said, ‘Do you need some help?’
Skelton accepted the man’s offer and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. He could stand. Nothing appeared to be broken, but the hip was agony.
‘Are these yours, mister?’ the boy asked holding out his glasses.
One of the arms was a little bent, but mercifully the lenses were intact.
The elephants were nowhere to be seen. Further up the 27line, police, Boy Scouts and the St John’s Ambulance Brigade were attending to the wounded.
‘Shall I ask one of them to come down and have a look at you?’ the man said.
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ Skelton said. The boy picked up his briefcase and umbrella, which lay near. ‘I wonder …?’ Skelton nodded towards his hat, which was rolling in the wind a little way off. The boy raced off to retrieve it.
‘I’m Arthur Skelton, by the way.’
‘Cyril Monkhouse,’ the man said, ‘and this is Howard.’
‘Thank you both very much for your help. What exactly happened?’
‘Some lads, I think,’ Cyril said. ‘Ran out and frightened the elephants.’
‘Ah, yes. A regrettable example of youthful exuberance, I expect,’ Skelton said.
‘Eh?’
‘A phrase I heard used earlier today.’
‘Well …’ Cyril said.
It was a strangely awkward moment. The three of them, Skelton, Cyril and Howard had shared a moment of peril and they were now to part. On the other hand, to say ‘Shall we go and get a drink somewhere’, seemed presumptuous.
‘Well, thank you again, Cyril,’ Skelton said and wondered why he felt so emotional. Almost weepy. Shock, probably.
‘Well, thank you for looking after the boy,’ Cyril said. His voice was cracking, too.
They shook hands with far more grip and enthusiasm than 28either of them intended, and thought but did not say, you are now embarking on the great journey of the rest of your life and may your health be robust, your fortunes prosper and your hopes fulfilled.