Kid Gloves Read online

  Stanley’s brother Arthur (born 1905) was also present at that golden wedding celebration, spryly taking photographs of the gathering, bending his knees to capture the shot he wanted. Those knees seemed unaware that they were entitled to go on strike, after ninety-odd years of work. They’re the knees everyone wants to have, the ones with the extended warranty. At dinner in Gray’s Inn Hall I asked after Arthur, and Stanley put on a bit of a show, entertaining the company with one of his brother’s moments in the spotlight.

  Solicitors like Arthur, being backroom boys, don’t normally become well-known by association with famous cases, as barristers do, but Arthur gained some notoriety when he represented the accused in the Towpath Murders in 1953. Arthur had been paid out of public funds, and the case, though apparently open-and-shut, took up a lot of court time. The junior barrister he instructed (Peter Rawlinson) interviewed a police officer with what at the time amounted to great and sustained hostility, strongly implying that the confession obtained from Alfred Charles Whiteway was a work of fiction. There were no bent coppers in the national awareness, so hammering them could hardly be seen as a virtuous activity. Whiteway was convicted and hanged, but Arthur didn’t take it personally (perhaps another difference between solicitors and barristers), describing Whiteway as an ideal client, regretting only that they worked together just the once.

  General laughter. One of the occasions when a lawyer mocking the system that has filled his pockets gets an appreciative hearing from his fellows. Did I contribute a chestnut of my own to the game of anecdote-conkers, by trotting out the old story of Dad’s client with Ménière’s disease? It seems horribly likely.

  If Dad and I can’t help tracing the alteration of attitudes to sexuality, exhibits in a museum of social history, then the same is true of the Prothero family. Chief Inspector John Prothero of Scotland Yard, the father of Arthur and Stanley, was the only witness to be called in the successful 1928 prosecution of The Well of Loneliness for obscenity, after a typically temperate campaign against the book by the Sunday Express, whose editor recommended that healthy boys and girls be given prussic acid – cyanide – rather than be allowed to read it. The Chief Inspector testified that the very theme of the novel was offensive, since it dealt with physical passion, a passion that was described by the presiding magistrate as abnormal. There was no need to establish any culpable explicitness of expression for the book to be condemned (and destroyed). Theme did the trick unaided.

  Chief Inspector Prothero’s marked-up copy of the book was inherited by Arthur, but not the accompanying attitudes. Arthur agreed to represent Peter Wildeblood in a landmark case of 1954, a time when a bargepole’s length was the minimum recommended distance between a reputable solicitor and a sexual scandal. Wildeblood was accused (with two others) of inciting young men to commit indecent acts, and was one of the first to acknowledge his homosexuality in public. He remarks in his memoir Against the Law the ‘there is some truth in the saying that a man’s best friend is his solicitor’ – Arthur was concerned that his client was feeling the cold (it was March), and lent him a pair of long johns to make sure he didn’t shiver in the witness box. He served time just the same.

  I wish I could discover what happened to that marked-up copy of The Well of Loneliness. Stanley doesn’t know. The British Library would receive a treasure like that with tears of joy.

  I’ve attended social occasions where drink has flowed freely, but nothing to compare with Gray’s Inn Hall in terms of the efficient delivery of alcohol. It was a revelation of what Dad’s social life must have been like, not every night of the week, to be sure, but fairly often. When drink was so plentiful, when it took sustained effort to beat back the tides, sobriety became merely quixotic, a pose and a false economy.

  I made the decision to keep close watch on my glass, to be sure that I noticed any sly replenishment. No-one came near, yet the next time I looked the level of wine in my glass had definitely risen. I began to see that Gray’s Inn catering was run on a sort of Harry Potter system, dispensing with human agency. Our glasses were table-top Artesian wells, so that wine bubbled up through enchanted channels in the stems of our glasses every time we set them down.

  As I lurched towards the 19 bus that would take me back to Highbury, I was sure that I would wake up with the mother and father of hangovers. Or the Lord Chief Justice, with a severe sentence to pass on my lack of self-control. I woke fresh as a daisy, unaccountably reprieved from the hangover I had earned with honest toil. It certainly seemed that the cellar-masters of Gray’s Inn were wizards of alcoholic immunity. They knew how to conjure congeners into cancelling themselves out, if congeners even exist. If only they’d been able to make the breakthrough in time for Dad to glide through those mornings when his unconfrontational wife told him some home truths.

  The slow upheaval in Dad’s thinking about sexual orientation made me feel that our intensive Anglesey session, Prince Charles, Jacqueline Bisset, old Aunty Mary Cobley and all, had been productive, sowing the seeds of enlightenment however long it took them to sprout. Then of course Dad had to go too far. Towards the end of his life he started being grieved by discrimination against gay people, shaking his head over the sheer unfairness of individuals being penalized for a harmless variation they hadn’t even chosen.

  I was exasperated. There’s a difference between revising your attitudes and rewriting history. How could he be shocked by dilute expressions of a prejudice that had once been his most heart-felt credo? He was cheating by granting himself an amnesty, even a retrospective amnesia, and obliterating one of the strongest convictions he had ever had, now that it no longer suited him. If pressed, I could come up with more flattering descriptions than ‘cheating’ of Dad’s ideological Great Leap Forward, but to say that he was refusing his own complexity seems to overshoot the target in the other direction.

  One of the plays performed most successfully at my school had been N. F. Simpson’s farce One Way Pendulum, which struck me as the funniest thing I had ever seen. I’m sure the mockery of legal language and process, Dad’s moral and professional world, was part of what made One Way Pendulum such a hit with me. In the course of a surrealistic courtroom scene, Simpson’s Judge says: ‘… you remained loyal to your masochism just so long as it suited you … The moment it was no longer useful to you you abandoned it without the slightest compunction. I can find no possible shred of excuse for behaviour of this kind …’

  That was how I felt about Dad’s reformed attitudes of the 1990s, with ‘homophobia’ standing in for ‘masochism’. Dad was being disloyal to his perversion. It wasn’t like being lucky enough to skip a hangover after a binge. He had been addicted to those toxins for half a century and more, yet that side of his personality and his history could apparently just fall away.

  Horror of homosexuality was an integral part of his identity as a small-town Congregationalist, born in Wales near the beginning of the First World War. It was as much part of his heritage as the leek and the harp, no more optional than bara-brith and How Green Was My Valley. It deserved better than to be thrown over when fashions changed. Doesn’t seasoned bigotry have a proper and permanent claim to make on the bigoted party? It has built up rights over time, so it can be made redundant (with agreed compensation) but not just melt away without a word said on either side.

  Barnacles don’t just slip off the hull. They have to be chipped away at, and Dad’s personality barnacles certainly clung, keeping themselves glued in place year after year. Actual barnacles have things called cement glands. I don’t know what Dad used instead.

  And then they were gone, and everything had been sanded do
wn around and repainted where they had been, to leave a vessel spick and span, seaworthy for another pattern of tides.

  It’s possible that what I really wanted was not an encounter between Dad and his complexity but a soap-opera resolution between the two of us, with him begging to be forgiven for his blindness. That’s not something I can rule out, however often I state as a fact that closure is for bin-bags not for people. It’s even true that Dad had made some progress with his apology technique since my teenage years. He had learned that it was possible to own up to a fault almost without being put under pressure. Admitting to an imperfection could be a strong rhetorical move.

  Making an apology needn’t be like walking the plank. It might be more like a rope bridge. The moment of vulnerability could be cut short, and Dad find himself safe on the other side. Admission of weakness might even be redefined as the key to strength.

  One example was what he said when I got a good degree in English, after dropping Classics against his advice. ‘Well, boy,’ he said, ‘you were right and I was wrong …’ – rope bridge, dangerously teetering – ‘… and I hope I’m a big enough man to admit it when I’ve made a mistake.’ Back on solid personality rock.

  So he could certainly have found a way to turn his change of attitude into a virtue. ‘Well, boy,’ he might have said, ‘your poor old Dad may have been saddled with a lot of backward ideas by the time and place he was brought up, but no-one can say he didn’t struggle against his conditioning. How many men of my generation have come so far from where they started?’ That might have been a good thing to hear, but I’d have settled for him remembering Keith’s name once in a while. Or perhaps I should just shut up and agree to receive what was on offer. Perhaps it was perverse to be refusing of him at a time when he was finally, and in his own fashion, accepting of me, the ‘me’ that he had found so hard to live with.

  Of the two carers who made things easier for Dad in the last stretch of his life, it was Nimat I would have liked to see again, but though we had a couple of phone conversations neither of us suggested a meeting. She had stopped working for the care agency and was studying for a qualification in social work.

  I had more extensive dealings with Bamie, though he didn’t contact me directly. It was a solicitor who phoned to ask if I would testify on his behalf in court. Why? What was the matter? He was up on a charge, and my testimony could make a difference to the verdict.

  What was the charge? It was rape. Bamie was being charged with the rape of his wife’s cousin. My knowledge of legal procedure was and is rudimentary, but it seemed unlikely that I could give evidence in any useful way. The only way I could help Bamie’s case was by proving that he was with me at the time of the alleged assault, and that wasn’t on the cards.

  I asked the solicitor if anything I said in court could possibly make a difference. He said it could do no harm.

  Bamie’s defence was that he had been having an affair with his wife’s cousin at an earlier stage, when she had been living under their roof, and that there had been no coercion either then or when they resumed their relations.

  There must have been a time when Bamie explained to his wife about the falseness of the accusation made against him and how it was to be combated. I was glad not to have been present at the conversation when he had given her the good news.

  She had moved out, taking their son with her, and was now living in a hostel. Further misfortune had rained down on this family fragment in limbo. The little boy, exploring in an unfamiliar kitchen, had pulled a pan of boiling water onto himself and been scalded.

  I gave an undertaking in principle that I would testify on Bamie’s behalf, though I admit I was hoping not to be called on. I could certainly be a character witness, but how was that relevant? Rape is not something on the level of a character flaw.

  It was months before the case came to trial, and then it was announced for a day when I was away on holiday – not on the far side of the earth, it’s true (Devon), but far enough away to make my heart sink still further. It had to be done though, in conscience, and I took a train from Totnes with my praise for Bamie thoroughly rehearsed, ready to emerge in solid sentences. I still had the feeling that what I had to say was meaningless in this context, and if Bamie was relying on my testimony then things did not look good for him. A young female relative by marriage and an elderly stranger he looked after for pay were obviously in different categories. Ideally he would have mild and tender dealings with both, but it was faintly mad to look to one of these styles of behaviour for evidence about the other.

  I didn’t stay long after doing my turn in court, and returned to pick up the threads of my holiday. Later I heard that Bamie had indeed been acquitted, I imagine on firmer grounds than someone being appreciative of his skills as a carer.

  Years later, when I had moved to South-East London and was waiting for a bus on Denmark Hill, I was startled by a car on the other side of the road doing a drastic U-turn, so as to end up in the bus lane next to me. A man leaped out of the driver’s seat and came towards me. I have to admit that I recoiled until I saw it was Bamie, transmitting intense goodwill on a wavelength bang next door to the one usually reserved for aggression.

  He told me that life was much better for him than it had been the last time we had met, though he admitted that it had been touch and go for a while. His religion had been sorely tested, and he had come close to losing his faith. He grasped my hands and said he would never forget the help I gave when he needed it.

  There were so many reasons for cutting the conversation short. A 468 bus was heading our way – my bus – and even if I didn’t want to board it Bamie’s car was blocking the bus lane. He needed to jump back in and do another U-turn to carry on towards Camberwell. I didn’t even have time to ask whether he and his wife were back together. In fact I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, and I certainly didn’t want to hear him talking about his recent history in terms of a test of faith, some sort of religious trial.

  This was a reading of painful family events that seemed guaranteed to yield no insight, besides being unappealing to believers and unbelievers alike. The Book of Job would have exercised a lot less fascination down the millennia if its starting-point had been Job having sex with his wife’s cousin.

  Before I moved to South London I was unaware of religious diversity, in terms of the day to day. The beliefs on offer seemed to be variations on white-bread, meat-and-potatoes faith. Only Edith Wellwood had an unorthodox background, having been brought up in the Catholic Apostolic Church, a millenarian denomination inspired by Edward Irving. He’s commemorated with a plaque on Amwell Street. The church was somehow both high and low, with a hierarchical ministry (angels, priests and deacons) but also talking in tongues, or ‘speaking in the unknown tongue’ as it was called in the church. As a girl Edith had been told to pray for the Lord to return in her lifetime, which she did, though adding under her breath, ‘But not before I get my Matric.’ The church died out like a self-limiting virus. Established in the first place to await the imminent end of the world, its constitution wasn’t built for endurance. When the last Apostle died, in 1901, there was no mechanism for creating clergy, and when the last minister died there was no more church.

  Living in Herne Hill I found there was an explosion of spiritual cuisine more or less on my doorstep, with many local varieties and no doubt the occasional attempt at fusion. I go most days to catch a bus or a train at Loughborough Junction, where there are such exotic spiritual blooms, though they are housed by and large in battered commercial premises, as the Power of Faith Continual Miracle Church, the Celestial Church of Christ (Clapham Pari
sh) and the Light of God Evangelical Ministry (A Palace of Breakthroughs). There’s a Vessels of Treasure Sisterhood that holds regular meetings. The Light of God Evangelical Ministry offers a monthly Night to Repossess Your Possessions, which I must admit intrigues me. Repossession has an ominous overtone, but I’m sure it’s not meant to. How does the magic work? Do you bring along the possessions in question, or is a list enough?

  The Miracle Times slips through my letter-box in multiple copies, with a list of preparations available that includes Court Anointing Oil (‘tip the scales of justice in your favour’). I never thought lawyers would need to fear competition from aromatherapists, but that day is here. The front page is given over to testimony about the virtues of Bishop Climate Irungu’s Fire Service. A woman’s life was being made hell by her neighbours (‘It was like this family’s mission was to destroy my life, just because I’m alive and breathing’). She was building an unauthorized extension (‘I like to pride myself in my home and personal belongings’) when a lady came from the council to inspect the works, tipped off by neighbours offended by the noise. This lady recommended more ambitious construction, saying ‘Why didn’t you build more? You could have used more space!’, so she went on building and the neighbours went on complaining.

  Finally she put the family’s name on a list and put it in the fire at a Kingdom Church service (‘If we put someone’s name who is innocent then God will spare them, but if they are guilty God will revenge for us’). It wasn’t long before God got to work – ‘people were saying, “Did you hear what happened to Geoffrey? His burial is next week!”’ Yet still her troubles weren’t over. Another neighbour ‘was always scrutinizing my property, making my life a living hell’. Another list, another fire service, and ‘the neighbour’s wife is bedridden so that they need carers and expensive hospital trips. I’ve finally been left alone. Now there is peace in my life!’ Loving your neighbour isn’t the whole story down our way. For the benefit of those unable to attend Fire Services, Bishop Climate’s ‘prayer warriors’ are waiting by the phones. Do they have the authority to accept donations, the means to process them? I feel sure that they do.