Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [155]
But Olympia cannot finish her answer. For while Tucker and Sears have been sparring, the bailiff has responded to a knock on the courtroom door and has opened it. Phillip Biddeford, his overcoat dusted with snow, his bowler in his hand, stands at the threshold.
He seems flustered, disturbed by his surroundings, as if unable to read them immediately. And then he catches sight of his daughter in the witness box with the judge towering over her, and this sight must appear to him so unnatural, so wrong, that he pales and actually brings a hand to his chest. Olympia leans forward as if she would go to him, realizing only then how utterly confining the witness box is, a small and temporary prison. She cannot go to her father, nor can she even speak to him. And worse, she will have to continue to answer Sears’s hideous questions with her father in the room.
The bailiff leads Mr. Biddeford to a bench. Tucker, who has leaned around in his seat in an unsuccessful effort to signal to Biddeford, turns back again to Olympia.
But it is Sears who has the floor.
“Please, Miss Biddeford. I believe the question was: ‘Did you not abandon these three boys with no explanation and without even bidding them farewell?’”
Instinctively, Olympia reaches for the locket inside her blouse and touches it through the cloth. “Mr. Hardy made unwanted and improper advances toward me, and I thought it prudent, for my own personal safety, to leave at once. It was hardly a situation I could explain to Mr. Hardy’s three sons.”
“I see. So you found yourself once again involved in an improper amorous relationship.”
Tucker leaps to his feet, furious this time. “Objection!”
“Miss Biddeford’s moral character is a relevant issue,” Sears says quietly, as though he has anticipated Tucker’s consternation.
“Your Honor, in describing Miss Biddeford’s interactions with Averill Hardy as a relationship, and, moreover, an amorous one, counsel is mischaracterizing the witness’s testimony,” says Tucker heatedly. “Miss Biddeford was molested by Mr. Hardy — not the other way around.”
“Do we not agree that this is a matter Miss Biddeford might clarify for us herself?” Sears asks.
“Yes, the court agrees,” says Judge Littlefield. “In future, Mr. Sears, you will put appropriate boundaries around your questions.”
“Yes, Your Honor, I shall.”
Sears bends a finger under his nose as if lost for a time in deep thought. Then he turns suddenly in Olympia’s direction.
“Miss Biddeford, when did your sexual relations with Dr. Haskell begin?”
The bluntness of the question not only stuns Olympia but also seems to startle Tucker, who looks sharply up from his notes. Neither has prepared for such a frontal attack. Despite Olympia’s best intentions, and Tucker’s advice, Olympia glances down into her lap. My God, she thinks, I cannot have my father listen to this. I cannot possibly answer these questions in front of him. She looks up and silently implores Tucker to do something.
Tucker, either seeing the desperation on Olympia’s face or having similar thoughts of his own, stands. “Your Honor, counsel for the relator requests that Mr. Phillip Biddeford, the relator’s father, who has just arrived, be removed from the courtroom during this sensitive questioning of his daughter.”
Littlefield nods. “Bailiff, please show Mr. Biddeford to another room, where he can await a summons or” — Judge Littlefield checks his pocket watch — “a recess.”
Olympia watches as her father is led away, and it seems to her that he has to lean on the bailiff ’s arm for support. Sears returns his attention to Olympia.
“The question, once again, is, ‘When did your sexual relations with Dr. Haskell begin?’”
“On July fourteenth, 1899.”
“And what was the nature of these sexual relations?”
“Objection, Your Honor,” says Tucker from his seat. “Does the witness have to answer this abhorrent question?”
“Objection sustained,” Littlefield says. “Mr. Sears,