In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [83]
We got off the bus and Dan said to Flo: ‘Now if you speak out of turn this time I’ll wring your blasted neck for you.’ Flo was subdued by this until the lawyer came to meet us. Her thoughts at once flowed into their usual channel and she whispered to Rose: ‘Now there’s a catch for you, sweetheart. A lawyer’s something like a husband.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Rose. The lawyer, who had heard this exchange, gave Rose a sympathetic wink and then took Flo’s arm. He was a brisk little man with the bloodless London look, a sharp raw face, and shrewd eyes. He handled Flo in an easy authoritative way she did not resent at all. But Dan resented it. He hated the way people responded to Flo, who talked and laughed in her frank, matronly manner with everyone. But they overlooked him, always, because when he was dressed in the ugly suit he was reduced to nothing, He was scowling savagely as we entered the building. It was gloomy, with its surfaces painted shiny brown or tea-coloured or mustard, as if the authorities had been determined to make the processes of justice as grim as possible. Our footsteps had a loud hollow ring.
The old couple were standing with their lawyer near the top of some stairs, and they turned their backs on us with an emphatic scornful movement; and our faces all wore the suspicious wary look people instinctively assume in Law Courts, We looked at each new group as if they might turn out to be enemies. Flo actually drew herself up and shot an angry glance at an astonished old woman before breaking into a ringing laugh – which she at once smothered by clapping a hand over her mouth – and whispered through the cracks in her fingers that ‘she thought that was a witness for the prosecution’.
‘Not prosecution,’ said the lawyer. ‘It’s not that kind of case.’
‘How was I to know? This law is too difficult.’
‘You’d better remember that,’ said Dan. Flo, protected by the lawyer, defied him with her eyes for the pleasure of seeing him grow more angry.
Rose whispered: ‘Storm warning! Trouble tonight! I’ll come and we’ll have tea in your room and leave them to kill each other.’
The lawyer was nursing Flo because he remembered how at the last case she had ruined everything by allowing herself to be carried away by the spirit of truth at the wrong moment, Flo, he thought, was the weak point. But Dan did not understand this: he could not understand why Flo, who was so stupid, should get all this attention. He kept his heavy yellow gaze fixed on the lawyer’s face, and was looking for an opportunity to impress himself.
We went into the side room to confer with Counsel. It was a dull, yellowish, high-ceilinged room, like a station waiting-room, all the doors standing open, people drifting in and out with the bored yet expectant look of travellers waiting for a train. We had a glimpse, through a momentarily-opened door, into the court-room itself: an old man, the Judge, rested his head on his hand while he listened to black-draped lawyers arguing about some legacy.
As our Counsel entered. Rose dropped her eyes, put on a prim face, and whispered to me: ‘Look what’s come. Isn’t it a sweet little thing?’
Counsel was a willowy stripling, with smooth little-boy cheeks, spaniel eyes, and an assured upper-class manner that caused Flo to gaze at him with incredulous admiration and Rose to whisper again: ‘Don’t laugh now, but we’ll have a good laugh afterwards.’
Counsel’s voice was as smooth as milk; he was deferential and beautifully polite as he cross-examined Dan, who began staring suspiciously at him. As for Flo, she looked as if she might cry, and exclaimed: ‘I thought you were on our side, sir?’
‘But, madam, I am,’ purred the youth, who must have been so much older than he looked. He received the potatoes on the stairs, the filth in the basins, and the pepper on the tulips without a smile.