In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [85]
Rose was overcome, and blushed, saying: ‘Thanks, dear. But you need an education for the law. It’s true I know about it a little, because I had a policeman for a friend once.’
The lawyer and Counsel now tackled Flo and Dan together. At the end of half an hour, they had succeeded in getting Yes and No in reply to certain basic questions. Then they began work on us, the witnesses. After a few minutes, they gave Jack up, for every time they enquired: ‘And what happened next?’ Jack’s admiration for the physical strength of his stepfather, so much deeper than his resentment of him, caused him to break into descriptions of assault and violence which made Dan nod proudly, Flo sigh approvingly, and Rose to groan: ‘Lord help us.’ They told Jack he could go back to work, but as he had a day off he remained seated in a corner with a bunch of physical culture magazines, oblivious of the furious looks Dan was giving him.
Rose proved admirable but limited. When Flo said: ‘But. Rose, you said it was all right to lie,’ she replied, with an open contempt for everybody present: ‘I was just saying what everybody else thinks. I know what’s right and I’m sticking to it.’
As for me, it was decided that since I knew nothing of the old people but what I’d heard, it was no use putting me in the box.
Everything depended on the impression Flo and Dan would make when the time came.
Our case was low on the list. We could hear the Court official calling out names; and as the cases worked themselves through, legal men kept dropping into the room for a cigarette, or to remove their wigs and scratch their hair, or to hold hasty conferences with witnesses. The old couple still sat through an open door, quite silent, staring in front of them.
Dan was restless with suppressed belligerence. He needed to regain his position. He kept shooting glances of resentment at the pink-cheeked boy who had humiliated him, and al Rose, who had treated him like a child. But the discovery that these guardians of morality not merely overlooked but encouraged a good lie had made him feel their equal. We were all relaxed by now out of boredom. Flo had unbuttoned her coat. Aurora was asleep. Dan was leaning his weight on the table in the easy way he would have used in his basement.
‘You wouldn’t remember the war, sir, would you?’ said Dan to Counsel, who flushed angrily. ‘I served right through the war. Perhaps you could tell the Judge that. It’s more than some can say.’
‘My good man, it has nothing to do with the case.’
‘I saved a man’s life. And now I can’t say who’s to live in my own house.’
‘Mr Bolt, I’ve already told you, it’s irrelevant.’
‘He was a Lascar. And what gratitude do I get, nothing!’
Rose hissed resignedly: ‘Oh, my God, that tears it, if he’s going to start. I hope he doesn’t forget to tell how he did six months’ hard for nearly killing a man in a bar.’ She took out her knitting, which she had brought with her in case of just such an emergency.
Counsel, the lawyer, and various knots of people in doorways or seated on the benches had their eyes fixed on Dan. Every one of them looked slightly irritated. It was the facinated irritation caused by a phenomenon we don’t understand. The fact was, Dan was holding their attention simply by sitting there, and they didn’t know why. The angry power of his body was not evident, muffled as it was in the commonplace suit. And his face expressed nothing but the desire to express – it was long, flattish, yellowish, and almost contorted with his frustration at not being able to communicate.
‘Yes, he was a Lascar,’ said Dan, aggrieved, ‘a black man if you like, but he was human, and I could have died.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Counsel, Dan turned the hot beam of his eyes at him, and the boy became silent.
‘There I stood on deck,’ said Dan.