LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

with the state and society. We’d done the work and now we hoped that we’d be rewarded for our efforts.

      For the three of us, it was all so easy, so straightforward; our dreams were being fulfilled, our expectations achieved, we would become the barristers that we had aspired to be.

      After a couple of years Johnny moved out to live with Fiona, so we replaced him with this weird guy called Vikram, which didn’t really work, as he was a nurse who kept some odd hours. And then Ed met Joanne and he moved out, then Vikram moved out – and me, well, I moved into my own flat.

      On my own.

      Which, actually, I don’t mind at all.

      I think.

      Anyway, Johnny is at the Criminal Bar in a set similar to mine, and Ed works at a specialist Chancery set.

      As I’ve already alluded to, the Chancery Bar is very different from the Criminal Bar. It is full of particularly clever, academic types who rarely talk to one another and make a load of money. They all seem to be called Rupert or Henry. I’m not sure that Ed fits in. He tells us he works for oil companies and multinationals, but I’m never really quite sure what he actually does. Unlike criminal barristers or family barristers, he doesn’t tell you about his cases, in fact the only time he did, we had to tell him to stop because it was just too boring.

      Johnny, on the other hand, doesn’t stop telling you about his cases. He has a natural and infectious enthusiasm – if he were a dog he would have a constantly wagging tail.

      On this particular Friday night, they were already there when I arrived, standing by the bar.

      They greeted me with the universal hand gesture for ‘what do you want to drink?’ and I replied that I’d have a glass of stout.

      ‘Well, gents,’ said Johnny, pausing only to take a large glug of beer from his glass, ‘I’ve got some news.’

      I assumed that he was going to announce that he and Fiona were having a baby. They’d been married for a year (or is it two?) so it seemed kind of logical that they were going to start a family. But I was completely wrong.

      Johnny took a deep breath. ‘I’m leaving the Bar,’ he said.

      We both looked at him.

      ‘What?’ said Ed.

      ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘I’ve had my fill. I owe a ton of money, I’m being paid bugger all for working every hour, there’s no chance of career advancement – so I’ve decided: I’m getting out while I’m still young enough.’

      At this point a rather strange concoction of emotions filled my mind – first, there was an evil streak of pleasure, Johnny leaving meant one less criminal barrister to compete with; then there was jealousy, at his luck at having something else to go to; then there was respect that he had the balls to get up and do something else; finally, there was sadness, the old team was being broken up.

      ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ed.

      Johnny took another big intake of breath. ‘I’ve got a job as a croupier in a hotel in Dubai.’

      We both exclaimed, ‘What?!’

      ‘Yes. I start next month. The salary is ace. More money per month than I can earn prosecuting burglars and bottom pinchers, I can tell you.’

      Now my main emotion was jealousy – a croupier in a hotel, for a ruck of money, it’s genius, why didn’t I think of it?

      ‘What does Fiona think?’ I asked.

      ‘She’s mad for it. She’s got a job in the same hotel.’

      Ed shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, you must be bonkers.’

      ‘Look,’ argued Johnny forcefully, ‘what’s the point; we’re both lower-middle-class kids who went to university because we were told it was for the best. We got good jobs, in good professions, because we were told that was what we had to do, and we got riddled with debt for the privilege. Now, we can’t afford a mortgage, can’t afford a pension, can’t afford to start a family. It’s a joke.’

      Johnny had clearly rehearsed this argument before. I imagined him putting it to his parents and in-laws. Leaving the Bar will have made no sense to them, but it made perfect sense to me.

      ‘A croupier,’ said Ed with unconcealed contempt, ‘come on, you’re having a laugh.’

      ‘It’s okay for you, Ed,’ I said, ‘but Johnny’s right, for us it feels like we’re banging our heads against brick walls. We’ve not had a pay rise for years, in fact it just gets harder and harder to make a living.’

      ‘Yep,’ continued Johnny, ‘you boys at the Chancery Bar have got no idea, I was talking to Shanna earlier, you know, from my chambers?’

      We both nod and Johnny continued, ‘She’s about five years call, and this week she went to the Magistrates Court for a firm of solicitors to do a trial in the Youth Court, and do you know how much they paid her? Her bus fare, that’s what. They knew she’d do it because she wanted to impress them, in the hope of getting more work. I tell you, fellas, it’s a joke, and I’ve had enough.’

      Ed looked at us both, his lips thinned. He knew there was something in what we were saying, and what Johnny was doing.

      After a while he turned to me. ‘What are you going to do then, Russ? You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?’

      I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll get a job as an exotic dancer in John’s hotel.’

      ‘Seriously,’ said Ed, ‘what would you do if you weren’t a barrister? What would you do if you could do something else?’

      And that was the thing. I didn’t really want to do anything else. Okay, I am pissed off about the fact that our work was being farmed out to others, and that our pay was being cut, and that we were seen, wrongly, as immoral money-grabbing bastards who would sell our grandmothers for a brief, an acquittal and a bag of cash. I am pissed off with all of this, but – and call me a soft-centred lily-livered old whoopsie if you want – I still see it as a privilege to get up in court and represent people in their time of need. I want to be a barrister, just as I had when I’d sat down with my parents and watched, enthralled, some TV drama where a wonderfully erudite and maverick QC was winning the case against all the odds. That was still what I aspired to be.

      ‘Come on then,’ said Ed, repeating his question as if he was cross-examining a witness. ‘If you could do something else, what would you do?’

      I took in some breath, chewed my bottom lip a bit, shrugged mournfully, then answered, ‘I dunno, maybe write, I’m not sure.’

      ‘Well,’ said Johnny, thankfully ignoring my suggestion of an alternative career, ‘I’m sure I can put a good word in for you at the hotel.’

      I thanked Johnny for his offer of assistance, and suggested that it was my round.

      Then I saw her.

      Kelly Backworth.

      The unsmiling, unfriendly Judas who had failed to defend me in any way to her boss when the issue of my conduct in the Porky Phi case was being discussed and had sat there, with a face as unfeeling as a wardrobe, as Mrs Murdoch and my clerk had declared me a barrister persona non grata – NIHWTLBOE.

      I looked over at her. She was with a friend. And she was smiling. Oh yes, she was smiling now, great big, happy, unicorn-frolicking rainbow smiles. That was what she was doing now, away from court, away from me.

      And what a smile it was – lovely glistening teeth, sparkling behind full lips that were now freed from the shackles of the Family Court and glossed by a shimmering lipstick.

      I felt something shout at me from within my consciousness.

      Then I walked over to the other side of the bar to where she and her friend were sitting. I wasn’t sure what I was going

Скачать книгу