The Senator was still on the Bench, two young Counsel arrayed in front of him. She listened as he ruthlessly exposed the weaknesses in the argument of the one addressing the court. The anxious advocate was clasping the lectern on which his notes rested so tightly that all his fingers had blanched. An ill-concealed smile was present on the face of his opponent. He must be even greener than me, she thought. Sure enough. After he had risen to his feet he hardly had time to finish his first short submission before he was interrupted from on high by the sort of remark designed to chill the blood of the most experienced Counsel.
‘Mr Swan, I have the advantage over you. I appeared for the pursuer in High versus Norton, the case upon which you seem to be founding, and it was purely concerned with quantum of damages. I fail to see what possible assistance it can be in any consideration of the relevancy of the pleadings, and that is, surely, the only question with which we are concerned today.’
Mr Swan, not yet capable of reading the writing on the wall, simply recited another long extract from the same case report, apparently oblivious to the meaning of the Senator’s remarks.
Finally, Lord Lawford’s patience broke and he bellowed: ‘Unless, Mr Swan, you have any other authorities you wish to bring to the attention of this court, I might as well tell you that I intend to grant Mr Rose’s motion on behalf of the pursuer.’
‘No, my Lord, I am content to rely on High versus Norton,’ came the now desperate reply.
‘Very well. Pursuer’s motion granted. Mr Rose, you will, no doubt, be seeking your expenses.’
On hearing the expression ‘expenses’, Flora moved towards the Bar in readiness for her own appearance. At least, at this stage of the proceedings in her case she would have no opponent. She attempted to stop her hands from shaking, and for the third time re-ordered her papers. Lord Lawford would not have been her choice of judge. No one doubted his brilliance or his misanthropic tendencies. Female humanity was rumoured to rank particularly low in his estimation, and within the Faculty it was believed that he had concluded that the Bar was going to the dogs and that it was his duty to frighten away as many new members as possible prior to his retiral. To that end, no holds were barred; the simple bludgeoning with irate words, the stiletto thrust of the missed House of Lords’ case and the Delphic monologue which convinced its victim that he no longer understood English. All had been tried and tested by the newly elevated tyrant. Flora forced herself to speak, and as she was doing so she realised that, contrary to her earlier fears, she could not be embarrassed, could not be hurt. Her secret dread of breaking down in public was groundless. How could any of this matter compared to David’s death? What could the bewigged figure on the bench say to her that could wound? Nothing whatsoever.
Emboldened by her new invulnerability she made three confident submissions in favour of the granting of interim interdict to her client, a tenant farmer from Argyll. She explained that the landlord’s unauthorised removal of gates from the meadowhead field had resulted in the entry of ten Highland cows into the tenant’s poly tunnels and the destruction of all the young plants therein. She was not harangued, she was not even interrupted. She was asked one polite question, to which she was able to give a sensible reply, and the interim interdict was pronounced in her client’s favour. As she squeezed out between the benches, clutching her authorities and papers, she was patted on the shoulder by her instructing solicitor, his face creased with delight at the good result, but it all passed her by. She found she was as unmoved by success as she had expected to be by failure.
At lunchtime she went to the nearby Boots in Cockburn Street to collect newly processed photos. Image after image of David. The tears that had been held back with such effort finally made their escape and she took refuge in a nearby sandwich bar. With dismay she noted that there was only one empty seat in the whole place, and it was next to Colin Harvey QC. She would have retreated, but he had already caught her eye, smiling in recognition to signal the space. On spotting the tear stains on her face his embarrassment became evident, and she was at a loss as to whether to attempt to pass them off as some kind of allergy or to blame them on a death in the family. Without time to think she muttered something about her hay fever. For the next twenty minutes she dabbed her eyes and, as if a pact existed between them, they discussed the pollen count in winter and the most effective non-soporific antihistamines.
Her two o’clock consultation passed quickly. Flora knew from the sheaf of papers that she had already seen that little could be done to help Mrs Davie. The client herself hardly said a word, sitting, ostensibly unmoved, as Flora and her strident instructing solicitor discussed the case. Mrs Davie’s only child, Kylie, had been taken into care by the local authority, and they had now applied to free the child for adoption. Mrs Davie did not want to lose her offspring, she did not want her daughter adopted and would not consent to such a course. The hearing was for the court to decide whether to dispense with the necessity for her agreement to the adoption procedure, but in order to fight the local authority they would have to have some ammunition. Kylie, now aged three, was already showing signs of severely disturbed behaviour: she was smearing her own excrement on the walls of the three-roomed council flat in which she lived, was almost completely speechless and spent hours sitting next to the washing machine, banging her head on it. In her short life she seemed to have developed every childhood disease known to the medical profession, and infestation with a rich zoo of lice, worms and other parasites. While Mr Davie had been part of the ‘family unit’ she had, in unexplained circumstances, also suffered a fractured skull and a burn to her left leg. Fortunately, Mrs Davie’s last precognition stated that he no longer formed part of the family.
The woman appeared to have had the benefit of any and all parent-craft classes available and she was, as the entire Social Work Department admitted, always willing, but, sadly, never able. The explanation was simple. Her IQ was too low to enable her to look after a child, she could barely function at the level of a child herself and was illiterate, innumerate and incapable of caring for anyone. She was also pregnant. None of the psychiatrists approached so far on her behalf had been prepared to support her cause; the child’s paediatrician and general practitioner both believed that adoption would be in Kylie’s best interests; Mr Davie was now consenting to it and all the carers involved in ‘the Davie case’, without exception, were of the view that Mrs Davie was unable to look after Kylie.
Flora looked at the dejected specimen sitting opposite her. The woman’s eyes, through their milkbottle-bottomed spectacles, never met her own, flickering restlessly from the central light to the water flask and back again. Her hands, resting before her on the table, had thick stubby fingers with nails chewed to the quick, old blood visible where loose skin had been bitten off. She might as well have had ‘loser’ tattooed on her forehead.
‘You’d like to keep Kylie?’ Flora asked her. She needed to know how her client would respond to cross-examination.
‘Aye.’ The dull-faced woman nodded.
‘Can you explain why?’
‘I love her tae death. She’s ma bairn.’
‘Do you think you would be able to look after her, if she was returned to you?’
‘Aye, wi’ help, I done it afore.’
‘But you’ve had a lot of help so far, and even with it you were unable to cope with Kylie?’
‘I’ve not had enough, I jist need that bit more.’