I let Donovan go. He is in pieces, and reels dizzily to his seat. I stand to address the jury.
You have just heard the Defendant, Mr Donovan, admit liability in this matter. There remains only one thing for you to deal with: the quantum of damages. Members of the jury, I want compensation for dismemberment, for that is what we are talking about here. This may sound heartless to those who have lost real legs, but I, too, feel as though something has been chopped off. I am attacked by impalpable pains in regions I cannot locate, pains like the pains amputees are said to feel in the thin air their hands once would have occupied. Members of the jury, let me make plain what I am saying. Let me explain what has been sundered from me.
Before Donovan came along (and it must never be forgotten that he was the one who entered my life, that he made the first move), I lived happily from day to day. I had no regrets, and if I looked forward at all, members of the jury, it was to more of the same. I was at peace with myself.
Then he showed up — Mr Donovan, the man you see sitting over there. It was not me he wanted, it was a solicitor — a solicitor he could manipulate and dominate. He did not care about the effect he might have on me, the disturbance he might cause by suddenly reappearing in my life. And what was the effect of his come-back? I will tell you. He dug up my old future. Not my recent future, ladies and gentlemen — not the times awaiting me at Batstone Buckley Williams — but my old future, the one I looked forward to as a young man: the James Jones, international lawyer, scenario. And the hopes which this future contained, hopes which until then were safely underground, suddenly came to light again, more vivid than ever.
These hopes were dashed, members of the jury. Of course they were; how could I, now, at this stage of my life, ever fulfil the desires of my youth? I did not have a hope of becoming an international lawyer or of writing a learned book, of taking part in the bright swirl of history: and yet I hoped. Because of Donovan, I hoped.
What do I mean, when I say that my hopes were dashed? Let me tell you: I mean that they were severed from me for good. Yes, severed, as though an axe had been put to them: because these kinds of dreams, these youthful skylines, they are connected bodily to you, members of the jury, they are hooked deep into your insides like anchors jammed in rocks: move the anchor and you move the rocks. And this upheaval, ladies and gentlemen, this rumbling of hearts and guts, is painful. Especially when, as in my case, it is unjust — I could have been, I should have been, an international lawyer and learned author. But I am neither of these. I have been deprived of what I had coming to me, a deprivation I can lay at the door of Mr Donovan. If the Defendant had not been so self-centred, he would have alerted his chambers to my whereabouts at Batstone Buckley Williams, and I would now be a different man with different horizons. But I am not. The old me-to-be, the man of my dreams — you heard him giving evidence earlier, members of the jury, the other Mr Jones — he and I have split up for ever. It is over between us, it is over between my real self and me — for there can be no doubt, members of the jury, that the person I now am, and the life I now lead, worthy as they might be, are not the real thing. The real life, lustrous and significant, has been lost to me, and that is as bad as losing a limb. Anyone who thinks that I am going too far is wrong. I would give my right arm for those vanished years, even now.
(I stop there to let the jury take in what I have been saying. I look over at Donovan. He is sitting silently, in a daze. I know what he is thinking; not, My, how selfish I have been, but, My God, James is good — really good — how stupid I was never to have spotted his talent when he was my pupil! I resume.)
Members of the jury, Mr Donovan himself has admitted that he has ruined my life. It happened a long time ago, it is true, over a decade ago — but it happened. He deflected me from my rightful path. It may be that you think that I am feeling a little too sorry for myself, that I should show more backbone and face the future like a man, and you may be right to feel this. Perhaps I am not as strong a man as I should be and perhaps, in this sense, I have contributed to my loss. That may be so. But Mr Donovan here, he should have known that before he started to ruin my life. He should have realized what stuff I am made of, he should have realized (he is a lawyer, he is familiar with the eggshell — skull principle) that I was a vulnerable party. Members of the jury, I ask not just for a compensatory award, but for exemplary, punitive damages. I ask for justice.
I sit down. Donovan has nothing to add. While the jury deliberates, I finish my bottle of wine. I see that it is 8 a.m.
TWENTY
I never heard what the verdict of the jury was. The next thing I knew I was waking up on the sofa in the mid-afternoon with a hammering dehydration hangover, my rashy face hanging pale and swollen in the mirror on the wall. It sounded, from the gurgles and rumbles that tremored down my chest to my stomach, as if trains were running through my body’s tunnels.
Sweating a little, I lit a cigarette and glanced around me, at the living-room. It did not look good. Empty wine bottles, junk food cartons, newspapers, fat-crusted dishes, socks, cigarette packs, underpants, rotting flowers and garbage of all kinds stood out in the harsh daylight. Dust particles swam around in the air and a big bluebottle jangled against a windowpane. I stubbed out my cigarette: my throat was too sore to smoke it down to the butt.
Then, after I had guzzled at a stream of lukewarm tapwater in the kitchen, I made a discovery. I felt lighter than I had done for days; I felt as though some freight had been unladen from my body.
I felt all right.
I pushed my feet into shoes and headed for the door. I had no special destination in mind, I just needed to get out. I did not bother to change, or to shave or wash. I just stepped out of the house the way I was.
I caught a bus. I sat on the top deck and smoked a cigarette. It was yet another cloudless, sunshiny day, and when, at the Elephant and Castle, the bus stood still for ten minutes in a tangle of traffic, it came to me that, yes, I was not mistaken, I was feeling better. Down below throngs filled the pavements and two guys in sunglasses in an old purple sports car were blasting out opera and setting everything to music. It was a shot in the arm, and for the first time in a while I envisaged being part of all that action down there.
Then a small smile visited me: something struck me: all at once, on top of this bus, I was seeing daylight. The knots and kinks that had roped and snarled up my mind had ravelled out, and suddenly the whole of the Donovan business looked different. I was seeing it in a new way, from a distance, from the vantage point of someone looking back. It looked as though I had moved on: moved on from the Donovan part of my life.
Yes, I thought. What Donovan saw in Arabella, why he had collapsed in court, why he had burned his manuscript, why he had not contested the divorce, why Arabella had left that message on the ansaphone, why his father had come and suddenly gone, why he had cried on the golf course — who cared? Not me, that was for sure. Me, I had lost interest. Whether Donovan threw himself off a cliff or scaled great heights, it was all the same to me. Good luck to him. During the boiling, therapeutic night I had disentangled my life from his, and that was that. This was not a case of forgive and forget: this was just a case of forget. Anyway, there comes a moment when forgetting is forgiving — amnesty, after all, flows from amnesia.
Yes, I was letting it pass, all of it. Bygones were bygones. I knew that if I looked long and deep enough into the vehement events of the past year — events which had, as far as I could see, expired suddenly and inexplicably — they would no doubt yield profound and interesting meanings, illuminations of the downfall of genius and of the mysterious causalities of history. But I did not want to know. I had cut the cord, and that was that.