The Sleep of Reason (51 page)

Clive Bosanquet spoke for longer than the other two, but for less than an hour. More than ever, he was meticulously correct. Prosecuting for the Crown, he said, he had the duty to bring home to the jury the attention that they ought to pay to the prisoners’ plea: there had not been many cases where such a plea had been thoroughly argued: no one, certainly not the Crown, wished to dismiss that plea if these women were mentally irresponsible. But – and then he examined point by point what Cornford had said, how Matthew Gough had rebutted it, and what “responsibility” had to mean. The unassertive voice went on, not with passion, but with attrition. At one stage he said that it would be possible, or at least theoretically possible, for the jury to admit the plea for one of the women and reject it for the other: but neither defence counsel had wished to argue this, and the prosecution did not admit it: the two were inseparably combined, and what applied to one, as all the technical evidence demonstrated, would apply to the other: it had to be all or nothing. That was all. With a gesture, he got on with the attrition.

All through those speeches, I couldn’t listen as I usually did. It was not till I read them later that I appreciated what had actually been said. Odd phrases stuck out, tapped away at circuits in the mind that I couldn’t break. Free choice. Who had a free choice? Did any of us? We felt certain that we did. We had to live as if we did. It was an experiential category of our psychic existence. That had been said by a great though remarkably verbose man. It sounded portentous: it meant no more than the old judge declaring robustly that he could decide – it was in his power and no one else’s – whether to take a second gin and tonic. It meant no more: it also meant no less. We had to believe that we could choose. Life was ridiculous unless we believed that. Otherwise there was no dignity left – or even no meaning. And yet – we felt certain we could choose, were we just throwing out our chests against the indifferent dark? We had to act as if it were true. As if.
Als/ob
. That was an old answer. Perhaps it was the best we could find.

Morality. Morality existed only in action. It arose out of action: was formed and tested in action: expressed itself in action. That was why we mustn’t cheapen it by words. That was why the only people I knew – they were very few – who had any insight into the moral life, talked about it almost not at all.

On the stroke of twelve, the judge started to sum up. Suddenly I was listening with acute attention, absent-mindedness swept clean away. I watched the old, healthy, avian face as he turned, with his courteous nod, towards the jury box: I was listening, knowing already what his opinion was.

“Members of the jury, it is now my duty to sum this case up for you.” All through the trial his voice had shown, except in one rebuke, none of the cracks or thinning of age, and as he talked to the jurors, so easily and unself-consciously, it was still unforced and clear: but his accent one had ceased to hear except in old men. It belonged to the Eton of 1900, not cockney-clipped like the upper-class English two generations later, but much fuller, as though he had time to use his tongue and lips. “This, I think, is the seventh day on which you have listened with the utmost patience to the evidence and the speeches. And, at the end of it all, the issue in this case comes down to the point of a pin. It is agreed by everyone, I think, that these two young women have some degree of mental abnormality: is it enough to impair substantially – I have to remind you of that word – their mental responsibility? Are Miss Ross and Miss Pateman not responsible for the deeds, I need not tell you they are terrible deeds, that they have committed? Or, to make the point sharper still, are they not fully responsible, so that we have to make special allowance for them and accept their plea? Which is, you will remember, one of diminished responsibility. Either you will accept that, and bring in a verdict accordingly: which means, you understand, that they will be treated like mental patients who have perpetrated the crime of manslaughter. Or else you will decide that they were responsible for what they have done, and find them guilty of murder. In which case it will be necessary for me to pass the statutory sentence.”

Almost from the start of the summing up, Cora had been yawning. It looked like insolence: I believed that it was her first sign of nerves. The judge went on: “I do not for one instant pretend that that decision is easy for you. As learned counsel have carefully explained to you, this whole conception of diminished responsibility is relatively new to our law. And you have also been told that it has no really sharp and precise definition in medical or scientific terms. You have actually heard doctors of great distinction, mental doctors or psychiatrists, whatever we like to call them, taking absolutely contrary positions about the degree of responsibility of these two young women. Dr Cornford and Dr Kahn have told us – and I am sure that no one here would doubt their absolute professional integrity – they have told us that these women were less than fully responsible, so much less as not really to be answerable for their actions, when they killed the child. On the other hand, Dr Gough and Dr Shuttleworth, again with integrity that no one can doubt, have given their judgment, which is that Miss Ross and Miss Pateman were as responsible as any of us, when we perform any deed for good and ill. No, perhaps I have gone a little further than those doctors did. But they were quite positive that these young women’s responsibility was not substantially impaired.

“Members of the jury, this is not going to be easy for you. I shall try shortly to give you what little help I can. But I have no more knowledge of these young women’s minds than you have. I shall try to remind you what the doctors said, and what Miss Ross and Miss Pateman said themselves. You have listened to it all, and so have I. And it is for you, and you alone, to make the decision.

“But, right at the beginning, I have to tell you two things. I have just said that it is for you, and you alone, to make the decision. I have to repeat it, so that you will never forget it during your deliberations. This issue must not be decided by doctors. I should tell you that, and tell you it time and again, even if the doctors’ opinions were not divided. It is not in the nature of our law to have judgment by professional experts. We listen to them with gratitude and respect, but in the end it is you who are the judges. In such a case as this, it would, in my view, be specially wrong for the issue to be decided by doctors. For I am convinced that none of these eminent men would consider stating that they had reached any final certainties about the human mind. Perhaps those certainties never will be reached. Sometimes, for the sake of our common humanity, I find myself hoping that they won’t. At any rate, no one can be certain now. It is for you to reach a decision as to whether these young women – as my learned friend Mr Benskin put it very clearly – are or are not responsible for these criminal actions, in the sense that you are yourselves for what you do. It is your decision. You will have to be guided by your experience of life, your knowledge of human nature, and I must say, by something we sometimes undervalue, by your common sense.

“Now one other thing, before I try to draw your minds back to the evidence. You have had to listen to the story of an abominable crime. When one thinks of the treatment of that young boy before he died, and then of his death, one finds it hard – and here I am speaking for myself, as an ageing man – one finds it hard to cling to one’s faith in a merciful God.

“But now I have to ask you to do something which you may think impossible. You must do your best, however. I want you to put the nature and details of this crime out of your consideration. You are concerned only with whether these women are, or are not, fully responsible. It would be the same question, and the same problem, if they had committed some quite minor offence, such as stealing half-a-dozen pairs of stockings or a suitcase. It would be the same problem. I ask you to approach the decision in that spirit. I know that it will be difficult. I am asking you to banish the natural revulsion and horror that you must have felt. Forget all those thoughts. Think only of whether these young women were responsible for what they have done.”

One would have to be something like clairvoyant, I was thinking, to listen to him now – and then guess right about how he spoke in private. And yet he was as relaxed, speaking to the jury, as when he spoke to Hargrave and me in his dining-room. It was the habit of a lifetime to be calm and magisterial, to let nothing of himself slip out. Except perhaps a distaste for all the theorists who didn’t live in his own solid world. As he went on, underneath the fairness, underneath the amiable manners, he once or twice inflected his voice, just towards the edge of sarcasm, when he discussed the psychiatrists’ “explanations”. Or did I imagine the inverted commas? He was not a speculative man: in secret, he hadn’t much use for intellectual persons. But that had been so all through his career. It was nothing new that day, it didn’t affect his judgment, it would have been hard to tell whether he was trying to lead the jury at all.

That was Margaret’s impression, as we sat at lunch, the four of us. She had travelled up during the morning, in order to be with us at the end, and had heard nearly all the summing up, which the judge had still to finish.

“He’s not pushing them one way or the other, is he?”

George gazed at her.

“Perhaps he doesn’t think it’s necessary,” he said. He wasn’t speaking bitterly: or apathetically: not with much emotion, just as a matter of fact, like one who took the result for granted. He was not looking drawn. The rest of us were showing signs of suspense, but not George. He gave out an air of resolve or even of obscure determination. It was he who took the initiative, telling us it was time to return. “Last sitting,” he said in a loud, vigorous, exhorting cry.

In the courtroom, full but not as jam-tight as on the first day, smelling in the warm afternoon of women’s scent, sweat, the odour of anxiety, the judge turned again to the jury box, with a smile that was social, not quite easy or authoritative.

“Members of the jury, thanks to the exertions of the lady who has been taking the shorthand notes, I have been supplied with a transcript of what I said to you this morning, and I see that I have made three very stupid little mistakes.” They were, in fact, small mistakes which most of us had either not noticed or discounted as slips of speech, such as transposing the doctors’ names: but the judge was flustered, irritated with himself and those he was talking to. Perhaps he had the streak of vanity that one met in men who had not competed much and who weren’t used to being at a disadvantage: perhaps he didn’t like being reminded that he had reached one of the stages in old age when he could still trust his judgment, but not his memory. At any rate, he wanted to shorten his summing up, he was distrustful of quoting names, he had to make an effort to assert himself. “Let us get our feet on the ground. We are dealing with reality, and this is certain–” He went on with an adjuration that, I fancied, he might have used before. “You have been dealing with an avalanche of words. This is nobody’s fault, of course. It is the only way that it could be done. But you are not dealing with things of imagination. You are dealing with actual lives, actual things that really happened.” Then he was in command again. He told them that he agreed totally with Bosanquet, and by implication with the other counsel: there was no ground for discriminating between the two. He repeated, slowly and masterfully, that it must be the jury’s decision, and not the doctors’. They must detach themselves from their hatred of the crime, and consider as wisely as they could what substantial impairment (he reiterated the words three times) of responsibility meant and what responsibility those two young women bore. At that, he gave his benevolent paternal beck to the jury. “It is in your hands now,” he said.

The judge’s procession left: the heads of the two women dipped out of sight. It was about ten to three. Slowly, in jerks and spasms, the courtroom emptied. As soon as we got outside into the hall, Margaret lit a cigarette, as in an interval at the theatre. In the rush, we all found ourselves near the refreshment table, where I brushed against Archibald Rose, wig in hand, eating a sausage roll.

“Now we shan’t be long,” he whispered to me, in a casual detached tone. None of the others had heard that remark: but each of us, certainly George, was behaving as though Rose was right, as though the jury would be returning soon. We talked very little. It was a good many minutes before George said: “Well, I suggest we might as well have a cup of tea.” We lingered over it, so weak and milky, like the tea I had tasted in the jail. The hall was less crowded, people were edging away. We drank more cups of tea. All of a sudden the delay seized hold of me. I didn’t know about the others, but later Margaret and Martin told me it was the same for them.

At half past four I said: “Let’s go for a stroll.” George said that he wouldn’t bother, found a chair in the now half-deserted hall, sat down and lit a pipe. The others were glad to escape into the free air. Neither of them dissenting, we went away from the Assize Hall, not just round the block, but on into the centre of the town, getting on for a mile away. Margaret knew what I was doing: so probably did Martin. I was trying to cheat the time of waiting – so as to get back when it was all over. We had lived through times of waiting before this. I might have recalled that other time with George in this same court: but curiously, so it seemed to me in retrospect, I didn’t. Maybe my memory blocked it off. Instead, it was much more like times that each of us had been through: meaningless suspense: bad air trips, making oneself read thirty pages before looking at one’s watch: Martin knowing that his son was driving, not told when he might arrive.

“What does all this mean?” Martin said, without any explanation, after we had walked a few hundred yards.

“It must mean that the jury are arguing,” I replied.

“I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said. He had taken it for granted that the defence didn’t stand a chance.