Londra, sadece binalardan değil, içinde yaşayanların çılgın ve çarpık hikayelerinden oluşan devasa bir labirenttir. Yazar Ian McAuley’nin yeni kitabı “The London Stories” (FGI Publishing) de, bu harika ve delice şehrin hayatından kısa öyküleri bir araya getiriyor.
Kitaptan özel olarak yayınlanmasına izin verilen “Crosswords” (Bulmacalar) başlıklı bu hikaye, okuyucuyu, yolsuzluk batağına saplanmış bir ceza avukatının, beklenmedik ve fantastik bir yöntemle hak ettiğini bulduğu bir dünyaya davet ediyor.
Hikaye, avukatın kibrinin ve hırsının, Londra’nın bilinen gerçekliğinin sınırlarını aşan, adeta bir kara mizah bulmacasına dönüştüğü o anı anlatıyor. Bu, McAuley’nin şehrin gündelik yüzünün altındaki ahlaki karmaşayı ve fantastik adaleti ne kadar ustalıkla işlediğini gösteren çarpıcı bir örnek.
“Crosswords”
Heads turned as Simon Knevett burst through the swing doors which led from the Central Criminal Court into the gloom of the main corridor of the Old Bailey. His black robe was flowing behind him, and his wig was slightly awry.
“Yes!” he mouthed not too silently, both fists clenched in triumph.
James, a fellow barrister, was passing by.
“You haven’t won, have you?” he asked in unconcealed astonishment.
“Not guilty,” crowed Simon.
“You lucky bastard,” said James, admiringly.
“It’s the gift of the gab, James.”
Seeing that James was intending to stop for a chat, Simon moved away at a pace. “Sorry, must rush,” he called out.
Clerks, cleaners, policemen and even hard-faced re-offenders parted before him as he swept down the wood-panelled corridor. Simon had learnt some time ago that if you look unstoppable, people will naturally move to one side.
‘Ah, I love this place’, he thought to himself. This unlikely victory would undoubtedly bring some choice new cases his way. And there is nothing like the kind of fees paid by the really top flight of London’s villains to make a young barrister feel good about himself.
Having disposed of his wig and robe, and donned an anonymous overcoat, Simon hurried towards the strangely unnatural glow of daylight that beckoned at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Just inside the exit door sat old George the porter, tucked in behind a scratched old oak desk.
“Cheers, George,” said Simon, exhibiting that upper-class affability that is so effective in making the recipient feel that they are a significant person, worthy of attention. Not that Simon had any illustrious ancestors, but it was a useful skill he’d picked up at public school from those who had.
“Mr Knevett,” replied George, respectfully.
Emerging into the cold air outside, Simon stood still for a moment, his eyes adjusting to a daylight so grey that only the interior of the Old Bailey could have been murkier.
And there was Susie.
It had been maybe three or four years since Susie had first appeared, crouched sadly in a recess next to the side exit of the Old Bailey. Her appearance had shocked the regulars at the Bailey. Until then, only grimy old tramps and alcoholics had wandered helplessly adrift on London’s streets.
Susie, by contrast, looked like a respectable forty-year-old who’d dressed up in her Sunday clothes to do a bit of gardening. What’s more, if you caught her in one of her more communicative moods, she could hold an educated conversation with you about practically any subject under the sun. In short, her predicament, whatever it was, seemed very much ‘something-about-which-something-must-be-done’.
Yet that was the perspective of some years ago. People were now well used to various psychiatric cases, beggars, disturbed adolescents, runaways and assorted troubled and unfortunate individuals hanging about on the streets of central London.
As for Susie, she was now as much a fixture at the Old Bailey as was George the porter. It was common knowledge at the Bailey that she was a former psychiatric patient who couldn’t be persuaded to stay in her hostel beyond sleeping hours. So, they gave her sandwiches and crosswords.
“Hello Susie,” said Simon, radiating charm. From his manner, Susie might have been one of his most important clients.
“Have you got something for me?” he continued.
She had, of course, because this had become a regular ritual, and he knew that he was her favourite. She took out a crossword puzzle from a grimy bag and waved it in the air.
“You’re the one,” she gabbled. She was in one of her happier moods. “The clever one. Waiting for you. This one here I can’t get at all. Very difficult. Very, very difficult.”
“All the better,” smiled Simon.
“It’s got thirteen letters. First letter, ‘d’. Tenth letter, ‘t’. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“And the clue is — ‘Give the devil his due, he’s entitled to it’.”
Simon paused for thought.
“Hm, very cryptic.”
Simon paused a little longer.
“I’m waiting, I’m waiting,” chimed Susie, as impatient as ever. Simon had never let her down before.
Simon looked Susie straight in the eye. “Demonstration.”
Susie looked down at the puzzle.
“It fits, yes, it fits. I don’t know why, but it fits.”
Simon was patient. “If you break up ‘demonstration’, it reads ‘demon’s-t-ration’. So ‘give the devil his due, he’s entitled to it’ is a ‘demon’s-tea-ration’. Got it?”
“Clever. Give the devil his due. Very clever. You are clever. A clever little devil, you’ll get what’s due. Yes. Clever little devil, that’s what you are.”
Susie tossed her head back and forwards a few times and then went on working on the rest of the crossword without any further acknowledgement of Simon”s presence.
“At your service, Susie,” said Simon, and he strode off down Newgate Street.
It was one of those late winter days when people seemed reluctant to venture out onto the streets, and those that did were dressed so drably that they impinged little on the cityscape. Simon turned his collar up as icy cold gusts of wind blew out of side streets.
Turning off Cheapside into a tangle of ancient streets that had been laid down in medieval times, Simon walked down a narrow lane flanked on either side by tall, solid stone buildings. In this warren of streets, Simon couldn’t quite find his bearing. Off on one side was an unfamiliar row of Victorian-fronted shops whose interior lights glowed out into the street.
Then, recognising an insurance company’s brass nameplate on a wall, he turned down a paved alley that opened out into a small square — and the church of St Blaizey. The church was a cobbled-together old stone building that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Saxon village. Here, it stood neatly sandwiched between two sombre-suited merchant banks.
St Blaizey’s. A good place, so Simon thought, for a clandestine meeting, because there are few places more empty than a City church outside of lunchtime. At least, that’s the usual rule, but as Simon walked into the foyer, he could sense the presence of people inside.
Emerging into the dappled light of the stained-glass windows, he saw that maybe a dozen or so scruffily dressed people were sitting in the front pews. Glancing around, he saw that the rest of the church was empty. And that his contact hadn’t arrived yet.
Standing at the back of the church, Simon examined the other visitors more closely. Most were in crumpled and shabby clothes, a few wore dressing gowns and pyjamas. Almost all were elderly, and there was a lot of coughing and wheezing going on. A pretty sad and pathetic collection of humankind, all told, thought Simon, and surely nothing for him to worry about.
Not that Simon was the worrying kind. He was quite confident that he was clever enough to get away with anything he chose to do. After all, he’d never been caught cheating at exams, cheating with other men’s wives, or cheating with his income tax. True, this current adventure was of a different degree of danger, but then the plus side of that was a different degree of thrill and financial return.
No, Simon had no moral problems with cheating. If you weren’t found out, it only showed how clever you were. Cheating and cleverness, as far as he was concerned, were natural bedfellows.
Something which caught his eye pulled Simon out of his reverie of self-satisfaction. Could that be a huge fishbone in the central stained-glass window? How very strange.
At that moment a nurse strode purposefully into the church with a rustle of starched linen, and some urgently-to-be-applied medication in her hands. She was definitely a nurse, no doubt about that, but there was something peculiar about her clothes that made Simon think of Florence Nightingale and the Crimean war.
“Excuse me,” said Simon.
“Yes?” Her manner said – ‘be quick’.
“What’s going on here?”
“It’s the blessing of the throat service.”
The nurse spoke as if this was a subject taught in every school across the nation.
“Sorry, the what?”
“It’s the blessing of the throat service. February the third. Saint Blaizey’s day. It’s traditional.”
“Ah, I see,” said Simon, trying to sound satisfied enough to get rid of her. “Makes a change. You don’t usually see a single blessed soul in here,” he said, flashing that charming smile.
The nurse was unimpressed and marched away without replying.
“Good luck with that, Florence,” murmured Simon, as he took a pew.
Simon looked at his watch. He’d been running late, but so was his contact. Perhaps he should have chosen somewhere easier to find. But then it would have been more risky to use.
Simon looked around the church once more, his eyes straying back again towards the stained-glass fishbone. There was something strangely irritating about it. It was the kind of irritation he usually felt about contemporary art, but the style marked it out as being many centuries old.
Organ music swelled up from somewhere, and a vicar appeared in front of the altar. He was holding up a cross made out of two candles that had been tied together with a dried reed.
There was a small choir somewhere out of sight, singing surprisingly well.
Simon heard a cough at the back of the church. A woman entered, wearing a red hat, and carrying The Times newspaper in her left hand. She looked about as uncomfortable as a city businessman walking into his club sporting a copy of The Sun.
She must have been an attractive tart ten years ago, Simon observed dispassionately. However, Mrs Jackson, for this must surely be her, now looked more than ripe for attention from some seriously expensive beauticians.
Mrs Jackson glanced nervously round the church, unsettled by the unexpected activity. She looked inquiringly at Simon, who looked casually away. He took a newspaper out of his briefcase, and started to fill in the crossword, as obviously as he felt he could without drawing undue attention to himself.
Mrs Jackson stared at Simon for a moment, and then, remembering herself, sat down in a parallel pew.
The vicar intoned various welcomes and prayers, his voice reverberating around the church. He then turned his attention to the huddled group of invalids gathered in the front pews of the church.
“Lord, today we honour the name of your servant, Saint Blaizey, who on his way to martyrdom in this city at the hands of the Romans, touched the throat of a boy who was choking on a fishbone and miraculously saved his life. It was said that from thenceforth this boy was quite unable to tell a lie but was only able to speak the pure words of God’s truth.”
The nurse helped an elderly invalid up from their seat, and the vicar approached them.
“Blessed be Saint Blaizey, and may the power of God help you in your affliction,” intoned the vicar, who touched the man’s throat with the candle cross.
Simon grew increasingly impatient as the vicar worked his way around the group, dispensing blessings at a painfully slow pace.
With the blessings done at last, the organ struck up a hymn that Simon remembered from school.
‘Lo! round the throne, a glorious band,
The Saints in countless myriads stand …’
The choir sung with an exquisite purity of voice. Simon remembered the song from school. He’d always liked the tune of this hymn, and he quietly added his own voice to the others for the final verse.
‘We therefore pray thee, God of love,
Regard us from thy throne above.
On this thy martyr’s triumph day,
Pray wash our stain of sin away.’
It was a beautiful moment, but dismissing profitless sentimentality and taking the opportunity for a quiet exit, Simon leaned down to open his briefcase, took out a plastic bag, and tucked it underneath his seat. After a brief pause, he got up and walked out of the church.
Barely a minute later, Mrs Jackson shuffled over to his pew and sat down. First checking to see if anyone was watching, she then reached down and picked up the plastic bag. It was pleasantly heavy to the touch, and glancing inside, she saw the wads of banknotes. She looked up at the stained-glass windows with the ecstatic look of a martyr to the faith, her thoughts only of the heaven that life was now to be.
Mrs Jackson looked very different when she appeared in the witness box at the Old Bailey a few weeks later. Positively groomed in fact. She was certainly impressing the defendant, Dave Green, a villain whose criminal breeding went back so many generations that Burke’s Peerage would have been impressed if they’d cared to take an interest in such things.
Today, Dave Green was relaxed and smiling. This, he thought, was going to be a good day — courtesy of a solid alibi from the respectable Mrs Jackson. Money very well spent, he was confident of that.
Simon, bewigged and gowned, turned to Mrs Jackson.
“Mrs Jackson, it is agreed that the murder of Tony Hapgood took place at twenty minutes past nine on the night of the twenty-second of November. This date, you will remember — for how could we forget — was the one on which Mrs Thatcher resigned. Mrs Jackson, could you tell me about what you, and Dave, were doing on that night?”
“Well, Dave, that’s Dave Green, he came round my house after work. I’m a widow, you see. And then we spent the evening watching TV. And I do remember the news about Thatcher ’cause Dave can’t stand the woman and he was well pleased.”
“And you can remember, can you not, Mrs Jackson, the times that Dave Green arrived and left your house by the television programmes that you were watching?”
“Yes, he came in just before EastEnders, about five to seven, then he left … he left …”
Mrs Jackson started coughing. She obviously had a tickle in the back of her throat, but struggled on bravely, after taking a sip from a glass of water.
“He left … just after the programme started …”
Pausing for breath, Mrs Jackson was suddenly convulsed with an extremely violent fit of coughing. She grabbed a handkerchief from her pocket, just in time to regurgitate something unpleasant into it. As Mrs Jackson stared down at it in astonishment, Simon — unable for a moment to disguise his disgust — thought he saw a small fishbone.
Closing the handkerchief up in her hand, she struggled to recover her composure. Simon was patient, waiting for a decent interval before checking. “Are you alright to continue, Mrs Jackson?”
Mrs Jackson nodded. He continued.
“And the programme, Mrs Jackson, that had just started when the defendant left. What was that programme?”
“It was the Benny Hill show, which starts at eight o’clock.”
Even as Mrs Jackson was speaking, there was a look of horror on her face at what was coming out of her mouth. The truth and the whole truth, so help me God.
The judge lifted his eyelids. Dave’s face fell so far it looked like a suitable case for demolition. Quite enough time, then, for Dave to have committed the crime.
Dave’s calm composure, so carefully crafted for the jury, was instantly replaced by the customary scowl of a man who’d crippled more men than there were jurors in the room. Dave looked over at Simon, who, to his credit, didn’t even blink.
Simon took a slightly severe tone with Mrs Jackson.
“Are you sure, Mrs Jackson, that you’re not confusing the Benny Hill show with some other programme?”
Mrs Jackson had never been a very strong person, but she knew the value of money, and the prospect of having to account for what she had already half-spent gave her a strength of will that should have been sufficient for any suicide bomber to complete their mission. However, as she struggled to deliver the testimony for which she’d been so handsomely paid, her face started to twitch alarmingly. She then rapidly went through a series of expressions that alternatively suggested that she was having an asthma attack, that she’d just seen a ghost, and finally that she was going to throw up. When the words finally came out it was with the momentum of the launch of a major sea-going vessel.
“It was the Benny Hill Show.”
Simon was in like a knife.
“Think carefully, Mrs Jackson. Could you be getting confused with the Nine o’clock News?”
The Judge saw his chance. For this dusty custodian of the law, who thought he was ‘close to the people’ because he watched a lot of television, this opportunity was too good to miss.
“I’m sure the witness can tell the difference between Benny Hill and the Nine o’clock News, Mr Knevett. Do you have any other questions?”
“No, Mi’lord,” he murmured, admitting defeat. He sat down and stared ahead, seemingly oblivious to the aggressive glare of the horrified Dave and the wild stare of the now terrified Mrs Jackson.
Simon didn’t feel inclined to banter with Susie when he left the Old Bailey, but Susie wasn’t going to let him go.
“Mr Knevett. Here he is. The clever one.”
“Yes, Susie,” he replied politely but wearily.
“This one’s got two words — six letters and five letters. First word starts with a ‘G’. The clue is ‘Sticks in gullet of singing devil’.”
“You should be able to get that Susie.”
“I can’t think.”
“Come on, it’s easy.”
“Can’t get it. Can’t get it.”
“You’ll kick yourself. It’s the gospel … uh … uh …”
Simon was trying to get out a second word, but somehow, it wasn’t coming.
“… truth!” said Susie, finishing the answer for him triumphantly. “The Gospel truth.”
As she began to write the answer into the crossword, she heard Simon begin to cough, and then to choke. Looking up, she saw that Simon’s face had gone an alarmingly salmon colour.
Susie leapt up and gave him a whack between his shoulders so powerful that he was thrown violently forward into the dank little corner that Susie had made home. But he stopped coughing.
Something had been dislodged from his throat onto the pavement. It was a small fishbone.
