Murderers and Other Friends by John Mortimer Read Free Book Online Page B

of the bench arrived I saw an elderly man with a stiff and undoubtedly artificial leg. When I was asked to defend the embarrassing exhibits I put forward a legal argument which I hoped would appeal to that particular tribunal. ‘Some of us,’ I said, ‘stand in need of artificial limbs. Others cannot maintain our erections. There is no reason, either in logic or in law, why some should be helped by mechanical devices and others left to suffer. Furthermore’ – and here I moved to the more respectable part of my submission – ‘these little fellows were made in Denmark. The Treaty of Rome was signed to ensure unrestricted distribution of goods among Common Market members. It’s far better, surely, that the Danes should make and export such articles as these. If we forbid their import there might well spring up, in this fair part of England, a cottage industry for the manufacture of mechanical genitalia. I ask the question, of course, rhetorically but would that be the socially desirable outcome of this difficult and anxious case?’ I sank back in my seat, exhausted. The chairman of the bench conferred briefly with his colleagues and announced that they found all the exhibits ‘totally acceptable’.
    Such cases were among the foolish things that happened in a forgotten age, before unemployment and Aids and the breakup of nations into murderous tribes left us no time to mind about the bollocks at all.
    Advocates are meant to have some sixth sense which enables them to have an immediate insight into the characters of witnesses, detect liars and recognize secret sympathizers. In fact, first appearances are frequently misleading, and so it was in the case of a juryman in the Free Wales Army trial, another strange engagement during my early years as a QC.
    The Public Order Act makes it illegal for a private army to gather, or drill, or wear uniforms in order to subvert the government, or cause people to fear that that is its intention. This was what it was alleged the Free Wales Army had done when half a dozen or so men with varying political beliefs, and a wide range of levels of intelligence, were put on trial at Swansea Assizes. It was not long before the Prince of Wales was to be installed in Caernarvon Castle, wearing a uniform specially designed for him by Lord Snowdon, and kneeling in front of his mother. Dire rumours were abroad suggesting that the Welsh freedom-fighters planned to fly a radio-controlled helicopter full of pig shit over the historic ceremony; its automatic doors would open and the load would be deposited on the royal group. I don’t believe that this fell scheme was ever within the capacity of the army, any more than its other plan of fixing magnetic mines on to Welsh dogs, who would leap at attacking English tanks, stick to them and explode. All the same, the judge seemed anxious to keep the case going until Charles had safely assumed the mantle of the Black Prince. In an effort to show no partiality for England or Wales, the powers that were had chosen a Scottish judge to try the case. Each morning the court was carefully searched for bombs, and when it was declared safe the judge would enter nervously, while the defendants sang some stirring anthem in the Welsh language.
    I was very grateful to the army for introducing me to the beauty of the Gower peninsula, where I lived for many weeks. In the evening the Welsh barristers would entertain us, often singing, to the tune of ‘Bread of Heaven’, the words:
    Bread from Morganses,
    Beef from Evanses,
    Beer from the Royal Oak!
    â€˜Oh, John,’ said one old Welsh QC late at night, ‘tell me honestly. With our beer and our singing shall our profession ever die?’ While Welshmen were prepared to plan military insurrection in the hills, I didn’t think it would.
    The fatal misinterpretation of a juryman’s character happened to me at the start of the trial. In those distant days you were