Chapter One
A Question of Silk
Roger Thursby was counsel for the defendant. The plaintiff was in the witness box. After Roger had cross-examined him for half an hour the judge asked the witness if he would like to sit down.
‘Thank you, my Lord,’ said the plaintiff, and sat down. But he would have preferred to run out of the Court, down the street, and into his mother’s arms, or, at any rate, to someone kind and comforting. Even those who tell the truth in the witness box can have an uncomfortable time there, but the plaintiff had not even a clear conscience to cheer him. He wished he’d never started the action. He’d been warned that there were difficulties. Difficulties! That was a mild word. And now here was one of the ablest counsel at the junior Bar knocking him round the ring till everything was in a haze. If only he could go down for the count. At any rate it would be over then. He asked for a glass of water. That gave him a moment’s breathing space – but only a moment, for the obliging usher brought it all too soon.
‘He needs something a bit stronger,’ said Roger’s opponent, in an undertone. And then, as the witness braced himself for the next blow, temporary relief came to him in a manner he had not anticipated. For, just as Roger said: ‘Come, Mr Frail, you don’t really mean that, do you?’ the judge intervened by saying:
‘Just one moment, Mr Thursby, please.’ The witness wondered if the judge was going to say – as he had said once before – in quiet but ominous tones: ‘Mr Frail, I don’t think you’re doing yourself justice.’ But the judge did not say that or anything like it. Instead, he began: ‘Mr Leonard Seaforth Jones,’ and, before the witness could even start to wonder what Mr Leonard Seaforth Jones had to do with the case, he went on: ‘Her Majesty having been pleased to appoint you one of her counsel learned in the law, will you kindly take your place within the Bar.’
Mr Jones, ordinarily very large and even larger in the regalia of his full-bottomed wig and QC’s ceremonial dress, prised himself with some little difficulty along the front row of counsel’s seats until he was approximately in the middle of the row, and bowed low to the judge. He then turned to his right and bowed to a QC who was standing at that end of the row, then to another QC at the other end and finally he turned round and bowed to the junior Bar. He was just about opposite Roger when he did this, and he and Roger exchanged winks. Then Mr Jones turned round, faced the judge, and sat down.
‘Do you move, Mr Jones?’ said the judge.
For answer, Mr Jones stood up, bowed again and then went, still with some difficulty, along the row and out at the other end, to wait patiently for his colleagues. When they had all gone through the necessary motions in that Court, they would all go to the next Court, where the same process would be repeated. And so on.
The witness eventually became aware that his torture was being interrupted by the final ceremony in the taking of silk.
‘Miss Drusilla Manville, Her Majesty having been pleased to appoint you one of her counsel learned in the law, will you kindly take your place within the Bar.’ An extremely pretty woman, who could not have been more than thirty-five, went through the formalities. As she bowed to Roger, her full-bottomed wig looking curiously old as it hung down her young face, he whispered: ‘It suits you very well, if I may say so.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, as she turned to face the judge again.
Roger suddenly remembered that his mother was in Court and would be wondering what on earth was happening. He scribbled a note, which he sent to her by a junior clerk: ‘I’ll tell you all about it afterwards.’
Ten minutes later he rose to resume his cross-examination of the plaintiff. But by this time the unhappy man had regained his composure sufficiently to indicate that he would like his seconds to throw in the towel.
‘When they reach the glass-of-water stage,’ Roger told one of his pupils later, ‘there’s at least an even chance that the end is near.’
Roger had been called to the Bar just over twelve years and in that time he had made almost as much progress as it is possible for a junior to make. During the ceremony of taking silk, another of the new QCs, when bowing to Roger, had said: ‘You next year?’
Roger shook his head, but not very convincingly, either to the questioner or to himself. He had, in fact, been thinking of applying for silk for some little time. But it was not a decision to be made in a hurry. The work that he had to do as a junior was of several kinds. He did a great deal of paperwork, writing opinions and drafting the technical legal documents required in litigation. Then, quite as important, he acted as midwife, wet-nurse and doctor to a delicate baby case until it became strong and healthy, or, almost as often, strangled it at birth, saying a few words of comfort to the parents. ‘Much better to tell you now why you won’t win than to explain later why you didn’t.’
‘But are you quite sure, Mr Thursby? You won’t mind my saying that our neighbour, who’s a lawyer himself, said that he thought we’d be bound to win and it was he who told me to come to you.’
‘Well,’ Roger had said, ‘I can’t deny that I think part of his advice was excellent.’
The other side of Roger’s practice as a junior was the conduct of cases in Court, when sometimes he would be opposed by a QC and sometimes by another junior. Occasionally, if the case appeared to be an interesting one, his mother came to listen. And so it happened that, for the first time, she saw part of the ceremony of taking silk.
That night, in trying to explain the ceremony to his mother, Roger also discussed with her his own future. ‘Discussed’ is perhaps not quite the correct word. Roger had inherited his father’s brains. He was devoted to his mother, but devotion could not blind him to the fact that her intelligence was strictly limited. Nevertheless he nearly always talked over his problems with her. He never analysed his reasons for doing this, but there were really two. First, the discussion was often more or less a monologue by Roger and in any event it helped him come to a decision. Secondly, they both liked the feeling that, whatever the problem, it was apparently shared between them.
‘You see, mother,’ he said, ‘a man may do awfully well as a junior because his paper work is first-class and he’s good enough, though not spectacular, in Court. If he takes silk, he has to give up his paper work and may be a complete failure as a silk.’
‘Well, dear, why not just become a Queen’s Counsel and give up this idea of taking silk?’
‘Mother, how often have I got to tell you it’s the same thing?’
‘Then really, dear, I don’t know what you’re worrying about. If it were something different, you’d have to choose between the two, but, as they’re both the same, it can’t make any difference, can it, dear? Or have I got something wrong?’
‘When you become a Queen’s Counsel you have a silk gown, mother. That’s why it’s called “taking silk”. Don’t you remember? I really have told you before.’
‘I know, dear. I really will try to remember this time.’
The next day Mrs Thursby was talking to a friend. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘Roger said something to me last night about taking silk.’
‘I’m so glad,’ said her friend, ‘because now you’ll be able to tell me what it means.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Thursby, with some confidence, ‘it means this.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘This is what it means,’ she went on, with slightly less confidence, ‘I’ll tell you.’ Again she stopped.
‘I’m able to tell you,’ she went on, after a pause, ‘because Roger explained it all most carefully to me.’
There was another pause.
‘When you’re at the Bar,’ she continued eventually, but as though she were repeating a lesson she had not quite learned, ‘when you’re at the Bar either you’re a barrister – or you’re not.’ There was a moment’s silence while Mrs Thursby’s friend tried hard to look enlightened. ‘That doesn’t sound quite right,’ said Mrs Thursby.
‘Well, I did wonder,’ said her friend.
‘Because,’ went on Mrs Thursby, ‘if you’re at the Bar you are a barrister, aren’t you? I wonder what Roger meant, because I’m sure he said that, and it sounded so right when he said it.’
‘I expect that’s because he is a barrister,’ said her friend. ‘They’re so convincing even when what they say is wrong.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Mrs Thursby, ‘but I’m sure Roger wouldn’t tell me anything wrong. Just give me a moment, dear. I’m sure it’ll come to me.’
Her friend gave her several moments. Suddenly Mrs Thursby’s face lit up.
‘I remember,’ she said, ‘there are two kinds of barrister. That’s what I meant. When you’re at the Bar you’re either one kind or the other. D’you see, dear?’
‘You mean – like with apples – either Cox’s or Blenheims.’
‘Oh – no,’ said Mrs Thursby. ‘There are lots of kinds of apples. More like grapes – either muscats or the others.’
‘And which kind is Roger?’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Thursby, ‘that’s what I’ve forgotten.’
It was perhaps rather too much for Mrs Thursby to remember that barristers are divided into juniors and Queen’s Counsel, and that, as a general rule, the work of a Queen’s Counsel is mostly confined to appearing in Court. Roger had explained to her years before, in fact soon after he was called, that being a junior did not necessarily mean that you were young or inexperienced. ‘Some of the juniors in the Chancery Division have beards, mother,’ he had told her.
‘Your father had a beard once, Roger,’ his mother had replied. ‘I’ll find the photograph.’
‘And some juniors become judges without ever taking silk, you know,’ Roger had continued, while his mother was searching in a drawer.
‘Here it is,’ she had said a moment later. ‘It was red – until he shaved it off – but, of course, the colour doesn’t show there.’
About nine months after he had talked about silk to his mother, Roger talked very seriously to his clerk on the subject. Donald Pirbright had been his clerk for over eleven years. Roger had served his year’s pupillage with a Mr Grimes and had then gone to other chambers. The clerk in the new chambers was Donald and, during the eleven years, there had grown up between Roger and his clerk the usual indefinable but close relationship which exists between a barrister and his clerk. Donald was an excellent clerk and, like all excellent clerks, he had his idiosyncrasies; they are not called faults in the Temple. When Roger arrived at his chambers in the morning, Donald would call him ‘sir.’ In the afternoon, after a visit or two to one of his favourite haunts, he would be more likely to say ‘sir, sir,’ or even ‘sir, sir, sir,’ and by the evening, as often as not, he called him ‘Roger.’ The discussion about silk was in the late afternoon.
‘Well,’ said Roger, ‘what about it? Do I or don’t I?’
‘Next year,’ said Donald.
‘What’s the point of waiting? Bullet and Angel are applying.’
‘Sir, sir. Please don’t mention Mr Bullet and Mr Angel. Not in the same breath as yourself, sir. Sir, really. Bullet and Angel. Sir, sir, sir.’
‘Bullet’s not at all bad,’ said Roger.
‘Bullet,’ said Donald, ‘Mr Bullet, I beg his pardon, is bloody hopeless.’
‘Anyway, he’ll get it.’
‘Sir, sir sir, don’t come that one on me. Of course he’ll get it. He’s an MP. They get it automatically.’
‘But why should I wait, anyway?’ asked Roger. ‘What’s the advantage of waiting? Or are you frightened?’
‘Now, sir,’ said Donald, as sternly as his recent visits to The Feathers would allow, ‘now, sir, my clerk’s fees don’t mean a thing. You know that. I’m surprised at you, sir. I really am.’
Every time that Roger received a fee his clerk received one too. It is not certain who invented the practice, but Roger had thought more than once that there should be a statue in the Temple to the man who had thought of the brilliant idea which resulted in a barrister’s clerk being paid not by his employer but by the client. The clerks might perhaps subscribe to a second statue, nestling under the shadow of the first, to the band of heroes among the clerks who, after the 1939-45 war, successfully established the practice by which a barrister pays the shillings in his guineas to the clerk. The idea was not a new one, but it was only after the war that there was a concerted attack on the Bar by the clerks, who, without a shot fired, achieved their object. When barristers and clerks were reunited after the war they naturally discussed their respective adventures during the war and then, as it were by a prearranged signal, in every set of chambers the clerk would say in an almost off-hand way: ‘Oh, by the way, sir, we now have the shillings in the guineas.’
A pause.
‘That all right with you, sir? They’re all doing it, sir.’
Victory was complete almost immediately. A few waverers wandered uncertainly and self-consciously about the Temple for a week or two, but they soon felt that they were being regarded as outcasts and within a very short time: ‘Oh, Bernard, I’ve been thinking about the matter you mentioned the other day.’
‘Matter, sir, matter?’
‘You know – the shillings in the guineas.’
‘Oh – that, sir.’
A pause.
‘Well, sir?’
‘All right, Bernard, I give in.’
‘Thank you very much, sir. They’re all doing it, really, sir.’
And they all were. And are.
When Donald said that his clerk’s fees didn’t mean a thing, he really meant it. Naturally he would have been sorry for himself as well as for Roger if, when he took silk, his practice declined and with it the clerk’s fees and the shillings. But thoughts of that possibility were not uppermost in his mind and he was thinking almost entirely of Roger’s interests.
‘Well, why on earth d’you want me to wait, then? I’m working sixteen hours a day, weekends included. I don’t get time for a thing. I’ve about had enough. I haven’t even had time to get married.’
‘Sir, sir, sir,’ said Donald. ‘That’s nothing to do with time. Find the lady and you’ll find the time.’
‘But I haven’t time to find the lady. If I’m working for you all night and all day, how can I? No, really, Donald, it’s not good enough. And anyway, you still haven’t said what there is to wait for. I’m making ten thousand a year. If you think I won’t get on as a silk at all, for Heaven’s sake say so. I shan’t take any notice, but do say so.’
‘Get on, sir, get on? Of course, you’ll get on. I’ll tell you something else, sir. You won’t be a silk for more than five or six years – that’s if you want to go up. I’m not sure if I’d come with you myself if you go on the Bench. We’d have to ask Henry – Mr Blagrove.’
Henry Blagrove was the head of Roger’s chambers. He was seven or eight years older than Roger and was as indolent by nature as Roger was energetic. But his charming and determined wife, Sally, had spurred him into a little more activity and he had eventually taken silk. He was extremely able and, as a silk, he had just about the size practice he wanted. Sally was a solicitor, but she had given up practice to have babies and Roger was godfather of their first. Theirs was a very happy set of chambers. If Roger became a High Court judge, Donald could have gone with him as clerk or stayed with Henry, and it was a difficult choice to make. However, that was a long way ahead at the moment.
‘Well, if I’m going to get on as a silk, why not now? Tell me that.’
‘All right, sir, if that’s how you want it – now it shall be. All the same, I’d have liked to have seen another year’s junior work behind you.’
‘You wouldn’t have to do it, Donald,’ said Roger. ‘You can play golf and take your wife out, while I sit sweating at home. Now we’ll reverse the process. I can sit twiddling my thumbs while you search the highways and byways to find me a brief.’
‘Search the highways, my foot,’ said Donald.
‘That’s really all I wanted to know,’ said Roger. ‘P’raps you’d turn up the Law List and tell me all the people I’ve got to write to. How many d’you think there’ll be?’
Roger now had the task of writing to every practising junior on his circuit, who was senior to him in call, to inform him of his intention to apply to the Lord Chancellor for the purpose of taking silk, so that they could apply also if they wanted to do so. It was a task to which he looked forward. It meant that he had made up his mind. It was a risk undoubtedly, but it was worth it. The only question now was whether the Lord Chancellor would give it him first time. He was certainly young – thirty-three – but there was no doubt about the size and quality of his practice. He did not think that he would receive – as some promising juniors had received in the past – a polite note with ‘next time’ on it. Anyway, if he did, the decision would have been made for him. That night he wrote a letter to the Permanent Secretary to the Lord Chancellor:
I shall be grateful if you will place before the Lord Chancellor this my application to be considered for appointment as one of Her Majesty’s Counsel.
He showed it to his mother.
‘How many QCs are there, dear?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know – altogether, I suppose, about three to four hundred, but I should say that only about half of them practise.’
‘The Queen must have a lot of cases to need all those counsel.’
Roger did his best to explain.
‘You make it all sound very clear,’ said his mother.
‘Good,’ said Roger.
‘But I’m afraid,’ she went on, ‘I still don’t understand. All the same, I’m glad you’ll be one of them. But don’t ask her too many questions.’
Some little time was to elapse before the Lord Chancellor’s decision would be known and meantime Roger carried on with his ordinary work. But he did so in a much happier frame of mind. He could see the way ahead and there would be some time in it for other things besides law. He was very cheerful when he lunched next day at the Inn he used for the purpose. He usually sat with the same people, though he could never quite think why. Probably it was habit. They had been his neighbours when he first lunched in that Hall some years ago before and it seemed rude to sit elsewhere. In any event, lunch did not take long. The conversation during it was usually on the same lines. Arnold Carruthers, who sat opposite him, was a barrister of a good many years’ experience. He found it helped him to discuss his professional problems with other people and almost invariably he would begin, as soon as he decently could – and sometimes before: ‘Look, I’m an actress of uncertain age and not much talent. I get knocked down by a bus. What’s it worth? I couldn’t act much before the accident. Can’t act at all now.’
Sometimes it would be a point of law. ‘Look, the Court of Appeal in Lea and Moore seem to have said that you can’t try a case in the County Court by consent unless it first started in the High Court. I’m referring, of course, to cases which are outside the normal jurisdiction. But they only looked at Section 43. They never once referred to Section 65. Now, I think–’ And Carruthers would elaborate his point and try to obtain the opinions of those around him. If he was lucky someone would point out that a new Act did away with the effect of the decision.
Another of Roger’s neighbours had a very small practice, a reasonable private income, and a fund of undergraduate stories. He began on this occasion with: ‘D’you know this one? There was a girl with a rather short skirt standing in a bus. The conductor gave her a ticket, but she dropped it. “Will it matter?” she asked the conductor. Have you heard it by the way?’
‘Only once or twice,’ said his immediate neighbour, ‘and not for a very long time.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose Thursby knows it. He’s never heard any of them.’
‘No, I haven’t, as a matter of fact,’ said Roger politely, ‘but it’ll probably be above my head.’
‘Oh, no – not this one. Well – the conductor turned to the girl and said–’
At that moment Carruthers arrived.
‘Look, so sorry to butt in, but I’ve got rather a teaser. D’you mind? I’m a stable boy at a well-known racing stable–’
‘Got anything for the Derby?’
‘No, look, this is serious–’
‘Then the girl said: “But how shall I know if it’s the right ticket?” Then the conductor turned to the girl and said–’
‘And while I’m out exercising a horse which I haven’t ridden before–’
‘Hullo, Roger, they tell me you’re applying for silk.’
‘But I’ve only just posted the letter–’
‘Good news travels fast.’
‘Then the girl turned to a passenger and said: “I wonder if you’d mind–”’
‘Now this horse was well known to the trainer to be difficult, but I didn’t know it. Now, while I’m on this brute–’
‘Good news! If I get it first time, I expect I’ll be in the bread line.’
‘Rubbish – I hear Forsythe’s applied.’
‘Is there anything confidential you don’t know?’
‘Confidential be blowed. I bet you’ve written to at least thirty people on your circuit.’
‘More, if you want to know.’
‘Well, you can’t expect them all to keep quiet about it.’
‘Then the girl said–’
‘As I fell on the ground the trainer arrived and cursed me. What he actually said was–’
And so on and so forth, what the girl said, how the conductor turned, why the stable boy fell, what the trainer called him, interspersed with the latest gossip and a few polite inquiries. And lunch in Hall was over.
