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Authors: P. D. James
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himself in the stall on the cantoris side in which he had sat Sunday after Sunday for nearly forty years, and let the weariness and ennui which had threatened him all day take undisputed possession.
“Seventy-two is not old.” He spoke the words aloud but they fell on the unencumbered air less as a small defiant affirmation than as a thin wail of desperation. Was it really possible that that appalling moment over the road in Court Twelve only three weeks earlier could have robbed him of so much in one moment? The memory of it, the agony of it, was with him almost every waking minute. Now his body became stiff with remembered terror.
He had been in the middle of his closing arguments in a case which had been more forensically interesting than difficult, a lucrative brief from an international company, and a case concerned as much with establishing a point of law as with any dramatic conflict of interests. In one second, with no warning, language deserted him. The words he next wanted to speak were not there, neither in his mind nor on his tongue. The familiar court in which he had appeared for over forty years became an alien cockpit of terror. He could remember nothing, not the name of the judge or of the parties, not the name of his junior or of opposing counsel. There was a half-minute when it seemed that every breath was stilled, every eye in the court was bent on him with surprise, contempt or curiosity. He managed somehow to finish his sentence and sit down. At least he could still read. The written words still conveyed a meaning. He took up his brief with hands which were shaking so violently that they must have signalled his distress to the whole court. But no one spoke, nothing was said. After a little pause and a glance at him, the opposing counsel got to his feet.
But it mustn’t happen again. He couldn’t live again through that embarrassment, that panic. He had been to his general practitioner, had spoken in general terms of lapses of short-term memory, of a fear that this could be a symptom of something worse. He had forced himself to speak the dreaded word, Alzheimer’s. The subsequent physical examination revealed nothing abnormal. The doctor spoke reassuringly about overwork, the need to take things more gently, the advisability of a holiday. The connectors of his brain were getting less efficient with age; that was to be expected. He was reminded of the words of Dr. Johnson: “If a young man mislays his hat he says he has mislaid his hat. The old man says, ‘I have lost my hat. I must be getting old.’ ” He suspected that this anecdote was offered as reassurance to all elderly patients. He had received no reassurance; he had expected none.
Yes, it was time to retire. He hadn’t intended to commit himself to Drysdale Laud, had regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. He had been precipitate. But he had been wiser than he knew. It was right to give way to a younger man as Head of Chambers. Or a younger woman. Drysdale or Venetia, it hardly mattered to him which of them succeeded him. And how much did he himself want to go on? Even Chambers had changed. It was now less a band of brothers than the convenient, if over-crowded, set of rooms in which men and women lived their separate professional lives, sometimes not meeting for weeks. He lamented the old days, when he was first a member and there was less specialization, when colleagues would saunter into each other’s rooms to discuss a brief or the nicer points of law, to seek advice and rehearse arguments. A gentler world. Now the systems men had taken over with their calculators, their technology, their managerial obsession with results. Wouldn’t he be better out of it? But where was he to go? For him there was no world elsewhere, no place except that quadrilateral of narrow streets and courts where the ghost of a small boy, with his romantic dreams, his naïve ambitions, walked through the Middle Temple.
His grandfather, Matthew
“Seventy-two is not old.” He spoke the words aloud but they fell on the unencumbered air less as a small defiant affirmation than as a thin wail of desperation. Was it really possible that that appalling moment over the road in Court Twelve only three weeks earlier could have robbed him of so much in one moment? The memory of it, the agony of it, was with him almost every waking minute. Now his body became stiff with remembered terror.
He had been in the middle of his closing arguments in a case which had been more forensically interesting than difficult, a lucrative brief from an international company, and a case concerned as much with establishing a point of law as with any dramatic conflict of interests. In one second, with no warning, language deserted him. The words he next wanted to speak were not there, neither in his mind nor on his tongue. The familiar court in which he had appeared for over forty years became an alien cockpit of terror. He could remember nothing, not the name of the judge or of the parties, not the name of his junior or of opposing counsel. There was a half-minute when it seemed that every breath was stilled, every eye in the court was bent on him with surprise, contempt or curiosity. He managed somehow to finish his sentence and sit down. At least he could still read. The written words still conveyed a meaning. He took up his brief with hands which were shaking so violently that they must have signalled his distress to the whole court. But no one spoke, nothing was said. After a little pause and a glance at him, the opposing counsel got to his feet.
But it mustn’t happen again. He couldn’t live again through that embarrassment, that panic. He had been to his general practitioner, had spoken in general terms of lapses of short-term memory, of a fear that this could be a symptom of something worse. He had forced himself to speak the dreaded word, Alzheimer’s. The subsequent physical examination revealed nothing abnormal. The doctor spoke reassuringly about overwork, the need to take things more gently, the advisability of a holiday. The connectors of his brain were getting less efficient with age; that was to be expected. He was reminded of the words of Dr. Johnson: “If a young man mislays his hat he says he has mislaid his hat. The old man says, ‘I have lost my hat. I must be getting old.’ ” He suspected that this anecdote was offered as reassurance to all elderly patients. He had received no reassurance; he had expected none.
Yes, it was time to retire. He hadn’t intended to commit himself to Drysdale Laud, had regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. He had been precipitate. But he had been wiser than he knew. It was right to give way to a younger man as Head of Chambers. Or a younger woman. Drysdale or Venetia, it hardly mattered to him which of them succeeded him. And how much did he himself want to go on? Even Chambers had changed. It was now less a band of brothers than the convenient, if over-crowded, set of rooms in which men and women lived their separate professional lives, sometimes not meeting for weeks. He lamented the old days, when he was first a member and there was less specialization, when colleagues would saunter into each other’s rooms to discuss a brief or the nicer points of law, to seek advice and rehearse arguments. A gentler world. Now the systems men had taken over with their calculators, their technology, their managerial obsession with results. Wouldn’t he be better out of it? But where was he to go? For him there was no world elsewhere, no place except that quadrilateral of narrow streets and courts where the ghost of a small boy, with his romantic dreams, his naïve ambitions, walked through the Middle Temple.
His grandfather, Matthew
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