Read Online A Certain Justice by P. D. James - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: P. D. James
Ads: Link
Langton, had from his birth intended him to be a lawyer. Despite the name, with its overtones of ecclesiastical eminence, the family had been poor; his great-grandfather had kept a small hardware shop in Sudbury in Suffolk, his great-grandmother had been in service with an aristocratic Suffolk family. They managed, but there was never money to spare. But their only child had been highly intelligent, ambitious and determined to be a lawyer. Scholarships had been won, sacrifices made, the family at the great house where his mother had worked had given their patronage. At the age of twenty-four Matthew Langton had been admitted to the Middle Temple.
And now memory, like a searchlight, moved with seemingly deliberate intent over the wasteland of Hubert’s life, paused to illumine with shadow-less clarity a moment in time which for a second was fixed and motionless and then, as if activated by some click of recollection, moved on again. Himself at the age of ten, walking through Middle Temple Gardens with his grandfather, trying to match his steps to the old man’s longer stride, hearing the roll call of famous names, men who had been members of their ancient society: Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Burke, the American patriot John Dickinson, the Lord Chancellors, the Lord Chief Justices, the writers — John Evelyn, Henry Fielding, William Cowper, De Quincey, Thackeray. He and his grandfather would pause at every building to identify it by the badge assigned to the Templars: the Paschal Lamb carrying the banner of innocence set in a red cross on a white nimbus ground. He remembered his triumph when he discovered it above a door or on a water pipe. He was told the history, the legends. Together they counted the goldfish in the pool in Fountain Court and stood hand in hand under the four-hundred-year-old double hammer-beamed roof of Middle Temple Hall. And here, in those childhood years, he had imbibed the history, the romance, the proud traditions of this ancient society, and had known that one day he would be part of it.
He must have been aged eight, perhaps even younger, when his grandfather first showed him the Temple Church. They had walked together between the thirteenth-century effigies of the knights, and he had learned their names by heart as if they were friends: William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, and his sons William and Gilbert. William the Marshall had been adviser to King John before Magna Carta. Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, with his cylindrical helmet. Hubert would recite the names in his high childish voice, pleasing his grandfather by this act of memory and, greatly daring, laying small hands on the cold stone as if these flat impassive faces held some secret to which he was heir. The church had outlived them and their turbulent lives as it would outlive him. It would survive the ceaseless battering of the millennium against its walls as it had survived that night of 10 May 1941, when the flames had roared with the tongues of an advancing army, the chapel had become a furnace, the marble pillars had cracked and the roof had exploded in a burst of fire to fall in blazing shards over the effigies. Then it had seemed that seven hundred years of history were falling in flames. But the pillars had been replaced, the effigies repaired, new stalls were ranked in collegiate order where once there had been Victorian woodwork, and Lord Glentanar had given his splendid Harrison organ to replace the one destroyed.
Now in his own old age, Hubert suspected that his grandfather had tried to discipline his passionate pride in the career he had achieved, his veneration for the ancient society of which he was part, and that only with the child had he felt free to express emotions, of the strength of which he was half ashamed. He had told his stories with little embellishment, but as the fervid imagination of adolescence had replaced the simple acceptance of childhood, Hubert had clothed history with
And now memory, like a searchlight, moved with seemingly deliberate intent over the wasteland of Hubert’s life, paused to illumine with shadow-less clarity a moment in time which for a second was fixed and motionless and then, as if activated by some click of recollection, moved on again. Himself at the age of ten, walking through Middle Temple Gardens with his grandfather, trying to match his steps to the old man’s longer stride, hearing the roll call of famous names, men who had been members of their ancient society: Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Burke, the American patriot John Dickinson, the Lord Chancellors, the Lord Chief Justices, the writers — John Evelyn, Henry Fielding, William Cowper, De Quincey, Thackeray. He and his grandfather would pause at every building to identify it by the badge assigned to the Templars: the Paschal Lamb carrying the banner of innocence set in a red cross on a white nimbus ground. He remembered his triumph when he discovered it above a door or on a water pipe. He was told the history, the legends. Together they counted the goldfish in the pool in Fountain Court and stood hand in hand under the four-hundred-year-old double hammer-beamed roof of Middle Temple Hall. And here, in those childhood years, he had imbibed the history, the romance, the proud traditions of this ancient society, and had known that one day he would be part of it.
He must have been aged eight, perhaps even younger, when his grandfather first showed him the Temple Church. They had walked together between the thirteenth-century effigies of the knights, and he had learned their names by heart as if they were friends: William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, and his sons William and Gilbert. William the Marshall had been adviser to King John before Magna Carta. Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, with his cylindrical helmet. Hubert would recite the names in his high childish voice, pleasing his grandfather by this act of memory and, greatly daring, laying small hands on the cold stone as if these flat impassive faces held some secret to which he was heir. The church had outlived them and their turbulent lives as it would outlive him. It would survive the ceaseless battering of the millennium against its walls as it had survived that night of 10 May 1941, when the flames had roared with the tongues of an advancing army, the chapel had become a furnace, the marble pillars had cracked and the roof had exploded in a burst of fire to fall in blazing shards over the effigies. Then it had seemed that seven hundred years of history were falling in flames. But the pillars had been replaced, the effigies repaired, new stalls were ranked in collegiate order where once there had been Victorian woodwork, and Lord Glentanar had given his splendid Harrison organ to replace the one destroyed.
Now in his own old age, Hubert suspected that his grandfather had tried to discipline his passionate pride in the career he had achieved, his veneration for the ancient society of which he was part, and that only with the child had he felt free to express emotions, of the strength of which he was half ashamed. He had told his stories with little embellishment, but as the fervid imagination of adolescence had replaced the simple acceptance of childhood, Hubert had clothed history with
Similar Books
