In the novel the law confronts profoundly and sincerely held religious beliefs. Fiona Maye is a high-court judge fifty-nine years old. She is the Duty Judge, who deals with any kind of legal emergency, when somebody needs a rapid decision. The duty lasts for a week at a time.
In the instant case, the boy almost eighteen, needs a blood transfusion to save him, but he is refusing it on religious grounds as he is a Jehovah’s Witness. The hospital can’t proceed against the will of the patient, for it would be tantamount to criminal assault.
Judge Fiona Maye decides to visit the boy to ascertain his state of mind; though unorthodox, the procedure is not without precedent. But this sets off emotional consequences in Adam Henry, the boy, and novel follows the ensuing chain of events arising out of the meeting. Her own childlessness plays into Fiona Maye’s own emotional attachment.
She is compassionate and self-sufficient as a person, very rational as judges ought to be, indifferent to religion but respectful of people’s beliefs. She feels for the boy, and admires his artistic abilities, and his creativity in music and poetry. But like many rational people she is unable to weigh up her own personal problems. She begins to see in the boy the child she never had. The novel is about the boy as much as the judge.
The case turns on the Children Act of 1989, and hence the name. In its very first clause the Act says:
“When a court determines any question with respect to the upbringing of a child, the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.”
The child’s welfare is central – not the parent’s needs or the parents’ faith.
In an interview Ian McEwan speaks of a judge by the name of Alan Ward who did preside over a Jehovah’s Witness case. Judge Ward did go and visit the boy who was a ward of the court. Alan Ward went to the boy’s bedside, and they talked about football non-stop. Judge Ward ruled that the hospital could treat against the boy’s will. The boy made a recovery. Later Judge Ward took him to a Manchester United match, and the boy met all his football heroes. Seven or eight years later, the judge learned as a footnote in the papers, that in his twenties the boy got ill again, went to the hospital, and died there, refusing the transfusion. Alan Ward told the story to Ian McEwan while they were waiting for a concert to begin, and McEwan thought what a gift this was – he had actually heard the essence of a short novel – it rarely happens like that.
At the April meeting we will read Shakespeare, as usual; it will take place on April 23, his birthday. KumKum asked about Betty Kurien, Professor at St Theresa’s College. Her daughter, Chanchal, can fix her up for Zoom to attend our meeting, said Geetha. She lives close to the Pastoral Orientation Centre (POC) near where Shoba lives. Betty Kurien came for the 450th anniversary of WS’ birthday which KRG celebrated as a public occasion seven years ago, and twice for our Romantics Poets gathering. Devika said she was her professor, an excellent teacher.
KumKum requested Thommo, Geetha, Talitha, and Shoba to sing songs from Shakespeare’s plays. One should start reading the next novel which is rather long: Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence slated for May 2021.
Arundhaty – Introduction to The Children Act
Ian Russell McEwan is an English novelist and screenwriter. He is listed among the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Ian McEwan was born on 21 June in 1948 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He spent much of his childhood in the Far East, Germany and North Africa where his father was posted as an officer in the army.
He returned to England and read English at Sussex University. After graduating, he became the first student enrolled in the Creative Writing MA course established at the University of East Anglia by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999.
Ian McEwan’s works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), the Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). Atonement was also made into film and won the Oscar award for the best original score (Music) and the Globe award for Best Motion Picture (Drama).
In 2006, Ian McEwan won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year. The novel Solar won The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction in 2010 and Sweet Tooth won the Paddy Power Political Fiction Book of the Year award . In 2014 . In 2016 he was awarded the Bodleian Medal.
McEwan has never failed to commend his first and only writing teacher, Malcolm Bradbury, as the source of his confidence as a writer. At the Booker Prize announcement ceremony he found himself in a deserted hall and “coming towards me, from some distance away, were Malcolm and his wife, Elizabeth, … we approached each other as in dream, and I remember thinking, half seriously, that this was what it might be like to be dead. In the warmth of his embrace was concentrated all the generosity of this gifted teacher and writer.”
The citation of the Goethe Medal awarded to him in 2020 read:
“His literary work is imbued with the essence of contradiction and with critical, deeply psychological reflection on phenomena that affect society as a whole, such as climate change, artificial intelligence and morality in science. Despite the harsh attacks he is often subjected to in his own country, he campaigns against narrow-minded nationalism and is a passionate pro-European.”
To commemorate the Goethe Medal, the Goethe Institut commissioned artist Lukas Jüliger to create four illustrations depicting a journey through Ian McEwan's books and the recurring motifs within them; one of these works is featured on the Ian McEwan Website.
McEwan’s early pieces were notorious for their dark themes and perverse, even gothic, material. He was called ‘Ian Macabre.’ The controversy surrounding the extreme subject matter of the first four works (which are concerned with paedophilia, murder, incest and violence) was exacerbated by their troubling narrative framework.
McEwan’s subsequent writing has moved away from such disquieting themes, but he continues to explore the impact on ordinary people of unusual or extreme situations.
In 2002, McEwan discovered that he had a half-brother who had been given up for adoption during the Second World War; the story became public in 2007. The brother was a bricklayer named David Sharp, born six years earlier than McEwan, when their mother was married to a different man.
Ian McEwan was appointed to the CBE in the 2000 New Year Honours list.
Several of his novels have been turned into films:
Atonement, On Chesil Beach, The Children Act, The Cement Garden, Enduring Love, The Child in Time, The Comfort of Strangers, The Innocent, Solid Geometry, The Good Son, The Unbelievers.
He married Annalena McAfee (m. 1997), and Penny Allen (m. 1982–1995). He has children: Gregory McEwan, and William McEwan.
Ian McEwan was interviewed by Anil Dharker at the Tata Literature Live! on Nov 16, 2020, starting at minute 24:28 at the Youtube site below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEDnVBIjPVg
This biography relies on Wikipedia and other sources.
Thommo
Thommo used the Google Play link Joe gave to watch the film of the novel. One of the changes from the novel, he said, was that Adam Henry took up the guitar, not the violin as in the novel – appropriate because the guitar would have been far easier for him to learn. Another change is that in the novel the last Fiona sees of Adam is the kiss in Carlisle, but in the film she goes to see him when he is dying in the hospital. The setting of the book is at an earlier period than in the film. The way Thommo caught this was that in the novel Justice Maye moves around in a Bentley, (“The car she reclined in was a 1960s Bentley, ”) whereas in the film she uses a Lexus. The novel indicates that the Bentley would be replaced by a Vauxhall in the coming years, a brand that is no longer in production, said Thommo. Some of these replacements could be explained by which brand was willing to pay to be featured in the film. Thommo’s customary acuity about cars was once more in evidence.
Thommo read the passage where Jack declares he wants one big passionate affair before relapsing into senile stupor. The time to propose an open marriage was before the wedding not 35 years later as Fiona ponders:
“She had the power to remove a child from an unkind parent and she sometimes did. But remove herself from an unkind husband? When she was weak and desolate? Where was her protective judge?”
Thommo having studied statistics himself wanted to read one sentence following this passage about Jack’s new-found paramour:
“A pretty statistician working on the diminishing probability of a man returning to an embittered wife.”
Geetha says the passage is testament to the saying, men are from Mars and women from Venus. It’s the name of a book by John Gray where the problems in relationships between men and women are shown to be governed by their give and take, but different methods are used in scoring by men and women.
Devika
Devika sensed a great deal of loneliness in this book. Fiona has no child and her husband has left her. It is really sad, and so Devika thought of reading the passage where childlessness is the unplanned result of her early successes at the bar, the need to work long hours, then Jack encouraging her to defer pregnancy, and later the fear in her forties that a child might become autistic:
“And in her forties, there sprang up anxieties about elderly gravids and autism.”
And once she took her oath of office after being chosen a Judge she knew she had become a ‘bride of the law’ even as once nuns who took vows became ‘brides of Christ.’ Coming to the present situation she ruminates:
“here was her punishment, to face this disaster alone, without sensible grown-up children, concerned and phoning, downing tools and rallying round for urgent kitchen-table conferences, talking sense to their stupid father, bringing him back.”
KumKum remarked on the white top Priya wore; she got it from Cottage Emporium in Janpath, New Delhi, meeting Nirmala Sitaraman there, who was shopping for a Rajasthani saree. KumKum thought Ms Sitharaman (Finance Minister of India) looks lovely in her grey hair now.
Arundhaty
Justice Fiona Maye is interrogating the leukemia patient Adam Henry in hospital. She wants to make him aware that dying could be the more fortunate outcome. Consider the more miserable outcome:
“You could lose your sight, you could suffer brain damage or your kidneys could go. Would it please God to have you blind or stupid and on dialysis for the rest of your life?”
He is upset, because nobody had pointed this out to him – not a martyr’s death, but life as a cripple could be the outcome. This was a book Arundhaty had picked up for reading two years ago when Reggie was alive, to keep herself busy, for they had stopped going out. She found later Ian McEwan was an author of great distinction with many awards to his credit. KumKum said as an author he has also written the screenplays for several of his novels that have been turned into films – yet another source of earning for him. Priya has read his novel Atonement, which she thought was even better; it was also made into a film.
Geeta
In her passage Adam Henry recites a poem in hospital and Fiona Maye offers an appreciation. Adam mentions that his dad thought the poem would have a great effect on the congregation of believers when published after his death in the society’s magazine, The Watchtower. When Fiona Maye wonders whether poets have to suffer to excel, Adam replies:
“I think all great poets must suffer.”
Priya asked if the rule of life among Jehovah’s Witnesses is even now the same. Nearly all Jehovah’s Witnesses (~7.5m active members worldwide) continue to refuse transfusions of whole blood (including preoperative autologous donation) and the primary blood components – red cells, platelets, white cells and plasma. KumKum mentioned an encounter with two persons, a well-dressed young man and woman, from the sect who came to her home saying they would save her. How? – she asked. They said by introducing her to Jesus. KumKum answered she has already been introduced, and she would be delighted to introduce them if they cared, whereupon they left.
Geetha
Geetha also selected the meeting of Fiona Maye with Adam. It is not surprising that so many readers thought the encounter between Judge Fiona Maye and Adam Henry in the hospital was central to the story. It is poignant how the relationship was built by her taking the unusual step of halting the court proceedings to get a first-hand grasp of the boy’s mind and his understanding of the grave situation he was in. The meeting seals their bond. Adam Henry who had been learning the violin only for a short while plays a tune Fiona Maye knew well from her past recitals: a sad and lovely melody, a traditional Irish air, to which the composer Benjamin Britten had set the Yeats poem titled Down by the Salley Gardens.
Down by the salley gardens
my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens
with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy,
as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish,
with her would not agree.
In a field by the river
my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder
she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy,
as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish,
and now am full of tears.
You can hear a good rendition here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GnVf9SqB5Q
In the film Emma Thompson shows she has an excellent voice when she renders this version of the poem as a song in an encore.
Joe
Joe remarked that what Justice Maye did, as narrated in Geetha’s reading, was unusual. She did not violate any judicial protocol, but took time out from the court hearing to inform herself better about the complexities of the case relating to the parents, the son, and what the law demanded. She wished to ascertain the mind of different people. She wanted to meet the boy to know whether he understood everything about his condition, his treatment, and the future that awaited him in either case. She dealt with him quite sensitively at his bedside – not officiously but coming down to his level to understand him as a person and learn what was going on in his mind. She does this, less as a judge observing him from on high, and more as a compassionate listener. It is a signal part of this book.
Priya interrupted to say: “That is all very well, Joe, but what about the kiss?” Joe replied that is not part of his reading and not his problem to address therefore. KumKum said she would take up the kissing matter.
In the reading Justice Maye has returned to the court to deliver the judgment. And as is usual, the judge recapitulates the arguments pro and con, highlights the principles underlying the case, and then concludes with the judgement. Since
“his parents and the elders of the church have made a decision which is hostile to A’s welfare, which is this court’s paramount consideration, … I overrule the wishes of A and his parents,” she declares.
The passage is the most tightly argued piece of prose in the book and owes a great deal to the research Ian McEwan conducted into the legal precedents. In Justice Maye's judgement reference is made to a case which guided her, a prior decision by Justice Alan Ward. In the acknowledgments at the end of the novel the same judge is thanked by Ian McEwan. In one of his interviews McEwan says he owes this book entirely to a conversation he had with Justice Ward. By the time Ward had narrated in extenso the two cases relating to Jehovah’s Witnesses refusing transfusion, he said he knew he had the germ of a novel, which became The Children Act. Subsequently Justice Ward (retired by then) made available documents and access to the courts for the film. Ian McEwan submitted the draft of his novel for reading by Justice Ward and accepted many corrections – so it’s a well-researched book in its legal aspects. It’s part of his craft that the author expended so much effort in getting the legal arguments right, and how courts view cases, weighing the pros and cons.
Joe said he is fond of judges who give reasoned and precise arguments. There are a few such cases in Indian courts also that have attained great fame. He referred to the sole dissenting opinion of Justice H.R Khanna in the case when a 4-1 majority decided that PM Indira Gandhi, could suspend constitutionally guaranteed rights by declaring an Emergency. However, Justice Khanna argued:
“The Constitution and the laws of India do not permit life and liberty to be at the mercy of the absolute power of the Executive …”
Justice Khanna developed the Basic Structure Doctrine, sometimes called the four corners of the Constitution, whereby no law passed in Parliament can be allowed to breach the core structure of the Indian Constitution. Joe’s divagations on the law were cut short mercifully by KumKum.
Zakia
In Zakia’s passage the parents are happy they have their son back, alive – yet are themselves blameless in the eyes of their congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is the courts that decided their son must live, not they.
“What a relief! We’ve still got our son even though we said he must die. Our son the cake!”
The parents reflect that the cake is still in your hand even though you’ve just eaten it.
Gopa
Gopa said the novel is about a middle-aged lady, a judge, and an error she makes in handling the case. Priya asked what is the error – is it the kiss near the end? No, said Gopa and continued. She goes to visit the boy; that’s quite alright. But at a certain point Justice Maye gets up when he starts playing the violin, and decides to sing. That is the point at which the Cafcass (see below) lady, Marina Greene, who accompanied Justice Maye becomes a bit uncomfortable. It is then that Adam Henry becomes star-struck by Justice Maye and wants her as his role-model and mentor in life. An inter-personal relationship begins. But how is that an error, inquired Priya again. Again Gopa said no, that is not the error.
The error is when Justice Maye gets a letter from Adam Henry, she should have handed over the letter to Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. She does not do so, but keeps the letter, and does not reply to it personally, to shield herself from an intrusion into her privacy. She could have replied in a nice way but Gopa claims that to do so, without informing Cafcass, would have been ‘illegal.’ So although she was a good human being and an excellent judge this mistake of hers, leaves the boy in limbo. Whereas Cafcass could have helped in many ways by putting the boy in touch with educators, friends, etc. But isn’t such correspondence received by judges private, asked Priya. It is, but has to be shared with Cafcass if it’s a Family Court matter, said Gopa.
To quote from the novel and a letter Adam Henry wrote to Justice Maye:
“I need to hear your calm voice and have your clear mind discuss this with me. I feel you’ve brought me close to something else, something really beautiful and deep, but I don’t really know what it is. You never told me what you believed in, but I loved it when you came and sat with me and we did “The Salley Gardens.” I still look at that poem every day. I love being “young and foolish” and if it wasn’t for you I’d be neither, I’d be dead! I wrote you lots of stupid letters and I think about you all the time and really want to see you and talk again. I daydream about us, impossible wonderful fantasies, like we go on a journey together round the world in a ship and we have cabins next door to each other and we walk up and down on the deck talking all day.”
Sexual or not, it’s clear from this passage that Adam Henry had a juvenile crush on ‘My Lady’ Justice Maye at this point and wants to be in her exclusive company. Whether not informing Cafcass about a letter Adam Henry wrote to her, was ‘illegal,’ as Gopa claims, can only be settled by exhibiting the specific clause in a given Act passed by Parliament which was being violated by her keeping mum about the letter.
A mere error of judgment, in hindsight, cannot amount to illegality. Her action must not only be in clear violation of a statute, to be labeled illegal, but there is the all-important mens rea principle in law: she had to have the clear intent to commit an act she knew to be illegal.
Justice Maye composed a reply to the first but didn’t send it. Then she receives a second letter:
“Immediately, she [Justice Maye] e-mailed Marina Greene to ask if she could find time, as a matter of routine follow-up, to visit the boy and report back. By the end of the day she had a reply. Marina had met Adam that afternoon at his school, where he was starting an extra term to prepare for exams before Christmas. She spent half an hour with him. He had put on weight, there was color in his cheeks. He was lively, even “funny and mischievous.”
So Justice Maye wanting to be sure nothing was amiss, did alert Marina to check up on Adam Henry.
Priya
Adam Henry writes a poem in which he compares Fiona Maye to Satan, a poetic device to dramatize her awful behaviour in kissing him and then packing him off in a taxi. The kiss was quite intriguing said Priya; she doesn’t know why it happened. Joe said it is a wrong characterisation to say she kissed him. Any kiss is an osculation of two sets of lips, contended Joe. Priya replied that she could have warded him off. We’re going to discuss it at the end, said KumKum. Here is how the novelist sets up the event that troubled Priya so much:
“Lightly, she took the lapel of his thin jacket between her fingers and drew him toward her. Her intention was to kiss him on the cheek, but as she reached up and he stooped a little and their faces came close, he turned his head and their lips met. … A fleeting contact, but more than the idea of a kiss,”
Aim gone amiss –
When the cheek is dismissed,
Lip meets on lip,
Leads to future guilt trip!
But Priya suggests that Justice Maye should have used her judicial judo skills to ward off the unintended conjunction of lips that happened when Adam Henry suddenly turned away his cheek to present his lips to the rounded lips of Justice Maye, which were ready to kiss, not the lips, but the cheek of Adam Henry.
After Priya read the Ballad of Adam Henry, readers agreed it was not much of a poem, but there is symbolism in it, beginning with the opening line:
I took my wooden cross and dragged it by the stream.
Priya continued to demonstrate her concern about the kiss – did it play an important part in his suicide? – she asked. A tanka to recall the much ado about kissing triggered by Priya:
The transgressive kiss
That bothered Priya so – Joe
Found nothing amiss.
Aim gone wrong shows no intent,
It was just an accident !
KumKum
KumKum thought Joe’s synopsis at the head of her reading did not quite represent her views. The kiss bothered Justice Maye and that should have figured. Justice Maye's concern is that the kiss might have been observed and an official complaint would be raised, which could embarrass her professionally. She seems to be troubled by the kiss, which Joe brushed off as inconsequential.
Pamela
Justice Maye continues to be troubled till the end of the novel – she considers how “on a powerful and unforgivable impulse, she kissed him, then sent him away.” It is easy for a judge to think that judicial “responsibilities ended at the courtroom walls.” But is it so?
“Adam came looking for her and she offered nothing in religion’s place, no protection, even though the Act was clear, her paramount consideration was his welfare.”
This is what bothers her more at the end, far more than the kiss, which was accidental in any case, and nothing she could be indicted for. But Adam’s death would forever weigh on her conscience – for, she had ignored the opportunity to help a confused youth whose future held much promise. Her negligence had contributed to the feeling of despair which ended in death.
KumKum shared an episode from her time in New Delhi with a school conducted by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The school was for Afghan refugees from the war in their country in the 1980s when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Two million civilians were killed, and millions fled the country as refugees. Some came to India en route to re-settlement in USA, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. The teachers at the school were warned not to fraternise with the students many of whom were disturbed. They would seek out attachment.
Once, a teacher at the centre went to meet a young Afghan boy in his late teens who was involved in a car accident. When she visited him in the hospital she hugged him to comfort him. When he was released he began to stalk the teacher, a widow, and go to her house. Ultimately, the teacher resigned because she could not take it any more. The boy had completely misinterpreted her embrace in the hospital. The Adam Henry kiss reminded KumKum of this incident; Justice Maye felt she had done something she normally would not do with a child whose case had come up before her in Family Court.
Gopa pointed out that the kiss was accidental, a result of Adam swivelling his face at the last moment. Moreover, it was the fear of being found out that caused her anguish. So, nothing was planned, it happened. Joe insisted that in the context of Western society a peck on the cheek that turned into a momentary 3-second mating of lips, is utterly inconsequential. But not when the boy is disturbed, said KumKum. Gopa agreed that it had an effect on the boy, even to the fatal extent of death by voluntary withdrawal of treatment – it resembles Sallekhana, the ritual fast unto death undertaken by some Jains.
Joe maintained that in the context of Presidents like Trump who are going around groping and bedding sundry women, this is a very low level violation of protocol. Indeed, on the scale of infractions of propriety a judge accidentally kissing a child who is the subject of a court case she decided, would rank as a mere peccadillo.
Geetha pointed out that in the passage Justice Maye feels guilty that she could not offer him the guidance, love and protection he needed. Adam Henry expects some follow-up to the kiss, and hence wrote the poems, and when no response came, he wrote another damning her as Satan. Joe offered the example of a guy who commits suicide because a girl rejects his love; isn’t the guy an idiot? How is the girl in any way responsible? In this case Adam Henry fantasises that he could room in Justice Maye’s house, do house-work for her, and learn from her.
Arundhaty gave another example from her experience in which she was harassed by a guy she did not like. He wrote a letter saying he would kill himself. Arundhaty went trough a terrible time, fearing he would actually do it. If he had done it she would feel some guilt, even though she could have done nothing about it. KumKum said the much worse outcome is when such an unrequited lover boy throws acid on the girl.
Geetha pointed out that the circumstances surrounding the case – the fact that Justice Maye had gone to the hospital and communed with him, played music and sung; the growing difficulty in her relations with her husband, Jack; her childlessness, and so on – added to her turmoil.
The case of the Siamese twins was also well-argued and handled in court. She was a conscientious judge and for her the work was very important; it defined a large part of her life.
Arundhaty made a perceptive observation: “It is difficult for us to understand why in that society sex is such an important thing. It’s not that you are thinking of just doing that, whatever age you are. For us, we accept the fact that at some point of time you stop doing all these things.”
Pamela said aghast: did you know she [Justice Maye] was sixty years old?
Gopa added another reason for embarrassment: when your children are teenagers in the next room, she asked, have you felt the impossibility of ‘doing all these things’? She sympathised with Jack, who arriving at the end of his amatory life wanted one last fling. KumKum wanted to hear from Thommo, but Geetha said he had run away. By common agreement at KRG, henceforth the phrase ‘all these things’ will stand for age-inappropriate sex acts.
Hey babe, you wanna do these things,
Inspired by our recent readings?
Come, let’s have a second innings!
The Readings
Thommo p. 5-7 – Jack wants to have an affair to quench his sexual need
“I’m going to have this affair.”
“You want a divorce.”
“No. I want everything the same. No deception.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes you do. Didn’t you once tell me that couples in long marriages aspire to the condition of siblings? We’ve arrived, Fiona. I’ve become your brother. It’s cozy and sweet and I love you, but before I drop dead, I want one big passionate affair.”
“Mistaking her amazed gasp for laughter, for mockery perhaps, he said roughly, “Ecstasy, almost blacking out with the thrill of it. Remember that? I want one last go, even if you don’t. Or perhaps you do.”
She stared at him in disbelief.
“There it is, then.”
This was when she had found her voice and told him what kind of idiot he was. She had a powerful grip on what was conventionally correct. That he had, as far as she knew, always been faithful made his proposition all the more outrageous. Or if he’d deceived her in the past he’d done it brilliantly. She already knew the name of the woman. Melanie. Not so remote from the name of a fatal form of skin cancer. She knew she could be obliterated by his affair with this twenty-eight-year-old statistician.
“If you do this it’ll be the end for us. It’s as simple as that.”
“Is this a threat?”
“My solemn promise.”
“By then she had regained her temper. And it did seem simple. The moment to propose an open marriage was before the wedding, not thirty-five years later. To risk all they had so that he might relive a passing sensual thrill! When she tried to imagine wanting something like it for herself—her “last fling” would be her first—she could think only of disruption, assignations, disappointment, ill-timed phone calls. The sticky business of learning to be with someone new in bed, newly devised endearments, all the fakery. Finally, the necessary disentangling, the effort required to be open and sincere. And nothing quite the same when she came away. No, she preferred an imperfect existence, the one she had now.
But on the chaise longue it rose before her, the true extent of the insult, how he was prepared to pay for his pleasures with her misery. Ruthless. She had seen him single-minded at the expense of others, most often in a good cause. This was new. What had changed? He had stood erect, feet well apart as he poured his single malt, the fingers of his “free hand moving to a tune in his head, some shared song perhaps, not shared with her. Hurting her and not caring—that was new. He had always been kind, loyal and kind, and kindness, the Family Division daily proved, was the essential human ingredient. She had the power to remove a child from an unkind parent and she sometimes did. But remove herself from an unkind husband? When she was weak and desolate? Where was her protective judge?
Self-pity in others embarrassed her, and she wouldn’t have it now. She was having a third drink instead. But she poured only a token measure, added much water and returned to her couch. Yes, it had been the kind of conversation of which she should have taken notes. Important to remember, to measure the insult carefully. When she threatened to end the marriage if he went ahead, he had simply repeated himself, told her again how he loved her, always would, that there was no other life but this, that his unmet sexual needs caused him great unhappiness, that there was this one “chance and he wanted to take it with her knowledge and, so he hoped, her assent. He was speaking to her in the spirit of openness. He could have done it “behind her back.” Her thin, unforgiving back.
Devika p. 44-46 – Fiona Maye looks back on her career and how childlessness crept into it
Yes, her childlessness was a fugue in itself, a flight—this was the habitual theme she was trying now to resist—a flight from her proper destiny. Her failure to become a woman, as her mother understood the term. How she arrived at her state was a slow-patterned counterpoint played out with Jack over two decades, dissonances appearing, then retreating, always reintroduced by her in moments of alarm, even horror, as the fertile years slipped by until they were gone, and she was almost too busy to notice.
A story best told at speed. After finals, more exams, then the call to the bar, pupillage, a lucky invitation to prestigious chambers, some early success defending hopeless cases—how sensible it had seemed, to delay a child until her early thirties. And when those years came, they brought complex worthwhile cases, more success. Jack was also hesitant, arguing for holding back another year or two. Mid-thirties then, when he was teaching in Pittsburgh and she worked a fourteen-hour day, drifting deeper into family law as the idea of her own family receded, despite the visits of nephews and nieces. In the following years, the first rumors that she might be elected precociously to the bench and required to be on circuit. But the call didn’t come, not yet. And in her forties, there sprang up anxieties about elderly gravids and autism. Soon after, more young visitors to Gray’s Inn Square, noisy demanding great-nephews, great-nieces, reminded her how hard it would be to squeeze an infant into her kind of life. Then rueful thoughts of adoption, some tentative inquiries—and throughout the accelerating years that followed, occasional agonies of doubt, firm late-night decisions concerning surrogate mothers undone in the early-morning rush to work. And when at last, at nine thirty one morning at the Royal Courts of Justice, she was sworn in by the Lord Chief Justice and took her oath of allegiance and her Judicial Oath before two hundred of her bewigged colleagues, and she stood proudly before them in her robes, the subject of a witty speech, she knew the game was up; she belonged to the law as some women had once been brides of Christ.
She crossed New Square and approached Wildy’s bookshop. The music in her head had faded, but now came another old theme: self-blame. She was selfish, crabbed, drily ambitious. Pursuing her own ends, pretending to herself that her career was not in essence self-gratification, denying an existence to two or three warm and talented individuals. Had her children lived, it would have been shocking to think they might not have. And so here was her punishment, to face this disaster alone, without sensible grown-up children, concerned and phoning, downing tools and rallying round for urgent kitchen-table conferences, talking sense to their stupid father, bringing him back. But would she take him in? They would also need to talk sense to her. The almost-existing children, the husky-voiced daughter, a museum curator perhaps, and the gifted, less settled son, good at too many things, who failed to complete his university course, but a far better pianist than she. Both always affectionate, brilliant at Christmases and summer-holiday castles and entertaining their youngest relations.
Arundhaty p. 104 -106 Justice Mayes interrogates the leukemia patient Adam Henry to ascertain whether he has considered the worst outcome
He was playing her, all right, drawing her back onto other ground, to a wilder space where he could dance round her, tempt her to say something inappropriate and interesting again. It occurred to her that this intellectually precocious young fellow was simply bored, understimulated, and that by threatening his own life he had set in motion a fascinating drama in which he starred in every scene, and which had brought to his bedside a parade of important and importuning adults. If this was so, she liked him all the more. Serious illness could not smother his vitality.
So, how was he doing? “Pretty well, so far,” she said, aware she was taking a risk. “You give the impression of someone who knows his own mind.”
“Thank you,” he said in a voice derisively sweet.
“But it might just be an impression.”
“I like to make a good impression.”
His manner, his humor, had an element of the silliness that can accompany high intelligence. And it was self-protective. He was surely very frightened. It was time to talk him down.
“And if you know your own mind, you won’t object to discussing practicalities.”
“Fire away.”
“The consultant says that if he could transfuse you and raise your blood count he could add two very effective drugs to your treatment and you’d have a good chance of a complete and fairly quick recovery.”
“Yes.”
“And without a transfusion you could die. You understand that.”
“Yup.”
“And there’s another possibility. I need to be sure you’ve considered it. Not death, Adam, but a partial recovery. You could lose your sight, you could suffer brain damage or your kidneys could go. Would it please God to have you blind or stupid and on dialysis for the rest of your life?”
Her question overstepped the mark, the legal mark. She glanced across to where Marina sat in her shadowy corner. She was using the magazine to support a notebook and was writing by feel alone. She did not look up.
Adam was staring at a space over Fiona’s head. With a wet clicking sound he moistened his lips with a white-coated tongue. Now there was sulkiness in his tone.
“If you don’t believe in God you shouldn’t be talking about what does or doesn’t please him.”
“I haven’t said I don’t believe. I’d like to know whether you’ve considered this carefully, that you may be ill and disabled, mentally, physically or both, for the rest of your life.”
“I’d hate it, I’d hate it.” He turned from her quickly in the attempt to conceal the tears that had suddenly formed. “But if that’s what happens I have to accept it.”
Geeta p.109-111 Adam Henry recites a poem in hospital and Fiona Maye offers an appreciation
He glanced at her, drew breath and began.
My fortunes sank into the darkest hole
When Satan took his hammer to my soul.
His blacksmith’s strokes were long and slow
And I was low.
But Satan made a cloth of beaten gold
That shone God’s love upon the fold.
The way with golden light is paved
And I am saved.
She waited in case there was more but he put the page down, leaned back and looked at the ceiling as he spoke.
“I wrote it after one of the elders, Mr. Crosby, told me that if the worst was to happen, it would have a fantastic effect on everyone.”
Fiona murmured, “He said that?”
“It would fill our church with love.”
She summed up for him. “So Satan comes to beat you with his hammer, and without meaning to he flattens your soul into a sheet of gold that reflects God’s love on everyone and for this you’re saved and it doesn’t matter so much that you’re dead.”
“My Lady, you’ve got it exactly,” the boy almost shouted in his excitement. Then he had to stop to recover his breath again. “I don’t think the nurses understood it, except for Donna, the one who was in here just now. Mr. Crosby’s going to try and get it published in The Watchtower.”
“That would be marvelous. You may have a future as a poet.”
He saw through this and smiled.
“What do your parents think of your poems?”
“My mum loves them, my dad thinks they’re okay but they use up the strength I need to get better.” He rolled onto his side again to face her. “But what does My Lady think? It’s called ‘The Hammer.’”
He had such a hunger in his look, such longing for her approval, that she hesitated. Then she said, “I think it shows a touch, a very small touch, mind, of real poetic genius.”
He continued to gaze at her, expression unchanged, wanting more. She had thought she knew what she was doing, but just then her mind emptied. She didn’t want to disappoint him and she was not used to talking about poetry.
He said, “What makes you say that?”
She didn’t know, not immediately. She would have appreciated Donna returning to bustle around the machines and her patient, while she herself went to the unopenable window and looked out across Wandsworth Common and decided what to say. But the nurse was not due for another fifteen minutes. Fiona hoped that by starting to speak she would discover what she thought. It was like being at school. Back then she had mostly got away with it.
“The shape, the form of it, and those two short lines balancing things out, you’re low, then you’re saved, the second overcoming the first, I liked that. And I liked the blacksmith’s strokes…”
“Long and slow.”
“Mm. Long and slow is good. And it’s very condensed, the way some of the best short poems are.” She felt some confidence returning. “I suppose it’s telling us that out of adversity, out of a terrible time, something good can come. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t think you have to believe in God to understand or like this poem.”
He thought for a moment and said, “I think you do.”
She said, “Do you think you have to suffer to be a good poet?”
“I think all great poets must suffer.”
“I see.”
By pretending to adjust her sleeve she exposed her wristwatch and glanced down at it on her lap without seeming to. She must soon return to the waiting court and give her judgment.
But he had seen her. “Don’t go yet,” he said in a whisper. “Wait till my supper comes.”
Geetha p. 114-117 – Fiona Maye sings Down by the Salley Gardens by Yeats as Adam Henry plays the tune on the violin
Fiona looked at her watch, openly this time. She said, “I think you’ve made it pretty clear that you know your own mind, as much as any of us ever can.”
He said with proper solemnity, “Thank you. I’ll tell my parents tonight. But don’t go. My supper isn’t here yet. What about another poem?”
“Adam, I have to get back to court.” But she was keen all the same to turn the conversation away from his condition. She saw the bow lying on his bed, partly in shadow.
“Quickly, before I go, show me your violin.”
The case was on the floor by a locker, under the bed. She lifted it up and placed it on his lap.”
“It’s only a school violin for beginners.” But he brought it out with extreme care and showed it to her and together they admired the contoured nut-brown wood edged with black and the delicate scrolls.
She laid her hand on the lacquered surface and he put his close to hers. She said, “They’re beautiful instruments. I always think there’s something so human about the shape.”
He was reaching for his beginners’ violin tutor from the locker. She hadn’t intended for him to play, but she couldn’t stop him. His illness, his innocent eagerness made him impregnable.
“I’ve been learning for four weeks exactly and I can play ten tunes.” His boast too made it impossible to deflect him. He was turning the pages impatiently. Fiona looked over at Marina and shrugged.
“But this one is the hardest yet. Two sharps. D major.”
Fiona was looking at the music upside down. She said, “It might just be B minor.”
He didn’t hear her. He was already sitting up, with the violin tucked under his chin, and without pausing to tune the strings, he began to play. She knew it well, this sad and lovely melody, a traditional Irish air. She had accompanied Mark Berner in Benjamin Britten’s setting of the Yeats poem “Down by the Salley Gardens.” It was one of their encores. Adam played it scratchily, without vibrato, of course, but the pitch of the notes was true even though two or three were wrong. The melancholy tune and the manner in which it was played, so hopeful, so raw, expressed everything she was beginning to understand about the boy. She knew by heart the poet’s words of regret. But I, being young and foolish… Hearing Adam play stirred her, even as it baffled her. To take up the violin or any instrument was an act of hope, it implied a future.
When he finished she and Marina applauded, and from his bed Adam made an awkward bow.
“Stupendous!”
“Fantastic!”
“And only four weeks!”
“Fiona, in order to contain the emotion she felt, added a technical point. “Remember that in this key the C is sharp.”
“Oh yes. So many things to think of at once.”
Then she made a proposal that was far removed from anything she would have expected of herself, and which risked undermining her authority. The situation, and the room itself, sealed off from the world, in perpetual dusk, may have encouraged a mood of abandon, but above all, it was Adam’s performance, his look of straining dedication, the scratchy inexpert sounds he made, so expressive of guileless longing, that moved her profoundly and prompted her impulsive suggestion.
“So play it again, and this time I’ll sing along with you.”
Marina got to her feet, frowning, perhaps wondering whether she should intervene.
Adam said, “I didn’t know there were words.”
“Oh yes, two beautiful verses.”
With touching solemnity, he raised the violin to his chin and looked up at her. When he began to play she was pleased to hear herself find the higher notes easily. She had always been secretly proud of her voice, and never had much chance to use it outside the Gray’s Inn choir, back when she was still a member. This time the violinist remembered his C sharp. On the first verse they were tentative, almost apologetic, but on the second, their eyes met and, forgetting all about Marina, who was now standing by the door, looking on amazed, Fiona sang louder and Adam’s clumsy bowing grew bolder, and they swelled into the mournful spirit of the backward-looking lament.
Joe Ch 3 p. 121-123 – Justice Maye’s Judgement
“However, I am not ultimately influenced by whether he has or doesn’t have a full comprehension of his situation. I am guided instead by the decision of Mr. Justice Ward, as he then was, in Re E (a minor), a judgment also concerning a Jehovah’s Witness teenager. In the course of which he notes, ‘The welfare of the child therefore dominates my decision, and I must decide what E’s welfare dictates.’ That observation was crystallized in the clear injunction of the Children Act of 1989, which declares in its opening lines for the primacy of the child’s welfare. I take ‘welfare’ to encompass ‘well-being’ and ‘interests.’ I’m also bound to take into account A’s wishes. As I’ve already noted, he has expressed them clearly to me, as has his father to this court. In accordance with the doctrines of his religion derived from a particular interpretation of three passages in the Bible, A refuses the blood transfusion that will likely save his life.
“It is a fundamental right in adults to refuse medical treatment. To treat an adult against his will is to commit the criminal offense of assault. A is close to the age when he may“this court. In accordance with the doctrines of his religion derived from a particular interpretation of three passages in the Bible, A refuses the blood transfusion that will likely save his life.
“It is a fundamental right in adults to refuse medical treatment. To treat an adult against his will is to commit the criminal offense of assault. A is close to the age when he may make the decision for himself. That he is prepared to die for his religious beliefs demonstrates how deep they are. That his parents are prepared to sacrifice a dearly loved child for their faith reveals the power of the creed to which Jehovah’s Witnesses adhere.”
Again she stopped and the public gallery waited.
“It is precisely this power that gives me pause, for A, at seventeen, has sampled little else in the turbulent realm of religious and philosophical ideas. It is not part of the methods of this Christian sect to encourage open debate and dissent among the congregation at large, which is referred to by them, aptly some might say, as ‘the other sheep.’ I do not believe that A’s mind, his opinions, are “entirely his own. His childhood has been an uninterrupted monochrome exposure to a forceful view of the world and he cannot fail to have been conditioned by it. It will not promote his welfare to suffer an agonizing unnecessary death, and so become a martyr to his faith. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, like other religions, have a clear notion of what awaits us after death, and their predictions of the end days, their eschatology, are also firm and very detailed. This court takes no view on the afterlife, which in any event A will discover, or fail to discover, for himself one day. Meanwhile, assuming a good recovery, his welfare is better served by his love of poetry, by his newly found passion for the violin, by the exercise of his lively intelligence and the expressions of a playful, affectionate nature, and by all of life and love that lie ahead of him. In short, I find that A, his parents and the elders of the church have made a decision which is hostile to A’s welfare, which is this court’s paramount consideration. He must be protected from such a decision. “He must be protected from his religion and from himself.
“This has been no easy matter to resolve. I have given due weight to A’s age, to the respect due to faith and to the dignity of the individual embedded in the right to refuse treatment. In my judgment, his life is more precious than his dignity.”
“Consequently, I overrule the wishes of A and his parents.”
Zakia p.143-144 – The parents of Adam Henry rejoice at his being saved
But that isn’t the one thing I wanted to tell you. It’s this. My mum couldn’t bear to watch so she was sitting outside my room and I could hear her crying and I felt really sad. I don’t know when my dad turned up. I think I passed out for a while and when I came round they were both there by my bed—and they were both crying and I felt even sadder, for all of us for disobeying God. But this is the important thing—it took me a moment to realize that they were crying for JOY! They were so so happy, hugging me, and hugging each other and praising God and sobbing. I was feeling too weird and I didn’t work it out for a day or two. I didn’t even think about it. Then I did. Have your cake and eat it! I never understood that saying before, now I do. Your cake is still in your hand even though you’ve just eaten it. My parents followed the teachings and they obeyed the elders and did everything that was right and can expect to be admitted to the earthly paradise—and at the same time they can have me alive without any of us being disassociated. Transfused, but not our fault! Blame the judge, blame the godless system, blame what we sometimes call “the world.” What a relief! We’ve still got our son even though we said he must die. Our son the cake!
Gopa Chapter 4 p. 145-146 – Justice Maye writes a letter to Adam Henry and decides against sending it
She did not reply, or rather, she did not post the note it took her almost an hour that evening to compose. In her fourth and final draft she thought she was friendly enough, glad to learn that he was home and feeling better, pleased that he had good memories of her visit. She advised him to be loving toward his parents. It was normal in one’s teenage years to question the beliefs one had grown up with, but one should do it in a respectful manner. She finished by saying, although it was not true, that she had been “tickled” by the idea of the boat trip round the world. She added that when she was young, she’d had dreams of escape just like his own. This wasn’t true either, for she had been too ambitious, even at sixteen, too hungry for good grades on her essays to think of running off. Teenage visits to her Newcastle cousins had been her only adventures. When she looked at her short letter a day later, it wasn’t the friendliness that struck her, it was the coolness, the dud advice, the threefold impersonal use of “one,” the manufactured recollection. She reread his and was touched again by its innocence and warmth. Better to send nothing at all than cast him down. If she changed her mind, she could write later.
KumKum p. 172-174 – On her tour of the northern courts Justice Maye makes a phone call to Jack and finds their relationship improving. She’s relieved that no complaint has been lodged against her for the unintended kiss.
She was not prone to wild impulses and she didn’t understand her own behavior. She realized there was much more to confront in her confused mix of feelings, but for now it was the horror of what might have come about, the ludicrous and shameful transgression of professional ethics, that occupied her. The ignominy that could have been all hers. Hard to believe that no one had seen her, that she was leaving the scene of the crime unscathed. Easier to believe that the truth, hard and dark as a bitter seed, was about to reveal itself: “that she had been observed and hadn’t noticed. That even now, miles behind her in London, the case was being discussed. That one day soon she’d hear on her phone the hesitant embarrassed voice of a senior colleague. Ah, Fiona, look, awfully sorry but I’m afraid I should warn you, uh, something’s come up. Then, waiting for her back at Gray’s Inn, a formal letter from the Judicial Complaints investigation officer.
She tapped two keys to summon her husband on the phone. In flight from a kiss, running scared for the cover of a married woman of some repute, some solidity. She made the call without thinking, out of habit, barely aware of the state of play between her and Jack. When she heard his tentative hello, the acoustic told her that he was in the kitchen. The radio was playing, Poulenc perhaps. On Saturday mornings they always had, always used to have, a lazy but early breakfast, a spread of papers, muted Radio Three, coffee, warmed pain aux raisins from Lamb’s Conduit Street. He would be in “his paisley silk dressing gown. Unshaven, hair uncombed.
In a careful neutral tone, he asked her if she was all right. When she said “fine” it surprised her how normal she sounded. She began to improvise with facility, just as Pauling, with a satisfied sigh, remembered a shortcut and pulled free of the traffic. Plausible enough in the way of good housekeeping to remind Jack of her return date at the end of the month, and natural, or it had once been, to suggest that on the evening she came home they should go out for a meal together. A nearby restaurant they liked was often booked up in advance. Perhaps he could make a reservation now. He thought it was a good idea. She heard him suppress the surprise in his voice, steering cleanly between warmth and distance. He asked her again if she was all right. He knew her too well, and clearly, she wasn’t sounding quite so normal. With lightened emphasis she said she was absolutely fine. They exchanged a few lines about work. The call ended on his cautious good-bye that sounded almost like a question.
But it had worked. She was lifted from paranoid reveries into the actuality of an arrangement, a date, an improving relationship. She felt better defended and altogether more sensible. If there had been a complaint against her, she would have heard it by now. It was good to have phoned and moved matters on from that indefinable breakfast moment. Worth remembering the world was never how she anxiously dreamed it. An hour later, as the car began the slow crawl along the congested A69 into Carlisle, she was absorbed in court papers.
Priya p.180-181 – Fiona Maye reads a poem by Adam henry and decides it was a poetic device to dramatize her awful behavior of kissing him, and then packing him off in a taxi
THE BALLAD OF ADAM HENRY
I took my wooden cross and dragged it by the stream.
I was young and foolish and troubled by a dream
That penitence was folly and burdens were for fools.
But I’d been told on Sundays to live life by the rules.
The splinters cut my shoulder, that cross was heavy as lead,
My life was narrow and godly and I was almost dead,
The stream was merry and dancing and sunlight danced around,
But I must keep on walking, with eyes fixed on the ground.
Then a fish rose out of the water with rainbows on its scales.
Pearls of water were dancing and hung in silvery trails.
“Throw your cross in the water if you’re wanting to be free!”
So I drowned my load in the river in the shade of the Judas tree.
I knelt by the banks of that river in a wondrous state of bliss
While she leaned upon my shoulder and gave the sweetest kiss.
But she dived to the icy bottom where she never will be found,
And I was full of tears until I heard the trumpets sound.
“And Jesus stood on the water and this he said to me,
“That fish was the voice of Satan, and you must pay the fee.
Her kiss was the kiss of Judas, her kiss betrayed my name.
May he
May he what? The last words of the final verse were lost to a skein of spidery lines that looped around second thoughts, to words deleted and reinstated and to other variants with question marks. Rather than attempt to decipher the mess, she read the poem again, then lay back with eyes closed. She minded that he was angry with her, casting her as Satan, and began to daydream a letter to him, knowing that she would never post it, or even write it. Her impulse was to appease him as well as justify herself. She summoned flat ready-made phrases. I had to send you away. It was in your own best interests. You have your own young life to lead. Then, more coherently, Even if we had the room, you could not be our lodger. Such a thing is simply not possible for a judge. She added, Adam, I’m not Judas. An old trout perhaps… This last to lighten a fierce self-justifying intent.
Her “sweetest kiss” had been reckless and she hadn’t got away with it, not where he was concerned. But it was only kindness not to send him a letter. He’d write by return, he’d be at her door and she’d have to turn him away again. She folded the sheet back into its envelope, took it to her bedroom and stored it in the drawer of her bedside table. He would soon move on. Either he had drifted back into religion, or Judas, Jesus and the rest were poetic devices to dramatize her awful behavior, kissing him, then packing him off in a taxi. Whichever it was, Adam Henry was likely to succeed brilliantly at his postponed exams and go to a good university. She would fade in his thoughts, become a minor figure in the progress of his sentimental education.
Pamela p. 212 to 213 – Justice Maye reflects on her culpability in Adam Henry’s death: when he came looking for her and she offered nothing to promote his welfare. Meanwhile, bedroom with Jack is returning to normal.
There, in court, with the authority and dignity of her position, she offered him, instead of death, all of life and love that lay ahead of him. And protection against his religion. Without faith, how open and beautiful and terrifying the world must have seemed to him. With that thought she slipped back into a deeper sleep and woke minutes later to the singing and the sighing of the gutters. Would it ever stop raining? She saw the solitary figure making his way up the drive of Leadman Hall, bent against the rainstorm, finding a way in the dark, hearing the falling branches. He must have seen ahead the lights in the house and known she was there. He shivered in an outhouse, wondering, waiting for his chance to talk to her, risking everything in the pursuit of—what exactly? And believing he could get it from a woman in her sixtieth year who had risked nothing in life beyond a few reckless episodes in Newcastle a long time ago. She should have been flattered. And ready. Instead, on a powerful and unforgivable impulse, she kissed him, then sent him away. Then ran away herself. Failed to answer his letters. Failed to decipher the warning in his poem. How ashamed she was now of her petty fears for her reputation. Her transgression lay beyond the reach of any disciplinary panel. Adam came looking for her and she offered nothing in religion’s place, no protection, even though the Act was clear, her paramount consideration was his welfare. How many pages in how many judgments had she devoted to that term? Welfare, well-being, was social. No child is an island. She thought her responsibilities ended at the courtroom walls. But how could they? He came to find her, wanting what everyone wanted, and what only free-thinking people, not the supernatural, could give. Meaning.
When she shifted position she felt against her face the pillow wet and cold. Fully awake now, she pushed it aside to reach for another, and was surprised to touch a warm body stretched out alongside her, at her back. She turned. Jack lay with his head propped on his hand. With the other he pushed her hair clear of her eyes. It was a tender “gesture. By the light from the hall she could just see his face.
He said simply, “I’ve been watching you sleep.”
After a while, a long while, she whispered, “Thank you.”
Then she asked him if he would still love her once she had told him the whole story. It was an impossible question, for he knew almost nothing yet. She suspected he would try to persuade her that her guilt was misplaced.
He put his hand on her shoulder and drew her to him. “Of course I will.”
They lay face-to-face in the semidarkness, and while the great rain-cleansed city beyond the room settled to its softer nocturnal rhythms and their marriage uneasily resumed, she told him in a steady quiet voice of her shame, of the sweet boy’s passion for life and her part in his death.
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