This is the Life. Joseph O’Neill

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СКАЧАТЬ life. In the mornings I would shake off the reins of tiredness and feel a great horsepower pumping up inside me. My work was my reward. When an opinion or pleading I had devilled for Donovan went out unchanged bearing his signature, far from being displeased or resentful at this exploitation of my free labour (like most other pupils, I was unpaid), I was gratified – to think that I, James Jones, had produced a work worthy of the brilliant Professor Donovan!

      In my new state of excitement I became fired by ambition – real ambition, not just wishfulness. I desired that tenancy at 6 Essex like nothing else – more than anything in the universe I wanted my name, Mr James Jones, up on the blackboard bearing the tenants’ names in white paint. I would envisage each letter of my name there when I walked in every morning, fantasize over each brushstroke. It would happen, I knew it would; my visions were so vivid that they could only be premonitions. I knew the room I would occupy down to the last detail, down to the paintings I would buy to hang on the wall. My future was under my belt. It all made sense, it all fell into place: sometimes I would awaken from my work and suddenly the ineluctable nature of my situation would be revealed to me: of course, I would think, this is it. This is how it was meant to be.

      Looking back on my time at 6 Essex afresh, I think that I was perhaps too unobtrusive, too quietly efficient, too mole-like, for my own good. Just recently I saw a documentary about moles on the television. Moles work night and day. They never rest. If they are not paddling out fresh corridors of earth they are maintaining their existing galleries and tunnels, snapping and crunching intruding roots and mending the walls. The point is, most of this was not known until they sent down one of those fantastic subterranean cameras. Before that happened, the moles received no credit for their industry. For all anyone knew they were bone idle. Likewise, if I had been a little more prominent about my efforts in the basement, if my profile had been a little higher, then perhaps, just maybe, I would have been offered a tenancy. But I thought there was no need for self-promotion. I thought that Donovan would recognize my worth and stand by me when the decision came to be made as to which one of the seven pupils would be taken on. I thought he would say, Consider Jones, he hasn’t put a foot wrong in six months. I thought he would say, Jones: look no further than Jones.

      But no. When the chambers meeting came around Donovan was in Alexandria, with the result that at the meeting there was no one in my corner, no one rooting for me. Oliver Owen was taken on, I was not.

      The afternoon that the axe fell I was in the chambers library with the other rejected pupils. All six of us were seated around the oval central table while we numbly contemplated our Weakening futures. Oliver Owen was at El Vino’s with the head of chambers, celebrating.

      Then Alastair Smail, the head of the pupillage committee, the man who had made us and broken us, entered the library, whistling a tune through his bright pink lips as though nothing had happened. After searching and craning among the bookshelves he turned round and asked whether anyone had seen Westcott on Trusts anywhere. Receiving no reply, he went energetically through the borrowers’ index, fingering the cards and commentating loudly on his progress. Then he looked around and sensed, for the first time, the gloom. ‘What’s the matter with everyone? It’s like a funeral parlour in here,’ he said, leaving without waiting for an answer.

      While the others just looked at each other, I got up and followed him, eventually catching up with him in the corridor outside. I needed to speak to him urgently about getting a pupillage elsewhere, in another set of chambers. I had neglected to take precautions on that score (my work had taken up all my time), and there was a real danger that I would miss the boat completely if I did not act quickly.

      ‘Alastair, I wonder if I could have a word with you.’

      ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, still walking.

      ‘About finding somewhere else,’ I said. ‘I was wondering if you might know anywhere where there might be some space – for me.’

      He looked at me with a strange expression. ‘I thought you had somewhere. I thought you’d organized something.’ Now I looked at him: where did he get that idea from? ‘I do know some people, yes, but you realize that, well, that the other pupils do have – priority.’

      What? ‘Priority? Why?’

      ‘As tenancy applicants, they have priority over pupils who made no such application. You appreciate that, Jones.’

      ‘But I am an applicant, too,’ I said. ‘I applied for a tenancy too.’

      ‘Did you?’ Smail said. ‘We received no such application from you. We assumed you had made other plans.’

      ‘But I did apply,’ I said. I could not believe what I was hearing. ‘I did apply.’

      Again Smail looked at me with a strange expression. ‘Well, we received no application,’ he repeated. ‘Nothing at all.’

      ‘I didn’t send anything in writing, that’s true,’ I said desperately. ‘But I wasn’t aware that a formal application needed to be made. I thought the very fact that I was here as a pupil was in itself an application. No one told me that I needed to apply formally.’

      ‘Nobody told you? Michael didn’t tell you?’ I shook my head. Smail shook his head too. ‘Well, this is unfortunate. And you wish to apply, do you?’

      I said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Yes, if it’s not too late.’

      Smail thought for a moment. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll get back to you as quickly as possible. Don’t worry,’ he said with a smile. ‘We’ll sort something out.’

      ‘Thank you Alastair,’ I said. I meant it, I was full of gratitude: perhaps all was not yet lost! Perhaps I was still in with a chance, after all! ‘Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about all this, but I really did not know about the need to apply.’ Smail gave me a smile which said it was quite all right, and walked away.

      The next day I received the following letter at home. It was a standard letter which began with Dear…, and with my name, Jones, inked in over the dots.

      Thank you for your application for a tenancy in these chambers. It is my sad duty to inform you that, after careful consideration of the merits of your application, we are unable to place you on the short list of candidates. We wish you every success in the future. Yours sincerely,

       Alastair Smail

      Soon afterwards I began sending off applications to other chambers. The only pupillage I was offered was with an obscure landlord and tenant set, and they made it clear that they doubted very much whether they would be able to take me on at the end of it. It was not me, they said, it was simply a question of space: there were just not enough square feet to go round. It was then that I saw an advertisement inviting applications to Batstone Buckley Williams. I attended a brief interview and they immediately offered me a position. Of course, I gratefully accepted. The Bar had, by then, lost its appeal for me. The senior partner at Batstone’s, Edward Boag, took me aside the first day I arrived. We went into a corner together and he gave me a piece of advice. ‘I want you to forget all the law you’ve ever learned,’ he divulged. ‘We don’t like intellectual pretensions at Batstone Buckley Williams. And let me let you into a secret.’ He looked around in case anyone was listening. ‘This business is all about one thing: meeting deadlines. Lots of them.’

      I must make it clear that I do not feel bitter about the experience – not in the slightest. I am very happy here, at Batstone Buckley Williams, and in many ways I am relieved that I never stayed at the Bar – the pressure and the workload are simply too great for my liking. СКАЧАТЬ