I muttered something about the possibility of being sick and he gave me a mint to suck.
The court official with the ceremonial stick came in and we all stood up, sat down, genuflected at the Crown, whatever. The jury clattered back in along the little wooden benches and sat down. The room was so quiet it felt as if everyone had inhaled and frozen, sitting perfectly still for the seven minutes it took the clerk to declare the result.
Guilty of murder. A murderer. Murderess. My own precious Susie, my sweetheart, my funny valentine, my dear Christ Almighty. Every pore on my body swelled open, as if trying to absorb the news osmotically. A hair fell from my head. A man dropped a pen down the row from me, and I kept thinking: he’s dropped it, he’s dropped it.
Susie turned slowly in her chair, her black hair sliding off her shoulder like a lazy oil slick, the flannel of her pale gray suit jacket folding perfectly into tiny consecutive waves below her shoulder blade. She looked back at me, horrified and helpless. Instinctively, I reached out to touch her and smashed my knuckles loudly on the glass barrier. In the tense hush of the courtroom it sounded as if I were rapping jauntily on the glass to get her attention. Everyone- the journalists, the old women, even the old man- stared at me disapprovingly. It was the most private, despairing, appalling moment of our lives, and yet they sat there, watching us, disapproving of my reaching over to give a last free embrace to my darling wife. It was like watching a loved one die on the pitch at Wembley and then being criticized for your technique.
Finding me a disappointment, as ever, Susie seemed to shrink to half-size, to look more alone than before in her big wood-and-glass playpen. Sad and defeated, she dropped her eyes to her lap and turned away from me. My hand was throbbing. Everyone stood up. I felt as if I were sinking into a grave.
Sentencing has been deferred until psychiatric and social reports can be drawn up; exactly the same sort of reports that she used to draw up herself for a living. We have to go back for the sentencing hearing in a few weeks, but murder has a statutory penalty of life imprisonment, so that’s what she’ll get. Whose lives are they taking in payment? Susie’s or mine? Or Margie’s? The forces of justice are orphaning our daughter at nineteen months old.
Margie’ll never know her mother. She’ll never walk past a makeup counter, catch a smell, and remember a thousand days at her mother’s knee. She’ll never roll indignant teenage eyes and join the other girls bitching about their bloody mums during school lunchtime. Susie will never surprise her in her thirties with a story about little Margie saying something rude to a pompous visitor, about falls and friends forgotten, about the literal confusion of early childhood. I wanted to stand up and scream at them; they’re taking the wrong life.
As I made my way out of the courtroom, I tried hard to blend into the milling public, but I’m too tall to be inconspicuous, especially in a crowd of the midgetized elderly. A cross-eyed woman ran up to me and asked for my autograph. The crowd turned on me, wanting papers of their own signed, poking at my hand with chewed pens. I kept my eyes on the door and plowed through them. What does my autograph mean? Do they want a bit of me? It can’t be salable, surely.
The lobby was quieter than usual. Most of the journalists had been corralled into a side room, but some members of the public took flash photos of me and got told off by the policeman on the door. Fitzgerald took me aside to brief me, but I couldn’t hear the words he was saying, just a vague rumbling mumble from a mile away about an appeal and statements for the press.
To my surprise I found I was nodding and then shook my head violently. What the fuck was I agreeing to? It felt like one of those no-trousers-at-assembly dreams I used to have. I managed to rub my ten-ton lips together. “I can’t speak.”
Fitzgerald nodded. “Aye, well, all right, then,” he said matter-of-factly. “That’s not a problem. We can proceed without your active, verbal participation. Leave it to me. Just stand next to me and keep quiet, no matter what they ask. They may try to provoke you.”
A woman passed us and slipped, late, into the journalists’ room. Through the swinging door I could see a gang of grown men, half of whom had never been in the public galleries, I’m sure. Pointing at the two seats set out for Fitzgerald and me were fifty beady eyes, fluffy microphones and cameras, boxy TV cameras on stands, and flashes on tripods. Their voices were high and excited. Sitting on chairs and swiveling around to talk, writhing, grinning at each other. The Dr. Susie Harriot Murder Trial was going to run and run for them. It was just an entertainment. I’ve seen it happen to other people and never considered the casual brutality of it. Distant participants in the story, who neither knew nor loved Susie, would sell their stories. They’d be paid little more than pocket money to attach their faces to a string of misquotes that would make Susie sound sexier than she is, more evil, more interesting.
“Can’t go in there,” I said to Fitzgerald, knowing this more surely than any other thing in the universe. “Just- I’m going to be sick.”
Fitzgerald looked at my face, and judging from the way his head darted away from my mouth, he knew I was telling the truth. He put his hand on my forearm and patted it once. “Perhaps the best course of action in this instance would be for you to go home,” he said. “Just go home.”
“Can’t I see her? Before she’s gone?”
Fitzgerald shook his head and apologized. I fled.
A couple of photographers followed me and took pictures as I hailed a cab. I left the car there. I’ve driven drunk; I’ve driven at sixty through blinding rain; I’ve driven my dying mother-in-law to the hospital, but I couldn’t have fitted the key into the ignition yesterday. The car’s probably got a stack of tickets on it already.
The answering machine was full when I got in, men and women offering gazillions for my story. We pay more, I care, so sorry, remember me from the court? I was sitting behind you, over your left shoulder.
I’m in the papers this morning, hailing the taxi, looking shifty and portly and weird. I had no idea I looked like that. I’ve always thought having longer hair made me seem rakish and bohemian. Instead I look as if I’m inexplicably ashamed of the tops of my ears. I’m plump in parts as well, which is a surprise. A sagging roll of fat is perched on my belt, and my jaw’s indistinct. I look tearful, and my back’s rounded as if I’m waiting to be slapped across the back of the head. This may well be the only time in my life when I’m in the papers, and I look fat and ill-groomed and frightened.
I went out and bought all the other papers this morning to see if my strange appearance was the fault of a crooked lens, but it wasn’t. It’s bizarre being in the papers. I feel a thrill of something, a mixture of fear and pleasure. The pleasure is like the delight of seeing an unexpected photograph of myself at a party I don’t remember being at; it’s confirmation that I exist and am up to stuff. The fear is more real. People will know me from those photographs; people I’ve never met before; odd people. They’ll look at my photograph for too long; they’ll laugh at me for having a fast, faithless wife and for not working; make jokes about my hair and fatness to each other on the train on their way home from work; use me as a nickname for a misguided sidekick whose wife is fucking a serial killer.
The arrant stupidity of the coverage is astonishing. They’re selling it as a sexy story, making out Susie was a frustrated suburban type. One of the tabloids is telling people not to trust their doctors anymore.
I’ve brought all the papers up here to the study, to hide them from Margie. It’s irrational, I know, but I don’t want these stories near her. I don’t want her perfect, tiny hands with their rosy fingernails to touch the paper they’re printed on. It feels like an unforgivable act of brutality, to bring these terrible accusations into such a precious, innocent life. She’ll see them one day. She’ll be curious and look them up, and I can’t protect her indefinitely from articles like this one from yesterday: