‘The unbranded LipService in flagrante delicto,’ explains the procurator.
Mum fatale has told them about how I tried to get her to use unprogrammed LipService.
‘Oh, yes. There’s no merrywidow with her, it’s all boxer nastiness. My daughter is ill fitting and rides up my back because of it. It was chest-bindingly cruel to force that unbranded pastie onto me. I would never go commando, I always wear my Frisson Froufrou. But do you think I sagged a bit? No.’
The procurator is standing just in front of me, bordelloed over. I don’t think he understood a word but he’s rushing over to her. My neck snaps round to follow him and for the first time I look at Mother sitting in the witness chair with the procurator on his knees to her right, clasping her hand. On her left the judge crouches, clutching her other hand. The light from the dome above illuminates the rose raincoat and Mother is transfigured into the madonna of the sunset corona. She’s a woman on fire, and through the glow I swear I see she-me standing behind Mother, arms over head, holding the lighter aloft. Mother is the brand made flesh, Frisson Froufrou incarnate. The men of law are weak-kneed before her.
Petula stamps her foot but it makes no sound in its hushed-up hose. ‘Objectio, objectio!’ The judge hurls the reflex hammer at her but it glances off her bunched shoulder pad. I start laughing. It’s an ugly sound, but I can’t stop.
When order is finally restored and the adorers have regained their feet, the procurator says, ‘The testimonium of this charming gentlewoman is lux in tenebris, a great illuminator. For what does it reveal?’ He pauses uncertainly.
I see them all waiting on the gallery’s hard wooden benches, waiting to understand and participate in the court’s catharsis. For once they aren’t all looking at me, and I search the rows for Stillwell, but he’s not there.
‘What does it not reveal!’ he declares triumphantly.
With that court is adjourned for the weekend.
20
In my cell, I lie on my bed, digesting the yoghurty tasture of the sheets. It’s proof of life when I’m starting to feel unreal. Language in the Ether Jar sublimates into gas, increasing the empty spaces between atoms of meaning. I am that void, the unspoken, the rapidly dispersing significance of these speech particles.
Words fail me. They do me no justice. Not because I am innocent, but because they can’t give offense – least of all mine. What does the procurator or Judge Mannix or Petula Ormod or Dr Bromide think my patch prose was like? What does the unspeakable mean to those who have never heard it – like the mob eager to lynchpin it on me? Do they even know what it is? In LipService there is rhyme but no reason.
There is someone who could tell everyone what LitService was really like, who knows what it’s like to face a dead wall of language. And when I return to the Ether Jar on Monday, he is called to testify. I can tell from the crease in his trousers that he has returned to the fold.
‘Copywriter,’ says the procurator, ‘you are the provisor of panem et circenses to the plebeius…’
‘Bread and circuses!’ interrupts Wordini. ‘Who writes your Arguendo? That is just too ah-cute.’
‘Arguendo is an imperium in imperio,’ mumbles Brimlad. ‘Now, forthwith to the quaestio: What confeasible interest could you have in this offender?’ He waves towards me.
‘Commercial, of course. The good doctor and I reached our mutually agreeable firms on merchandising. Manus manum lavat and all that. Isn’t that what you lawyawners say – one hand washes the other?’
The audience starts applauding, Wordini takes a bow, and the procurator rams the witness chair into the back of his knees so that he falls back into his seat.
‘Could we continue?’ asks Procurator Brimlad. ‘Is it not a non sequitur to employ a persona non grata in essential surfaces such as copywriting?’
‘Perhaps to the sparrow-minded,’ says Wordini, looking directly at the procurator. ‘But the best way to mortar a maverbrick into place is to turn oddity into commodity. Which is why my medicronies and I are launching Censory LipService – a patch that brings your speech to your senses…’
Wordini’s announcement whooshes through the gallery that had been wilting under all the hot air.
‘Copywriter, copywriter…’ insists the procurator, hoping to switch Wordini’s raillery back onto his track, but he rattles on, overfreighted.
‘Imagine dining out on your brand slogan. You can – but can you guess how it will taste? This is the real lip-smacking nature of the desplendent’s perversity and now you can safely relish the deviant neural paths that brought her here.’
The audience bends to his windy language.
‘Our Censory LipService lets you savour word flavours.’
‘Contemptus!’ bellows the judge. ‘The court is not a forum for mercators to vender their vendibles. You will adhere to the question or be held in contemptus.’
Wordini is undeterred. ‘Free sample patches sponsored by The Hayrick at the exit.’ The judge responds with the knee-jerk action of the reflex hammer. An orderly reaches under each of the copywriter’s armpits, and together they haul him away, still inveigling, ‘With Censory LipService, you’ll truly chew over your words, as never before!’
The crowd are shifty in their seats, furtively turning to the exit, where another pair of large orderlies has stepped forward to block the doors. As Wordini is dragged past me, he succeeds in bringing the digits of one hand to his mouth and kissing them in a gesture that is part ironic magnifique – perhaps, at all that has brought me to this point – and part finger-licking. It’s what I also saw Dr Bromide do.
‘Your Honour, Surgeon Legal, I haven’t cross-interrogoed the witness,’ complains Petula Ormod.
‘Objectio overwrought,’ says the judge and waves her back to her seat.
Wordini’s triumphant finger-kissing opens up a fault in me, and I half stand, my wrists still bound to the wheelchair’s arms and start running at him. Beneath the carapace of the chair, I hear the wind between my handlebar horns. The movement is its own impetus. Until I harrow into Wordini’s back. And the possessed whistling dies out.
When the orderlies come for me again the next day, they also restrain my ankles to the footrests’ struts. ‘Any further attempts at perverting the course of justice and it’s sedation for you,’ says the hairy one who had been escorting Wordini out when I charged at him.
Wordini’s advertorial outburst still seems to be ringing in people’s ears, leaving them deaf to new sounds. Petula sits listlessly swiping a device screen while she rubs a foot with the other hand. Again and again, Judge Mannix a-hems, everyone sits up blinking, but he fails to call the court to order. When the session finally begins, Procurator Brimlad summons Stillwell to the stand.
It’s wrenching trying to see his face, but he stays turned away as he walks to the witness chair. The collar of his white coat is turned up against the cold, or everything else. I feel how he is buttoned up and I’m afraid – I don’t know whether for him or me. Pivoting in my chair, I glimpse the orderly, who rocks on the balls of his feet and raises a finger. I sit quietly to hear what Stillwell will say. Can’t let them banish me into the n-ether now.
‘You were the facile princeps of the posse forensis that investigated the medico-tempering of LipService patches?’