THE MUSE & THE MOLE

THE MUSE & THE MOLE

(submission: 2966 words)

Contents

Prologue 4

THE MUSE 5

THE MOLE 141

Epilogue 270

Definitions 302

Prologue

My name is Alex Donovan. If it sounds familiar, you may remember that I was the solicitor involved in the drawbridgegate scandal. I want to tell you my story from the beginning, and in such a way that you might experience the events more or less as I did. For as Keats observed, ‘Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced’. And some things are truly so shocking, they deserve to be witnessed by all.

THE MUSE

1

Is there anything people won’t do for money, I wonder, staring out over the City from a top-floor conference room at Wallis Grunt commercial law firm. Today marks the end of my solicitor’s training, and the panel sitting across the table from me are offering to keep me on and to double my (already generous) salary. Tempting? It’s a no-brainer. But something is holding me back.

It’s funny how we tend to focus on whether or not others want us, to the exclusion of the bigger question, namely whether or not we want them: I’m embarrassed to admit that since starting here two years ago, this is the first time that I have genuinely considered whether I want to work here. And the answer, awkwardly, is not what I expected.

‘Mr Donovan? Can we assume that’s a “yes”?’

It is dawning on me that there may be a limit to the number of corporate softball matches I am willing to sacrifice my summer evenings for. I should be less frivolous. At risk of sounding idealistic or ungrateful, even, I studied law to make a difference to people’s lives, not to be holed up in a data room all day, compiling disclosure bundles for some ethically challenged energy giant - I know, which begs the question: why come here in the first place?

‘Mr Donovan?’

Easy: it was the small incentive of a free legal training, settlement of ALL my student debt, paid employment for two years, and multiple opportunities to do pro bono work (few of which have materialised, I notice…)

‘Mr Donovan?’

‘Yes, I…I was just…’

‘Giving us an answer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wonderful!’ The panel members rise to their feet.

‘No. Sorry, I meant yes, I was giving you an answer…’

As they hover above their seats, I confirm that I wish to decline their offer. And after a cringingly inarticulate attempt to explain myself, I return to ground level with a bump. Seconds later, however, moving through the giant revolving doors to the street, a lightness returns to my step.

#

A week passes, and with no plan and bills to pay, the novelty of being unemployed is wearing off fast. An advert I spot on Twitter grabs my attention: ‘Do you have a passion for justice and holding the government to account?’ it reads, and I click on the link. The job is for a solicitor/caseworker at Hatton Taylor, a firm specialising in immigration and asylum law. I read on with interest but double take when I see the pay: one-sixth of what I would be on if I had stayed at Wallis Grunt. Still, I tell myself, everything’s a trade-off, and a quick look at my outgoings suggests it’s just about feasible - the advantages of being a bachelor. They seem legit too - ranked second in Chambers & Partners – and so what if they’re based in South London? I tart up my CV, print off an application form and resolve to think on it.

An hour or two later, I’m half way into a special offer bottle of crianza and thinking about drink-dialing my ex - she’d say I was a fool for leaving the job, I imagine - when a news item about refugees appears on the television. It features a dapper QC with a floppy fringe - I don’t catch his name - lamenting the loss of a boatload of some 70+ asylum-seekers off the coast of Dover.

‘Unless and until proper safe routes exist for these people,’ he says, ‘we are going to see many more casualties of this nature, and on a much larger scale.’

The camera then crosses fleetingly to a woman whom the QC introduces as his junior.

‘Each and every one of these deaths was preventable,’ she agrees, and I am ashamed to admit that I miss what she says after that, struck instead by the lilt of her accent and the compassion in her bright eyes. I don’t believe in fate as such, but seeing these two standing up for the vulnerable gives me the shot in the arm I need: I fill out the application form, scan it in and send it off.

#

I go a month without hearing back from Hatton Taylors and by now, I have contemplated pretty much any and every form of gainful employment I can imagine: internships with NGOs – fat lot of good as they’re all unpaid; freelance journalism (similar issues); skilled apprenticeships (I’m ‘overqualified’ apparently) – shit, I’ve even toyed with returning to Wallis Grunt and begging for my job back. Honestly, if it weren’t for supportive friends like Danso in situations like this, I don’t know what I’d do.

‘Alex, chill,’ he told me a week ago, in typical, Danso style, ‘worst case scenario, the sofa’s yours – in fact, hold up, Hemmingway, you can write your memoirs from it!’

Anyway, enough prattle: the news just in is that finally – wait for it - Hatton Taylor have offered me an interview. And call me woefully naïve, but my sense is that if I can just get a foot in the door here, a new world awaits on the other side - perhaps, even, a world where people really care.

2

Warm Friday afternoon in June, and I’m haring down Peckham Road, one eye on my phone. I turn right down Rye Lane and slow to a brisk walk.

#

Hatton Taylors’ offices are set back from the road in a converted Edwardian villa. I ring the bell and the receptionist shows me to a large conference room. A 1950s juke box sits in one corner, otherwise the furnishings are sparse and less swanky than my old city firm’s - and the coffee and biscuits are conspicuous by their absence.

I take the liberty of opening a sash window. Above it, chipped cornicing runs around the high dusty ceiling like an antique picture frame. Just then, there’s a knock on the door and in come my interviewers.

They introduce themselves by their first names: Marina, Karl and Kenan. None of them is wearing a suit, and Marina has on a chunky, multi-coloured necklace and bright yellow blouse. ‘And you must be Alex Donovan.’ She smiles. ‘Please, take a seat. Right, why the switch from corporate law?’

‘Jesus! Why don’t you just ask him direct?’ says Karl and all four of us laugh.

‘Well?’ she says.

‘I want to help people,’ I reply instinctively. ‘And it’s the closest I can think of to being a priest, without having to believe or to be celibate...’

Kenan leans forward. ‘So, you are OK with obedience?’ he quips, and we are away.

#

Thirty minutes later and we’re standing up and shaking hands: I am going to be an immigration and asylum lawyer. Marina makes a phone call and a drinks trolley arrives. I brace myself to meet my new colleagues.

First to arrive is Jedrek, the firm’s senior partner. ‘Welcome aboard.’ He shakes my hand and explains that he will be supervising me. The others turn up in dribs and drabs, lawyers and support staff, some making a beeline for me, others heading straight for the trolley. There’s not a briefcase in sight and no one attempts to engage me in chat about banal reality TV shows. And when someone puts on some old-school hip hop, I find myself beaming inside. The corporates can keep their biscuits.

#

When enough people have left and it seems polite, I steal quietly away. Or so I think. On the way to the bus stop, Marina comes into view. She is standing outside a pub called Stormbird, cigarette in one hand, martini the other.

‘Not so fast!’ she calls out, and I recognise half the people I have just met. ‘There are two types of legal aid lawyer.’ She laughs, brushing her fringe out of her eye with the back of her hand, and gesturing for me to join them. ‘You’re either a fitness nut, or a boozer.’

#

I stay until the bitter end – well, you would, wouldn’t you? - and I’m heading home when I see a 24/7 and remember something. I grab a six-pack of Stella, take a bus across town and leg it down Bermondsey Street, looking out for a dingy loft and loud music: my friend Danso is DJing at a squat party.

#

Up six flights of rickety stairs, and I’m in, engulfed in smoke and dancing. It’s heaving. I find the makeshift bar and trade in my beers for some cold ones from an ice bucket on the floor. As I turn around, I clash heads with someone and apologise.

‘No, you’re all right,’ she replies, and we lock eyes.

‘Why, thank you...’ I offer her my beer.

She smiles and holds up hers. ‘Have one, thanks.’ And with that, she disappears back into the party, leaving me with the sensation that I have seen her before somewhere.

#

There’s a sort of landing at the back of the building and some stairs out onto a roof terrace. There I find her, looking out over the cityscape towards the Shard. She is fairer than she looked inside and her eyes sparkle with the city lights around her. As I approach, she tosses her cigarette on the floor and stamps on it.

‘Filthy habit,’ she says.

‘There are worse, trust me.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Talking to strange men on dingy rooftops.’

‘Who says it’s dingy?’ She lights up another and offers me one. We do names – hers is Amy - and in no time we are on to, ‘I’m curious, what do you do with yourself, Alex?’

I’ve been waiting to say this to someone, and today I kind of can: ‘Actually I’m a human rights lawyer.’

She tilts her head and asks what type of human rights work I do, and I tell her, adding that I am, in fact, ehm, ‘yet to start.’

I’m dying to ask her about herself, but her questions come thick and fast: which firm am I joining? What do I make of them? Why the move from corporate? I’m talking too much, but it’s so easy.

‘You wanted to help people…’ she prompts me.

‘That’s right,’ I say, cringing at how earnest I must sound.

‘So, you decided you would become a noble defender of human rights.’ She smiles.

‘That’s right,’ I say again, puffing out my chest, ‘a fearless apologist for a secular religion I can call my own.’

‘Good for you.’ She laughs. ‘Seriously, we need more people like you.’

Blushing, I concede that I don’t suppose I’ll solve all the world’s ills…‘But if I can help vulnerable people to navigate our complex immigration and asylum laws and keep them safe, I’ll be a happy man.’

‘Ahh,’ she says, ‘that’s really lovely. Well, well, well.’

‘Well, well, well…what?’ I reply with a smile, and seize my opportunity: ‘And you, Amy? Can I ask what you do?’

She smiles. ‘OK. Erm, how to put this? Your firm instructs us: I am a barrister at Target Chambers.’

Oh god – I fan my face with my hand – I knew I recognised her. Still, faint heart never won fair lady. ‘Another beer, perhaps?’

She politely declines and I’m resigning myself to take the hint when a couple of long seconds later, to my delight, she asks if I know anywhere round here to grab a bite.

#

You can always rely on the Spanish. It takes us less than two minutes to reach Jose’s Tapas Bar and though the place is officially closed, the waiter and I remember each other from a long lunch I had there with my old man. He clears us a space at the white marble bar and goes to fetch a cloth to wipe it down. The whole room is candle-lit, and every so often, when there’s a break in the chatter, you can hear the broken cry of flamenco guitar.

Her phone buzzes. ‘The boss,’ she mouths to me. ‘Anton, hi, yes, sorry, I was famished. Yes, I’m absolutely fine.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Yes, not to worry, I’ll get a taxi. I said I’m fine! Cool, see you Monday after court.’

‘Your boss was at the party?’

‘I say “boss”, he’s my head of chambers. But, yes, some of the clerks invited us along. You know, I’m quite glad they did…’ she blushes, and diverts her gaze to the serviette-strewn floor.

‘You refer to the music?’ I ask.

She laughs. ‘Actually, I did enjoy it - he’s good that DJ.’

The waiter appears. I order a couple of glasses of Ribera del Duero and we chat about his family while my new acquaintance squints at the menu, chalked on the wall behind the bar. She invites me to choose, and when the waiter’s gone again, she turns to me:

‘A Spanish-speaker I see….hombre!’

‘You too?’ I ask.

‘No.’ She laughs. ‘I did a case with Marina Perez – she’s at your…’

‘She interviewed me,’ I interrupt. ‘Seemed lovely.’

‘Amazing lawyer too. Anyway, she told me if you ever want to appear like you’ve understood something, you just say ‘hombre’ – works for everything.’

‘Hombre.’

The waiter appears and fills her glass. I thank him again for letting us in and he shushes me: ‘This man is a gentleman,’ he tells Amy to my embarrassment. ‘Last time he was here, he invited everyone a drink.’

Was my dad actually, but no need to disabuse her of this version. The conversation moves to Spain and to Andalusia. She raves about Seville and I wonder, could she go any higher in my estimation? OK, marginally perhaps: she hasn’t seen Cadiz…

Oops, I’m off. I tell her about the pueblos blancos of the Costa de la Luz, about the remote fishing village of Zahara de los Atunes and its wild and infinite beach, about its night life and its picaresque population - ‘Oh, and it is home to the most beautiful restaurant in the world,’ I add.

‘Big claim…’

‘El Refugio.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘You’re pulling my leg?’

‘Kid you not, it’s a terrace by the sea, with a beautiful sprawling fig tree in the middle.’

‘Yum, figs are my favourite,’ she whispers, and I start to question whether any of this is real.

It is. When the bill comes, my card is declined. She instantly offers hers, but the waiter again comes to my aid. ‘Loyal customers rule,’ he declares, ‘you pay twice next time.’ At last, I remember his name:

‘Mil gracias, Rogelio.’

‘A ustedes, Don Sanz.’ He laughs and opens the door for us.

‘Sanz?’ Amy asks on the way out. ‘Your surname?’ And I am forced to confess that the last time I was here, I may have attempted to introduce myself as the Spanish music sensation, Alejandro Sanz.

#

On the walk to the bus stop, I discover that Amy lives in Kilburn. I offer to get her cab, but she reminds me I have no money. I press my Oyster Card into her hand. ‘Here, at least have this.’

‘I have money.’ She smiles, handing it back. ‘Not much, but enough for the bus.’

We walk straight past the first bus stop. And the second. I learn of her upbringing in Connemara, how her father passed away from a sudden heart attack when she was 12 and how her mother turfed her out four years later, ‘Bless her, poor thing, it wasn’t her fault: no space. I was the eldest and she had five younger mouths to feed.’ She found some work, she continues, her tone lifting, front of house in a fancy hotel, then finished school and applied to Oxford to read Law, ‘To my astonishment, they let me in.’

‘Always wanted to be lawyer, then?’ I ask.

‘I’m one of the precocious ones who knew when they were like…four,’ she replies. ‘I had my own wig by eight…’

‘You serious?’

‘I had you there.’ She laughs.

I stop counting the bus stops.

#

It must be, what, two in the morning? Three? Anyway, we’re passing the Globe theatre and I offer her my arm. She hesitates, then takes it and I feel a shudder. I never want this night to end.

#

It doesn’t. On we drift, past the Tate, down the South Bank as far as the Festival Hall, then up the steps to Hungerford Bridge. Half way across, Amy stops to let some noisy revellers pass, and we peer down at the obsidian-black river beneath, rolling silently on.

‘Tamesas,’ her voice is gentle, ‘the old Celtish word that gave the river its name – it means “dark”.’ It is quiet now, just the wave-like swoosh of distant traffic, and the slosh and slap of the water on the piers below. I want to bottle this moment and keep it somewhere safe.

When I look up, she is pointing back across the river, the tips of her hair lifting in the gentle breeze. ‘Sublime isn’t it?’ she says, and we watch, mesmerised for a moment, as The National Theatre morphs from shamrock green to warm sunset red, majestic like a Rothko monochrome, tightly framed by the night sky.