Читать книгу All She Ever Wished For - Claudia Carroll - Страница 12

The present

‘The main thing is not to panic,’ says Bernard, my hubby-to-be, when I call to fill him in on what’s just happened, my imminent heart attack, etc.

‘Try not to panic?’ I say, doing the exact polar opposite. ‘Bernard, I’ve just been summoned for jury service, bloody jury service and you’re telling me not to panic?’

I consult the now half-scrunched letter in my hand for about the thousandth time today. ‘Here it is in cold, hard print. I’ve got to be at the Criminal Courts of Justice at 9 a.m. this coming Monday morning. So forgive me for panicking when this lands on me less than a month and counting before D-Day! Do you realise how much there’s still left to do?’

It’s a rhetorical question; of course Bernard hasn’t the first clue what’s left to do. After all, he’s a forty-three-year-old heterosexual male. What the hell does he know about weddingy floral centrepieces or alternate menu choices for coeliac lacto-ovo vegetarians?

‘Now I strongly suggest you stay calm dearest,’ Bernard says patiently. ‘All this panic is getting you nowhere. A nice cup of tea, that’ll soon set you to rights.’

Bernard, it has to be said, thinks that there’s no drama in this life that can’t be instantly righted with a cup of Clipper gold blend.

‘The thing you have to understand,’ I sigh, regrouping and trying my best to keep cool, ‘is that with a wedding like this, there’s a whole clatter of stuff that you can only leave till these last, precious few weeks. So there’s no way in hell I can handle something as huge as jury service right now. Besides, I’ve got my family and pals all roped into helping me out before the big day, how could I possibly just skive off to court and leave them to do all the heavy lifting for me?’

‘Well, I’m sure they’d be most understanding, under the circumstances—’

‘No, I can’t do it, Bernard, it just isn’t right. I won’t do it to my friends and I certainly wouldn’t put my family through that. I need to be here working around the clock along with everyone else, that’s all there is to it. After all, we’re talking our dream wedding here.’

‘I suggest you just try to put this whole thing into perspective,’ he says calmly. ‘Remember, it’s nothing personal. Being summoned for jury service can happen to any of us, at any time.’

‘I know, but I’ve got my whole life ahead of me to deal with stuff like this! Why does it have to be right now? Landing on me out of a clear blue sky?’

‘Such a pity you don’t live in the UK,’ Bernard muses calmly. ‘Because over there, you know, you’re allowed to turn down jury service twice and only on the third time are you obliged to serve.’

‘But, sweetheart, I don’t live in the UK. It’s totally different here; if you’re summoned, you’ve got to turn up, simple as that. And you know the nightmare I had at work trying to get time off – I can’t have all that precious time eaten into with this crapology.’

‘Now there’s absolutely no need for neologism,’ he chides gently, and it’s all I can do to bite my tongue and ask him to stop using words I don’t understand. ‘The critical thing is to remember that this is how our judicial system works. That’s how our democracy works.’

‘I already know all of that, but the thing is, how am I supposed to get out of it?’

‘In fact, did I ever tell you about the time I was summoned just a few months before I was due to take my doctorate?’ he chats away, sounding perfectly relaxed about this, oblivious to the rising note of hysteria in my voice. ‘I still had reams of research to do on the painting technique of the seventeenth-century Dutch Masters, with particular reference to Vermeer, which as you know is a highly contentious subject which needs a plethora of astute writing, not to mention the most forensic editing—’

‘Eh, no offence, but can we just get back to the point?’

No rudeness intended in cutting across him, but when Bernard gets going on either Vermeer or Rembrandt, you could be on the phone all night.

‘Sorry, sausage. But just remember that when it comes to court service, just because you’ve been summoned, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ll be selected.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, both the Prosecution and Defence have the perfect right to turn down any proposed juror on the slightest pretext, you know.’

‘So all I have to do is turn up at the courts, hang around for a bit and then maybe I’ll just be discharged at the end of the day?’ I ask hopefully, for the first time since that bloody letter landed on me this morning, seeing a sudden glint of light in this nightmare. Could he possibly be right? Is that all there is to it? After all, if all this jury service malarkey takes no more than a single day out of my schedule, then maybe – just maybe – all is not lost.

‘Better than that, sausage,’ Bernard chats on. ‘Fact is, there are a whole myriad of reasons why you can plead ineligibility to serve. So go online, check them all out and remember, at all costs, nil desperandum. Now I’ve really got to dash, I’m afraid. I’ve got a tutorial with my MA students at 2 p.m., so I’ll call you later. That alright with you, dearest?’

‘Of course it is,’ I smile, for the first time all day starting to feel the tight constraint that’s been around my chest actually start to loosen a little.

You see? This is why I love Bernard. This is why he and I make the perfect couple. This is why we work, no matter what anyone says. And believe me, in the run-up to this wedding, they’ve pretty much said it all. At stressed-out times like this, I can always rely on him to be the sober yang to my slightly more highly strung ying.

Even if I haven’t the foggiest what his Latin reference meant.

*

Turns out Bernard is absolutely on the money. When I log onto the court’s website, there’s a whole section on who isn’t eligible for jury service, not to mention all the reasons why you can be instantly disqualified the minute a Jury Selection Officer casts their eye on you. My eye greedily scrolls down the page, desperately trying to spot one that might just apply to me. Or if all else fails, one that I can plausibly fake and hopefully get away with.

Bernard, I know, would baulk at my doing anything that even remotely smacks of dishonesty, never having told an out-and-out lie in the whole course of his life. But then, I remind myself, Bernard doesn’t have to organise catering for over fifty guests, get a marquee up, fully stock a bar, scrub and clean this house from top to bottom, then hound all our last-minute guests who’ve yet to RSVP. And that’s just what I’ve got to do this week alone. So it’s actually reasonably calm and quiet compared with the weeks that lie ahead, but don’t get me started.

OK. So far the court’s website is telling me that if you’re in any way involved with the administration of justice, then you’re automatically disqualified, simple as that. I scan quickly down the checklist to find out exactly who they mean, but given that I’m neither the President, the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, a guard, a prison officer, a practicing barrister, a solicitor or a court officer, then that’s feck all use to me.

My eye keeps speed-scrolling down, the words almost like a blur in front of me.

‘Those who have been convicted of a serious offence in Ireland, those who have ever been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years or more, those who, within the last ten years, have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of at least three months and have served at least part of that sentence … ’

Silently cursing myself for being law-abiding all these years, I keep on reading, praying that I’ll stumble on some handy little get-out-of-jail-free card that’ll neatly extricate me from all of this shite.

‘Persons aged 65 and upwards … members of either the House of the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament), members of the Council of State, the Comptroller and Auditor General … a person in Holy Orders, a minister of any religious denomination or community, members of monasteries and convents, aircraft pilots, full-time students and ships’ masters … ’

Bugger, bugger, bugger, I think. The slow, sickening panic I’ve been holding at bay starting to rise again.

‘Those who provide an important community service, including practicing doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists, vets, chemists, etc … ’

Important community service? Yes, success! We might just have a winner on our hands here. Finally, this could actually mean all my problems are solved, I think, suddenly feeling calmer. And OK, so maybe working as a personal trainer in a gym mightn’t necessarily be considered ‘important community service’, but plenty of my clients, not to mention my manager, would certainly disagree.

Well, this is it then, I decide firmly. I’m not officially summoned for jury service till next week, so cometh the hour, cometh the woman. I’ll stride into the courts, be polite and professional, but by God, I’ll plead my case. I work in a busy city centre health club, I’ll tell them, and I’ve a long list of clients who are completely dependent on me.

And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll flash the engagement ring, say the wedding is less than a month away and, what the hell, if they’ll only see reason here, I might even invite every single solicitor and barrister, as well as whoever’s standing in the dock in handcuffs along to the afters.

Feck it, I think, firmly snapping my laptop shut, mind made up. I’ll name our first-born child after the judge if it’ll give Bernard and I back our dream wedding day.

Because after what I’ve been through to get here, nothing is going to compromise that. No court case, no legal threats, absolutely nothing.