Conference With Counsel

Abstract

“Everyone here?”

This from the barrister’s clerk, a tall man, stooped and edentulous, his bleak and cadaverous form draped in a grimy suit. The clerk rubbed his hands together, and balancing on one foot and then another, surreptitiously shined the tips of his shoes on his socks as he addressed the group of five people assembled in the waiting room of counsel’s chambers. The group sat on lumpy armchairs covered in pale blue draylon, sat around a glass topped coffee table laden with grubby copies of Country Life and Horse and Hound. Who was in the waiting room? There was John Crowe, a solicitor, Henry Green a GP, Doctor Rosenberg an oncologist, Professor Sleight a pathologist, and Sylvia Hitchings, widow of Alex, around whose case the conference with counsel had been scheduled.