Low life
One leg over
Jeffrey Bernard
The past few days haven't been a lot of fun and the fact that three quarters of the human race, including the entire media force, were actually interested— to the point of obsession—in some metal junk falling out of the sky, is probably indicative of our being on the edge of another Dark Age. It seems to me that we've been going through another of those phases in which rock bottom is touched by nearly everyone. Idiots abound.
One night recently, I climbed miserably into bed and had a dream designed by Brueghel. In the morning, there wasn't a single letter from a London publisher begging my presence. I examined the honeysuckle to see whether or not it would bear the weight of my banged body and then a passing herdsman showed me something in the Daily Mirror which was to lift me from the dark cavern of my depression to Olympian heights of jibbering delight.
You may remember a similar black patch four months ago, (Spectator 17 March) when we were saved by Mr Sam Riley who laid clown his life in breaking the world record for alcohol consumption; now, that herdsman brought me news of another great Englishman who had emerged on the scene illuminating our darkest hour like a Churchill. Our new, but unnamed, warrior and hero appeared in Bodmin Crown Court last Monday week. He stood, al15" 6" of him in his stockinged foot— it wasn't reported whether he wore a sock on the end of his artificial leg — accused of raping a 17 stone, 16-year-old virgin in the front seat of a van parked outside an abattoir.
It was alleged that the accused (known hereinafter as 'our hero') forced the ample Cornish lady across the gearbox, handbrake and seat-belt clips, held her down with one hand and removed her knickers with the other. This makes Drake's effort at sanN froid with his game of bowls seem almost hysterical to me, but anyway.
Counsel for the defence, out-Rumpoling Rumpole, got straight to the crutch of thp matter when he inquired of the hitherto unsullied girl, 'If you are telling the truth, he managed to lift 17 stone with one hand'. The victim said, 'I saw his false leg after he got his trousers down. It was from the knee-cap down'. All good stuff, but the cherry on top of the icing came when our hero admitted to the police that he had sex with the girl and claimed that she con sented. 'But', he added, didn't enjoy it'. The following day he was found not guilty.
Now there happen to be several interesting aspects of this case as I pointed out to my dear wife in my summing up. 'In the first place', I told her, 'you must, as has become the practice these days, regard the victim as a hostile witness, hell-bent on producing a Greek tragedy and you must therefore disregard most of her evidence. She allowed a man, an almost defenceless amputee, who was in a drunken state, to drive her down a dark lane to an abattoir, from where, she stated, she was too frightened to run away. Too frightened to run away from a onelegged man! I ask. you!
'Wouldn't you say', I continued addressing my still sceptical wife, 'that it was more likely that the accused was the victim of what is known among the lower orders as having been given a "sympathy-leg-over"? Is it not a well-known fact that a sentimental and crusading streak in women obliges them to give their ,bodies willy-nilly to amputees, unpublished poets, potential suicides and all manner of little boys lost and would you deny that his cavalier statement to the police to the effect that he had not enjoyed said congress to be a wounding remark and one that would make her entire 17 stone quiver with indignation?
'Finally, would you not agree that the accused stands not only nearly legless by surgical definition but nearly legless in so far as he was unable to remember the night of the alleged rhapsody beyond the fact that he didn't enjoy it? I put it to you, you can only bring in one verdict. Take your time'.
'Not guilty', said my wife, 'but I bet he did enjoy it, whatever it was', I sat there, another case closed, feeling sure that our other hero, Mr Sam Riley, was turning in his grave with delight.
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