You know how it is on those days when they are making Carey Street ready for the procession of a new lord chancellor, with the full wigs and robes, and white gloves held limp in the hand. At the corner of Bell Yard, near the place for locking the bicycles of the ones who run with the rush-hour white vans and taxicabs, they had already parked a Range Rover of the Metropolitan Police protection squad.
I crossed quickly to the north side, dodging a green hire bike splayed wounded on the sidewalk, like the waterbuck that time in the Serengeti when I was younger than I am now.
There are two ways to attend a lord chancellor’s swearing, if you wish to. The novice will try to join the grand and mighty for the ceremony itself, from a polished wooden bench inside the Royal Courts of Justice. But better – unless you have some official speaking to do – is to view the procession as it makes the slow business westward on Carey Street. This can be done from Roxy’s, where it is possible that someone will buy you a drink.
In the sleet of that WC2 afternoon I passed the bookstore arch and the shop of the ones who photocopy court bundles and entered Roxy’s by the east door, where the blackboard of the day’s menu is written in coloured chalk and the beer-foamed empties stack up on a Thursday night.
This afternoon it was only tourists drinking half pints and photographing the black cat with the ruff.
‘What is all the commotion outside?’ asked the barmaid with the bold eyes.
‘It is for the arrival of the new lord chancellor. He will walk in procession preceded by the tipstaff and the bearer of the mace of office, all in ceremonial dress,’ I replied.
‘What, not again?’ she asked. ‘How long is this one gonna last?’
‘¿Quién puede decir? Who can say?’
She squeezed a red wine from the plastic bladder into my glass. ‘Cash or card?’ she asked.
‘Wait. I am being joined by the public relations head of a top-50 law firm. She will pay. It is the custom.’
She shrugged. ‘Will this be her now?’
It was a tall woman, perhaps young, in the black suit that is either court dress or a widow’s weeds; sometimes both.
‘What are you having?’ I asked after we had done the thing with the hands and the pretended kiss.
‘I shall have an Orangina,’ she said. ‘But let me get these.’ So she was not young after all.
The serving one did the business with the telephone and the handset which deducts the bill from your bank balance, if you have any, and prints a copy of the receipt.
We took a seat at the corner table with its green and white chequered plastic cloth and talked of our journeys on the underground, of the news business and of writers we had known. Some were working in public relations and some were making podcasts. Some were dead. At last, she pulled from her Mulberry a brown paper envelope with no writing on the front.
‘Here is an exclusive of the press release we shall send out next week about lateral hires and the opening of our office in Retford,’ she said. ‘You will find some great photographs on our website.’
Sometimes it is kind not to tell the whole truth. ‘I shall read it with interest,’ I said. ‘But I must go now, for the procession is about to begin. Will you stay and watch?’
She shook her head. I knew then she had seen too many lord chancellors in too few years. ‘I must be back in the office for a Zoom call,’ she said. ‘Where are the loos?’
‘They are round the end of the bar up the narrow stairs. Be careful coming down and do not swing on the safety rail, for it will break off in your hand.’
‘In this way speak the good ones.’
I placed our sticky glasses back on the bar, ordered a refill of red, and turned into the street. Across the way, agency photographers and the ones who make moving pictures were being briefed by the bearded one from HMCTS. At the eastern end of Carey St, a saloon car in government black was pulling in to the curb.
A VIP officer watched, legs astride, Heckler & Koch cradled across the crook of his left arm.
The east wind was blowing now and flurries of snow danced over the grey roofs of Chancery Lane.
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