It's funny how fast a bloke can go from being fit as a bull, to feeling a bit wrong in the waterworks department, to being told by some po-faced doctor that he's probably not long for this world, and if there's anything he really wants to do – travel the world, go skydiving, write his memoirs – he'd best do it sooner rather than later. And as for kids, well, too bad, so sad. If he hasn't had them by now, he's got a very short timeframe to get some Doris knocked up, and then it's goodbye to all that. I never really appreciated what testosterone did for me until I had none. It's not just the loss of my manhood and along with it the dirty dreams that I'd wake from hard and aching most mornings, or the automatic nod-and-wink reaction to anything in a skirt. I've realised it's where that killer instinct to compete, to push and to shove, wheel and deal to keep my job, my barristers, and my Chambers intact comes from; without it, I'm having to work very hard to keep up appearances. I just don't have the same get up and go anymore, the ability to run on adrenaline for twelve hours a day and still go out drinking and shag myself silly with some bird or other. By six p.m. I'm done in, wanting only to go home, crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep; that's the hormone therapy at work, or so I keep telling myself.
Sometimes I think I'd be better off taking a handful of pills, downing a decent bottle of Scotch, and choosing my own end, rather than waiting for what I've been told is coming. When I think about it, which is more often than I'd like, I'm actually glad that it's just me to worry about; no wife or kids to feel guilty over, not even a dog or a cat. There have been nights when I've sat at home, bottle in one hand, packet of strong painkillers in the other, staring at the wall and seriously contemplating it. But then I think of who would come looking for me when I didn't turn up at work or answer my phone, who would batter the door down in fear and fury when I didn't answer it, who would be the first to see my body slumped on the floor, and I can't do it. Not to her. Martha's had grief enough of her own to deal with, and besides, she would never, ever, forgive me.
I can't bear that thought, and so I keep on keeping on, day in day out, while every day finding it that little bit harder to bluff them into thinking I'm the Billy they all know and love, or loathe, as the case may be; it's all much the same to me, in the end. No one likes to feel that they pass unnoticed through the world, or that they leave no impression, good or bad, on the people they spend most of their time with, do they? You want them to know you've been there, that you've made a difference that only you could have wangled or fought for or wheedled out of some solicitor with an iffy liver the size of Surrey and a temper to match. Or at least I do; call it professional vanity, but I want to be known for what I do, and then I want to be known for what I did, once I'm pushing up daisies. Here lies Billy Lamb, a king amongst barristers'clerks, that's what my headstone should read, if there's any justice in this world. And yeah, I already know the answer to that one: there's precious little, if any, and most of it dispensed not by blind Justice with her sword and scales, but by one Martha Costello, with fire in her belly and a tongue as smart as a whip. She's something else, that girl, and the way she takes on the lumbering old dinosaur that is the British legal system is nothing short of miraculous to behold: I'd even go so far as to say she's the closest thing I've got to a hero.
Last year, though, she was the one in need of a white knight. When she told me that she was pregnant, it had been like a kick in the guts; but she was watching me with eyes that dared me to react with anything other than supreme indifference, and so I'd toned it down quick smart. I was dying to know who the father was, but I know her well enough to realise that to ask would have been the stupidest thing I'd ever done, and so I'd smiled until it hurt, and played the dependable, discreet professional. Over the next few weeks I'd watched her begin to bloom – it's funny how it suits some women, and leaves others looking worse than death – and smile that secret smile to herself while her hands drifted unconsciously across her belly while she worked at her desk, or ordered an orange juice in the pub, instead of her usual bottle of red. It made me happy to see her in those moments, all soft and unguarded for once, and I wondered if that was what she'd be like with a lover, if this was the real Martha Costello.
And then I'd found out who the lucky man was, and it had taken every scrap of self-control I had not to strangle him with his Old Harrovian tie. Of all the barristers in all the Chambers in all of London, it had to be him. Of course it did. On the one hand, the revelation had gone a long way to explaining the strained atmosphere in Shoe Lane at the time, but on the other, it had been a massive shock. Miss Costello and Mr Reader, making the beast with two backs…it just didn't bear thinking about, which was why I couldn't seem to stop. So I'd forced myself to focus on the real reason I was sat across from him in a pub neither of us ever went to: he was thinking of sneaking out of Shoe Lane, and I'd caught him with his hand on the doorknob, so to speak, or some sort of knob, at any rate. It had been easy then to channel the outrage and anger, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I had taken hold of that poncy tie and pulled him towards me, while fear flared in his eyes as he began to understand just what he had done: wrecked his career, and my trust in him, in one fell swoop. I was so angry with him, I lost it completely, and I don't mind admitting that when I grabbed his dicky knee and dug my fingers into it hard, I was thinking of Miss Costello and what was she going to do with a kid, and how the hell was I meant to sell a preggers barrister when half the solicitors in this country still turn up their noses at the idea of a lady lawyer in the first place.
Oh, I was in a rare temper, all right, and not even the sight of Mr Reader's face turning chalk-white with pain could shake me out of it. It was the betrayal that hurt the most, even worse than the realisation that he'd been having it off with my darling girl. Chambers, whether we like it or not, is a family. We spend more time with each other than we do with our own nearest and dearest, and in my case there weren't too many of them left, as it happens. Mum had passed away about a year after Dad, and with both of them gone, the rest of the family had just drifted apart. My younger sister, Caroline, had married and moved to London, but I was so caught up in clerking that I only saw her and his family a few times a year, and I lost touch with the few remaining elderly aunts and uncles, who one by one died off or went into a home. My loyalty is to Shoe Lane and my barristers, first, last and forever, and I expect nothing less from them in return. I watch over their careers, steer them right, give them the briefs they deserve, act as their confessor, their professional conscience and their guardian angel all in one, and I get precious little thanks in return.
Not that I expect it; watching each hatch of baby barristers stretch their wings, jump out of the nest and make their first faltering flights on their way to becoming fully-fledged legal eagles is reward enough for me. That, and the increasingly fat clerks' fees which they start to bring in if they're halfway competent. I go to each one of their first appearances in Court proper, although they never see me hidden at the back of the public gallery: I like to see what I'm selling, after all, and what sort of work they might be best suited to. There've been a few that I've moved on out of Chambers altogether; Miss Niamh Cranitch was one such. A Judge's daughter was never going to be anything else other than a prosecutor, in the end, and so I found a place for her in a good set over in the Middle Temple. She was glad enough to go; I think she wanted a fresh start, which in her case meant as far away from our blue-eyed boy as possible. Always a mistake, that, sleeping with your pupil-master, when the criminal bar's worse than a posh girls' school for malicious rumours and vicious gossip, and Uncle Billy hears it all. It's not good for the pupil-master, either, especially not if he's got an application in for silk…
Once I'd gotten my head around the idea that in a few months' time Chambers would be even more like a crèche than usual, I'd decided that it was up to me to keep Miss Costello quietly just ticking over, instead of racing at full speed. As senior clerk, I controlled her workload, and with the help of young Jake, my nephew and heir-apparent if he shows himself any good at this lark, I thought I could manage it without her twigging. I thought wrong, and she tore strips off me, furious that I was implying she needed a rest, as Jakey-boy had put it. That's the thing about her; she gives no quarter, but she asks for none, either. She's as hard on herself as she is on opposing counsel, and I love her for it. I love her for many things, but that ferocious pride that drives her to work longer hours, take on more cases and win more victories than anyone else in Chambers, that warrior spirit of hers, is right at the top of the list. I could have done with some of it myself, when it came to that psychopathic little toerag, Gary Rush; if I'd been a bit more like her, and a bit less like a senior clerk, she would never have lost the baby.
I blame myself for that, even though it was his doing. I should have seen what he was. That's the thing with being a defence set; we get it all in here. The good, the bad, the sad, and the barking mad, but I still should have seen it, the evil in him. She knew, all right, but typical of her, she'd said nothing, wanting to manage it on her own. She hates asking for help because she doesn't want to be seen as different from anyone else – read, any other bloke – in Chambers. And while it was impossible to know that Rush was going to go ballistic, hunt her down in the hallowed halls of the Central Criminal Court itself, and knee her so hard in the stomach that it brought on a miscarriage, it's my job to look out for her, and that day, I failed miserably. When flowers were sent from Chambers (thirty-six red roses, one from each of us and a half-dozen from me) I paid for them myself, and when I saw her creeping unsteadily back into Court the next day, white as a sheet and with a haunted, lost look in her eyes, I'd have cut off my own balls for her if I'd thought it would have helped. Now, I wish I had: it might have stopped the cancer that's threatening to spread throughout my body, despite the radiotherapy, the chemotherapy and enough oestrogen to turn me into the next Mrs Slocombe, only without the blue rinse.
See, I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm going to be the exception to the rule, that I'm going to be the one who beats prostate cancer diagnosed at stage three, that I'm going to win through. The best I can hope for is to go down fighting, and so I've made up my mind to stay schtum and keep on working; at any rate, Shoe Lane would die without me, and I'd die without Shoe Lane. It's getting harder, though, to keep turning up bang on seven-thirty each morning. The medication I'm on makes me so tired, and I don't feel like eating; everything tastes tinny, somehow, and then there are the hot flushes which overcome me without warning and leave me shagged out, only without the shag. I've never been one to sit down all day, in this job, but I'm having to spend more and more time in the clerks' room and not out and about romancing solicitors over long boozy lunches.
As for alcohol, well, I still indulge, but I have to be careful that I don't overdo the pain meds at the same time, or else I could end up having my stomach pumped out at Barts, and that's something I'm keen to avoid, for obvious reasons. I think, though, it's the loneliness that's worst to bear, the not having someone who knows what I'm going through when I'm laid out like a fresh mackerel on a slab in the MRI scanner, or a hand to hold when they're sticking me full of poisonous substances in the hope that it'll cure, rather than kill me. The closest thing I've got to anything like that is an iPod that I asked her to fill full of her favourite songs; it's like hearing her voice right there in that stark white radiation suite. My head aches all the time, now, and I feel as if I'm trying to see my way clear through a grey mist that never lifts; even the simplest bit of wheeling or dealing has begun to feel like a mammoth effort, only there's no-one else up to it. Jake's a long way from being ready, and I don't trust John, ever since the attempt to get rid of me last year.
What scares me the most, though, is that I'll start to lose the plot and not know it until Chambers comes crashing down around my ears. That's why I have to let someone know, and the only someone I want to know is Miss Costello. She's the only one I trust enough to drop my guard with, the only one strong enough not to go to pieces at the news. Over the last few weeks I've gone to her room again and again, wanting to tell her, but each time I've bottled it, or Mr Reader or some other member of Chambers has been there, or else she's looked so tired and weighed down with work that I haven't had the heart to add to her burden, until now. The numbers from my latest test show that the hormone therapy that's been keeping the cancer at bay is starting to fail, and things are only going to go downhill from here on out; I need to tell her soon. She doesn't always like it when I'm brutally honest with her, and I'd be the first to say that we've butted heads more than once over the years, but she always recognises the truth, in the end. Only thing is, how can I ever look Martha Costello straight in the eye, and say those three little words?
A/N: For those not familiar with the 1970s BBC sitcom Are You Being Served, Mrs Slocombe is a woman of a certain age, notable for her brightly coloured hairdo. She's the antithesis of the type of woman Billy would be attracted to.