1 Picture, 1 Story Week #35

THE VERDICT

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For there or four weeks, Udo had been steeling himself against this moment. And when he walked into the dock that morning, he thought he was fully prepared. He wore a smart palm-beach suit and appeared unruffled and indifferent. The proceeding seemed to be of little interest to him, except for one brief moment at the beginning when one of the counsels had got into trouble with the judge.

"This court begins at nine o'clock. Why are you late?" Whenever Mr. Justice William Galloway, judge of the High Court looked at the victim, he fixed his gaze as a collector fixes his insect with formalin. He lowered his head like a charging ram and looked over his gold-rimmed spectacles at the lawyers.

"I am sorry, Your Honour," the man stammered. "My car broke down on the way."
The judge continued to look at him for a long time. Then he said very abruptly, "All right, Mr. Ade. I accept your excuse. But I must say I'm getting sick and tired of these constant excuses about the problem of locomotion."
There was suppressed laughter at the bar. Udo smiled a wan and ashy smile and lost interest again.
Every available space in the courtroom was taken up. There were almost as many people standing as sitting. The case had been the talk of Lagos for a number of weeks and on this last day, anyone who could possibly leave his job was there to hear the judgement. Some civil servants paid as much as ten thousand naira to obtain a doctor's certificate of illness for the day.
Udo's listlessness did not show any signs of decreasing even when the judge began to sum up. It was only when he said: "I cannot comprehend how a young man of your education and brilliance promise could have done this", that a sudden and marked change occurred. Treacherous tears came into Udo's eyes. He brought out a white handkerchief and rubbed his face. But he did it as people do when they wipe sweat. He even tried to smile and belie the tears. A smile would have been quite logical. All that stuff about education, promise and betrayal had not taken him unawares. He had experienced it and rehearsed this very scene a hundred times until it had become as familiar as a friend.

In fact, some weeks ago when the trial began, Mr. Green, his boss who was one of the crown witnesses, had also said something about a young man of great promise. And Udo had remained completely unmoved. Mercifully, he had recently lost his mother and Clara had gone out of his life. The two events following closely on each other half dulled his sensibility and left him a different man, able to look words like education and promise squarely in the face. But now when supreme moment came, he was betrayed by treacherous tears.

THE END

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