A legal matter
Posted: 07 Oct 2016, 17:07
"Here you are," said the woman who had introduced herself as Stella as she returned to the spartan desk in the huge, open plan office where she had indicated that Phil should sit down. She was setting a mug of coffee down in front of him. "Help yourself to more from the machine whenever you want it. I need to get back downstairs in case any calls are coming in. Connie usually arrives just before eight o'clock and she'll tell you what to do and get you started. Your office-mates should be in soon too, but they're not such early risers as you evidently are." She smiled at Phil and took her leave.
Twenty-six year old Phil Somerville took a few deep breaths to calm his nerves as the receptionist's footsteps died away and he started to take stock of the tidy, deserted office in which he was seated. He had been relieved to see that Stella had shown no trace of any reaction other than friendliness and professionalism when he had arrived at Langham and Rutherford solicitors' offices and introduced himself. His main anxiety about starting his first day at work, towering above all the other stresses of anticipation which such a huge day involved, had been that Graham, one of his new colleagues-to-be, might have broken his promise of secrecy about what had happened when Phil had arrived for his interview four weeks earlier and why he had ended up less than immaculately dressed for the interview. Any indiscretion on Graham's part would have likely resulted in the embarrassing incident spreading around his new solicitor colleagues and other office workers like wildfire, as Phil had been fretting. He had for that reason scanned Stella's face anxiously, when he said who he was, to catch any possible flicker of amusement in her eye. But her perfectly ordinary reaction reassured him that Graham had probably kept his mouth shut.
His interview had evidently gone well enough to result in his being accepted as a new trainee solicitor at Langham and Rutherford, but one question had made his toes curl and caused him to dig deep for an inspired response. Connie Rutherford, the partner who would be Phil's direct boss, had said: "You have probably noticed that everyone here wears a neat suit, whether we are interviewing clients at the time or just working in the office. We are also obviously required to dress impeccably when we are representing clients in court. So I find it interesting that you have not come to this interview in a matching jacket and trousers. If you were to be accepted for this position, would dressing appropriately be any problem for you?"
Phil had gulped and then come out with the response to this dreaded question which he had feverishly prepared while Graham had been driving him back to the solicitors' firm for his interview, delivering the answer in as confident a manner as he could muster, and hoping that the slightly dumbfounded few seconds of silence with which the two interviewers received it could be construed as a positive reaction. "Yes, I will certainly wear a very good suit at work to give the right impression to Langham and Rutherford's clients. The reason I am not doing so now is that I feel that my talents should speak for themselves and that a suit is not necessary to convince you of them in this interview. Therefore I have dressed casually so that you can see me for my real worth to your company rather than any pretend facade which a suit might afford."
Now, on his first working day having been accepted for the position despite this interview no-no, and with nothing to do but wait, Phil sipped nervously at the coffee for the next ten minutes. His heart rate had just about returned to normal when he was awakened from a reverie by the sudden noise of footsteps and conversation outside the door. Swallowing his mouthful of coffee hastily and replacing the mug back on the table in his hurry to greet the new colleagues and make the right impression, Phil instantly cursed to himself and looked down anxiously at his shirt, tie and suit trousers to see where the splash of coffee from his mug had ended up. To his relief, his white shirt and neat grey, recently dry-cleaned suit showed no sign of wetness, and only a couple of drops of the brown liquid on the spartan white desktop betrayed his carelessness. Coffee down his suit, while less drastic as a disaster than what had happened on the day of his interview, would still have been a bad start to the first day of his new job. Phil grabbed a tissue from his pocket, dabbed on the table surface hurriedly, and replaced the tissue in his pocket just in time as the door opened.
A female voice was in full flow. "Yes, my hit and run case is in court tomorrow. The client couldn't really suggest anything mitigating when I interviewed him, seems like he just panicked at the time, so I think... oh hello! Are you Phil?"
Phil stood up smartly and extended his hand towards the young woman with as confident a smile on his face as he could muster. She introduced herself as Jenny, and the young male following her into the office turned out to be called David. Both solicitor colleagues seemed friendly, both were neatly dressed in business suits of a similar quality to Phil's own, and Phil started to relax as the two of them hung up their outdoor coats, settled down at their respective desks and kept up a banter with him as they each grabbed a coffee from the machine, switched on their desktop computers and generally started work. Phil had clearly been expected, and they were obviously as keen to make a good start with him as he was with them.
The door soon opened again, and another male and female entered the room. This time Phil recognised both colleagues. The woman, a middle aged woman, was the firm's partner Connie who had been one of Phil's interviewers. And the male of about thirty following her into the room was Graham. Phil felt himself blushing slightly as Graham greeted him with a slap on his shoulder and a wink, but the neutral friendliness on Graham's face reassured Phil that he had kept his promise of secrecy.
"I see you two have already met, then?" said Connie as she observed the interaction between Graham and her new protege. "How come?"
"I was downstairs when he arrived for his interview," responded Graham smoothly. "We exchanged a few words then," he continued. "Good to see you again Phil, and good luck with your first assignment." He turned back to Connie. "He's shadowing Jake to start with, right? They're interviewing Danny Hayes and his brother."
Phil sighed inwardly with relief as he observed Graham's deft handling of Connie's question and his glossing over of the lengthy, excruciatingly embarrassing encounter which Phil had had with Graham prior to the interview.
"Yes, you're working with Jake to start with, Phil," said Connie. "He shouldn't be too long, at least not if he stayed off the beer and partying yesterday. Were you out with him last night, Jenny?"
Jenny shook her head. "No, I don't encourage him, you know," she replied.
Connie nodded at her approvingly. then continued: "Well, I did ask Jake to get here early today for a change to help get Phil started, so hopefully he's dragged himself out of bed by now. Could someone set Phil up with a PC, please, and anything else he needs until Jake gets here? And show him around the place if you have time." She headed off to her own adjoining office leaving Phil with the others.
While Jenny set up Phil's computer for him and Graham and David fetched sundry stationery items for Phil's desk and pointed out the location of photocopiers, printers and a cupboard full of client dossiers, several other new colleagues arrived, and Phil became acquainted with a middle-aged male called Vishy, a male of his own age named Jonathan, and a woman in her thirties called Liz, in addition to meeting up again briefly with the other senior partner of the firm who had interviewed him, Richard Langham, the company's sixty-three year old founder, who shook hands cordially with Phil.
"I see you do indeed possess a smart suit, even if you don't use it for job interviews," Mr. Langham remarked, casting an approving eye over his new recruit. "Now, you'll be joining us for the dinner and concert tonight, I hope?" he continued briskly. "Are you a Rachmaninoff fan like I am?"
"Oh yes," replied Phil slightly breathlessly in his attempt to come over as enthusiastic. A quarter of an hour earlier his new colleagues David and Vishy had told him about this work outing which was scheduled for that same evening and warned him that attendance, while not strictly compulsory, was most certainly expected of all the firm's employees. "I'd like to very much, sir. I love Rachmaninoff's piano concertos especially."
"Splendid," beamed the older man. "I'll see you again tonight then at the dinner if not before. Now best of luck with your assignments today. I'm sure you'll do well. And don't call me 'sir'," he added with a wink before disappearing in the direction of his private office further along the corridor.
By the time the door finally opened again some three quarters of an hour later than the first colleagues had arrived, and a tall slim guy of around Phil's age swaggered in wearing a beige suit, punching Phil affably in the shoulder and introducing himself as Jake, Phil had already relaxed completely and warmed to his new colleagues in the friendly office atmosphere. But the first question that Jake asked Phil after introducing himself, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to Phil, caused Phil's jaw to drop and his hands to tremble. "Right then, what do you know about wetting your pants?"
"Um... excuse me?" replied Phil faintly, battling with his face in an attempt to look innocent, as if to make out that he had no idea what Jake was talking about. Various people in the office had overheard Jake's question and were looking at Phil in anticipation of his answer. Jenny in particular was standing right by Jake and gazing at him, and from the rapport between the two of them which Phil had noticed as soon as Jake had arrived, it seemed likely that Jenny and Jake were an item.
"How can a healthy young adult bloke piss himself?" Jake seemed to be performing slightly in front of Jenny in his interrogation of his new colleague. Jenny looked amused. Jake gazed at Phil as he waited for his reply, establishing a subtle dominance over the new trainee solicitor who seemed to wilt under the pressure.
Phil felt dizzy with shame and horror. Graham had betrayed him after all! "Um..." he began again, but faltered. Jenny laughed. Phil glanced abjectly and reproachfully at Graham who was observing the scene from behind his desk a few metres to one side.
***
Four weeks earlier, Phil had arrived by bus in his neat, light grey suit in the unfamiliar area of the city and had located the premises of Langham and Rutherford on the basis of the street number of their address with more than an hour and a quarter to spare before his interview appointment. Deciding that he should present himself at reception approximately ten minutes before his appointed time, he attempted to while away an hour by wandering around the streets in the vicinity, rehearsing in his mind his answers to the expected questions which would be posed to him in the interview, and recalling to himself the information about the company which he had feverishly researched the previous evening so that he could demonstrate an interest in what he hoped would be his first place of work as a junior solicitor.
Phil's reconnaissance during the subsequent fifteen minutes of the neighbourhood, which was a concrete jungle of streets and office blocks, soon turned into a concerted search for somewhere to relieve himself as the bladder twinges of which he had been aware on the bus became a serious sense of fullness as he continued to bide his time. This search was not fruitful, and Phil finally decided that his best course of action was to report far too early for his interview after all and find a toilet there straight away before the situation became absolutely critical, which it was threatening to become by now.
Walking purposefully and briskly back to the venue of his interview, and wincing slightly as his bladder started to seriously protest, Phil grabbed himself momentarily in the groin at a point when a corner in the road was concealing him from the view of anyone ahead of him, and mentally cursed the extra cup of coffee he had consumed to calm his nerves that morning before setting out. Rounding the corner, he broke into a slight trot which brought him to the door which he had located a quarter of an hour earlier. He bent slightly forward, one knee bent inwards across the other, as he pushed ineffectively at the door and then looked at the pair of doorbells and their inscriptions in some confusion.
"Can I help you?"
Phil, startled by the unexpected male voice from right behind him, swung round to see a pleasant-faced guy of about thirty in a dark blue business suit and tie. "Oh," Phil began, slightly flustered. "I'm looking for Langham and Rutherford. I've got an appointment."
"Reception is round the side there," said the stranger, indicating a side street to the left, "but you can come in this way if you like. It's slightly quicker to get to the offices from this door." He was inserting a key into the lock. "I spotted you running up the road just now, so I guess you're a bit late for your appointment, right?" He pushed the door open and gestured to Phil to step inside.
"Um, no, that's not till eleven, but I wanted to be early," said Phil as he stumbled over the threshold and gazed round the foyer hurriedly and anxiously. A lift and a flight of stairs were in evidence, but no obvious bathroom facilities. "Actually I really need to go to the toilet first," he added as he felt his bladder spasming again.
The unfamiliar employee was shutting the door behind them and turning back to Phil. "That's round the corner to the right and then just continue to the end of the corridor... careful!"
"Oww!" gasped Phil in agony. He had moved off in the direction indicated as soon as the young man had uttered the words, but his shin had slammed immediately against the rim of a large clay plant pot on the floor which he had failed to notice on entering. As the pain seared through his body, he clutched his lower leg with both hands and hopped around on the other leg for a moment.
"Steady on, man, are you okay?" asked the stranger.
The pain in Phil's leg subsided within seconds, but his senses then picked up a new warm feeling around and underneath his groin. Phil gasped again as he clamped off the flow which he had just released, then set off around the corner which the guy had indicated, breaking into a slightly limping trot as he spotted a sign reading "gentlemen" at the end of the corridor ahead. The warm wetness which he could sense in his underwear was replenished by another spurt lasting a second or two as he came to a brief halt outside the door, but for the moment at least Phil's senses were focused on the pain in his bladder and the necessity of relieving it immediately, rather than the warm feeling around his groin and what that feeling must mean. He pushed the door open, charged into the deserted men's washroom, and bolted into a cubicle, opening his suit trousers with trembling hands in one practised movement and then relieving himself into the toilet with no time to shut the cubicle door behind him. He closed his eyes as the feelings of relief surged through him, for the moment ignoring both the dull pain from where he had banged his shin and the warm but cooling wet sensation underneath where he was holding himself.
The sound of the men's room door opening behind him also barely registered with Phil as he felt the tension in his whole body ebb away and his bladder emptied itself, but as the last of the droplets cascading into the toilet finally dried up and his hands fumbled with his underwear and flies to put his equipment away again, the feeling of the sopping wet material under his fingers brought the thought which had been lurking at the back of Phil's mind to the fore. The sensation of relief from his bladder started to give way to this more troublesome notion.
"Are you alright?"
The voice interrupted Phil's train of thought again as his fingers manipulated the zip and the clammy wetness bubbled around them through the soft material. His heart beat faster as he became more conscious of the fact that the young man who had let him into the building had followed him into the toilet, and that he was in no fit state to turn round.
"Mmm," replied Phil indistinctly as he pulled the zip of his suit trousers up into place, pressed the button to flush the toilet, and then glanced downwards at himself. He gulped as he stared at his suit trousers.
"Are you sure?"
Phil made no reply. As the noise of the flushing toilet filled the air, he continued to gaze down at his trousers. Just two hours before he had been similarly examining them in the hall mirror before he set out, checking for any imperfection such as a crease or a piece of lint. Now he stared in horror at the dark, wet area which spread out over the crotch and the two or three streaks which continued downwards from the large patch, one down the inside of his left leg and the other more prominently on the front of the same leg.
"That looked painful," the voice was continuing from behind him. "Those plant pots should be moved out of the way really. They're not safe there. Sorry about that. Are you sure you're alright? There's a first aid box at reception if you need a dressing or anything."
"Ohhhh..." groaned Phil indistinctly in reply.
"Come out and let's have a look at your leg," said the stranger. To Phil's horror, he sensed the man coming right up behind him and tugging at the crook of his arm. He turned a quarter circle so that he was facing one wall of the cubicle and turned his head further to look at the young man but with his wet groin still concealed. The guy was pointing at the leg which Phil had banged.
"No, it's okay," stammered Phil.
"Roll up your trouser leg and let's have a look," persisted the man. "I'm Graham Turner, by the way. I'm one of the solicitors here. I'm not expecting any clients this morning, so I guess you're due to see Jenny Houghton, right? The others are out of the office at the moment."
"Um, no, I'm not a client. I'm here for a job interview."
"Oh yes of course, for the vacancy. The partners will be interviewing you then, I guess. I'll tell them you're here. What's your name?"
"Phil Somerville."
"Nice to meet you Phil. Now let's just check your shin isn't bleeding first. You don't want to drip blood on Connie's carpet while she's interviewing you, now, do you?" Graham grinned at Phil making eye contact once again and then turned his attention to Phil's lower half once more. "Come on, turn round and let's have a look." He dropped to a squatting position ready to examine Phil's injury.
Phil numbly hoisted up the leg of his suit trousers so that the shin was exposed, then closed his eyes in anguish as he felt Graham's hands touch his bare leg. There was a silence for a while, one which lasted rather longer than Graham would have needed merely to examine the injured shin. Finally Graham replaced the trouser leg gently and stood up again.
"No bleeding there, just a small bruise as far as I can see," he reported. Then he added in a matter-of-fact voice: "But you seem to be a bit wet. Have you peed yourself?"
Phil gulped, made no reply, and stared down once again at the damage to his beautiful suit. As the extent of the wet patch and the streaks which emanated from it registered more emphatically with him, and as he came to terms with the fact that it was screamingly obvious that he had indeed peed himself and that he was now in no state to be interviewed for the post of trainee solicitor on which he had pinned all of his hopes, Phil felt like bursting into tears. He put his hands over his mouth and continued to stare downwards at himself.
"Okay, don't worry," said Graham hastily after a few seconds, recognising that no answer was needed to his question anyway because it was perfectly obvious that the lad had indeed peed in his suit and was absolutely devastated by this. "What time's your interview?"
"Eleven o'clock." Phil's voice was barely a whisper as he fought back the tears.
"In fifty minutes, then," said Graham. "Is that enough time for you to get home and change and then get back here? Where do you live?"
"Rifford Green. The bus only runs every half an hour. I won't make it." Phil covered his face with his hands as the enormity of what had happened started to sink in.
"We'll go in my car then. It'll only take quarter of an hour to Rifford Green, and the same time to come back. We've got time if we go now."
"But this is my only suit." Phil's voice was an anguished whisper.
"Then you'll be wearing something other than a suit for your interview, won't you? Or do you honestly think you'll give a better impression like that when you've quite obviously wet yourself? Come on, Phil. My car's right outside."
***
"How can a healthy young adult bloke piss himself?". Jake, with Jenny fawning at his side, had Phil on the ropes.
Graham filled the silence following the question as he spotted Phil staring across at him instead of answering Jake's strange query. "For goodness sake, Jake, can't you provide a bit of context to your questions instead of just dropping the poor guy into it?" He made eye contact with Phil. "He's referring to your first client, but he's got a funny way of broaching the subject." Graham winked at Phil reassuringly, fully aware of the sudden anxiety which Phil had felt and understanding the reason. On the way back to the office that morning four weeks earlier, Phil, by then dressed in clean dry underpants and a pair of dark trousers which did not really match his grey suit jacket, had begged Graham not to mention what had happened to anyone. Graham had assured him that it was none of anyone else's business and that he did not need to worry.
Phil now recovered his composure and turned back to Jake. "What's the context, then?" he asked in as neutral a manner as possible, hoping that Jake and Jenny had not picked up on his initial horrified reaction.
"Our client this morning, mate," replied Jake. "Danny Pissypants. A very big baby, he's twenty-one now. He's coming in at ten-thirty. With his older brother Pete Soggynappy who was present and witnessed the incident too." Jake was clearly exercising his wit for Jenny's benefit.
"Danny and Peter Hayes are their names," corrected Graham who had originally accepted the clients but had passed them on to Jake.
"Oh, I do apologise, Danny and Pete Hayes then," continued Jake. "Danny, the younger brother, was arrested on Tuesday evening and bailed to appear before magistrates in two weeks' time. We're supposed to be defending him on a really wholesome combination of charges. Insulting a police officer, damaging the inside of a police car, and - wait for it - indecent exposure. Quite a collection, isn't it?"
Phil looked nonplussed. "And pissing himself, you said?" he prompted.
"Well, that's what his older brother Pete was babbling on about when I spoke to him on the phone yesterday. I guess pissing your pants is not a crime, but somehow that's what I gather happened from what the lad's brother was on about. I guess we'll find out what precisely Danny Piddlybriefs' problem was when the two of them get here and we all try to work out some sort of defence to his charges, find out what the hell the big wet baby was playing at." Jake was rewarded by a giggle from Jenny.
Graham was still eavesdropping on the conversation at Phil's desk and interjected at this point. "You know, we are actually supposed to be open-minded and show some understanding of our clients so we can take their side in the story. Otherwise it's a bit difficult defending them in court. To say nothing of keeping good relations with the clients for the sake of the business. I'm sure you know that, Phil, but I'm not sure Jake's ever really got the hang of keeping an open mind and taking the clients' side."
"Oh, don't worry about me," retorted Jake to Graham. "I've got a very open mind. I'm sure twenty-one year old Danny has a perfectly innocent explanation for weeing in his jeans and being charged with these charming misdemeanours. It will be all the police officers' fault, I'm sure." He turned back to Phil. "That's why you're going to find out all you can about why healthy adult blokes might piss themselves after a night on the town. There's your computer, all the information on the internet is at your mercy, find out about it and get yourself prepared for Pete and Danny Woopsy-Daisy-I've-done-it-in-my-pants Hayes when they come in an hour."
***
The Hayes brothers had slightly similar appearances, they were wearing identical rugby shirts, and they gave the impression of having a particularly close emotional bond with each other. However twenty-five year old Pete was clearly the dominant one. At times during the interview he evidently found it appropriate to reprimand Danny, the younger one by four years, whenever he felt that the latter was stepping out of line or not making enough effort to answer the questions being put to him. Danny, clearly devoted to his older brother, gave a chatty and slightly boisterous impression during the introductions with the two young solicitors Jake Purnell and Phil Somerville in their neat suits and ties, and he maintained this impression from the initial pleasantries right up to the point where the discussion moved on to the details of his brush-up with the police the previous Tuesday evening and how he had ended up with the weird set of charges for which he was now summonsed to appear before magistrates.
Phil's previous hour spent reading up about the human system of processing fluids and bladder control had been rather a waste of time as a start to his first day. The information had not even covered banging your shin against a clay plant pot or any other particular reason for involuntary urination, so Phil had ended up without any preconceived ideas about what might have happened to their client. Phil was nonetheless keen to create a good impression in front of his new colleague Jake, who had by now stopped his evident showing off and adopted a more professional attitude after Jenny had returned to her desk to concentrate on her own work. Phil wanted to make sure that he took an active part in the interview, adding questions of his own as well as taking notes while Jake established the basics of the story.
These basics took some time to emerge, because the younger brother Danny initially kept up a voluble, incessant and at times slightly insolent chattiness ("This is my cool brother Pete, he's an actor, he's been in plays in the theatre, he's got such a cool motorbike, I always stay with him when I've got free time from college,...What a boring office, haven't you got anything cool to put on the walls? Pete's got all sorts of cool stuff at home...Do you blokes always wear suits? Haven't you got anything cool to wear? Don't your girlfriends get bored looking at you?..." and so on, and on and on). But when Phil brought the brothers each a cup of coffee and Jake's request to get down to business was finally backed up by a firm rebuke from Pete to Danny, the latter's demeanour switched suddenly from its previous hectic chattiness to a sulky unwillingness to cooperate.
"The magistrates will expect to learn your side of the story, so we do need to make sure we know exactly what happened," Jake was saying in an attempt to encourage Danny, who had failed to respond to Jake's opening question asking for Danny's account of what had occurred. "Let's take it from the start. The two of you were returning from a night out, right?"
"Not me, I was just picking Danny up and giving him a lift back to my place on the motorbike," said Pete. "He'd been out with his student friends for one last night at college, then he was coming to stay with me for a few days."
Danny perked up again and launched into another hyperactive monologue. "Yeah, I had a great time. My mate Steve was there, so was Adrian, and Ben and Jonathan, they're dead cool, and Toby and Hugh. But Toby went home after he got into a fight with Adrian. Serves him right really, well okay Adrian started it by making some remark when Toby kept going for a piss every twenty minutes, but then Toby shouldn't have mentioned Adrian wetting his pants in the queue for the toilets at Alton Towers last year. Stands to reason Adrian hit him. All of us are in the Real Ale Club, we drink the proper stuff, you know, not the gassy lager you get in most bars, but stout and porter and cool stuff like that. Oh yeah and Gary too, he was there, he's really into real ale, he drinks the bottled stuff from Germany. Gary was drinking so much I reckon he was pissing even more than Toby, I've never seen a bloke go to the toilet so many times. Still, it's real ale and it's worth it even if you do end up peeing your brains out. Pete here knows all about real ale too, don't you, Big Bro? You won't catch Pete drinking rubbish. Pete's met my mates from the Real Ale Club and they think he's dead cool. You wouldn't believe what my mate Steve said about Pete after the first time they met him and they all saw his cool motorbike. Steve wants to get a motorbike just like Pete's but he still needs to get his licence. Adrian reckons Pete can get the bike modified if he wants, but Pete knows better than that, he's had his bike since..."
"Danny!" interrupted Pete sharply, successfully bringing his brother's verbal diarrhoea to a halt. "That's enough. You know perfectly well we're not here to talk about beer and motorbikes."
"Let's hear from you, Danny, about what happened when you were arrested on Tuesday," prompted Phil, his pen poised over his sheet of paper.
Jake filled in the details which were known by then and brought the discussion to its necessary focus. "Let's see, we have three separate charges. Insulting a police officer, indecent exposure, and causing damage to the inside of a police vehicle. Well, the first one can usually be explained away by hefty emotions, and we might be able to convince the magistrates to let you off that one. Depending on what exactly you said to the officer, I suppose. But the other two are pretty serious, aren't they? What happened?"
Danny stared sullenly at the table. "Go on, Little Bro," prompted Pete after a pause. "Tell them what happened."
Danny opened up. "Look, it wasn't my fault! Those policemen wouldn't let me piss in the road! What was I supposed to do? I was trying to tell Pete earlier that I needed a piss, banging on his arm and yelling, but he couldn't hear, and when he stopped at the lights I just had to go, so I got off the bike, and I didn't know the police were there. That stupid officer asks me what I'm doing with my thing out, and so I tell him what the bloody hell does it look like and I call him a stupid git and yeah I know that was stupid of me but I just couldn't help it because I was angry and bursting for a piss and he made me put it away before I'd even had a chance to piss, and he was acting like he couldn't understand why I was standing there in the road..."
"Wait, wait," interrupted Jake. "Calm down and take it from the beginning. You got off your brother's bike while he was waiting at traffic lights, right? Why did you do that?"
The story which emerged, under some somewhat brusque, occasionally even sarcastic, questioning from Jake, and some much gentler prompting from Phil, was that the younger brother Danny had discovered that his bladder, coping with the consequences of a rowdy evening of beer drinking in his college town with his fellow real ale connoisseurs, could not hold out for the duration of the journey to his brother Pete's home some forty miles away, despite this taking less than an hour on Pete's motorbike. In the latter stages of the journey, Pete had mistaken Danny's attempts to signal that something was amiss, banging on Pete's chest with his hands, for a general expression of joy and excitement which would have been quite typical for Danny.
Pete had therefore carried on, oblivious to Danny's desperation, until they had finally arrived in Pete's home town where, with barely one minute of journey time before they would have arrived at Pete's house, they had been forced to stop at a red traffic light. Danny, on the point of wetting his pants by that stage, had then immediately clambered off the bike in the middle of the junction, waddled uncomfortably to the side of road, and opened the fly of his jeans, completely unaware of a police patrol car right by him. Ready at last to relieve all the pressure which had built up to critical proportions, he was startled by a firm hand on his shoulder.
A heated altercation followed, which included the police officer ordering Danny to put his equipment back into his underwear where it belonged immediately and to take off his helmet, and Danny insulting the officer after the latter asked him what he thought he was doing ("What the bloody hell does it look like, you stupid git!?"). The officer and his colleague then officially cautioned Danny and bundled him into the back of their car with the intention of giving him time to calm down while they turned their attentions to the motorbike's driver. Pete, aware of the unexpected turn of events, had by now manoeuvred the bike to the side of the road. After several minutes of questioning to Pete about where he and Danny were heading and whether they had been drinking alcohol, followed by inspection of Pete's licence and insurance documents, the two officers then got back into the front seats of their car to deal with the younger brother. It was then that they discovered, to their extreme annoyance, that Danny had by now released the entire contents of his bladder into his jeans and that the back seat of their squad car was drenched in Danny's urine. At that point they had lost all patience with the young man, placed him under arrest, and driven him straight to the police station to be formally charged, still wearing his soaking wet jeans.
Danny's two legal representatives showed differing reactions to the story. While Phil nodded, made sympathetic noises and scribbled notes in response to Danny's and Pete's account, Jake interrupted occasionally with sardonic questions. Pete reacted to this in a slightly annoyed manner at one stage, supporting his brother protectively with an arm round his shoulders, but Jake insisted that these questions would be expected from the magistrates when Danny appeared in court and therefore it was necessary to establish the answers in advance. Jake made a particular issue out of the fact that Pete and Danny had almost arrived at their destination just two streets ahead when Danny got off the bike to urinate at the side of the busy street in full view of the general public, and Jake wanted to know why Danny had not just waited the final minute or so before he would have been able to use Pete's toilet. "Surely you've been toilet trained, haven't you? Didn't your mother teach you to wait for a proper opportunity when you needed a wee?" was one of Jake's questions. He also focused on the short nature of the journey (less than an hour) and openly wondered why Danny had been unable to wait that long. "Did you forget to go for a pee before you got on the back of your brother's bike?" was another exploratory question. And when Danny defensively indicated that he had indeed gone to relieve himself before saying goodbye to his student friends in the bar, Jake followed up with "Can't you normally wait fifty minutes before you have to piss again?"
To Phil's relief, since he had started to feel that Jake's questions had become unnecessarily embarrassing and demeaning to their twenty-one year old client who had clearly done little more wrong than suffer the consequences of a full bladder at an inconvenient moment and had handled his encounter with the police poorly because he was panicking about being unable to hold it any longer when the officers apprehended him, Jake finally brought the interview to a close. An agreement was reached that Danny would plead guilty to the charges, that Jake himself would represent Danny in front of the magistrates, and that Jake would strive to present the case that Danny was extremely sorry both for exposing himself in public and for insulting the officer, that he knew that this was wrong and would never do it again, and that the damage to the car seat was an unavoidable consequence of being shut inside the police car with no access to a toilet. After that, said Jake, it was luck of the draw whether the magistrates would be understanding enough to let Danny off with a caution or whether they would choose to impose a fine or community work.
After the brothers had departed, Jake handed Phil a file containing information about another of their clients who had been arrested on a charge of dangerous driving and told him to go back to his desk and study it. Jake evidently had little work to be getting on with himself, because he then wandered over to Jenny's desk and spent twenty minutes obviously chatting her up. Jake was clearly entertaining her with the juicy details of the interview which they had just conducted, and Jenny was giggling at Jake's account. As Phil half-listened to the snippets ("...silly idiot tried to pee in the road right in front of a police car...pissed himself in the car while they were checking his brother's motorbike insurance...I said to him 'Haven't you been toilet trained? Didn't your mother teach you?'...") Phil privately thanked his lucky stars that it had been Graham, and not Jake or Jenny, who had been on hand when Phil had arrived for his interview four weeks before and had suffered his own unfortunate accident. Jake in particular would undoubtedly have handled the situation far less compassionately and helpfully than Graham had done.
***
Twenty-six year old Phil Somerville took a few deep breaths to calm his nerves as the receptionist's footsteps died away and he started to take stock of the tidy, deserted office in which he was seated. He had been relieved to see that Stella had shown no trace of any reaction other than friendliness and professionalism when he had arrived at Langham and Rutherford solicitors' offices and introduced himself. His main anxiety about starting his first day at work, towering above all the other stresses of anticipation which such a huge day involved, had been that Graham, one of his new colleagues-to-be, might have broken his promise of secrecy about what had happened when Phil had arrived for his interview four weeks earlier and why he had ended up less than immaculately dressed for the interview. Any indiscretion on Graham's part would have likely resulted in the embarrassing incident spreading around his new solicitor colleagues and other office workers like wildfire, as Phil had been fretting. He had for that reason scanned Stella's face anxiously, when he said who he was, to catch any possible flicker of amusement in her eye. But her perfectly ordinary reaction reassured him that Graham had probably kept his mouth shut.
His interview had evidently gone well enough to result in his being accepted as a new trainee solicitor at Langham and Rutherford, but one question had made his toes curl and caused him to dig deep for an inspired response. Connie Rutherford, the partner who would be Phil's direct boss, had said: "You have probably noticed that everyone here wears a neat suit, whether we are interviewing clients at the time or just working in the office. We are also obviously required to dress impeccably when we are representing clients in court. So I find it interesting that you have not come to this interview in a matching jacket and trousers. If you were to be accepted for this position, would dressing appropriately be any problem for you?"
Phil had gulped and then come out with the response to this dreaded question which he had feverishly prepared while Graham had been driving him back to the solicitors' firm for his interview, delivering the answer in as confident a manner as he could muster, and hoping that the slightly dumbfounded few seconds of silence with which the two interviewers received it could be construed as a positive reaction. "Yes, I will certainly wear a very good suit at work to give the right impression to Langham and Rutherford's clients. The reason I am not doing so now is that I feel that my talents should speak for themselves and that a suit is not necessary to convince you of them in this interview. Therefore I have dressed casually so that you can see me for my real worth to your company rather than any pretend facade which a suit might afford."
Now, on his first working day having been accepted for the position despite this interview no-no, and with nothing to do but wait, Phil sipped nervously at the coffee for the next ten minutes. His heart rate had just about returned to normal when he was awakened from a reverie by the sudden noise of footsteps and conversation outside the door. Swallowing his mouthful of coffee hastily and replacing the mug back on the table in his hurry to greet the new colleagues and make the right impression, Phil instantly cursed to himself and looked down anxiously at his shirt, tie and suit trousers to see where the splash of coffee from his mug had ended up. To his relief, his white shirt and neat grey, recently dry-cleaned suit showed no sign of wetness, and only a couple of drops of the brown liquid on the spartan white desktop betrayed his carelessness. Coffee down his suit, while less drastic as a disaster than what had happened on the day of his interview, would still have been a bad start to the first day of his new job. Phil grabbed a tissue from his pocket, dabbed on the table surface hurriedly, and replaced the tissue in his pocket just in time as the door opened.
A female voice was in full flow. "Yes, my hit and run case is in court tomorrow. The client couldn't really suggest anything mitigating when I interviewed him, seems like he just panicked at the time, so I think... oh hello! Are you Phil?"
Phil stood up smartly and extended his hand towards the young woman with as confident a smile on his face as he could muster. She introduced herself as Jenny, and the young male following her into the office turned out to be called David. Both solicitor colleagues seemed friendly, both were neatly dressed in business suits of a similar quality to Phil's own, and Phil started to relax as the two of them hung up their outdoor coats, settled down at their respective desks and kept up a banter with him as they each grabbed a coffee from the machine, switched on their desktop computers and generally started work. Phil had clearly been expected, and they were obviously as keen to make a good start with him as he was with them.
The door soon opened again, and another male and female entered the room. This time Phil recognised both colleagues. The woman, a middle aged woman, was the firm's partner Connie who had been one of Phil's interviewers. And the male of about thirty following her into the room was Graham. Phil felt himself blushing slightly as Graham greeted him with a slap on his shoulder and a wink, but the neutral friendliness on Graham's face reassured Phil that he had kept his promise of secrecy.
"I see you two have already met, then?" said Connie as she observed the interaction between Graham and her new protege. "How come?"
"I was downstairs when he arrived for his interview," responded Graham smoothly. "We exchanged a few words then," he continued. "Good to see you again Phil, and good luck with your first assignment." He turned back to Connie. "He's shadowing Jake to start with, right? They're interviewing Danny Hayes and his brother."
Phil sighed inwardly with relief as he observed Graham's deft handling of Connie's question and his glossing over of the lengthy, excruciatingly embarrassing encounter which Phil had had with Graham prior to the interview.
"Yes, you're working with Jake to start with, Phil," said Connie. "He shouldn't be too long, at least not if he stayed off the beer and partying yesterday. Were you out with him last night, Jenny?"
Jenny shook her head. "No, I don't encourage him, you know," she replied.
Connie nodded at her approvingly. then continued: "Well, I did ask Jake to get here early today for a change to help get Phil started, so hopefully he's dragged himself out of bed by now. Could someone set Phil up with a PC, please, and anything else he needs until Jake gets here? And show him around the place if you have time." She headed off to her own adjoining office leaving Phil with the others.
While Jenny set up Phil's computer for him and Graham and David fetched sundry stationery items for Phil's desk and pointed out the location of photocopiers, printers and a cupboard full of client dossiers, several other new colleagues arrived, and Phil became acquainted with a middle-aged male called Vishy, a male of his own age named Jonathan, and a woman in her thirties called Liz, in addition to meeting up again briefly with the other senior partner of the firm who had interviewed him, Richard Langham, the company's sixty-three year old founder, who shook hands cordially with Phil.
"I see you do indeed possess a smart suit, even if you don't use it for job interviews," Mr. Langham remarked, casting an approving eye over his new recruit. "Now, you'll be joining us for the dinner and concert tonight, I hope?" he continued briskly. "Are you a Rachmaninoff fan like I am?"
"Oh yes," replied Phil slightly breathlessly in his attempt to come over as enthusiastic. A quarter of an hour earlier his new colleagues David and Vishy had told him about this work outing which was scheduled for that same evening and warned him that attendance, while not strictly compulsory, was most certainly expected of all the firm's employees. "I'd like to very much, sir. I love Rachmaninoff's piano concertos especially."
"Splendid," beamed the older man. "I'll see you again tonight then at the dinner if not before. Now best of luck with your assignments today. I'm sure you'll do well. And don't call me 'sir'," he added with a wink before disappearing in the direction of his private office further along the corridor.
By the time the door finally opened again some three quarters of an hour later than the first colleagues had arrived, and a tall slim guy of around Phil's age swaggered in wearing a beige suit, punching Phil affably in the shoulder and introducing himself as Jake, Phil had already relaxed completely and warmed to his new colleagues in the friendly office atmosphere. But the first question that Jake asked Phil after introducing himself, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to Phil, caused Phil's jaw to drop and his hands to tremble. "Right then, what do you know about wetting your pants?"
"Um... excuse me?" replied Phil faintly, battling with his face in an attempt to look innocent, as if to make out that he had no idea what Jake was talking about. Various people in the office had overheard Jake's question and were looking at Phil in anticipation of his answer. Jenny in particular was standing right by Jake and gazing at him, and from the rapport between the two of them which Phil had noticed as soon as Jake had arrived, it seemed likely that Jenny and Jake were an item.
"How can a healthy young adult bloke piss himself?" Jake seemed to be performing slightly in front of Jenny in his interrogation of his new colleague. Jenny looked amused. Jake gazed at Phil as he waited for his reply, establishing a subtle dominance over the new trainee solicitor who seemed to wilt under the pressure.
Phil felt dizzy with shame and horror. Graham had betrayed him after all! "Um..." he began again, but faltered. Jenny laughed. Phil glanced abjectly and reproachfully at Graham who was observing the scene from behind his desk a few metres to one side.
***
Four weeks earlier, Phil had arrived by bus in his neat, light grey suit in the unfamiliar area of the city and had located the premises of Langham and Rutherford on the basis of the street number of their address with more than an hour and a quarter to spare before his interview appointment. Deciding that he should present himself at reception approximately ten minutes before his appointed time, he attempted to while away an hour by wandering around the streets in the vicinity, rehearsing in his mind his answers to the expected questions which would be posed to him in the interview, and recalling to himself the information about the company which he had feverishly researched the previous evening so that he could demonstrate an interest in what he hoped would be his first place of work as a junior solicitor.
Phil's reconnaissance during the subsequent fifteen minutes of the neighbourhood, which was a concrete jungle of streets and office blocks, soon turned into a concerted search for somewhere to relieve himself as the bladder twinges of which he had been aware on the bus became a serious sense of fullness as he continued to bide his time. This search was not fruitful, and Phil finally decided that his best course of action was to report far too early for his interview after all and find a toilet there straight away before the situation became absolutely critical, which it was threatening to become by now.
Walking purposefully and briskly back to the venue of his interview, and wincing slightly as his bladder started to seriously protest, Phil grabbed himself momentarily in the groin at a point when a corner in the road was concealing him from the view of anyone ahead of him, and mentally cursed the extra cup of coffee he had consumed to calm his nerves that morning before setting out. Rounding the corner, he broke into a slight trot which brought him to the door which he had located a quarter of an hour earlier. He bent slightly forward, one knee bent inwards across the other, as he pushed ineffectively at the door and then looked at the pair of doorbells and their inscriptions in some confusion.
"Can I help you?"
Phil, startled by the unexpected male voice from right behind him, swung round to see a pleasant-faced guy of about thirty in a dark blue business suit and tie. "Oh," Phil began, slightly flustered. "I'm looking for Langham and Rutherford. I've got an appointment."
"Reception is round the side there," said the stranger, indicating a side street to the left, "but you can come in this way if you like. It's slightly quicker to get to the offices from this door." He was inserting a key into the lock. "I spotted you running up the road just now, so I guess you're a bit late for your appointment, right?" He pushed the door open and gestured to Phil to step inside.
"Um, no, that's not till eleven, but I wanted to be early," said Phil as he stumbled over the threshold and gazed round the foyer hurriedly and anxiously. A lift and a flight of stairs were in evidence, but no obvious bathroom facilities. "Actually I really need to go to the toilet first," he added as he felt his bladder spasming again.
The unfamiliar employee was shutting the door behind them and turning back to Phil. "That's round the corner to the right and then just continue to the end of the corridor... careful!"
"Oww!" gasped Phil in agony. He had moved off in the direction indicated as soon as the young man had uttered the words, but his shin had slammed immediately against the rim of a large clay plant pot on the floor which he had failed to notice on entering. As the pain seared through his body, he clutched his lower leg with both hands and hopped around on the other leg for a moment.
"Steady on, man, are you okay?" asked the stranger.
The pain in Phil's leg subsided within seconds, but his senses then picked up a new warm feeling around and underneath his groin. Phil gasped again as he clamped off the flow which he had just released, then set off around the corner which the guy had indicated, breaking into a slightly limping trot as he spotted a sign reading "gentlemen" at the end of the corridor ahead. The warm wetness which he could sense in his underwear was replenished by another spurt lasting a second or two as he came to a brief halt outside the door, but for the moment at least Phil's senses were focused on the pain in his bladder and the necessity of relieving it immediately, rather than the warm feeling around his groin and what that feeling must mean. He pushed the door open, charged into the deserted men's washroom, and bolted into a cubicle, opening his suit trousers with trembling hands in one practised movement and then relieving himself into the toilet with no time to shut the cubicle door behind him. He closed his eyes as the feelings of relief surged through him, for the moment ignoring both the dull pain from where he had banged his shin and the warm but cooling wet sensation underneath where he was holding himself.
The sound of the men's room door opening behind him also barely registered with Phil as he felt the tension in his whole body ebb away and his bladder emptied itself, but as the last of the droplets cascading into the toilet finally dried up and his hands fumbled with his underwear and flies to put his equipment away again, the feeling of the sopping wet material under his fingers brought the thought which had been lurking at the back of Phil's mind to the fore. The sensation of relief from his bladder started to give way to this more troublesome notion.
"Are you alright?"
The voice interrupted Phil's train of thought again as his fingers manipulated the zip and the clammy wetness bubbled around them through the soft material. His heart beat faster as he became more conscious of the fact that the young man who had let him into the building had followed him into the toilet, and that he was in no fit state to turn round.
"Mmm," replied Phil indistinctly as he pulled the zip of his suit trousers up into place, pressed the button to flush the toilet, and then glanced downwards at himself. He gulped as he stared at his suit trousers.
"Are you sure?"
Phil made no reply. As the noise of the flushing toilet filled the air, he continued to gaze down at his trousers. Just two hours before he had been similarly examining them in the hall mirror before he set out, checking for any imperfection such as a crease or a piece of lint. Now he stared in horror at the dark, wet area which spread out over the crotch and the two or three streaks which continued downwards from the large patch, one down the inside of his left leg and the other more prominently on the front of the same leg.
"That looked painful," the voice was continuing from behind him. "Those plant pots should be moved out of the way really. They're not safe there. Sorry about that. Are you sure you're alright? There's a first aid box at reception if you need a dressing or anything."
"Ohhhh..." groaned Phil indistinctly in reply.
"Come out and let's have a look at your leg," said the stranger. To Phil's horror, he sensed the man coming right up behind him and tugging at the crook of his arm. He turned a quarter circle so that he was facing one wall of the cubicle and turned his head further to look at the young man but with his wet groin still concealed. The guy was pointing at the leg which Phil had banged.
"No, it's okay," stammered Phil.
"Roll up your trouser leg and let's have a look," persisted the man. "I'm Graham Turner, by the way. I'm one of the solicitors here. I'm not expecting any clients this morning, so I guess you're due to see Jenny Houghton, right? The others are out of the office at the moment."
"Um, no, I'm not a client. I'm here for a job interview."
"Oh yes of course, for the vacancy. The partners will be interviewing you then, I guess. I'll tell them you're here. What's your name?"
"Phil Somerville."
"Nice to meet you Phil. Now let's just check your shin isn't bleeding first. You don't want to drip blood on Connie's carpet while she's interviewing you, now, do you?" Graham grinned at Phil making eye contact once again and then turned his attention to Phil's lower half once more. "Come on, turn round and let's have a look." He dropped to a squatting position ready to examine Phil's injury.
Phil numbly hoisted up the leg of his suit trousers so that the shin was exposed, then closed his eyes in anguish as he felt Graham's hands touch his bare leg. There was a silence for a while, one which lasted rather longer than Graham would have needed merely to examine the injured shin. Finally Graham replaced the trouser leg gently and stood up again.
"No bleeding there, just a small bruise as far as I can see," he reported. Then he added in a matter-of-fact voice: "But you seem to be a bit wet. Have you peed yourself?"
Phil gulped, made no reply, and stared down once again at the damage to his beautiful suit. As the extent of the wet patch and the streaks which emanated from it registered more emphatically with him, and as he came to terms with the fact that it was screamingly obvious that he had indeed peed himself and that he was now in no state to be interviewed for the post of trainee solicitor on which he had pinned all of his hopes, Phil felt like bursting into tears. He put his hands over his mouth and continued to stare downwards at himself.
"Okay, don't worry," said Graham hastily after a few seconds, recognising that no answer was needed to his question anyway because it was perfectly obvious that the lad had indeed peed in his suit and was absolutely devastated by this. "What time's your interview?"
"Eleven o'clock." Phil's voice was barely a whisper as he fought back the tears.
"In fifty minutes, then," said Graham. "Is that enough time for you to get home and change and then get back here? Where do you live?"
"Rifford Green. The bus only runs every half an hour. I won't make it." Phil covered his face with his hands as the enormity of what had happened started to sink in.
"We'll go in my car then. It'll only take quarter of an hour to Rifford Green, and the same time to come back. We've got time if we go now."
"But this is my only suit." Phil's voice was an anguished whisper.
"Then you'll be wearing something other than a suit for your interview, won't you? Or do you honestly think you'll give a better impression like that when you've quite obviously wet yourself? Come on, Phil. My car's right outside."
***
"How can a healthy young adult bloke piss himself?". Jake, with Jenny fawning at his side, had Phil on the ropes.
Graham filled the silence following the question as he spotted Phil staring across at him instead of answering Jake's strange query. "For goodness sake, Jake, can't you provide a bit of context to your questions instead of just dropping the poor guy into it?" He made eye contact with Phil. "He's referring to your first client, but he's got a funny way of broaching the subject." Graham winked at Phil reassuringly, fully aware of the sudden anxiety which Phil had felt and understanding the reason. On the way back to the office that morning four weeks earlier, Phil, by then dressed in clean dry underpants and a pair of dark trousers which did not really match his grey suit jacket, had begged Graham not to mention what had happened to anyone. Graham had assured him that it was none of anyone else's business and that he did not need to worry.
Phil now recovered his composure and turned back to Jake. "What's the context, then?" he asked in as neutral a manner as possible, hoping that Jake and Jenny had not picked up on his initial horrified reaction.
"Our client this morning, mate," replied Jake. "Danny Pissypants. A very big baby, he's twenty-one now. He's coming in at ten-thirty. With his older brother Pete Soggynappy who was present and witnessed the incident too." Jake was clearly exercising his wit for Jenny's benefit.
"Danny and Peter Hayes are their names," corrected Graham who had originally accepted the clients but had passed them on to Jake.
"Oh, I do apologise, Danny and Pete Hayes then," continued Jake. "Danny, the younger brother, was arrested on Tuesday evening and bailed to appear before magistrates in two weeks' time. We're supposed to be defending him on a really wholesome combination of charges. Insulting a police officer, damaging the inside of a police car, and - wait for it - indecent exposure. Quite a collection, isn't it?"
Phil looked nonplussed. "And pissing himself, you said?" he prompted.
"Well, that's what his older brother Pete was babbling on about when I spoke to him on the phone yesterday. I guess pissing your pants is not a crime, but somehow that's what I gather happened from what the lad's brother was on about. I guess we'll find out what precisely Danny Piddlybriefs' problem was when the two of them get here and we all try to work out some sort of defence to his charges, find out what the hell the big wet baby was playing at." Jake was rewarded by a giggle from Jenny.
Graham was still eavesdropping on the conversation at Phil's desk and interjected at this point. "You know, we are actually supposed to be open-minded and show some understanding of our clients so we can take their side in the story. Otherwise it's a bit difficult defending them in court. To say nothing of keeping good relations with the clients for the sake of the business. I'm sure you know that, Phil, but I'm not sure Jake's ever really got the hang of keeping an open mind and taking the clients' side."
"Oh, don't worry about me," retorted Jake to Graham. "I've got a very open mind. I'm sure twenty-one year old Danny has a perfectly innocent explanation for weeing in his jeans and being charged with these charming misdemeanours. It will be all the police officers' fault, I'm sure." He turned back to Phil. "That's why you're going to find out all you can about why healthy adult blokes might piss themselves after a night on the town. There's your computer, all the information on the internet is at your mercy, find out about it and get yourself prepared for Pete and Danny Woopsy-Daisy-I've-done-it-in-my-pants Hayes when they come in an hour."
***
The Hayes brothers had slightly similar appearances, they were wearing identical rugby shirts, and they gave the impression of having a particularly close emotional bond with each other. However twenty-five year old Pete was clearly the dominant one. At times during the interview he evidently found it appropriate to reprimand Danny, the younger one by four years, whenever he felt that the latter was stepping out of line or not making enough effort to answer the questions being put to him. Danny, clearly devoted to his older brother, gave a chatty and slightly boisterous impression during the introductions with the two young solicitors Jake Purnell and Phil Somerville in their neat suits and ties, and he maintained this impression from the initial pleasantries right up to the point where the discussion moved on to the details of his brush-up with the police the previous Tuesday evening and how he had ended up with the weird set of charges for which he was now summonsed to appear before magistrates.
Phil's previous hour spent reading up about the human system of processing fluids and bladder control had been rather a waste of time as a start to his first day. The information had not even covered banging your shin against a clay plant pot or any other particular reason for involuntary urination, so Phil had ended up without any preconceived ideas about what might have happened to their client. Phil was nonetheless keen to create a good impression in front of his new colleague Jake, who had by now stopped his evident showing off and adopted a more professional attitude after Jenny had returned to her desk to concentrate on her own work. Phil wanted to make sure that he took an active part in the interview, adding questions of his own as well as taking notes while Jake established the basics of the story.
These basics took some time to emerge, because the younger brother Danny initially kept up a voluble, incessant and at times slightly insolent chattiness ("This is my cool brother Pete, he's an actor, he's been in plays in the theatre, he's got such a cool motorbike, I always stay with him when I've got free time from college,...What a boring office, haven't you got anything cool to put on the walls? Pete's got all sorts of cool stuff at home...Do you blokes always wear suits? Haven't you got anything cool to wear? Don't your girlfriends get bored looking at you?..." and so on, and on and on). But when Phil brought the brothers each a cup of coffee and Jake's request to get down to business was finally backed up by a firm rebuke from Pete to Danny, the latter's demeanour switched suddenly from its previous hectic chattiness to a sulky unwillingness to cooperate.
"The magistrates will expect to learn your side of the story, so we do need to make sure we know exactly what happened," Jake was saying in an attempt to encourage Danny, who had failed to respond to Jake's opening question asking for Danny's account of what had occurred. "Let's take it from the start. The two of you were returning from a night out, right?"
"Not me, I was just picking Danny up and giving him a lift back to my place on the motorbike," said Pete. "He'd been out with his student friends for one last night at college, then he was coming to stay with me for a few days."
Danny perked up again and launched into another hyperactive monologue. "Yeah, I had a great time. My mate Steve was there, so was Adrian, and Ben and Jonathan, they're dead cool, and Toby and Hugh. But Toby went home after he got into a fight with Adrian. Serves him right really, well okay Adrian started it by making some remark when Toby kept going for a piss every twenty minutes, but then Toby shouldn't have mentioned Adrian wetting his pants in the queue for the toilets at Alton Towers last year. Stands to reason Adrian hit him. All of us are in the Real Ale Club, we drink the proper stuff, you know, not the gassy lager you get in most bars, but stout and porter and cool stuff like that. Oh yeah and Gary too, he was there, he's really into real ale, he drinks the bottled stuff from Germany. Gary was drinking so much I reckon he was pissing even more than Toby, I've never seen a bloke go to the toilet so many times. Still, it's real ale and it's worth it even if you do end up peeing your brains out. Pete here knows all about real ale too, don't you, Big Bro? You won't catch Pete drinking rubbish. Pete's met my mates from the Real Ale Club and they think he's dead cool. You wouldn't believe what my mate Steve said about Pete after the first time they met him and they all saw his cool motorbike. Steve wants to get a motorbike just like Pete's but he still needs to get his licence. Adrian reckons Pete can get the bike modified if he wants, but Pete knows better than that, he's had his bike since..."
"Danny!" interrupted Pete sharply, successfully bringing his brother's verbal diarrhoea to a halt. "That's enough. You know perfectly well we're not here to talk about beer and motorbikes."
"Let's hear from you, Danny, about what happened when you were arrested on Tuesday," prompted Phil, his pen poised over his sheet of paper.
Jake filled in the details which were known by then and brought the discussion to its necessary focus. "Let's see, we have three separate charges. Insulting a police officer, indecent exposure, and causing damage to the inside of a police vehicle. Well, the first one can usually be explained away by hefty emotions, and we might be able to convince the magistrates to let you off that one. Depending on what exactly you said to the officer, I suppose. But the other two are pretty serious, aren't they? What happened?"
Danny stared sullenly at the table. "Go on, Little Bro," prompted Pete after a pause. "Tell them what happened."
Danny opened up. "Look, it wasn't my fault! Those policemen wouldn't let me piss in the road! What was I supposed to do? I was trying to tell Pete earlier that I needed a piss, banging on his arm and yelling, but he couldn't hear, and when he stopped at the lights I just had to go, so I got off the bike, and I didn't know the police were there. That stupid officer asks me what I'm doing with my thing out, and so I tell him what the bloody hell does it look like and I call him a stupid git and yeah I know that was stupid of me but I just couldn't help it because I was angry and bursting for a piss and he made me put it away before I'd even had a chance to piss, and he was acting like he couldn't understand why I was standing there in the road..."
"Wait, wait," interrupted Jake. "Calm down and take it from the beginning. You got off your brother's bike while he was waiting at traffic lights, right? Why did you do that?"
The story which emerged, under some somewhat brusque, occasionally even sarcastic, questioning from Jake, and some much gentler prompting from Phil, was that the younger brother Danny had discovered that his bladder, coping with the consequences of a rowdy evening of beer drinking in his college town with his fellow real ale connoisseurs, could not hold out for the duration of the journey to his brother Pete's home some forty miles away, despite this taking less than an hour on Pete's motorbike. In the latter stages of the journey, Pete had mistaken Danny's attempts to signal that something was amiss, banging on Pete's chest with his hands, for a general expression of joy and excitement which would have been quite typical for Danny.
Pete had therefore carried on, oblivious to Danny's desperation, until they had finally arrived in Pete's home town where, with barely one minute of journey time before they would have arrived at Pete's house, they had been forced to stop at a red traffic light. Danny, on the point of wetting his pants by that stage, had then immediately clambered off the bike in the middle of the junction, waddled uncomfortably to the side of road, and opened the fly of his jeans, completely unaware of a police patrol car right by him. Ready at last to relieve all the pressure which had built up to critical proportions, he was startled by a firm hand on his shoulder.
A heated altercation followed, which included the police officer ordering Danny to put his equipment back into his underwear where it belonged immediately and to take off his helmet, and Danny insulting the officer after the latter asked him what he thought he was doing ("What the bloody hell does it look like, you stupid git!?"). The officer and his colleague then officially cautioned Danny and bundled him into the back of their car with the intention of giving him time to calm down while they turned their attentions to the motorbike's driver. Pete, aware of the unexpected turn of events, had by now manoeuvred the bike to the side of the road. After several minutes of questioning to Pete about where he and Danny were heading and whether they had been drinking alcohol, followed by inspection of Pete's licence and insurance documents, the two officers then got back into the front seats of their car to deal with the younger brother. It was then that they discovered, to their extreme annoyance, that Danny had by now released the entire contents of his bladder into his jeans and that the back seat of their squad car was drenched in Danny's urine. At that point they had lost all patience with the young man, placed him under arrest, and driven him straight to the police station to be formally charged, still wearing his soaking wet jeans.
Danny's two legal representatives showed differing reactions to the story. While Phil nodded, made sympathetic noises and scribbled notes in response to Danny's and Pete's account, Jake interrupted occasionally with sardonic questions. Pete reacted to this in a slightly annoyed manner at one stage, supporting his brother protectively with an arm round his shoulders, but Jake insisted that these questions would be expected from the magistrates when Danny appeared in court and therefore it was necessary to establish the answers in advance. Jake made a particular issue out of the fact that Pete and Danny had almost arrived at their destination just two streets ahead when Danny got off the bike to urinate at the side of the busy street in full view of the general public, and Jake wanted to know why Danny had not just waited the final minute or so before he would have been able to use Pete's toilet. "Surely you've been toilet trained, haven't you? Didn't your mother teach you to wait for a proper opportunity when you needed a wee?" was one of Jake's questions. He also focused on the short nature of the journey (less than an hour) and openly wondered why Danny had been unable to wait that long. "Did you forget to go for a pee before you got on the back of your brother's bike?" was another exploratory question. And when Danny defensively indicated that he had indeed gone to relieve himself before saying goodbye to his student friends in the bar, Jake followed up with "Can't you normally wait fifty minutes before you have to piss again?"
To Phil's relief, since he had started to feel that Jake's questions had become unnecessarily embarrassing and demeaning to their twenty-one year old client who had clearly done little more wrong than suffer the consequences of a full bladder at an inconvenient moment and had handled his encounter with the police poorly because he was panicking about being unable to hold it any longer when the officers apprehended him, Jake finally brought the interview to a close. An agreement was reached that Danny would plead guilty to the charges, that Jake himself would represent Danny in front of the magistrates, and that Jake would strive to present the case that Danny was extremely sorry both for exposing himself in public and for insulting the officer, that he knew that this was wrong and would never do it again, and that the damage to the car seat was an unavoidable consequence of being shut inside the police car with no access to a toilet. After that, said Jake, it was luck of the draw whether the magistrates would be understanding enough to let Danny off with a caution or whether they would choose to impose a fine or community work.
After the brothers had departed, Jake handed Phil a file containing information about another of their clients who had been arrested on a charge of dangerous driving and told him to go back to his desk and study it. Jake evidently had little work to be getting on with himself, because he then wandered over to Jenny's desk and spent twenty minutes obviously chatting her up. Jake was clearly entertaining her with the juicy details of the interview which they had just conducted, and Jenny was giggling at Jake's account. As Phil half-listened to the snippets ("...silly idiot tried to pee in the road right in front of a police car...pissed himself in the car while they were checking his brother's motorbike insurance...I said to him 'Haven't you been toilet trained? Didn't your mother teach you?'...") Phil privately thanked his lucky stars that it had been Graham, and not Jake or Jenny, who had been on hand when Phil had arrived for his interview four weeks before and had suffered his own unfortunate accident. Jake in particular would undoubtedly have handled the situation far less compassionately and helpfully than Graham had done.
***