There is a Rose in Spanish Harlem

By James Mulligan

There is a Rose in Spanish Harlem
Synopsis
A young lawyer on his lunchbreak encounters what he takes to be an apparition outside St Clement
Danes Church in London's Strand. The apparition consists of a vision of a young man hovering
silently just above the statue of Dr Johnson, at the rear of the church. The apparition/vision
seriously unsettles the young lawyer and, in the following days, he makes impulsive decisions to
leave the legal profession and to sell his apartment and leave London. On a whim he chooses to
go to Weymouth, his decision triggered simply by seeing a reproduction of John Constable's
painting 'Weymouth Sands' on a poster at Waterloo station.
In Weymouth he finds lodgings and a job as a labourer on a construction site. He finds new friends,
a very different lifestyle and time to reflect on his earlier life which he now considers to have been
too solitary and sensual and too cerebral. He contemplates the religious beliefs he has held to, and
figures he has been lukewarm and maybe aloof in his faith.
He suffers an accident on the building site and in a coma enters what could be described as an outof-the-body experience. In this state he meets again the young man who appeared to him in the
apparition in the Strand. Much of what he has struggled with in his 'search for God' takes on new
meaning.
He wakes from the coma and returns from his sojourn in the unknown better equipped to deal with
the life that he takes up again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350906301

Book preview

London 1984

As I left Court Number 12 and headed towards the Royal Courts of Justice building exit out onto The Strand the words of a song I heard on the taxi radio earlier in the day repeated in my head several times.

There is a rose in Spanish Harlem…

All sorts of images — a red rose growing unlikely and alone up through the cracked and scuffed concrete and the iridescence on the surface of the oozing tarmac between the roadway and the kerbside; the ‘chosen few’ gazing on the elusive lone red rose; the moon on the run; the rose being captured and cultivated in the singer’s garden; the stars gleaming.

‘Hey! Just think about those images man,’ I mused… ‘When the moon is waning, waxing, whatever, the moon is on the run and all the stars are gleaming. The silence.’

‘Oh! For God’s sake,’ I then muttered, ‘Control your thoughts man. Don’t get carried away.’

‘At that moment I realised God did not exist.’

A young, willowy, blonde-haired woman standing by the entrance railings was dictating these words into a portable recording device as I walked out the wrought iron gates of the Royal Courts of Justice.

I turned right and then…

The man appeared in the air … about a metre above the statue of Dr Johnson, at the rear of St Clement Danes church. I stopped immediately I saw him. A rather frail-looking man of Mediterranean appearance, hair brushed back en brosse and wearing a Burberry trench coat, bumped into me, held his hands out open palms towards me in a gesture of apology, and said, ‘Pardon Monsieur. Totalement ma faute. J’étais loin.’

The man in the air seemed to be around my own age which was twenty-eight. His hair was dark, his eyes blue, and his whole expression calm and serene. He was surrounded by a very brilliant light, more brilliant than the sun, but it did not hurt my eyes. He did not say anything.

I was on my way up to the Youth Hostel Association shop in Southampton Street to buy a small backpack. It was now the end of March and the full breath of a new springtime was definitely here. During the past week I had felt I could breathe that change in the air in the tangy breezes that came up from the Thames at Victoria Embankment as I made my way to work in the mornings. In that first true intimation of springtime each year I had always experienced strange, unsought feelings of anticipation and exhilaration. And I always felt a restlessness and a need to change things. This coming weekend—Sunday was April Fool day—I had planned to go on a cycling trip; perhaps down through the green and calm of Sussex.

I stood by the kerbside and looked and looked. Some passers-by began to notice me and, despite the undoubted vision I was seeing, I became embarrassed. Suddenly the vision was gone …

After that I didn’t feel too much like walking ahead on up The Strand. I took out my handkerchief and wiped my forehead as I was beginning to perspire a little. I turned back towards Fleet Street and walked rather quickly past the weary grey of the Royal Courts of Justice on my left. On the corner of Chancery Lane, a street busker in a battered black Stetson hat and long Australian bush raincoat had set up pitch. His worse-for-wear guitar case was opened out on the pavement and therein two forlorn coins lay in lonely embarrassment. I had never seen a busker ply his trade in this locality before and figured it wouldn’t be long before the police moved him on. To a jangling guitar accompaniment and his Stetson flopping in time he sang:

Morning came and morning went.

Just pick up your money. Go pack up your tent.

You ain’t goin’ nowhere…

I reached into my overcoat pockets, found I had no loose change, reached into my jacket inside pocket for my wallet and quickly withdrew a pound note and dropped it in the guitar case as I passed. He smiled, nodded his head in thanks, looked at me in some wonder, and sang again the line: You ain’t goin’ nowhere.

The wine bar was quite full as it was lunchtime. A telephone rang shrill and penetrating through the drifting layers of smoke and the low cacophony of chatter and gentle bustle. I ordered a glass of lager, and in the mock-antique mirror behind the counter I saw that I looked extremely pale. A paleness akin to the soul-chilling pallor of cold fear I had once confronted on a fellow mountaineer’s face when, roped together, both of us had almost fallen to our deaths from a ledge in the snow-silence of the face of the Rocca Sbarüa in north Italy. I also felt a little unsteady on my feet and my hand trembled slightly as I lifted my glass. Adjacent to the mirror, and also framed in mock-antique fashion, was a poster advertising the film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Beneath a film-still of the actors playing the story’s three protagonists was a caption reading:

Wherever your treasure is; there will your heart be also

Two men stood at the bar counter alongside me. I was momentarily distracted from my preoccupations by snatches of their conversation. They were obviously journalists covering a case in the Court of Appeal. One said to the other in an accent that had not entirely freed itself from Cockney: ‘Like I said, the best fall guy ever is a dead man. A dead man don’t say nothing. Double negative there, but you know what I mean. Let me give you Lee Harvey Oswald.’ The other man, whose accent was much more refined, laughed and said, ‘The prosecution rests its case M’Lud… Now here’s something strange. Something of a coincidence. Last night I had a dream about President Kennedy. Would never have thought of it again had you not mentioned Lee Harvey Oswald. Where do dreams come from? Friday 22nd November 1963 is etched into my memory like it happened yesterday—on the previous Monday I had begun my career in Fleet Street. Never saw, before or since, public grief as on that Friday evening…

But back to this case. The judge is right. We have to be so careful with memory. Memory plays tricks on us. And not only memory but sometimes what we actually think we hear or see can be total illusion. Totally erroneous. Only the other day I came across an example of this. You’ve heard that big hit from the Sixties, Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys? Well for years I thought that the first line of the song went: I love the Coco clothes she wears. You know Coco Chanel designer fashion with maybe the fragrance of Coco Chanel perfume? Well now I discover the lyric is plain: I love the colourful clothes she wears.’ His companion smiled, shook his head, and said, ‘Well, well, well. I would never have had you down as a beach boy. Actually, I think the lyric you thought you heard is better.’

‘John, you are becoming quite a secret drinker these days. Won’t do you any good you know. Lawyers go down that slippery slope faster than most.’ I recognized my colleague Robert Bedingfeld’s voice and, turning away from the bar, I made my way over to the window cubicle where he sat with Christopher de Villeneuve QC, our Head of Chambers. ‘Platitudes and clichés are a much more imminent danger, Robert,’ I joked but with, I’m afraid, unconvincing jocularity in my voice. When I sat down they both obviously noticed how pale I looked and how distracted I appeared. There was a short uncomfortable silence and then Robert asked me if I was feeling all right. I placed my beer glass on the table in front of me defensively and, in an attempt to nonchalantly brush the matter aside, I said, ‘Oh it’s nothing. A chill perhaps. I haven’t been feeling too good off and on since that ill-advised climbing trip in the Falzarego Pass last New Year.’

Christopher de Villeneuve observed me more closely than was comfortable and then, in the judiciously laconic manner he sometimes adopted, said softly, almost like he was talking to himself, ‘This bodes some strange eruption to our state.’

Just at that moment we were joined by the plump, if not to say corpulent figure of Jeremy Harrington. I had acted as Junior Counsel to him on several occasions. He slapped me on the back as he settled his large frame at our table and said, ‘Well John, how is this copyright fiasco going?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer but continued, his expansive bonhomie beaming around the room, ‘Ah yes, copyright, copyright. There’s been no one to touch copyright since old D’Arcy walked Lincoln’s Inn.’ He took a large cigar from a black leather holder, expertly cut the end of it with an antique silver clipper featuring a hand hammer mechanism, and went on, ‘Mellifluous Irish brogue, brushing Sweet Afton cigarette ash off his gown. Old D’Arcy, gone to his just deserts. He was always partial to a good dessert and not the only one.’ Jeremy Harrington patted his bulging waistcoat sympathetically and blew a thin plume of cigar smoke towards the ceiling. I drank my lager without joining in the ensuing conversation, glad of Harrington’s intervention. I kept thinking about, and reviewing, the vision of the man in the air. There was something familiar about his gaze. But something I could not quite apprehend. Something akin to the unfocussed searching in the gaze of my own reflection that I had glimpsed in a thousand mirrors over the years.

However, it wasn’t long before I was drawn in to the conversation again with my over-weight colleague’s sustained salvo of good-natured teasing: ‘Don’t see too much of you these days John. You’ve become a bit monkish in demeanour of late. You don’t even fence anymore. Pity, because you were a useful fencer. I think you had an advantage there as you are left-handed and this wrong-footed your opponents. You know when they called you ‘Lefty’ Calvert I thought it referred to your politics. I knew nothing then of your left-handed fencing. And, by the way, do you see any of those fellow alumni from St John’s these days?’ I replied a little wearily, ‘No. I’m not a reunion man. School, college or wherever. The past cannot be trapped down again. Life moves on and you can never step into the same river twice. To pretend otherwise is being phony and fake.’ Jeremy Harrington arched his eyebrows a little and replied, ‘That may be so Mr Philosopher, but we are getting away from the issue of you becoming a bit of an isolate. Spending far too much time secluded in that ivory tower of yours in Maida Vale it seems. Are you through with that Teilhard de Chardin phase yet? Teetering on the edge of heterodoxy there old Sport.’

I defended myself half-heartedly with, ‘No, nothing isolate about me. Okay, no fencing but I still love the mountains. Love the mountain air. I still climb.’ Jeremy replied, ‘Indeed you do still climb John, and much good may it do you. Fortunately, as to myself, an over generous avoirdupois means I’m exempted from such derring-do; such cartoon machismo.’ He then changed the subject asking, ‘Any news of you getting married and—to repeat an oxymoron—settling down John? You’re pushing thirty now and there’s a streak of silver beginning at your temples. You don’t want to grow old alone; a lonely bachelor. Suddenly, oh so suddenly, empty days of retirement; grey hair; wheeling a trolley around a supermarket; Pac-a-mac; Hushpuppie shoes; elasticated anorak. I have this great fear of elasticated anoraks.’ ‘With girth like that, it should be the elasticated anorak in fear of you,’ joked Robert and I took advantage of the uproar of laughter to finish my drink and stand up excusing myself saying that I had to be before Mr Justice Glanville in chambers at two o’clock. I took my leave saying, ‘Happy Monday one and all,’ and as I went to the door Jeremy Harrington called out after me laughing and waving his cigar through an aureole of smoke, ‘Good luck with Glanville. If they ever make a film about The Hanging Judge he’s the man to play the title role—and he won’t need makeup. That man’s cold stare could freeze mercury. Talk about the evil eye; talk about the fear of God.’ ‘Plus, he has a voice that sounds like bald tyres spinning on gravel,’ called out Robert. I smiled back weakly, made a ‘thumbs up’ gesture to indicate confidence that I did not feel, and set off for the Law Courts.

On my way back to the Courts I was very careful not to glance left in the direction of St Clement Danes. My mind, triggered no doubt by the interlude in the wine bar, went back to a vivid dream I had a few years back—in fact during the time I was working as Junior Counsel to Jeremy Harrington. Jeremy had invited me, along with a few other colleagues, for a weekend up at his ancestral home at the village of Mount St John in Yorkshire. We had gone out shooting on the grouse moors on Saturday morning—but I deliberately did not shoot anything. During that night I was absorbed in a dream so real-seeming. So lucid. I saw the room I was sleeping in transformed. The floor was strewn with newly mowed rushes and a ripe, sweet-smelling fragrance filled the room. A small congregation knelt there in silence at the Holy Mass. The altar was almost bare except for two candles whose light was growing pale in the dawn light which brushed with rose the tops of firs trees outside the window. An old priest with long, lank grey hair, a high brow and an intelligent face lined with suffering, prayed the Mass. Standing on each side of the altar, heads bowed in a sculptural reverence, stood two figures who could only be angels.

When I told the others at breakfast next morning about my dream Jeremy Harrington said, ‘You have no doubt picked up on something that really did happen. You know of my family’s recusant history? In fact, Saint Edmund Campion once visited here—one step ahead of the pursuivants I imagine. John you are a man with eyes to see a little more than some of us; ears to hear a little more than all the rest of us. That’s a gift. Don’t throw it away in the winds.’

I had an extremely unsatisfactory session before Mr Justice Glanville. He proved his usual intractable self and refused to move my way on any of the points I raised. The flinty hardness in his gaze never wavered and when a nervous-looking court usher handed him some documents she seemed to visibly recoil from his withering glance. I was almost on the verge of being downright rude to him—something that would have been very out of character for me. He even adjourned the session for fifteen minutes complaining that I was insufficiently prepared. At this point the court clerk winked at me and raised his eyes to heaven in empathy with my exasperation.

* * *

After my business in chambers was finished a lady from the National Council for Civil Liberties was waiting in the corridor outside to brief me about an urgent matter. However, I just could not concentrate on what she was saying so I arranged for her to speak, later in the day, with Robert Bedingfeld instead. I knew then that I was not going to be much use to anyone for the rest of the day so I went back to my office, tidied up my desk, and decided to go home early.

I caught a Piccadilly Line underground train at Covent Garden. I had to stand and the jam-packed compartment, the stale air and the jolting, lurching and swaying of the train made me feel a little nauseous. Things were better when I changed to the Bakerloo Line as it was less crowded