DoubleTake:The scenes in Court 14 were straight out of Kafka, or perhaps even the world conjured up by Dickens, writes Ann Marie Hourihane
Now that consensus has broken out among all the political parties - Sinn Féin's late adoption of the national attitude to corporation tax has rendered that party particularly adorable - there is only one question to be decided by the electorate: do we go with Dickens or do we go with Kafka?
At first, standing in the stifling atmosphere of Court 14 on Wednesday, as Mr Justice Liam McKechnie handed down his judgment in the Miss D case, it was tempting to go with Kafka. The details of the case seemed to invite it, and so did Court 14 on the day.
The young women barristers standing at the back in their uniform of black and white. The line of middle-aged men - that is, the senior barristers - sitting in the front row. The documents they had with them. One senior counsel had an article in his papers entitled "The Care of Women Requesting Induced Abortion". Farther back, alawyer had a large blue book on the desk in front of her, entitled Civil Procedure In The Superior Court. On the cover was a large stamp that read "3 Day Loan Only".
The cloud of bewilderment that hung over us all. The judge recalling Miss D's account of how, as revealed on her first ante-natal scan, "the baby had no head". (Miss D ran from the hospital). The terrifying opacity of the HSE. The protesters at the gates outside. The absence of Miss D herself. The man who stood up from the body of the court afterwards, wanting to make a speech. All of this was straight out of Kafka.
No one could adequately describe what went on in Court 14, the combination of the ordinary and the sinister, better than Kafka. Here is the first sentence of The Trial: "Someone must have slandered Joseph K, because one morning, without his having done anything wrong, he was arrested." You see, Kafka liked initials almost as much as we do.
But there is a lot to be said for Dickens, too. He was once a court reporter, and had good shorthand. How much Dickens could have made of Court 14 last Wednesday. Because Court 14 was far too small for what it was asked to contain. There were mutterings that it was mad, really, that the case had not been heard in a bigger room. But Dickens might have liked the place. Its yellow walls, its green carpet, its blonde pine seating, the four big globe lampshades that hung over us like full moons. He would have been very good on the crush of the crowd, and its patience. On the female barristers - mothers - who had come along to watch and were spitting fire. On the young female barristers standing at the back, thinking: "This will never happen to me. This will never happen to me." Above all, he would have been good on Miss D's mother, a handsome woman, who sat silently by one of the windows. Her legs were crossed and one foot tapped on the air for the afternoon. Tap, tap, tap.
And behind her chair stood one of the older women so beloved by Dickens, sometimes almost draped over Miss D's mother, who never turned towards her or looked at her, sometimes holding her jacket to herself like a blanket. The older woman's face really was livid, and if it had an expression, that expression seemed to say - along with, surprisingly enough, Dorothy Parker: "What fresh hell is this?"
But we can't be dragging in every writer of genius wholesale. Dickens would have loved Mr Justice Liam McKechnie, who shot into court one hour behind schedule, like a cork out of a bottle. Mr Justice McKechnie, who looked - and I mean this as a compliment - as if he had just been building a rocket in his garden shed.
Mr Justice McKechnie, who, in Cork tones, brought us through every aspect of the case as the stenographer kept up a furious pace. Mr Justice McKechnie, who told us that Miss D's father "had never featured in her existence". Mr Justice McKechnie, who spoke of the baby with no head, although he used the grander medical observation: "No cranial vault was present . . . there is no treatment and never has been."
Dickens would have been alive to the pity of it. To the savagery of Nature: "the tragic foetus in this case is an aberration of Nature", read Mr Justice McKechnie. To a young, impoverished woman tempted to perjure herself, in order to make everyone's lives easier, and refusing to do that. To Mr Justice McKechnie's warm praise of Miss D -"her courage, integrity and maturity" - and to the fact that Miss D was not there to hear perhaps the only positive remarks she has ever received from a male authority figure.
I suppose genius is limitless, and therefore Dickens would have been capable of describing our politicians' supine position regarding the fate of Miss D, and of all other defenceless young women who fall on the care of this republic. But then, maybe Kafka would have been better on that subject. It is still rather difficult to tell.