This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial by Helen Garner Page A

Morrissey was tormented by terrific bouts of
dry coughing. He barked, he croaked, he sweated and turned pale. Long pauses fell
while he composed himself. Justice Cummins coddled him affectionately, offered to
adjourn at lunchtime on Friday so he could rest his voice for two and a half days,
threatened trouble if he saw him at the football at the MCG. Morrissey was embarrassed.
He grinned and ducked his head and said that he would soldier on till the end of
the week.
    Then, first thing on Friday morning, before the jury was called in, Morrissey told
the judge that he had stayed up working half the night and would now be able to finish
his cross-examination by lunchtime.
    Justice Cummins’ brow came down. Overnight, he said sharply, inquiries had come from
the jury: how much longer was this trial likely to go on? Some of these jurors were
going to work before court, or during the lunch break. They were serious people,
applying themselves to their task. They had made arrangements to cancel this afternoon’s
work, and now they were to be told they would be released by lunchtime. They were
not rag dolls to be thrown aside for the convenience of counsel. They had lives to
lead. They should be treated properly.
    Morrissey stood at the bar table staring down at his hands. He looked offended, even
wounded. Why, yesterday the judge had practically tucked him up in bed with a hot-water
bottle. Today, he was rapping Morrissey’s knuckles with a ruler.
    But Farquharson’s supporters gazed loyally at their wigged champion. They believed
in him. They urged him on. When Louise’s mother slipped into court one day to see
what her daughter had been raving about, she looked around in surprise and said,
‘It feels like a family in here.’ The cramped court had become an intimate space,
intimate enough for Morrissey—this decent, warm and very endearing man, perhaps
sentimental, perhaps a little vain—to identify with his client to the point where,
in its paroxysms of coughing, his own body was acting out Farquharson’s story. A
story that was becoming more fantastical with every passing day.
    …
    On the Monday of the trial’s fourth week, the Crown introduced a crucial witness.
    Hostility showed in the rigid shoulders of Farquharson’s sisters as the man climbed
the steps to the stand. His dark hair was freshly cut. In his jeans, runners and
striped short-sleeved shirt he affected a rockabilly jauntiness. But his crisp-featured
face was expressionless, his posture tense and wary. His name was Greg King; he was
a bus driver; and he was about to be dragged through the sort of public ordeal that
most people face only in nightmares from which, gasping and sweating, they are grateful
to wake.
    ‘Mr King,’ said Rapke. ‘Do you know a man by the name of Robert Farquharson?’
    ‘Yes, I do.’
    ‘How do you know him?’
    ‘We grew up together. He’s a friend of mine, a mate, a family friend.’
    The two mates kept their faces turned in opposite directions. From my seat I could
see them in profile, each resolutely avoiding the other’s eye.
    They were Winch boys. They went to the local primary school a few years apart, and
then to Geelong Tech. They did not really become friends until King at twenty and
Farquharson at seventeen found jobs with the local shire council. Outside work they
played football together, and hung out at the pub or at King’s house. By the time
Farquharson and Cindy Gambino got serious, King and his wife, Mary, had already started
their family, and the men’s friendship began to dwindle.
    When Rapke asked him to describe the relationship between Farquharson and Gambino,
King began to breathe audibly. His voice grew husky. They were always at each other,
he said. He had urged them to see that as a couple you have to bond, but they kept
on niggling and arguing. When they married, they already had two children. King went
to their wedding. He and Mary would visit them for a barbecue, or the two couples
would go