Autobiography (32 page)

If anything, this ought to have lowered Joyce further into the mud in the mind of John Weeks, because it underlines how Joyce had ‘failed’ to uphold his business partnership duties. Instead, it appeared that all failures on the part of Joyce were shifted over to Morrissey and Marr, without even a
suggestion from Weeks that Joyce had ever been careless. Emerging from all of this, I came to the very basic realization that any personal wish from Joyce was going to be granted by Weeks. This was a civil case, not a criminal case. Placing the evidence of Morrissey and Marr aside for one moment, and assessing the case on the opening pleas of Joyce alone, surely it could not be possible for any judge to listen to the stumbling and incomprehensible Joyce and correspond those blunders with truth? A demented child of six years old would see the circuitous deviancy in the Joyce pleadings. So why couldn’t Weeks see this? Stuck in blame thirteen years after the event, it was hard to comprehend how anyone could believe anything at all that Joyce had said in relation to the events of 1983. Without any understanding of knowing when not to speak, Joyce had prattled on, trying to make the notion of sacrifice work to his advantage. Did John Weeks really not see how confusion and guilt are often the same thing?

Comically, Weeks sought to emphasize a considerable disparity in age between myself and the other three Smiths, referring to Morrissey as ‘an older man’, which would of course set the stage for decisive corruption. That the other three each had grammar school education compared to my secondary, and that they all held bank accounts at the Smiths’ formation whereas I had lived without such security, were points given no weight by Weeks. In actual fact, of the four, I was the least worldly, and it was only because I was the oldest of the four that Weeks could labor this fact as if it should have an obviously dark meaning. Several days in, it is generally acknowledged that the case is Joyce versus Morrissey, and those present will know that any defeat I may suffer within these walls shall be as important to onlookers as any triumph I may have had elsewhere. There is not one friendly face, nor one shrug of sympathy towards me from the lines of predators seated with such propriety on the benches. I am entirely and utterly alone. Marr has neatly edged his way over the dividing line, and is safely tucked away as everyone’s friend – yet no one’s. Even as Davis points out my personal sense of pride, Weeks later ridicules such an idea as if not one word in my support must be allowed air. It is crystal clear to me that this case must go against me even if I am right. Joyce is indecisive; I am fully decisive. My clarity annoys the judge, whereas the fog offered by Joyce only seems to help him. Joyce cannot remember, and says so three hundred times, yet his self-willed lack of recall does not annoy the judge at any stage, whereas my clarity aggravates. I can vividly remember, and I say so three hundred times.

DAVIS
:
You are very careful with your words, Mr Morrissey.

ME
:
Well, I’m in court.

Being careful with words is sneered out by Davis – as if it were in itself an anarchic act, as darkness descends all afternoon, and Davis attempts to divide me from Marr – which I am determined will not work. I have already been set adrift from everyone else. I have nothing to hide, and I have nothing to reveal that is not already as plain as day. Cross-examination is really only badgering, and it only takes place because the barking barrister is paid good money to badger. It is unlikely that he even believes the words that he speaks, yet his vocation is to badger in return for money – as with a common bailiff – and this is what Nigel Davis does for a respectable living. Surely unable to fist-fight, he feels safe in the world of words where his cross-examination slaps the face of another over and over again, until they tire and give in. It is an unchristian way of grinding people down, but this is how the legal system makes its money – and a colossal amount of it. Perhaps the wrong verdict is reached, perhaps injustice wins the day, but barristers and judges have little concern for the cruelty of their sport as long as they have the boyish joy of concluding it on their own terms
, even if law clashes with truth. Their time in the courtroom is a grand performance, whilst outside is the world they rarely inhabit, and which they more than likely know nothing about. Cross-examination by a barrister is a game whereby the first one to blink is the loser. It really is
that
silly.

Weeks decides that he ‘prefers’ the ‘evidence’ of Joyce, yet Joyce’s evidence is that he can’t remember anything. My vivid recollections do not fit in with how John Weeks wants to wind up the case, and so I therefore receive derision. Back in the witness stand, Joyce still cannot remember, cannot remember, cannot remember. Why force a case into the High Court if you cannot remember anything about it? Joyce ‘just presumed’, and then ‘can’t remember’, and then ‘just assumed’. Quite apart from turning up at the High Court with neither evidence nor witnesses, Joyce’s presumptions and assumptions are tolerated by the presiding adjudicator, even though Joyce has nothing in writing, has no evidence to support his claim, and does not appear on any Smiths recording contracts! At what point does the absurd become psychoneurotic? Surely the law should not entertain presumptions and assumptions under any circumstances because they are not evidence, they are meaningless, and they are a waste of the court’s time?

Yet deputy Weeks, applying the Partnership Act,
‘prefers’
the assumptions and presumptions of Joyce, and what a great moral task it must have been to bark out laws from 1890 at a time, now, when nothing else from 1890 applies to modern life. Why is such silliness allowed, when usually a court of law requires written evidence? When faced with the evidence of a host of professional functionaries, John Weeks will consider accountant Patrick Savage to be imaginative, and Weeks ‘prefers’ Joyce’s inability to recall. The Smiths are brutalized not by Joyce, but by Weeks, whose judgment marks me out for prolonged and eternal milking by Joyce. As if not enough, Weeks will also make me an easy target for lifelong jokes in the press by carefully shaping and delivering his own description of me as being ‘devious, truculent and unreliable’, which amounts to a very deadly first-degree assassination of anyone’s character.

Three words were used that had never previously described me, thus their weight as a catchphrase for eternity. Had Weeks described me in words befitting my character, no one would care or give any attention. The meaning of ‘devious, truculent and unreliable’ is to present a description so patently unlikely that ears prick up.
We all know that, if repeated often enough in print
, words are bound to eventually be believed, and it seemed obvious his quote would indeed be printed often enough. In the event of any
future court action shading my life (fame
=
money
=
lawsuits), the ‘devious, truculent and unreliable’ stinger alone need only be used once by any opposing party and my defense would come unstuck, because ‘devious, truculent and unreliable’ in judicial parlance means ‘evil, aggressive and a liar’. What was the reason for this attack on me, so aggressively fueled and so overdone that it appears to want to bring a life to an end? Surely judges have no need to unleash thoughts that are actually more violent than anything done or expressed by either plaintiff or defendant. What, then, was John Weeks thinking of? In the quiet room of his final years he will be delighted that his potential was realized by a famously recurring quote. It is a quote powerful enough to poison everything. Weeks could have merely said that someone was right and someone was wrong – or, indeed, that both parties were wrong. Instead he leaves a quote that might be rancid and powerful enough to cause one subject to be unable to ever again conduct business; to never again be trusted, or – even better – to kill himself with the brandishing shock of it all. It doesn’t take much to force someone over the edge, but Weeks’ judgment in itself could have constituted manslaughter.

I had done no harm. I was decisive. Joyce was indecisive. Would the judge not accept one solitary word of my exhaustive evidence? The pounder-drummer will become up to £3 million richer because he said
‘I just assumed it was 25 per cent’
– and that’s all it took. By ‘just assuming’ it was 25 per cent, he was now awarded 25 per cent. Having accepted a 10 per cent cut throughout his entire career – and beyond – it was only when the Smiths broke up that Joyce decided upon a 25 per cent gamble – after all, what is there to lose when the case is funded for Joyce by other people?

Joyce may not thank God, but he has much to thank John Weeks for, since it was Weeks who postmortemed the cobwebbed crates of the nineteenth century to give meaning to a case that was not won by Joyce himself, but that was made easy for Joyce. Without this anachronous act, the case should have collapsed seconds after Joyce first opened his mouth. In puerile rambling the hearings had dragged on and on. Like an irritable child on a hot day, Johnny took to the witness box for a second time, his newly primed approach resembling a sea-dog with news of a sinking ship:
‘
Well, Morrissey’s mother, and Morrissey’s mother, and yes, Morrissey should’ve sorted it out,’
and with this the hounds are now fully snapping at my heels, my mind’s eye wandering to late August of 1983 when I inch back the curtains to see my mother and Johnny’s mother driving off together in order to get to know one another. I think of my mother helping Johnny on the day he turned up at her house in a terrible state, and now here he was dragging her into this vile scenario as if it were all she deserved. By now, Marr, Rourke and Joyce have magically transformed into the Beverley Sisters, each chanting how that awful Morrissey had destroyed their lives – and just when they were all doing so well with their musical careers. It is an inferno of betrayal that I can bear no more, and I walk out of the court, the human mess of it all now so overcooked and grotesque – as if the subject all along had been discovery of human remains in someone’s potting-shed, and not simply a chubby drummer chancing his arm. What would they say at Salford Lads’ Club if they caught the stench within these walls – Johnny Marr crying off for being held accountable for his own actions, and all Mancunian camaraderie shafted. It was true that Johnny may have run a little wild, but people who were angry with him always forgave him, and here he was in late repentance – folding for Nigel Davis, his head to one side, seemingly imploring credit for at least being friendly. The shapeless Weeks brought his eyes to bear on Marr as if to question why Marr had made him wait so long. Johnny tunneled his way towards Weeks, a child again, wanting anything at all except the disapproval of complete strangers. Now, like Joyce, he too speaks with the voice of a child begging forgiveness, and the hunchbacked Weeks now looks as if he has his catch.

It takes courage to make yourself unpopular with your legal bully-boys for the sake of mere loyalty, and Johnny did not have that courage. A virtuoso of to-ing and fro-ing, you might swear that you are in the company of identical triplets as Johnny stands before you. I think of the happy months recording
Strangeways, Here We Come
, and I think that at least we had those times. Now, in this sunless and seditious High Court I had endured enough insults from people who had only ever profited from knowing me. Like royalty at the opera, the suffering face of John Weeks increases the web of sorrow as his deferential orderlies and his tide of little helpers are sworn to silence around him. Behind a bundle of oh-so-terribly-important papers, the huge teeth of Nigel Davis appear to expand at signs of fatigue and collapse in Marr – as if the only point of the exercise was to wear the witness down and to make him say what wasn’t true. I imagine barristers and connoisseurs of honor and civil scurvy roaring with laughter in their civic backrooms as they think of the clownish playthings that gather before them in search of justice in the godly Great Halls.

Alone, I left the court’s moldering walls. I left behind its odious gasses and I stepped out into new air, leaving the gabbling gargoyles stewing in their pitiful little warren; barristers soaked in fake humility, Johnny goaded by his little clan, Weeks wringing his creased little hangman’s hands whilst resembling a pile of untouched sandwiches, Joyce telling the world over and over again how he spent his Smiths years in a state of assuming and mis-hearing and mistaking and presuming, playing the daft-as-a-brush card up and out to the balcony, announcing
‘It’s not about money,
’
and
‘I just a-shoe-mmmd,’
and
‘I just want my money,’
as if his personal wishes were in themselves law. Leaving the court’s yard, a squirrel of a solicitor who is representing my lawyer (who did not appear at the hearing) tugs my arm.

‘Mr, ummmm, Morrissey, ummmm, what about our fees?’

Bleak House, indeed.

Although the trial was originally set to run for several more days, the second that I left the courtroom the trial ended abruptly, everyone was sent home and the door closed upon all of us. It was as though, without my presence, the taunt was no fun, and darker shadows rolled in as Weeks shuffled away to construct his literary masterpiece known as the Final Judgment – a judgment that made the entire Smiths case much worse than it had ever been, and also placed me in unimaginable peril, as it effectively served as an open invitation to others to take action against me. A final judgment must dwarf everything that has already been said, and with his death-rattle voice the fossilized Weeks left untouched the vital question of why Joyce had waited so long .

Weeks seems adamant that after five years of constant recording I had done nothing at all to earn the respect of Marr, Rourke or Joyce: no one present owed me a grain of consideration, yet the welfare of Joyce is underlined as everyone’s concern. With this, nothing in the final judgment strikes me as fair, final, or justice. But the judgment did not move Marr to action – not even in the name of
Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me
or
Please, please, please let me get what I want
. How could Joyce – even in thought – allow what I felt to be a gangland elimination of me by Weeks, with
Hatful of Hollow
,
Louder than Bombs
and
The World Won’t Listen
effortlessly pushed aside?