Ugly Review

Ugly
by Constance Briscoe
Hodder & Stoughton

Review and interview by Paul Magrath

Constance Briscoe is now a successful barrister and part-time judge. But for much of her schooldays Clare, as she was then known, was beaten, abused and bullied. Her chief tormentor was her own mother, a first generation Jamaican immigrant called Carmen, who when not pinching and twisting her daughter’s nipples, grabbing and squeezing what the author quaintly calls her “minnie”, belabouring her with a broken-off stair plank or kicking her in the stomach, was busy adding insults to all her injuries by calling her “ugly”, “scarface” and (for reasons that will become clear) “pissabed”.

The problem was that Clare, even in her early teens, was a chronic sufferer of nocturnal incontinence. She wet the bed. Her mother thought she did so deliberately, and would make her put her wet sheets back on the bed and sleep in them. Her GP recommended a special alarm, whose imperious clamour only exacerbated the problem. No effort seems to have been made to investigate the (fairly obvious) psychological cause. Yet as soon as Clare slept away from home, the problem stopped. And when she returned, it resumed.

The real problem, then, was her mother. But what was her mother’s problem? Perhaps it was her (ex) husband, another Jamaican immigrant, who after winning the pools had abandoned his wife and their growing brood of children, only turning up at Christmas time with food and presents. He was too busy landlording it over the little property empire he’d built up with his pools winnings to offer Clare more than occasional refuge from her mother and the equally violent stepfather, Eastman, who now occupied his place in the home.

You do not have to read too many newspapers, let alone law reports, to find plentiful instances of man’s or woman’s inhumanity even to their own offspring. But what distinguishes the author of this harrowing but somehow uplifting memoir is her indomitable spirit and her determination, from an early age, not only to surmount the various obstacles in her way, but to succeed in spite of them.

When attacked by her stepfather Eastman, for example, she goes to the local Magistrates’ Court and takes out a summons, as a result of which he is bound over to keep the peace, on pain of imprisonment. He keeps his own peace after that, but signally fails to keep that of Carmen, who later beats Clare so severely that she collapses at school and refuses to go home. A teacher, Miss Korchinskye, herself a refugee (from the concentration camps), offers to take her in. Fate punishes “Miss K” abysmally for this act of humanity: she is horrifically injured in an accident. But her kindness offers Clare a lifeline out of the hell of her domestic environment.

Another turning point comes with a school trip to the Crown Court. One of the barristers involved is Michael Mansfield, now a leading crime practitioner and campaigning, media-savvy silk. On hearing that Clare, a schoolgirl in her early teens, wants to be a barrister, he not only pays her the compliment of taking her seriously but even promises her a pupillage.

Despite every discouragement from home and school, Clare passes her A-levels and gets into Newcastle University. Her mother makes one last attempt to bar her way to the Bar: asked to countersign her daughter’s university grant application form, she simply tears it up. Clare has to postpone her entry for a year and work as a nurse to make her own way. In 1982 she graduates in law and in 1983 is called to the Bar. She writes to Mansfield asking when she can start her pupillage. He writes back: “Dear Constance, Come as soon as you like.”

Mansfield thus emerges as a sort of fairy godfather who, with a wave of his wand, transforms the fortunes of this Cinderella heroine. Meeting him when she did was certainly a lucky break, but Constance Briscoe, tracked down to her chambers in Bell Yard, in the shadow of the vast and labyrinthine Royal Courts of Justice, is less sanguine about the chances of today’s young recruits to the Bar.

“The problem at the moment,” she says, “is that you can’t get pupillage. When I came to the Bar everyone who was qualified would find pupillage. Now you have to have a First or 2:1. For me it was an achievement to get a degree in the first place.”

I point out that things have got better in that at least pupils are now paid. Perhaps surprisingly, she disagrees: “I don’t think pupils should be paid. I do think if students come to the Bar they should show some sort of determination. It’s not a continuation of university.”

So, no moaning at the Bar, and no mollycoddling either. “I think there should be a level playing field. I would not expect any special favours because I was black or had had a hard time. The opportunity should be available to everyone.”

Her own children are now approaching university age. Her son, 18, is on his gap year, her daughter is 16. What had they made of the book? She explains that it was one the reasons why she decided, in her mid-40s, to return to the trauma of her childhood. “I felt the time was right to write about my life so they would understand my past and the reasons why they have never met my mother.”

Writing it was “not an enjoyable occasion” but now, she says, “I have not a single regret”. Her children are proud of her. Colleagues from both Bar and Bench have been first astonished at the revelations in the book (“Mine is not a background shared by many at the Bar”) and then supportive, as has been the reading public. The book flew to the top of the bestseller lists, and has hovered there for several months.

It has obviously struck a chord with many readers. Though calmly written, it is an angry book. It’s a book that makes you angry just to read it. A pretty damning indictment, as they say.

But to the legal mind, of course, an indictment is not a verdict. It’s an accusation, not a judgment. The rules of natural justice demand that the other party be heard.

And so, perhaps, she shall. For Carmen has instructed lawyers of her own and is now threatening to sue. Constance Briscoe stands by her account and has the scars to prove it. “I am quite looking forward to the court case,” she says. “I might finally hear what it was that motivated my mother all those years.”

In the meantime, she has been writing more books. She was inspired to take up writing by meeting the legal thriller writer John Grisham (at Middle Temple Hall for the launch of his book The King of Torts), so it’s no surprise to learn that she has now written a crime novel of her own. A children’s story and further instalments of her autobiography are also waiting in the wings.

But she is not abandoning the law: she is keen to take silk and would welcome the offer of full time judging. Asked in which division she would like to sit, she is unhesitating in her reply: “Family”. Well, no one could say she had not the experience for it.

Current Newsletter | Other articles of interest