the devils walk : major characters

Biography not yet written

"James Dorrell was 57. He lived alone in a small farmhouse, known locally as a Mas, in a remarkably beautiful, but oddly unfashionable corner of west Provence. He was an alcoholic and a homosexual. At six foot two inches tall, broad shouldered and of athletic build he was an imposing figure. But, whilst he dominated most people he stood next to, latterly he had developed a slight stoop. Whether this was the effect of a lifetime of hard drinking or whether, as a roof will sometimes sag under its own weight, he was being bent under the sheer weight of being James Dorrell, it was hard to say. Either way, it gave the impression that he was older than he really was.

Some people would say that he was good looking and, if he ever admitted to it (which immodestly he did from time to time), he would say that his best aspect was front-on, rather than his profile which tended to accentuate the tell-tale signs of a heavy drinker on his otherwise finely Roman nose.

People who knew him only socially would regard him as a bonne-viveur and certainly, with a drink in his hand, he was rather a hail-fellow-well-met type. However this was not Dorrell in private, nor was it Dorrell professionally. When he was in the company of just one or two, the lack of depth that he displayed when in a crowd was countered by a thoughtful and reflective wisdom. His was the kind mind that grasped things quickly and was invariably ahead of the rest. Although it might be said that he did not suffer fools (for which of us really does?) he was, nevertheless, seldom bothered by someone who might not be blessed with quite as sharp a mind as his.

He was, for the most part, kind and loyal to his friends – such as they existed. He was also diligent and successful in his career. People who met him just once would come away with the impression of a man who was affable (if drunk), genial and apparently uncomplicated. Whereas those who met him a few times would think all of this but might have begun to detect one or two flaws. Anyone who knew him really well would have recognised in James Dorrell a man who was far from at ease; there were forces at work within him that meant that he was in a constant state of agitation. However, there was only one person who ever did and, whilst he was a remarkable man in his own right, he was kind of person who would not recognise anything in anyone."

"turning back to the table he [Dorrell] found that he was not alone, as he had expected, but in the company of an elderly looking man who he assumed to be the Abbot. He had a lined and care-worn face topped by short cropped, thick hair that was, for the most part silver, but with just some signs of the much darker colour it had once been. Beneath sharp and penetrating eyes were folds of skin that gave him a slightly lugubrious appearance, in contrast to his body which was wiry verging on the gaunt."

...it seemed as if the figure of Linden-Car was isolated from the rest of the group like a saint in a renaissance painting; radiant, perfectly still, perfectly beautiful. It was as if everyone else had been created by the ‘school of’ whilst the brush strokes that had formed Linden-Car were those of the Master; palpably more accomplished and infinitely, effortlessly serene.

...the white, porcelain quality of the face, the soft blond curls that fell about the ears and over his sapphire-blue eyes, the strong shoulders, the white shirt, unbuttoned sufficiently to reveal downy, blonde hairs on the chest. The slender waist and legs covered by widely flared jeans out of which were poking bare feet; beautiful bare feet that, [to Dorrell], might have been the model for the feet on Michael Angelo’s David.

...a very tall and distinguished looking young man with dark skin, coal black eyes and jet black hair with a fringe that had defied attempt to brush back across his head and hung rakishly across his right eye. He was wearing a navy blue blazer with a silk cravat tied loosely around his neck. His appearance should have made Dorrell feel less like a stuff shirt but annoyingly he was carrying the whole thing of with great style and aplomb. He introduced himself as Akbar Pahlavi in a highly refined Old Etonian accent indicating both breeding and education.

"Dwight D. Hogg was nothing that his name suggested, apart perhaps, from being an American. Hearing the name without seeing its owner you would imagine something altogether more Texan – an imposing figure of at least six feet in height and weighing in around 180lbs. You might picture Dwight D Hogg in a painting by Charles Marion Russell with a rhinestone bolo tie, a Stetson and crocodile skin cowboy boots or perhaps as Mid West railroad tycoon. The real Dwight D Hogg was none of these, not ever likely to be.

The young man who came knocking on Dorrell’s door that night was slight of stature, maybe no more than 5’7’, and frail of frame. The tweed jacket he was wearing looked as though it had been bought for someone much taller and much wider, or perhaps for a youth who was expected by his mother to grown into it. It was not badly made and could easily have cost an above average sum, but either way it did not fit him nor did he ever look likely to grow into it.

Emerging from a collar, that was also slightly too large and held together by a thinly knotted tie, was a clean-shaven neck and a head with a rather weak jaw line and a face of unremarkable looks. His hair, although betraying some signs of an attempt to control it, stuck up and out in a number of different directions and looked as though it had not changed in either or texture from the day he was born. His appearance was strikingly unremarkable; the sum of all his parts, including his eyes, which were pale blue and betrayed not a hint of emotion, aggregated to nothing. He was, in effect, a featureless landscape. If, after meeting him you were asked to describe him, you would be forgiven for thinking that you had been mistaken and that you had, in fact, met no one at all."

...from Utah and had come to Afghanistan to escape from his family who had him earmarked for the priesthood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"...turned out to be Sir Christopher Ames QC. Before he got to know him Dorrell felt moderately smug that he had overcome one of the trickiest of hurdles en route to being called to the Bar with such ease. However, during his year at Guildford Dorrell got to know his man rather better by being obliged to study a number of his opinions and some of his more prominent cases.  It appeared that, whilst his knowledge of the law was legendary and his skills as an advocate equally so, he had a reputation as one of the dullest people in the Inns of Court, a reputation that seemed to be entirely born out by what Dorrell read.

As it turned out Ames’ reputation was unfair. His style, although always an accomplished performance, was never theatrical. His greatest weapons were an almost unnatural attention to detail and a truly remarkable memory, both of which were extremely disconcerting in their own way. "

"...If ever there was a Saul turned Paul it was Adelaide Carton. She had been born just before the end of the war into a lower-middle class household in Aylesbury. Her father was a works foreman for Nestlé and a lay preacher in the Church of England and Adelaide grew up learning the value of submission to authority, loyalty to Queen and Country and the importance of honouring and maintaining the statue quo. It was not that her father was a reactionary, it was simply that he came from an era that believed in a certain order of things; when God was on his throne in heaven, the Queen was on hers on earth, the Prime minister was in Downing Street and his government ruled wisely and beneficently then all was well with the world.

When Adelaide was 8 years old her mother left her father for a man she had met at her part-time job in the bookbinder. Nothing could have been more shocking for her but it was perhaps her father who suffered the most. He felt the force of a double jeopardy – firstly that the idea of separation and divorce was beyond any sphere of reference he had, it was something that happened to other people but added to this he could not see that he had done anything wrong. His wife tried to re-assure him that this was the case and that the fault lay entirely with her but by now he wasn’t listening. It had begun to occur to him that her behaviour could only be accounted for if she had been possessed by Satan.

"...Babak Khorrami was a genial looking man with the look of a Russian dedooshkah. He was balding, with dark strands of hair combed down to the top of his head, leading to a band of oiled curls above his collar and over his ears, showing that once he would have had a much more impressive head of hair.  His receding hairline was, however, balanced entirely by a thick, yard-broom of a moustache that was trimmed tidily above a broadly smiling mouth. 

He was, in all other aspects, round. His round head sat on top of round shoulders from which extended short arms, at the end of which were small hands with thick fingers, the back of which were covered in a matt of black hair every bit as luxuriant as his moustache. As they entered the room his hands were resting on the paunch of a distinctly round stomach which seemed to betray a life of idleness but the athletic manner in which he sprang out his chair and advanced across the room to meet Dorrell and Akbar suggested otherwise."

"..., thickset man entered wearing shalvar trousers under a long cotton collarless shirt. He was bear headed but with a thick head of black hair, a bushy beard and heavy, dark eyebrows above coal black eyes, one of which was partially closed as a result of a wound which ran diagonally across his forehead and onto his left cheek."

"...Kate Hampshire represented the class of black professionals who were becoming an increasingly significant proportion of the black African and black Caribbean population of Great Britain".... Characterisation not yet complete