- Posted on: 15 March, 2021
- 60 Years Old
- Fay Weldon
- #1983 #60 #Judge Henry Bissop #Male #Novel #The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
Donate
Judge Henry Bissop 60
The judge himself, even at sixty, was a wonderfully handsome man: tall, broad-shouldered, even-featured, self-controlled. His hair was plentiful, snowy-white, and cut weekly. When the judiciary was having its photograph taken Judge Bissop would be pushed to the fore, for he looked like what a judge should be – distinguished, wise, firm but kindly.
The judge took his work seriously. He knew he must stand above and beyond the common man, guarding himself from error, protecting himself from corruption. He knew how rare a man he was, how very few there were prepared to wield the fine rapier-blade of justice within the vulnerable substance of society: how difficult it was to dispose of another man’s life when he personally had done you no particular harm, how peculiar to steal his time away in yearly chunks – twelve months for this, eighteen for that, a dozen years for the other. How disconcerting to be the one say this is bad, this is worse, for this there’s hell to pay! But there it was. And it was, when it came to it, a vocation. He had been born to it.
