David Cocks threw a summer champagne party for his chambers while his abandoned pupil gave birth to his child

The tale of Mr Justice Cold Heart




The goose no doubt had been fattened nicely in readiness for the festivities at the handsome 173-acre country estate of David Cocks QC.

As a silk of the highest repute, and the sixth highestearning barrister in the land, he could afford to indulge himself at Christmas with his family.

Two hundred miles away from his home in Devon, in a dingy district of the London borough of Camden, Christmas was a much humbler affair for Felicity Hammerton and her son, David.

They shared a small turkey in their two-bedroom, first-floor flat. There were few presents - Felicity cannot afford them.

Instead, she spent the festive season contemplating the fat legal letter that landed on her doormat last week from Mr Cocks's solicitors. In it, she learned that the eminent QC was seeking an end to the payment of maintenance for the couple's love child.

At £10,000 a year, it is a drop in the ocean of his estimated £800,000 annual salary, but crucial to his son's standard of living.

A rather Scrooge-like gesture at this time of year, certainly - but few who know David Cocks in either a professional or a private capacity are surprised.

For many years, they have spoken of his abiding hatred for the woman who was once his pupil barrister and his mistress, and his determination to have nothing to do with her or the son she bore him.

Theirs is a bitter and fraught history, one that has scandalised the upper echelons of the legal profession and been played out for three decades in some of the highest courts in the land.

It is also a deeply poignant tale, one that has left huge emotional scars on mother and son. Now 31, David is a clever but vulnerable young man who has struggled to cope with his father's rejection.

His refuge, over the years, has been academia - he is studying to be an archaeologist at a London university. It is a refuge that is threatened by his father's intransigence because the regular payments contributed to the cost of his education.

It is for this reason that Felicity has decided to break her silence of nearly 30 years. "David has been devastated over the years by his father's cruelty - we both have," she says.

"I have tried hard to give our son the best life I could, but it has been a struggle. David has taken refuge in his books, but now his father even wants to take that away."

Today, it is clear that fighting for recognition of her son has taken its toll. Gone are the vibrant tumbling locks and curvaceous figure that, more than 30 years ago, made her a head-turner among the rarefied surroundings of the Inns of Court.

Back then, she was a barrister of great promise. Orphaned as a child, Felicity had been raised by her admiral grandfather. But, having been left with no financial means after his death when she was 16, she had funded herself through law school by taking various jobs.

Life had been kinder to David Cocks, now 71. Rugby and Oxford-educated, he was a rising star of the legal profession when his path crossed that of Ms Hammerton, 14 years his junior.

A brilliant criminal barrister, he would go on to become chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, and his magisterial figure and thick black hair earned him the nickname "the Prince of Darkness".

Unfortunately, he was also married with three children when, after spotting Felicity in court, he asked her out for lunch. "I was flattered," Felicity recalls. "He was such an impressive figure. I could not believe he was interested in me."

Within days, David had asked her to leave her chambers and become his pupil barrister. "He promised me a dazzling career. My pupil master was furious - it wasn't done to poach. He said to me: 'Felicity, that man is no gentleman.' I wish I'd heeded his warning."

But it was too late: Felicity was smitten. 'Here was one of the most impressive barristers of his generation reaching his hand to me. I was flattered and hopelessly na've."

The friendship quickly became an affair, sealed when the barrister turned up at her apartment late one night with a bottle of champagne.

"He seduced me and the following morning he told me he loved me. I thought I had met my prince; I had no idea he was married."

The affair quickly became intense. There were dinners, weekends away, even a holiday - a week in Wales during the height of summer.

Blissfully ignorant of his marital status, Felicity only discovered the truth ahead of a weekend invitation to stay at her lover's parental home.

"He casually told me his wife and children would also be there. I was bewildered, devastated. He said he hadn't told me before because he knew I would never have succumbed to his affections."

After a "wretched" weekend, in which Felicity's presence was explained as her just being a pupil barrister he was mentoring, she returned to London vowing to end the affair.

"But he was so persuasive and I was so very in love with him. He said he wanted to build a new life with me in America and, of course, I believed him. I thought he just needed time."

But events were soon brought to a head. Within nine months of their affair starting, Felicity discovered she was pregnant - and any dreams of a long-term future with her lover were shattered.

"He told me I could stay in chambers if I had an abortion, or I could have the baby and leave. I was devastated," she recalls.

"I wrote him a letter in which I said I would not, could not, get rid of our child. His response was to telephone me at 6am, shouting: 'You have wrecked my life and I am going to wreck yours.' I was trembling from the force of his anger."

Felicity left chambers within days, finding work with a much smaller, less lucrative firm in order to make ends meet.

While her former lover lived in grand style in a large house in St John's Wood, North-West London, her pregnancy was spent in the unheated, one-room flat she had rented at the start of her pupillage.

Her only respite came in the form of a holiday towards the end of her pregnancy at the Spanish home of her godfather, the poet Robert Graves. The fare was paid by Cocks's then chambers' room mate Sir Derek Spencer, who went on to become Solicitor General, and who had taken pity on Felicity.

"I know he discussed with Cocks the possibility of setting up a trust fund, but he wasn't interested. Derek was appalled by his callous attitude," says Felicity.

Effectively abandoned, she gave birth to her son in a London hospital while, less than a mile away, Cocks threw a summer champagne party for his chambers.

Three weeks later, Felicity had no option but to return to work. Within days, she received the phone call she'd been praying for. "David rang and asked if we could meet. I was full of hope that he had seen the error of his ways."

Ironically, given Felicity's straitened circumstances, Cocks's choice of venue was the Ritz. But the meeting was not what she had hoped for. "He told me that if he bumped into me he would be friendly, but he would have nothing to do with the child and would not be giving us money. We were eating cucumber sandwiches while I could barely afford the bus fare home."

There was worse to come. During a freezing winter, living in a flat with no heating, baby David was struck down with pneumonia, his life endangered. "Later, I found out that when Derek Spencer had told Cocks about it, he had replied that he couldn't care less, that it was nothing to do with him."

Desperate to gain some financial provision for her son, in 1976 Felicity launched paternity proceedings, bitterly contested by Cocks, who denied he was the baby's father.

The presiding magistrate, Ronald Knox-Mawer, said he had "no hesitation" in finding the case proven, and ordered Cocks to pay £25 a week maintenance, less tax.

"David applied to pay it in a lump sum on the 365th day of each year. I felt that was sheer spite. Luckily, the judge said a child could not eat in arrears and refused him."

For ten years, his son received just £16.24 a week from Cocks, despite his flourishing career. "I remember on one occasion I was pushing the pram down the street to take the baby to the childminder before starting work," she says.

"David drove by in his large Volvo and stuck his fingers up at me. I was floored by his contempt for me."

The irony of their bitter estrangement was compounded when Felicity learned that, in 1979, Cocks's wife, Patricia, had divorced him, naming in the petition Sarah Childs, the wife of David's best friend.

Cocks and Sarah married two years later and moved to a country estate near Tiverton, Devon, with Sarah's two children. Meanwhile, Felicity was working night and day to make ends meet as a barrister. Home was the two-bedroom former council flat where she and David still live, and the mortgage, combined with childcare, took everything she had.

In the early Eighties, she applied to the court for the maintenance to be increased. Cocks offered £2,335 a year. After a hearing and appeal, this sum was raised to £10,000 a year and David was able to attend private school.

"Almost immediately, Cocks launched wardship proceedings, arguing David - whom he'd never seen - should be made a ward of court because he was opposed to private education.

"It was ludicrous - his other children had been privately educated. The proceedings were dismissed as a misuse of jurisdiction, but although I was relieved, it was hard to deal with the full force of his anger," says Felicity.

"The judge said that he had no doubt the boy was going to grow up emotionally maimed if this rejection by his father went on."

Certainly, Felicity saw the devastation at first hand: for years, David had slept with a model horse under his pillow, a link, he believed, to his father, who is a fine horseman. "After the proceedings, I found he had smashed the horse to pieces," says Felicity, revealing the mental turmoil her son must have felt.

Given his lengthy opposition to his son, it seems astonishing Cocks would ever show any interest in him. But, when David was around 14 -and for reasons that remain a mystery - overtures were made.

One morning, a note arrived inviting David to play squash with his father. "David was excited, but also terribly scared. He had never even seen this man and he was terrified of his reputation."

Father and son came face to face for the first time when David junior climbed into his father's car to drive to a sports centre. An accomplished squash player, Cocks thrashed the teenager. "It was typical of him, that he had to win," says Felicity.

A pattern was set. Every third week, Cocks would drive his son to school one morning. Every ninth Sunday, they played squash. Young David desperately wanted more, but any overtures towards further intimacy were rejected.

In the event, contact lasted only a matter of months before it petered out. It was replaced by yet more court proceedings.

"Cocks applied for maintenance proceedings to be moved to the county court, which can drag out cases for ever. He also applied to reduce maintenance," says Felicity.

"I felt embattled and exhausted. It seemed that everything he did was to spite me." After yet more lengthy proceedings in the late Nineties, Cocks's application to reduce maintenance was rejected.

Felicity was advised to take her son on holiday to recover - a break that was to prove all too brief a respite.

"While I was away, Cocks applied for me to pay his court costs, even though he had lost his case. It was £35,000. I heard the news by phone and collapsed with the shock."

In fact, Felicity had a thrombosis which had travelled to her brain. Immobile in an Austrian hospital for ten days, she was airlifted back to Britain, still dangerously ill.

Since then, she has been plagued by ill health and now survives on incapacity benefit. She confesses to loneliness - she says there have been no lovers since Cocks - and she lives in fear of old age, when she will receive just £54 a week pension.

"I feel as if he has stolen my life away," she says. "And I feel he has done it out of spite."

And what of her son? David is a fiercely intelligent, but intensely shy young man whose continued rejection by his father has taken a huge emotional toll.

With yet more court proceedings ahead, there seems little chance of a rapprochement.

In the season of goodwill, it seems unlikely that the eminent Mr Cocks QC would have spared his son even the most fleeting of thoughts as he tucked into his Christmas feast.