‘That’s what we’ve got you for. To put our point of view across.’ Dave had mistaken my function.
‘You’ve got me to get you out of trouble. That’s what you’ve got me for. I’m not going to get up tomorrow and teach old Rice Crispies to sing protest songs… to a small guitar.’
‘You’re just not taking this case seriously!’ Dave was totally wrong, and I told him so.
‘Oh yes I am. I am seriously determined to keep Kathy out of prison.’
At which Miss Trelawny said it was time for their nightly poem. She found a book and gave it to me open.
‘Me?’
‘You like this. Read it to us…’
So I read to the lotus eaters, quietly at first and then with more emphasis, enjoying the sound of my own voice. ‘It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity.’
They were all listening as though they actually enjoyed it, except for Dave who was whispering to Kathy.
‘Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought…’
Kathy was shushing Dave, making him listen to the old sheep. I looked at her as I read the last lines.
‘Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year; And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.’
I slammed the book shut. I needed to sleep before Court in the morning.
‘The Officer was only doing his duty. Active, your Honour, in the pursuit of crime!’ Tooke was making his final speech on the point of evidence, to an unenthusiastic audience.
‘Or in the manufacture of a crime? That’s what troubles me.’ The judge was really troubled, bless him. He went on. ‘If I thought this young woman only collected drugs… only got in touch with any sort of supplier because of the trap set for her – then would you concede, Mr Tooke, I would have to reject the evidence?’
‘I think your Honour would.’
Tooke was a lovely prosecutor. Everything was going extremely well when Rice Crispies adjourned for lunch. So I was in festive mood when I set off for a crab sandwich and a nourishing stout in the pub opposite the Shire Hall, looking forward to wetting my whistle and putting the final touch on my clinching argument. But I was stopped by Friendly who said the client wanted to see me as a matter of urgency. He led me into a small room, decorated with old framed leases and eighteenth-century maps of Coldsands, and there, clearly bursting with news to impart, were Miss Kathy Trelawny and her friend Dave.
‘We want to tell the truth.’ I closed the door carefully and looked at her Dave without encouragement.
‘What truth?’
‘It’s the only way I can get Peter’s case across,’ Kathy said. She was smiling no longer.
‘Peter?’
‘My brother. I told you. He was busted.’
‘In Turkey. I remember. Well, this isn’t Turkey. And it’s not Peter’s case or anyone else’s.’ I looked at Kathy. ‘It’s yours.’
‘Kathy wants you to know why she did it.’
She was about to speak, and I almost shouted at her, hoping it still wasn’t too late.
‘Shut up!’
‘You see I had…’
‘The conference is over! Got to get a bite of lunch. Come on, Friendly.’ I moved to the door.
‘It appears we have new instructions, Mr Rumpole.’ Friendly looked concerned, not half so concerned as I was.
‘The old instructions are doing very nicely, thank you. Don’t say a word until this evening. When it’s all over tell me what you like.’
‘She wants everyone to know. How else can we get Pete’s case into the papers?’
Dave, like an idiot, had moved between me and the door. I had no way of escaping the fusillade of truth which Kathy then let fly.
‘I got the stuff last year after Pete got busted in Istanbul. I was going to sell it anyway. It was going to cost ten thousand pounds to get him out in lawyers’ fees and…” she looked at me almost accusingly, ‘bribes, I suppose… He got twelve years. We’ve got to get people to care about Peter!’
So it was quite clear, she was telling me that she hadn’t committed her crime as the result of a request from an agent provocateur. She had the stuff before Detective Sergeant Smedley of the west country Drug Squad first came to ‘Nirvana’. That was the truth, the last thing in the world I wanted to know. I looked at my watch, and turned to Friendly.
‘What is there – a z.25 back to London? Friendly, run outside, for God’s sake, and see if you can’t whistle me up a taxi. I’m retiring from this case.’
Friendly, totally puzzled by the turn of events, left us.
‘Running out on us?’ Dave never made an unexpected remark.
‘Why, for God’s sake?’ Kathy asked me, and I had to tell her. ‘Let me try and explain. My existence is bound by a small blue volume handed down like the Tablets on the day of my Call to the Bar by a Master of my Inn in a haze of port and general excitement.’
‘What the hell’s he talking about!’ Dave couldn’t resist interrupting, but Kathy told him to listen. I went on with such calm as I could muster.
‘Barristers down the ages have killed. They have certainly committed adultery. Although that sort of thing doesn’t appeal to me some may well have coveted their neighbours’ camels and no doubt worshipped graven images. But I don’t believe there’s one of us who has ever gone on to fight a case after our client has told us, in clear crystal ringing tones, that they actually did the deed.’
‘You mean – you won’t help me?’ Kathy looked as if it had never occurred to her.
‘I can’t now.’
‘But Kathy wants to tell the judge the pot law’s ridiculous. And about Pete.’
‘It’s my duty to preside over your acquittal, not your martyrdom to the dubious cause of intoxication,’ I told her. ‘I’ll see the judge and tell him I can’t act for you any longer… personal reasons.’
‘The old fool’ll think you fancy her.’ I can’t imagine where Dave got that far-fetched idea, and I went on ignoring him.
‘You’ll get another barrister. What you tell him is your business. I’ll ask the judge to adjourn for a week or two… You’ll still be on bail.’
‘What’s the matter? Afraid to stick your neck out? Or would you starve to death if they made pot legal?’ Dave was about to start on another of his political speeches, but Kathy silenced him. She asked him to leave us alone, and I told him to go and find Friendly and my taxi. He went. He had smashed my defence and I was alone with Kathy, looking at the pieces.
‘I thought… We got along together.’ Kathy was smiling again. I couldn’t help admiring her courage. ‘I mean, you keep talking about clients. I didn’t think I was a client. I thought I was more of a friend, actually.’
‘Never have friends for clients. That really ought to be one of the Ten Commandments.’
‘I don’t suppose you could forget what I told you?’
‘Of course I could. I’d like nothing more than to forget it. I’d forget it at once if I wasn’t a bloody barrister!’
‘And there’s nothing more important than that in your life? Being a barrister.’
I thought about this very carefully. Unfortunately, there was only one answer.
‘No.’
‘Poetry doesn’t mean a damn thing to you! Friendship doesn’t mean anything. You’re just an old man with a heart full of a book about legal etiquette!’ Kathy was angry no w, she’d stopped smiling.
‘You’re saying just what I have long suspected,’ I had to agree with her.
‘Why don’t you do something about it?’
‘What do you suggest?’ She moved away from me, and went and looked out of the window, at the sunshine and the municipal begonias. At last she said, ‘I might leave Coldsands and come up to London. Do a language course.’
‘And Dave? Would Dav
e be coming with you?’
‘Dave’s stuck here organizing the house. I want to get away. Have a bit of a rest from home-made muesli and debates about the geyser. I thought. Well. I’d get a flat in London. I could come and have lunch with you sometimes. When you’re in the Old Bailey.’
‘Every man has his price. Is that mine? A lunch down the Old Bailey?’
‘Not enough?’
‘More than enough. Probably, much more. Something to think about, in the long cold nights with She Who Must Be Obeyed.’
She suddenly turned on me, she was holding on to my arm, as if afraid of falling.
‘I’m not going to prison! You won’t let them send me to prison!’
There was only one way, now Dave had done his damnedest.
‘I can go and see the judge. He might agree to a suspended sentence. I don’t know. I can go and see him.’
‘That’s right! He likes you. I could see you get along. Go and see him. Please go and see him.’ She was smiling again, eager. I had to tell her the facts of life.
‘You know what it means. If I go and see the judge for you?’
‘I… I plead guilty.’ She knew. I left her then and went to the door. We still had our trump card. Dear old Rice Crispies was simply aching to get away to the gymkhana.
His Honour Judge Crispin-Rice was delighted to see Rumpole and the prosecuting Tooke. He made us Nescafe with the electric kettle in his room. He looked younger with his wig off, and, when we had settled such vital matters as how much milk and no sugar thank you, he and Tooke tried to make me envious of their previous night’s revelry in the Bar Mess.
‘We had a good evening. You should have been with us, Rumpole. Didn’t we have a splendid evening, Vernon?’
‘The leader gave us “The Floral Dance”.’ Tooke relived the great moment.
‘Old Pascoe is wonderful for 75. He entertained us in song.’ The judge offered us a Senior Service. ‘You’d have enjoyed it.’
‘A splendid evening! We fined little Moreton a dozen bottles of claret for talking shop at dinner.’ Tooke was bubbling at the memory.
‘We then started hacking away at the penalty! How many bottles were left?’
‘None, Judge. As far as I remember.’
I thought the time had come to return their thoughts to the business in hand.
‘Look here, Judge,’ I said. ‘At the risk of being fined for talking shop. If… If it so happened I could persuade my client to plead guilty…’ His Honour was stirring his cup, giving me no great assistance. ‘You might be grateful for a short afternoon.’ Even this didn’t hook him. I went on, a little desperately. ‘She’s a remarkable girl.’
‘So I can see.’ Old Rice Crispies smiled then. Perhaps, I thought, I could rope him into ‘Nirvana’.
‘Knows a good deal about Wordsworth.’ I didn’t know if this would sway the judicial mind.
‘Wordsworth? Is he a mitigating factor?’
‘Poor old sheep of the Lake District. He can’t afford to lose admirers.’
‘No. Well. She’d get the full benefit of pleading guilty.’ He was using his judge’s voice. I stood up, like a barrister.
‘Can’t you tell me any more than that?’
‘There are rules.’
‘I thought you might indicate…’
‘The tariff? You know the tariff. How much was it? Twenty pounds weight. A fair wallop!’
‘It was only cannabis.’ I tried to make it sound like broken biscuits. ‘They use the stuff just like whisky. It doesn’t occur to them…”
‘But it isn’t whisky, is it?’ The judge’s voice again. ‘It’s a Class B drug as defined by the Dangerous Drugs Act.’
‘But what do we know about it?’
‘That it’s illegal. Isn’t that all we need to know?’ He looked at me then, and gave me a charming smile. ‘My God, Rumpole. Are we going to see you turning up in Court in beads?’ ‘She’s got a good character.’ I played my last card.
The judge drained his Nescafe. ‘Well, you know about a “good character”. Everyone had a “good character” once… I mean, if we let everyone out because of their “good character” no one would ever go inside.’
‘That’d be a scandal. All those empty prisons.’ I said it with too much feeling. Rice Crispies looked at me as if I were coming out in a rash.
‘I say, Rumpole. You’re not getting involved in this case, are you?’
‘Involved? Of course not. No, naturally. But I was thinking possibly a suspended sentence?’ At which his Honour Judge Crispin-Rice put his wig back on and said something which was no help at all.
‘You’ve got your job to do, Rumpole, and I’ve got mine.’
I sweated my guts out in my speech in mitigation, and the judge listened to me with perfect courtesy. He then gave Kathy Trelawny three years in the nicest possible way, and she was taken down to the cells. Vernon Tooke came up to me in the robing room. He was on his way to the gymkhana.
‘Well. Ended nice and quick.’
‘Yes, Tooke, very quickly.’
‘Going back to London?’
‘Tomorrow. I’ll be going back tomorrow.’
‘Quite an attractive sort of person, your client.’
‘Yes, Tooke.’
‘All the same. To prison she had to go.’
When I came out into the main hall the commune was standing in a little group. Oswald was playing a lament on his flute and the baby was silent. None of them spoke to me, but I heard a voice at my elbow say, ‘It seems a shame, sir. A girl like that.’ It was Detective Sergeant Jack the Hippie Smedley. And he added what we both knew, ‘It’s an evil place, Holloway.’
Out in the street I was nearly run over by a police car. Miss Kathy Trelawny was sitting in the back and saw me. She was still smiling.
Joviality was at its height in the Crooked Billet that night. Sam told all his old stories, and Bobby played the piano. I stood beside her, my glass of rum on the piano top, and in a pause she looked across at her husband.
‘Look at Sam,’ she said. ‘He’s happy as a tick! What’s he want with a slow death on lime juice in a bungalow? I made up my mind. I’m not going to tell him. Are you in favour of that?’
‘People not telling people things? People not scattering in- formation like bombs? Oh yes,’ I told her. ‘I’m all in favour of that.’
Then she played ‘Roll out the Barrel’ and we all joined in, our voices floating out over the sea until Sam called ‘Time Please’. I never saw the people from ‘Nirvana’ again.
Rumpole and the Honourable Member
‘You’re giving me a rape?’
My clerk, Albert, had just handed me a brief. He then returned to the complicated business of working out the petty cash account; his desk was covered with slips of paper, a cash box and odd bits of currency. I never inquired into Albert’s system of book-keeping, nor did anyone else in Chambers.
‘Don’t you want it, Mr Rumpole?’ I turned to look at Henry, our second clerk. Henry had joined as an office boy, a small tousled figure who scarcely seemed able to read or write. Albert used him mainly to run errands and make instant coffee, and told him he would only be allowed to take a barrister into Court when he’d learnt to shine his shoes and clean his fingernails. Henry had changed over the years. His shoes were now gleaming, he wore a neat pinstriped suit with a waistcoat, and was particularly assiduous in his attentions to Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c, m.p.,our Head of Chambers. Albert, as head clerk, got ten per cent of our earnings, but Henry was on a salary. I had thought for a long time that Henry thought Albert past it, and had his eye on a head clerk’s position. I should add, so you can get the complete picture of life in our clerk’s room, that our old lady typist had left us and we had a new girl called Dianne who read quite extraordinarily lurid novels when she wasn’t typing, spent a great deal of the day titivating in the loo, and joined Henry in looking pityingly at Albert as he struggled to adjust the petty cash.
‘You don’t ask whet
her you want a rape,’ I told Henry sharply. ‘Rape comes uninvited.’ I was gathering my post from the mantelpiece and looked at it with disgust. ‘Like little brown envelopes from the Inland Revenue.’
‘Morning Rumpole.’ I became aware of the presence of young Erskine-Brown who was standing by the mantelpiece, also watching Albert in his struggle to balance the budget. He was holding some sort of legal document and wearing a shirt with broad stripes, elastic-sided boots and an expression of amused contempt at Albert’s business methods. As I have made clear earlier in these reminiscences, I don’t like Erskine-Brown. I greeted him civilly, however, and asked him if he’d ever done a rape.
‘As you know, Rumpole, I prefer the civil side. I really find crime moderately distasteful.’
At this point Erskine-Brown started to complain to Albert about the typing of the distasteful document, some mortgage or other act of oppression, he was carrying, and Albert said if he was interrupted he’d have to start again on his column of figures. I happened to glance down at the pound notes on Albert’s desk and noticed one marked with a small red cross in the corner; but I thought no more of it at the time. I then turned my attention to my brief, which I immediately noticed was a paying one and not Legal Aided. I carried it into my room with increased respect.
The first thing I discovered was that my client was a Labour M.P. named Ken Aspen. The next was that he was accused of no less a crime than the rape of one of his loyal party workers, a girl called Bridget Evans, in his committee room late on the night before the election. I couldn’t help feeling pleased, and slightly flattered, that such a case had come my way; the press box at the Bailey was bound to be full and the words of the Rumpole might once again decorate the News of the World. Then I unfolded an election poster and saw the face of Aspen, the workers’ friend, a reasonably good-looking man in his early forties, frowning slightly with the concentrated effort of bringing us all a new heaven and a new earth which would still be acceptable to the Gnomes of Zurich. The poster I had was scrawled over and defaced, apparently by the hand of the complainant, Miss Bridget Evans, at the time of the alleged crime.
The First Rumpole Omnibus Page 8