The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  He looked at me almost as if I was the one to be pitied, and said, after a pause, ‘I can’t remember.’

  I smiled as if I’d got exactly the answer I wanted, a bit of a sickly smile. ‘Did Miss Evans start talking about your wife?’

  ‘About Anna. Yes.’

  ‘Did she want you to leave your wife?’

  ‘Did she?’ Sam Parkin was helping me out in the silence.

  ‘I can’t… I can’t exactly remember. She went on and on, goading me.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  It was then the Honourable Member showed his first sign of passion. ‘She’d been asking for it! All that clap-trap about betraying the Party. All those cliches about power corrupting. I suddenly got angry. It was then I…’

  ‘Then you what?’

  ‘Made… Made love to her.’

  ‘In anger?’ Sam Parkin was frowning.

  ‘I suppose so. Yes.’

  I saw Anna’s look of fear, and then the judge leaned forward to ask, ‘Just tell us this, Mr Aspen. Did you believe that was what she wanted?’

  So the old darling on the bench had chucked Ken Aspen a lifebelt. I hoped to God the drowning man wasn’t going to push it away. It seemed about a year before he answered. ‘I don’t know, what I believed then. Exactly.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, if I may say sir.’ When I got back to the clerk’s room, Albert was, as ever, consoling. ‘It was the client.’

  ‘That’s right, Albert. These things are always so much easier without clients.’

  I saw that Henry, our second clerk, was smiling as he told me that there was a Chambers meeting and I was to go up to our learned leader’s room. When Albert offered to take me up, Henry said that Featherstone had said that it was a meeting for members of Chambers only, and our head clerk wasn’t invited. Albert looked at me and I could see he was worried.

  ‘Cheer up Albert,’ I told him. ‘See you at Pommeroy’s later.’

  Featherstone was pouring us all Earl Grey out of his fine bone china tea service.

  ‘It seems that Albert has been pursing a long career of embezzlement,’ hec said as he handed round sugar.

  ‘That seems a very long word for nine pounds fifty,’ I told them. ‘I’d say the correct legal expression was fiddling.’

  ‘I don’t see how we can excuse crime. Whatever you call it.’ Erskine-Brown was clearly appearing for the prosecution.

  ‘Anyway, it was my nine pounds fifty. It seems to me I can call it what I like. I can call it a Christmas present.’

  At which Uncle Tom, who was dozing in the corner said, ‘I suppose it will be Christmas again soon. How depressing.’

  ‘Apparently, it’s not just your money, Rumpole.’ Featherstone sat judicially behind his desk.

  ‘Isn’t it? Is there the slightest evidence that anyone else suffered?’ I asked the assembled company.

  ‘The petty cash!’ Erskine-Brown was the only one to answer.

  ‘I told you about the petty cash.’ I was too tired to argue with Erskine-Brown.

  ‘You told me you’d borrowed from Albert’s float.’

  ‘Yes. And paid for the drinks in Pommeroy’s.’

  ‘You were lying, weren’t you, Rumpole?’ Now even Featherstone realized Erskine-Brown had gone too far. ‘Erskine-Brown,’ he said. ‘That’s not the sort of language we use to another member of Chambers. If Rumpole says he borrowed the money then I for one am prepared to accept his word as a gentleman.’

  Suddenly I grew impatient with the learned friends. I pushed myself to my feet. ‘Then you’re a fool, that’s all I can say as a gentleman. Of course I was lying.’

  ‘What does Rumpole say he was doing?’ Uncle Tom asked George for information.

  ‘Lying.’

  ‘Dear me, how extraordinary.’

  ‘I lied because I don’t like people being condemned,’ I explained. ‘It goes against my natural instincts.’

  ‘That’s very true. He never prosecutes. You don’t prosecute, do you, Rumpole?’ George gave me a friendly smile. I liked old George.

  ‘No. I don’t prosecute.’

  ‘All right. Now we’ll hear Rumpole’s defence of Albert.’ Erskine-Brown leant back in Featherstone’s big leather chair, trying to look like a juvenile judge.

  ‘It doesn’t seem to me that it’s Albert that’s in trouble.’

  ‘Not in trouble?’

  ‘It’s us! Legal gentlemen. Learned friends. So friendly and so gentlemanly that we never check his books, or ask to see his accounts. Of course he cheats us, little small bits of cheating, nine pounds fifty, to buy a solicitor a drink or two in Pom-meroy’s. He feels it’s a mark of respect. Due to a gent. Like calling you “Sir” when you go wittering on about the typing errors in your statement of claim.’

  ‘Rather an odd mark of respect, wouldn’t you say, Rumpole?’ Featherstone stopped me, and called the meeting to order. ‘I move we vote on this.’

  ‘It’s a matter for the police,’ Erskine-Brown said predictably.

  ‘Rumpole. You wouldn’t agree?’ The learned leader was asking for my vote.

  ‘You’d hardly expect him to.’ Erskine-Brown could never let a sleeping Rumpole lie.

  ‘Well… Albert’s part of my life .:. He always has been.’

  ‘I remember when Albert first came to us. As a boy. He was always whistling out of tune.’ Uncle Tom was reminiscing. And I added my tuppence worth. ‘He’s like the worn-out lino in the Chambers loo and the cells under the Old Bailey. I feel comfortable with Albert. He’s like home. And he goes out and grubs for briefs in a way we’re too gentlemanly to consider.’

  ‘He’s cheated us. There’s no getting away from that.’ George interrupted me, quite gently.

  ‘Well, we’ve got to be cheated occasionally. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’ I looked round at their blank faces. ‘Otherwise you’d spend your whole life counting your change and adding up bills, and chucking grown men into chokey because they didn’t live up to the high ideals of the Chambers, or the Party, or some bloody nonsense.’

  ‘I don’t know that I exactly follow.’ George was doing his best.

  ‘Neither do I. I’ve done a rather bloody case. I’m sorry.’ I sat down beside our oldest member. ‘How are you, Uncle Tom?’

  ‘I never expected Christmas to come again so quickly!’ This was Uncle Tom’s contribution. Now Featherstone was summing up. ‘Personally, speaking quite personally, and without in any way condoning the seriousness of Albert’s conduct…’

  ‘Rape’s bloody tiring,’ I told them. ‘Specially when you lose.’

  ‘I would be against calling in the police.’ This was Feather-stone’s judgement.

  ‘Not very gentlemanly having Old Bill in Chambers. Stamping with his great feet all over the petty cash vouchers.’ I lit my last small cigar.

  ‘On the other hand, Albert, in my view, must be asked to leave immediately. All those in favour?’ At Featherstone’s request all the other hands went up.

  ‘Well, Rumpole,’ said Erskine-Brown, teller for the ‘Ayes’. ‘Have you anything to say?’

  ‘Have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed against you?’ I blew out smoke as I told them an old chestnut. ‘They say Mr Justice Snaggs once asked a murderer that. “Bugger all”, came a mutter from the dock. So Snaggs J. says to the murderer’s counsel, “Did your client say something?” “Bugger all, my Lord,” the counsel replied. “Funny thing,” says Mr Justice Snaggs. “I thought I heard him say something.”‘ My story ended in a hoot of silence. It was one that my old clerk Albert laughed at quite often, in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar.

  A couple of nights later I was sitting alone in Pommeroy’s, telling myself a few old legal anecdotes, when to my surprise and delight Nick walked in alone. He sat down and I ordered a bottle of the best Chateau Fleet Street.

  ‘I dropped into Chambers. Albert wasn’t there.’

  ‘No. We have a new clerk, Henry.’


  ‘I’m sorry about the case.’

  ‘Yes. The Honourable Member got five years.’ I took a mouthful of claret to wash away the taste of prisons, and saw Nick looking at me. ‘He had a strong desire to be found guilty. I don’t know why exactly.’

  ‘So really you needn’t have asked all those questions?’

  ‘Well, yes, Nick. Yes. I had to ask them. Now, are we going to see you both on Sunday?’

  There was a pause. Nick looked at me. He obviously had something far more difficult to communicate than the old confessions of poker games in the deserted vicarage during his schooldays.

  ‘I wanted to tell you first. You see. Well, I’ve decided to take the job in Baltimore. Ricky wants to go back. I mean, we can get a house there… and… well, her family’d miss her if she were stuck with me in England.’

  ‘Her family?’

  ‘They’re very close.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose they are.’

  ‘Apparently her mother hates the idea of Ricky being in England.’ He smiled ‘She’s the sort of woman that’d start sending us food parcels.’

  I could think of nothing to say, except, ‘It was good of you, Nick. Good of you to spare the time to drop into Chambers.’

  ‘We’ll be back quite often. Ricky and I. We’ll be back for visits.’

  ‘You and Ricky, of course. Well then, Cheers.’

  We had one for our respective roads and I gave my son a bit of advice. ‘There’s one thing you’ll have to be careful of, you know, living in America.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The hygiene! It can be most awfully dangerous. The purity! The terrible determination not to adulterate anything! You will be very careful of it, won’t you, Nick?’

  Some weeks later, as I was packing the bulging briefcase after breakfast for a day down the Bailey with a rather objectionable fraud, She Who Must Be Obeyed came in with a postcard from our son and his intended, written in mid-air, with a handsome picture of a jet and a blue sky on the front and kisses from Nick and Ricky on the back. I handed it back to her and she gave it an attentive re-read as she sat down for another cup of tea. Then she said, ‘You know why Erica went back home, don’t you?’

  I confessed total ignorance.

  ‘She didn’t like it when she came to see you in Court. She didn’t like the way you asked all those questions. She made that quite clear, when they were here for lunch last Sunday. When they came to say “Good-bye”. She thought the questions you asked that girl were tasteless.’

  ‘Distasteful.’ I was on my way to the door. ‘That’s the word. Distasteful.’

  ‘There’s a picture of their jet on the front of this postcard.’

  ‘I saw it. Very handsome.’ I opened the kitchen door as dramatically as possible. ‘Fare thee well! and if forever still forever, fare thee well.’ It takes a bad moment to make me fall back on Lord Byron.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Hilda frowned. ‘What’re you going to do today, Rumpole?’

  It was a day, like all the others, and I said. ‘I suppose. Go on asking distasteful questions.’

  Rumpole and the Married Lady

  Life at the Bar has its ups and downs, and there are times when there is an appalling decrease in crime, when all the decent villains seem to have gone on holiday to the Costa Brava, and lawfulness breaks out. At such times, Rumpole is unemployed, as I was one morning when I got up late and sat in the kitchen dawdling over breakfast in my dressing gown and slippers, much to the annoyance of She Who Must Be Obeyed who was getting the coffee cups shipshape so that they could be piped on board to do duty as teacups later in the day. I was winning my daily battle with the tormented mind who writes The Times crossword, when Hilda, not for the first time in our joint lives, compared me unfavourably with her late father.

  ‘Daddy got to Chambers dead at nine every day of his life!’

  ‘Your old dad, old C. H. Wystan, got to Chambers dead on nine and spent the morning on The Times crossword. I do it at home, that’s the difference between us. You should be grateful.’

  ‘Grateful?’ Hilda frowned.

  ‘For the companionship,’ I suggested.

  ‘I want you out of the house, Rumpole. Don’t you understand that? So I can clear up the kitchen!’

  ‘O woman! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy and hard to please.’ Hilda doesn’t like poetry. I could tell by her heavy sigh.

  ‘Just a little peace. So I can be alone. To get on with things.’

  ‘And when I come home a little late in the evenings. When I stop for a moment in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, to give myself strength to face the Inner Circle. You never seem particularly grateful to have been left alone in the house. To get on with things!’

  ‘You’ve been wasting time. That’s what I resent.’

  ‘I wasted Time – and now doth Time waste me.’ I switched from Scott to Shakespeare. The reaction of my life-mate was no better.

  ‘Chattering to that idiot George Frobisher! I really don’t know why you bother to come home at all. Now Nick’s gone it seems quite unnecessary.’

  ‘Nick?’ It was a year since Nick had gone to America and we hadn’t had a letter since Christmas.

  ‘You know what I mean! We used to be a family. We had to try at least, for Nick’s sake. Oh, why don’t you go to work?’

  ‘Nick’ll be back.’ I moved from the table and put an arm on her shoulder. She shook it off.

  ‘Do you believe that? When he’s got married? When he’s got his job at the University of Baltimore? Why on earth should he want to come back to Gloucester Road?’

  ‘He’ll want to come back sometime. To see us. He’ll want to hear all our news. What I’ve been doing in Court,’ I said, giving Hilda her opening.

  ‘What you’ve been doing in Court? You haven’t been doing anything in Court apparently!’

  At which moment the phone rang in our living-room and Hilda, who loves activity, dashed to answer it. I heard her telling the most appalling lies through the open door.

  ‘No, it’s Mrs Rumpole. I’ll see if I can catch him. He’s just rushing out of the door on his way to work.’

  I joined her in my dressing gown; it was my new clerk, the energetic Henry. He wanted me to come into Chambers for a conference, and I asked him if the world had come to its senses and crime was back in its proper place in society. No, he told me, as a matter of fact it wasn’t crime at all.

  ‘You haven’t even shaved!’ Hilda rebuked me. ‘Daddy’d never have spoken to his clerk on the telephone before he’d had a shave!’

  I put down the telephone and gave Mrs Rumpole a look which I hoped was enigmatic. ‘It’s a divorce,’ I told her.

  As I walked through the Temple, puffing a small cigar on the way to the factory, I considered the question of divorce. Well, you’ve got to take what you can nowadays, and I suppose divorce is in a fairly healthy state. Divorce figures are rising. What’s harder to understand is the enormous popularity of marriage! I remembered the scene at breakfast that morning, and I really began to wonder how marriage ever became so popular. I mean, was it ‘Home Life’ with She Who Must Be Obeyed? Gloucester Road seemed to be my place of work, of hard, back-breaking toil. It was a relief to get down to the Temple, for relaxation. By that time I had reached my Chambers, No. 1 Equity Court, a place of peace and quiet. It felt like home.

  When I got into the hallway I opened the door of the clerk’s room, and was greeted by an extraordinary sight. A small boy, I judged him to be about ten years old, was seated on a chair beside Dianne our typist. He was holding a large, lit-up model of a jet aeroplane and zooming it through the air at a noise level which would have been quite unacceptable to the New York Port authority.

  I shut the door and beat a hasty retreat to the privacy of my sanctum. But when I opened my own door I was astounded to see a youngish female seated in my chair, wearing horn-rimmed specs and apparently interviewing a respectable middle-aged lady and a man who gave every appearance of being an instruct
ing solicitor. I shut that door also and turned to find the zealous Henry crossing the hall towards me, bearing the most welcome object in my small world, a brief.

  ‘Henry,’ I said in some panic. ‘There’s a woman, seated in my chair!’

  ‘Miss Phillida Trant, sir. She’s been with us for the last few months. Ex-pupil of Mr Erskine-Brown. You haven’t met her?’

  I searched my memory. ‘I’ve met the occasional whiff of French perfume on the stairs.’

  ‘Miss Trant’s anxious to widen her experience.’

  ‘Hence the French perfume?’

  ‘She wants to know if she could sit in on your divorce case. I’ve got the brief here. “Thripp v. Thripp.” You’re the wife, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Am I? Jolly good.’ I took the brief and life improved considerably at the sight of the figure written on it. ‘Marked a hundred and fifty guineas! These Thripps are the sort to breed from! Oh, and I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Henry. There seems to be a child in the clerk’s room, with an aeroplane!’

  ‘He’s here for the conference.’

  I didn’t follow his drift. ‘What’s the child done? It doesn’t want a divorce too?’

  ‘It’s the child of the family in “Thripp v. Thripp”, Henry explained patiently, ‘and I rather gather the chief bone of contention. So long now, Mr Rumpole.’ He moved away towards the clerk’s room. ‘Sorry to have interrupted your day at home.’

  ‘You can interrupt my day at home any time you like, for a brief marked a hundred and fifty guineas! Miss Phillida Trant, did you say?’

  ‘Yes sir. You don’t mind her sitting in, do you?’

  ‘Couldn’t you put her off, Henry? Tell her a divorce case is sacrosanct. It’d be like a priest inviting a few lady friends to join in the confessional.’

  ‘I told her you’d have no objection. Miss Trant’s very keen to practise.’