The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘In a way. I’m two years older than Mordred. I’ve always had to look after him. He wouldn’t have got anywhere without me, Mr Rutnpole, simply nowhere, if I hadn’t been there to deal with the Parish Council, and say the right things to the Bishop. Mordred just never thinks about himself, or what he’s doing half the time.’

  ‘You should have kept a better eye on him, in the sales.’

  ‘Of course I should! I should have been watching him like a hawk, every minute. I blame myself entirely.’

  She stood there, busily blaming herself, and then her brother could be heard calling her plaintively from the passage.

  ‘Coming, dear. I’m coming at once,’ Evelyn said briskly, and was gone. I stood looking after her, smoking a small cigar and remembering Hilaire Belloc’s sound advice to helpless children:

  Always keep tight hold of nurse,

  fear of finding something worse.

  George Frobisher brought a friend to dinner, and, as I had rather suspected when I got a whiff of George’s perfume in the passage, the friend was a lady, or, as I think Hilda would have preferred to call her, a woman. Now I must make it absolutely clear that this type of conduct was totally out of character in my friend George. He had an absolutely clean record so far as women were concerned. Oh I imagine he had a mother, and I have heard him occasionally mutter about sisters; but George had been a bachelor as long as I had known him, returning from our convivial claret in Pommeroy’s to the Royal Borough Hotel, Kensington, where he had a small room, reasonable en pension terms and coloured television after dinner in the residents’ lounge, seated in front of which device George would read his briefs, occasionally taking a furtive glance at some long-running serial of Hospital Life.

  Judge of my surprise, therefore, when George turned up to dinner at Casa Rumpole with a very feminine, albeit middle-aged, lady indeed. Mrs Ida Tempest, as George introduced her, came with some species of furry animal wreathed about her neck, whose eyes regarded me with a glassy stare, as I prepared to help Mrs Tempest partially disrobe.

  The lady’s own eyes were far from glassy, being twinkling, and roguish in their expression. Mrs Tempest had reddish hair (rather the colour of falsely glowing artificial coals on an electric fire) piled on her head, what I believe is known as a ‘Cupid’s Bow’ mouth in the trade, and the sort of complexion which makes you think that if you caught its owner a brisk slap you would choke in the resulting cloud of white powder. Her skirt seemed too tight, and her heels too high, for total comfort; but it could not be denied that Mrs Ida Tempest was a cheerful and even a pleasant-looking person. George gazed at her throughout the evening with mingled admiration and pride.

  It soon became apparent that in addition to his lady friend, George had brought a plastic bag from some off-licence containing a bottle of non-vintage Moet. Such things are more often than not the harbinger of alarming news, and sure enough as soon as the pud was on the table George handed me the bottle, to cope with an announcement that he and Mrs Ida Tempest were engaged to be married, clearly taking the view that this news should be a matter for congratulation.

  ‘We wanted you to be the first to know,’ George said proudly.

  Hilda smiled in a way that can only be described as ‘brave’ and further comment was postponed by the explosion of the warm Moet. I filled everyone’s glasses and Mrs Tempest reached with enthusiasm for the booze.

  ‘Oh, I do love bubbly,’ she said. ‘I love the way it goes all tickly up the nose, don’t you Hilda?’

  ‘We hardly get it often enough to notice.’ She Who Must Be Obeyed was in no celebratory mood that evening. I had noticed, during the feast, that she clearly was not hitting it off with Mrs Tempest. I therefore felt it incumbent on me to address the Court.

  ‘Well then. If we’re all filled up, I suppose it falls to me. Accustomed as I am to public speaking…’ I began the speech.

  ‘Usually on behalf of the criminal classes!’ Hilda grumbled.

  ‘Yes. Well… I think I know what is expected on these occasions.’

  ‘You mean you’re like the film star’s fifth husband? You know what’s expected of you, but you don’t know how to make it new.’ It appeared from her giggles and George’s proud smile that Mrs Tempest had made a joke. Hilda was not amused.

  ‘Well then!’ I came to the peroration. ‘Here’s to the happy couple.’

  ‘Here’s to us, George!’ George and Mrs Tempest clinked glasses and twinkled at each other. We all took a mouthful of warmish gas. After which Hilda courteously pushed the food in George’s fiancee’s direction.

  ‘Would you care for a little more Charlotte Russe, Mrs Tempest?’

  ‘Oh, Ida. Please call me Ida. Well, just a teeny-weeny scraping. I don’t want to lose my sylph-like figure, do I Georgie? Otherwise you might not fancy me any more.’

  ‘There’s no danger of that.’ The appalling thing was that George was looking roguish also.

  ‘Of you not fancying me? Oh, I know…’ La Tempest simpered.

  ‘Of losing your figure, my dear. She’s slim as a bluebell. Isn’t she slim as a bluebell, Rumpole?’ George turned to me for cor-roboration. I answered cautiously.

  ‘I suppose that depends rather on the size of the bluebell.’

  ‘Oh, Horace! You are terrible! Why’ve you been keeping this terrible man from me, George?’ Mrs Tempest seemed delighted with my enigmatic reply.

  ‘I hope we’re all going to see a lot of each other after we’re married.’ George smiled round the table, and got a small tightening of the lips from Hilda.

  ‘Oh yes, George. I’m sure that’ll be very nice.’

  The tide had gone down in Mrs Tempest’s glass, and after I had topped it up she held it to the light and said admiringly. ‘Lovely glasses. So tasteful. Just look at that, George. Isn’t that a lovely tasteful glass?’

  ‘They’re rejects actually,’ Hilda told her. ‘From the Army and Navy Stores.’

  ‘What whim of providence was it that led you across the path of my old friend George Frobisher?’ I felt I had to keep the conversation going.

  ‘Mrs Tempest, that is Ida, came as a guest to the Royal Borough Hotel.’ George started to talk shyly of romance.

  ‘You noticed me, didn’t you dear?’ Mrs Tempest was clearly cast in the position of prompter.

  ‘I must admit I did.’

  ‘And I noticed him noticing me. You know how it is with men, don’t you, Hilda?’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if Rumpole notices me at all.’ Hilda struck, I thought, an unnecessarily gloomy note.

  ‘Of course I notice you,’ I assured her. ‘I come home in the evenings - and there you are. I notice you all the time.’

  ‘As a matter of fact we first spoke in the Manageress’s Office,’ George continued with the narration, ‘where we had both gone to register a complaint, on the question of the bath water.’

  ‘There’s not enough hot to fill the valleys, I told her, let alone cover the hills!’ Mrs Tempest explained gleefully to Hilda, who felt, apparently, that no such explanation was necessary.

  ‘George agreed with me. Didn’t you, George?’

  ‘Shall I say, we formed an alliance?’

  ‘Oh, we hit it off at once. We’ve so many interests in common.’

  ‘Really.’ I looked at Mrs Tempest in some amazement. Apart from the basic business of keeping alive I couldn’t imagine what interests she had in common with my old friend George Frobisher. She gave me a surprising answer.

  ‘Ballroom dancing.’

  ‘Mrs Tempest,’ said George proudly, ‘that is Ida, has cups for it.’

  ‘George! You’re a secret ballroom dancer?’ I wanted Further and Better Particulars of this Offence.

  ‘We’re going for lessons together, at Miss McKay’s Ecole de Dance in Rutland Gate.’

  I confess I found the prospect shocking, and I said as much to George. ‘Is your life going to be devoted entirely to pleasure?’

  ‘Does Horace tango at all, Hilda?�
� Mrs Tempest asked a foolish question.

  ‘He’s never been known to.’ Hilda sniffed slightly and I tried to make the reply lightly ironic.

  ‘I’m afraid crime is cutting seriously down on my time for the tango.’

  ‘Such a pity, dear.’ Mrs Tempest was looking at me with genuine concern. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’

  At which point Hilda rose firmly and asked George’s intended if she wanted to powder her nose, which innocent question provoked a burst of giggles.

  ‘You mean, do I want to spend a penny?’

  ‘It is customary,’ said Hilda with some hauteur, ‘at this stage, to leave the gentlemen.’

  ‘Oh, you mean you want a hand with the washing-up,’ Mrs Tempest followed Hilda out, delivering her parting line to me.

  ‘Not too many naughty stories now, Horace. I don’t want you leading my Georgie astray.’ At which I swear she winked.

  When we were left alone with a bottle of the Old Tawney George was still gazing foolishly after the vanishing Ida. ‘Charming,’ he said, ‘isn’t she charming?’

  Now at this point I became distinctly uneasy. I had been looking at La Belle Tempest with a feeling of deja vue. I felt sure that I had met her before, and not in some previous existence. And, of course, I was painfully aware of the fact that the vast majority of my social contacts are made in cells, courtrooms and other places of not too good repute. I therefore answered cautiously. ‘Your Mrs Tempest… seems to have a certain amount of vivacity.’

  ‘She’s a very able business-woman, too.’

  ‘Is she now?’

  ‘She used to run an hotel with her first husband. Highly successful business apparently. Somewhere in Kent…’

  I frowned. The word ‘hotel’ rang a distant, but distinctly audible, bell.

  ‘So I thought, when we’re married, of course, she might take up a small hotel again, in the West Country perhaps.’

  ‘And what about you, George? Would you give up your work at the Bar and devote all your time to the veleta?’ I rather wanted to point out to him the difficulties of the situation.

  ‘Well. I don’t want to boast, but I thought I might go for a Circuit Judgeship.’ George said this shyly, as though disclosing another astonishing sexual conquest. ‘In fact I have applied. In some rural area…’

  ‘You a judge, George? A judge}Well, come to think of it, it might suit you. You were never much good in Court, were you, old darling?’ George looked slightly puzzled at this, but I blundered on. ‘It wasn’t in Ramsgate, by any chance? Where your inamorata kept a small hotel?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ George was lapping up the port in a sort of golden reverie.

  ‘Don’t do it George!’ I said, loudly enough, I hoped, to blast him out of his complacency.

  ‘Don’t be a judge?’

  ‘Don’t get married! Look, George. Your Honour. If your Lordship pleases. Have a little consideration, my dear boy.’ I tried to appeal to his better nature. ‘I mean - where would you be leaving me?’

  ‘Very much as you are now, I should imagine.’

  ‘Those peaceful moments of the day. Those hours we spend with a bottle of Chateau Fleet Street from 5.30 on in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. That wonderful oasis of peace that lies between the battle of the Bailey and the horrors of Home Life. You mean they’ll be denied me from now on? You mean you’ll be bolting like a rabbit down the Temple Underground back to Mrs Tempest and leaving me without a companion?’

  George looked at me, thoughtfully, and then gave judgement with, I thought, a certain lack of feeling.

  ‘I am, of course, extremely fond of you, Rumpole. But you’re not exactly… Well, not someone who one can share all one’s interests with.’

  ‘I’m not a dab hand at the two-step?’ I’m afraid I sounded bitter.

  ‘I didn’t say that, Rumpole.’

  ‘Don’t do it, George! Marriage is like pleading guilty, for an indefinite sentence. Without parole.’ I poured more port.

  ‘You’re exaggerating!’

  ‘I’m not, George. I swear by Almighty God. I’m not.’ I gave him the facts. ‘Do you know what happens on Saturday mornings? When free men are lying in bed, or wandering contentedly towards a glass of breakfast Chablis and a slow read of the Obituaries? You’ll both set out with a list, and your lady wife will spend your hard-earned money on things you have no desire to own, like Vim, and saucepan scourers, and J-cloths… and Mansion polish! And on your way home, you’ll be asked to carry the shopping-basket… I beg of you, don’t do it!’

  This plea to the jury might have had some effect, but the door then opened to admit La Belle Tempest, George’s eyes glazed over and he clearly became deaf to reason. And then Hilda entered and gave me a brisk order to bring in the coffee tray.

  ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed!’ I whispered to George on my way out. ‘You see what I mean?’ I might as well have saved my breath. He wasn’t listening.

  Saturday morning saw self and She at the check-out point in the local Tesco’s, with the substantial fee for the Portsmouth Rape Trial being frittered away on such frivolous luxuries as sliced bread, Vim, cleaning materials and so on, and as the cash register clicked merrily up Hilda passed judgement on George’s fiancée.

  ‘Of course she won’t do for George.’

  I had an uneasy suspicion that she might be correct, but I asked for further and better particulars.

  ‘You think not? Why exactly?’

  ‘Noticing our glasses! It’s such bad form noticing people’s things. I thought she was going to ask how much they cost.’

  Which, so far as She was concerned, seemed to adequately sum up the case of Mrs Ida Tempest. At which point, having loaded up and checked that the saucepan scourers were all present and correct, Hilda handed me the shopping-basket, which seemed to be filled with lead weights, and strode off unimpeded to the bus stop with Rumpole groaning in her wake.

  ‘What we do with all that Vim, I can never understand.’ I questioned our whole way of life. ‘Do we eat Vim?’

  ‘You’d miss it, Rumpole, if it wasn’t there.’

  On the following Monday I went down to Dockside Magistrates Court to defend young Jim Timson on a charge of taking and driving away a Ford Cortina. I have acted for various members of the clan Timson, a noted breed of South London villain, for many years. They know the law, and their courtroom behaviour, I mean the way they stand to attention and call the magistrate ‘Sir, is impeccable. I went into battle fiercely that afternoon, and it was a famous victory. We got the summons dismissed with costs against the police. I hoped I’d achieve the same happy result in the notable trial of the Reverend Mordred Skinner, but I very much doubted it.

  As soon as I was back in Chambers I opened a cupboard, sneezed in the resulting cloud of dust and burrowed in the archives. I resisted the temptation to linger among my memories and pushed aside the Penge Bungalow photographs, the revolver that was used in the killing at the East Grimble Rep, and old Charles Monti’s will written on a blown ostrich egg. I only glanced at the drawing an elderly R.A. did, to while away his trial for soliciting in the Super Loo at Euston Station, of the Recorder of London. I lingered briefly on my book of old press cuttings from the News of the World (that fine Legal Text Book in the Criminal Jurisdiction), and merely glanced at the analysis of bloodstains from the old Brick Lane Billiard Hall Murder when I was locked in single-handed combat with a former Lord Chief Justice of England and secured an acquittal, and came at last on what I was seeking.

  The blue folder of photographs was nestling under an old wig tin and an outdated work on forensic medicine. As I dug out my treasure and carried it to the light on my desk, I muttered a few lines of old William Wordsworth’s, the Sheep of the Lake District,

  Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

  For old, unhappy, far-off things,

  And battles long ago.

  On the cover of the photographs I had stuck a yellowing cutting from the Kamsgate Times. ‘Couple Charge
d in Local Arson Case’ I read again. ‘The Unexplained Destruction of the Saracen’s Head Hotel!’ I opened the folder. There was a picture of a building on the sea front, and a number of people standing round. I took the strong glass off my desk to examine the figures in the photograph and saw the younger, but still roguishly smiling, face of Mrs Ida Tempest, my friend George’s intended.

  Having tucked the photographs back in the archive, I went straight to Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, nothing unusual about that, I rarely go anywhere else at six o’clock, after the day’s work is done; but George wasn’t in Chambers and I hoped he might drop in there for a strengthener before a night of dalliance with his inamorata in the Royal Borough Hotel. However when I got to Pommeroy’s the only recognizable figure, apart from a few mournful-looking journalists and the opera critic in residence, was our Portia, Miss Phillida Trant, drinking a lonely Cinzano Bianco with ice and lemon. She told me that she hadn’t seen George and said, rather enigmatically, that she was waiting for a person called Claude, who, on further inquiry, turned out to be none other than our elegant expert on the Civil side, my learned antagonist Erskine-Brown.

  ‘Good God, is he Claude? Makes me feel quite fond of him. Why ever are you waiting for him? Do you want to pick his brains on the law of mortgages?’

  ‘We are by way of being engaged,’ Miss Trant said somewhat sharply.

  The infection seemed to be spreading in our Chambers, like gippy tummy. I looked at Miss Trant and asked, simply for information, ‘You’re sure you know enough about him?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do.’ She sounded resigned.

  ‘I mean, you’d naturally want to know everything, wouldn’t you – about anyone you’re going to commit matrimony with?’ I wanted her confirmation.

  ‘Go on, surprise me!’ Miss Trant, I had the feeling, was not being entirely serious. ‘He married a middle-aged Persian contortionist when he was up at Keble? I’d love to know that – and it’d make him far more exciting.’

  At which point the beloved Claude actually made his appearance in a bowler and overcoat with a velvet collar, and announced he had some treat in store for Miss Trant, such as Verdi’s Requiem in the Festival Hall, whilst she looked at him as though disappointed at the un-murkiness of the Erskine-Brown past. Then I saw George at the counter making a small purchase from Jack Pommeroy and I bore down on him. I had no doubt, at that stage, that my simple duty to my old friend was immediate disclosure. However when I reached George I found that he was investing in a bottle far removed from our usual Chateau Fleet Street.