By this time, Ransom told me, the Headmaster was trembling. No doubt if he had been running an old-fashioned blood-and-thunder type of academy he might have remained more calm. He might even have torn up Ransom’s letter and told him to take girls en masse to Vivaldi in the future, rather than give them individual attention. But as the Head of a Progressive school he no doubt feared that he was only a whisper away from anarchy, one false step and he would have a Maoist takeover in the P.E. period, strip-shows in the art classes and group tactile experience during Religious Instruction. Accordingly he pressed Ransom with cross-examination, ever a dangerous weapon in the hands of the amateur.
‘And what does this mean?’ he asked again, brandishing the letter.’ “I realize I love you physically and spiritually more than anyone I’ve ever loved in my life before”?’
‘It means exactly what it says,’ Ransom told him. ‘Francesca is an extremely sensitive and intelligent girl as well as being physically beautiful. What is does not mean is that I have ever been to bed with her.’
‘Well,’ the Headmaster said, and Ransom told me the gleam in the old Thespian’s eye was undoubtedly salacious. ‘We will have to see what Miss Clapstick says about that.’
‘I’m sure she’ll tell you exactly the same thing,’ Ransom answered, as subsequently recorded in the deposition of the Headmaster’s evidence. ‘And she may even tell you that her name is “Capstick” as well.’
‘I’m glad you reminded me of that,’ said the old trooper, hogging the curtain line. ‘As I also mean to write to her father.’
What Miss Capstick did tell the Headmaster led to a letter from the Headmaster to Capstick pere regretting that, as there were bad apples in every barrel, so there were black sheep, or persons who took the message of the poets too literally, even among the teaching staff of the John Keats Comprehensive. When Mr Capstick the bank manager received the bad news it led to his visiting the Old Bill. In due course Inspector David Hewitt of the local Constabulary rang up Ronald Ransom and asked him if he might find it convenient to call in at the Station the next morning, that is if he wanted to spare himself the embarrassment of a couple of the local rozzers tramping in to finger his collar just as he was explaining the saucier passages in Measure for Measure to a crowded classroom of delighted adolescents.
That particular chain of events led inevitably to a conference in my room in Chambers at Number 3 Equity Court, and to my asking Ransom that unavoidable but always embarrassing question, ‘Well, did you do it?’
‘I can’t fight the case.’ Ransom was a pleasant-looking young man, I’d say in his late twenties, a dark-haired, blue-eyed Scot. He wore an old tweed jacket which he’d probably had since he was a student and a tie that might, for all I knew, have been hand-woven by some admirer in evening classes.
‘That doesn’t sound exactly like an answer to my question.’
‘Well, she told the old boy I did, didn’t she?’
It was a question and not an answer and seemed to me to show traces of a fighting spirit; so I eagerly prepared for battle.
‘Fantasy! That’s why she said that. Pure fantasy!’
‘You really think so?’
‘Well, of course. I mean, children…’
‘She’s almost sixteen.’
It was that ‘almost’ that had landed him on the windy side of the law. I tried again. ‘Young people… persons, reading poetry. Well, naturally it stimulates the imagination. I will have to educate the trial judge, who may well consider the All England Law Reports the height of erotic fantasy. I will have to explain to him exactly how poetry affects the mind.’
‘How about the body?’ As a client this gentle young Scot seemed unlikely to prove helpful.
‘We’d better forget about the body. Judges in this class of case don’t really like to be reminded that the body exists. “This case,” we shall say (I was already framing some of the better phrases for my final speech), “this case, members of the jury,” (I stood up and lit, with relish, a small cigar) “this case exists entirely in a young girl’s imagination, an imagination overstim-ulated by indulgence in the love poems of John Donne. When I was a lad, members of the jury, when some of us were lads, we read about brave Horatius, and imagined we were fighting to keep the bridge and defend, single-handed, the City of Rome. Young Fanny Chopstick…’
‘Capstick.’
‘Whatever her name is… “reads about being someone’s enthusiastic mistress and so she imagines she is precisely thatl”‘ I paused for a moment to consider whether this was a proposition sound in law and logic. Given a reasonably educated jury (I’d settle for one member with the Guardian sticking out of his pocket) I decided that it was.
‘You’d have to cross-examine her?’ Ransom asked me.
‘Gently. To point out the vividness of her imagination.’
‘I couldn’t have her put through that in Court, Mr Rumpole.’
I looked at him, at his almost embarrassingly honest eyes, his frayed jacket and homespun tie. ‘May I remind you, Mr Ransom,’ I said, ‘of the present overcrowded conditions in our prisons. Are you seeking to add to the congestion?’
‘I know, but…’
‘And may I also remind you of the unpopularity with the other inmates of anyone convicted of offences with young girls. It’s so easy to spill boiling cocoa on someone’s head. I believe it’s known as “cocoaing the S.O.s”.’
‘What’s an S.O., Mr Rumpole?’ Ransom sounded detached.
‘A sexual offender.’ I could have also told him that an unpopular prisoner could fairly easily choke to death on a rock-cake.
‘The client,’ up spoke Mr Grayson, the local Hertfordshire solicitor, an anxious and kindly looking individual who in fact had the Guardian not sticking out of his pocket, indeed, but nestling in his pile of papers in the case of the Queen against Ronald Ransom (and it was most definitely not the sort of case, in my opinion, in which Her Majesty should have let herself get involved). ‘The client wants to keep out of prison.’
‘Well,’ I smiled. ‘How unusual!’
‘It wouldn’t be prison, would it?’ Ransom looked alarmed for the first time. ‘I mean, she was nearly sixteen…’
‘She is sixteen now,’ Mr Grayson added.
‘Now is hardly the point,’ I told them. ‘Whether Mr Ransom goes to prison or not would depend, in my opinion, entirely on the judge concerned. Now, at the Bailey if we drew “Pokey” Peterson, who happens to be paying maintenance to an ageing ex-wife, and who has just married a young lady from the chorus at Churchill’s Club, well, you’d probably get a conditional discharge; but if fate span the wheel and sent us Mr Justice Vosper, I’m afraid you’d be into the slammer before you can say “the expense of spirit in a waste of shame”. So if it’s merely a question of sparing a young girl’s feelings…’
‘It is. It’s a question of that,’ Ransom answered me.
‘Then think of yourself. Your job.’
‘I don’t care about the job really. I’d like to try and write something. I’ve never had the time.’
‘You may get the time now. Possibly eighteen months.’
Ransom was kind enough to laugh at this pleasantry. ‘You’re too ruthless a questioner, Mr Rumpole,’ he flattered me. ‘And I think too much of Francesca to have her put through the mill by you. I’m definitely pleading guilty. But surely they won’t send me to prison, will they?’ For the first time his eyes avoided me.
‘I told you. It depends entirely on the judge. Now, if you can tell me who we’re likely to get…’
‘Oh, I can tell you that,’ Mr Grayson announced our incredible, our earth-shattering good fortune just as if it were the date, or the probable length of the hearing. ‘It’s in our local Circuit Court. We’ll have His Honour Judge Frobisher.’
His Honour Judge George Frobisher! His Honour old George. His Honour my oldest, my dearest friend, in whose company I have sunk more bottles of Pommeroy’s plonk and solved more knotty clues in The Times cros
sword than with any other person, alive or dead. Old George with whom I spent almost forty years in Chambers until he was elevated, or demoted as I would prefer to call it, to a position on the Circuit, or Circus Bench. Dear old George, who confided in me when he was thinking of committing an unpremeditated act of matrimony with a lady who, I recalled, had a touch of arson in her past.* I had crossed swords with old George in friendly duels in almost every Court in England, from the Uxbridge Magistrates to the Family Division, and from London Sessions to Lewes Assizes; and for the life of me I couldn’t remember any occasion when George had emerged victorious. Old George Frobisher, it has to be said, is the dearest of fellows, the kindest of companions and the best of listeners; he is sound on his law and takes a good note of the evidence; but in Court he stands up with all the eager self-confidence of a rabbit with a retiring disposition caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. He was also, at the Bar, frenetically incapable of making up his mind; not only on vital issues, such as whether to put his client into the witness-box, but on minor matters, such as whether to start his final speeches, ‘Members of the jury’ or ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury’. (Sometimes he compromised and called them both.) He was also extremely suggestible, and many is the Country Court claim I have been able to settle with old George on extremely favourable terms, and many are the prosecutions charges I have been able to persuade him to drop like a hot potato. In short, I have never had, in Court or out of it, the slightest trouble with old George.
‘You don’t mean to tell me…’ I was almost, I swear it, laughing with delight. ‘You don’t mean to tell me our judge is my old friend George Frobisher?’
‘His Honour Judge George Frobisher, yes,’ Mr Grayson replied, in a tone of what I thought was quite unnecessary awe.
‘Then I promise you more, I give you my word,’ I was happy to assure Mr Ronald Ransom, ‘your chances of being cocoaed are nil. What is more, you will never be banged up, even in an open prison. Plead guilty if you feel you have to. We shall have absolutely no trouble with old George.’
The good fortunes of my client Ransom seemed to be increasing daily. One early morning in the following weeks I called into my breakfast cafe opposite the Old Bailey, and was disappointed to find that the attraction by the tea urn was noticeably absent (a chill, perhaps, or exhaustion after a night out with the weight-lifter). Sitting there, however, nursing a cup of coffee, shivering slightly and looking distinctly green about the gills was Miss Phillida Trant, our talented Chambers’ token tribute to sexual equality, the Portia of Number 3 Equity Court.
‘Hullo, Rumpole,’ she said. ‘I hear you’re going to be agin me out in the wilds of Hertfordshire. Case of R. v. Ransom. Spot of unlawful carnal knowledge.’ The trouble with lady barristers, you will have noticed, is that they talk more like men barristers than men barristers do.
‘Good heavens,’ I said. ‘Miss Trant! You don’t look in the least bit well. Are you sickening for something?’ I wasn’t coming straight to the point, you notice, which was my firm determination to keep Ronald Ransom out of the cooler. I was determined to try a little circuitous politeness first.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I am.’
‘Can I get you something?’ I asked solicitously. ‘They do a particularly good bacon and egg on a fried slice here.’ At which news Miss Trant went, if possible, even greener.
‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve just thrown up in the loo at Blackfriars Station.’
‘It’s gastric flu.’ I sat down beside her and lit a small cigar which didn’t seem to help matters; Miss Trant coughed and waved her hand in the air. ‘There’s a lot of it about.’
‘It’s not gastric flu,’ Miss Trant told me. ‘I’m up the bloody spout.’
I didn’t know whether congratulations or commiseration were in order. Accordingly I took a gulp of coffee, with an expression of deep sympathy and respect.
‘I don’t know why I’m telling you,’ she said. ‘I haven’t even told Claude yet.’ Claude, I remembered, was the baptismal name of Erskine-Brown, the pompous young specializer in mortgages and company law, and the member of our Chambers least sympathetic to Rumpole, to whom Miss Trant had been rash enough to get herself engaged. ‘I suppose I’m telling you because, well, you’ve brought me up in the law, haven’t you? You’re a sort of father figure. Ever since you gave me such a terrible beating in the Dock Street Magistrates Court.’*
I am no longer proud of the way in which I induced Miss Trant, who was prosecuting, to bore the Dock Street Magistrate to such a state of irritation, by quoting law to him by the yard, that he gave judgement for Rumpole. Accordingly I asked with some sympathy, ‘The proposed nipper does emanate from Erskine-Brown, I suppose?’
‘Oh yes,’ Miss Trant nodded vigorously. ‘The trouble is, I can’t seem to bring myself to tell him. He’ll want to marry me or something.’
‘You don’t want to get married?’
‘I’ve got three new firms of solicitors.’ Miss Trant told me, ‘and a six-month-long firm fraud starting in Portsmouth in November. Of course I don’t want to get married! What would I want to get married for?’
The trouble, as I say, with lady barristers is that they’re so much keener on being barristers than barristers are.
‘Claude’ll want me to stay at home,’ Miss Trant went on pathetically, ‘and mix up Ostermilk.’
‘Well,’ I told her judicially. ‘I see your problem, Miss Trant. But I suppose it’ll have to come out in the end.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s what I’m afraid of.’
The conversation seemed to be weaving unhealthily towards the gynaecological, an area of life I have always strictly avoided. ‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘Now about this wretched school-teacher, poor old Ronald Ransom…’
‘It’s not going to take long, is it?’ Miss Trant put on her glasses again and looked at me anxiously. ‘I’m prosecuting a larceny at the Bailey the week after.’
‘I thought about three weeks.’ Ransom’s luck seemed to be holding out marvellously. ‘Unless of course I can twist his arm and get him to plead guilty.’
‘Is there any hope of that?’ Miss Trant sounded eager.
‘I suppose anything’s possible.’ I looked thoughtful. ‘Of course, I’d have to be sure he wouldn’t get sent to prison.’
‘Why on earth should he get sent to prison?’ Miss Trant looked at me, surprised. ‘She was almost sixteen. Anyway, in my opinion, the bloody girl asked for it.’
Only one thing is certain in the dubious world of the law. No one is harder on a lady than a lady barrister.
Ronald Ransom and Miss Phillida Trant weren’t the only ones for whom the course of true love was not running par- ticularly smoothly at that time. I have written already* of the unfortunate time when the learned Head of our Chambers, Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c, m.p., had apparently lost his marbles (in Erskine-Brown’s vivid phrase) and taken up with a junior typist in our clerk’s room of such pronounced left-wing views that she declined to type a statement of claim on behalf of a landlord in a possession case. She would only type on behalf of tenants, defendants, abandoned wives and other unprivileged persons. It is true that I had managed, with what I can say without boasting was consummate legal skill, to extricate Feather- stone from his unfortunate situation. However, with that longing for self-immolation which seizes persons who plead guilty, or make long statements to the police, Guthrie Feather-stone had, in an intimate moment, over an up till then cheerful dinner at ‘L’Etoile’, confessed the whole affair to his wife Marigold, who had been predictably furious and left the table with her poulet a I’estragon practically untouched.
After the confession Marigold’s mood ranged from the martyred to the vindictive in varying degrees of unbearability, so that the unfortunate Guthrie often arrived at Chambers looking less like a suave and successful Q.C. (for undoubtedly he was still successful) than a man who spends his nights watching over a dynamite factory in which all th
e employees are allowed to smoke.
Now it was about this time that I was defending a rather beguiling young man called Higgins on a long series of safe-breakings and warehouse-enterings. The evidence against him consisted of a swollen bank account for which no particular explanation could be given and a collection of heavy tools and comic masks in his car. It was alleged to appeal to Higgins’s sense of comedy to enter enclosed premises wearing a Mickey Mouse or Count Dracula mask to prevent identification.
This case was being prosecuted, competently enough, by my learned Head of Chambers, and as we sat together chattering before the judge came into Court, I happened to remark, that Guthrie wasn’t looking quite up to snuff. In fact he seemed to be in a mood of deep despondency. He explained, in answer to my solicitous inquiry, that his wife Marigold was still cutting up extremely rough and had what the poor man described as ‘a touch of the nervy’.
‘She’s threatening to divorce me, Rumpole.’
‘Not still?’
‘I just couldn’t face the whole stink of a divorce at the moment. I mean, a divorce just plays havoc with your chance of getting your bottom on to the Bench.’
At last all was explained. Since I had put Guthrie Featherstone back on the road of respectability he had gone the whole hog and was hell bent on a scarlet-and-ermine trimmed dressing-gown.
‘You want to get your bottom there, of course…’
‘It’s not me so much. It’s Marigold.’
‘Marigold?’
‘My wife, Marigold.’
‘Oh, that Marigold.’
‘She’s fired off an ultimatum. Unless I can make the High Court Bench she’s going to up sticks and file a petition.’
‘Seems a bit desperate.’
‘She is desperate.’
‘But my dear Guthrie. My dear old Featherstone. What are you going to do about it? I mean, you can’t just knock on the Lord Chancellor’s door and ask…’
‘Vosper J. has a bit of influence in appointments…’
The First Rumpole Omnibus Page 36