The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  As it was six thirty my ex-clerk Henry, whom I can remember as a barely literate office boy, was just leaving to take our typist Dianne for their customary Cinzano Bianco in Pommeroy’s, where they lit each other’s cigarettes, occasionally held hands when they thought no one was looking, and tried to delay, for as long as possible, the inevitable journey home to their respective spouses. Henry is now touching forty, his hair no longer covers his ears, his trousers are less flared and his suits more conservative: he is beginning to look like a man with the sort of income a young barrister might aspire to only after years of practice. He watched without expression as the biker undid a multitude of zips, shed his skin of leather and emerged, like a somewhat formal snake, in a grey suit.

  ‘Mind if I hang my gear on your door, Henry? Being a squatter gives you no damn place to put anything.’

  He looked at my ex-clerk as if expecting some reactionary opposition to his plan, which he would be able to denounce on a point of democratic principle. He seemed almost disappointed when Henry’s reply was, ‘That’s quite all right, Mr Cracknell. The Chambers meeting’s being going on about ten minutes.’

  The man addressed as Cracknell raised his eyes to the ceiling above which, in Featherstone’s room, the established members of Chambers were discussing matters of great importance, particularly to him.

  ‘This Chambers meeting is the first we have held in the absence of a once familiar figure…’

  Guthrie Featherstone was in the chair, behaving with his customary mixture of self-assurance and nervousness, as if constantly aware that things might all get terribly out of hand (I owe my knowledge of this meeting to Miss Phillida Trant, the Portia of our Chambers, who described it all to me much, much later).

  ‘Rumpole!’ It was my old friend George Frobisher, now a Circuit (or as I prefer to call it, Circus) Judge who guesses that Featherstone, in his somewhat elliptical way, was referring to the Old Bailey Hack, now put out to grass in a distant land.

  ‘I understand a card has been dispatched to carry our joint greetings to Horace Rumpole in his well-deserved retirement,’ Featherstone told them and smiled. ‘No doubt the cost has been deducted from Chambers’ expenses.’

  ‘We thought we’d never get rid of Rumpole. We kept giving him farewell dinners,’ Uncle Tom grumbled. No doubt he remembered the clock they all gave me in the hope of putting me out to grass, a suggestion which, on that occasion, I made bold to resist. Then up spoke a diminutive, grey-haired Welshman with an insinuating voice and the look of a man who could apply a good deal of low cunning to running-down cases. He was a practitioner on the Welsh Circuit named Owen Glendour-Owen and a recent addition to Chambers.

  ‘The man’s lucky to have a son doing well at a foreign university, from what I can gather. Very comfortable billet he must have there now.’

  ‘All the same, Chambers doesn’t seem Chambers without Rumpole.’ My old friend George Frobisher put in a word for me.

  ‘Exactly! We seem to have got rid of the stink of cheap, small cigars in the passages.’ Claude Erskine-Brown, never one of the Rumpole fan club, had no regrets.

  ‘There do seem to be rather fewer villains loitering about Chambers,’ George admitted.

  And Uncle Tom, our oldest, and absolutely briefless member of Chambers (he comes in every day to read the law reports, do the Times crossword and get away from the unmarried sister who polishes violently round him if he stays at home) came out with one of his interminable reminiscences. ‘I seem to recall,’ he said, ‘that one of Rumpole’s clients took up the waiting-room carpet before a conference. And removed it in a hold-all!’

  Featherstone smiled round at the conspirators, who seemed to be agreeing that they were better off without Rumpole. ‘And I don’t have the embarrassment of judges raising the question of Rumpole’s hat - as a disgrace to the legal profession! However, I digress.’ He got down to business. ‘Rumpole’s final retirement, much delayed as Uncle Tom reminds us…’

  ‘He kept making his positively last appearance,’ Uncle Tom suggested, quite unnecessarily, ‘like a bloody opera singer!’

  ‘Rumpole’s final departure’ – Featherstone was now in full flood – ‘has left a considerable gap in our ranks. In fact you may say that the loss of one Rumpole has made room for at least two other members of the Bar. We have been fortunate indeed that Owen Glendour-Owen has joined us from Cardiff, with his useful connection with car insurance.’

  The addition of this cunning Celt, which might have been greeted with cries of despair in happier days, now seemed an occasion of deep satisfaction to my treacherous ex-colleagues. There were murmurs of approval, cries of ‘Welcome, Owen’ and ‘Hear, hear!’, at which the tiny Welshman twinkled complacently and told them proudly, ‘They call me “Knock-for-Knock” Owen in the valleys.’

  Featherstone called the meeting to order. ‘I thought I’d take this opportunity,’ he said, ‘to raise the question of the other candidate who might share Rumpole’s old room with you, Glendour-Owen. As you all know, young Cracknell has been with us during the past year as a squatter…’

  Here, perhaps, I should explain a legal term. The average young man, hopeful of pursuing a brilliant career at the Bar, may think that he is brought to the ‘Off simply by passing his exams, eating his dinners, getting ‘called’ by his Inn and doing his six months’ pupillage in the Chambers of some established practitioner. If he thinks this, he’s in for an unpleasant surprise. Once his pupillage is over, he may well be flung out of the Chambers and left with nowhere to park his backside or put his briefs on the mantelpiece. He is without a clerk to send him rushing out for ten quid to Uxbridge Magistrates Court, and he hasn’t even the corner of a room to hold a decent conference. In short, our young hopeful cannot start to practise until he finds some set of Chambers to take him in. Accordingly he clings on to his place of pupillage with the tenacity of a drowning man clutching an overcrowded raft: although he knows he is unwanted, and. there is probably not enough ship’s biscuits and water to go round, he prefers to hang on rather than brave the dark and hostile waters around him. An ex-pupil in this position is called a ‘squatter’; he turns up at Chambers every day like a perpetual rebuke, does his work in some inconvenient corner and will continue to squat on until he’s either pushed off to sink or swim somewhere else in the Temple, or accepted (as he devoutly hopes) as a permanent tenant with a right to sit at a desk, be clerked by Henry, typed for by Dianne and raise his voice at Chambers meetings. And since my retirement there had arrived to squat at Number Two Equity Court none other than the Dirt Track Rider himself, young Kenneth Cracknell.

  ‘Cracknell? Is that the fellow that looks as though he’s dropped in from Mars?’ George sounded disapproving.

  ‘I saw him in the clerk’s room the other day. I thought he’d come to deliver a telegram.’ Erskine-Brown was scarcely more enthusiastic.

  ‘Oh, I know you’re all against Ken.’ Phillida Trant looked round at the male members of Chambers in a defensive fashion.

  ‘Ken?’ George wondered. ‘Is Ken the person from outer space?’

  ‘Cracknell gets a fair amount of work. He’s about to do a long fraud with Phillida Trant, and a dirty books case in the north.’ Glendour-Owen seemed to have a more intimate acquaintance with the squatter, whom he seemed to see as a potential money-spinner.

  ‘Do we really want dirty books in Chambers?’ Erskine-Brown sounded unimpressed.

  ‘Probably a good deal more amusing than the Law Reports.’ Uncle Tom put the other side of the argument.

  Featherstone smiled round at them all; but he smiled most at the lady I shall always remember as Miss Phillida Trant. He thought she was looking particularly beautiful, flushed with opposition to the oppressive anti-Cracknell faction which included her husband. Featherstone had never been entirely able to understand why the proudly beautiful Miss Trant, whose appearance in wig and gown, stiff collar, white bands and hornrimmed specs was one, to his mind, of flagrant sexuality, had been snatc
hed off and put in pod by Claude Erskine-Brown who, by any sensible board of selectors, would undoubtedly be chosen to bore for England. Featherstone, in spite of his appearance of respectability and his longing for the High Court Bench, was frequently troubled by pangs of ill-directed love, of the sort that had brought him so near to disaster in the case of Angela, our temporary Trotskyite typist.* As he saw Miss Trant glaring with hostility at her husband, Featherstone felt the stimulating tremor of a marriage breaking up and resolved to lose no opportunity in inviting Miss Trant to lunch. He also decided to throw his weight on her side in the Cracknell controversy.

  ‘Interesting fellow, Cracknell,’ Featherstone said. ‘He tells me that he intends to do cases connected with civil rights.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Erskine-Brown sounded as though his worst fears were confirmed. Miss Trant looked at her husband with a hostility that made Featherstone’s heart flutter.

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with civil rights? Better than civil wrong, wouldn’t you say so? Of course, Ken’s a radical lawyer. I know that’s the sort you don’t want to have the key of the lavatory… like women and blacks!’ She started her usual oration, and her husband looked at her, puzzled.

  ‘Philly, what on earth’s come over you?’

  ‘Blacks! That reminds me…’ Uncle Tom had somewhat lost the thread of the argument. ‘They nearly wished a Parsee on us once. I voted for you, old fellow.’ He slapped a surprised Glendour-Owen on the shoulder. ‘Even though you’re Welsh.’†

  ‘Well, I’m not sure Cracknell sounds in the least bit desirable.’ Erskine-Brown looked at his wife. ‘From what you tell me, Philly, he lives in a commune.’

  ‘I told you, Claude, that he lives in a community. Near King’s Cross.’ His wife corrected him and went on, flushed with sincerity, ‘I’ve seen Ken once or twice in action. Down at Bow Street. Believe it or not, he’s a very attractive advocate.’

  At which point the door opened and the squatter entered. The others looked somewhat startled, as if they’d been caught out in some discreditable conspiracy. Miss Phillida Trant was the first to greet him, using that shortened version of his Christian name which he insisted on to show that he was of radical views, a man of the people, totally without pretensions, and not a pompous barrister like the rest of us.

  ‘Oh, hello, Ken,’ said Miss Trant, almost shyly.

  ‘Well, hullo.’ Young Cracknell looked round the room, unsmiling. ‘Aren’t squatters invited?’

  ‘Of course.’ Featherstone was almost too effusive. ‘And you won’t be a squatter forever. We’re considering the position of accommodation in Chambers, now that Rumpole’s left.’

  ‘Rumpole?’ Ken Cracknell seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Everyone’s always talking about Rumpole. I’ve never met the man.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘It’s a sunshine day.’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, it always is.’

  I was standing on the ‘sidewalk’ of a busy shopping street in Miami; around me the population were busily Dunkin’ Dough- nuts or chewing Happy Brunchburgers, or pushing overbur- dened trolleys filled with convenience foods, or merely standing on the street corners of Dade City (it’s a little-known fact that the late Colonel Dade was actually defeated by the Red Indians) hoping, in an unconvinced sort of way, for Good Times Just Around The Corner. I had bought a new box of small cigars, Hilda was waiting for me in a battered yellow taxi, and I was confronted with an unusual sight in that bustling city, where the young people looked as if they’d just swum in from Cuba and the old people looked anxiously embalmed, of a young man wearing a quiet tie, a clean white shirt, well-ironed jeans and industriously polished shoes. His hair was short, clean and neatly parted. He was proffering to me, held between finger and thumb, a large yellow flower, which looked, considering the surrounding petrol fumes and the humidity, surprisingly perky.

  ‘A sunshine day for you and me, friend and brother,’ the young man repeated. ‘Praise to the Eternal Sun!’

  I had been thinking for weeks of the soft rain falling round the Temple tube station, but I didn’t want to argue. As politeness seemed to demand it, I took his chrysanth. In a tone of voice which sounded quite practical he announced that he had something more to offer.

  ‘Want to take a hand-out?’ he said. He had a bunch of pamphlets, in favour of what? Strip shows, life insurance, cut- price burial or the protection of whales?

  ‘Are you selling something?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sunlight!’ The young man was smiling at me. I thought he might be a salesman for picture windows or patio doors. Whatever sort of sunlight he was dealing in, I imagined it came at a fair old price.

  I opened the taxi door and was about to get in beside Hilda when he said, ‘Meet and talk?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We shall meet and talk, friend and brother. As sure as the seeds grow in the sunlight. We shall meet and talk…’

  ‘Sorry. Got to get back home now. My son Nick’s giving a party. Poolside.’

  I shut the taxi door then, but I still saw his pleasant face, framed in the open window. He raised his hand in a sort of cheerful salute and said, ‘Sunlight to Children of Sun! Blood to Children of Dark!’

  As the taxi moved away I returned the friendliest greeting I could think of. ‘And a very Happy Christmas to you too.’

  ‘Rumpole,’ said She Who Must Be Obeyed. ‘You’re holding a flower.’

  ‘Well, so I am.’

  ‘He seemed a very nice young man,’ Hilda said. ‘He looked so very different from most young people nowadays.’

  She was smiling, so I gave her the flower. She sniffed it enthusiastically and then put it on the seat beside her, where it wilted in the long traffic jam going out of the city.

  ‘ “Meet and talk.” A total stranger came up to me in the city, gave me a chrysanth and said, “Meet and talk.” ‘

  ‘It may seem just crazy to you, Dad,’ my daughter-in-law said, giving me that sweet smile of toleration for the Senior Citizen which I find particularly irritating, ‘but people around here just like to rap on… about life, and God and such like.’ Erica was wrapped in some sort of ethnic, handwoven garment which did little to conceal the fact that she was expecting the first Rumpole ever to become a citizen of the United States. ‘Maybe now you’ve given up the rat race you’ll learn to rap with strangers, Dad.’

  It grated a little, I must confess, to hear all the real world I once inhabited, the cloud-capped Assize Courts, the golden pinnacles of the Old Bailey itself, the Lords of Appeal and the Great Villains, the Circus Judges and the Timson family (notorious crooks of South London), my notable trials including the Penge Bungalow Murders and the Great Grimsby Fish Fraud, all referred to as the rat race. I looked at Nick, my son, who had the brazier going on which he proposed to cook large steaks, which would be served with salad and glasses of Californian wine (not really much worse than Pommeroy’s plonk) when the guests arrived. I remembered that the last time I had seen him cook out of doors was when he was about eight and we boiled shrimps over a camp-fire on the beach at Lowestoft. And then the chime of bells sounded at Nick’s front door and he went in through the house to receive his visitors.

  ‘I guess you’ll be able to make your own space now you’re retired, Dad.’ Erica was often difficult to follow. ‘You’ll really be able to find yourself.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said when I’d thought the matter over. ‘I might not like myself after I’d found me.’

  At which point Nick came back to the camp-fire with the guests for the evening: Professor Nathan Blowfield, Head of the Legal Faculty (a small, round man in a tartan jacket whose health was in constant danger owing to his indulgence in the habit of jogging), and his wife Betsy Blowfield, both of whom I knew already; and a couple who were strangers to me, a very pretty and smiling black girl in a white silk shirt, clean dungarees and gold glasses, and her attendant male, a supervisor from the English Department. Their names were announced as Paul Gilpin a
nd Tiffany Jones.

  ‘Any time you want to come up to the campus, Mr Rumpole,’ Professor Blowfield smiled invitingly, ‘I’m sure my students would be honoured to meet a trial lawyer from England.’

  ‘Am I a trial lawyer?’ I asked him. ‘I used to think I’d passed the test.’

  ‘Tell me,’ young Paul Gilpin looked at me with amusement, ‘do you guys still wear the rug…?’ He patted the top of his head. ‘What do you call it, the peruke? In your courtrooms…’

  ‘I have hung up my old wig.’ I downed a sizeable gulp of the Californian claret-style. ‘Rumpole’s occupation’s gone. But yes. I wore my crown of itchy horsehair for almost half a century.’

  ‘And I’m sure you looked real nice in it.’ Tiffany Jones was smiling at me; she seemed a pleasant girl whose serious spectacles and matter-of-fact American voice belied her exotic, African appearance. ‘You must have looked like George Washington or something.’

  ‘If that was the old darling who never told a lie,’ I had to admit, ‘well really, not much.’

  ‘Nick tells us you’re retired now,’ Paul Gilpin said.

  ‘Yes. I dropped out. I bought this sunshine shirt.’ I had, in fact, invested in a Miami shirting which was about as discreet as the eruption of Vesuvius. ‘And Hilda and I spend our days bumming round the beach.’

  ‘You’ve found time to breathe a little?’ Paul Gilpin asked me in a meaningful sort of way.

  ‘I used to breathe down the Old Bailey,’ I told him, ‘strange as it may seem.’

  ‘I guess Paul only meant that you’d found peace of mind, since your retirement.’ The others had wandered away in search of food and drink and I was left with Tiffany Jones, whose gentle voice made me feel that I had been unnecessarily rude to the well-meaning Paul.