The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Things, Mr Rumpole?’ said Henry looking at me, as I thought, coolly.

  ‘My practice, Henry. Solicitors have been asking for me, have they?’ I was undoing the brief, and saw the now familiar covers of Schoolgirl Capers.

  ‘No, sir. Not exactly.’ Henry spoke without mercy. ‘The word seems to have got around, about you losing all those cases down the Bailey.’

  ‘A long run of Judge Bullingham, Glendour-Owen,’ I explained my ill fortune to the newcomer. ‘That’s not going to happen again.’

  ‘How long will you be staying this time, sir?’ Henry asked, and the Welshman’s little eyes were fixed on me as he chipped in with, ‘Yes, Rumpole. How long will you be staying?’

  I considered the matter, and gave them the best answer I could. ‘Well, I don’t know exactly. Nothing wrong with my ticker, thank God, and a good intake of claret keeps me astonishingly regular. I suppose I might be here for another ten, fifteen years.’

  At which neither of them looked particularly delighted, and Henry went with a sniff of disapproval. ‘Gentlemen in Chambers getting their own work, Mr Rumpole,’ he said. ‘It’s not in the best traditions of the Bar.’

  As the door closed I saw the Welsh invader make a beeline for my chair. I made a quick dash round the corner of the desk and had got my bottom firmly in it before he could hitch up his trousers. Then I made my comment on our cool clerk. ‘ “Best traditions of the Bar!” He sounds like Judge Bullingham.’

  ‘Rumpole.’ The Welshman seemed to be taking in breath for some prolonged protest. As I was in no mood for a lengthy address, I decided that a soft answer would turn away wrath, and that it might be just possible to set this bumptious little person, who was clearly one of nature’s Circus Judges, on a road to promotion, which might keep him from hurling himself at my chair every time I felt the need to sit down. Accordingly I looked at him with warmth and admiration.

  ‘Glendour-Owen. You’re not the Glendour-Owen, are you? Not the one who does all the car insurance?’

  ‘Well, yes. “Knock-for-Knock” Owen is what they call me -on the South Wales Circuit.’ He smiled immodestly.

  ‘I was a guest at the Sheridan Club last night,’ I lied, I hoped in a good cause. ‘The Lord Chancellor was talking about you.’

  ‘The Lord Chancellor?’ He breathed the words like a sort of prayer. He was clearly ripe for the Circus.

  ‘ “That ‘Knock-for-Knock’ Owen who does a lot of motor insurance,” the Lord Chancellor was saying, “would make a wonderful Circuit Judge. Just the type we need in Wales.” He couldn’t speak too highly…’

  ‘A Judge? I’ve never even considered…’ Now the ambitious Celt was lying.

  I gave him a beam of encouragement. ‘Consider it, Owen. Turn it over in your mind, as you sit in the tube on the way to Uxbridge County Court. The Lord Chancellor’s got his eye on you!’ I opened my new brief in the obscene publications case and spread it liberally about the surface of the desk, dismissing the embryo Judge with a wave of the small cigar. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a practice to look after.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

  Is lust in action; and till action, lust

  Is perjured, raurd’rous, bloody, full of blame,

  Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

  Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;

  Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

  Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,

  On purpose laid to make the taker mad…’

  I was reciting to myself con brio the words of Shakespeare’s most embittered sonnet as some sort of entertainment to keep me going during the reading of School Capers Vol. i, numbers i to 6, which it was my tiresome duty to go through before enjoying the treat of an obscenity trial at the Grimble Crown Court. I also had to read two remarkably dull works of fiction entitled Double Dating in the Tower of Terror and Manacle me, Darling, but I kept these back as the main stodge and I was flicking through Schoolgirl Capers Vol. i, number 4, by way of an hors d’oeuvre, all the other items of suspect material being in my briefcase which was open on the floor beside me. Also open on the floor beside me, as I come to remember it, was a half-full (you can tell that I was feeling sufficiently comfortable and optimistic not to say half-empty) bottle of Pommeroy’s plonk, which I found left a more pleasant afterglow than the perfectly acceptable Californian Chateau Wells Fargo, or whatever it was that I had grown used to drinking. I may say I was on my second bottle of Pommeroy’s Ordinary, and I was full out on the sofa, cushions under the head, jacket and shoes off, and the open waistcoat deep in the snow of cigar ash. A saucer of small cigar ends was also on the floor beside me; in the kitchen, relics of my various meals (I went in for a regular diet of boiled eggs and toast, I don’t aspire to haute cuisine) covered the table and comfortably filled the sink; among my many talents (blood, typewriters and the art of cross-examination) I do not include bed-making, so the bedroom had what might be charitably described as a ‘lived-in’ appearance.

  Before my eyes the middle-aged schoolgirls capered, lifting their tunics, sticking out their tongues and gyrating in a lethargic, half-gymnastic sort of way, which I found singularly asexual. I turned the page and recited the sonnet to them.

  ‘Made in pursuit, and in possession so;

  Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

  A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

  Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream…’

  Had I not known it to be impossible, I might have thought I heard the sound of a key in the front door of the mansion flat. I went on reciting.

  ‘All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

  To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.’

  ‘Rumpole!’

  But this was no dream. I distinctly heard the front door open and a clarion cry with which I was all too familiar. I sprang into activity; my long training in crime stood me in excellent stead, and I started to remove clues and reorganize the scene. The saucer of cigar ends was tipped into the wastepaper basket, the bottles and glass went on the window sill where they might be concealed by the curtain until I got up at dawn, I fastened my briefcase on the sexually explicit material and…

  ‘Rumpole! I know perfectly well you’re there.’ It was a familiar voice.

  I looked round for incriminating signs and saw Schoolgirl Capers Vol. i, number 4, on the sofa. It was the work of seconds by a determined man able to keep his head in an emergency to thrust it behind the sofa cushions. I then took in a deep breath, regretted I hadn’t finished the second bottle of plonk for courage, and threw open the door that opened into our entrance hall or vestibule.

  ‘What’ve you been doing, Rumpole? Trying to lie doggo?’ She Who Must Be Obeyed was standing there surrounded by

  suitcases. Hers, I knew with a sinking heart, was to be no fleeting visit.

  After I had left America, it seemed there was a family gathering round the swimming bath. Nick was reading the New York Review of Books, Erica was listening to folk music on her cassette machine and knotting string to make hanging plant-pot holders, and Hilda was standing glowering into the water, drawing her cardigan about her as if cold.

  ‘I shall never understand Rumpole, doing a bolt like that!’ said She.

  ‘We couldn’t keep him here for ever.’ Nick did his best to sound reasonable.

  ‘Sneaking out by taxi in the middle of the night. I can’t understand how he got back to England.’ Hilda’s voice, it seems, was full of anger and contempt.

  ‘I think on a cheap standby with Gaelic Airlines.’ Nick, of course, knew all about it.

  ‘Back in the flat! We’ll never get it sold with Rumpole in it!’

  ‘He wanted you to stay here, you know.’ My son Nick was appointed as my advocate.

  ‘Stay here without Rumpole? I’ve never heard anything like it!’ said Hilda, showing a hitherto unknown taste for the presence of Rumpole.


  ‘He thought you’d be happier here.’ Erica, give her her due, was doing her best to support Nick’s side of the argument.

  At this Hilda clicked her tongue, drew her faithful cardigan still more tightly about her and seemed troubled by a new and awful thought. ‘You don’t think,’ she said to Nick, ‘you don’t think that possibly… at his age!’

  ‘What don’t I think, Mum?’

  After some sort of inner struggle my wife made herself say it. ‘Another woman!’

  ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous!’ Nick told me he laughed in a way which I didn’t find altogether flattering.

  ‘Is it?’ She was extremely doubtful. ‘Men get afflicted by a dreadful Indian summer or something. I’m always reading about it.’

  ‘Not Dad. It’s just his endless love affair with the Old Bailey.’

  But my wife wouldn’t have this. ‘He’s not in love with the Old Bailey. Judge Bullingham put him off the Old Bailey. It must be… something else. And I know exactly what I shall do about it.’

  ‘What’re you going to do about it, Mum?’ Erica was curious.

  ‘You’ll see. I shall…’ For a moment Hilda seemed hesitant, then she said, ‘I shall do my duty!’ At which she buttoned up her cardigan and went into the house. Forty-eight hours later she was at Heathrow Airport, and so, like a wolf on the fold, she came down by taxi on Froxbury Mansions and shattered the peace of Rumpole.

  ‘Well, Hilda. This is a surprise!’ I did my best to smile, but she wasn’t smiling.

  Instead she asked, ‘Why weren’t you at the airport?’

  ‘Well, I can’t spend my evenings hanging about Heathrow in the vague hope that you’ll descend from the skies.’ It seemed a reasonable explanation, but it was clearly unacceptable to Hilda.

  ‘I sent you a telegram.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  By this time we were both in our living-room and I was eyeing the waste-paper basket with a certain amount of guilt. ‘If it had a typed envelope…’

  ‘Most telegrams do.’

  I picked up the waste-paper basket and found, among ash to equal the destruction of Pompeii, a large number of old cigar butts, a handful of unopened bills and communications from the Inland Revenue (opening such things, I have found, merely causes headaches and other nervous disorders) and an unopened cablegram.

  ‘I must have mistaken it for another billet doux from the tax-gatherers,’ I said by way of explanation.

  At which She made her usual clicking sound and looked desperately round Casa Rumpole. ‘It looks like a rubbish tip in here, Rumpole. I suppose the washing-up hasn’t been done for a week. And I saw that the “For Sale” sign has been taken down.’

  ‘Well, I could hardly have some… some bright young man in the media move in with his extended family. Not while I’m living here, Hilda.’ I thought the explanation quite adequate, but her next question took me by surprise.

  ‘Why are you living here, Rumpole?’

  ‘It’s… it’s my home.’ It was the best I could do, but meant honestly. However, She Who Must Be Obeyed picked holes in my reply.

  ‘Our home was in America, Rumpole,’ she said. ‘We were perfectly happy. You’d retired and…’

  ‘You were perfectly happy,’ I corrected her.

  ‘Sneaking away like that! Doing a bolt! Leaving that ridiculous note telling me to stay behind and be happy!’ She stared at me, the only word is ‘implacably’.

  ‘What’s at the bottom of this, Rumpole?’

  ‘What’s at… where?’

  ‘What’s at the bottom of your extraordinary behaviour? I shall find out. Don’t think I shan’t find out. You can’t hide anything from me, Rumpole!’

  For once I was at a loss for an answer. I shrugged vaguely, having not the faintest idea what she was on about. Then she decided to lift the pressure and rise for a short adjournment.

  ‘In the meantime,’ Hilda said, ‘you can go and put the kettle on. I think I’ll have a cup of instant.’

  ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed,’ I murmured as I went obediently to the kitchen door.

  ‘And don’t start washing up in there, Rumpole,’ Hilda called after me. ‘Leave it to me. You’ll only break something!’

  ‘I hear, O Master of the Blue Horizons,’ I told myself as I went into the kitchen. I looked round the comforting mess and said goodbye to my last meal of boiled eggs and claret. Freedom – I suppose I should have known that it was too good to last.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day I was standing in front of the desk in what I had been forced to regard as the communal room in Chambers, sorting through the exhibits in my new obscenity case before having a conference with the client Meacher and old Albert Handyside from instructing solicitors in Grimble. As I shuffled through the exhibits I noticed the absence of one item, viz. Schoolgirl Capers Vol. i, number 4. I also became aware of a tall and anxious figure who had percolated into the room. It was our learned Head of Chambers, Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C., m.p., and as I looked up at him I remembered that he might, for once in his distinguished career, come in useful to Rumpole.

  ‘Featherstone,’ I said in my most ingratiating manner, ‘play golf with old Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office. Put in a word for that Welsh chap who hangs about in this room.’

  ‘Glendour-Owen?’ Featherstone looked puzzled.

  ‘That’s the fellow,’ I told him. ‘He’s longing to be a Circuit Judge. Eaten up with ambition for the post. Can’t you do something for the poor devil? I mean, there must be vast, lawless stretches of Wales where he could make himself useful.’ I was still searching among my papers. Schoolgirl Capers Vol. 1, numbers 3 and 5 all present and correct. Number 4 still gone missing. ‘Look, Featherstone old darling. I’m just about to have a conference.’

  Featherstone looked somewhat taken aback at the news and said, ‘I hope this is a one-off, Rumpole.’

  ‘What on earth’s happened to Schoolgirl Capers number 4?’ I demanded of no one in particular. I saw that Featherstone had moved somewhat closer to my deskful of adult reading, sniffing slightly as if he were a dog who had a whiff of a juicy joint cooking. But when he spoke, it was still in a voice full of sadness and disapproval.

  ‘I mean, Henry told me you were taking on this case to help out Ken. I just hope you’re not going to make a habit of it. You see, we just haven’t got the accommodation.’

  ‘Make a habit of it?’ I looked at him, puzzled. ‘I’ve been making a habit of it for the last forty years.’

  The phone on the desk rang. It was Henry to say that old Albert Handyside and the client Meacher were awaiting my pleasure. I told him to shoot them up with all convenient speed. As he moved to the door Featherstone said, ‘I’ll talk to you later. Oh, and Rumpole…”

  ‘I seem to have lost… half the evidence.’ I was still searching, hopelessly, for the missing Caper.

  Featherstone nerved himself to say, rather too casually, ‘I happen to be sitting on the Parliamentary Committee on Pornography. I wonder if you’d let me have a glance at those magazines later? Purely as a public duty, of course.’

  ‘Oh, purely as a public duty? How brave of you, Featherstone!’

  The learned Head of Chambers took my tribute with a puzzled frown and vanished, to be quickly replaced by Mr Meacher, Pornographer-in-Chief to the town of Grimble, a large, red-faced man with a bright blue suit, suede shoes, a gold bracelet watch, a North-country accent and an overwhelming smell of after-shave, and Albert Handyside. And so the conference began. Rumpole was in business again.

  At which moment the following disastrous event occurred on the home front. She Who Must Be Obeyed paused in the much-needed hoovering of our living-room to plump the sofa cushions. Under one of these cushions she discovered a strange, and to her eye, deeply disturbing object; that is to say, a much-thumbed copy of Schoolgirl Capers Vol. i, number 4. She picked it up as though it were some unmentionable vermin that had crept into the
warmth of our sofa and died and, holding it at arm’s length, she leafed through the contents. She had got to page 45 when she realized that a desperate remedy was needed. She wrapped the awful exhibit in a sheet of plain brown paper, put on her hat and coat and went straight round to the surgery of our local G.P., a somewhat dour and anxious Scot named Doctor Angus MacClintock.

  During the statutory thirty-three and a half minutes for which Hilda was kept sitting in the waiting-room she looked neither to right nor to left; and she read neither last year’s Illustrated London News nor the June 1976 Punch. She held the horrible parcel tightly on her lap, as though it might wriggle in a sensual fashion and slither away. When her turn was called she went straight into the Doctor’s consulting room without removing her hat.

  ‘Mrs Rumpole.’ Dr MacClintock rose anxiously to greet her. He was a grey man in a grey room and his voice was calculated to produce an instant awareness of death in the healthiest patient. ‘I thought you were sunning yourself out in Florida. Nothing serious, I hope?’ ‘Yes, it is. Very serious.’ ‘What are the symptoms?’

  To which she answered simply, ‘The symptoms are Rumpole.’ ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘I had to come, Doctor.’ Hilda spoke in a voice of doom. ‘Something terribly strange has happened to my husband.’

  ‘Terribly strange? Oh dear me. Not his back again?’

  ‘Worse than his back. I found this. He’d been reading thisl’

  At which Hilda stripped off the discreet brown-paper covering

  and revealed Schoolgirl Capers Vol. 1, number 4, in its full embarrassment to the Doctor’s astonished gaze.

  ‘I’m very much afraid, Dr MacClintock,’ Hilda told him, ‘that Rumpole has got sex.’

  Meanwhile, up at the mill, I was slogging away and trying to earn an honest bob or two in conference with the bookseller, who was describing the difficulties which face an honest vendor of adult reading material in the town of Grimble. There was, it seemed, a local Savonarola or Calvin who was a particular thorn in Mr Meacher’s flesh.