The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘What’s she doing?’ said Miss Trant, giving a cursory look. “The Dying Swan”?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Featherstone proudly. ‘Quite the little Margot Fonteyn, isn’t she? And this is old Luke with his fingers in the spaghetti. Oh, my God!’ Featherstone’s voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper. He was staring across the restaurant at a couple of dark-suited businessmen who were about to settle at a distant table.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ asked Miss Trant, puzzled.

  ‘My God! My God!’ Featherstone moaned gently, his hand on his chest.

  ‘Featherstone. Guthrie! Are you in some sort of pain?’ Miss Trant was no Florence Nightingale, and hoped to God she wouldn’t be called on to administer the kiss of life.

  ‘Pain? Yes. Pain. That’s what I’m in. Of course. I must dash. Immediately! Look, I’ll pay the bill.’ At which Featherstone stood up suddenly and pushed back his chair.

  ‘Pay the bill? We haven’t eaten anything!’ Miss Trant pointed out reasonably, but Featherstone was on his way out of the Trattoria Gallactica, waving a limp hand and muttering vaguely, ‘Goodbye, Phillida. See you in Chambers. Sometime.’

  This highly unsatisfactory luncheon had an immediate effect which unexpectedly involved me, and in a most unwelcome manner. I had just lost a perfectly simple and winnable indecent assault in a cinema at Uxbridge, and was gloomily wondering if I had lost my grip. As I wandered into the clerk’s room, Henry told me that there was a lady waiting for me upstairs. As I opened the door, I noticed a welcome absence of Ken and Glendour-Owen, and the unlikely presence of a handsome woman, about thirty-five years of age with a cashmere twinset, a double row of pearls and an expression of grim determination.

  ‘Mr Rumpole. We have met, over the years. At Chambers parties. I’m Marigold Featherstone.’

  I remembered the wife of the Q.C., M.P., our Head of Chambers. ‘Of course. Look, I’ll just see if Guthrie’s in his room.’

  ‘I don’t want Guthrie at this particular moment.’ I thought the tone was somewhat chilling. ‘Thank you very much. It’s you I want, Mr Rumpole. Would you mind closing the door?’ Hers was a tone of command. I shut the door behind me.

  ‘You want me, Mrs Featherstone?’

  ‘Tell me, Mr Rumpole. Do you handle divorce?’

  ‘Only rarely. And then with particularly thick gloves. Why do you ask?’ I sat down at my desk.

  ‘I ask, Mr Rumpole, because I have need of your services.’

  ‘Of mine?’

  ‘For a divorce.’

  ‘I mean, who…’ I thought she perhaps had a lady friend tossed on the rough seas of a stormy marriage, but her answer set me rocking back in the swivel-chair.

  ‘My husband, Mr Rumpole. I’d hardly be bothering to divorce anyone else’s husband, would I?’ I could see the force of her argument. ‘I’m afraid Guthrie’s gone completely off the rails.’ She sighed, and had she been my Hilda, she would have undoubtedly clicked her tongue. ‘He has taken up, Mr Rumpole, with another woman.’

  ‘Oh, well now. Can you be sure about that? I mean, what’s the evidence?’ I couldn’t see a man, even Guthrie Featherstone, suffer such a summary conviction.

  ‘The evidence, Mr Rumpole,’ Mrs Featherstone said impassively, ‘is the evidence of my own eyes.’

  From that moment I began to feel pessimistic about the chances of any sort of defence for our learned Head of Chambers. The eyes of his lady wife were clear and unblinking, the sort of eyes that might well be believed in a court of law. She continued with her evidence.

  ‘I was in the perfume department at Harrods, Mr Rumpole. I was buying my usual little atomizer. Guthrie never brings me perfume home, and I happened to catch sight of him, at the “Ma Tendresse” counter.’

  ‘He was buying perfume?’ I hazarded a guess.

  ‘Well, Mr Rumpole. He wasn’t buying potatoes.’

  I began to see that there was a certain ruthless logic about this woman’s mind. I asked the obvious question. ‘Did you confront him?’

  ‘I moved towards him, but Harrods was extremely crowded on that day and he escaped. Furtively.’

  ‘Did you ask him about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’ Poor old Guthrie had no doubt been condemned without a hearing.

  ‘I didn’t want to give him the chance to lie to me.’

  A woman of steel, you’d have to agree, this Mrs Marigold Featherstone. However, I did my best to sound unconvinced by the evidence. ‘Well, I don’t see that adds up to much of a case. He might have been buying scent for anyone, an old aunt perhaps. Has he got an old auntie with a birthday?’

  ‘He was buying it, Mr Rumpole,’ said Marigold, driving the final nail into her husband’s coffin, ‘for the girl he took out to lunch at the Trattoria Gallactica.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I did my best to sound casual. ‘And which girl was that?’

  ‘Some little tart. I don’t know her name. My brother Tom was lunching his accountant at the Trattoria Gallactica, and he distinctly saw Guthrie at the corner table gazing into the eyes of this King’s Road strumpet. And do you know what Tom saw plonked on her plate?’

  ‘Tagliatelle verdi?’ I was guessing again, of course.

  ‘A great big bottle of “Ma Tendresse”. The toilet water. Of course, as soon as he caught sight of Tom, Guthrie simply got up and legged it. He’s a terrible coward, you know.’

  The wretched Featherstone clearly needed the assistance of a good lawyer. Always ready to take on a hopeless case, I decided to defend him. ‘Mrs Featherstone. If I were to act for you in this dispute with your husband…’ I started cautiously.

  ‘Yes?’ said Marigold eagerly.

  ‘The Head of Chambers! Well, it would cause enormous embarrassment.’

  ‘If I’m divorcing Guthrie, Mr Rumpole, embarrassment is just what I intend to cause!’ This was not a woman to be trifled with.

  I said, ‘Leave it with me, Mrs Featherstone. I’ll think it over.’ A bit of delay, I had found it an infallible rule, never does any harm to the defence.

  ‘I shall call on you next week,’ said Marigold Featherstone coldly. ‘Then I shall expect your answer.’

  Whilst I set about the unlikely task of finding a defence to the charges brought by this implacable plaintiff against our Head of Chambers, my son Nick, out of the extreme goodness of his heart, was finding out some other answers for me. He climbed into his rather battered Volkswagen (Erica kept the estate car for her use) and drove down to the Miami shopping street where I had been buying small cigars when I first heard about seeds growing in the sunlight.

  Nick parked his car and walked up and down the street, but drew a blank. Then he went into a bar and ordered a cold beer and sat staring at the intersection I had recommended to him, but saw nothing unusual. He ordered another beer without incident; but when it came, and he was about to lower his mouth to the tooth-freezing and gaseous liquid, he saw two girls in white dresses come into the bar carrying long-stemmed chrysanthemums. Nick looked, as he told me, and saw the young man in the white shirt and tie standing at the street corner with the flowers which he handed out to the passers-by, all of whom received them and his greetings with politeness and some with interest.

  In a moment Nick had abandoned his beer and was standing in front of the young man who had just presented him with a chrysanthemum.

  ‘It’s a sunshine day,’ said the young man cheerfully.

  ‘Is it? I really hadn’t noticed,’ Nick said with carefully affected gloom.

  ‘Sunlight to Children of Sun,’ said the young man. ‘Are you not aware of the sun, our source of strength?’

  ‘I guess I’m only aware of my problems. I’ve sure got a few of those.’ Nick was giving an excellent performance of a young American academic going through a crisis in his personal rela- tionships.

  ‘Meet and talk.’ The young man was smiling and interested.

  ‘Pardon me?’ said Nick, apparently lost in dejection.

  ‘We s
hall meet and talk, friend and brother,’ the young man repeated, ‘as sure as the seed grows in the sunlight.’

  ‘Meet and talk?’ Nick looked up gratefully.

  ‘Well, sure thing, friend and brother. You and I have all the time in the world for one-to-one communication. You haven’t done much talking lately? Just exchanged words, is that it? Not real talking.’ The young man looked at Nick in a kindly and yet penetrating way, and Nick agreed quickly.

  ‘Exchanged words. Yes. That’s exactly it!’

  ‘That’s all you do on the outside, isn’t it?’ The young man in the tie nodded understandingly. ‘Exchange words in the office, or with your family maybe. But never talk, one heart to another’s heart, beating as one. They never know that, the Children of Dark.’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve been feeling terribly lonely lately,’ Nick admitted in evident distress.

  ‘Come with me then, friend and brother. The lonely days are over. Come with me, and we’ll talk it all through.’

  Nick’s troubles were apparently serious enough for the young man to shut up the free chrysanthemum service and suggest a walk on Miami beach. He took a lift in that direction in Nick’s German antique, and then they walked, two young men in close and confidential conversation, past the bejewelled geriatrics and the golden lads and girls who were presently leaping about at volley ball, or stretched beautifully on towels. In what seems, when you have passed through it, to be a regrettably short period, these golden lads and girls would be in need of hearing aids, bifocals and a cheap blood pressure service.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Nicholas Rumpole.’

  ‘Then you’re Nicholas.’

  ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘You can just call me William. That’s my given name. My family name’s forgotten now. A family name’s the first thing we give up, we Children of Sun. But then we forget a lot of things.’

  ‘Children of Sun?’ Nick sounded puzzled.

  ‘We shall inherit the earth. We Sun Children.’ William looked at Nick and he was smiling.

  ‘Sounds interesting. When?’

  ‘In ten years.’ William had no doubt about it. ‘When the time of Darkness is over, the world shall belong to the Sun’s Children.’

  ‘It’s a religion?’ Nick hazarded a guess.

  ‘It’s a whole life.’

  ‘Christian?’

  William shook his head. ‘Jesus is no use to us. Jesus died. We’re not interested in death, Nicholas. Death or sickness. We shall give back health to the world, during the years of Rule.’

  ‘The years of what}’

  ‘First we have the years of Preparation,’ William explained. ‘Then the years of Rule, when the Sun’s Children enter into their inheritance. You see, the Master gives us everything. He protects us with his power. His power for the miraculous.’

  ‘Miracles?’ Nick inquired simply.

  ‘Oh, sure. He’s not bound by the laws of man and nature. He gives us perfect freedom, Nick. And in return what do we give him? Well, I guess we just about give him everything. Perfect loyalty. Perfect fidelity. And you know the joy, Nick? He gives us perfect peace.’

  A little later they were sitting at a straw-roofed beach bar having a drink. ‘Nothing alcoholic,’ William had said. ‘Just juice, I guess.’ So Nick had a beer and William was drinking chemical bottled orange juice (in the State where citrus fruit grows like weeds), sitting on bar stools on the edge of the sand, served by brown-skinned blonde girls in bikini tops and abbreviated shorts.

  ‘It sounds the sort of life I need.’ Nick sighed. ‘Perfect simplicity.’

  ‘The Dark world’s a maze. In the Sunlight all is made clear. You make your life with us and… no more problems. That I guarantee. Will you come to us?’ William was still smiling at Nick and looking at him through clear blue eyes with irresistible sincerity.

  ‘If only I could…’

  ‘Of course you can. Anyone can. Knock and it shall be opened to you.’

  ‘What shall be opened?’

  ‘Home. Our home and your home. The Sun Valley that’s waiting for you.’

  ‘I can’t imagine a real home,’ Nick said in the most desolate voice he could manage. ‘I haven’t really had a home life for a hell of a long time.’

  ‘We all make our contribution.’ William went on smiling at him. ‘All we ask of you is your talent. What’s your talent, Nicholas?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I’m a teacher.’

  ‘We need teachers. Teachers will help us educate the world in happiness and positive thinking.’

  ‘What else do you need?’

  ‘All sorts: builders, carpenters, cooks, doctors.’

  ‘Economists?’ Nick made an informed guess, based on the letter from me that he had by now received.

  ‘We have the best. We had a bad experience in that department, but now we have the very best. One of our most zealous children.’

  ‘I wonder who…’ Nick began to ask, but William gave him another welcoming smile and put a hand gently on his arm.

  ‘No more questions, Nicholas. I’m not questioning you about your life or whatever it is that’s making you live in Darkness. Come to us in Sunshine. Save the questions until you’re safe inside the family.’

  ‘What’s your work exactly?’ Nick asked William.

  ‘My work, Nicholas, is to bring back friends.’

  ‘Bring them back where?’

  ‘Home. You’ve got your Volks, haven’t you. What’re we waiting for?’

  ‘I must say, I’m interested.’

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘I’d like to visit you.’

  ‘To visit with us is to stay with us. You won’t want to do anything else. Come and see. Once they’re home, no one cares to leave Sun Valley.’

  ‘Well.’ Nick finished his drink. ‘I don’t know what I’ve got to lose.’

  ‘Only the chains of Darkness.’ William smiled at him. ‘Shall we go? Oh, and you’ll find you won’t have a need of that stuff any more.’ He nodded towards Nick’s beer. ‘Only fruit juice and the Word of the Master.’

  So eventually they drove off in Nick’s old Volkswagen, with William talking soothingly all the time, so that with the heat and the gentle voice repeating encouraging sentiments and messages of hope, Nick said that he felt, in a way, hypnotized and almost fell asleep as he drove along the freeway.

  In time they turned off at an exit and were driving past fields and orchards, fruit farms and shacks, low-lying country much afflicted by mosquitoes and hurricanes. They drove on for almost an hour, William giving directions and comfort, and my son Nick saying as little as was needed to keep up the pretence of his disillusionment with a harsh world and of his readiness to put his life at the service of an unknown Master and join the Children of Sun.

  ‘Happiness outside is a thing that has to be forced on you, by money or sex or some other kind of hallucinogenic drug. But flowers don’t need money to grow, Nick. They don’t need the Big Job of the Wonderful Home. It’s because they have the warmth of the Sun inside them. You’re going to see a whole lot of sights where we’re going to, Nicholas, and I sure can’t wait to show them to you. But one thing you won’t see, and that’s an unhappy face.’

  ‘What do I have to do? To get in to your home?’ Nick asked innocently.

  ‘Just decide to stay.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Well. If you do decide to stay with us, Nicholas, there is a contract.’

  ‘A legal document?’

  ‘Scarcely. You have to write out the words of power. And write them in rather a special way.’

  ‘Oh, really? And what sort of a special way is that?’

  William turned to Nick for a moment and said quietly, ‘You write in your own lifeblood, Nicholas. Everyone does. It doesn’t take much to do it.’

  At last they came to a high wall, running along the side of a narrow country road. And then there was a wide gate in the wall, painted white and topped w
ith barbed wire. Over the gate there was a high, wooden arch and a sign reading sun valley and high and triumphant over the sign was a large, glass-covered coloured photograph of a cleric, a man with crinkly white hair, kindly eyes beaming behind rimless spectacles and a deep and healthy suntan. Nick didn’t recognize the photograph, but then he had never been in Percival Simpson’s bed-sit in Alexander Herzen Road.

  William asked Nick to stop in front of the gate, and he clasped his hands and raised them towards the photograph. ‘The Master,’ he said. Then he asked Nick to honk the horn, and a couple of clean-shirted, large and healthy-looking young men came out of the shed by the gate and looked into the car. William rolled down the window and spoke to them.

  ‘A new friend and brother,’ he said. ‘His name’s Nicholas.’

  Nick said that the smiles of the gatekeepers seemed to be suddenly switched on like street lights at twilight.

  ‘Be very welcome, Nicholas.’

  ‘May the Sun shine always on a new friend.’

  At which one of them unlocked the huge padlock which held the gate, and the other swung it open.

  ‘We’re home, Nicholas,’ said William. ‘Just drive in slowly.’

  Nick, bless his heart, drove in for the sake of the defence of Percival Simpson, and he said it was an extremely unpleasant moment when he heard the gates close and the padlock snap behind him.

  There was nothing immediately obvious that could explain the distinct sense of foreboding that my son Nicholas Rumpole felt. What he had driven into was like a spacious and very well-kept farmyard. There was a line of sheds where he guessed animals were kept, and another line of buildings on the other side of the square which might have housed offices and communal rooms. The bottom of the square was also blocked by buildings of some sort, so that the compound was effectively closed in, in a way that made Nick think of a well-run open prison. The inhabitants, however, were all much like William, young men and women, wearing clean jeans and smiling. In a corner of the yard a group were loading boxes and sacks of vegetables onto a new pick-up truck. As they worked they were singing: