‘I understand. And I’m perfectly prepared to travel, Rumpole.’
‘Going far? We’ll have to do our best to get along without you.’
‘I’m coming with you, of course. In a case of this importance, you’ll be in need of a leader. Preferably one from Chambers.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so, old darling. My instructing solicitor is prepared to leave it to me. The Rights of Man, you know, are rather my spécialité de la maison. I’m sure you’ve got enough landlord and tenant stuff to keep you fully occupied.’ At which, I blew out smoke and the would-be leader, looking extremely miffed, simulated terminal bronchitis and withdrew from my presence.
So the long journey started which ended up over the choucroute and the water of life in the Grimms’ fairytale Kammerzell House in Strasburg. There I was applauded for my devotion to justice by a fan club of Europeans and his Honour Judge Bloxham, looking extremely green about the gills, sat glowering at me with ill-concealed hostility from the corner of the room.
As Jeremy Jameson collected the bill to put in with his Euro expenses, I plodded off towards the facilities. As I stood in front of the porcelain, lit by a sudden and blinding white light, I was conscious of a shrunken figure at the far end of the row of stalls. Judge Bloxham turned to face me, zipping up his trousers; and, looking paler than ever, his eyes dead with despair, he uttered one word, pronounced like a curse from a dry throat, ‘Rumpole’, and shuffled away across the marble floor.
I gave him time to get away and then returned to the dining-room, only to discover that, as rare things will, all my newfound friends had vanished. Betsi Hoprecht and the rimless Professor of International Law (both of whom had met me at the airport), the Euro M.P., Poppy, the elegant sheep, and even my instructing solicitor had gone off into the night and the table was being cleared under the instruction of the Minister for Strawberries. At that moment I felt I was in Europe, a stranger and alone.
Walking back to the hotel in the moonlight, I looked at my watch. Almost eleven on a Saturday night. It seemed a long time since I and Peter Fishlock had been met at the airport by Betsi Hoprecht, who had stood tall and fair-haired above the smaller, darker inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine waiting for their loved ones. She had taken us in charge, kept us going on a tour round the monuments, and arranged the dinner at the Kammerzell House at which we were to meet the gallant band who sat shoulder to shoulder, consuming choucroute and fighting for the Rights of Man. I had felt safe in Betsi’s hands, relieved of the painful process of decision. Now I was on my own, crossing the cathedral square, and I decided to see the astronomical clock put on its hourly performance.
The shadowy cathedral was empty, the windows which Betsi had shown us glowing with coloured sunlight were now blind and black. Only a few candles, lit for the dead and the dying, flickered in the cloisters by the side-chapels. In the empty pews only a few heads, the anxious, the insomniac or old, were bowed in prayer and contemplation. I put in a coin and the clock towered above me in golden light with its minarets and huge dials, the signs of the Zodiac, the round sun in a bright blue sky dotted with stars, the columns of gold and black marble, and the figures of Christ and Death waiting for their hourly moment of confrontation.
As I looked up at these wonders, I was conscious of a tallish tourist standing beside me. I thought how badly his clothes went with the wonders of sixteenth-century science and architecture: a red plastic anorak with LES DROITS DE L’HOMME written on it, trousers that looked as though they’d been made in a computer, and a baseball cap which bore the insignia of the Common Market. Then eleven struck. The heavens began to whirr and move at the command of the master clockmaker, the Ages of Man passed in their chariots, the heavenly globe was lit up in front of the perpetual calendar with its statues of Diana and Apollo, and Christ, his hand held up in benediction, chased the skeleton Death. As the slow strokes died away, and all the devices on the clock shuddered to a standstill, a voice with which I was unfortunately familiar said, ‘The continentals are clever fellows, aren’t they?’
‘Bollard! What on earth are you doing here?’
‘What on earth? That’s rather a good question, Rumpole. What are any of us doing on earth? Our duty, let us hope. To God and our country. And preparing ourselves for a better life not on earth. That’s the hope we live with.’
‘I have to tell you, Bollard, that if the hope you live with is infiltrating yourself into Monday’s case as leading Counsel for Amin Hashimi, forget it. Your journey has been entirely unnecessary.’
‘I shall be in the case on Monday, as you would know, Rumpole, if you were in the habit of reading your papers before going into Court. But I shall be appearing for a slightly more reputable client than your Mr Hashimi.’
‘Oh, really. Who’s that?’
‘H.M.G., Rumpole.’
‘Who’s he, when he’s at home?’
‘Her Majesty’s Government. I’m here to support Lord Justice Ponting’s opinion in the Court of Appeal.’
‘You mean you’re for the H.M.G. of the U.K.?’
‘Exactly so!’ Of course Ballard failed to detect the note of sarcasm in my flight to the acronym.
‘But you didn’t do the case at the Bailey or in the Court of Appeal. Tubby Arthurian did it.’
‘Quite right. But with the international importance this matter has now achieved, with the entire reputation of the U.K. judiciary at stake, it was thought by H.M.G. . . .’
‘What was thought?’
‘Well’ – the man seemed embarrassed, as it turned out he had good cause to be – ‘that Counsel should be chosen who would be likely to have some influence over you. To check what H.M.G. described, in a confidential memo to myself, as your worst excesses, Rumpole.’
‘Why on earth would you have any influence over me?’
‘Well, H.M.G. thought that as I am undoubtedly your Head of Chambers and therefore placed in some position of authority . . .’
‘H.M.G. thought that might curb my excesses?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Then H.M.G. must be singularly ignorant of the inner working of our great legal system. H.M.G. should know by now that the sight of you, Bollard, causes my worst excesses to break out like the measles.’
‘I had hoped’ – Soapy Sam had the good sense not to sound particularly optimistic – ‘that we might be able to reach some sort of common approach. We don’t want to cause poor old Bloxham public embarrassment, do we?’
‘Don’t we? I’ve been looking forward to it for months.’
‘Perhaps we could talk over a drink.’
‘You can buy me a drink at any time,’ I was kind enough to tell him.
‘Thank you, Rumpole.’ Ballard was now looking anxiously round the cathedral, and a note of fear had come into his voice, ’Hilda’s not with you, is she?’
‘Mrs Rumpole,’ I told him, with some dignity, ‘has gone to stay with her friend Dodo Mackintosh in Cornwall.’
‘I wouldn’t want Marguerite to hear that wives were allowed. I told her this was strictly no spouses.’
Marguerite, I remembered, was the ex-Matron of the Old Bailey, the person once in charge of aspirins and Elastoplast, whom the fearless Ballard had decided to marry. ‘How did she take that?’
‘Not too well, I’m afraid. But I told her that when you’re appearing for H.M.G. confidential matters may arise.’
‘Baloney!’
‘Well, I have to confess, Rumpole, that the idea of being fancy-free on this agreeable little trip to the Continent did rather appeal to me. I thought I might stay on for a couple of days. I took the opportunity of buying some holiday gear this afternoon.’ He looked down at his trousers with incomprehensible pride.
‘You mean that rig-out? You look as though you were going in for a bicycle race.’
‘You should learn to get with it, Rumpole. An old tweed jacket with leather patches’ – the man had the ice-cold nerve to look critically at my attire – ‘and grey flannel bags simply don
’t say European.’
‘Unlike your plastic anorak? It doesn’t seem to be able to stop talking about it.’
‘Perhaps you should mix a little more with young people, Rumpole. Perhaps you should learn to approach the millennium. I’ve got to know some young people. Since I got here, I’ve got to know what you might call the international set.’
‘You must be a quick worker.’
‘What?’
‘I said you must be a quick worker. Didn’t you arrive today?’
‘Oh, no. I’ve been here a few days. Getting used to the atmosphere. I must say, it’s all been quite stimulating.’
‘A few days?’ I raised my eyebrows at a complacently smiling Ballard. ‘I’m surprised that Marguerite let you off the leash for so long.’
‘I have to confess’ – Soapy Sam didn’t look at all ashamed – ‘I wasn’t entirely candid about the date of our cause célebre.’
‘You mean you told her that Hashimi started last Wednesday?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘I bet they’ve got that written down, in the great charge- sheet in the sky.’
‘The God I believe in,’ he had the nerve to tell me, ‘is deeply understanding of human frailty. You only flew over this morning, did you? That must be exhausting for you, at your age. I expect you’re longing for your bed. Well, mustn’t keep you.’
‘So what are you going to do? Hang around until the clock strikes another hour?’
‘Never you mind, Rumpole. There are better things to do in Strasburg than to wait for the clock to strike, I’m bound to tell you.’
As I left the cathedral, I saw, in the shadows of an empty pew, a fair head bent in prayer. To my surprise, Betsi Hoprecht was kneeling, no doubt interdenominationally calling on the God of the clock to ally Himself with the Merciful, the Compassionate, for the protection of Amin Hashimi.
It was a short walk to the Hotel D’Ange Rouge, and from my bedroom I could still hear the odd calls of love from the backpackers who loitered round the cathedral or staggered home singing. I lay in bed reading the written brief to the Court of Human Rights, a somewhat long document prepared by Fishlock with an analysis of all the British cases on bias. The Judges were welcome to it. What I profoundly hoped would stir them out of their international coma would be the Rumpole address, the rallying cry against injustice, the devastating destruction of Billy Bloxham with which I expected to win the day. I heard the cathedral clock strike one and then I turned out my light.
It was a warm spring night and the window on to the little balcony that overlooked the square was open and the curtain flapping. The window of the next room must have been open also, and I heard the sound of a strong woman, who sounded very much like Betsi Hoprecht, laughing. The full and disturbing significance of this was not revealed to me until the next morning, however, when, setting out eagerly for breakfast, I saw none other than Soapy Sam Ballard emerge from the next- door room in question. He was shaved, bathed and, I had a shrewd suspicion, slightly perfumed. He was wearing his Droits de l’Homme anorak and looked like the cat that had got at the cream.
It was Sunday, a day of rest and respite before battle was joined between myself, a freelance, and the Government of Her Britannic Majesty, in the person of its improbable champion, Soapy Sam Ballard, Q.C. Breakfast was held in a small, hot room which I found to be crowded. Ballard was at a table in the corner with some unremarkable person I thought to be connected with H.M.G. The only seat I could find was at a table set for three at which the curly-headed Poppy was already installed, smiling vaguely and peeling an orange. I asked if I could sit down.
‘Why not? Jeremy won’t be here for hours. He’s sleeping off the choucroute.’
I put in a request for ham and eggs and looked thoughtfully back towards my Head of Chambers. I tried to see him in a new light: Casanova Ballard, Soapy Don Juan, Lord Byron Ballard, bedroom Ballard, high in the list of the world’s great lovers, and then the mind, I have to confess it, boggled. It also failed to come to terms with the idea of that slimmed-down Betsi Hoprecht on her way to Ballard’s bed, even though she was kneeling, as though hoping for a miracle, in prayer as a necessary preliminary.
‘Bloody Europe!’
I looked around for the source of this condemnation and decided it could only have come from the smiling Poppy, whose orange, by now, was neatly peeled and quartered.
‘So you’re a Euro-sceptic?’ I thought she was, on the whole, preferable to that grumpy group of M.P.s who had appointed themselves the Prosecutors of the Common Market.
‘Sceptic’s not the word for it! Other people get taken to the Seychelles, or the Caribbean, or even Acapulco.’
‘Other people?’
‘Other people’s girlfriends, I mean. When my daughter starts looking for a lover, I’ll say I don’t give a toss what he is doing, just so long as he’s not a Euro M.P. I wouldn’t even mind Jeremy being an M.P. if he took me out in England, but at home he’s always at terrible black-tie dinners where we mustn’t be seen together. He has to go on holiday with his wife and dear little Sebastian, who has to get postcards from everywhere and last-minute presents at the airport. All I see of the world is Brussels and Luxemburg and Strasburg, where there’s nothing to do except eat until the brass buttons on your Chanel suit shoot off like bullets. You’ve left your wife at home?’
I had to admit it.
‘I thought so! Everyone leaves their wives at home when they go to Strasburg. Jeremy’s wife has taken little Sebastian to Brighton. God, how I envy them.’
‘Aren’t we going on a trip round the wine towns?’
‘You haven’t done that before?’
‘No.’
‘Jeremy and I’ve done it almost more times than we’ve had sex. Those little half-timbered buildings you wander round as though you were Hansel and bloody Gretel. And you know what the aim and object of the whole exercise is? Yes, you’re right. A socking great lunch!’
At which point Betsi Hoprecht strode into the breakfast room, clapped her hands three times and announced that the bus would leave from the front entrance in exactly twenty-five minutes and would we make sure that we were on it. At her entrance, Ballard smiled in as sickly and ingratiating a manner as Malvolio in the play. Betsi returned this greeting with what I thought was an admirably contrived glare of nonrecognition.
The Tokay d’Alsace tasted of grapes, a gentle flavour far removed from the chemical impact of Pommeroy’s Reasonable White. The sun shone on the restaurant terrace, it glittered on the glasses and ice-bucket, and was warm on our faces. Around us the tops of the pinkish, plastered houses bulged like huge bosoms, kept in place by the ribbons of dark oak. Their steep tiled roofs were pierced with the eyes of numberless dormer windows. Flowers clambered round a well in the centre of the square and, on the slender, sand-coloured church steeple, the clock stood at half past one. We had filled the minibus and now occupied another long restaurant table. The rimless professor was there, as was the man in the consular service and his gardener wife. Jeremy Jameson was there, smiling with a mixture of defiance and guilt. He had come downstairs late, buttoning his shirt, which was not satisfactorily tucked into his crumpled linen trousers. Poppy was smiling, sipping Tokay, and reading the Mail on Sunday, hot from the morning plane and greeted by her like a missing child.
‘Our whole team is here.’ I was sitting next to Betsi and she was giving me her full and flattering attention. ‘All of us are behind you, Mr Rumpole. Cheering you on!’
‘Not that little chap from the consular service, surely? Isn’t he on the side of H.M. Government?’
‘Well, he should be, of course. That is where his duty lies. But his heart is with us, Mr Rumpole. He has read all of your memoirs, he tells me. Some of them twice over.’
‘Is that really so?’ I looked down the table at Eddie Parsloe with a new respect.
‘“We must be free or die.” He says the spirit of your poet Wordsworth breathes through you.’
&
nbsp; ‘Well, that’s remarkably civil of him.’
‘And Lady Mary, she’s what you would call a hoot, isn’t she?’
‘And do you know your Common Market’s only going to allow us three varieties of bloody begonia?’ Lady Mary Parsloe was hooting at the unfortunate Nordic professor. ‘It’s a disgrace. They’ll be at our floribunda roses next.’
‘What about Samuel Bollard, Q.C.? You didn’t think of inviting him?’
‘Mr Ballard, I have to correct you. Ballard is his name.’
‘I know that perfectly well.’
‘So why do you call him by the wrong name then?’
‘I suppose in the hope of irritating him.’
‘But he is a very nice man.’ To my distress, a faraway look came into her pale blue eyes. She was wearing a crisp white dress, which showed off her brown arms to advantage. She smelt of clean linen and rustled like a hospital nurse. ‘Also, he is your boss, I think.’
‘You think wrong,’ I had to tell her.
‘He is Head of your Chambers?’
‘Bollard has made himself responsible for the coffee machine and the paper clips. But I am a free spirit and a freelance advocate.’
‘You are not afraid of him?’
‘Of course not.’ I felt full of courage, though I must confess that we had got through a number of bottles of Tokay with considerable help from me. ‘An advocate can’t afford to be afraid.’
‘So’ – Betsi gave me a display of blindingly white teeth – ‘you are afraid of nothing or nobody?’
‘Except sometimes,’ I had to confess, ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed.’
‘Who is this she?’
‘As a matter of fact, my wife, Hilda.’
‘And you have to obey?’
‘Well. No. Of course not.’
‘So why do you call her that? Is it to irritate her?’
‘It seems to describe her.’
‘I feel it describes certain aspects of your character more. You are very English, Mr Rumpole. That’s your characteristic, I think.’
I wanted to ask her if she found Soapy Sam Ballard was a good lover but my courage failed me. In any event we were interrupted by an even louder hoot from Lady Mary.
Rumpole and the Angel of Death Page 22