‘Might you take’ – Ballard was at his most obsequious – ‘in your great wisdom and humanity, which is a byword at the Old Bailey; you are known, I believe, as “the Quality of Mercy” down there – a merciful view if there were to be a contrite apology?’
‘Rumpole’d rather be disbarred than apologize to me.’ Oliphant was probably right.
‘But if he would?’
‘If he would, it’d cause him more genuine pain and grief than anything else in the world.’ And then the judge, thinking it over, was heard to make some sort of gurgling noise that might have passed for a chuckle. ‘I’d enjoy seeing that, I really would. I’d love to see Horace Rumpole grovel. That might be punishment enough. It would be up to the tribunal, of course.’
‘Of course. But your attitude, Judge, would have such an influence, given the great respect you’re held in at the Bar. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.’
It was after that bit of crawling over the dessert that I spotted Oliphant coming out of Middle Temple Lane and Ballard imagined he’d saved me from ending my legal career in the cold and inhospitable waters of the Thames.
It soon became clear to me that my supporters expected me to appear as a penitent before Mr Justice Oliphant. This was the requirement of She Who Must Be Obeyed, who pointed out the awful consequences of my refusal to bow the knee. ‘How could I bear it, Rumpole?’ she said one evening when the nine o’clock news had failed to entertain us. ‘I remember Daddy at the Bar and how everyone respected him. How could I bear to be the wife of a disbarred barrister? How could I meet any of the fellows in chambers and hear them say, as I turned away, “Of course, you remember old Rumpole. Kicked out for unprofessional conduct.” ’
Of course I saw her point. I sighed heavily and asked her what she wanted me to do.
‘Take Sam Ballard’s advice. We’ve all told you, apologize to Sir Oliver Oliphant.’
‘All right, Hilda, you win.’ I hope I said it convincingly, but down towards the carpet, beside the arm of my chair, I had my fingers crossed.
Hilda and I were not the only couple whose views were not entirely at one in that uneasy period before my trial. During a quiet moment in the clerk’s room, Henry came out with some startling news for Dot.
‘Well, I told Eileen last night. It was an evening when she wasn’t out at the Drainage Inquiry and I told my wife quite frankly what we decided.’
‘What did we decide?’ Dot asked nervously.
‘Like, what you told me. I’m a big part of your life.’
‘Did I say that?’
‘You know you did. We can’t hide it, can we, Dot? We’re going to make a future together.’
‘You told your wife that?’ Dot was now seriously worried.
‘She understood what I was on about. Eileen understands I got to have this one chance of happiness, while I’m still young enough to enjoy it.’
‘Did you say “young enough”, Henry?’
‘So, we’re beginning a new life together. That all right, Dot?’
Before she could answer him, the telephone rang and the clerk’s room began to fill with solicitors and learned friends in search of briefs. Henry seemed to regard the matter as closed and Dot didn’t dare to reopen it, at least until after my trial was over and a historic meeting took place.
During the daytime, when the nuts and fruit and Madeira were put away and the tables were arranged in a more threatening and judicial manner, my trial began in the Outer Temple Parliament Room. It was all, I’m sure, intended to be pleasant and informal: I wasn’t guarded in a dock but sat in a comfortable chair beside my legal advisers, Sam Ballard, QC, Liz Probert, his junior, and Mr Bernard, my instructing solicitor. However, all friendly feelings were banished by the look on the face of the presiding judge; I had drawn the short straw in the shape of Mr Justice Graves – or Gravestone, as I preferred to call him – who looked as though he was sick to the stomach at the thought of a barrister accused of such appalling crimes, but if someone had to be he was relieved, on the whole, that it was only Horace Rumpole.
Claude gave evidence in a highly embarrassed way of what he’d heard and I instructed Ballard not to ask him any questions. This came as a relief to him as he couldn’t think of any questions to ask. And then Ollie Oliphant came puffing in, bald as an egg without his wig, wearing a dark suit and the artificial flower of some charity in his buttonhole. He was excused from taking the oath by Graves, who acted on the well-known theory that judges are incapable of fibbing, and he gave his account of all my sins and omissions to Montague Varian, QC, for the prosecution. As he did so, I examined the faces of my judges. Graves might have been carved out of yellowish marble; the lay assessor was Lady Mendip, the headmistress, and she looked as though she were hearing an account of disgusting words found chalked up on a blackboard. Of the three practising barristers sent to try me only Arthur Nottley smiled faintly, but then I had seen him smile through the most horrendous murder cases.
When Varian had finished, Ballard rose, with the greatest respect, to cross-examine. ‘It’s extremely courteous of you to agree to attend here in person, Judge.’
‘And absolutely charming of you to lodge a complaint against me,’ I murmured politely.
‘Now my client wants you to know that he was suffering from a severe toothache on the day in question.’ Ballard was wrong; I didn’t particularly want the judge to know that. At any rate, Graves didn’t think much of my temporary stopping as a defence.
‘Mr Ballard,’ he said, ‘is toothache an excuse for speaking to a client during the luncheon-time adjournment? I should have thought Mr Rumpole would have been anxious to rest his mouth.’
‘My Lord, I’m now dealing with the question of rudeness to the learned judge.’
‘The boring old fart evidence,’ I thought I heard Nottley whisper to his neighbouring barrister.
And then Ballard pulled a trick on me which I hadn’t expected. ‘I understand my client wishes to apologize to the learned judge in his own words,’ he told the tribunal. No doubt he expected that, overcome by the solemnity of the occasion, I would run up the white flag and beg for mercy. He sat down and I did indeed rise to my feet and address Mr Justice Oliphant along these lines.
‘My Lord,’ I started formally, ‘if it please your Lordship, I do realize there are certain things which should not be said or done in court, things that are utterly inexcusable and no doubt amount to contempt.’
As I said this, Graves leant forward and I saw, as I had never in court seen before, a faint smile on those gaunt features. ‘Mr Rumpole, the tribunal is, I believe I can speak for us all, both surprised and gratified by this unusually apologetic attitude.’ Here the quartet beside him nodded in agreement. ‘I take it you’re about to withdraw the inexcusable phrases.’
‘Inexcusable, certainly,’ I agreed. ‘I was just about to put to Mr Justice Oliphant the inexcusable manner in which he sighs and rolls his eyes to heaven when he sums up the defence case.’ And here I embarked on a mild imitation of Ollie Oliphant: ‘ “Of course you can believe that if you like, Members of the Jury, but use your common sense, why don’t you?” And what about describing my client’s conduct as manslaughter during the evidence, which was the very fact the jury had to decide? If he’s prepared to say sorry for that, then I’ll apologize for pointing out his undoubted prejudice.’
Oliphant, who had slowly been coming to the boil, exploded at this point. ‘Am I expected to sit here and endure a repetition of the quite intolerable …’
‘No, no, my Lord!’ Ballard fluttered to his feet. ‘Of course not. Please, Mr Rumpole. If it please your Lordship, may I take instructions?’ And when Graves said, ‘I think you’d better,’ my defender turned to me with, ‘You said you’d apologize.’
‘I’m prepared to swap apologies,’ I whispered back.
‘I heard that, Mr Ballard.’ Graves was triumphant. ‘As I think your client knows perfectly well, my hearing is exceptionally keen. I wonder what Mr Rumpole’
s excuse is for his extraordinary behaviour today. He isn’t suffering from toothache now, is he?’
‘My Lord, I will take further instructions.’ This time he whispered, ‘Rumpole! Hadn’t you better have toothache?’
‘No, I had it out.’
‘I’m afraid, my Lord’ – Ballard turned to Graves, disappointed – ‘the answer is no. He had it out during the trial.’
‘So, on this occasion, Mr Ballard, you can’t even plead toothache as a defence?’
‘I’m afraid not, my Lord.’
‘Had it out … during the trial.’ Graves was making a careful note, then he screwed the top back on his pen with the greatest care and said, ‘We shall continue with this unhappy case tomorrow morning.’
‘My Lord’ – I rose to my feet again – ‘may I make an application?’
‘What is it, Mr Rumpole?’ Graves asked warily, as well he might.
‘I’m getting tired of Mr Ballard’s attempts to get me to apologize, unilaterally. Would you ask him not to speak to his client over the adjournment?’
Graves had made a note of the historic fact that I had had my tooth out during the trial, and Liz had noted it down also. As she wrote she started to speculate, as I had taught her to do in the distant days when she was my pupil. As soon as the tribunal packed up business for the day she went back to chambers and persuaded Claude Erskine-Brown to take her down to the Old Bailey and show her the locus in quo, the scene where the ghastly crime of chattering to a client had been committed.
Bewildered, but no doubt filled with guilt at his treacherous behaviour to a fellow hack, Claude led her to the archway through which he had seen the tedious Tong listening to Rumpole’s harangue.
‘And where did you see Rumpole?’
‘Well, he came out through the arch after he’d finished talking to his client.’
‘But while he was speaking to his client.’
‘Well, actually,’ Claude had to admit, ‘I didn’t see him then, at all. I mean, I suppose he was hidden from my view, Liz.’
‘I suppose he was.’ At which she strode purposefully through the arch and saw what, perhaps, she had expected to find, a row of telephones on the wall, in a position which would also have been invisible to the earwigging Claude. They were half covered, it’s true, with plastic hoods, but a man who didn’t wish to crouch under these contrivances might stand freely with the connection pulled out to its full extent and speak to whoever he had chosen to abuse.
‘So Rumpole might have been standing here when you were listening?’ Liz had taken up her position by one of the phones.
‘I suppose so.’
‘And you heard him say words like, “Just get on with it. I’ve got enough trouble without you causing me all this agony. Get it out!”?’
‘I told the tribunal that, don’t you remember?’ The true meaning of the words hadn’t yet sunk into that vague repository of Wagnerian snatches and romantic longings, the Erskine-Brown mind. Liz, however, saw the truth in all its simplicity as she lifted a telephone, brushed it with her credit card in a way I could never manage, and was, in an instant, speaking to She Who Must Be Obeyed. Mizz Probert had two simple requests: could Hilda come down to the Temple tomorrow and what, please, was the name of Horace’s dentist?
When the tribunal met next morning, my not so learned counsel announced that my case was to be placed in more competent hands. ‘My learned junior Miss Probert,’ Sam Ballard said, ‘will call our next witness, but first she wishes to recall Mr Erskine-Brown.’
No one objected to this and Claude returned to the witness’s chair to explain the position of the archway and the telephones, and the fact that he hadn’t, indeed, seen me speaking to Tong. Montague Varian had no questions and my judges were left wondering what significance, if any, to attach to this new evidence. I was sure that it would make no difference to the result, but then Liz Probert uttered the dread words, ‘I will now call Mr Lionel Leering.’
I had been at a crossroads; one way led on through a countryside too well known to me. I could journey on for ever round the courts, arguing cases, winning some, losing more and more perhaps in my few remaining years. The other road was the way of escape, and once Mr Leering gave his evidence that, I knew, would be closed to me. ‘Don’t do it,’ I whispered my instructions to Mizz Probert. ‘I’m not fighting this case.’
‘Oh, Rumpole!’ She turned and leant down to my level, her face shining with enthusiasm. ‘I’m going to win! It’s what you taught me to do. Don’t spoil it for me now.’
I thought then of all the bloody-minded clients who had wrecked the cases in which I was about to chalk up a victory. It was her big moment and who was I to snatch it from her? I was tired, too tired to win, but also too tired to lose, so I gave her her head. ‘Go on, then,’ I told her, ‘if you have to.’
With her nostrils dilated and the light of battle in her eyes, Mizz Liz Probert turned on her dental witness and proceeded to demolish the prosecution case.
‘Do you carry on your practice in Harley Street, in London?’
‘That is so. And may I say, I have a most important bridge to insert this morning. The patient is very much in the public eye.’
‘Then I’ll try and make this as painless as possible,’ Liz assured him. ‘Did you treat Mr Rumpole on the morning of May the sixteenth?’
‘I did. He came early because he told me he was in the middle of a case at the Old Bailey. I think he was defending in a manslaughter. I gave him a temporary stopping, which I thought would keep him going.’
‘Did it?’
‘Apparently not. He rang me around lunchtime. He told me that his tooth was causing him pain and he was extremely angry. He raised his voice at me.’
‘Can you remember what he said?’
‘So far as I can recall he said something like, “I’ve got enough trouble with the judge without you causing me all this agony. Get it out!” and, “Put us out of our misery!” ’
‘What do you think he meant?’
‘He wanted his tooth extracted.’
‘Did you do it for him?’
‘Yes, I stayed on late especially. I saw him at seven thirty that evening. He was more cheerful then, but a little unsteady on his feet. I believe he’d been drinking brandy to give himself Dutch courage.’
‘I think that may well have been so,’ Liz agreed.
Now the members of the tribunal were whispering together. Then the whispering stopped and Mr Justice Gravestone turned an ancient and fish-like eye on my prosecutor. ‘If this evidence is correct, Mr Varian, and we remember the admission made by Mr Claude Erskine-Brown and the position of the telephones, and the fact that he never saw Mr Rumpole, then this allegation about speaking to his client falls to the ground, does it not?’
‘I must concede that, my Lord.’
‘Then all that remains are the offensive remarks to Mr Justice Oliphant.’
‘Yes, my Lord.’
‘Yes, well, I’m much obliged.’ The fishy beam was turned on to the defence. ‘This case now turns solely on whether your client is prepared to make a proper, unilateral apology to my brother Oliphant.’
‘Indeed, my Lord.’
‘Then we’ll consider that matter, after a short adjournment.’
So we all did a good deal of bowing to each other and as I came out of the Parliament Room, who should I see but She Who Must Be Obeyed, who, for a reason then unknown to me, made a most surprising U-turn. ‘Rumpole,’ she said, ‘I’ve been thinking things over and I think Oliphant treated you abominably. My view of the matter is that you shouldn’t apologize at all!’
‘Is that your view, Hilda?’
‘Of course it is. I’m sure nothing will make you stop work, unless you’re disbarred, and think how wonderful that will be for our marriage.’
‘What do you mean?’ But I’d already guessed, with a sort of dread, what she was driving at.
‘If you can’t consort with all those criminals, I’ll have you at h
ome all day! There’s so many little jobs for you to do. Repaper the kitchen, get the parquet in the hallway polished. You’d be able to help me with the shopping every day. And we’d have my friends round to tea; Dodo Mackintosh complains she sees nothing of you.’ There was considerably more in this vein, but Hilda had already said enough to make up my mind. When my judges were back, refreshed with coffee, biscuits and, in certain cases, a quick drag on a Silk Cut, Sam Ballard announced that I wished to make a statement, the die was cast and I tottered to my feet and spoke to the following effect.
‘If your Lordship, and the members of the tribunal, please. I have, I hope, some knowledge of the human race in general and the judicial race in particular. I do realize that some of those elevated to the Bench are more vulnerable, more easily offended than others. Over my years at the Old Bailey, before your Lordship and his brother judges, I have had to grow a skin like a rhinoceros. Mr Justice Oliphant, I acknowledge, is a more retiring, shy and sensitive plant, and if anything I have said may have wounded him, I do most humbly, most sincerely apologize.’ At this I bowed and whispered to Mizz Liz Probert, ‘Will that do?’
What went on behind closed doors between my judges I can’t say. Were some of them, was even the sea-green incorruptible Graves, a little tired of Ollie’s down-to-earth North Country common sense; had they been sufficiently bored by him over port and walnuts to wish to deflate, just a little, that great self-satisfied balloon? Or did they stop short of depriving the Old Bailey monument of its few moments of worthwhile drama? Would they really have wanted to take all the fun out of the criminal law? I don’t know the answer to these questions but in one rather athletic bound Rumpole was free, still to be audible in the Ludgate Circus palais de justice.
The next events of importance occurred at an ambitious chambers party held as a delayed celebration of the fact that Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, our Portia, was now elegantly perched on the High Court Bench and her husband, Claude, had received the lesser honour of being swathed in silk. This beano took place in Ballard’s room and all the characters in Equity Court were there, together with their partners, as Mizz Liz would call them, and I had taken the opportunity of issuing a few further invitations on my own account.
Forever Rumpole Page 30