‘That's where you're wrong, Rumpole. It won't cost us a single penny.’
‘Who's going to pay for it, then?’
‘The television.’
‘Hilda, please. Face up to reality.’
‘I am. Have you never seen the Make Over programme? No? You've always been asleep, or reading about some dreadful crime or other. The real world is passing you by. They take people's homes and make them over.’
‘Make them over to what? The bankruptcy court?’
‘Make them over to modern, lovable, hugely desirable residences where relationships can grow and flourish. And the television company pays.’
‘But why us, Hilda? Why, out of the entire population, did they choose us?’
‘I wrote, Rumpole. It was when I said that you needed a makeover that I got the idea. So I wrote to the programme and told them we had a typically seedy sort of London flat, and Mark and Sue came to see us and the answer was “Yes”. They'll do a programme about us.’
‘A programme?’ The voice was faint, the mind had grown tired of boggling.
‘Of course. They'll show the whole rebuilding thing and us as we enjoy our new lifestyle. You'll be on the television. You'll be famous, Rumpole.’
‘You mean – the whole country will see us?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Hilda sounded delighted. ‘Nationwide.’
‘So Judge Bullingham and Soapy Sam Ballard and the Lord Chief Justice and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police – not to mention the Timsons and my next Jury and the entire population of Wormwood Scrubs – can watch me sitting with you in a talk pit having our relationship cemented by beams of light from crystal balls and volcanic eruptions? Do you honestly think, Hilda, that's going to be a great help to my practice at the criminal Bar?’
‘Of course it will! You need a bit of publicity, Rumpole. No one's ever heard of you. Now you'll be quite famous. Oh, and I've got another piece of good news. I got a call from Elsie Prosser. Elsie Inglefield as was.’
‘You mean,’ I could sense what was coming, ‘you two were at school together?’
‘Of course we were. Elsie Inglefield was a house monitor with me at St Elfreda's. That was before she married the Honourable Archie Prosser.’
‘The Boy Wonder? What's honourable about him?’
‘He's Lord Binfield's son. And Elsie tells me he's joined your Chambers. A bit of a feather in the cap of 1 Equity Court, isn't it?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Anyway, I've invited them here to dinner. It's a long time ahead, but make a note in your diary. Of course we can tell them about it, but I'm afraid the new talk pit won't be ready by then.’
A pity, I thought. I could have pushed the Hon. Archie Prosser into it and nailed down the lid.
The neglected council house somewhere in Kent was a place that had no talk pit, no lava lamps and had never been subjected to any sort of makeover. The walls showed the damp, and hot water was a distant memory since the boiler packed up. The windows were frequently broken by local inhabitants, resentful of strangers whom they suspected were after their jobs or had come to sponge off their taxes. The men played cards or sometimes, in the evenings, sang national laments, or outdated rock numbers they had heard secretly on banned radios. The women, astonished at being allowed to uncover their faces or wear trousers without fear of the lash, giggled and gossiped in the kitchen. The children whooped with delight as they chased each other up and down the stairs, playing as they might have done in their villages or in the back streets of Kabul, only knowing they were out on an adventure and not caring where, or how, their future lives would be led. In one of the overcrowded bedrooms a man lay with his face to the wall, sunk in a deep depression and hopeless gloom. The others, as though afraid that this condition might be contagious, as far as possible avoided him.
When Ted Minter the solicitor called at this address, Doctor Mohammed Nabi was no longer there. He had stirred himself, gone out to buy a little food with his vouchers and not returned.
‘I told you he's afraid for his life, Mr Rumpole. Maybe it's some of the other refugees. Perhaps it's part of the Mafia that smuggled him over.’
‘Mafia? I asked Ted to explain.
‘The Russian Mafia. Aided by quite a few Afghans on the make. The mango chutney element has the stamp of Afghans on it.’
‘So which of their organizations is threatening the Doctor?’
‘Jamil doesn't know. He says the Doctor hasn't any idea, but it was a Russian he paid originally.’
‘And the Doctor's vanished?’
‘I told you, I only get instructions through Jamil.’
‘And have you met this Jamil?’
‘He telephones me.’
‘So what organization does he belong to?’
‘Well,’ Ted became vague, started a search in his overstuffed briefcase again and gave it up. ‘As I said, he's some kind of social worker. They've certainly heard of him at the Asylum Seekers' Council. He keeps them informed. He speaks reasonable English, so he can cope with the forms. It's not entirely satisfactory.’
‘If you want my honest legal opinion, it's bloody hopeless.’
‘It was before the adjudicator.’ Ted smiled as if the general hopelessness of the world he operated in caused him only vague amusement. ‘Neither of them turned up, not Jamil, not the Doctor. My instructions were to go on without them. Read the statements, you know the sort of thing. Make the legal argument. Of course they threw us out. The strange thing was…’
‘What?’
‘We got leave to appeal to the Tribunal.’
‘As a reward for not bothering to turn up?
‘I had to undertake to get the Doctor to the Appeal.’
‘Sounds a pretty hopeless undertaking.’
‘Jamil says the Doctor realizes it's vitally important. He'll be there. Another strange thing…’
‘What?’
‘They've made it a “Starred Appeal”. As though we were going to decide some great point of legal principle.’
‘Tell the Doctor's messenger that the vital point of legal principle is whether he bothers to turn up, not only to the hearing but to a conference in these Chambers within the next two weeks. And if he can't force himself to do that, you can send him a message of goodbye from Rumpole.’
‘Rumpole, do you know the one about marriage being like a hurricane?’
‘Yes,’ I told the Boy Wonder, but it didn't deter him in the least.
‘It starts with all that sucking and blowing and you end up by losing your house!’ Our addition to Equity Court then laughed immoderately. Having heard this joke told somewhat better by Jack Pommeroy the week before, I gave a weakish smile.
‘You don't know many jokes, do you, Rumpole?’
‘Only one,’ I had to confess, ‘and that's not a true belly laugh.’
‘Tell us though.’
The fact that you've been offered a seat in Chambers, was what I'd intended to say, but I decided not to bring myself down to the Archie Prosser level. Instead I told him I had to get to the Temple station before they privatized the Underground and caused total chaos on the Circle Line.
To this he answered unexpectedly, ‘You know we have girls in the Sheridan Club now?’
‘No, I didn't know.’
‘A lot of the members were against it, but I like to see a girl round the old place occasionally. Cheers a fellow up.’
‘Does it really?’
‘So what I meant to say was, could you stop in for a drink at the old place? There's a girl member there longing to meet you. Bunty Heygate. You've heard of her, of course – a real live wire of the Home Office team.’
A live wire at the Home Office sounded a bit of an oxymoron, like hot ice. That gloomy institution, dedicated to cracking down on Magna Carta, the Presumption of Innocence, the right to cross-examine or any other available aid to a fair trial, seemed to me to be shrouded in perpetual darkness. ‘But why ever,’ I asked Archie, ‘does this Home Office
luminary want to see me?’
‘Afghanistan.’
‘Oh yes?’ For once the fellow was beginning to hold my attention.
‘Aren't you defending some doctor who came in with a load of pickles?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Over here no doubt to sponge on our National Health Service.’
‘You mean there's a terrible danger he might help get a few patients off their trolleys?’
‘Come and meet Bunty anyway.’ Archie was in no way put out. ‘She's heard such a lot about you. Oh, and by the way, see if you can't think of a few jokes.’
‘A drink in the Sheridan Club with the Honourable Archie Prosser and the star of the Home Office, Rumpole? Of course you've got to go. And remind him about coming here on the fourteenth of the month after next. It seems Archie is tied up for dinner till then.’
‘Tied up for dinner.’ I thought about it as Archie raised a glass of champagne to his lips. Was he frequently tied up, trussed, roasted to a pleasant, light brown and served, perhaps with an orange in his mouth, on a silver platter? My dream was interrupted by a throaty female voice calling, ‘Cheers, Mr Rumpole.’ She drank and, without hesitation, I followed her example.
I had come, at Hilda's express order, to the Sheridan Club, hidden in the purlieus of Whitehall. The room we sat in was large and gloomy, lit by a single chandelier, with chocolate-brown walls and furnished with armchairs flattened by long use in the seating department and shiny, like jackets worn at the elbows. The temperature in the room was a good four degrees lower than the outside air, so chilling the champagne seemed unnecessary.
This was the institution to which women had, after a long campaign against a determined opposition, gained access, an event greeted by the papers as though it were as great an historical moment as entry to the House of Commons or the priesthood. Some of these ‘girls' were dotted about the room. Grey-haired, darkly clothed, bespectacled, they were hard to distinguish from the elderly, pink-cheeked, high-voiced old men they were entertaining or being entertained by.
Bunty Heygate was an exception. She might well, with some justification, still have been called a ‘girl’. Her blonde hair was cut in a fashionable page-boy manner. Her face was fresh and her eyes appealing. She wore a red coat and skirt with darker velvet at the collar and cuffs, and heels just this side of a fetishist's delight. Her voice had that note of command learned as part of the curriculum in girls' boarding schools.
‘We so admire the way you stand up in Court, Mr Rumpole, fighting for human rights,’ Bunty told me.
‘Do you really?’ This, from a member of the Government, was something of a revelation.
‘I want you to believe we're right behind you.’
‘So far behind that you're practically out of sight. Judging from what your Home Secretary said.’
‘Mr Rumpole,’ she interrupted me with a tolerant smile, ‘we politicians have to live in the real world. I've got constituents in the North of England, men who gather in pubs and discuss hanging and flogging first-time offenders – that's after they've castrated them, of course. Now, when we make statements about our policy, those are the people we have to think about.’
‘You mean the men in pubs?’
‘Exactly! But we do respect what you said in Court about Jury trials…’
‘Members of the Jury, you are the lamp that shows the light of freedom burns.’ I had said that in a case at Snaresbrook concerning sending indecent magazines through the post. It got reported in the Guardian as a saying of the week, but the Jury convicted me. I was grateful to Bunty for remembering it. Then I asked, ‘Why are you cutting down on Jury trials?’
‘Mr Rumpole,’ Bunty was smiling gently. ‘Get real. Have you ever been north of Watford?’
‘Very often. Have you?’
‘I do try to go. But since I became a member here, it's so tempting to stay in London.’ There was a pause as she looked round the room with apparent affection, at the dark walls, the wheezing chairs and the members' guests who were looking with awe at the central table set out with back numbers of The Field and Country Life and the portrait of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He was looking down in some disapproval at the club which bore his name and yet seemed singularly short of drunken playwrights and loud-voiced, bosomy actresses. Bunty Heygate MP was examining her well-tended nails and she started almost shyly. ‘You're representing Doctor Nabi, Archie told me.’
‘I hope to be, when we can find him. I was told you think it's an important case. A Starred Appeal they said. That's very flattering.’
‘The Foreign Office have taken a view, haven't they, Bunty?’ Archie Prosser, who seemed to move in high political circles, was helping her out.
‘Well, to be honest with you,’ she smiled at me disarmingly, ‘we have a problem. We do have to respect, well, other nations whose ways may be different from ours. We have to respect their ethnicity.’
‘Ethnicity?’ It was a word to which I had not yet become accustomed. ‘What does that mean, exactly?’
‘Well, you see, we want an Afghan to be proud of his Afghanism, his religion, his customs. His traditional way of life. It's not politically correct, we feel, for us to impose white, Western values on another civilization. We would not want Afghans…’
‘To become members of the Sheridan Club, for instance?’ I suggested. This appeared to irritate Bunty, who became noticeably less friendly.
‘It's not like that! It's, well… As you know, they have their own ways of dealing with theft, which seem perfectly reasonable to them.’
‘You mean by chopping off people's hands?’
‘It's all part of their Sharia law.’
‘Which would be extremely popular with those men in pubs up North you keep talking about. You know the Afghan police make their local doctors attend to the hand-chopping?’ My cross-examiner's blood was up.
‘There's no direct evidence of that.’ Archie Prosser seemed to know.
‘There will be! Once I get the good Doctor in front of the Tribunal.’
‘All I'm trying to say, Mr Rumpole,’ Bunty leaned forward and spoke now in a low, eager voice, almost as if she were making a declaration of love, ‘is that this country has to maintain reasonably friendly relations with countries and people… all over the world.’ Here she spread out her hands as though to embrace Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, practitioners of Sharia law and worshippers of the Reverend Moon in one cosy and politically correct embrace.
‘So you're in favour of women being denied education and treatment in hospital, or being whipped for wearing trousers?’
‘Of course I'm not,’ she explained patiently, as though to a child. ‘I was brought up in a different cultural tradition.’
And damned lucky for you, I thought, as I inspected her page-boy cut and scarlet nails; you might have a bit of a tough time in Kabul. ‘You don't believe in a justice which transcends all cultural traditions?’ I asked them both in a voice so unexpectedly resonant that several of the assembled old boys and their girlfriends turned to look at me in alarm.
‘Of course you'll say that in Court, and we'll all respect you for it.’ Once again Bunty sounded as though she were soothing a difficult child. ‘But we don't want the Tribunal used as a platform for politicians or, worse still, political terrorists! We don't want that, do we?’
It was a question, I thought, that didn't deserve an answer, and I gave her none. Bunty put her bright fingers against her mouth and, apparently, thought profoundly.
‘Ours is a government of barristers,’ she told me, ‘but we're always needing more.’
‘Are you?’ I thought I knew what was coming.
‘So many tribunals, committees needing chairmen. We're facing an alarming shortage of stipendiary magistrates.’
‘That doesn't alarm me,’ I had to confess.
‘The Lord Chancellor's always looking for someone to appoint.’
The approach had been made, and I let it dangle in the air until Ar
chie came crashing in with, ‘At your age, Rumpole, don't you want a steady job? Get your feet under some reasonably well-paid desk?’
‘I don't think so. I fully expect to die with my wig on. Now I'd better get back to the mansion flat, before it's made over.’
‘Great to meet you, Mr Rumpole.’ Bunty was all smiles again. ‘You know we have a kind of connection. I was at Saint Elfreda's. Long after your wife, of course, but we met briefly at the OE dinner.’
So Bunty had received the same kick-start in life as She Who Must Be Obeyed. That piece of news, I have to confess, didn't surprise me in the least.
‘Mr Minter is here, Sir. And he's got a doctor with him.’ My clerk, Henry, rang me in my room, where I was considering the possibility of lighting an outlawed cheroot and getting away with it.
‘Doctor Nabi?’ I asked him.
‘I don't know, Sir. I'll just check.’ I slid the small cigar out of its packet while listening to the ensuing silence. Then Henry said, ‘That seems to be his name, Sir.’
I had scarcely lit up before my door opened. The possibility of it being Bonzo Ballard and the smoke police caused me to dispose of the evidence. As I did so, Ted Minter and his briefcase came shambling eagerly in, accompanied by a tall, thin, brown-eyed stranger with a shy smile.
‘Found him at last. This is the missing Doctor.’ Ted was understandably triumphant.
I waved the Doctor towards my client's chair and asked Ted, ‘How did that happen?’
‘I got a call from Jamil saying he was coming to my office. That was yesterday.’
‘We were worried about you, Doctor,’ I said. ‘No one could find you.’
‘I also was worried, Mr Rumpole. I was afraid all the time they would kill me.’ He spoke with a pleasant, rather breathless accent, but seemed to have, I was relieved to discover, a reasonable command of English. I wouldn't have to examine him through an interpreter.
‘We may not treat refugees particularly well,’ I advised him. ‘Our government seems anxious to get rid of them as quickly as possible. But we don't actually cull them. We save that honour for the sheep. Now tell me, Doctor, what were you so afraid of?’
Rumpole Rests His Case Page 8