‘Why on earth?’ He still hadn’t quite caught my drift.
‘Well, you know exactly what these young lady barristers are, impressionable, passionate even, and enormously impressed with the older legal hack, especially one teetering on the verge of knee breeches and a silk gown.’
‘You don’t mean…?’ I could see that now he had perked up considerably.
‘And she seems to find you extremely personable, Claude!’ I laid it on thick. ‘You put her in distinct mind, so she has told me, of a film actor – “Newman”, could that be the name?’ I asked innocently, and drained my glass. At which moment, Claude Erskine-Brown took off his spectacles and admired himself in one of the mirrors, decorated with fronds of frosty vegetation, that cover Pommeroy’s walls. ‘Ridiculous!’ he said, but I could see that the old fish was well and truly hooked.
‘Of course it’s ridiculous,’ I agreed. ‘But on second thoughts, far better she doesn’t get into Chambers. Wouldn’t you agree?’ I left him then, but as I went out of Pommeroy’s, Erskine-Brown was still looking at himself shortsightedly in the mirror.
The next day Henry gave me the glad news that I was to be leading the extraordinarily busy Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown in the Timson defence. It seemed that Mr Bernard had seen sense on the subject of our little disagreement at Uxbridge, but Henry told me, extremely severely, that he couldn’t go on clerking for me if I called my instructing solicitor a ‘viper’ again. I asked him if he’d pass ‘snake’, assured him I wasn’t serious, and then went up to seek out our new Head of Chambers in his lair.
I was going to play the next card in the Fiona Allways game. I knocked at the door, heard a cry of ‘Who is it?’ and found Ballard with a cup of tea and a ginger biscuit working on some massive prosecution involving a large number of villains who were all represented by different-coloured pencils.
‘Oh. It’s you.’ Our leader didn’t sound particularly welcoming. All the same I came in, pushed Ballard’s papers aside and sat on the edge of his desk.
‘Just thought I ought to give you a friendly warning,’ I started confidentially.
‘Isn’t it you that needs warning? Henry tells me that you’ve taken to being offensive to Mr Bernard.’
I lit up a small cigar and blew out smoke. Ballard coughed pointedly.
‘It doesn’t do Chambers any good, you know, insulting a solicitor,’ he told me. By way of an answer I closed my eyes and tried a vivid description.
‘Fascinating character!’ I began. ‘Marvellous hair, burnished like autumn leaves. Tender white neck, sticking out of the starched white collar…’
‘Mr Bernard?’ Ballard was puzzled.
‘Of course not!’ I put him right. ‘I was speaking of Miss Phillida Trant, now Mrs Erskine-Brown.’ I brought out the packet of small cigars and offered it. ‘You don’t smoke, I suppose?’
‘You know I don’t.’
‘What do you do, I wonder?’ There was a short diversion as Ballard blew my ash off his depositions and then I said thoughtfully, ‘Gorgeous creature in many ways, our Portia.’
‘With a most enviable practice, I understand,’ Ballard agreed. ‘Perhaps she’s polite to solicitors.’
‘Determined to rise to the absolute top.’
‘I have the highest respect for Phillida, of course, but…’
‘Devious.’ I supplied the word. ‘A brilliant mind, of course, but devious!’
‘Rumpole. What are you trying to tell me?’ Ballard seemed anxious to bring our dialogue to a swift conclusion.
‘The way she got you to show your sexual prejudices at that Chambers meeting!’ I said with admiration.
‘My what…?’
‘Your blind and Victorian opposition to women in the legal profession. I believe she’s writing a report on that to the Bar Council. Plus ten articles for the Observer, in depth.’
‘But Rumpole, she spoke against Allways.’ Ballard was already arguing weakly.
‘What a tactician!’ For the sake of emphasis, I gave Ballard a brisk slap on the shoulder.
‘She seemed totally opposed to the girl.’
I slipped off his desk and took a turn round the room. ‘Just to lead you on, don’t you see? To get you to show your hand. You walked right into it, Bollard. I can see the headlines now! “Christian barrister presides over sexist redoubt!” “Bollard, Q.C., puts the clock back fifty years.” ’
‘Ballard.’ He corrected me without too much conviction and said, ‘I didn’t take that attitude, surely.’
‘You will have done!’ I assured him, ‘by the time our Phillida’s finished with you. Don’t cross her, Bollard, I warn you. She has the ear of the Lord Chancellor. I don’t know if you were ever hoping for some sort of minor judgeship…’ I went to the door and then turned back to Ballard. ‘Of course, you have one thing in your favour.’
‘What’s that?’ He seemed prepared to clutch at a straw. It was then that I played the ace. ‘Our Portia seems to have taken something of a shine to you,’ I told him. ‘ “Craggily handsome” I think was the way she put it. I suppose there’s just a chance you might get round her. Try using your irresistible charm.’
I left him then. The poor old darling was looking like a person who has to choose between a public execution and a heady draught of hemlock.
Whatever may be said about the equality of the sexes, there is still something about the nature of women which parts the average man almost entirely from his marbles. Faced with most problems, both Erskine-Brown and Ballard might have proved reasonably resolute. When the question concerned a moderately personable young woman, they became as clay in the potter’s hands. These thoughts passed through my mind as I lay in bed that night staring at the ceiling, while Hilda sat at the dressing table in night attire, brushing her hair before coming to bed.
‘What are you thinking, Rumpole?’ she asked. ‘I know you, Rumpole. You’re lying there thinking about something!’
‘I was thinking,’ I confessed, ‘about man’s attitude to the female of the species.’
‘Oh, were you indeed?’ Hilda sounded deeply suspicious.
‘On the one hand the presence of a woman strikes him with terror!’
‘Really, Rumpole, don’t be absurd,’ Hilda said severely.
‘And fierce resentment.’
‘Is that what you were thinking?’
‘And yet he finds her not only indispensable, but quite irresistible. Faced with a whiff of perfume, for instance, he is reduced to a state bordering on imbecility.’
‘Rumpole. Are you really?’ Hilda’s voice had softened considerably. The room became redolent with the smell of lavender water. Hilda was spraying on perfume.
‘She is a woman, therefore may be woo’d;
She is a woman, therefore may be won;’
I repeated sleepily.
I saw Hilda emerge from her dressing gown and make towards the bed. She said, ‘Oh, Rumpole…’ quite tenderly. But then sleep claimed me, and I heard no more.
One afternoon I turned up at the gates of Brixton Prison with my learned junior, Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, and there was Mr Bernard waiting for us and replying to my hearty greeting in a somewhat guarded manner.
‘Hail to thee blythe Bernard!’ I said, and he replied, ‘We’re taking you in on the express wishes of the client, Mr Rumpole. Just for this case.’
I then became aware of a pleasant-looking young woman with blonde hair and a small, rather plump child who was sitting slumped in a pushchair, regarding me with a wary eye.
‘Mr Rumpole.’ The lady introduced herself. ‘I’m April Timson. Tony’s that glad that you’re going to be his brief.’
My companion looked less than flattered, but I greeted our client’s family warmly.
‘Mrs Timson, good of you to say so. And who’s this young hopeful?’
‘That’s our young Vince. Been in to see his dad,’ said the child’s proud mother.
‘Delighted to meet you, Vincent,’ I said, and managed to le
ave a thought with April which might pay off in the course of time. ‘Let me know,’ I said, ‘the moment he gets into trouble.’
‘Straight up, it’s a sodding plant,’ said Tony Timson, and then turned apologetically to my junior. ‘Pardon my French.’
‘Don’t be so silly, Tony.’ Phillida didn’t like not being taken for one of the boys. We were sitting in a small glass-walled room in the interview block at Brixton, and I felt I had to question Tony further as to his suggested defence.
‘What sort of a plant are you suggesting,’ I asked. ‘A floribunda of the Serious Crimes Squad or an exotic bloom cultivated by the Molloys?’
‘That D.I. Broome. He’s got no love for the Timsons,’ Tony grumbled.
‘Neither have the Molloys.’
‘That’s true, Mr Rumpole. That’s very true.’
‘A plant by the supergrass’s family? I suppose it’s possible.’ I considered the suggestion.
‘I’d say it’s typical.’
‘So some person unknown brought in the cash and popped it into your Super Snow White Extra DeLuxe Easy-Wash?’ I framed the charge.
‘The jury may now wonder how Tony can afford all these luxuries out of window-cleaning,’ Phillida suggested.
‘It’s not a luxury. My April says it’s just something you got to have,’ said Tony, the proud householder.
‘You know how he affords these things, Portia?’ I explained our case to one not expert in the Timson branch of the law. ‘Tony’s a minor villain. Small stuff. Let’s have a look at his form.’ I plucked a sheet of paper from my brief. ‘Warehouse-breaking, shop-breaking, criminal damage to a set of traffic lights…’
‘I misjudged a turning, Mr Rumpole,’ Tony admitted. It was the item of which he seemed slightly ashamed. But there was more to come.
‘Careless driving, dangerous driving, failure to report an accident,’ I read out. ‘Look here, old sweetheart. If I get you out of this, do promise not to give me a lift home.’
That same evening, Claude Erskine-Brown put his head round the door of my room, where Miss Fiona Allways was looking up a bit of law, and invited her to join him in a bottle of Pommeroy’s bubbly. Naturally anxious to be on friendly terms with those who held her legal future in their hands, she accepted the invitation, and I am indebted to her for an account of what then took place.
Once ensconced at a corner table in the shadowy regions of the wine bar, Erskine-Brown took off his spectacles and sighed as though worn out by the cares of office.
‘It can be lonely at the top, Fiona,’ he said. ‘I mean, you may wonder what it feels like to be on the verge of becoming a Q.C.’ Perhaps he was waiting for her to say something, but as she didn’t he repeated with a sigh, ‘I’ll tell you. Lonely.’
‘But you’ve got Mrs Erskine-Brown.’ Fiona was puzzled.
Claude gave her a sad little smile. ‘Mrs Erskine-Brown! I seem to see so little of Phillida nowadays. Pressures of work, of course. No,’ he went on seriously, ‘there comes a time in this job when a person feels terribly alone.’
‘I suppose so.’ Fiona felt the topic was becoming exhausted.
‘I envy you those happy, carefree days when you hop from Magistrates Court to Magistrates Court, picking up little crumbs of indecent exposure.’
‘Frozen chicken,’ Fiona corrected him.
‘What?’ Erskine-Brown looked puzzled.
‘I was doing a case about frozen chicken pieces. It seemed quite a responsibility to me.’
As the subject had moved from himself Claude’s attention wandered. He looked across to the bar and said, ‘Is that old Rumpole over there?’
‘Why?’ Fiona asked, in all innocence. ‘Can’t you see without your glasses?’
In fact, and this Erskine-Brown didn’t notice, perhaps because she was hidden in the mêlée at the bar, I had come into the joint with Phillida in order that we might refresh ourselves after a hard conference at Brixton. I said I hoped she had no hard feelings about me being taken in to lead her in the Timson affair. She confessed to just a few hard feelings, but was then sporting enough to buy us a perfectly reasonable bottle.
‘Criminals and barristers, Portia,’ I told her as Jack Pommeroy was uncorking the claret. ‘Both extremely conservative professions…’
But before she had time to absorb this thought, Phillida was off like a hound on the scent towards a corner of the room. Again I have to rely on Miss Allways’s account for what was going on at the distant table.
‘And if ever you have the slightest problem,’ Erskine-Brown was saying gently, ‘of a legal nature, or anything else come to that, don’t hesitate, Fiona. A silk’s door is always open to a member of Chambers, however junior.’
‘A member of Chambers?’ Fiona repeated hopefully.
‘I’m sure. I mean, some old squares are tremendously prejudiced against women, of course. But speaking for myself…’ He put a hand on one of Fiona’s which she had left lying about on the table. ‘I have absolutely no objection to a pretty face around Number 3 Equity Court.’
‘Haven’t you, Claude?’ Mrs Erskine-Brown had fetched up beside the table and spoke with considerable asperity.
‘Oh, Philly.’ Erskine-Brown hastily withdrew his hand. ‘Are you going to join us for a drink? You know Fiona, of course…’
‘Yes. I know Allways.’ Phillida looked suspiciously at the gold-topped bottle. ‘What is it? Somebody’s birthday? No, I’m not joining you two. I’m going to go straight back to Chambers and write a letter.’
At which Phillida Erskine-Brown banged out of Pommeroy’s, leaving her husband with a somewhat foolish expression on his face, and me with an entire bottle of claret.
Phillida, always as good as her word, did go back to her room in Chambers and started to write a lengthy and important letter to an official quarter. It was whilst she was doing this that there came a tap at her door, which she ignored, and then the devout Ballard entered uninvited. This time I have to rely on our Portia for a full account of what transpired, and when she told me, over a rather hilarious celebratory bottle about a month later, her recollection may have grown somewhat dim; but she swears that it was a Ballard transformed who came gliding up to her desk. He was wearing a somewhat garish spotted tie (in pink and blue, as she remembered it), a matching silk handkerchief lolled from his top pocket, and surrounding the man was a fairly overpowering odour of some aftershave which the manufacturers advertise as ‘Trouble-starter’. He was also smiling.
‘I saw your light on,’ Ballard murmured. Apparently Phillida didn’t find this a statement of earth-shaking interest and went on writing.
‘Mrs Erskine-Brown,’ Ballard tried again. ‘You won’t mind me calling you Phyllis?’
‘If you want to, but it doesn’t happen to be my name.’ Phillida didn’t look up from her writing.
‘Burning the midnight oil?’
‘It’s only half past six.’
Although she had given him little encouragement, Ballard came and perched, no doubt as he thought, jauntily, on the corner of her desk and made what seemed to Phillida to be an entirely unnecessary disclosure. ‘I’ve never married of course,’ he said.
‘Lucky you!’ Phillida said with meaning as she went on with her work.
‘I lead what I imagine you’d call a bit of a bachelor life in Dulwich. Decent-sized flat, though, all that sort of thing.’
‘Oh, good,’ Phillida said in as neutral a manner as possible.
‘But I don’t want you to run away with the idea that I don’t like women, because I do like women… very much indeed. I am a perfectly normal sort of chap in that regard,’ Ballard assured her.
‘Oh, jolly good.’ Phillida was still busy.
‘In fact, I have to confess this to you. I find the sight of a woman wigged and wearing a winged collar surprisingly, well, let’s be honest about this, alluring.’ There was a considerable pause and then he blurted out, ‘I saw you the other day, going up the stairs in the Law Courts. Robed up!’
‘Did you? I was on my way to do a divorce.’ Phillida was folding her letter with grim determination.
‘Well, I just didn’t want you to be under any illusions.’ Ballard stood and gave Phillida what was no doubt meant to be a challenging look. ‘I’m thoroughly in favour of women, from every point of view.’
‘I’m sure the news will come as an enormous relief to the women of the world!’ She licked the envelope and stuck it down. What she said seemed to have a strange effect on Ballard and he became extremely nervous.
‘Oh, I don’t want it published in the papers!’ he said anxiously. ‘I thought I’d make it perfectly clear to you, in the course of private conversation.’
‘Well, you’ve made it clear, Ballard.’ Phillida looked him in the eye for the first time, and didn’t particularly like what she saw.
‘Please, “Sam”,’ he corrected her skittishly.
‘All right, “Sam”. You’ve made it terribly clear,’ she repeated.
‘Look. Some day when you’re not in Court,’ he was smiling at her again, ‘why don’t you let me take you out to a spot of lunch? They do a very decent set meal at the Ludgate Hotel.’
Phillida looked at him with amazement and contempt. She then got up and walked past him to the door, taking her letter. ‘I’ve got to put this out to post,’ was all she had to say to that.
I had gone back to our clerk’s room to pick up some forgotten papers and was alone there, Henry and Dianne having left for some unknown destination, when Phillida came to put her letter in the ‘Post’ tray on Dianne’s desk.
‘What on earth happened, Portia?’ I asked her. ‘You left me to finish the bottle.’
‘Has everyone in this Chambers gone completely out of their heads?’ she replied with another question.
‘Everyone?’
‘Ballard just made the most disgusting suggestion to me.’ She did seem extremely angry.
‘Bollard did? Whatever was it?’ I asked, delighted.
‘He invited me to have the set lunch at the Ludgate Hotel. And as for my so-called husband…’ Words failing her, she went to the door. ‘Goodnight, Rumpole!’
The Second Rumpole Omnibus Page 37