'Ah, there you're wrong. I don't know that at all.' 'Pull the other one!" Sam shared the usual public view of legal eagles.
'I don't know. And if she ever admitted it to me, I'd have to make her surrender and plead " Guilty". We've got a few rules, old sweetheart. We don't deceive Courts, not on purpose.' 'You mean, you think she's innocent?' Sam made it clear that no one who lived in a commune called 'Nirvana' could possibly be innocent of anything.
'He told you, Sam! He's got rules about it.' Bobby was polishing glasses and coming to the rescue of an old friend.
'At the moment I think she's the victim of a trick by the police. That's what I'll have to go on thinking, until she tells me otherwise.' 'That's ridiculous! The police don't trick people. Not in England.' Sam clearly felt he'd not delivered us from the Nazi hordes for nothing.
'Never had a plain clothes copper come in here and order a large Scotch after closing time?' I asked him.
' The bastards! But that's entirely different.' 'Yes, of course.' 'Anyway, who's paying you to defend Miss Slag-Heap? That's what I'd like to know.' Sam was triumphant. It hurt me, but I had to tell him.
'Fasten your seat belt, old darling. You are! Miss Kathy Trelawny is on legal aid. And I am here by courtesy of the ratepayers of Coldsands.' I lifted my rum in Sam's direction. 'Thank you, "Three-Fingers." Thank you for your hospitality.' 'Bloody hell.' Sam sounded more sorrowful than angry, and it gave him an excuse to turn the handle once more on the Teachers.
'We don't mind, do we, Sam?' As always Bobby's was the voice of tolerance. 'We don't mind buying Horace the odd drink occasionally.' Later I sat in the residents' lounge, a small room which opened off the bar, and tried to shut out the considerable noise made by Sam's regular customers, middle-aged men mostly, in a sort of uniform of cavalry twill trousers and hacking jackets. I was working on my brief and already I had a plan of campaign. When the Detective Sergeant went to buy Miss Trelawny's cannabis he was disguised as a hippie and acting, I was quite prepared to argue, as an agent provocateur. If I could establish that my client would never have committed any sort of crime unless the police had invited her to I might, given a fair wind and a sympathetic judge, have the whole of the police evidence excluded which would lead to the collapse of the prosecution, a Zen service of thanksgiving at 'Nirvana', and Rumpole triumphant. I had brought a number of law reports on the question of agent provocateur and was interested to discover that it was the old hanging judges who regarded these beasts with particular disfavour; it's odd how gentler days have somehow dimmed our passion for liberty.
I had worked out an argument that might appeal to a judge who still had some of the old spark left in him when the door from the bar opened to admit Mr Friendly and my client.
I had, I felt, known Miss Kathy Trelawny for a long time. She had floated before my eyes from my early days with the old Oxford Book of English Verse, as Herrick's Julia, or Lovelace's Lucasta, or 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', or the 'Lady of Shallot'. As she smiled, she reminded me strongly of Rosalind in the forest of Arden, or Viola comforting the love-sick Duke. She had a long, slender neck, a mass of copper-coloured hair, friendly blue eyes and she was exceedingly clean. As soon as I saw her I decided that my one ambition in life was to keep her out of Holloway. I had to take a quick gulp from the glass beside me before I could steady my nerve to read out a passage from the depositions. Miss Trelawny was sitting quietly looking at me as if I was the one man in the world she had always wanted to meet, and she hoped we would soon be finished with the boring case so we could talk about something interesting, and deeply personal.
'"Real cool house, man,"' I was reading out the Detective Sergeant's evidence with disgust. '"You can't score nothing in this hick town. You don't get no trouble from the Fuzz"?' 'Just from the way the old darling talked, didn't you twig he was a Sergeant from the local Drug Squad?' Miss Trelawny showed no particular reaction, and Friendly quickly filled the silence. 'My client has never come up against the police before.' ' We'll have a bit of fun with this case,' I told them.
'What sort of fun exactly?' Friendly sounded doubtful, as if he didn't exactly look on the coming trial as the annual dinner dance of the Coldsands Rotary.
'A preliminary point! In the absence of the jury we will ask the judge to rule the whole of Detective Sergeant Jack Smedley, alias Jack the Hippie's evidence inadmissable. On the sole ground...' ' On what sole ground ?' 'That it was obtained contrary to natural justice, in that it constituted a trick. That it is the testimony of an agent provocateur.' ' We don't get many of those in conveyancing.' Friendly looked distinctly out of his depth.
'A nasty foreign expression, for a nasty foreign thing. Spies and infiltrators! Policemen in disguise who worm their way into an Englishman's home and trap him into crime!' 'Why should they do that, Mr Rumpole?' I stood up and directed my answer at my client. Her warm and all-embracing smile, and her total silence, were beginning to unnerve me. ' So they can clap innocent citizens into chokey and notch up another conviction on their collective braces! Bloody unBritish, like bidets and eating your pud after the cheese! Now, I mean your average circuit judge... Circus judges... we call them down the Bailey.' Friendly consulted a note. 'It's his Honour James Crispin-Rice tomorrow.' We were in luck. I knew old Rice Crispies well at the Bar. He was a thoroughly decent chap, who had once stood as a Liberal candidate. He was the product of the Navy and a minor public school. No doubt he'd had it firmly implanted in him in the fourth form, never trust a sneak. They had left the door slightly open, and through it I could hear the old familiar sound of Bobby thumping the piano.
' You think he might rule out the evidence ?' I got up and shut the door, blotting out some remarkable tuneless rendering of the Golden Oldies which had started up a cote de Chez Dogherty.
' If we can implant a strong dislike of Sergeant Smedley in the old darling,' I told them. 'Disgusting behaviour, your Honour. The police are there to detect crime, not manufacture it. What's the country coming to? Constables tricked out in beads and singing to a small guitar conning an innocent girl into making huge collections of cannabis resin from some Persian pushers she met at Bristol University. She'd never have done it if the policeman hadn't asked her!' 'Wouldn't you. Miss Trelawny?' Friendly gave her the cue to speak. She ignored it, so on I went showing her my quality.
'Withdraw the evidence from the jury, your Honour! It's un-English, unethical and clearly shows that this crime was deliberately created by the police. The whole business is a vile outrage to our age-old liberties.' Wordsworth crept into my mind and I didn't send him about his business. 'It is not to be thought of that the Flood Of British freedom, which to the open sea...' I paused, insecure on the words and then, very quietly and for the first time, Miss Kathy Trelawny spoke, with words appropriattly supplied by the old sheep of the Lake District.
'Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity Hath flowed, "with pomp of waters unwithstood,"... Should perish.' She looked at me, I took over.
' We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake...' I decided I'd had enough of Wordsworth, and asked her, surprised, 'You know it?' 'Wordsworth? A little.' 'I thought no one did nowadays. Whenever I come out with him in the Bar Mess they look amazed. Unusual, for a client to know Wordsworth.' ' I teach kids English.' 'Oh yes. Of course you do.' I had learned from the brief that all the inhabitants of' Nirvana' were in work.
'There's one thing I wanted to ask you.' Now she had broken the ice, there seemed to be no holding her, but Friendly stood up, as if anxious to bring the conference to an end.
' Well, we shouldn't keep Mr Rumpole any longer.' 'Ask me, Miss Trelawny?' 'Yes.' Her smile was unwavering. 'What do you want me to say exactly?' 'Say? Say nothing! Look... rely on me, with a little help from Wordsworth. And keep your mouth firmly closed.' I opened the door. Great gusts of singing blew in on us from the bar. Bobby's voice was leading, ' We'll meet again Don't know where Don't know when, But we're bound to meet again Some sunny day.' I remembered my crave
n cowardice in not speaking to Bobby on the occasion of the NAAFI hop, and I asked Miss Trelawny to join me for a drink. Fortunately, Friendly remembered that his wife would be waiting up for him, and I took my client alone into the bar.
As we sat at the counter, Sam came up to us swaying only slightly, like a captain on the deck of his well-loved ship. He looked at Kathy Trelawny with amazed approval.
' Where did you get this popsy, Rumpole ?' He leant across the bar to chat to my client intimately. 'You shouldn't be with the ground staff, my dear. You're definitely officer material. What's it to be?' ' I'll have a coke. I don't drink really." She was smiling at him, the smile I thought, uncomfortably, of universal love bestowed on everyone, regardless of age or sex.
'Oh,don'tyou? You don't drink!' Sam took offence. 'There's nothing else you don't do, is there?' ' Quite a lot of things.' Sam ignored this and recalled the Good Old Days as he passed me a rum.
'Remember, Rumpole? We used to divide the popsies into beer WAAFS and gin WAAFS.' He winked at Kathy Trelawny. ' In my opinion you're a large pink gin.' ' She told you, Sam. She doesn't drink,' I reminded Sam. He was getting impatient.
'Did you pick up this beautiful bit of crackling in a bloody Baptist Chapel?' He poured Miss Trelawny a Coca-Cola.
'Take no notice of him, my dear. You can be teetotal with Rumpole. But let's launch our friendship on a sea of sparkling shampoo!' ' I'd probably sink,' Kathy Trelawny smiled at him.
'Not with me you wouldn't. Let me introduce myself. Pilot Officer "Three-Fingers"Dogherty. "Three-Fingers" refers to the measures of my whisky. My hands are in perfect order.' To demonstrate this he put a hand on hers across the bar.
' I haven't met many pilot officers."
Kathy, I feel I know her well enough to call her Kathy for the rest of this narrative} withdrew her hand. She was still smiling.
'Well, you've met me, my dear!' Sam rambled on undiscour-aged.' One of the glamour boys. One of the Brylcreem brigade. One of the very, very few.' He stood himself another Teachers. 'And if I had a crate available, I'd bloody well smuggle you up in the sky for a couple of victory rolls. You see him... You see "Groundstaff Rumpole?" Well, we'd leave him far below us! Grounded!' ' I don't think we should do that,' Kathy protested. The only time she stopped smiling was when Sam made a joke.
'Why ever not?' Sam frowned.
'I think I'm going to need him.' As she said this I felt ridiculously honoured.
'Rumpole? Why ever should you need Rumpole? What did you say your name was ?' 'I didn't.' Now my time had come. I had great pleasure in performing the introduction.
'This is Miss Kathy Trelawny. Of "Nirvana", 34 Balaclava Road.' And I added, in a whisper to Sam, 'the well-known unmade bed'.
Sam looked like a man who has just lifted what he imagined was a glass of vintage champagne and discovered it contained nothing but Seven Up. He looked at Kathy with pronounced distaste and said,' No bloody wonder you don't drink.' ' It's just something I don't like doing.' She smiled back at him.
'Naturally. Naturally you won't have a pink gin like a normal girl. Excuse me.' He moved away from us, shouting, 'Drink up please. Haven't any of you lot got homes ?' The piano stopped, people started to drift out into the night.
'Was that meant to be a joke... All that "pilot officer" business?' Kathy asked me.
'No joke at all. Sam was a great man on bombers. He could find any target you'd care to mention, in the pitch dark, on three fingers of whisky... He was good, Sam. Extremely good.' 'You mean good at killing people?' When she put it like that, I supposed that was what I did mean. Kathy turned to look at Bobby, who was sitting on the piano stool, lighting a cigarette. She asked me and I told her that was Sam's wife and I used to think she was gorgeous.
' Gorgeous for the war time, anyway. Things were a bit utility then.' 'And now?' I looked at her.' Children seem to grow up more beautiful. It must be the orange juice.' 'Or the peace?' Sam gave us a crescendo version of 'Time Please' and I walked my client to the bus shelter. It was a still, rather warm September night. The sea murmured perpetually, and the moonlight lit up the headland and whitened the strip of beach. There were only very few words for it, and I recited them to Kathy as we moved away from the cars starting up round the Crooked Billet.
' It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration, ' 'We read poetry. At the house,' Kathy told me. 'It's a good way to end the day. Someone reads a poem. Anything.' And then she shivered on that warm night, and said, 'They won't lock me up will they?"
' I told you. We'll knock out the evidence! Put your trust in Rumpole!' I tried to sound as cheerful as possible, but she stood still, trembling slightly, her hand on my arm.
'My brother Pete's locked up in Turkey... twelve years. He was always such a scared kid. He couldn't sleep with the door shut. Neither of us could.' ' What on earth did your brother do in Turkey?' 'Drugs,' she said, and I wondered what sort of an idiot her brother must be. Then she asked me,' Will it be over soon?' 'It'll be over.' There were lights coming up the hill, to take her away from me.
'That's my bus... why don't you come and see me in "Nirvana"?' Then the most strange thing happened, she leant forward and kissed me, quite carefully on the cheek. Then she was gone, and I was saying to myself, "Nirvana"? Why ever not?' I walked back to the Crooked Billet in a state of ridiculous happiness. Flower power that year was exceedingly potent.
I was up early the next morning, sinking a boiled egg in the residents' lounge as the sun sparkled on the sea and Bobby fussed around me, pouring tea. Sam was still asleep, God was in his heaven and with old Rice Crispies on the bench I could find nothing particularly wrong with the world. After breakfast I put a drop of eau-de-cologne on the handkerchief, ran a comb through the remaining hair and set off for the Coldsands seat of justice.
When I got down to the Shire Hall, and into the wig and gown, I had my first view of the inhabitants of 'Nirvana', the lotus eaters of 34 Balaclava Road. They were out in force, clean jeans, Mexican-looking shawls, the statutory baby. One tall coloured boy whom I later discovered to be called 'Oswald' was carrying a small flute. I just hoped they weren't going to mistake the whole business for a bit of harmless fun round the South African Embassy.
'Morning. You must be Rumpole. Welcome to the Western Circuit.' I was being addressed by a tall fellow with a rustic tan beneath his wig, a gentleman farmer and gentleman barrister. I looked down to discover if he had jodphur boots on under the pinstripes.
' Tooke. Vernon Tooke's my name. I'm prosecuting you.' 'Awfully decent of you.' I smiled at him.
Tooke glanced disapprovingly at my supporters club.
' I say, Rumpole. Where did you get that shower from? Rent-a-hippie. What a life, eh... Gang-bangs on the National Assistance?' Did I detect in Farmer Tooke's voice, a note of envy ?
'Used to be a decent area,' he continued, 'Balaclava Road. Until that lot got their foot in the door. Squatters, are they?' 'They've got a nine-year lease. And they've all got jobs. The only fellows scrounging off the State, Tooke, are you and I!' ' Really Rumpole ?' Tooke looked pained.
' Well, they're paying you on the rates, aren't they?' 'Most amusing!' He looked as if I'd pointed out a bad case of foot and mouth in the herd, but he offered me a cigarette from a gold case. I refused and produced the remains of a small cigar from the waistcoat pocket. Tooke ignited it with a gold lighter.
'Is this going to take long?" he asked anxiously. 'Coldsands gymkhana tomorrow. We tend to make it rather a day out.' 'Take long? I don't suppose so. It's quite a simple point of law.' 'Law, Rumpole... Did you say law?" The casually dropped word seemed to fill Tooke with a certain amount of dread.
' That's right. You do have law, I suppose, down on the Western Circuit?' I left Tooke and moved towards the commune. A young man with dark hair and a permanent frown who seemed to be their leader greeted me, as I thought, in an unfriendly fashion.
' You her lawyer ?' I admitted it, Kathy, smiling as ever,
introduced him to me as a friend of hers, named Dave Hawkins. I speculated, with a ridiculous stab of regret, that the friendship was a close one.
'This is Dave.' 'Oh yes?' 'Will she be going in today?" Dave wanted to be put in the picture.
'In?' 'Into the witness box. I mean, there's something I want her to say. It's pretty important.' I was accustomed to being the sole person in charge of my cases. I put Dave right patiently. 'Dave. May I call you Mr Hawkins? If I were a doctor taking out your appendix, old darling, you wouldn't want Kathy, would you, telling me where to put the knife?' At this point the usher came out of court and called, ' Katherine Trelawny.' 'You'd better answer your bail.' As I said this Kathy gave a little shiver and asked me.' Will they lock me up now?' ' Of course not. Trust me.' The usher called her again. I dropped the remnants of the small cigar on the marble floor of the Shire Hall and ground it underfoot. The lance was in the rest, Sir Galahad Rumpole was about to do battle for the damsel in distress, or words to that effect.
John Mortimer - Rumpole 1 - Rumpole of The Bailey Page 6