And no one must speak to you, particularly your legal advisers.
Is that thoroughly understood, Mr Rumpole?' 'Naturally, my Lord,' I assured him. 'I do know the rules.' 'I hope you do, Mr Rumpole. I sincerely hope you do.' The events of that lunch-hour achieved a historic importance. After a modest meal of bean-shoot sandwiches in the Nuthouse vegetarian restaurant down by the Bank (Claude was on a regime calculated to make him more sylph-like and sexually desirable), he returned to the Old Bailey and was walking up to the Silks' robing room when he saw, through an archway, the defendant Long seated and silent. Approaching nearer, he heard the following words (Claude was good enough to make a careful note of them at the time) shouted by Rumpole in a voice of extreme irritation.
'Listen to me,' my speech, which Claude knew to be legal advice to the client, began. 'Is this damn thing going to last for ever? Well, for God's sake, get on with it! You're driving me mad. Talk. That's all you do, you boring old fart. Just get on with it. I've got enough trouble with the Judge without you causing me all this agony. Get it out. That's all. Short and snappy. Put us out of our misery. Get it out and then shut up!' As I say, Claude took a careful note of these words but said nothing to me about them when I emerged from behind the archway. When we got back to Court I asked my client a few more questions, which he answered with astounding brevity.
'Mr Long. Did you ever intend to do your wife the slightest gharm?' 'No.' 'Did you strike her?' 'No.' 'Or assault her in any way?' 'No.' 'Just wait there, will you?', I sat down with considerable relief, 'in case Mr Erskine-Brown can think of anything to ask you.' Claude did have something to ask, and his first question came as something of a surprise to me. 'You've become very monosyllabic since lunch, haven't you, Mr Long?' 'Perhaps it's something he ate,' I murmured to my confidant, Bernard.
'No', Erskine-Brown wouldn't have this, 'it's nothing you ate, is it? as your learned counsel suggests. It's something Mr Rumpole said to you.'.
'Said to him?' Oilie Oliphant registered profound shock. 'When are you suggesting Mr Rumpole spoke to him?' 'Oh, during the luncheon adjournment, my Lord.' Claude dropped the bombshell casually.
'Mr Rumpole!' Oilie gasped with horror. 'Mr Erskine-Brown, did I not give a solemn warning that no one was to speak to Mr Long and he was to speak to no one during the adjournment?' 'You did, my Lord,' Claude confirmed it. 'That was why I was so surprised when I heard Mr Rumpole doing it.' 'You heard Mr Rumpole speaking to the defendant Long?' 'I'm afraid so, my Lord.' Again Bernard winced in agony, and there were varying reactions of shock and disgust all round. I didn't improve the situation by muttering loudly, 'Oh, come off it, Claude.' 'And what did Mr Rumpole say?' The Judge wanted all the gory details.
'He told Mr Long he did nothing but talk. And he was to get on with it and he was to get it out and make it snappy.
Oh, yes, he said he was a boring old fart.' 'A boring old what, Mr Erskine-Brown?' 'Fart, my Lord.' 'And he's not the only one around here either,' I informed Mr Bernard.
If the Judge heard this he ignored it. He went on in tones of the deepest disapproval to ask Claude, 'And, since that conversation, you say that the defendant Long has been monosyllabic. In other words, he is obeying Mr Rumpole's quite improperly given instructions?' 'Precisely what I am suggesting, my Lord.' Claude was delighted to agree.
'Well, now, Mr Rumpole.' The Judge stared balefully at me. 'What've you got to say to Mr Erskine-Brown's accusation?' Suddenly a great weariness came over me. For once in my long life I couldn't be bothered to argue and this legal storm in a lunch-hour bored me as much as my client's evidence. I was tired of Long, tired of judges, tired of learned friends, tired of toothache, tired of life. I rose wearily to my feet and said, 'Nothing, my Lord.' 'Nothing?' Mr Justice Oliphant couldn't believe it.
'Absolutely nothing.' 'So you don't deny that all Mr Erskine-Brown has told the court is true?' 'I neither accept it nor deny it. It's a contemptible suggestion, made by an advocate incapable of conducting a proper cross-examination. Further than that I don't feel called upon to comment. So far as I know I am not on trial.' 'Not at the moment,' said the Judge. 'I cannot answer for the Bar Council.' 'Then I suggest we concentrate on the trial of Mr Long and forget mine, my Lord.' That was my final word on the matter.
When we did concentrate on the trial it went extremely speedily.
Mr Long remained monosyllabic, our speeches were brief, the Judge, all passion spent by the drama of the lunchhour, summed up briefly and by half past five the Jury were back with an acquittal. Shortly after that many of the characters important to this story had assembled in Pommeroy's Wine Bar.
Although he was buying her a drink, Liz Probert made no attempt to disguise her disapproval of the conduct of her learned leader, as she told me after these events had taken Place. 'Why did you have to do that, Claude?' she asked in a severe manner. 'Why did you have to put that lunchtime conversation to Long?' 'Rather brilliant, I thought,' he answered with some selfsatisfaction and offered to split a half-bottle of his favourite Pouilly Fume with her. 'It got the Judge on my side immediately.' 'And got the Jury on Rumpole's side. His client was acquitted, I don't know if you remember.' 'Well, win a few, lose a few,' Claude said airily. 'That's par for the course, if you're a busy Silk.' 'I mean, why did you do that to Rumpole?' 'Well, that was fair, wasn't it? He shouldn't have talked to his client when he was still in the box. It's just not on!' 'Are you sure he did?' Liz asked.
'I heard him with my own ears. You don't think I'd lie, do you?' 'Well, it has been known. Didn't you lie to your wife, about taking me to the Opera?'* Liz had no compunction about opening old wounds.
'That was love. Everyone lies when they're in love.' 'Don't ever tell me you're in love with me again. I shan't believe a single word of it. Did you really mean to get Rumpole disbarred?' 'Rumpole disbarred?' Even Claude sounded shaken by the idea. 'It's not possible.' 'Of course it's possible. Didn't you hear Oilie Oliphant?' 'That was just North Country bluff. I mean, they couldn't do a thing like that, could they? Not to Rumpole.' 'If you ask me, that's what they've been longing to do to Rumpole for years,' Liz told him. 'Now you've given them just the excuse they need.' 'Who needs?' 'The establishment, Claude! They'll use you, you know, then they'll throw you out on the scrap heap. That's what they do to spies.' 'My God!' Erskine-Brown was looking at her with considerable admiration. 'You're beautiful when you're angry!.
At which point Mizz Probert left him, having seen me alone, staring gloomily into a large brandy. Claude was surrounded with thirsty barristers, eager for news of the great Rumpole-Oliphant battle.
Before I got into conversation with Liz, who sat herself down at my table with a look of maddening pity on her face, I have to confess that I had been watching our clerk Henry at a distant table. He had bought a strange-looking white concoction for Dot Clapton, and was now sitting gazing at her in a way which made me feel that this was no longer a rehearsal for the Bexleyheath Thespians but a real-life drama which might lead to embarrassing and even disastrous results. I didn't manage to earwig all the dialogue, but I learned enough to enable me to fill in the gaps later.
'You can't imagine what it was like. Dot, when my wife was Mayor.' Henry was complaining, as he so often did, about his spouse's civic duties.
'Bet you were proud of her.' Dot seemed to be missing the point.
'Proud of her! What happened to my self-respect in those days when I was constantly referred to as the Lady Mayoress?' 'Poor old Henry!' Dot couldn't help laughing.
'Poor old Henry, yes. At council meetings I had to sit in the gallery known as the hen pen. I was sat there with the wives.' 'Things a bit better now, are they?' Dot was still hugely entertained.
'Now Eileen's reverted to Alderperson? Very minimally, Dot. She's on this slimming regime now. What shall I go back to? Lettuce salad and cottage cheese, you know, that white stuff. Tastes of soap. No drink, of course. Nothing alcoholic. You reckon you could go another Snowball?' 'I'm all right, thanks.' I saw Dot cover her glass wi
th her hand.
'I know you are. Dot,' Henry agreed enthusiastically. 'You most certainly are all right. The trouble is, Eileen and I haven't exactly got a relationship. Not like we've got a relationship.' 'Well, she doesn't work with you, does she? Not on the fee notes,' Dot asked, reasonably enough.
'She doesn't work with me at all and, well, I don't feel close to her. Not as I feel close to you, Dot.' 'Well, don't get that close,' Dot warned him. 'I saw Mr Erskine-Brown give a glance in this direction.' 'Mr Erskine-Brown? He's always chasing after young girls.
Makes himself ridiculous.' Henry's voice was full of contempt.
'I had noticed.' 'I'm not like that. Dot. I like to talk, you know, one on one.
Have a relationship. May I ask you a very personal question?' 'No harm in asking.' She sounded less than fascinated.
'Do you like me. Dot? I mean, do you like me for myself?' 'Well, I don't like you for anyone else.' Dot laughed again.
'You're a very nice sort of person. Speak as you find.' And then Henry asked anxiously, 'Am I a big part of your life?' 'Course you are!' She was still amused.
'Thank you, Dot! Thank you very much. That's all I need to know.' Henry stood up, grateful and excited. 'That deserves another Snowball!' I saw him set out for the bar in a determined fashion, so now Dot was speaking to his back, trying to explain herself, 'I mean, you're my boss, aren't you? That's a big part of my life.' Things had reached this somewhat tricky stage in the Dot-Henry relationship by the time Liz came and sat with me and demanded my full attention with a call to arms. 'Rumpole,' she said, 'you've got to fight it. Every inch of the way!' 'Fight what?' 'Your case. It's the establishment against Rumpole.' 'My dear Mizz Liz, there isn't any case.' 'It's a question of free speech.' 'Is it?' 'Your freedom to speak to your client during the lunchhour.
You're an issue of civil rights now, Rumpole.' 'Oh, am I? I don't think I want to be that.' And then she looked at my glass and said, as though it were a sad sign of decline, 'You're drinking brandy!' 'Dutch courage,' I explained.
'Oh, Rumpole, that's not like you. You've never been afraid of judges.' 'Judges? Oh, no, as I always taught you, Mizz Liz, fearlessness is the first essential in an advocate. I can cope with judges. It's the other chaps that give me the jim-jams.' 'Which other chaps, Rumpole?' 'Dentists!' I took a large swig of brandy and shivered.
Time cures many things and in quite a short time old smoothy-chops Leering had the nagging tooth out of my head and I felt slightly better-tempered. Time, however, merely encouraged the growth of the great dispute and brought me nearer to an event that I'd never imagined possible, the trial of Rumpole.
You must understand that we legal hacks are divided into Inns, known as Inns of Court. These Inns are ruled by the benchers, judges and senior barristers, who elect each other to the office rather in the manner of the Council which ruled Venice during the Middle Ages. The benchers of my Inn, known as the Outer Temple, do themselves extremely proud and, once elected, pay very little for lunch in the Outer Temple Hall, and enjoy a good many ceremonial dinners. Grand Nights, Guest Nights and other such occasions, when they climb into a white tie and tails, enter the dining hall with bishops and generals on their arms, and then retire to the Parliament Room for fruit, nuts, port, brandy, Muscat, Beaumes de Venise and Romeo y Julieta cigars. There they discuss the hardships of judicial life and the sad decline in public morality and, occasionally, swap such jokes as might deprave and corrupt those likely to hear them.
On this particular Guest Night Mr Justice Graves, as Treasurer of the Inn, was presiding over the festivities. Oilie Oliphant was also present, as was a tall, handsome, only slightly overweight Q.C. called Montague Varian, who was later to act as my prosecutor. Sam Ballard, the alleged Head of our Chambers and recently elected bencher, was there, delighted and somewhat overawed by his new honour. It was Ballard who told me the drift of the after-dinner conversation in the Parliament Room, an account which I have filled up with invention founded on a hard-won knowledge of the characters concerned. Among the guests present were a Lady Mendip, a sensible grey-haired headmistress, and the Bishop of Bayswater. It was to this cleric that Graves explained one of the quainter customs of the Outer Temple dining process.
'My dear Bishop, you may have heard a porter ringing a handbell before dinner. That's a custom we've kept up since the Middle Ages. The purpose is to summon in such of our students as may be fishing in the Fleet River.' 'Oh, I like that. I like that very much.' The Bishop was full of enthusiasm for the Middle Ages. 'We regard it as rather a charming eccentricity.' Graves was smiling but his words immediately brought out the worst in Oliphant. 'I've had enough of eccentricity lately,' he said. 'And I don't regard it as a bit charming.' 'Ah, Oliver, I heard you'd been having a bit of trouble with Rumpole.' Graves turned the conversation to the scandal of the moment.
'You've got to admit, Rumpole's a genuine eccentric!' Montague Varian seemed to find me amusing.
'Genuine?' Oliphant cracked a nut mercilessly. 'Where I come from we know what genuine is. There's nothing more genuine than a good old Yorkshire Pudding that's risen in the oven, all fluffy and crisp outside.' At which a voice piped up from the end of the table singing a Northern folk song with incomprehensible words 'On Ilkley Moor Ba Tat!' This was Arthur Nottley, the junior bencher, a thin, rather elegant fellow whose weary manner marked a deep and genuine cynicism. He often said he only stayed on at the Bar to keep his basset hound in the way to which it had become accustomed. Now he had not only insulted the Great Yorkshire bore, but had broken one of the rules of the Inn, so Graves rebuked him.
'Master Junior, we don't sing on Guest Nights in this Inn.
Only on the Night of Grand Revelry.' ' 'I'm sorry, Master Treasurer.' Nottley did his best to sound apologetic.
'Please remember that. Yes, Oliver? You were saying?' 'It's all theatrical,' Oliphant grumbled. 'Those old clothes to make himself look poor and down-at-heel, put on to get a sympathy vote from the Jury. That terrible old bit of waistcoat with cigar ash and gravy stains.' 'It's no more than a facade of a waistcoat,' Varian agreed.
'Asortofdickie!' 'The old Lord Chief would never hear argument from a man he suspected of wearing a backless waistcoat.' Oliphant quoted a precedent. 'Do you remember him telling Freddy Ringwood, "It gives me little pleasure to listen to an argument from a gentleman in light trousers"? You could say the same for Rumpole's waistcoat. When he waves his arms about you can see his shirt.' 'You're telling me, Oliver!' Graves added to the horror, 'Unfortunately I've seen more than that.' 'Of course, we do have Rumpole in Chambers.' Ballard, I'm sure, felt he had to apologize for me. 'Unfortunately. I inherited him.' 'Come with the furniture, did he?' Varian laughed.
'Oh, I'd never have let him in,' the loyal Ballard assured them. 'And I must tell you, I've tried to raise the matter of his waistcoat on many occasions, but I can't get him to listen.' 'Well, there you go, you see.' And Graves apologized to the cleric, 'But we're boring the Bishop.' 'Not at all. It's fascinating.' The Bishop of Bayswater was enjoying the fun. 'This Rumpole you've been talking about. I gather he's a bit of a character.' 'You could say he's definitely got form.' Varian made a legal joke.
'Previous convictions that means, Bishop,' Graves explained for the benefit of the cloth.
'We get them in our business,' the Bishop told them.
'Priests who try to be characters. They've usually come to it late in life. Preach eccentric sermons, mention Saddam Hus m in their prayers, pay undue attention to the poor of North Bayswater and never bother to drop in for a cup of tea with the perfectly decent old ladies in the South. Blame the Government for all the sins of mankind in the faint hope of getting their mugs on television. "Oh, please God," that's my nightly prayer, "save me from characters."' Varian passed him the madeira and when he had refilled his glass the Bishop continued: 'Give me a plain, undistinguished parish priest, a chap who can marry them, bury them and still do a decent Armistice Day service for the Veterans Association.' 'Or a chap who'll put his cas
e, keep a civil tongue in his head and not complain when you pot his client,' Oliphant agreed.
'By the way,' Graves asked, 'what did Freddy Ringwood do in the end? Was it that business with his girl pupil? The one who tried to slit her wrists in the women's robing room at the Old Bailey?' 'No, I don't think that was it. Didn't he cash a rubber cheque in the circuit mess?' Arthur Nottley remembered.
'That was cleared. No', Varian put them right, 'old Freddy's trouble was that he spoke to his client while he was in the middle of giving evidence.' 'It sounds familiar!' Oilie Oliphant said with relish, 'and in Rumpole's case there was also the matter of the abusive language he used to me on the Bench. Not that I mind for myself. I can use my common sense about that, I hope. But when you're sitting representing Her Majesty the Queen it amounts to tese majeste.' 'High treason, Oliver?' suggested Graves languidly.
John Mortimer - Rumpole On Trial Page 23