'Mrs Rumpole,' said the ridiculously boring mandarin, might I ask you to give me the honour of this dance?' She who Must Be Obeyed, apparently delighted, said, 'Of course, Judge, what tremendous fun!' My worst fears were confirmed and they waltzed away together with incomprehensible zest.
In due course, Swainton and his houri came to sit at our able and, looking idly at the throng, we witnessed the entry of ° ""olgirls in gym-slips and straw hats. One was tall and i57 thin and clearly Gloria. The other, small and plump, wore a schoolgirl mask to which a pigtailed wig was attached. Swainton immediately guessed that this was Miss de la Haye's little accompanist in disguise. 'Betty Dee and Buttercup,' I said, only half aloud, as this strange couple crossed the room, and Linda Milsom, who was having trouble retaining the liverish-looking glass eye in her navel, said, 'Some people sure like to make themselves look ridiculous.' A little time passed and then Swainton said, 'Well, that beats everything!' 'What?' I asked, removing my nose from my glass and shifting the patch so that I had two eyes available.
'An alleged vicar dancing with a bar pianist in drag.' It was true. The Reverend Bill and the small schoolgirl were waltzing expertly. 'I think,' I said, 'I could be about to solve the mystery of the Absent Body.' 'I very much doubt it.' Swainton was not impressed with my deductive powers.
'Would you like me to try?' And, before he could answer, I asked Linda to cut in and invite Bill Britwell for a dance.
'Oh,' she appealed to her boss, 'do I have to?' 'Why not?' Swainton shrugged his shoulders. 'It might be entertaining to watch Counsel for the Defence barking up the wrong tree.' When instructed by the best-selling author. Miss Milsom acted with decision and aplomb. I saw her cross the floor and speak to Bill Britwell. He looked at his partner, who surrendered more or less gracefully and was left alone on the floor. Before the small schoolgirl could regain the table where Gloria was waiting, Cap'n Rumpole had drawn up alongside.
'I'm afraid I'm no dancer,' I said. 'So shall we go out for a breath of air?' Without waiting for a reply, I took the schoolgirl's arm and steered her towards the doors which led out to the deck.
So there I was by the rail of the ship again, in the moonlight with music playing in the background, faced, not by Hilda, but by a small, round figure wearing a schoolgirl mask.
'Betty Dee and Buttercup,' I said. 'You were Buttercup, weren't you? The little sister, the young girl in the photograph 158 Rill Britwell threw into the sea? Not that there was any need for that. No one really remembered you.' 'What do you want?' A small voice spoke from behind the mask.
'To set your mind at rest,' I promised. 'No one knows you've been part of a music-hall act. No one's going to hold that against you. Bill can preach sermons to the Anglicans of Malta and no one's going to care a toss about Betty Dee and Buttercup. It's the other part you were worried about, wasn't it? The part you played down the Old Bailey. A long time ago.
Such a long time. When we were all very young indeed. Oh, so very young. Before I did the Penge Bungalow Murders, which is no longer even recent history. All the same I was at the Bar when it happened. You know, you should've had me to defend you. You really should. It was a touching story. A young girl married to a drunk, a husband who beat her. Who was he?
"Happy" Harry Harman? He even did a drunk act on the stage, didn't he? Drunk acts are never very funny. I read all about it in the News of the World because I wanted the brief.
He beat you and you stabbed him in the throat with a pair of scissors. You should never have got five years for manslaughter.
I'd've got you off with not a dry eye in the jury-box, even though the efficient young Counsel for the Prosecution was a cold fish called Gerald Graves. It's all right. He is not going to remember you.' 'Isn't he?' The small voice spoke again.
'Of course not. Lawyers and judges hardly ever remember the faces they've sent to prison.' 'Are you sure?' I was conscious that we were no longer alone on the deck.
Bill Britwell had come out of the doors behind us, followed by Cjraves and Howard Swainton, who must have suspected that rile drama they had concocted was reaching a conclusion. 'Oh, y, I said, 'you can come out of hiding now.' She must have believed me because she lifted her hands and carefully removed the mask. She was only a little nervous as s e stood the moonlight, smiling at her husband. And the Judge and the mystery writer, for once, had nothing to say.
, 159 'Such a pleasure, isn't it,' I asked them, 'to have Mrs Mavis Britwell back with us again?' The Rock of Gibraltar looked much as expected, towering over the strange little community which can be looked at as the last outpost of a vanishing Empire or as a tiny section of the Wimbledon of fifty years ago, tacked improbably on to the bottom of Spain. The good ship Boadicea was safely docked the next morning and, as the passengers disembarked for a guided tour with a full English tea thrown in, I stood once more at the rail, this time in the company of Mr 'Miscarriage of Justice' Graves. I had just taken him for a guided tour round the facts of the Britwell case.
'So she decided to vanish?' he asked me.
'Not at all. She went to stay with her old friend. Miss Gloria de la Have, for a few days.' And then I asked him, 'She didn't look familiar to you?' 'No. No, I can't say she did. Why?' ' "Old men forget"', I wasn't about to explain, ' "yet all shall be forgot.'"
'What did you say?' His Lordship wasn't following my drift.
'I said, "What a load of trouble you've got."' 'Trouble? You're not making yourself clear, Rumpole.' 'You as good as accused the Reverend Bill of shoving his dear wife through the porthole.' I recited the charges. 'You reported the story to the ship's captain, who no doubt wired it to the Gibraltar police. That was clear publication and a pretty good basis for an action for defamation. Wouldn't you say?' 'Defamation?' The Judge repeated the dread word. 'Oh, yes,' I reminded him, 'and juries have been quite absurdly generous with damages lately. Remember my offer to defend you?' My mind went back to a distant bail application. 'Please call on my services at any time.' 'Rumpole', the Judicial face peered at me anxiously, 'you don't honestly think they'd sue?' 'My dear Judge, I think you're innocent, of course, until you're proved guilty. That's such an important principle to keep in mind on all occasions.' 160 And then I heard a distant cry of 'Rumpole!' Hilda was kitted out and ready to call on the Barbary apes.
'Ah, that's my wife. I'd better go. We're on a honeymoon too you see. Our second. And it may disappoint you to know, we're innocent of any crime whatsoever.'There is, when you come to think about it, no relationship more important than that of a man with his quack, or 'regular medical attendant', as Soapy Sam Ballard would no doubt choose to call him. A legal hack relies on his quack to raise him to his feet, to keep him breathing, to enable him to crossexamine in a deadly manner and then, gentle as any sucking dove, move the Jury to tears. Without the occasional ministrations of his quack, the criminal defender would be but a memory, an empty seat in Chambers to be filled by some white-wig with a word processor, and a few unkind anecdotes in the Bar mess. There might be tears shed around Brixton and the Scrubs, but the Judiciary would greet my departure with considerable relief. In order to postpone the evil hour as long as possible, I am in need of the life-support of a reasonably competent quack.
Mind you, I do a great deal for my own health by what is known in the Sunday papers as a 'sensible life-style'. I am careful to take, however rough and painful the experience may be, a considerable quantity of Pommeroy's Very Ordinary, which I have always found keeps me astonishingly regular. I force myself to consume substantial luncheons of steak and kidney pud and mashed potatoes in the pub opposite the Old Bailey, and I do this in order to ward off infection and prevent weakness during the afternoon.
My customary exercise consists of a short stroll from the Temple tube station to Equity Court, and rising to object to impertinent questions put by prosecuting counsel. I avoid all such indulgences as jogging or squash, activities which I have known to put an early end to many a promising career at the Bar.
162The quack By Ap
pointment to the House of Rumpole used to be a certain Dr MacClintock, a Scot of the most puritanical variety, who put me on the scales and sentenced me to a spell on nothing more sustaining than a kind of chemical gruel called Thin-0-Vite. He did this with the avowed intent of causing a certain quantity of Rumpole to vanish into thin air and leave not a wrack behind. I never felt that this was a scheme likely to contribute to anyone's good health, and readers of these chronicles will recall that MacClintock kicked the bucket not long after prescribing it.* The poor old darling was your pessimistic brand of quack who foresees death following hard upon your next slap-up tea of crumpets and Dundee cake.
So you don't want a quack who is too gloomy and turns your mind to being carried downstairs in your box by sweating undertaker's men complaining of the weight. On the other hand, the quack who tells you there's absolutely nothing wrong with you and that you've got the liver of a five year old and you'll probably go on forever is also disconcerting. Does he protest too much? Is he just trying to keep up your spirits?
And has he secretly informed She Who Must Be Obeyed that you have, at the best, two more weeks to live? On the whole, and to sum up, all you can say is that a man's relationship with his quack is a matter of mutual confidence and judicious balance.
When Dr MacClintock was translated to the great geriatric ward in the skies, the responsibility for the health and wellbeing of the Rumpoles eventually passed to Dr Ghulam Rahmat. Dr Rahmat had been highly spoken of by MacClintock, who had made him a partner in that small quackery which served the area around Froxbury Mansions. He was a short, thick-set man, perhaps in his late forties, with greying "air and large, melting brown eyes behind heavy spectacles.
He was the most optimistic, indeed encouraging, quack I have ever known.
See 'Rumpole and the Quality of Life' in Rumpole and the Age of miracles, Penguin Books, 1988.
I 3 'How are you, Rumpole?' 'I am dying, Egypt, dying.' She Who Must Be Obeyed, whose title, as you will know, derives from the legendary and all-powerful Queen Cleopatra, answered me with a brisk 'Then we'd better call the Doctor.' 'Call nobody,' I warned her, wincing at the deafening sound of my own voice. 'I am returning to my bed. There's nothing on today except a Chambers meeting to consider the case of a Mrs Whittaker who wants to come in as a pupil to ErskineBrown.
That's something worth missing. If Henry telephones tell him that Rumpole's life is ebbing quietly away.' 'Stuff and nonsense, Rumpole. You drank too much, that's all.' Was that all? My head felt as though I had just received a short back-and-sides from the mad axe-man of Luton and a number of small black fish seemed to be swimming before my eyes. No doubt it was all because the Lord Chancellor, in a moment of absent-mindedness, had decided to make Hoskins a circuit judge. Hoskins, the colourless and undistinguished member of our Chambers, mainly concerned with the heavy cost of educating his four daughters, had never found it easy to come by or do his briefs. Now, presumably on the basis that if you can't argue cases you'd be better off deciding them, Hoskins had been elevated to the Circus Bench. The net result was a party in Chambers, at which the large and hungry-looking Misses Hoskins appeared and giggled over their sherry. This soiree was followed by a longer and more serious session in Pommeroy's, which had ended once again, I regret to say, with Henry and me recalling the great hits of Dame Vera Lynn. So now I turned my face to the wall, closed my eyes and knew what it was like to stand loitering on the edge of eternity.
'And how is the great barrister-at-law feeling now?' I was awoken from a troubled doze by a voice which sounded like that of an actor playing the part of an Indian doctor. His dialogue also had the sound of words invented to create a a character. This was my first meeting with him, but in all our subsequent encounters I felt that there was something unreal, almost theatrical, about Ghulam Rahmat, and the way he 164pronounced the absurd title he always insisted on giving me, 'barrister-at-law'.
'I am,' I confessed to the smiling character at my belside, 'feeling like death.' 'Temporary, sir. A purely temporary indisposition. No need to fly the flag over the Old Bailey at half-mast yet awhile.
Tomorrow there will be rejoicing there. The crowds ir1 the street will be cheering. Word will go round. The great barrister-at-law is returned to us, stronger than ever. I hat's told your good lady while you were sleeping, sir. From the look of him, your husband strikes me as strong as a horse.' Now I had a lifetime's experience of the evil after-effts of over-indulgence in Pommeroy's plonk, but they had, up till now, not included the presence of an Asian quack doing Peter Sellers impressions at the Rumpole bedside. I appealed to Hilda, who had joined the party.
'Did you tell Doctor...' 'Rahmat, sir. Ghulam. Medical doctor. Bachelor of Arts of the University of Bombay. A professional like you, sir. But not with a title so imposing and universally feared as barrisier-atlaw.' 'Did you tell Dr Rahmat that I felt near to death?' I asked Hilda.
'We are all near to death.' The thought seemed to cause the Doctor a good deal of amusement. He began to laughi but suppressed the sound as though it were somehow impolite, like a belch. 'But, no doubt, Mr Rumpole will survive us all.
Sit up, please. Will you do me the honour to let me listen to your chest? What a lung you have there, sir! It's a pleasure to listen to your hearty breathing. No doubt about it. Youftill go on forever.' 'Really?' I must say the man had cheered me up considerably.
'So there's nothing seriously wrong?' Nothing at all. I diagnose a severe attack of the collywobbles brought on by food-poisoning, perhaps?'. ood-poisoning?' She Who Must repeated with an unbeliev"ig sigh.
r ich I prescribe two Alka-Seltzers in a glass ofater, 165 strong black coffee, a quiet day in bed and even more than the usual kindness and consideration from your lady wife And tomorrow we shall say the barrister-at-law is himself again!' When she had seen the medical man off the premises and returned to the sick-room, I restrained myself from telling Hilda that for her to treat me with more than her usual kindness and consideration wouldn't greatly tax her ingenuity.
Instead, I gave her a weak smile and quaffed the Alka-Seltzer.
'What a very charming and sensible quack,' I said as I effervesced quietly.
But events were soon to occur which placed considerable doubt on the charm and good sense of Dr Ghulam Rahmat.
The following facts emerged during the subsequent proceedings.
At 10.30 a.m. on the day in question, the waiting-room in the local surgery was full of assorted bronchials, flus, eczemas, rheumatics, carbuncles and suspected and feared antisocial diseases. The receptionist, a Miss Dankwerts, was seated behind her desk, in charge of the proceedings. The names of the doctors were written upon an electric device on the wall behind her, and beside each name a red light flashed if they were engaged or a green if they were available. At the moment with which we are concerned Dr Rahmat's light was red as he was seeing a Miss Marietta Liptrott, who had been waiting to be treated for a sore throat. She had previously been a patient of Dr Cogger, but as he was busy she had asked specifically for the Indian doctor. Miss Liptrott had been closeted with her chosen quack for about ten minutes when a scream was heard from behind Dr Rahmat's door. With her clothes somewhat disarrayed, she flew past the assorted complaints and the startled receptionist and, crying, 'The beast! The beast!', rushed out of the building and into the wastelands around the Gloucester Road. The doctors were accustomed to press their (1 buttons as soon as a patient left, but Dr Rahmat's light remained red for some time after Miss Liptrott ran out. When it changed to green and his next patient, a Mrs Rodway, was! admitted she found the Doctor nervous, apparently unable to 166entrate on her urticaria and looking, so the witness was to Sify, as though 'he'd had the fright of his life'.
Towards the end oftne afternoon surgery on that day, that s to say shortly after six o'clock, I happened to call in to get a prescription for She Who Must Be Obeyed (whose blood pressure is inclined to rise, especially if I have overstayed my allotted time in Ponimy'''), The surgery was almost empty, but a youngi
sh man in a blue suit was opening his briefcase the receptionist's desk and I saw it contained a number of printed folders, pill bottles and a portable telephone. I took him to be the rep fora nrm °f manufacturing chemists and he was rattling on about the wonders of a miracle cure for something or other whenDr Cogger's light went green and he shot out of his door and recognized me.
'Hullo there Mr Rumpole.' Tim Cogger had treated me on a couple of occasions for temporary voice loss, the occupational hazard of Old Bailey hacks and opera singers. He was considerably younger than old MacClintock, but he seemed to have inherited the leadership of the practice. Cogger was the hearty type of quack who once played rugby football for Barts and seemed to believe in the short, sharp shock treatment for most illnesses. H0 was continually complaining that his patients were 'typical National Health pill-scroungers' and, on my rare visits to hiltti he seemed to regard a head cold as the mark of a wimp. 'You're looking well!' he told me, as though daring me to complain °f anything.
'I was looking forD1" Rahmat,' I said. 'He promised my wife a prescription.' 'Oh, I'm afraid Rahmat's gone home.' Dr Cogger seemed to know all about something extremely serious. 'He may not be back at work for a day or two. If it's for Mrs Rumpole, perhaps I could help?' Dr Cogger then got the receptionist to look up Hilda's records and scribbled a new prescription in the most °bliging manner. I the11 knew nothing of the dramatic event of Ae morning, but by the evening it was certainly service with a ile down at the local quackery.
John Mortimer - Rumpole A La Carte Page 18