‘One of your customers?’ I asked Vanberry.
‘One of my best,’ he sighed. ‘I imagine the profession of garagiste in Luton must be extremely profitable. And he makes a point of coming to all of our blind tastings.’
‘Now I’m here,’ Mr Mantis said, taking off his zipper jacket and displaying a yellow jumper ornamented with diamond lozenges, ‘let battle commence.’ He twirled and sniffed and took a mouthful from a tasting glass, made a short but somehow revolting gargling sound and spat into the sawdust. ‘A fairly unpretentious Côte Rotie,’ he announced, as he did so. ‘But on the whole 1975 was a disappointing year on the Rhône.’
The contest was run like a game of musical chairs. They gave you a glass and if you guessed wrong, the chair, so to speak, was removed and you had to go and sit with the girls and have an ice cream. At my first try I got that distant hint of wild strawberries again from a wine that was so far out of the usual run of my drinking that I became tongue-tied, and when asked to name the nectar could only mutter ‘damn good stuff’ and slink away from the field of battle.
Erskine-Brown was knocked out in the second round, having confidently pronounced a Coonawarra to be Châteauneuf du Pape. ‘Some bloody stuff from Wagga, Wagga,’ he grumbled unreasonably – on most occasions Claude was a staunch upholder of the Commonwealth, ‘one always forgets about the colonies.’
So we watched as, one by one, the players fell away. Martyn Vanberry was in charge of the bottles and after the contestants had made their guesses he had to disclose the labels. From time to time, in the manner of donnish quiz-masters on upmarket wireless guessing-games, he would give little hints, particularly if he liked the contender. ‘A churchyard number’ might indicate a Graves, or ‘a macabre little item, somewhat skeletal’ a Beaune. He never, I noticed, gave much assistance to the garagiste from Luton, nor did he need to because the ebullient Mr Monty Mantis had no difficulty in identifying his wines and could even make a decent stab at the vintage year, although perfect accuracy in that regard wasn’t required.
Finally the challengers were reduced to two: Monty Mantis and the lady with the eyeglass, Honoria Bird or Birdie as she was known to all the pinstriped expectorating undertakers around her. It was their bottoms that hovered, figuratively speaking, over the final chair, the last parcelled bottle. Martyn Vanberry was holding this with particular reverence as he poured a taster into two glasses. Monty Mantis regarded the colour, lowered his nose to the level of the tide, took a mouthful and spat rapidly.
‘Gordon Bennett!’ He seemed somewhat amazed. ‘Don’t want to risk swallowing that. It might ruin me carburettor!’
Martyn Vanberry looked pale and extremely angry. He turned to the lady contestant, who was swilling the stuff around her dentures in a far more impressive way. ‘Well, Birdie,’ he said, as she spat neatly, ‘let me give you a clue. It’s not whisky.’
‘I think I could tell that.’ She looked impassive. ‘Not whisky.’
‘But think … just think …’ Vanberry seemed anxious to bring the contest to a rapid end by helping her. ‘Think of a whisky translated.’
‘Le quatre-star Esso?’ said the garagiste, but Vanberry was unamused.
‘White Horse?’ Birdie frowned.
‘Very good. Something Conservative, of course. And keep to the right!’
‘The right bank of the river? St Emilion. White Horse? Cheval Blanc …’ Birdie arrived at her destination with a certain amount of doubt and hesitation.
‘1971, I’m afraid, nothing earlier.’ Vanberry was pulling away the brown paper to reveal a label on which the words Cheval Blanc and Appellation St émilion Contrôlée were to be clearly read. There was a smatter of applause. ‘Dear old Birdie! Still an unbeatable palate.’ It was a tribute in which the Luton garagiste didn’t join; he was laughing as Martyn Vanberry turned to him and said, icily polite, ‘I’m sorry you were pipped at the post, Mr Mantis. You did jolly well. Now, Birdie, if you’ll once again accept the certificate of Les Grands Contestants du Vin and the complimentary bottle which this time is a magnum of Gevrey Chambertin Claire Pau 1970 – a somewhat underrated vintage. Can you not stay with us, Mr Mantis?’
But Monty Mantis was on his way to the door, muttering about getting himself decarbonized. Nobody laughed, and no one seemed particularly sorry to see him go.
There must be no accounting, I reflected on this incident, for tastes. One man’s antifreeze may be another’s Mouton Rothschild, especially if you don’t see the label. I was reminded of those embarrassing tests on television in which the puzzled housewife is asked to tell margarine from butter, or say which washing powder got young Ronnie’s football shorts whitest. She always looks terrified of disappointing the eager interviewer and plumping for the wrong variety. But then I thought that as a binge, the blind tasting at Vanberry’s Fine Wines had been about as successful as a picnic tea with the Clacton Temperance Society and the incident faded from my memory.
Other matters arose of more immediate concern. One was to be of some interest and entertainment value. To deal with the bad news first: my wife Hilda, whose very name rings out like a demand for immediate obedience, announced the imminent visit to our mansion flat (although the words are inept to describe the somewhat gloomy and cavernous interior of Casa Rumpole) in Froxbury Court, Gloucester Road, of her old school-friend Dodo Mackintosh.
Now Dodo may be, in many ways, a perfectly reasonable and indeed game old bird. Her watercolours of Lamorna Cove and adjacent parts of Cornwall are highly regarded in some circles, although they seem to me to have been executed in heavy rain. She is, I believe, a dab hand at knitting patterns and during her stays a great deal of fancywork is put in on matinée jackets and bootees for her younger relatives. Hilda tells me that she was, when they were both at school, a sturdy lacrosse player. My personal view, and this is not for publication to She Who Must Be Obeyed, is that in any conceivable team sent out to bore for England, Dodo would have to be included. As you may have gathered, I do not hit it off with the lady, and she takes the view that by marrying a claret-drinking, cigar-smoking legal hack who is never likely to make a fortune, Hilda has tragically wasted her life.
The natural gloom that the forthcoming visit cast upon me was somewhat mitigated by the matter of Mizz Probert’s application to enter 3 Equity Court, which allowed me a little harmless fun at the expense of Soapy Sam Bollard (or Ballard as he effects to call himself), the sanctimonious President of the Lawyers As Christians Society who, in his more worldly manifestation, has contrived to become Head of our Chambers.
Sometime after the end of Regina v. Snakelegs (not a victory to be mentioned in the same breath as the Penge Bungalow Murders, in which I managed to squeeze first past the post alone and without a leader, but quite a satisfactory win all the same), I wandered into the clerk’s room and there was the eager face of Mizz Probert asking our clerk Henry if there was any news about her application to become a pupil in Chambers, and Henry was explaining to her, without a great deal of patience, that her name would come up for discussion by the learned friends in due course.
‘Pupil? You want to be a pupil? Any good at putting, are you?’ This was the voice of Uncle Tom – T. C. Rowley – our oldest member, who hadn’t come by a brief for as long as any of us can remember, but who chooses to spend his days with us to vary the monotony of life with an unmarried sister. His working day consists of a long battle with The Times crossword – won by the setter on most days, a brief nap after the midday sandwich and a spell of golf practice in a corner of the clerk’s room. Visiting solicitors occasionally complain of being struck quite smartly on the ankle by one of Uncle Tom’s golf balls.
‘Good at putting? No. Do you have to be?’ Mizz Probert asked in all innocence.
‘My old pupil master, C. H. Wystan,’ Uncle Tom told her, referring to Hilda’s Daddy, the long-time-ago Head of our Chambers, ‘was a terribly nice chap, but he never gave me anything to do. So I became the best member at getting his balls into a waste-
paper basket. Awfully good training, you know. I never had an enormous practice. Well, very little practice at all quite honestly, so I’ve been able to keep up my golf. If you want to become a pupil this is my advice to you. Get yourself a mashie niblick …’
As this bizarre advice wound on, I left our clerk’s room in order to avoid giving vent to any sort of unseemly guffaw. I had a conference with Mr Bernard, the solicitor who appeared to have a retainer for the Timson family. The particular problem concerned Tony Timson, who had entered a shop with the probable intention of stealing three large television sets. Unfortunately the business had gone bankrupt the week before and was quite denuded of stock, thus raising what many barristers might call a nice point of law – I would call it nasty. Getting on for half a century knocking around the Courts has given me a profound distaste for the law. Give me a bloodstain or two, a bit of disputed typewriting or a couple of hairs on a cardigan, and I am happy as the day is long. I feel a definite sense of insecurity and unease when solicitors like Mr Bernard say, as he did on that occasion, ‘Hasn’t the House of Lords had something to say on the subject?’
Well, perhaps it had. The House of Lords is always having something to say; they’re a lot of old chatterboxes up there, if you want my opinion. I was saved from an immediate answer by Mizz Probert entering with a cup of coffee which she must have scrounged from the clerk’s room for the sole purpose of gaining access to the Rumpole sanctum. I thanked her and prepared to parry Bernard’s next attack.
‘It’s the doctrine of impossible attempt of course,’ he burbled on. ‘You must know the case.’
‘Must I?’ I was playing for time, but I saw Mizz Probert darting to the shelves where the bound volumes of the law reports are kept mainly for the use of other members of our Chambers.
‘I mean there have been all these articles in the Criminal Law Review.’
‘My constant bedtime reading,’ I assured him.
‘So you do know the House of Lords decision?’ Mr Bernard sounded relieved.
‘Know it? Of course I know it. During those long evenings at Froxbury Court we talk of little else. The name’s on the tip of my tongue …’
It wasn’t, of course, but the next minute it was on the law report which Mizz Probert put in front of me. ‘ “Swinglehurst against the Queen …” Of course. Ah, yes. I’ve got it at my fingertips, as always, Mr Bernard. “Doctrine of impossible attempts examined – R. v. Dewdrop and Banister distinguished”.’ I read him a few nuggets from the headnote of the case. ‘All this is good stuff, Bernard, couched in fine rich prose …’
‘So how does that affect Tony Timson trying to steal three non-existent telly sets?’
‘How does it?’ I stood then, to end the interview. ‘I think it would be more helpful to you, Mr Bernard, if I gave you a written opinion. I may have to go into other authorities in some depth.’
So it became obvious that, as far as I was concerned, Mizz Liz Probert would be a valuable, perhaps an indispensable, member of Chambers. When I asked her to write the opinion I had promised Bernard, she told me that she had been the top student of her year and won the Cicero scholarship. With Probert’s knowledge of the law and my irresistible way with a jury, we might, I felt, become a team which could have got the Macbeths off regicide.
A happy chance furthered my plans. Owing to the presence on the domestic scene of Dodo Mackintosh (not the sort of spectacle a barrister wishes to encounter early in the mornings), I was taking my breakfast in the Taste-Ee-Bite, one of the newer and more garish serve-yourself eateries in Fleet Street. I was just getting outside two eggs and bacon on a fried slice, when Soapy Sam Bollard plonked himself down opposite me with a cup of coffee.
‘Do you read the Church Times, Rumpole?’ he started improbably, waving a copy of that organ in the general direction of my full English breakfast.
‘Only for the racing results.’
‘There’s a first-class fellow writing on legal matters. This week’s piece is headed VENGEANCE IS MINE. I WILL REPAY. This is what Canon Probert says …’
‘Canon who?’
‘Probert.’
‘That’s what I thought you said.’
‘Society is fully entitled to be revenged upon the criminal.’ Ballard gave me a taste of the Canon’s style. ‘Even the speeding motorist is a fit object for the legalized vengeance of the outraged pedestrian.’
‘What does the good Canon recommend? Bring back the thumb-screw for parking on a double yellow line?’
‘ “Too often the crafty lawyer frustrates the angel of retribution”,’ Ballard went on reading.
‘Too often the angel of retribution makes a complete balls-up of the burden of proof.’
‘You may mock, Rumpole. You may well mock!’
‘Thank you.’
‘What we need is someone with the spirit of Canon Probert in Chambers. Someone to convince the public that lawyers still have a bit of moral fibre.’ Ballard’s further mention of this name put quite a ruthless scheme into my head. ‘Probert,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘did you say Probert?’
‘Canon Probert.’ Ballard supplied the details.
‘Odd, that,’ I told him. ‘The name seems strangely familiar …’
Later, when Mizz Probert handed in a highly expert and profound legal opinion in the obscure subject of impossible attempt, often known in the trade as ‘stealing from an empty purse’, I had a few words with her on the subject of her parentage.
‘Is your father,’ I asked, ‘by any chance the Canon Probert who writes for the Church Times?’ And then I gave her an appropriate warning: ‘Don’t answer that.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because our Head of Chambers is quite ridiculously prejudiced against women pupils whose fathers aren’t canons who write for the Church Times. You may go now, Mizz Probert. Thank you for the excellent work.’ She left me then. Clearly I had given her much food for thought.
So, in due course, a meeting was called in Sam Ballard’s room to consider the intake of new pupils into Chambers. Those present were Rumpole, Erskine-Brown and Hoskins, a grey and somewhat fussy barrister, much worried by the expensive upbringing of his numerous daughters.
‘Elizabeth Probert,’ Ballard, QC, being in the Chair, read out the next name on his list. ‘Does anyone know her?’
‘I have seen her hanging about the clerk’s room,’ Erskine-Brown admitted. ‘Remove the glasses and she might have a certain elfin charm.’ Poor old Claude was ever hopelessly susceptible to a whiff of beauty in a lady barrister. ‘I wonder if she could help me with my County Court practice …’
‘That’s all you think about, Erskine-Brown!’ Hoskins sounded disapproving. ‘Wine, women and your County Court practice.’
‘That is distinctly unfair!’
‘So far as I remember your wife didn’t care for Fiona Allways.’ Hoskins reminded him of his moment of tenderness for a young lady barrister now married to a merchant banker and living in Cheltenham.
‘Yes. Well. Of course, Phillida can’t be here today. She’s got a long firm fraud in Doncaster,’ Claude apologized for his wife.
‘She might not take to anyone who looked at all elfin without her glasses.’ Hoskins struck a further warning note.
‘It was just a casual observation …’
‘And I’m not sure we want any new intake in Chambers. Even in the form of pupils. I mean, is there enough work to go round? I speak as a member with daughters to support,’ Hoskins reminded us.
‘Thinking the matter over’ – Erskine-Brown was clearly losing his bottle – ‘I’m afraid Philly might be rather against her.’
It was then that I struck my blow for the highly qualified Mizz. ‘I would be against her too,’ I said, ‘if it weren’t for the name. Ballard, isn’t that canon you admire so tremendously, the one we all read in the Church Times, called Probert?’
‘You mean she’s some relation?’ Ballard was clearly excited.
‘She hasn’t said she isn’t.
’
‘Not his daughter.’ By now he was positively awe-struck.
‘She hasn’t denied it.’
Then Ballard looked like one whose eyes had seen his and my salvation. ‘Then Elizabeth Probert comes from a family with enormously sound views on the religious virtue of retribution as part of our criminal law. I see her as an admirable pupil for Rumpole!’
‘You think he might teach her some of his courtroom antics?’ Erskine-Brown sounded sceptical.
‘I think she might’ – Ballard spoke with deep conviction – ‘just possibly save his soul!’
So it came about that I was driven to my next conference at Brixton Prison in a very small runabout, something like a swaying biscuit box, referred to by Mizz Probert as her Deux Chevaux, and I supposed there was something to be said for having a pupil on wheels. Apart from the matter of transport, there was nothing particularly new or unusual about the conference in question, for I had once again been summoned to the aid of Hugh Snakelegs Timson who had, once again, been found in possession of a quantity of property alleged to have been stolen. Once again, DI Broome and DC Cosgrove had called at the Bromley semi to find the Cortina parked out in the street, and the lock-up garage full of cases of a fine wine, none other than St émilion Château Cheval Blanc 1971.
‘Hugh Timson seems to be always getting into trouble.’ Mizz Probert was steering us, with a good deal of dexterity, round the Elephant and Castle.
‘I suppose he takes the usual business risks.’
‘Have you ever found out the root of the problem?’
‘The root of the problem would seem to be Detective Inspector Broome who’s rapidly becoming the terror of the Timsons.’
‘I bet you’ll find that he comes from a broken home.’
‘Inspector Broome? Probably.’
‘No. I meant Hugh Timson. In an inner-city area. With an antisocial norm among his peer group, most likely. He must always have felt alienated from society.’
Was Mizz Probert right, and is it nurture and not nature that shapes our ends? I suppose I was brought up in appalling conditions, in an ice-cold vicarage with no mod cons or central heating. My old father, being a priest of the Church of England, had only the sketchiest notion of morality, and my mother was too occupied with jam-making and the Women’s Institute to notice my existence. Is it any real wonder that I have taken to crime?
The Collected Stories of Rumpole Page 34