‘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 façade of a waistcoat,’ Varian agreed. ‘A sort of dickie!’
‘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 Hussein 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 case, 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!’ Ollie 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 lèse majesté.’
‘High treason, Oliver?’ suggested Graves languidly. ‘There’s a strong rumour going round the Sheridan Club that Rumpole called you a boring old fart.’
At which Arthur Nottley whispered to our leader, ‘Probably the only true words spoken in the case!’ and Ballard did his best to look disapproving at such impertinence.
‘I know what he said.’ Oliphant was overcome with terrible common sense. ‘It was the clearest contempt of court. That’s why I felt it was my public duty to report the matter to the Bar Council.’
‘And they’re also saying’ – Varian was always marvellously well informed – ‘that Rumpole’s case has been put over to a Disciplinary Tribunal.’
‘And may the Lord have mercy on his soul,’ Graves intoned. ‘Rumpole on trial! You must admit, it’s rather an amusing idea.’
The news was bad and it had better be broken to She Who Must Be Obeyed as soon as possible. I had every reason to believe that when she heard it, the consequent eruption of just wrath against the tactless, bloody-mindedness of Rumpole would register on the Richter Scale as far away as Aldgate East and West Hampstead. So it was in the tentative and somewhat nervous way that a parent on Guy Fawkes night lights the blue touchpaper and stands well back that I said to Hilda one evening when we were seated in front of the gas-fire, ‘Old thing, I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘And I’ve got something to tell you, Rumpole.’ She was drinking coffee and toying with the Telegraph crossword and seemed in an unexpectedly good mood. All the same, I had to confess, ‘I think I’ve about finished with this game.’
‘What game is that, Rumpole?’
‘Standing up and bowing, saying, “If your Lordship pleases, In my very humble submission, With the very greatest respect, my Lord” to some old fool no one has any respect for at all.’
‘That’s the point, Rumpole! You shouldn’t have to stand up any more, or bow to anyone.’
‘Those days are over, Hilda. Definitely over!’
‘I quite agree.’ I was delighted to find her so easily persuaded. ‘I shall let them go through their absurd rigmarole and then they can do their worst.’
‘And you’ll spend the rest of your days sitting,’ Hilda said. I thought that was rather an odd way of putting it, but I was glad of her support and explained my present position in greater detail. ‘So be it!’ I told her. ‘If that’s all they have to say to me after a lifetime of trying to see that some sort of justice is done to a long line of errant human beings, good luck to them. If that’s my only reward for trying to open their eyes and understand that there are a great many people in this world who weren’t at Winchester with them, and have no desire to take port with the benchers of the Outer Temple, let them get on with it. From this time forth I never will speak word!’
‘I’m sure that’s best, Rumpole, except for your summings-up.’
‘My what?’ I no longer followed her drift.
‘Your summings-up to the jury, Rumpole. You can do those sitting down, can’t you?’
‘Hilda,’ I asked patiently, ‘what are you talking about?’
‘I know what you’re talking about. I ha
d a word with Marigold Featherstone, in Harrods.’
‘Does she know already?’ News of Rumpole’s disgrace had, of course, spread like wildfire.
‘Well, not everything. But she was going to see Guthrie did something about it.’
‘Nothing he can do.’ I had to shatter her hopes. ‘Nothing anyone can do, now.’
‘You mean, they told you?’ She looked more delighted than ever.
‘Told me what?’
‘You’re going to be a judge?’
‘No, my dear old thing. I’m not going to be a judge. I’m not even going to be a barrister. I’m up before the Disciplinary Tribunal, Hilda. They’re going to kick me out.’
She looked at me in silence and I steeled myself for the big bang, but to my amazement she asked, quite quietly, ‘Rumpole, what is it? You’ve got yourself into some sort of trouble?’
‘That’s the understatement of the year.’
‘Is it another woman?’ Hilda’s mind dwelt continually on sex.
‘Not really. It’s another man. A North Country comedian who gave me more of his down-to-earth common sense than I could put up with.’
‘Sir Oliver Oliphant?’ She knew her way round the Judiciary. ‘You weren’t rude to him, were you, Rumpole?’
‘In all the circumstances, I think I behaved with remarkable courtesy,’ I assured her.
‘That means you were rude to him.’ She was not born yesterday. ‘I once poured him a cup of tea at the Outer Temple garden party.’
‘What made you forget the arsenic?’
‘He’s probably not so bad when you get to know him.’
‘When you get to know him,’ I assured her, ‘he’s much, much worse.’
‘What else have you done, Rumpole? You may as well tell me now.’
‘They say I spoke to my client at lunchtime. I am alleged to have told him not to bore us all to death.’
‘Was it a woman client?’ She looked, for a moment, prepared to explode, but I reassured her. ‘Decidedly not! It was a retired civil servant called Henry Sebastian Tong.’
‘And when is this Tribunal?’ She was starting to sound determined, as though war had broken out and she was prepared to fight to the finish.
‘Shortly. I shall treat it with the contempt it deserves,’ I told her, ‘and when it’s all over I shall rest:
‘For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.’
The sound of the words brought me some comfort, although I wasn’t sure they were entirely appropriate. And then she brought back my worst fears by saying, ‘I shall stand by you, Rumpole, at whatever cost. I shall stand by you, through thick and thin.’
Perhaps I should explain the obscure legal process that has to be gone through in the unfrocking, or should I say unwigging, of a barrister. The Bar Council may be said to be the guardian of our morality, there to see we don’t indulge in serious crimes or conduct unbecoming to a legal hack, such as assaulting the officer in charge of the case, dealing in dangerous substances round the corridors of the Old Bailey or speaking to our clients in the lunch hour. Mr Justice Ollie Oliphant had made a complaint to that body and a committee had decided to send me for trial before a High Court Judge, three practising barristers and a lay assessor, one of the great and the good who could be relied upon to uphold the traditions of the Bar and not ask awkward questions or give any trouble to the presiding Judge. It was the prospect of She Who Must Be Obeyed pleading my cause as a character witness before this august Tribunal which made my blood run cold.
There was another offer of support which I thought was far more likely to do me harm than good. I was, a few weeks later, alone in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, contemplating the tail end of a bottle of Château Fleet Street and putting off the moment when I would have to return home to Hilda’s sighs of sympathy and the often-repeated, unanswerable question, ‘How could you have done such a thing, Rumpole? After all your years of experience’, to which would no doubt be added the information that her Daddy would never have spoken to a client in the lunch hour, or at any other time come to that, when I heard a familiar voice calling my name and I looked up to see my old friend Fred Timson, head of the great South London family of villains from which a large part of my income is derived. Naturally I asked him to pull up a chair, pour out a glass and was he in some sort of trouble?
‘Not me. I heard you was, Mr Rumpole. I want you to regard me as your legal adviser.’
When I explained that the indispensable Mr Bernard was already filling that post at my trial he said, ‘Bernard has put me entirely in the picture, he having called on my cousin Kevin’s second-hand car lot as he was interested in a black Rover, only fifty thousand on the clock and the property of a late undertaker. We chewed the fat to a considerable extent over your case, Mr Rumpole, and I have to inform you, my own view is that you’ll walk it. We’ll get you out, sir, without a stain on your character.’
‘Oh, really, Fred’ – I already felt some foreboding – ‘and how will you manage that?’
‘It so happened’ – he started on a long story – ‘that Cary and Chas Timson, being interested spectators in the trial of Chas’s brother-in-law Benny Panton on the Crockthorpe post-office job, was in the Old Bailey on that very day! And they kept your client Tongue – or whatever his name was—’
‘Tong.’
‘Yes, they kept Mr Tong in view throughout the lunch hour, both of them remaining in the precincts as, owing to a family celebration the night before, they didn’t fancy their dinner. And they can say, with the utmost certainty, Mr Rumpole, that you did not speak one word to your client throughout the lunchtime adjournment! So the good news is, two cast-iron alibi witnesses. I have informed Mr Bernard accordingly, and you are bound to walk!’
I don’t know what Fred expected but all I could do was to look at him in silent wonder and, at last, say, ‘Very interesting.’
‘We thought you’d be glad to know about it.’ He seemed surprised at my not hugging him with delight.
‘How did they recognize Mr Tong?’
‘Oh, they asked who you was defending, being interested in your movements as the regular family brief. And the usher pointed this Tong out to the witnesses.’
‘Really? And who was the Judge in the robbery trial they were attending?’
‘They told me that! Old Penal Parsloe, I’m sure that was him.’
‘Mr Justice Parsloe is now Lord Justice Parsloe, sitting in the Court of Appeal,’ I had to break the bad news to him. ‘He hasn’t been down the Bailey for at least two years. I’m afraid your ingenious defence wouldn’t work, Fred, even if I intended to deny the charges.’
‘Well, what Judge was it, then, Mr Rumpole?’
‘Never mind, Fred.’ I had to discourage his talent for invention. ‘It’s the thought that counts.’
When I left Pommeroy’s a good deal later, bound for Temple tube station, I had an even stranger encounter and a promise of further embarrassment at my trial. As I came down Middle Temple Lane on to the Embankment and turned right towards the station, I saw the figure of Claude Erskine-Brown approaching with his robe bag slung over his shoulder, no doubt whistling the big number from Götterdämmerung, perhaps kept late by some jury unable to make up its mind. Claude had been the cause of all my troubles and I had no desire to bandy words with the fellow, so I turned back and started to retrace my steps in an easterly direction. Who should I see then but Ollie Oliphant issuing from Middle Temple Lane, smoking a cigar and looking like a man who has been enjoying a good dinner. Quick as a shot I dived into such traffic as there was and crossed the road to the Embankment, where I stood, close to the wall, looking down into the inky water of the Thames, with my back well turned to the two points of danger behind me.
I hadn’t been standing there very long, sniffing the night air and hoping I had got shot of my two opponents, when an unwelcome han
d grasped my arm and I heard a panic-stricken voice say, ‘Don’t do it, Rumpole!’
‘Do what?’
‘Take the easy way out.’
‘Bollard!’ I said, for it was our Head of Chambers behaving in this extraordinary fashion. ‘Let go of me, will you?’
At this, Ballard did relax his grip and stood looking at me with deep and intolerable compassion as he intoned, ‘However serious the crime, all sinners may be forgiven. And remember, there are those that are standing by you, your devoted wife – and me! I have taken up the burden of your defence.’
‘Well, put it down, Bollard! I have nothing whatever to say to those ridiculous charges.’
‘I mean, I am acting for you, at your trial.’ I then felt a genuine, if momentary, desire to hurl myself into the river, but he was preaching on. ‘I think I can save you, Rumpole, if you truly repent.’
‘What is this?’ I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘A legal conference or a prayer meeting?’
‘Good question, Rumpole! The two are never far apart. You may achieve salvation, if you will say, after me, you have erred and strayed like a lost sheep.’
‘Me? Say that to Ollie Oliphant?’ Had Bollard taken complete leave of his few remaining senses?
‘Repentance, Rumpole. It’s the only way.’
‘Never!’
‘I don’t ask it for myself, Rumpole, even though I’m standing by you.’
‘Well, stop standing by me, will you? I’m on my way to the Underground.’ And I started to move away from the man at a fairly brisk pace.
‘I ask it for that fine woman who has devoted her life to you. A somewhat unworthy cause, perhaps. But she is devoted. Rumpole, I ask it for Hilda!’
What I didn’t know at that point was that Hilda was being more active in my defence than I was. She had called at our Chambers and, while I was fulfilling a previous engagement in Snaresbrook Crown Court, she had burst into Ballard’s room unannounced, rousing him from some solitary religious observance or an afternoon sleep brought on by over-indulgence in bean-shoot sandwiches at the vegetarian snack bar, and told him that I was in a little difficulty. Ballard’s view, when he had recovered consciousness, was that I was in fact in deep trouble and he had prayed long and earnestly about the matter.
The Collected Stories of Rumpole Page 63