The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Yes, Mr Rumpole.’ His Honour Judge Matthew was an amazingly civilized character for Grimble, although Albert had warned me that he was a tough sentencer. We had shared coffee and crossword clues the last time I had been up north and when he was still at the Bar, and he gave me a small, but quite charming, smile of welcome.

  ‘If the Alderman could restrain himself from treating us like a Sunday night gathering at the Baptist Chapel,’ I suggested, and his Honour took up the suggestion.

  ‘Just confine yourself to the evidence,’ he said courteously to the witness. ‘It will be for the jury to decide on the exact nature of the articles for sale in the bookshop. Yes, Mr Mackwood.’

  Mackwood asked his final question. ‘Did you purchase at that shop the following articles: Schoolgirl Capers Volume i, numbers i to 6, Double Dating in the Tower of Terror, Manacle me, Darling and the films the jury have already seen?’

  ‘I did, my Lord.’

  Mackwood subsided and Rumpole rose to cross-examine, looking hard at the jury and taking his customary ten seconds’ pause before firing off the first question. ‘Just a few questions, Alderman Launcelot Pertwee. You say this shop, the Adult Book Mart, is a source of corruption to the neighbourhood?’

  ‘I regard it, your Honour’ - another small bow, again ignored by the Judge - ‘as a terrible source of corruption.’

  ‘Standing as it does,’ I put it to him, ‘between a betting shop and the off-licence of the Grimble Arms, who’s more corruptible, Alderman: the punters or the boozers?’

  ‘I object! How can this witness possibly tell…?’ Mackwood rose to his full height to make some alleged objection. I ignored him and he gradually subsided.

  ‘Can’t you, Alderman?’ I kept my eye on the target witness. ‘I thought you came here as an expert on corruption. Does not the Grimble Arms offer “Topless A-Go-Go” on the bar as an attraction on Friday nights?’

  ‘I believe it does. Regrettable…’ Pertwee sighed in a pained sort of manner. I was delighted to see some of the jury smiling. Laughter is your strongest weapon against prosecutions of pornography. I made a reasonable suggestion to the Alderman.

  ‘You don’t think it might be preferable to have sex neatly packaged in books and magazines and not prancing about on the bar, kicking over the pints of Newcastle Brown?’ There was laughter in Court, music to Rumpole’s ears. ‘Tell me, Alderman. There are no kindergartens, no convent schools, no academies for young girls of tender years in Sowerby Street, are there?’

  ‘No, there are not, but…’

  ‘But me no buts, Alderman! And does not the Adult Book Mart have written above the door in large letters, “Entry to those under 18 prohibited”?’

  ‘I can think of no sign, Mr Rumpole,’ said the Judge with a charming smile, ‘that would be more immediately attractive to modern youth.’ The jury rewarded him with a little titter. It was undoubtedly his Honour’s point. I ignored him also.

  ‘At least there were no kiddiwinks present when you went into the shop, were there, Alderman? No simpering maidens of bashful sixteen? No impressionable young students of theology? Not even the toughest teenager?’

  ‘Not when I was there. No,’ the witness admitted reluctantly.

  ‘In fact the clientele consisted of three middle-aged men with suits, umbrellas and brief cases.’ I put it to him, ‘Perhaps they were all Aldermen of the fair city of Grimble?’

  ‘They were all middle-aged men,’ Pertwee admitted.

  ‘Of perfectly respectable appearance?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘No one was actually slavering at the mouth, or walking with their knuckles brushing the linoleum?’ I got home with a reasonable laugh then; the usher called, ‘Silence!’ and Mack-wood looked extremely displeased and got to his hind legs.

  ‘I really don’t understand what my learned friend is getting at.’ He made a self-consciously languid objection.

  ‘Oh, don’t you?’ I was anxious to help him out. ‘My learned friend says that this rubbish…’

  ‘It’s not rubbish, Mr Rumpole!’ My client Meacher whispered deafeningly from the dock. ‘It’s adult reading matter of an erotic nature.’

  I increased my volume to suppress the sound of my aggrieved client, and turned to the witness box. ‘This unmitigated rubbish, Alderman Pertwee, which you encouraged by spending two hundred pounds on assorted magazines and films… was it your ratepayers’ money?’

  ‘I took a float, yes.’ The Alderman sounded defensive. ‘When I made this investigation on behalf of my Committee.’

  ‘Do the ratepayers of Grimble know, Alderman, that you’re spending their hard-earned pennies on Schoolgirl Capers?’

  There was another small stir of laughter, which the Judge interrupted. ‘Mr Rumpole. If you defer the rest of your cross-examination until tomorrow, we might break off there and the jury will no doubt wish to examine the… um… literature.’

  ‘If they must, my Lord.’ It’s no help for the defence in an obscenity case to have anyone actually read the works in question. ‘I should make it clear that I don’t rely on the exact nature of this rubbish. I rely on our historic freedoms. Above all on the freedom of speech.’

  ‘I would like the jury to read every word of these books and magazines,’ said the lanky Mackwood, determined to rub their noses in it.

  ‘Very well,’ I shrugged at the jury. ‘The prosecution is always far more interested in sex than we are.’

  So we parted, and I spent the evening drinking claret in the Majestic (it tasted faintly of red ink and was apparently iced) with my old clerk Albert Handyside. When I got to Court the next morning, I was told that the jury were still out ‘reading’. (I must say that when they finally returned to Court, some of the young men and women of the twelve seemed to have struck up friendships of a warmth over and above the call of jury service.) I also noticed that Albert and the client Meacher were in close conversation outside the Court with a tall, bony-looking red-haired woman who was wearing a luxurious mink stole and several large diamond rings, court shoes and a small hat with a veil. As he was talking, Albert seemed to be taking notes. Not wishing to interrupt him, and having no doubt that he was at work on another case, I went to a call-box and telephoned the mansion flat and She Who Must Be Obeyed.

  ‘Rumpole, when are you coming home?’ The tones were not over-friendly.

  ‘Maybe a day or two. Not that we’re doing very much. Everyone’s sitting around, taking it easy and reading pornography.’

  ‘Reading pornography?’ Hilda sounded incredulous.

  ‘Yes, of course. What else would you like us to do?’

  ‘Oh, do be your age, Rumpole!’ Whereupon Hilda slammed down the receiver.

  Somewhat disconcerted by this I wandered back into Court. The jury was not yet back and Alderman Pertwee was sitting alone in a seat near the witness box, waiting to continue his evidence. He looked an unhealthy colour (bluish, I thought, around the edges) and was continually wiping his hands on a large white handkerchief. He also looked at the Court door from time to time in a nervous manner, and when he saw me his jaw dropped and his eyes became glassy. Not wishing to distress the wretched Alderman more than was absolutely necessary, I left the courtroom again and saw the red-headed woman ap- parently finishing her conference with Albert.

  ‘Very well, Mr Handyside,’ she was saying in a Grimble accent. ‘I want you to handle the divorce. I want the whole town to know the truth about my husband. And I want them to know it as soon as possible. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Absolutely clear, thank you very much,’ said Albert and added, much to my surprise, ‘And a very good day to you, Mrs Pertwee.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, coming up to Albert and the beatifically smiling Meacher. ‘What did you call her?’

  ‘He called her Mrs Pertwee,’ said Meacher in a voice of un- mistakable triumph. ‘And he called her that because that’s who she bloody is.’

  ‘She came about a divorce. But she wants you to use
her statement to cross-examine her husband this morning. As soon as Court sits.’ Albert’s eyes were now shining with a rare excite- ment. ‘She can’t wait to read all about it, it’s bound to make front page of the Grimble Echo.’

  ‘We’ve got him.’ Meacher was grinning broadly. ‘Mr Rum-pole, we’ve got Alderman Purity Pertwee by the short and curlies!’

  Albert leafed through his notebook, in which, it seemed, he had been taking a statement from the local Savonarola’s wife. ‘It does seem to be very valuable material, Mr Rumpole. Mrs Per- twee phoned me and I arranged to meet her here, early this morning. I’m gratified to say, sir, she gave me all the dirt.’

  ‘She was miffed he wasn’t taking her to his Ladies’ Night at the Lodge. He told her she’d let him down. Launcelot Pertwee told his old woman she always gets pissed on sherry at Masonic do’s, that her face goes red and she’s not fit to appear as an Alderman’s wife. Silly sod. He’s played straight into our hands.’ Meacher was elated.

  ‘So she gave me the whole story.’ Albert proffered his notebook.

  ‘Read it, Mr Rumpole! It’ll make your hair stand on end. Shocked me, it did,’ Mr Meacher admitted. ‘I’m used to a respectable business.’

  ‘He’s keeping this young girl at Pond End. That’s been going on for years, to her certain knowledge.’ Albert was obviously only giving me a taste of the dish he had prepared, a little slice off the end of the joint.

  ‘And Mrs Pertwee had to leave his bed because she failed to agree to certain practices. Have a look, Mr Rumpole.’ Mr Meacher sounded pained but enthusiastic. ‘And he attended a dubious film show after the annual do of the Management Committee of Grimble United.’

  ‘Mrs Pertwee’s found her clothes missing on several occasions. He’s actually donned articles of her clothing.’

  ‘He can’t be left. Not even with the young girls who man the pumps at the garage he owns. They call him “Forecourt Freddie” because he’s always out there chatting them up.’

  ‘Lucky his Honour knocked off when he did. You can use all this stuff on the Alderman when we go back.’

  Albert was giving his legal opinion, when I startled them both by saying, ‘No!’

  ‘What?’ Albert frowned, as though he were hard of hearing.

  ‘No. We can’t use it.’ I now hoped I had made myself clear.

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Rumpole?’ Meacher was determinedly reasonable. ‘It’s all good stuff, what Albert Handyside got you there.’

  ‘Mr Meacher. I explained.’ I did so again, quite patiently. ‘We’re going to win this case on liberty. The freedom of everyone to please themselves. To do as they like – provided they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses. We are against peeping and prying through bedroom keyholes to censor and condemn our fellow human beings! If we attacked the Alderman for the shortcomings of his private life, we should be selling the pass. Don’t you understand that? We should be the censors and the hypocrites. We should be selling our liberty!’

  Meacher looked stunned, but Albert had the solicitor’s immediate reaction: take counsel’s advice and then you always have someone to blame if things go wrong. ‘Of course, Mr Rumpole,’ he said doubtfully. ‘You’re in charge.’

  ‘Yes, I am in charge, aren’t I? Don’t be a back-seat driver, my dear old Albert, or you, Mr Meacher. Just sit back, relax and try to enjoy the view.’

  So when we got back to Court, I told the Judge that I didn’t wish to ask Mr Pertwee any further questions. The Alderman looked as though a reprieve had come through, and the sentence of death for which he had been preparing had been altered to a term of office as Mayor of Grimble. He bowed very low to the Judge, he actually contrived to bow to Rumpole, and went triumphantly out of Court.

  As I had no intention whatever of putting my client Meacher in the witness box, the evidence was now over. After my learned friend Mr Mackwood had paraded his prejudices in a few ill-chosen words, I rose to make, although I say it myself, one of my very best speeches. I had, of course, had little else to think about and I had rounded the phrases during a long night listening to the central heating (far more noise than heat) in the Majestic Hotel. I won’t weary you with the whole oration (the curious may find most of it only slightly misquoted in the Grimble Echo of the relevant date), but I will give you the end, the climax, the peroration. I included in it, of course, what is almost my favourite among Wordsworth’s poems, dedicated to National Independence and Liberty.

  ‘It is not to be thought of that the flood

  Of British Freedom, which, to the open sea

  Of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity

  Hath flowed with pomp of waters unwithstood…

  Should perish!’

  I told the Grimble Jury.

  I leaned forward then, dropped my voice and addressed them confidentially. ‘Members of the jury. Freedom is not divisible. You cannot pick and choose with freedom, and if we allow liberty for the opinions we hold dear and cherish, we must allow the same privilege to the opinions we detest or even to works of such unadulterated rubbish as Schoolgirl Capers Volume i, numbers i to 6. Let those who wish to read it do so; they will soon grow weary of the charms of such elderly schoolgirls. You and I, members of the jury, stand, do we not, for tolerance? We are not intolerant of Alderman Pertwee. He is free to express his opinions. We don’t seek to call him a hypocrite, or have him banned.’

  Young men and girls in the jury were sitting close together, some may even have been holding hands. I smiled at them. I think they may have smiled back. So I ended my speech.

  ‘Ours is the tolerant approach, and if we are tolerant in great matters, so we must be in the little, trivial matter of these puerile magazines, for once we start in the business of censorship and the banning of books, that is the ending of freedom. Our priceless liberties are in your hands today, members of the jury. There could be no safer place for them!’

  In due course the Judge summed up, with devastating fairness, and in due course the jury, having exchanged telephone numbers and arrangements for the weekend, struck their mini blow for respectability and found Mr Meacher guilty on all counts. The Judge dropped about nine pounds of charm and sent him to prison for ‘polluting the fair city of Grimble’. It was a disappointed Rumpole, feeling every year of his age, who made the unpleasant trip to the cells which every barrister is in honour bound to take after his client has been convicted. And Meacher, I felt sure, wasn’t going to prove a good loser; not for him the stiff upper lip of the playing fields of Eton. He was bloody angry, and he had no doubt where the blame was to be laid. As I entered the small cell under Grimble Court with a depressed-looking Albert Handyside, Mr Meacher muttered bitterly, ‘Eighteen months!’

  ‘Try and look on the cheerful side, Mr Meacher. You’ll be in an open prison, hobnobbing with bent coppers, twisted solicitors and all the toffs.’ I saw that I wasn’t cheering him up.

  ‘I wouldn’t be in no sort of prison if you’d done your job properly.’

  ‘You didn’t like the speech?’ I was, I must confess, a little disappointed by the client’s reaction.

  ‘I told you how to treat that bastard Pertwee. Go for the jugular!’

  ‘It was Mr Rumpole’s decision…’ Albert was going to do his best, but his disappointment was also clear. And he was interrupted by an explosion from Meacher.

  ‘How can pissing Pertwee be on the Council? Lay bloody preacher. Chairman of the Watch Committee. And that Judge gave me eighteen months for polluting the fair city of Grimble.’

  ‘Now that, I grant you, was a bit steep,’ I sympathized with him. ‘I don’t know what he thinks this grimy and draughty northern borough is. I mean, the Station Hotel may have a sort of macabre Gothic charm, but otherwise… Well, Grimble’s hardly Venice in the springtime.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m going to appeal!’ Meacher clenched his fists and looked enormously determined.

  ‘Now that, in my opinion, would be perfectly hopeless,’ I told Meacher, and I ha
d no doubt on the subject.

  ‘I don’t give a damn for your opinion, Mr Rumpole. You get me a young brief, Mr Handyside. Someone with a bit of guts, who’ll tell the truth about Launcelot bloody Pertwee!’ From his bench in the cell Meacher looked up at me, I thought malevolently. ‘You’re just like the old punters we get in our shops, Mr Rumpole, you are. Blokes what is past it.’

  So it was in no light-hearted mood that I returned, travel stained, British Railway bashed, and jury battered, to my refuge in Froxbury Mansions. I had expected, on recent form, a cold welcome from She Who Must Be Obeyed. Imagine my surprise therefore, when I let myself in to the flat and found, in my living-room, lights dim, flowers bought and set in a cut-glass vase, and She reclining by the gas fire wearing some sort of dressing-gown. Our old wireless set was on, and from it the disembodied voice of the late Richard Tauber percolated, singing:

  ‘Come, come, I love you only

  My heart is true…

  Come, come, my heart is lonely

  I long for you…’

  or words to the like effect.

  As I entered the unexpectedly warm gloaming of our living-room She said, ‘Rumpole, is that you, dear?’

  ‘What did you call me?’ I couldn’t believe my ears.

  ‘I called you “dear”. Can’t I call you “dear”, Rumpole?’ She rose gracefully and actually poured me a glassful of Pommeroy’s plonk; and it was a liberal measure.

  ‘I suppose there’s no reason why not.’ I took a gulp and a sniff round. ‘Is there a rather odd sort of smell in here?’

  is there…?’

  ‘Distinctly unusual smell. Mixture of R.C. churches and old flower vases.’

  ‘Well, that’s not very romantic’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m wearing lavender water, Rumpole,’ Hilda said, almost coyly. ‘The lavender water you give me every Christmas.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t recognize it.’ I realized I had said the wrong thing, and returned my nose to my glass.