Forever Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘I recall we had a man in chambers once called Drinkwater – oh, before you were born, Hoskins. And some fellow came and paid Drinkwater a hundred guineas – for six months’ pupillage. And you know what this Drinkwater fellow did? Bought us all champagne – and the next day he ran off to Calais with his junior clerk. We never saw hide nor hair of either of them again.’ He paused. Marigold looked puzzled, not quite sure if this was the punch line.

  ‘Of course, you could get a lot further in those days – on a hundred guineas,’ Uncle Tom ended on a sad note, and Marigold laughed heartily.

  ‘Your husband’s star has risen so quickly, Mrs Featherstone. Only ten years’ call and he’s an MP and leading counsel.’ Hoskins was clearly so excited by the whole business he had stopped worrying about his cheques for half an hour.

  ‘Oh, it’s the PR you know. Guthrie’s frightfully good at the PR.’

  I felt like Everglade. Marigold was speaking a strange and incomprehensible language.

  ‘Guthrie always says the most important thing at the Bar is to be polite to your instructing solicitor. Don’t you find that, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Polite to solicitors? It’s never occurred to me.’

  ‘Guthrie admires you so, Mr Rumpole. He admires your style of advocacy.’

  I had just sunk another glass of the beaded bubbles as passed by Albert, and I felt a joyous release from my usual strong sense of tact and discretion.

  ‘I suppose it makes a change from bowing three times and offering to black the judge’s boots for him.’

  Marigold’s smile didn’t waver. ‘He says you’re most amusing out of court, too. Don’t you quote poetry?’

  ‘Only in moments of great sadness, madam. Or extreme elation.’

  ‘Guthrie’s so looking forward to leading you. In his next big case.’

  This was an eventuality which I should have taken into account as soon as I saw Guthrie in silk stockings; as a matter of fact it had never occurred to me.

  ‘Leading me? Did you say, leading me?’

  ‘Well, he has to have a junior now … doesn’t he? Naturally he wants the best junior available.’

  ‘Now he’s a leader?’

  ‘Now he’s left the Junior Bar.’

  I raised my glass and gave Marigold a version of Browning. ‘Just for a pair of knee breeches he left us … Just for an elastic suspender belt, as supplied to the nursing profession …’ At which the QC himself bore down on us in a rustle of silk and drew me into a corner.

  ‘I just wanted to say, I don’t see why recent events should make the slightest difference to the situation in chambers. You are the senior man in practice, Rumpole.’

  Henry was passing with the fizzing bottle. I held out my glass and the tide ran foaming in it.

  ‘ “You wrong me, Brutus,” ’ I told Featherstone. ‘ “I said an elder soldier, not a better.” ’

  ‘A quotation! Touché, very apt.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I mean, all this will make absolutely no difference. I’ll still support you, Rumpole, as the right candidate for head of chambers.’

  I didn’t know about being a candidate, having thought of the matter as settled and not being much of a political animal. But before I had time to reflect on whatever the Honourable Member was up to, the door opened letting in a formidable draught and the head of chambers, C. H. Wystan, She’s Daddy, wearing a tweed suit, extremely pale, supported by Albert on one side and a stick on the other, made the sort of formidable entrance that the ghost of Banquo stages at dinner with the Macbeths. Wystan was installed in an armchair, from which he gave us all the sort of wintry smile which seemed designed to indicate that all flesh is as the grass, or something to that effect.

  ‘Albert wrote to me about this little celebration. I was determined to be with you. And the doctor has given permission, for no more than one glass of champagne.’ Wystan held out a transparent hand into which Albert inserted a glass of non-vintage. Wystan lifted this with some apparent effort, and gave us a toast.

  ‘To the great change in chambers! Now we have a silk. Guthrie Featherstone, QC, MP!’

  I had a large refill to that. Wystan absorbed a few bubbles, wiped his mouth on a clean, folded handkerchief, and proceeded to the oration. Wystan was never a great speech maker, but I claimed another refill and gave him my ears.

  ‘You, Featherstone, have brought a great distinction to chambers.’

  ‘Isn’t that nice, Guthrie?’ Marigold proprietorially squeezed her master’s fingers.

  ‘You know, when I was a young man. You remember when we were young men, Uncle Tom? We used to hang around in chambers for weeks on end.’ Wystan had gone on about these distant hard times at every chambers meeting. ‘I well recall we used to occupy ourselves with an old golf ball and mashie-niblick, trying to get chip shots into the waste-paper baskets. Albert was a boy then.’

  ‘A mere child, Mr Wystan,’ Albert looked suitably demure.

  ‘And we used to pray for work. Any sort of work, didn’t we, Uncle Tom?’

  ‘We were tempted to crime. Only way we could get into court,’ Uncle Tom took the feed line like a professional. Moderate laughter, except for Rumpole who was busy drinking. And then I heard Wystan rambling on.

  ‘But as you grow older at the Bar you discover it’s not having any work that matters. It’s the quality that counts!’

  ‘Hear, hear! I’m always saying we ought to do more civil.’ This was the dutiful Erskine-Brown, inserting his oar.

  ‘Now Guthrie Featherstone, QC, MP will, of course, command briefs in all divisions – planning, contract,’ Wystan’s voice sank to a note of awe, ‘even Chancery! I was so afraid, after I’ve gone, that this chambers might become known as merely a criminal set.’ Wystan’s voice now sank in a sort of horror. ‘And, of course, there’s no doubt about it, too much criminal work does rather lower the standing of a chambers.’

  ‘Couldn’t you install pit-head baths?’ I hadn’t actually meant to say it aloud, but it came out very loud indeed.

  ‘Ah, Horace.’ Wystan turned his pale eyes on me for the first time.

  ‘So we could have a good scrub down after we get back from the Old Bailey?’

  ‘Now, Horace Rumpole. And I mean no disrespect whatever to my son-in-law.’ Wystan returned to the oration. From far away I heard myself say, ‘Daddy!’ as I raised the hard-working glass. ‘Horace does practise almost exclusively in the criminal courts!’

  ‘One doesn’t get the really fascinating points of law. Not in criminal work,’ Erskine-Brown was adding unwanted support to the motion. ‘I’ve often thought we should try and attract some really lucrative tax cases into chambers.’

  That, I’m afraid, did it. Just as if I were in court I moved slightly to the centre and began my speech.

  ‘Tax cases?’ I saw them all smiling encouragement at me. ‘Marvellous! Tax cases make the world go round. Compared to the wonderful world of tax, crime is totally trivial. What does it matter? If some boy loses a year, a couple of years, of his life? It’s totally unimportant! Anyway, he’ll grow up to be banged up for a good five, shut up with his own chamber-pot in some convenient hole we all prefer not to think about.’ There was a deafening silence, which came loudest from Marigold Featherstone. Then Wystan tried to reach a settlement.

  ‘Now then, Horace. Your practice no doubt requires a good deal of skill.’

  ‘Skill? Who said “skill”?’ I glared round at the learned friends. ‘Any fool could do it! It’s only a matter of life and death. That’s all it is. Crime? It’s a sort of a game. How can you compare it to the real world of offshore securities? And deductible expenses?’

  ‘All you young men in chambers can learn an enormous amount from Horace Rumpole, when it comes to crime.’ Wystan now seemed to be the only one who was still smiling. I turned on him.

  ‘You make me sound just like Fred Timson!’

  ‘Really? Whoever’s Fred Timson?’ I told you Wystan never had much of a practice
at the Bar, consequently he had never met the Timsons. Erskine-Brown supplied the information.

  ‘The Timsons are Rumpole’s favourite family.’

  ‘An industrious clan of South London criminals, aren’t they, Rumpole?’ Hoskins added.

  Wystan looked particularly pained. ‘South London criminals?’

  ‘I mean, do we want people like the Timsons forever hanging about in our waiting room? I merely ask the question.’ He was not bad, this Erskine-Brown, with a big future in the nastier sort of breach of trust cases.

  ‘Do you? Do you merely ask it?’ I heard the pained bellow of a distant Rumpole.

  ‘The Timsons … and their like, are no doubt grist to Rumpole’s mill,’ Wystan was starting on the summing up. ‘But it’s the balance that counts. Now, you’ll be looking for a new head of chambers.’

  ‘Are we still looking?’ My friend George Frobisher had the decency to ask. And Wystan told him, ‘I’d like you all to think it over carefully. And put your views to me in writing. We should all try and remember, it’s the good of the chambers that matters. Not the feelings, however deep they may be, of any particular person.’

  He then called on Albert’s assistance to raise him to his feet, lifted his glass with an effort of pure will and offered us a toast to the good of chambers. I joined in, and drank deep, it having been a good thirty seconds since I had had a glass to my lips. As the bubbles exploded against the tongue I noticed that the Featherstones were holding hands, and the brand-new artificial silk was looking particularly delighted. Something, and perhaps not only his suspender belt, seemed to be giving him special pleasure.

  Some weeks later, when I gave Hilda the news, she was deeply shocked.

  ‘Guthrie Featherstone! Head of chambers!’ We were at breakfast. In fact Nick was due back at school that day. He was neglecting his cornflakes and reading a book.

  ‘By general acclaim.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Hilda looked at me, as if she’d just discovered that I’d contracted an incurable disease.

  ‘He can have the headaches – working out Albert’s extraordinary book-keeping system.’ I thought for a moment, yes, I’d like to have been head of chambers, and then put the thought from me.

  ‘If only you could have become a QC.’ She was now pouring me an unsolicited cup of coffee.

  ‘QC? CT. That’s enough to keep me busy.’

  ‘CT? Whatever’s CT?’

  ‘Counsel for the Timsons!’ I tried to say it as proudly as I could. Then I reminded Nick that I’d promised to see him off at Liverpool Street, finished my cooling coffee, stood up and took a glance at the book that was absorbing him, expecting it to be, perhaps, that spine-chilling adventure relating to the Footprints of an Enormous Hound. To my amazement the shocker in question was entitled simply Studies in Sociology.

  ‘It’s interesting,’ Nick sounded apologetic.

  ‘You astonish me.’

  ‘Old Bagnold was talking about what I should read if I get into Oxford.’

  ‘Of course you’re going to read law, Nick. We’re going to keep it in the family.’ Hilda the barrister’s daughter was clearing away deafeningly.

  ‘I thought perhaps PPE and then go on to sociology.’ Nick sounded curiously confident. Before Hilda could get in another word I made my position clear.

  ‘PPE, that’s very good, Nick! That’s very good indeed! For God’s sake. Let’s stop keeping things in the family!’

  Later, as we walked across the barren stretches of Liverpool Street station, with my son in his school uniform and me in my old striped trousers and black jacket, I tried to explain what I meant.

  ‘That’s what’s wrong, Nick. That’s the devil of it! They’re being born around us all the time. Little Mr Justice Everglades … Little Timsons … Little Guthrie Featherstones. All being set off … to follow in father’s footsteps.’ We were at the barrier, shaking hands awkwardly. ‘Let’s have no more of that! No more following in father’s footsteps. No more.’

  Nick smiled, although I have no idea if he understood what I was trying to say. I’m not totally sure that I understood it either. Then the train removed him from me. I waved for a little, but he didn’t wave back. That sort of thing is embarrassing for a boy. I lit a small cigar and went by tube to the Bailey. I was doing a long firm fraud then; a particularly nasty business, out of which I got a certain amount of harmless fun.

  Rumpole and the Showfolk

  I have written elsewhere of my old clerk, Albert Handyside, who served me very well for a long term of years, being adept at flattering solicitors’ clerks, buying them glasses of Guinness and enquiring tenderly after their tomato plants, with the result that the old darlings were inclined to come across with the odd dangerous and careless, indecent assault or take and drive away, which Albert was inclined to slip in Rumpole’s direction. All this led to higher things such as robbery, unlawful wounding and even murder; and in general to that body of assorted crimes on which my reputation is founded. I first knew Albert when he was a nervous office boy in the chambers of C. H. Wystan, my learned father-in-law; and when he grew to be a head clerk of magisterial dimensions we remained firm friends and often had a jar together in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar in the evenings, on which relaxed occasions I would tell Albert my celebrated anecdotes of Bench and Bar and, unlike She Who Must Be Obeyed, he was always kind enough to laugh no matter how often he had heard them before.

  Dear old Albert had one slight failing, a weakness which occurs among the healthiest of constitutions. He was apt to get into a terrible flurry over the petty cash. I never enquired into his book-keeping system; but I believe it might have been improved by the invention of the abacus, or a monthly check-up by a primary-school child well versed in simple addition. It is also indubitably true that you can’t pour drink down the throats of solicitors’ managing clerks without some form of subsidy, and I’m sure Albert dipped liberally into the petty cash for this purpose as well as to keep himself in the large Bells and sodas, two or three of which sufficed for his simple lunch. Personally I never begrudged Albert any of this grant in aid, but ugly words such as embezzlement were uttered by Erskine-Brown and others, and, spurred on by our second clerk, Harry, who clearly thirsted for promotion, my learned friends were induced to part with Albert Handyside. I missed him very much. Our new clerk, Henry, goes to Pommeroy’s with our typist, Dianne, and tells her about his exploits when on holiday with the Club Mediterranée in Corfu. I do not think either of them would laugh at my legal anecdotes.

  After he left us Albert shook the dust of London from his shoes and went up North, to some God-lost place called Grimble, and there joined a firm of solicitors as managing clerk. No doubt northerly barristers’ clerks bought him Guinness and either he had no control of the petty cash or the matter was not subjected to too close an inspection. From time to time he sent me a Christmas card on which was inscribed among the bells and holly ‘Compliments of the Season, Mr Rumpole, sir. And I’m going to bring you up here for a nice little murder just as soon as I get the opportunity. Yours respectfully, A. Handyside.’ At long last a brief did arrive. Mr Rumpole was asked to appear at the Grimble Assizes, to be held before Mr Justice Skelton in the Law Courts, Grimble: the title of the piece being The Queen (she does keep enormously busy prosecuting people) versus Margaret Hartley. The only item on the programme was wilful murder.

  Now you may have noticed that certain theatrical phrases have crept into the foregoing paragraph. This is not as inappropriate as it may sound, for the brief I was going up to Grimble for on the Intercity train (a journey about as costly as a trip across the Atlantic) concerned a murder which took place in the Theatre Royal, East Grimble, a place of entertainment leased by the Frere-Hartley Players: the victim was one G. P. Frere, the leading actor, and my client was his wife, known as Maggie Hartley, co-star and joint director of the company. And as I read on into R. v. Hartley it became clear that the case was like too many of Rumpole’s, a born loser: that is to say that unless
we drew a drunken prosecutor or a jury of anarchists there seemed no reasonable way in which it might be won.

  One night after the performance, Albert’s instructions told me, the stage-door keeper, a Mr Croft, heard the sound of raised voices and quarrelling from the dressing-room shared by G. P. Frere and his wife Maggie Hartley. Mr Croft was having a late cup of tea in his cubbyhole with a Miss Christine Hope, a young actress in the company, and they heard two shots fired in quick succession. Mr Croft went along the passage to investigate and opened the dressing-room door. The scene that met his eyes was, to say the least, dramatic.

  It appeared from Mr Croft’s evidence that the dressing-room was in a state of considerable confusion. Clothes were scattered round the room, and chairs overturned. The long mirror which ran down the length of the wall was shattered at the end furthest from the door. Near the door Mr G. P. Frere, wearing a silk dressing-gown, was sitting slumped in a chair, bleeding profusely and already dead. My client was standing halfway down the room still wearing the long white evening-dress she had worn on the stage that night. Her make-up was smudged and in her right hand she held a well-oiled service revolver. A bullet had left this weapon and entered Mr Frere’s body between the third and fourth metacarpals. In order to make quite sure that her learned counsel didn’t have things too easy, Maggie Hartley had then opened her mouth and spoken, so said Croft, the following unforgettable words, here transcribed without punctuation.

  ‘I killed him what could I do with him help me.’

  In all subsequent interviews the actress said that she remembered nothing about the quarrel in the dressing-room, the dreadful climax had been blotted from her mind. She was no doubt, and still remained, in a state of shock.

  I was brooding on this hopeless defence when an elderly guard acting the part of an air hostess whispered excitedly into the intercom, ‘We are now arriving at Grimble Central. Grimble Central. Please collect your hand baggage.’ I emerged into a place which seemed to be nestling somewhere within the Arctic Circle, the air bit sharply, it was bloody cold, and a blue-nosed Albert was there to meet me.