Forever Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  After much hard work, his Lordship had his way with Miss Frinton’s shorthand note, and counsel and solicitors engaged in the case were assembled in court to hear, in the presence of the gentlemen of the press, his latest version of his unfortunate judgment.

  ‘I have had my attention drawn to the report of the case in The Times,’ he started with some confidence, ‘in which I am quoted as saying to Timson, “It seems you had a great deal to put up with. And your wife, she, it appears from the evidence, washed her hair in the more placid waters” etc. It’s the full stop that has been misplaced. I have checked this carefully with the learned shorthand writer and she agrees with me. I see her nodding her head.’ He looked down at Lorraine, who nodded energetically, and the judge smiled at her. ‘Very well, yes. The sentence in my judgment in fact read: “It seems you had a great deal to put up with, and your wife.” Full stop! What I intended to convey, and I should like the press to take note of this, was that both Mr and Mrs Timson had a good deal to put up with. At different ends of the bath, of course. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. I hope that’s clear?’ It was, as I whispered to Mizz Probert sitting beside me, as clear as mud.

  The judge continued. ‘I certainly never said that I regarded being seated at the tap end as legal provocation to attempted murder. I would have said it was one of the facts that the jury might have taken into consideration. It might have thrown some light on this wife’s attitude to her husband.’

  ‘What’s he trying to do?’ sotto voce Hearthstoke asked me.

  ‘Trying to get himself out of hot water,’ I suggested.

  ‘But the attempted murder charge was dropped,’ Guthrie went on.

  ‘He twisted my arm to drop it,’ Hearthstoke was muttering.

  ‘And the entire tap end question was really academic,’ Guthrie told us, ‘as Timson pleaded guilty to common assault. Do you agree, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Certainly, my Lord.’ I rose in my most servile manner. ‘You gave him a very stiff binding over.’

  ‘Have you anything to add, Mr Hearthstoke?’

  ‘No, my Lord.’ Hearthstoke couldn’t very well say anything else, but when the judge had left us he warned me that Tony Timson had better watch his step in future as Detective Inspector Brush was quite ready to throw the book at him.

  Guthrie Featherstone left court well pleased with himself and instructed his aged and extremely disloyal clerk, Wilfred, to send a bunch of flowers, or, even better, a handsome pot plant to Miss Lorraine Frinton in recognition of her loyal services. So Wilfred told me he went off to telephone Interflora and Guthrie passed his day happily trying a perfectly straightforward robbery. On rising he retired to his room for a cup of weak Lapsang and a glance at the Evening Sentinel. This glance was enough to show him that he had achieved very little more, by his statement in open court, than inserting his foot into the mud to an even greater depth.

  BATHTUB JUDGE SAYS IT AGAIN screamed the headline. Putting her husband at the tap end may be a factor to excuse the attempted murder of a wife.

  ‘Did I say that?’ the appalled Guthrie asked old Wilfred who was busy pouring out the tea.

  ‘To the best of my recollection, my Lord. Yes.’

  There was no comfort for Guthrie when the telephone rang. It was old Keith from the Chancellor’s office saying that the Lord Chancellor, as head of the judiciary, would like to see Mr Justice Featherstone at the earliest available opportunity.

  ‘A bill through the houses of Parliament.’ A stricken Guthrie put down the telephone. ‘Would they do it to me, Wilfred?’ he asked, but answer came there none.

  ‘ “You do look,” my clerk, “in a moved sort, as if you were dismayed.” ’ In fact, Henry, when I encountered him in the clerk’s room, seemed distinctly rattled. ‘Too right, sir. I am dismayed. I’ve just had Mrs Rumpole on the telephone.’

  ‘Ah. She Who Must wanted to speak to me?’

  ‘No, Mr Rumpole. She wanted to speak to me. She said I’d be clerking for her in the fullness of time.’

  ‘Henry,’ I tried to reassure the man, ‘there’s no immediate cause for concern.’

  ‘She said as she was reading for the Bar, Mr Rumpole, to make sure women get a bit of justice in the future.’

  ‘Your missus coming into chambers, Rumpole?’ Uncle Tom, our oldest and quite briefless inhabitant, was pursuing his usual hobby of making approach shots to the waste-paper basket with an old putter.

  ‘Don’t worry, Uncle Tom.’ I sounded as confident as I could. ‘Not in the foreseeable future.’

  ‘My motto as a barrister’s clerk, sir, is anything for a quiet life,’ Henry outlined his philosophy. ‘I have to say that my definition of a quiet life does not include clerking for Mrs Hilda Rumpole.’

  ‘Old Sneaky MacFarlane in Crown Office Row had a missus who came into his chambers.’ Uncle Tom was off down Memory Lane. ‘She didn’t come in to practise, you understand. She came in to watch Sneaky. She used to sit in the corner of his room and knit during all his conferences. It seems she was dead scared he was going to get off with one of his female divorce petitioners.’

  ‘Mrs Rumpole, Henry, has only just written off for a legal course in the Open University. She can’t yet tell provocation from self-defence or define manslaughter.’ I went off to collect things from my tray and Uncle Tom missed a putt and went on with his story.

  ‘And you know what? In the end Mrs MacFarlane went off with a co-respondent she’d met at one of these conferences. Some awful fellow, apparently, in black and white shoes! Left poor old Sneaky high and dry. So, you see, it doesn’t do to have wives in chambers.’

  ‘Oh, I meant to ask you, Henry. Have you seen my Ackerman on The Causes of Death?’ One of my best-loved books had gone missing.

  ‘I think Mr Ballard’s borrowed it, sir.’ And then Henry asked, still anxious, ‘How long do they take then, those courses at the Open University?’

  ‘Years, Henry,’ I told him. ‘It’s unlikely to finish during our lifetime.’

  When I went up to Ballard’s room to look for my beloved Ackerman, the door had been left a little open. Standing in the corridor I could hear the voices of those arch-conspirators, Claude Erskine-Brown and Soapy Sam Ballard, QC. I have to confess that I lingered to catch a little of the dialogue.

  ‘Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office sounded you out about Guthrie Featherstone?’ Erskine-Brown was asking.

  ‘As the fellow who took over his chambers. He thought I might have a view.’

  ‘And have you? A view, I mean.’

  ‘I told Keith that Guthrie was a perfectly charming chap, of course.’ Soapy Sam was about to damn Guthrie with the faintest of praise.

  ‘Oh, perfectly charming. No doubt about that,’ Claude agreed.

  ‘But as a judge, perhaps, he lacks judgement.’

  ‘Which is a pretty important quality in a judge,’ Claude thought.

  ‘Exactly. And perhaps there is some lack of …’

  ‘Gravitas?’

  ‘The very word I used, Claude.’

  ‘There was a bit of lack of gravitas in chambers, too,’ Claude remembered, ‘when Guthrie took a shine to a temporary typist …’

  ‘So the upshot of my talk with Keith was …’

  ‘What was the upshot?’

  ‘I think we may be seeing a vacancy on the High Court Bench.’ Ballard passed on the sad news with great satisfaction. ‘And old Keith was kind enough to drop a rather interesting hint.’

  ‘Tell me, Sam?’

  ‘He said they might be looking for a replacement from the same stable.’

  ‘Meaning these chambers in Equity Court?’

  ‘How could it mean anything else?’

  ‘Sam, if you go on the Bench, we should need another silk in chambers!’ Claude was no doubt licking his lips as he considered the possibilities.

  ‘I don’t see how they could refuse you.’ These two were clearly hand in glove.

  ‘There’s no doubt Guthrie’ll have t
o go.’ Claude pronounced the death sentence on our absent friend.

  ‘He comes out with such injudicious remarks.’ Soapy Sam put in another drop of poison. ‘He was just like that at Marlborough.’

  ‘Did you tell old Keith that?’ Claude asked and then sat open-mouthed as I burst from my hiding-place with ‘I bet you did!’

  ‘Rumpole!’ Ballard also looked put out. ‘What on earth have you been doing?’

  ‘I’ve been listening to the Grand Conspiracy.’

  ‘You must admit, Featherstone J. has made the most tremendous boo-boo.’ Claude smiled as though he had never made a boo-boo in his life.

  ‘In the official view,’ Soapy Sam told me, ‘he’s been remarkably stupid.’

  ‘He wasn’t stupid.’ I briefed myself for Guthrie’s defence. ‘As a matter of fact he understood the case extremely well. He came to a wise decision. He might have phrased his judgment more elegantly, if he hadn’t been to Marlborough. And let me tell you something, Ballard. My wife, Hilda, is about to start a law course at the Open University. She is a woman, as I know to my cost, of grit and determination. I expect to see her Lord Chief Justice of England before you get your bottom within a mile of the High Court Bench!’

  ‘Of course you’re entitled to your opinion.’ Ballard looked tolerant. ‘And you got your fellow off. All I know for certain is that the Lord Chancellor has summoned Guthrie Featherstone to appear before him.’

  The Lord Chancellor of England was a small, fat, untidy man with steel-rimmed spectacles which gave him the schoolboy look which led to his nickname ‘the Owl of the Remove’. He was given to fits of teasing when he would laugh aloud at his own jokes and unpredictable bouts of biting sarcasm during which he would stare at his victims with cold hostility. He had been, for many years, the captain of the House of Lords croquet team, a game in which his ruthless cunning found full scope. He received Guthrie in his large, comfortably furnished room overlooking the Thames at Westminster, where his long wig was waiting on its stand and his gold-embroidered purse and gown were ready for his procession to the woolsack. Two years after this confrontation, I found myself standing with Guthrie at a Christmas party given in our chambers to members past and present, and he was so far gone in Brut (not to say Brutal) Pommeroy’s Méthode Champenoise as to give me the bare bones of this historic encounter. I have fleshed them out from my knowledge of both characters and their peculiar habits of speech.

  ‘Judgeitis, Featherstone,’ I hear the Lord Chancellor saying. ‘It goes with piles as one of the occupational hazards of the judicial profession. Its symptoms are pomposity and self-regard. It shows itself by unnecessary interruptions during the proceedings or giving utterance to private thoughts far, far better left unspoken.’

  ‘I did correct the press report, Lord Chancellor, with reference to the shorthand writer.’ Guthrie tried to sound convincing.

  ‘Oh, I read that.’ The Chancellor was unimpressed. ‘Far better to have left the thing alone. Never give the newspapers a second chance. That’s my advice to you.’

  ‘What’s the cure for judgeitis?’ Guthrie asked anxiously.

  ‘Banishment to a golf club where the sufferer may bore the other members to death with recollections of his old triumphs on the Western Circuit.’

  ‘You mean, a bill through two houses of Parliament?’ The judge stared into the future, dismayed.

  ‘Oh, that’s quite unnecessary!’ The Chancellor laughed mirthlessly. ‘I just get a judge in this room and say, “Look here, old fellow. You’ve got it badly. Judgeitis. The press is after your blood and quite frankly you’re a profound embarrassment to us all. Go out to Esher, old boy,” I say, “and improve your handicap. I’ll give it out that you’re retiring early for reasons of health.” And then I’ll make a speech defending the independence of the judiciary against scurrilous and unjustified attacks by the press.’

  Guthrie thought about this for what seemed a silent eternity and then said, ‘I’m not awfully keen on golf.’

  ‘Why not take up croquet?’ The Chancellor seemed anxious to be helpful. ‘It’s a top-hole retirement game. The women of England are against you. I hear they’ve been demonstrating outside the Old Bailey.’

  ‘They were only a few extremists.’

  ‘Featherstone, all women are extremists. You must know that, as a married man.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right, Lord Chancellor.’ Guthrie now felt his position to be hopeless. ‘Retirement! I don’t know how Marigold’s going to take it.’

  The Lord Chancellor still looked like a hanging judge, but he stood up and said in businesslike tones, ‘Perhaps it can be postponed in your case. I’ve talked it over with old Keith.’

  ‘Your right-hand man?’ Guthrie felt a faint hope rising.

  ‘Exactly.’ The Lord Chancellor seemed to be smiling at some private joke. ‘You may have an opportunity some time in the future, in the not-too-distant future, let us hope, to make your peace with the women of England. You may be able to put right what they regard as an injustice to one of their number.’

  ‘You mean, Lord Chancellor, my retirement is off?’ Guthrie could scarcely believe it.

  ‘Perhaps adjourned. Sine die.’

  ‘Indefinitely?’

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you keep up with your Latin.’ The Chancellor patted Guthrie on the shoulder. It was an order to dismiss. ‘So many fellows don’t.’

  So Guthrie had a reprieve and, in the life of Tony Timson also, dramatic events were taking place. April’s friend Chrissie was once married to Shaun Molloy, a well-known safe-breaker, but their divorce seemed to have severed her connections with the Molloy clan and Tony Timson had agreed to receive and visit her. It was Chrissie who lived on their estate and had given the party before which April and Tony had struggled in the bath together; but it was at Chrissie’s house, it seemed, that Peanuts Molloy was to be a visitor. So Tony’s friendly feelings had somewhat abated, and when Chrissie rang the chimes on his front door one afternoon when April was out, he received her with a brusque ‘What you want?’

  ‘I thought you ought to know, Tony. It’s not right.’

  ‘What’s not right?’

  ‘Your April and Peanuts. It’s not right.’

  ‘You’re one to talk, aren’t you, Chrissie? April was going round yours to meet Peanuts at a party.’

  ‘He just keeps on coming to mine. I don’t invite him. Got no time for Peanuts, quite honestly. But him and your April. They’re going out on dates. It’s not right. I thought you ought to know.’

  ‘What you mean, dates?’ As I have said, Tony’s life had not been a bed of roses since his return home, but now he was more than usually troubled.

  ‘He takes her out partying. They’re meeting tonight round the offey in Dalton Avenue. Nine-thirty time, she told me. Just thought you might like to know, that’s all,’ the kindly Chrissie added.

  So it happened that at nine-thirty that night, when Ruby was presiding over an empty off-licence in Dalton Avenue, Tony Timson entered it and stood apparently surveying the tempting bottles on display but really waiting to confront the errant April and Peanuts Molloy. He heard a door bang in some private area behind Ruby’s counter and then the strip lights stopped humming and the off-licence was plunged into darkness. It was not a silent darkness, however; it was filled with the sound of footsteps, scuffling and heavy blows.

  Not long afterwards a police car with a wailing siren was screaming towards Dalton Avenue; it was wonderful with what rapidity the Old Bill was summoned whenever Tony Timson was in trouble. When Detective Inspector Brush and his sergeant got into the off-licence, their torches illuminated a scene of violence. Two bodies were on the floor. Ruby was lying by the counter, unconscious, and Tony was lying beside some shelves, nearer to the door, with a wound in his forehead. The sergeant’s torch beam showed a heavy cosh lying by his right hand and pound notes scattered around him. ‘Can’t you leave the women alone, boy?’ the detective inspector said as Tony Timson slowly
opened his eyes.

  So another Timson brief came to Rumpole, and Mr Justice Featherstone got a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of the Lord Chancellor and the women of Islington.

  Like two knights of old approaching each other for combat, briefs at the ready, helmeted with wigs and armoured with gowns, the young black-haired Sir Hearthrug and the cunning old Sir Horace, with his faithful page Mizz Liz in attendance, met outside Number One Court at the Old Bailey and threw down their challenges.

  ‘Nemesis,’ said Hearthrug.

  ‘What’s that meant to mean?’ I asked him.

  ‘Timson’s for it now.’

  ‘Let’s hope justice will be done,’ I said piously.

  ‘Guthrie’s not going to make the same mistake twice.’

  ‘Mr Justice Featherstone’s a wise and upright judge,’ I told him, ‘even if his foot does get into his mouth occasionally.’

  ‘He’s a judge with the Lord Chancellor’s beady eye upon him, Rumpole.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware that this case was going to be decided by the Lord Chancellor.’

  ‘By him and the women of England.’ Hearthstoke smiled at Mizz Probert in what I hoped she found a revolting manner. ‘Ask your learned junior.’

  ‘Save your breath for court, Hearthrug. You may need it.’

  So we moved on, but as we went my learned junior disappointed me by saying, ‘I don’t think Tony Timson should get away with it again.’

  ‘Happily, that’s not for you to decide,’ I told her. ‘We can leave that to the good sense of the jury.’

  However, the jury, when we saw them assembled, were not a particularly cheering lot. For a start, the women outnumbered the men by eight to four and the women in question looked large and severe. I was at once reminded of the mothers’ meetings that once gathered round the guillotine and I seemed to hear, as Hearthstoke opened the prosecution case, the ghostly click of knitting-needles.

  His opening speech was delivered with a good deal of ferocity and he paused now and again to flash a white-toothed smile at Miss Lorraine Frinton, who sat once more, looking puzzled, in front of her shorthand notebook.