Forever Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  Aware that a chill wind of disapproval would be blowing round Froxbury Mansions that evening, I delayed my homeward journey by a brief visit to the wine bar Hilda had condemned in her judgement. I wandered into Pommeroy’s as lonely as a cloud, and was accompanied only by a single glass of Château Fleet Street when I heard a brisk, upper-crust voice at my elbow. ‘Rumpole! I want to invite you to lunch.’

  ‘Then invite, old darling.’

  I gave Archie Prosser full permission to feed me, regardless of expense. The newest arrival in our chambers in Equity Court, Prosser was a distant relative of Lord someone or other, an obscure link which predisposed She Who Must Be Obeyed slightly in his favour. Soapy Sam Ballard had introduced him into chambers as a sparkling wit, one likely to set Pommeroy’s Wine Bar in a roar, but I hadn’t yet heard him utter any line, or produce any thought worth including in a slim volume to be entitled The Wit and Wisdom of Archie Prosser. He was, however, an inoffensive soul who had been cooperative when he prosecuted me in the case of the female Fagin of the Underground. He was also, as he was continuously reminding me, a member of the Sheridan Club, a somewhat gloomy and ill-lit institution which does, as Archie was fond of telling us all, an excellent liver and bacon, which, if preceded by nine oysters in the half shell and followed by a summer pudding well covered with cream, the whole to be washed down with some rare vintage never even heard of in Pommeroy’s, might make Archie seem an agreeable companion for lunch and the smoking of an unusually large cigar. In return, I could reward him with a few of my jokes which had, like the wine, improved with age.

  ‘Delighted,’ I told him. ‘Any time next week would suit me. I think I may have what Luci Gribble would call a window of opportunity. There’s been a rise in the law-abiding rate. I think it’s hitting everybody.’

  Not much of a joke, I agree, and Archie took it without a smile. Instead he gave me a look of deep and maddening concern. ‘I bet you’re glad of the rest, aren’t you, Rumpole?’

  At this my patience snapped. ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I’m not in the least glad of the rest. I’m bored to tears by the rest. I’ve had quite enough rest to last until my final day on earth, which I intend to spend wearing a wig and arguing. I just wanted to point out that, as luck would have it, I’ve got one of Luci’s windows next week and I’d be delighted to fill it with a lengthy lunch at your club.’

  ‘You mean the Sheridan?’

  ‘Of course I mean the Sheridan.’

  ‘Talking of which,’ Archie told me, ‘I’m going to put Bernard up for membership. I think he’d appreciate that, don’t you?’

  ‘Bonny Bernard? You’re speaking of my favourite solicitor. I feel sure he would. And I’m equally sure I’d enjoy lunch with you there. Very kind of you, Archie.’

  ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking exactly in terms of the Sheridan.’

  ‘All right, if you insist. Where were you thinking in terms of?’ I imagined Archie Prosser’s ideas had gone upmarket. ‘The Ritz?’

  ‘Not exactly, Rumpole.’ The unpredictable Archie seemed to be shaking with some particular private joke. ‘I was thinking more in terms of Worsfield Prison.’

  We lived in a time when the government was cracking down on everything. Every week, it seemed, brought a new list of things which were to be cracked down on: single mothers who didn’t make sure their children went into school, noisy neighbours, graffiti artists and mobile-phone stealers were to be cracked down on with particular severity. What was noticeable was that very little was cracked up. There was a total absence of government announcements offering a free glass of Guinness on the National Health and wishing everyone a good time. The cracking down had become so universal that I didn’t know when I would wake up to discover that Château Thames Embankment, small cigars and legal jokes more than three years old were being cracked down on, and that I was on my way to Worsfield and not just for lunch.

  Another dearly held belief of the puritan masters of what claimed to be a deeply caring political party was that prison was a universal panacea. Like a magic potion which could relieve headaches, tonsillitis, yellow fever and broken legs, prison could do you nothing but good. The result of all this cracking down and locking up was that the prison population had risen to record levels, the nicks were bursting at the seams, the mad and bad were packed in with the merely muddled. In the face of this wave of overcrowding the Bunyan Society (named after a devout and imprisoned author) stood like Canute. It published facts and figures, protesting at the incarceration of fifteen-year-olds, the absence of education, the failure to stop reoffending and the sad story of a women’s prison without a visitors’ lavatory, where friends and relatives were instructed to pee in the car-park hedge. Ministers received these reports politely, perhaps even read them, and continued to crack down as before. The Bunyan Society’s reply was to arrange, so Archie Prosser told me, a lunch in Worsfield Prison, outside London, where the great and the good could show their solidarity with those of my customers whom even the Rumpole magic touch couldn’t save from custody.

  ‘Now I’m on the Committee of the Bunyan Society.’ Archie Prosser announced the fact with some satisfaction, feeling no doubt that he’d joined the great and the good. ‘I suggested we should have a representative of the old-fashioned criminal defender present at our prison lunch. You’ll be at home, Rumpole. I’m sure you’ll know lots of the people there.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed and there was, I’m afraid, a mournful note in my voice, ‘I most probably will.’

  ‘This way! Would you mind looking this way?’

  ‘Over here. Over on your right for the Daily Post.’

  ‘Look at me now. No – me, not him. All right. That’s lovely!’

  These were voices behind flashes of light as I approached, in drizzling rain, the castellated mini towers that flanked the gates of Worsfield Prison. When the flashes were no longer blinding me I saw, among the men with cameras, the shadowy figure of Luci Gribble, our chambers director of marketing, wearing a white belted mackintosh and a smile of achievement.

  ‘Well done, Horace! That’s a great photo opportunity!’

  I was about to say ‘Opportunity for what?’ when one of the photographers asked her, ‘Who the hell was he?’

  ‘Counsel for the defence,’ Luci told him. ‘Just an ordinary, everyday criminal barrister. An old workhorse paying a visit to his clients. Not a leader, perhaps, but one of the trusted foot soldiers of our chambers at Equity Court. No, not Rumbold. Rumpole. R–U–M …’

  Times have changed. When I joined our chambers, in Hilda’s father’s time, you would have been threatened with dismissal and heavily fined if you’d allowed your photograph to appear in a newspaper. Now we were being packaged and advertised like cornflakes. There was no chance of arguing about it with Luci. It was lunchtime and the old workhorse was in search of its nosebag. I rang a bell set into the stonework and a screw appeared with a bunch of jangling keys attached. ‘Name, please?’ he said, consulting a list. I had never felt more anonymous.

  The menu featured grey mince, watery mashed potatoes, digestive biscuits and a blue plastic mug of tepid water. The tables were set out in a main assembly area, and at each one, a member of the great and the good shared the feast with representatives of the small and the iffy. I sat between two thieves, one about to be set loose once more on the fallible locks and vulnerable window fastenings of the outside world. The other, once of the same persuasion, was so redeemed that he now worked for the Bunyan Society, gave lectures to gatherings of sociologists, students of criminology and interested police officers, and had sold his autobiography, Set a Thief, to a publisher. His name, proudly announced on the Bunyan Society label pinned to his jacket, was Brian Skidmore. He was a pale-faced fellow, probably in his early forties, with a high, aquiline nose which gave him the inappropriate look of a medieval cleric, and a case of premature baldness which added to the monkish nature of his appearance. He introduced the soon-to-be-released prisoner. ‘This is Chirpy Molloy. I d
on’t know if you’ve ever bumped into him round the courts, Mr Rumpole.’ Brian sounded like a schoolteacher introducing the most hopeless but likeable member of the class.

  ‘You were never my brief, were you, Mr Rumpole?’ I could see why he was called Chirpy. He was small, round-faced, plump, and his smile, half challenging, half defensive, must have stayed with him since he was a bright-eyed, tousle-headed child always responsible for the broken window, the fight in the playground or the missing contribution for the school outing.

  ‘I never had that pleasure.’ I bit into a digestive biscuit; it went badly with the mince.

  ‘Me being a Molloy, and you always appearing on behalf of the Timsons.’

  He was speaking of one of the great divides. The Montagues and the Capulets were friendly neighbours compared to the Timsons and the Molloys. This particular Molloy, however, was held even by the Timsons to be a perfectly straightforward and strictly non-violent villain, who appeared to his pub acquaintances and to the juries who were called on to try him to be a cheerful cockney chappie who could take the rough with the smooth, the benefit of the doubt with the guilty verdict, and the big blowouts in a Marbella holiday hotel with the grey mince and biscuits in Worsfield.

  ‘We Molloys generally use Mr Arkwright in Queen Alexandra’s Buildings. You heard of him?’

  ‘Of course I know Percy Arkwright. I believe, as a defender, he’s a great help to the prosecution.’ I shouldn’t have said it, but grey mince does bring out the worst in people.

  ‘You mean I’d be better off with you, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Perhaps. If you consult Mr Bernard, solicitor of Camberwell, he’d lead you to me.’

  ‘I’d say I’ll remember that for next time,’ Chirpy was now looking extra cheerful, ‘but there’s not going to be a next time. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Chirpy has decided to go straight, Mr Rumpole.’ Brian Skidmore was once again the schoolteacher, announcing, in an amused sort of way, that one of his less talented pupils was planning to build, in the carpentry lesson, a light aircraft capable of transatlantic flight.

  ‘To be honest, I got a girlfriend, and she doesn’t like me being away in prison, Mr Rumpole. She’s always on about it. She says she gets lonely nights. I’ve got to listen to her. I’m going to get a job round her father’s Videos R Us and that’ll be the end of it.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to buy your own aftershave from now on, Chirpy?’ Brian was gently mocking.

  Now I remembered what the Timsons had told me, with considerable amusement, about Chirpy Molloy. He was devoted to personal hygiene. He chose fairly small but expensive houses to break into, places belonging to owners who were known to be away on holiday. After collecting whatever valuables he could find, he invariably treated himself to a long and luxurious session in the bathroom. He sprinkled bath salts from glass jars into deep, hot water. He made considerable use of the Imperial Leather soap and applied the loofah. He borrowed the electric razor, slapped on the stinging perfume of Pour Les Hommes or Machisimo by Peruque. He didn’t spare the hand cream or the all-over body lotion. Then he would dress again in his working clothes and, having wiped off all possible fingerprints, make a dignified exit through a back door. The bathroom, after he left it, looked as though it had been hit by a typhoon. He needn’t have bothered about the fingerprints, the laughing Timsons told me, he might as well have left his name and address on the hall table.

  ‘It’s a wise decision,’ I was telling Chirpy. ‘If you’ve got a good job and a good girlfriend you certainly don’t need me!’

  ‘Quiet, Rumpole.’ Archie Prosser gave me orders from the next table. ‘The Home Secretary is about to say a few words.’ And he added, as though to remind me of one of the highlights of my long life, ‘You have met her. Don’t you remember?’

  Of course I remembered ‘Bunty’ Heygate, the elegant but earnest minister in the Home Office. I had met her with Archie in the Sheridan Club when I was engaged in the case of Doctor Nabi, an asylum seeker. She had been arguing that such colourful customs as cutting off hands, or stoning women to death for adultery, were traditional in certain countries, and that it would be racist to denounce them, and unreasonable to protect those who were in flight from them. Such views must have found favour with the government, as Bunty had, in the latest reshuffle, been promoted to Home Secretary, in which office she had forsaken her nickname and announced that she would, from now on, be known as Brenda.

  So there she was in all her glory, smiling with an even deeper self-satisfaction now she was a secretary of state. She still looked, however, like an enormously successful schoolgirl who had suddenly found herself promoted to headmistress. The page-boy haircut was neat and burnished, she was wearing a bottle-green suit, and her high-heeled, pointed-toed shoes clicked across the stone floor as she found the most favourable speaking position. Above her, galleries of cells rose like a great circle in a theatre; a net was stretched beneath the top one to catch any long-term convicts who might be tempted to take a quick way out. Brenda Heygate’s clear, untroubled voice carried easily, not only to the furthest visitor but to the lifers far above her.

  ‘It’s a great pleasure to be here,’ she said, ‘and to share with so many of you this excellent prison meal.’ Was mine the only muted groan? ‘I have to say, on behalf of all of us in government, and in particular those of us in the Home Office, that we are profoundly grateful to the Bunyan Society for (here she seemed to have some trouble remembering exactly what it was she was grateful to the Bunyan Society for, so she retreated, as soon as possible, to her familiar territory) – for the very useful work it has done, and, of course, for organizing this get-together. Now, I’m sure we’ll all have read in today’s papers I have made an important announcement.’ The inmates looked at her blankly, being unlikely to have read Home Office pronouncements, and the great and the good supporters of the Bunyan Society let out a disappointed sigh. ‘We have, as you know, greatly improved the safety on our streets and reduced the crime rate since the opposition party were in power and old people were in genuine fear of taking a short walk down to the corner shop. However, there is one area in which the crime rate is, unfortunately, rising, and this is what I have called “short-break burglary”. This is when criminals find that the householder is taking, shall we say, a short break in Paris, or perhaps Barcelona, or enjoying a longer break during school holidays, and take advantage.’ (Here I glanced at Chirpy Molloy, who was looking modestly down at his plate as the Home Secretary discussed his special subject.) ‘We have issued a Home Office warning to everyone going away for a holiday not to advertise the fact by cancelling, shall we say, the milk, or the daily papers. A sensible idea would be to donate your milk and papers to a friendly neighbour during a holiday period. Meanwhile, I give you all fair warning that I mean to crack down heavily on short-break burglaries, the maximum sentence for which will be seven years, which I hope to see applied in appropriate cases. Unlike the previous party in power, we intend to wake up the judiciary, who seem to find it a little difficult to move with the times, and make them crack down appropriately.

  ‘Finally, I’d like to say that, at this excellent lunch, we have, thanks to the Bunyan Society, a remarkable proof of what we have always said – that prison can work and does work in many cases. I’m going to ask Brian Skidmore to say a few words to you.’ It seemed to have been the usual story. ‘Brian came from a broken home and lacked the role model of a father figure.’ Here it was the turn of Brian Skidmore to look down modestly at his plate. ‘He turned to minor crime as a youth, and then got into more serious trouble, but it was here at Worsfield that a few words from the governor made the great change in his life. Now, as I’m sure you know, he works full time for the Bunyan Society and has kept completely out of trouble. Inmates of Worsfield and their guests, will you all welcome Brian Skidmore! Come along Brian, don’t be shy!’

  Although he said, ‘Excuse me, Mr Rumpole. I never wanted anything like this,’ Brian didn’t seem i
n the least shy. In a surprisingly short time he was up beside the Home Secretary and was greeted, as an ex-prisoner, by warmer applause from the great and the good.

  ‘I’m not used to this,’ he said. ‘This is worse than a prison sentence, having to speak. All I can say is I have to thank a lot of people. First of all, Mr Frank Dalton, when he was governor. I was up on a charge for something, and he said, “Why don’t we see you in chapel, Skidmore? There’s something we get to learn there. Do you know what that is?” Well, of course I didn’t know whatever he was talking about, and when I heard what they read out from the Bible I wasn’t any the wiser. The words were “The redemption of their soul is precious.” I didn’t know what redemption was in those days, but I do now. Because Mr Dalton explained it. We could all get off the crime if we tried hard enough. With a bit of help we could. So he arranged to put me in touch with the Bunyan Society. They were visiting here at the time, and they gave me a job, making the tea, mostly. And now I’m under manager in charge of events. So thanks for coming and a special vote of thanks, for agreeing to fit us into her busy schedule, to the Home Secretary.’

  At which the crackers-down and the cracked-down-on applauded. The party was breaking up when Archie Prosser suddenly said the word ‘Applethorpe!’ and started pushing his way between the departing guests towards a distant table, where a small, slightly wizened prisoner was thoughtfully picking his teeth.

  Meanwhile, Chirpy had gone smiling back to his cell. ‘He’ll never make it, you know.’ The redeemed Brian Skidmore had come back to our table and was watching Chirpy’s retreat with pity and some amusement.

  ‘Never make what?’ I asked him.

  ‘Never go straight. Not poor old Chirpy. He’ll leave here with no money and probably no job. No one to look after him.’

  ‘What about the girlfriend? And her father’s Videos R Us?’

  ‘She hasn’t bothered to wait for him. That’s what I heard in the chat round here. Of course, Chirpy doesn’t know that yet. He’ll be the last to know. So I doubt the job’s still open. He’ll drift back to the Molloys and you know what that means.’