‘Mr Rumpole,’ she said, ‘you did an absolutely first-class job!’
I paused in my tracks, looked at her more closely, and remembered that she had been sitting in Court paying close attention throughout R. v. Snakelegs Timson.
‘I just gave my usual service.’
‘And I,’ she said, sticking out her hand in a gesture of camaraderie, ‘have just passed the Bar exams.’
‘Then we don’t shake hands,’ I had to tell her, avoiding physical contact. ‘Clients don’t like it you see. Think we might be doing secret deals with each other. All the same, welcome to the treadmill.’
I moved away from her then, towards the lift, pressed the button, and as I waited for nothing very much to happen she accosted me again.
‘You don’t stereotype that much, do you, Mr Rumpole?’ She looked as though she were already beginning to lose a little faith in my infallibility.
‘And you don’t call me Mister Rumpole. Leave that to the dotty Bull,’ I corrected her, perhaps a little sharply.
‘I thought you were too busy fighting the class war to care about outdated behaviour patterns.’
‘Fighting the what?’
‘Protecting working people against middle-class judges.’
The lift was still dawdling away in the basement and I thought it would be kind now to put this recruit right on a few of the basic principles of our legal system. ‘The Timsons would hate to be called “working people”,’ I told her. ‘They’re entirely middle-class villains. Very Conservative, in fact. They live by strict monetarist principles and the free market economy. They’re also against the closed shop; they believe that shops should be open at all hours of the night. Preferably by jemmy.’
‘My name’s Liz Probert,’ she said, failing to smile at the jest I was not making for the first time. At this point the lift arrived. ‘Good day Mizz’ – I took her for a definite Mizz – I said, as I stepped into it. Rather to my surprise she strode in after me, still chattering. ‘I want to defend like you. But I must still have a lot to learn. I never noticed the point about the owners not identifying the stolen silver.’
‘Neither did I,’ I had to admit, ‘until it was almost too late. And you know why they didn’t?’ I was prepared to tell this neophyte the secrets of my astonishing success. That, after all, is part of the Great Tradition of the Bar, otherwise known as showing off to the younger white-wigs. ‘They’d all got the insurance money, you see, and done very nicely out of it, thank you. The last thing they wanted was to see their old sugarbowls back and have to return the money. Life’s a bit more complicated than they tell you in the Bar exams.’
We had reached the robing-room floor and I made for the Gents with Mizz Probert following me like the hound, or at least the puppy, of heaven. ‘I was wondering if you could possibly give me some counselling in my career area.’
‘Not now, I’m afraid. I’ve got a blind date, with some rather attractive bottles.’ I opened the door and saw the gleaming porcelain fittings which had been in my mind since I got out of Court. ‘Men only in here, I’m afraid,’ I had to tell Mizz Probert, who still seemed to be at my heels. ‘It’s one of the quaint old traditions of the Bar.’
The surprisingly rapid and successful conclusion of the Queen v. Snakelegs had liberated me, and I set off with some eagerness to Prentice Alley in the City of London, and the premises of Vanberry’s Fine Wines & Spirits Ltd, where I was to meet Claude Erskine-Brown, and sample, for the first time in my life, the mysterious joys of a blind tasting. After my credentials had been checked, I was shown into a small drinks party which had about it all the gaiety of an assembly of the bereaved, when the corpse in question has left his entire fortune to the Cats’ Home.
The meeting took place in a brilliantly lit basement room with glaring white tiles. It seemed a suitable location for a postmortem, but, in place of the usual deceased person on the table, there were a number of bottles, all shrouded in brown-paper bags. It was there I saw my learned friend, Erskine-Brown, already in place among the tasters, who were twirling minute quantities of wine in their glasses, holding them nervously up to the light, sniffing at them with deep suspicion and finally allowing a small quantity to pass their lips. They were mainly solemn-looking characters in dark three-piece suits, although there was one female in a tweed coat and skirt, a sort of white silk stock, sensible shoes and a monocle. She looked as though she’d be happier judging hunters at a country gymkhana than fine wines, and she was, so Erskine-Brown whispered to me, Miss Honoria Bird, the distinguished wine correspondent of the Sunday Mercury. Before the tasting competition began in earnest we were invited to sample a few specimens from the Vanberry claret collection. So I took my first taste and experienced what, without doubt, was a draft of vintage that hath been ‘Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green,…’ And it was whilst I was enjoying the flavour of Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth, mixed with a dash of wild strawberries, that a voice beside me boomed, ‘What’s the matter with you? Can’t you spit?’
Miss Honoria Bird was at my elbow and in my mouth was what? Something so far above my price range that it seemed like some new concoction altogether, as far removed from Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary as a brief for Gulf Oil in the House of Lords is from a small matter of indecency before the Uxbridge Magistrates.
‘Over there, in case you’re looking for it. Expectoration corner!’ Miss Bird waved me to a wooden wine-box, half-filled with sawdust into which the gents in dark suitings were directing mouthfuls of purplish liquid. I moved away from her, reluctant to admit that the small quantity of the true, the blushful Hippocrene I had been able to win had long since disappeared down the little red lane.
‘Collie brought you, didn’t he?’ Martyn Vanberry, the wine merchant, caught me as I was about to swallow a second helping. He was a thin streak of a chap, in a dark suit and a stiff collar, whose faint smile, I thought, was thin-lipped and patronizing. Beside him stood a pleasant enough young man who was in charge of the mechanics of the thing, brought the bottles and the glasses and was referred to as Ken.
‘Collie?’ The name meant nothing to me.
‘Erskine-Brown. We called him Collie at school.’
‘After the dog?’ I saw my Chambers companion insert the tip of his pale nose into the aperture of his wine glass.
‘No. After the Doctor. Collis-Brown. You know, the medicine? Old Claude was always a bit of a pill really. We used to kick him around at Winchester.’
Now I am far from saying that, in my long relationship with Claude Erskine-Brown, irritation has not sometimes got the better of me, but as a long-time member of our Chambers at Equity Court he has, over the years, become as familiar and uncomfortable as the furniture. I resented the strictures of this public-school bully on my learned friend and was about to say so when the gloomy proceedings were interrupted by the arrival of an unlikely guest wearing tartan trousers, rubber-soled canvas shoes of the type which I believe are generally known as ‘trainers’, and a zipped jacket which bore on its back the legend MONTY MANTIS SERVICE STATION LUTON BEDS. Inside this costume was a squat, ginger-haired and youngish man who called out, ‘Which way to the anti-freeze? At least we can get warmed up for the winter.’ This was a clear reference to recent scandals in the wine trade, and it was greeted, in the rarefied air of Vanberry’s tasting room, with as much jollity as an advertisement for contraceptive appliances in the Vatican.
‘One of your customers?’ I asked Vanberry.
‘One of my best,’ he sighed. ‘I imagine the profession of garagiste in Luton must be extremely profitable. And he makes a point of coming to all of our blind tastings.’
‘Now I’m here,’ Mr Mantis said, taking off his zipper jacket and displaying a yellow jumper ornamented with diamond lozenges, ‘let battle commence.’ He twirled and sniffed and took a mouthful from a tasting glass, made a short but somehow revolting gargling sound and spat into the sawdust. ‘A fairly unpretentio
us Côte Rotie,’ he announced, as he did so. ‘But on the whole 1975 was a disappointing year on the Rhône.’
The contest was run like a game of musical chairs. They gave you a glass and if you guessed wrong, the chair, so to speak, was removed and you had to go and sit with the girls and have an ice-cream. At my first try I got that distant hint of wild strawberries again from a wine that was so far out of the usual run of my drinking that I became tongue-tied, and when asked to name the nectar could only mutter ‘damn good stuff’ and slink away from the field of battle.
Erskine-Brown was knocked out in the second round, having confidently pronounced a Coonawarra to be Châteauneuf du Pape. ‘Some bloody stuff from Wagga, Wagga, he grumbled unreasonably – on most occasions Claude was a staunch upholder of the Commonwealth, ‘one always forgets about the colonies.’
So we watched as, one by one, the players fell away. Martyn Vanberry was in charge of the bottles and after the contestants had made their guesses he had to disclose the labels. From time to time, in the manner of donnish quiz-masters on upmarket wireless guessing-games, he would give little hints, particularly if he liked the contender. ‘A churchyard number’ might indicate a Graves, or ‘a macabre little item, somewhat skeletal’ a Beaune. He never, I noticed, gave much assistance to the garagiste from Luton, nor did he need to because the ebullient Mr Monty Mantis had no difficulty in identifying his wines and could even make a decent stab at the vintage year, although perfect accuracy in that regard wasn’t required.
Finally the challengers were reduced to two: Monty Mantis and the lady with the eyeglass, Honoria Bird or Birdie as she was known to all the pin-striped expectorating undertakers around her. It was their bottoms that hovered, figuratively speaking, over the final chair, the last parcelled bottle. Martyn Vanberry was holding this with particular reverence as he poured a taster into two glasses. Monty Mantis regarded the colour, lowered his nose to the level of the tide, took a mouthful and spat rapidly.
‘Gordon Bennett!’ He seemed somewhat amazed. ‘Don’t want to risk swallowing that. It might ruin me carburettor!’
Martyn Vanberry looked pale and extremely angry. He turned to the lady contestant, who was swilling the stuff around her dentures in a far more impressive way. ‘Well, Birdie,’ he said, as she spat neatly, ‘let me give you a clue. It’s not whisky.’
‘I think I could tell that.’ She looked impassive. ‘Not whisky.’
‘But think… just think…’ Vanberry seemed anxious to bring the contest to a rapid end by helping her. ‘Think of a whisky translated.’
‘Le quatre-star Esso?’ said the garagiste, but Vanberry was unamused.
‘White Horse?’ Birdie frowned.
‘Very good. Something Conservative, of course. And keep to the right!’
‘The right bank of the river? St Emilion. White Horse? Cheval Blanc…’ Birdie arrived at her destination with a certain amount of doubt and hesitation.
‘1971, I’m afraid, nothing earlier.’ Vanberry was pulling away the brown paper to reveal a label on which the words Cheval Blanc and Appellation St Emilion Contrôlée were to be clearly read. There was a smatter of applause. ‘Dear old Birdie! Still an unbeatable palate.’ It was a tribute in which the Luton garagiste didn’t join; he was laughing as Martyn Vanberry turned to him and said, icily polite, ‘I’m sorry you were pipped at the post, Mr Mantis. You did jolly well. Now, Birdie, if you’ll once again accept the certificate of Les Grands Contestants du Vin and the complimentary bottle which this time is a magnum of Gevrey Chambertin Claire Pau 1970 – a somewhat underrated vintage. Can you not stay with us, Mr Mantis?’
But Monty Mantis was on his way to the door, muttering about getting himself decarbonized. Nobody laughed, and no one seemed particularly sorry to see him go.
There must be no accounting, I reflected on this incident, for tastes. One man’s anti-freeze may be another’s Mouton Rothschild, especially if you don’t see the label. I was reminded of those embarrassing tests on television in which the puzzled housewife is asked to tell margarine from butter, or say which washing powder got young Ronnie’s football shorts whitest. She always looks terrified of disappointing the eager interviewer and plumping for the wrong variety. But then I thought that as a binge, the blind tasting at Vanberry’s Fine Wines had been about as successful as a picnic tea with the Clacton Temperance Society and the incident faded from my memory.
Other matters arose of more immediate concern. One was to be of some interest and entertainment value. To deal with the bad news first: my wife, Hilda, whose very name rings out like a demand for immediate obedience, announced the imminent visit to our mansion flat (although the words are inept to describe the somewhat gloomy and cavernous interior of Casa Rumpole) in Froxbury Court, Gloucester Road, of her old school-friend Dodo Mackintosh.
Now Dodo may be, in many ways, a perfectly reasonable and indeed game old bird. Her watercolours of Lanworth Cove and adjacent parts of Cornwall are highly regarded in some circles, although they seem to me to have been executed in heavy rain. She is, I believe, a dab hand at knitting patterns and during her stays a great deal of fancy work is put in on matinée jackets and bootees for her younger relatives. Hilda tells me that she was, when they were both at school, a sturdy lacrosse player. My personal view, and this is not for publication to She Who Must Be Obeyed, is that in any conceivable team sent out to bore for England, Dodo would have to be included. As you may have gathered, I do not hit it off with the lady, and she takes the view that by marrying a claret-drinking, cigar-smoking legal hack who is never likely to make a fortune, Hilda has tragically wasted her life.
The natural gloom that the forthcoming visit cast upon me was somewhat mitigated by the matter of Mizz Probert’s application to enter 3 Equity Court, which allowed me a little harmless fun at the expense of Soapy Sam Bollard (or Ballard as he effects to call himself), the sanctimonious President of the Lawyers As Christians Society who, in his more worldly manifestation, has contrived to become Head of our Chambers.
Sometime after the end of Regina v. Snakelegs (not a victory to be mentioned in the same breath as the Penge Bungalow Murders, in which I managed to squeeze first past the post alone and without a leader, but quite a satisfactory win all the same), I wandered into the clerk’s room and there was the eager face of Mizz Probert asking our clerk, Henry, if there was any news about her application to become a pupil in Chambers, and Henry was explaining to her, without a great deal of patience, that her name would come up for discussion by the learned friends in due course.
‘Pupil? You want to be a pupil? Any good at putting, are you?’ This was the voice of Uncle Tom – T. C. Rowley – our oldest member, who hadn’t come by a brief for as long as any of us can remember, but who chooses to spend his days with us to vary the monotony of life with an unmarried sister. His working day consists of a long battle with The Times crossword – won by the setter on most days, a brief nap after the midday sandwich, and a spell of golf practice in a corner of the clerk’s room. Visiting solicitors occasionally complain of being struck quite smartly on the ankle by one of Uncle Tom’s golf balls.
‘Good at putting? No. Do you have to be?’ Mizz Probert asked in all innocence.
‘My old pupil master, C. H. Wystan,’ Uncle Tom told her, referring to Hilda’s Daddy, the long-time-ago Head of our Chambers, ‘was a terribly nice chap, but he never gave me anything to do. So I became the best member at getting his balls into a waste-paper basket. Awfully good training, you know. I never had an enormous practice. Well, very little practice at all quite honestly, so I’ve been able to keep up my golf. If you want to become a pupil this is my advice to you. Get yourself a mashie niblick…’
As this bizarre advice wound on, I left our clerk’s room in order to avoid giving vent to any sort of unseemly guffaw. I had a conference with Mr Bernard, the solicitor who appeared to have a retainer for the Timson family. The particular problem concerned Tony Timson, who had entered a shop with the probable intention
of stealing three large television sets. Unfortunately the business had gone bankrupt the week before and was quite denuded of stock, thus raising what many barristers might call a nice point of law – I would call it nasty. Getting on for half a century knocking around the Courts has given me a profound distaste for the law. Give me a bloodstain or two, a bit of disputed typewriting or a couple of hairs on a cardigan, and I am happy as the day is long. I feel a definite sense of insecurity and unease when solicitors like Mr Bernard say, as he did on that occasion, ‘Hasn’t the House of Lords had something to say on the subject?’
Well, perhaps it had. The House of Lords is always having something to say; they’re a lot of old chatterboxes up there, if you want my opinion. I was saved from an immediate answer by Mizz Probert entering with a cup of coffee which she must have scrounged from the clerk’s room for the sole purpose of gaining access to the Rumpole sanctum. I thanked her and prepared to parry Bernard’s next attack.
‘It’s the doctrine of impossible attempt of course,’ he burbled on. ‘You must know the case.’
‘Must I?’ I was playing for time, but I saw Mizz Probert darting to the shelves where the bound volumes of the law reports are kept mainly for the use of other members of our Chambers.
‘I mean there have been all these articles in the Criminal Law Review.’
‘My constant bedtime reading,’ I assured him.
‘So you do know the House of Lords decision?’ Mr Bernard sounded relieved.
‘Know it? Of course I know it. During those long evenings at Froxbury Court we talk of little else. The name’s on the tip of my tongue…’
The Second Rumpole Omnibus Page 49
