The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  At which the door opened and a happy screw entered, for the purpose of springing young Jim – until the inevitable next time.

  ‘We’ve got his things at the gate, Mr Rumpole. Come on, Jim. You can’t stay here all night.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Jim agreed. ‘I don’t know how to face Dad, really. Me being so friendly with Peanuts.’

  ‘Jim,’ I tried a last appeal. ‘If you’re at all grateful for what I did …’

  ‘Oh I am, Mr Rumpole, I’m quite satisfied.’ Generous of him.

  ‘Then you can perhaps repay me.’

  ‘Why – aren’t you on legal aid?’

  ‘It’s not that! Leave him! Leave your Dad.’

  Jim frowned, for a moment he seemed to think it over. Then he said, ‘I don’t know as how I can.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Mum depends on me, you see. Like when Dad goes away. She depends on me then, as head of the family.’

  So he left me, and went up to temporary freedom and his new responsibilities.

  My mouth was dry and I felt about ninety years old, so I took the lift up to that luxurious eatery, the Old Bailey canteen, for a cup of tea and a Penguin biscuit. And, pushing his tray along past the urns, I met a philosophic Chief Inspector ‘Persil’ White. He noticed my somewhat lugubrious expression and tried a cheering, ‘Don’t look so miserable, Mr Rumpole. You won didn’t you?’

  ‘Nobody won, the truth emerges sometimes, Inspector, even down the Old Bailey.’ I must have sounded less than gracious. The wiley old copper smiled tolerantly.

  ‘He’s a Timson. It runs in the family. We’ll get him sooner or later!’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I suppose you will.’

  At a table in a corner, I found certain members of my Chambers, George Frobisher, Percy Hoskins and young Tony MacLay, now resting from their labours, their wigs lying among cups of Old Bailey tea, buns and choccy bics. I joined them. Wordsworth entered my head, and I gave him an airing … ‘Trailing clouds of glory do we come.’

  ‘Marvellous win, that. I was telling them.’ Young MacLay thought I was announcing my triumph.

  ‘Yes, Rumpole. I hear you’ve had a splendid win.’ Old George, ever generous, smiled, genuinely pleased.

  ‘It’ll be years before you get the cheque,’ Hoskins grumbled.

  ‘Not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter nakedness,/But trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God who is our home …’ I was thinking of Jim, trying to sort out his situation with the help of Wordsworth.

  ‘You don’t get paid for years at the Old Bailey. I try to tell my grocer that. If you had to wait as long to be paid for a pound of sugar, I tell him, as we do for an armed robbery …’ Hoskins was warming to a well-loved theme, but George, dear old George was smiling at me.

  ‘Albert tells me he’s had a letter from Wystan. I just wanted to say, I’m sure we’d all like to say, you’ll make a splendid Head of Chambers, Rumpole.’

  ‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy,/Shades of the prison house begin to close/Upon the growing boy …/But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,/He sees it in his joy.’ I gave them another brief glimpse of immortality. George looked quite proud of me and told MacLay, ‘Rumpole quotes poetry. He does it quite often.’

  ‘But does the growing boy behold the light?’ I wondered. ‘Or was the old sheep of the Lake District being unduly optimistic?’

  ‘It’ll be refreshing for us all, to have a Head of Chambers who quotes poetry,’ George went on, at which point Percy Hoskins produced a newspaper which turned out to contain an item of news for us all.

  ‘Have you seen The Times, Rumpole?’

  ‘No, I haven’t had time for the crossword.’

  ‘Guthrie Featherstone. He’s taken silk.’

  It was the apotheosis, the great day for the Labour-Conservative Member for wherever it was, one time unsuccessful prosecutor of Jim Timson and now one of Her Majesty’s Counsel, called within the Bar, and he went down to the House of Lords tailored out in his new silk gown, a lace jabot, knee breeches with diamanté buckles, patent shoes, black silk stockings, lace cuffs and a full-bottomed wig that made him look like a pedigree, but not over-bright, spaniel. However, Guthrie Featherstone was a tall man, with a good calf in a silk stocking, and he took with him Marigold, his lady wife, who was young enough, and I suppose pretty enough, for Henry, our junior clerk, to eye wistfully, although she had the sort of voice that puts me instantly in mind of headscarves and gymkhanas, that high-pitched nasal whining which a girl learns from too much contact with the saddle when young, and too little with the Timsons of this world in later life. The couple were escorted by Albert, who’d raided Moss Bros for a top hat and morning coat for the occasion, and when the Lord Chancellor had welcomed Guthrie to that special club of Queen’s Counsel (on whose advice the Queen, luckily for her, never has to rely for a moment) they came back to Chambers where champagne (the N.V. cooking variety, bulk bought from Pommeroy’s Wine Bar) was served by Henry and old Miss Patterson, our typist, in Wystan’s big room looking out over Temple Gardens. C. H. Wystan, our retiring Head, was not among those present as the party began, and I took an early opportunity to get stuck into the beaded bubbles.

  After the fourth glass I felt able to relax a bit and wandered to where Featherstone, in all his finery, was holding forth to Erskine-Brown about the problems of appearing en travestie. I arrived just as he was saying, ‘It’s the stockings that’re the problem.’

  ‘Oh yes. They would be.’ I did my best to sound interested.

  ‘Keeping them up.’

  ‘I do understand.’

  ‘Well, Marigold. My wife Marigold …’ I looked across to where Mrs QC was tinkling with laughter at some old legal anecdote of Uncle Tom’s. It was a laugh that seemed in some slight danger of breaking the wine glasses.

  ‘That Marigold?’

  ‘Her sister’s a nurse, you know … and she put me in touch with this shop which supplies suspender belts to nurses … among other things.’

  ‘Really?’ This conversation seemed to arouse some dormant sexual interest in Erskine-Brown.

  ‘Yards of elastic, for the larger ward sister. But it works miraculously.’

  ‘You’re wearing a suspender belt?’ Erskine-Brown was frankly fascinated. ‘You sexy devil!’

  ‘I hadn’t realized the full implications,’ I told the QC, ‘of rising to the heights of the legal profession.’

  I wandered off to where Uncle Tom was giving Marigold a brief history of life in our Chambers over the last half-century. Percy Hoskins was in attendance, and George.

  ‘It’s some time since we had champagne in Chambers.’ Uncle Tom accepted a refill from Albert.

  ‘It’s some time since we had a silk in Chambers,’ Hoskins smiled at Marigold who flashed a row of well-groomed teeth back at him.

  ‘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 punchline.

  ‘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?’

  ‘Polit
e 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. ‘You said an older 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!’

  ‘Here, here! 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 pithead 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 Off Shore 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? C.T. That’s enough to keep me busy.’

  ‘C.T.? Whatever’s C.T.?’

  ‘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.