At the end of the cross-examination, the learned Judge subjected Claude to the sort of scrutiny she might have given a greenish slice of haddock on a slab, long past its sell-by date. ‘Mr Erskine-Brown!’
‘Yes, my Lady.’
‘You are indeed fortunate to have a pupil who is so skilled in the art of cross-examination.’
‘Indeed, I am, my Lady.’
‘Then you must be very grateful that she remains to help you. For the time being.’ The last words were uttered in the voice of a prison governor outlining the arrangements, temporary of course, for life in the condemned cell. Hearing them, even my blood, I have to confess, ran a little chill.
When the lunch adjournment came Claude shot off about some private business and I strolled out of Court with the model pupil. I told her she’d done very well.
‘Thank you, Rumpole.’ Wendy took my praise as a matter of course. ‘I thought the Judge was absolutely outrageous to poor old Claude. Going at him like that simply because he’s a man. I can’t stand that sort of sexist behaviour!’ And then she was off in search of refreshment and I was left wondering at the rapidity with which her revered pupil master had become ‘poor old Claude’.
And then I saw, at the end of the wide corridor and at the head of the staircase, Nick Davenant, the glamorous prosecutor, in close and apparently friendly consultation with the leader of the militant sisterhood, Mizz Liz Probert of our Chambers. I made towards them but, as she noticed my approach, Mizz Liz melted away like snow in the sunshine and, being left alone with young Nick, I invited him to join me for a pint of Guinness and a plateful of steak-and-kidney pie in the pub across the road.
‘I saw you were talking to Liz Probert?’ I asked him when we were settled at the trough.
‘Great girl, Liz. In your Chambers, isn’t she?’
‘I brought her up, you might say. She was my pupil in her time. Did she question your gender awareness?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ Nick Davenant laughed, giving me a ringside view of a set of impeccable teeth. ‘I think she knows that I’m tremendously gender aware the whole time. No. She’s just a marvellous girl. She does all sorts of little things for me.’
‘Does she indeed?’ The pie crust, as usual, tasted of cardboard, the beef was stringy and the kidneys as hard to find as beggars in the Ritz, but they couldn’t ruin the mustard or the Guinness. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t ask what sort of things.’
‘Well, I wasn’t talking about that in particular.’ The learned prosecutor gave the impression that he could talk about that if he wasn’t such a decent and discreet young Davenant. ‘But I mean little things like work.’
‘Mizz Liz works for you?’
‘Well, if I’ve got a difficult opinion to write, or a big case to note up, then Liz will volunteer.’
‘But you’ve got Miss Slenderlegs, the blonde barrister, as your pupil.’
‘Liz says she can’t trust Jenny to get things right, so she takes jobs on for me.’
‘And you pay her lavishly of course.’
‘Not at all.’ Still smiling in a blinding fashion, Nick Davenant shook his head. ‘I don’t pay her a thing. She does it for the sake of friendship.’
‘Friendship with you, of course?’
‘Friendship with me, yes. I think Liz is really a nice girl. And I don’t see anything wrong with her bum.’
‘Wrong with what?’
‘Her bum.’
‘That’s what I thought you said.’
‘Do you think there’s anything wrong with it, Rumpole?’ A dreamy look had come over young Davenant’s face.
‘I hadn’t really thought about it very much. But I suppose not.’
‘I don’t know why she has to go through all that performance about it, really.’
‘Performance?’
‘At Monte’s beauty parlour, she told me. In Ken High Street. Takes hours, she told me. While she has to sit there and read Hello! magazine.’
‘You don’t mean that she reads this – whatever publication you mentioned – while changing the shape of her body for the sake of pleasing men?’
‘I suppose,’ Davenant had to admit reluctantly, ‘it’s in a good cause.’
‘Have the other half of this black Liffey water, why don’t you?’ I felt nothing but affection for Counsel for the prosecution, for suddenly, at long last, I saw a chink of daylight at the end of poor old Claude’s long, black tunnel. ‘And tell me all you know about Monte’s beauty parlour.’
The day’s work done, I was walking back from Ludgate Circus and the well-known Palais de Justice, when I saw, alone and palely loitering, the woman of the match, Wendy Crump. I hailed her gladly, caught her up and she turned to me a face on which gloom was written large. I couldn’t even swear that her spectacles hadn’t become misted with tears.
‘You don’t look particularly cheered up,’ I told her, ‘after your day of triumph.’
‘No. As a matter of fact I feel tremendously depressed.’
‘What about?’
‘About Claude. I’ve been thinking about it so much and it’s made me sad.’
‘Someone told you?’ I was sorry for her.
‘Told me what?’
‘Well’ – I thought, of course, that the damage had been done by the sisterhood over the lunch adjournment – ‘what Claude had said about you that caused all the trouble.’
‘All what trouble?’
‘Being blackballed, blacklisted, outlawed, outcast, dismissed from the human race. Why Liz Probert and the gender-aware radical lawyers have decided to hound him.’
‘Because of what he said about me?’
‘They haven’t told you?’
‘Not a word. But you know what it was?’
‘Perhaps.’ I was playing for time.
‘Then tell me, for God’s sake.’
‘Quite honestly, I’d rather not.’
‘What on earth’s the matter?’
‘I’d really rather not say it.’
‘Why?’
‘You’d probably find it offensive.’
‘Rumpole, I’m going to be a barrister. I’ll have to sit through rape, indecent assault, sex and sodomy. Just spit it out.’
‘He was probably joking.’
‘He doesn’t joke much.’
‘Well, then. He called you, and I don’t suppose he meant it, fat.’
She looked at me and, in a magical moment, the gloom lifted. I thought there was even the possibility of a laugh. And then it came, a light giggle, just as we passed Pommeroy’s.
‘Of course I’m fat. Fatty Crump, that set me apart from all the other anorexic little darlings at school. That and the fact that I usually got an A-plus. It was my trademark. Well, I never thought Claude looked at me long enough to notice.’
When this had sunk in, I asked her why, if she hadn’t heard from Liz Probert and her Amazonians, she was so shaken and wan with care.
‘Because’ – and here the note of sadness returned – ‘I used to hero-worship Claude. I thought he was a marvellous barrister. And now I know he can’t really do it, can he?’
She looked at me, hoping, perhaps, for some contradiction. I was afraid I couldn’t oblige. ‘All the same,’ I said, ‘you don’t want him cast into outer darkness and totally deprived of briefs, do you?’
‘Good heavens, no. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.’
‘Then, in the fullness of time,’ I told her, ‘I may have a little strategy to suggest.’
‘Hilda,’ I said, having managed to ingest most of a bottle of Château Fleet Street Ordinaire over our cutlets, and with it taken courage, ‘what would you do if I called you fat?’ I awaited the blast of thunder, or at least a drop in the temperature to freezing, to be followed by a week’s eerie silence.
To my surprise she answered with a brisk ‘I’d call you fatter!’
‘A sensible answer, Hilda.’ I had been brave enough for one evening. ‘You and Mizz Wendy Crump are obviously alike in toleranc
e and common sense. The only trouble is, she couldn’t say that to Claude because he has a lean and hungry look. Like yon Cassius.’
‘Like yon who?’
‘No matter.’
‘Rumpole, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
So I told her the whole story of Wendy and Claude and Mizz Probert, with her Sisterhood, ready to tear poor Erskine-Brown apart as the Bacchantes rent Orestes, and the frightened Ballard. She listened with an occasional click of the tongue and shake of her head, which led me to believe that she didn’t entirely approve. ‘Those girls,’ she said, ‘should be a little less belligerent and learn to use their charm.’
‘Perhaps they haven’t got as much charm as you have, Hilda,’ I flannelled, and she looked at me with deep suspicion.
‘But you say this Wendy Crump doesn’t mind particularly?’
‘She seems not to. Only one thing seems to upset her.’
‘What’s that?’
‘She’s disillusioned about Claude not because of the fat chat, but because she’s found out he’s not the brilliant advocate she once thought him.’
‘Hero worship! That’s always dangerous.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I remember when Dodo and I were at school together, we had an art mistress called Helena Lampos and Dodo absolutely hero-worshipped her. She said Lampos revealed to her the true use of watercolours. Well, then we heard that this Lampos person was going to leave to get married. I can’t think who’d agreed to marry her because she wasn’t much of a catch, at least not in my opinion. Anyway, Dodo was heartbroken and couldn’t bear the idea of being separated from her heroine so, on the morning she was leaving, Lampos could not find the blue silky coat that she was always so proud of.’
When she starts on her schooldays I feel an irresistible urge to apply the corkscrew to the second bottle of the Ordinaire. I was engaged in this task as Hilda’s story wound to a conclusion. ‘So, anyway, the coat in question was finally found in Dodo’s locker. She thought if she hid it, she’d keep Miss Lampos. Of course, she didn’t. The Lampos left and Dodo had to do a huge impot and miss the staff concert. And, by the way, Rumpole, there’s absolutely no need for you to open another bottle of that stuff. It’s high time you were in bed.’
At the Temple station next morning I bought a copy of Hello!, a mysterious publication devoted to the happy lives of people I had never heard of. When I arrived in Chambers my first port of call was to the room where Liz Probert carried on her now flourishing practice. She was, as the saying is, at her desk, and I noticed a new scarlet telephone had settled in beside her regulation black instrument.
‘Business booming, I’m glad to see. You’ve had to install another telephone.’
‘It’s a hotline, Rumpole.’
‘Hot?’ I gave it a tentative touch.
‘I mean it’s private. For the use of women in Chambers only.’
‘It doesn’t respond to the touch of the male finger.’
‘It’s so we can report harassment, discrimination and verbally aggressive male barrister or clerk conduct direct to the S.R.L. office.’
The S—?’
‘Sisterhood of Radical Lawyers.’
‘And what will they do? Send for the police? Call the fire brigade to douse masculine ardour?’
‘They will record the episode fully. Then we shall meet the victim and decide on action.’
‘I thought you decided on action before you met Wendy Crump.’
‘Her case was particularly clear. Now she’s coming to the meeting of the Sisterhood at 5.30.’
‘Ah, yes. She told me about that. I think she’s got quite a lot to say.’
‘I’m sure she has. Now what do you want, Rumpole? I’m before the Divisional Court at 10.30.’
‘Good for you! I just came in to ask you a favour.’
‘Not self-induced drunkenness as a defence? Crump told me she had to look that up for you.’
‘It’s not the law. Although I do hear you work for other barristers for nothing, and so deprive their lady pupils of the beginnings of a practice.’
Mizz Probert looked, I thought, a little shaken, but she picked up a pencil, underlined something in her brief and prepared to ignore me.
‘Is that what you came to complain about?’ she asked without looking at me.
‘No. I’ve come to tell you I bought Hello! magazine.’
‘Why on earth did you do that?’ She looked up and was surprised to see me holding out the publication in question.
‘I heard you read it during long stretches of intense boredom. I thought I might do the same when Mr Injustice Graves sums up to the jury.’
‘I don’t have long moments of boredom.’ Mizz Liz sounded businesslike.
‘Don’t you really? Not when you have to sit for hours in Monte’s beauty parlour in Ken High Street?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about …’ The protest came faintly. Mizz Probert was visibly shaken.
‘It must be awfully uncomfortable. I mean, I don’t think I’d want to sit for hours in a solution of couscous and assorted stewed herbs with the whole thing wrapped up in tinfoil. I suppose Hello! magazine is a bit of a comfort in those circumstances. But is it worth it? I mean, all that trouble to change what a bountiful nature gave you – for the sake of pleasing men?’
I didn’t enjoy asking this fatal question. I brought Mizz Liz up in the law and I still have respect and affection for her. On a good day she can be an excellent ally. But I was acting for the underdog, an undernourished hound by the name of Claude Erskine-Brown. And the question had its effect. As the old-fashioned crime writers used to say in their ghoulish way, the shadow of the noose seemed to fall across the witness-box.
‘No one’s mentioned that to the S.R.L.?’
‘I thought I could pick up the hotline, but then it might be more appropriate if Wendy Crump raised it at your meeting this afternoon. That would give you an opportunity to reply. And I suppose Jenny Attienzer might want to raise the complaint about her pupil work.’
‘What are you up to, Rumpole?’
‘Just doing my best to protect the rights of lady barristers.’
‘Anyone else’s rights?’
‘Well, I suppose, looking at the matter from an entirely detached point of view, the rights of one unfortunate male.’
‘The case against Erskine-Brown has raised strong feelings in the Sisterhood. I’m not sure I can persuade them to drop it.’
‘Of course you can persuade them, Liz. With your talent for advocacy, I bet you’ve got the Sisterhood eating out of your hand.’
‘I’ll do my best. I can’t promise anything. By the way, it may not be necessary for Crump to attend. I suppose Kate Inglefield may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.’
‘Exactly. Claude said “that pupil”. Not “fat pupil”. Try it anyway, if you can’t think of anything better.’
And so, with the case of the Sisterhood v. Erskine-Brown settled, I was back in the gloomy prison boardroom. When I’d first seen it, members of the caring, custodial and sentencing professions were feasting on sausage rolls and white wine after A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Now it was dressed not for a party but for a trial, and had taken on the appearance of a peculiarly unfriendly Magistrates’ Court.
Behind the table at the far end of the room sat the three members of the prisoners’ Board of Visitors who were entitled to try Matthew Gribble. The Chairwoman centre stage was a certain Lady Bullwood, whose hair was piled up in a jet-black mushroom on top of her head and who went in for a good deal of costume jewellery, including a glittering chain round her neck from which her spectacles swung. Her look varied between the starkly judicial and the instantly confused, as when she suddenly lost control of a piece of paper, or forgot which part of her her glasses were tied to.
Beside her, wearing an expression of universal tolerance and the sort of gentle smile which can, in my experience, precede an unexpectedly stiff
sentence, sat the Bishop of Worsfield, who had a high aquiline nose, neatly brushed grey hair and the thinnest strip of a dog-collar.
The third judge was an elderly schoolboy called Major Oxborrow, who looked as though he couldn’t wait for the whole tedious business to be over, and for the offer of a large gin and tonic in the Governor’s quarters. Beside them, in what I understood was a purely advisory capacity, sat my old friend the Governor, Quintus Blake, who looked as if he would rather be anywhere else and deeply regretted the need for these proceedings. He had, I remembered with gratitude, been so anxious to see Matthew Gribble properly defended that he had sent for Horace Rumpole, clearly the best man for the job. There was a clerk at a small table in front of the Visitors, whose job was, I imagined, to keep them informed as to such crumbs of law as were still available in prison. The prosecution was in the nervous hands of a young Mr Fraplington, a solicitor from some government department. He was a tall, gangling person who looked as though he had shot up in the last six months and his jacket and trousers were too short for him.
What I didn’t like was the grim squadron of screws who lined the walls as though expecting an outbreak of violence, and the fact that my client was brought in handcuffed and sat between two of the largest, beefiest prison officers available. After Matthew had been charged with committing an assault, obstructing an officer in the course of his duty and offending against good order and discipline, he pleaded not guilty on my express instructions. Then I rose to my feet. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’
‘Do you wish to address the Court, Mr Rumpole?’ The clerk, a little ferret of a man, was clearly anxious to make his presence felt.
‘I certainly do. Have you forgotten to read out the charges of mass murder, war crimes, rioting, burning down E-wing and inciting to mutiny?’
The ferret looked puzzled. The Chairwoman sorted hopelessly through her papers and Mr Fraplington for the prosecution said helpfully, ‘This prisoner is charged with none of those offences.’
‘Then if he is not,’ I asked, with perhaps rather overplayed amazement, ‘why is he brought in here shackled? Why is this room lined with prison officers clearly expecting a dreadful scene of violence? Why is he being treated as though he were some hated dictator guilty of waging aggressive war? My client, Mr Gribble, is a gentle academic and student of Shakespeare. And there is no reason for him to attend these proceedings in irons.’
The Collected Stories of Rumpole Page 68
