("Rumpole of the Bailey")

[fiefoe]

I went through four stories out of six of John Mortimer's story collection about the famous barrister and they really show their age.

• They know me there for never pleading guilty, for chain-smoking small cigars, and for quoting Wordsworth when they least expect it. Such notoriety will not long survive my not-to-be-delayed trip to Golders Green Crematorium. Barristers' speeches vanish quicker than Chinese dinners, and even the greatest victory in Court rarely survives longer than the next Sunday's papers.
• My father's example, and the number of theological students I met at Keble, gave me an early mistrust of clergymen whom I have always found to be most unsatisfactory witnesses. If you call a clergyman in mitigation, the old darling can be guaranteed to add at least a year to the sentence.
• ' Shades of the prison house begin to close Upon the growing boy.'
  Hilda spoke at last. 'Rumpole, you're not talking about your son, I hope. You're never referring to Nick...' 'Shades of the prison house begin to close") Not round our son, of course. Not round Nick. Shades of the public school have grown round him, the thousand-quid-a-year remand home.' Hilda always thought it indelicate to refer to the subject of school fees, as if being at Mulstead were a kind of unsolicited honour for Nick.
• * Fred Timson, star of a dozen Court appearances, was seeing his son in the cells under the Old Bailey as the result of a specially arranged visit. I know he brought the boy his best jacket, which his mother had taken specially to the cleaners, and insisted on his putting on a tie. I imagine he told him that they had the best 'brief in the business to defend him, Mr. Rumpole having always done wonders for the Timson family. I know that Fred told young Jim to stand up straight in the witness box and remember to call the judge 'my Lord' and not show his ignorance by coming out with any gaffe such as 'Your Honour', or 'Sir'. The world, that day, was full of fathers showing appropriate and paternal concern.
• * 'A person who is tired of crime,' I told him quite candidly, 'is tired of life.' 'Your Dangerous and Careless at Clerkenwell is on the mantelpiece, Mr. Hoskins,' Albert said.
• To my certain knowledge, Uncle Tom hasn't appeared in Court for fifteen years, when he managed to lose an undefended divorce case, but, as he lives with a widowed sister, a lady of such reputed ferocity that she makes She Who Must Be Obeyed sound like Mrs. Tiggywinkle, he spends most of his time in Chambers.
• * ' Straight from school on that Friday September 2nd, I went up to tea at my Aunty Doris's and arrived there at exactly 5.30. At 6 p.m. my Uncle Den came home from work accompanied by my Uncle Cyril. At 7 p.m. when this alleged crime was taking place I was sat round the television with my Aunty and two Uncles. I well remember we was watching "The Newcomers".' All very neat and workmanlike. Well, that was it. The family gave young Jim an alibi, clubbed together for it, like a new bicycle. However, I had to disappoint Mr Bernard about the bright shining alibi and we went through the swing doors on our way into Court.
• 'Think about it Bernard. Don't be blinded by the glamour of the criminal classes. Call the Uncles and the Aunties? Let them all be cross-examined about their records? The jury'11 realize our Jimbo comes from a family of villains who keep a cupboard full of alibis for all occasions.'
• than listening to me bowling fast in-swingers at the juvenile chief witness for the prosecution.
  'You don't speak. The Molloys and the Timsons are like the Montagues and the Capulets,' I put it to Peanuts.
  'What did you say they were?' The judge had, of course, given me my opportunity. I smacked him through the slips for a crafty single.' Not ejusdem generis, my Lord,' I said.
• he went down to the House of Lords tailored out in his new silk gown, a lace jabot, knee breeches with diamante 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.
• 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 ot wintry smile which seemed designed to indicate that all flesh is as the grass, or something to that effect.

-------
__ 'The law? You know where the law is now? Down in the George Hotel drinking the Circuit port and singing " What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor". The law is talking about the comical way the old Lord Chief passed a death sentence. The law is in another world; but it thinks it's the whole world. Just as you lot think the world's nothing but poetry, and perhaps the occasional puff of a dangerous cigarette.' 'That's what we've got you for. To put our point of view across.' Dave had mistaken my function.
-------

• Aspen spoke in a slightly modified public-school accent, and I thought the 'Ken' and the just flattened vowels were a concession to the workers, like a cloth cap on a Labour Member. Being a politician, he started off by looking for a compromise, couldn't I perhaps have a word with Miss Bridget Evans?
• Mrs Aspen also stood and looked at me as though I was a regrettable necessity in their important lives, like drains.
• old Sam looked, when the case opened, as if he'd just heard the clerk say, 'Put up Jack the Ripper.' Now he seemed to be wanning to Miss Bridget Evans who was telling her hair-raising story with effective modesty. As I tottered to my feet old Sam gave me an icy look. When you start to cross-examine in a rape case you open the flap of the tent, and you're out in the blizzard.
• 'How old were you when you had the abortion?' I looked round the Court and met Erica's look; not exactly a gaze of enraptured congratulation.
  ' I was nineteen... It was perfectly legal.' Miss Evans was now on the defensive.' I got a certificate. From the psychiatrist.' 'Saying you were unfit for childbirth?' 'I suppose so.' 'And the psychiatrist certified... you were emotionally unstable?' It was a shot in the bloody dark, but I imagine that's what trick cyclists always say, to prevent any unwanted increase in the population...
  ' So the jury have to rely, in this case, on the evidence of a young woman. Who has been certified emotionally, unstable.' The jury were looking delightfully doubtful as the usher brought me the note from the dock. No ammunition, not even any congratulation, but just one line scrawled, 'Leave her alone now, please! K. A.' I crumpled the note with visible irritation; in such a mood, no doubt, did Nelson put the glass to his blind eye when reading the signal to retreat.

-------

• 'And I've never known you to be telephoned by a client. At home!' 'I usually have quiet, undemanding clients. Murderers don't fuss. Robbers can usually guess the outcome, so that they're calm and resigned. Divorcing ladies are different. They're inclined to telephone constantly.'
• 'Listen, Hilda.' I did my best to remain calm. 'I have a client whose unhappy marriage may well provide you and Dodo with another tea in Hatreds. That can't be why you're leaving.' There was one of those silences that had become so frequent between us, and then she said, 'No. No, it isn't.' 'Then why?' 'You've changed, Rumpole. You don't go to work in the mornings. And as for the gin bottle!' 'You marked it! That was unforgiveable.' 'Then don't forgive me.' 'An Englishman's gin bottle is his castle.'
• * 'Oh really? And is it a damned lie about the bath water?' 'What about the bath water?' 'You ran off all the hot water deliberately. You put a note on the geyser, "Out of Bounds".' 'I haven't had a bath there for the last month. I have to go all the way to Ruislip, to my mother's.' 'Rumpole! You're against me?' 'Of course I'm against you. I'm the wife! You want to turn me out of the house, and my child!' ' Your child! You've alienated Norman's affections.' 'What?' 'You've turned him against me!' It's no doubt a strange habit of barristers to identify themselves so closely with their clients. But by now we had both raised our voices, and the other diners were listening but looking studiously away, as though they were overhearing a domestic quarrel.
• ' Mr Rumpole,' Mrs Justice Appelby's voice, like a cold shower, woke me from my reverie. 'Is it really too late for commonsense to prevail?' 'Commonsense, my Lady?' 'Could there not be one final attempt at a reconciliation?' I felt a sinking in the pit of the stomach. Could it be that even divorce was slipping away from us, and George and I would both have to go back to the crossword puzzle.
• * 'All right? You were all right, weren't you, Norman? When they really looked like separating?' ' I don't know what you mean.' 'When they were both trying to win you over to their side. When you got a present a week from Mum and a rival present from Dad? Tanks, planes, guns, it's been a sort of arms race between them, hasn't it, Norman?' 'I don't know what you're talking about, Mr Rumpole,' Norman repeated, with rather less conviction.
  'This mad impulse of your parents to get together again doesn't show much consideration for you, or for me either, come to that.' ' I don't mind if they get together. It's their business, isn't it?' 'Yes, Norman. Their business.' 'I'm not stopping them."
• 'Typed on the Imperial on which Dianne in my Chambers hammers out my so-called learned opinions. The typewriter you were playing with so innocently yesterday in the clerk's room. I put it to you, Norman, you typed that last note! In a desperate effort to keep this highly profitable divorce case going.' Norman looked up from my magnifying glass and said, 'I didn't see any gap in the capital " S ".' 'Didn't you, Norman? The judge will.'