Forever Rumpole by John Mortimer

Author:John Mortimer [Mortimer, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141964973
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2011-08-04T04:00:00+00:00

The sound of the words brought me some comfort, although I wasn’t sure they were entirely appropriate. And then she brought back my worst fears by saying, ‘I shall stand by you, Rumpole, at whatever cost. I shall stand by you, through thick and thin.’

Perhaps I should explain the obscure legal process that has to be gone through in the unfrocking, or should I say unwigging, of a barrister. The Bar Council may be said to be the guardian of our morality, there to see we don’t indulge in serious crimes or conduct unbecoming to a legal hack, such as assaulting the officer in charge of the case, dealing in dangerous substances round the corridors of the Old Bailey or speaking to our clients in the lunch-hour. Mr Justice Ollie Oliphant had made a complaint to that body and a committee had decided to send me for trial before a High Court judge, three practising barristers and a lay assessor, one of the great and the good who could be relied upon to uphold the traditions of the Bar and not ask awkward questions or give any trouble to the presiding judge. It was the prospect of She Who Must Be Obeyed pleading my cause as a character witness before this august tribunal which made my blood run cold.

There was another offer of support which I thought was far more likely to do me harm than good. I was, a few weeks later, alone in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, contemplating the tail-end of a bottle of Château Fleet Street and putting off the moment when I would have to return home to Hilda’s sighs of sympathy and the often-repeated, unanswerable question, ‘How could you have done such a thing, Rumpole? After all your years of experience’, to which would no doubt be added the information that her daddy would never have spoken to a client in the lunch-hour, or at any other time come to that, when I heard a familiar voice calling my name and I looked up to see my old friend Fred Timson, head of the great South London family of villains from which a large part of my income is derived. Naturally I asked him to pull up a chair, pour out a glass and was he in some sort of trouble?

‘Not me. I heard you was, Mr Rumpole. I want you to regard me as your legal adviser.’

When I explained that the indispensable Mr Bernard was already filling that post at my trial he said, ‘Bernard has put me entirely in the picture, he having called on my cousin Kevin’s second-hand car lot as he was interested in a black Rover, only fifty thousand on the clock and the property of a late undertaker. We chewed the fat to a considerable extent over your case, Mr Rumpole, and I have to inform you, my own view is that you’ll walk it. We’ll get you out, sir, without a stain on your character.’

‘Oh, really, Fred’ – I

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