Rumpole’s Return (1987) by John Mortimer

Author:John Mortimer
Format: epub
Published: 1987-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

or words to the like effect.

As I entered the unexpectedly warm gloaming of our living-room She said, ‘Rumpole, is that you, dear?’

‘What did you call me?’ I couldn’t believe my ears.

‘I called you ‘dear’. Can’t I call you ‘dear’, Rumpole?’ She rose gracefully and actually poured me a glassful of Pommeroy’s plonk; and it was a liberal measure.

‘I suppose there’s no reason why not.’ I took a gulp and a sniff round. ‘Is there a rather odd sort of smell in here?’

‘Is there…?’

‘Distinctly unusual smell. Mixture of R.C. churches and old flower vases.’

‘Well, that’s not very romantic.’

‘No.’

‘I’m wearing lavender water, Rumpole,’ Hilda said, almost coyly. ‘The lavender water you give me every Christmas.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t recognize it.’ I realized I had said the wrong thing, and returned my nose to my glass.

‘Since we met, you have given me thirty-nine bottles of lavender water,’ Hilda said without rancour.

‘Well, I never knew what else you’d like to smell of.’ And then I confessed, ‘The case at Grimble was an unmitigated disaster. Very unsatisfied client.’ I sat on the sofa and gratefully changed the subject. ‘I say, have you got a cold or something? Been in bed, have you, Hilda?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re wearing your dressing-gown.’ I thought it was about time someone pointed it out.

‘It’s really more of a negligee…‘ And to my amazement Hilda came and sat down quite uncomfortably close to me. In fact she was squashing up against my knee as I scratched the old sore of my disastrous day in Court.

‘I made the mistake of appealing to the old English sense of freedom. Freedom’s gone out of fashion in Grimble. That singer appears to be in some pain.’ Herr Tauber’s voice had risen to a painful squeal. I put him out of his misery and switched him off.

‘That was ‘These We Have Loved’.’ To my alarm Hilda was squashing up against me even more. ‘We’re not too old, are we, Rumpole,’ she almost whispered, ‘to enjoy anything sentimental?’

‘No.’ I made a cautious admission. ‘But…’

And then Hilda said a surprising thing. ‘You don’t have to read those magazines, Rumpole,’ she said. ‘After all, you are married.’

‘What magazines?’ I wasn’t entirely with her.

‘A dreadful thing about schoolgirls. I found it behind the sofa cushions.’

I began to get a strange glimmering, a sort of clue to Hilda’s incalculable behaviour over the last weeks. ‘Good heavens!’ I told her. ‘I had to read that, yes. It was part of the evidence in my case.’

‘Your what?’ Hilda seemed taken aback.

‘The obscenity case. The one I did at Grimble. Good God, Hilda. You don’t think I enjoyed reading that rubbish, do you? I’ve never been so bored in my whole life.’

‘Bored?’ She sounded curiously disappointed. ‘Is that what you were?’

‘Well, naturally. You didn’t read it, did you?’ My mind began to boggle at the thought of Hilda reading solemnly through ‘Changing Room Orgies’.

However, she shook her head vigorously, got up quickly and moved away from me. ‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘It was your work, was it? That’s all it was…’

‘Absolutely all!’ I assured her.

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