Quintus Blake, O.B.E. and the staff cordially invite
Horace Rumpole Esq.
to a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by
William Shakespeare 15th September at 7 p.m. sharp.
Entry by invitation only. Proof of identity will be required.
RSVP
The Governor’s Office Worsfield Prison Worsfield, Berks
I had been to Worsfield gaol regularly over the years and never without breathing a sigh of relief, and gulping in all the fresh air available, after the last screw had turned the last lock and released me from custody. I never thought of going there to explore the magical charm of a wood near Athens.
‘Hilda,’ I said, taking a swig of rapidly cooling coffee and lining myself up for a quick dash to the Underground, ‘can you prove your identity?’
‘Is that meant to be funny, Rumpole?’ Hilda was deep in the Daily Telegraph and unamused.
‘I mean, if you can satisfy the authorities you’re really She – I mean (here I corrected myself hastily) that you’re my wife, I’ll try for another ticket and we can go to the theatre together.’
‘What’s come over you, Rumpole? We haven’t been to the theatre together for three years – or whenever Claude last dragged you to the opera.’
‘Then it’s about time,’ I said, ‘we went to the Dream.’
‘Which dream?’
‘The Midsummer Night’s one.’
‘Where is it?’ Hilda seemed prepared to put her toe in the water. ‘The Royal Shakespeare?’
‘Not exactly. It’s in Her Majesty’s Prison, Worsfield. Fifteenth September. Seven p.m. sharp.’
‘You mean you want to take me to Shakespeare done by criminals?’
‘Done, but not done in, I hope.’
‘Anyway’ – She Who Must Be Obeyed found a cast-iron alibi – ‘that’s my evening at the bridge school with Marigold Featherstone.’
Hilda, I thought, like most of the non-criminal classes, likes to think that those sentenced simply disappear off the face of the earth. Very few of us wonder about their wasted lives, or worry about the slums in which they are confined, or, indeed, remember them at all.
‘You’ll have to go on your own, Rumpole,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ll have lots of friends there, and they’ll all be delighted to see you.’
‘Plenty of your mates in here, eh, Mr Rumpole? They’ll all be glad to see you, I don’t doubt.’ I thought it remarkable that both She Who Must Be Obeyed and the screw who was slowly and carefully going over my body with some form of metal detector should have the same heavy-handed and not particularly diverting sense of humour.
‘I have come for William Shakespeare,’ I said with all the dignity I could muster. ‘I don’t believe he’s an inmate here. Nor have I ever been called upon to defend him.’
Worsfield gaol was built in the 1850s for far fewer than the number of prisoners it now contains. What the Victorian forces of law and order required was a granite-faced castle of despair whose outer appearance was thought likely to deter the passers-by from any thoughts of evil-doing. Inside, five large cellular blocks formed the prison for men, with a smaller block set aside for the few women prisoners. In its early days all within was secrecy and silence, with prisoners, forbidden to speak to each other, plodding round the exercise yard and the treadmill – the cat o’ nine tails and the rope for ever lurking in the shadows. When it was built it was on the outskirts of a small industrial town, a place to be pointed out as a warning to shuddering children being brought back home late on winter evenings from school. Now the town has spread over the green fields of the countryside and the prison is almost part of the city centre. This, I thought, as my taxi passed it on the way from the station, looked in itself, with its concrete office blocks, grim shopping malls and multi-storey car parks, as if it were built like the headquarters of a secret police force or a group of houses of correction.
Inside the prison there were some attempts at cheerfulness. Walls were painted lime green and buttercup yellow. There was a dusty rubber plant, and posters for seaside holidays, in the office by the gate where I filled in a visitor’s form and did my best to establish my identity. But the scented disinfectant was fighting a losing battle with the prevailing smell of stale air, unemptied chamber-pots and greasy cooking.
The screw who escorted me down the blindingly lit passages, with his keys jangling at his hip, told me he’d been a school teacher but became a prison warder for the sake of more pay and free membership of the local golf club. He was a tall, ginger-haired man, running to fat, with that prison pallor which can best be described as halfway between sliced bread and underdone potato chips. On one of his pale cheeks I noticed a recent scar.
The ex-teacher led me across a yard, a dark concrete area lined with borders of black earth in which a few meagre plants didn’t seem to be doing well. A small crowd of visitors from the outer world – youngish people whom I took to be social workers and probation officers with their partners, grey-haired governors of other prisons with their wives, enlightened magistrates and a well-known professor of criminology – was waiting. Their voices were muted, serious and respectful, as though, instead of having been invited to a comedy, they were expecting a cremation. They stood in front of the chapel, a gaunt Gothic building no doubt intended to put us all in mind of the terrible severity of the Last Judgement. There, convicted murderers had prayed while their few days of life ticked away towards the last breakfast. ‘Puts the wretch that lies in woe / In remembrance of the shroud’ – I remembered the lines at the end of the play we were about to see. Then the locked doors of the chapel opened and we were shepherded in to the entertainment.
‘I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not kill’d indeed; and for the more better assurance, tell them that I Pyramus, am not Pyramus but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear!’ The odd thing was – I had discovered by a glance at my programme before the chapel lights dimmed and the cold, marble-paved area in front of the altar was bathed in sunlight and became an enchanted forest – the prisoner playing Nick Bottom was called Bob Weaver. What he was in for I had no idea, but this weaver seemed to be less of a natural actor than a natural Bottom. There was no hint of an actor playing a part. The simple pomposity, the huge self-satisfaction, and the like-ability of the man were entirely real. When the audience laughed, and they laughed a good deal, the prisoner didn’t seem pleased, as an actor would be, but as hurt, puzzled and resentful as bully Bottom mocked. And, when he came to the play scene, he acted Pyramus with intense seriousness which, of course, made it funnier than ever.
We were a segregated audience, divided by the aisle. On one side, like friends of the groom, sat the inmates in grey prison clothes and striped shirts – and trainers (which I used to call sand-shoes when I was a boy) were apparently allowed. On the other side, the friends of the bride were the great and the good, the professional carers and concerned operators of a curious and notoriously unsuccessful system. Of the two sides, it was the friends of the groom who coughed and fidgeted less, laughed more loudly and seemed more deeply involved in the magic that unfolded before them:
‘But we are spirits of another sort.
I with the morning’s love have oft made sport,
And like a forester the groves may tread
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.’
I hadn’t realized how handsome Tony Timson would look without his glasses. His association, however peripheral, with an armed robbery (not the sort of thing the Timson family had any experience of, nor indeed talent for) had led him to be ruler of a fairy kingdom. Puck, small, energetic and Irish, I remembered from a far more serious case as a junior member of the clan Molloy. All too soon, for me anyway, he was alone on the stage, smiling a farewell:
‘If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear. . .’
Then the house lights went up and I remembered that all the lovers, fairies and Rude Mechanicals (with the exception of the actresses) were robbers, housebreakers, manslaughterers and murderers, there because of their crimes and somebody’s – perhaps my – unsuccessful defence.
‘I think you’ll all agree that that was a pretty good effort.’ The Governor was on the stage, a man with a ramrod back, cropped grey hair and pink cheeks, who spoke like some commanding officer congratulating his men after a particularly dangerous foray into enemy territory. ‘We owe a great deal to those splendid performers and all those who helped with the costumes. I suggest we might give a hand to our director who is mainly responsible for getting these awkward fellows acting.’ A small, middle-aged man with steel-rimmed spectacles rose up from the front row of the inmates and lifted a hand to acknowledge the applause. This the Governor silenced with a brisk mutter of words of command. ‘Now will all those of you who live in, please go out. And those of you who live out, please stay in. You’ll be escorted to the boardroom for drinks and light refreshments.’
The screws who had been waiting, stationed round the walls like sentries, reclaimed their charges. I saw the director who had been applauded walking towards them with his knees slightly bent, moving with a curious hopping motion, as though he were a puppet on a string. I hadn’t seen his face clearly but something in the way he moved seemed familiar, although I couldn’t remember where I’d met him before, or what crime he might, or might not, have committed.
‘Never went much for Shakespeare when I was at school,’ Quintus Blake, the Governor, told me. He was holding a flabby sausage-roll in one hand and, in the other, a glass of warmish white wine which, for sheer undrinkability, had Pommeroy’s house blanc beaten by a short head. ‘Thought the chap was a bit long-winded and couldn’t make his meaning clear at times. But, by God, doesn’t he come into his own in the prison service?’
‘You mean, you use him as a form of punishment?’
‘That’s what I’d’ve thought when I was at school. That’s what I’ll tell Ken Fry if he complains we’re giving the chaps too good a time. If they misbehave, I’ll tell him we put them on Shakespeare for twenty-eight days.’ Ken Fry is our new, abrasive, young Home Secretary who lives for the delighted cheers of the hangers and floggers at party conferences. Given time, he’ll reintroduce the rack as a useful adjunct to police questioning.
‘The truth of the matter’ – Quintus bit bravely into the tepid flannel of his sausage-roll – ‘is that none of the fellows on Shakespeare duty have committed a single offence since rehearsals began.’
‘Is that really true?’
‘Well, with one exception.’ He took a swig at the alleged Entre Deux Mers, decided that one was enough and put his glass down on the boardroom table. ‘Ken Fry says prison is such a brilliant idea because no one commits crimes here. Well, of course, they do. They bully each other and get up to sexual shenanigans which put me in mind of the spot behind the fives court at Coldsands. I don’t know what it is about prison that always reminds me of my school-days. Anyway, as soon as they landed parts in the Dream, they were as good as gold, nearly all of them. And for that I’ve got to hand it to Gribble.’
‘Gribble?’
‘Matthew Gribble. Inmate in charge of Shakespeare. Just about due for release as he’s got all the remission possible.’
‘He produced the play?’
‘And even got a performance out of that human bulldozer who played bully Bottom. One-time boxer who’d had his brains turned into mashed potatoes quite early in his career.’
‘Gribble was the man who stood up at the end?’
‘I thought I’d get this lot to give him a round of applause.’ The Governor looked at the well-meaning elderly guests, the puzzled but hopeful social workers, who were taking their refreshments, as they took all the difficulties in their lives, with grim determination. It was then I remembered Matthew Gribble, an English teacher at a Berkshire polytechnic, who had killed his wife.
‘I think,’ I said, ‘I defended him once.’
‘I know you did!’ The Governor smiled. ‘And he wants you to do the trick again before the Board of Visitors. I said I’d try and arrange it because, so far as I’m concerned, he’s an absolutely model prisoner.’
All this happened at a time when Claude Erskine-Brown (who had not yet become a Q.C. – I call them Queer Customers) took to himself a young lady pupil named Wendy Crump. Mizz Crump was a person with high legal qualifications but no oil painting – as Uncle Tom, of blessed memory, would have been likely to say. She had, I believe, been hand-picked by Claude’s wife, the Portia of our Chambers, who had not yet got her shapely bottom on to the Bench and been elevated to the title of Mrs Justice Phillida Erskine-Brown, a puisne judge of the High Court.
‘Your Mizz Crump,’ I told Claude, when we met at breakfast time in the Tastee-Bite eatery a little to the west of our Chambers, ‘seems a bit of an all-round asset.’
‘All round, Rumpole. You’ve said it. Wendy Crump is very all round indeed.’ He gave a mirthless laugh and spoke as a man who might have preferred a slimline pupil.
‘Hope you don’t mind,’ I told him, ‘but I asked her to look up the effect of self-induced drunkenness on crimes of violence. She came up with the answer in a couple of shakes, with reference to all the leading cases.’
‘I’ll agree she’s a dab hand at the law.’
‘Well, isn’t that what you need a pupil for?’ I knew it was a silly question as soon as I’d asked it. An ability to mug up cases on manslaughter was not at all what Claude required of a pupil. He wanted someone willing, husky-voiced and alluring. He wanted a heartshaped face and swooping eyelashes which could drive the poor fellow insane when they were topped by a wig. He wanted to fall in love and make elaborate plans for satisfying his cravings, which would be doomed to disaster. What the poor old darling wanted was yet another opportunity to make a complete ass of himself, and these longings were unlikely to be fulfilled by Wendy Crump.
‘What a barrister needs, Rumpole, in a busy life with heavy responsibilities and a great deal of nervous tension is, well, a little warmth, a little adoration.’
‘I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if Mizz Crump didn’t adore you, Claude.’
‘Don’t even suggest it!’ The clever Crump’s pupil master gave a shudder.
‘Anyway, don’t you get plenty of warmth and affection from Philly?’
‘Philly’s been on circuit for weeks.’ Claude took a quick swig of the coffee from the Old Bailey machine and didn’t seem to enjoy it. ‘And when she’s here she spends all her time criticizing me.’
‘How extraordinary.’ I simulated amazement.
‘Yes, isn’t it? Philly’s away and I have to spend my days stuck here with Wendy Crump. But not my nights, Rumpole. Never, ever, my nights.’
I lost his attention as Nick Davenant from King’s Bench Walk passed us, followed by his pupil Jenny Attienzer. She was tall, blonde, willowy and carrying his coffee. Poor old Claude looked as sick as a dog.
That afternoon I was seated at my desk, smoking a small cigar and gazing into space – the way I often spend my time when not engaged in Court – when there was a brisk knock at the door and Wendy Crump entered and asked if I had a set of Cox’s Criminal Reports. ‘Not in here,’ I told her. ‘Try upstairs. Cox’s Reports are Soapy Sam Ballard’s constant reading.’ And then, because she looked disappointed at not finding these alluring volumes at once, I did my best to cheer her up.
‘Claude thinks you’re a wonderful pupil.’ I exaggerated, of course. ‘I told him you were a dab hand at the law. He’s very lucky.’
It’s rare nowadays that you see anyone blush, but Wendy’s usually pale cheeks were glowing. ‘I’m the lucky one,’ she said, and added, to my amazement, ‘to be doing my pupillage with Erskine-Brown. Everyone I know is green with envy.’ Everyone she knew, I thought, must be strangely ignorant of life at the Bailey, where prosecution by Claude has come to be regarded as the key to the gaolhouse door.
Wendy ended her testimonial with ‘I honestly do regard it as an enormous privilege.’ I supposed the inmates of Worsfield would consider basketball or macramé a privilege if it got them out of solitary confinement. Looking at the enthusiastic Mizz Crump I thought that Claude had been unfair about her appearance. It was just that she had acquired the look of an intelligent and cheerful middle-aged person whilst still in her twenties. She was, I suppose, what would be called considerably overweight, but there was nothing wrong with that. With her wiry hair scraped back, her spectacles and her willing expression, she looked like the photographs of the late Dorothy L. Sayers, a perfectly pleasant sight.
‘I just hope I can be a help to him.’
‘I’m sure you can.’ Although not, I thought, the sort of help the ever-hopeful Claude was after.
‘I could never rise to be a barrister like that.’
‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ I encouraged her.
‘I mean I could never stand up and speak with such command – and in such a beautiful voice too. Of course he’s handsome, which means he can absolutely dominate a courtroom. You need to be handsome to do that, don’t you?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘thank you very much.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean that. Of course you dominate all sorts of courtrooms. And it doesn’t matter what you look like.’ She gave a little gasp to emphasize her point. ‘It doesn’t matter in the least!’
‘The extraordinary thing is that his name is Weaver. He was on the same floor as me, a couple of cell doors away.’ Matthew Gribble spoke as if he were describing a neighbour in a country village. ‘Bob Weaver. He used to laugh at me because I kept getting books from the library. He was sure I got all the ones with dirty bits in because I knew where to look for them. Of course, in those days, he couldn’t tell the difference between soft porn and Mansfield Park. He was hardly literate.’
‘You say he was.’
‘Until I taught him to read, that is.’
‘You taught him?’
‘Oh, yes. I honestly don’t know how I’d’ve got through the years here if I hadn’t had that to do.’ He gave a small, timid smile. ‘As a matter of fact, I enjoyed the chance to teach again.’
‘How did you manage it?’
‘Oh, I read to him at first. I read all the stories I’d liked when I was a child. We started with Winnie-the-Pooh and got on to Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Then he began to want to read for himself.’
‘So you decided to cast him?’
‘If we ever did the Dream. He looked absolutely right. A huge mountain of a man with the outlook of a child. And kind, too. He even had the right name for it.’
‘You mean, to play Nick, the weaver?’
‘Exactly! I asked him to do it a long time ago. Two years at least. I asked him if he’d like to play Bottom.’
‘And he agreed?’
‘No.’ The timid smile returned. ‘He looked profoundly shocked. He thought I’d made some sort of obscene suggestion.’
We had been in the Worsfield interview room four and a bit years before, sitting on either side of the same table, with the bright blue paint and the solitary cactus, and the walls and door half glass so the screws could look in and see what we were up to. Then, we had been talking about his teaching, his production with the Cowshott drama group, the performances which he got out of secretaries and teachers and a particularly dramatic district nurse – and of his wife who apparently hated him and his amateur theatricals. When she flew at him and tore at his face with her fingernails during one of their nightly quarrels over the washing up, he had stabbed her through the heart. I thought I had done the case with my usual brilliance and got the jury to find provocation and reduce the crime to manslaughter, for which the Judge, taking the view that a kitchen knife is not the proper reply to an attack with fingernails, had given him seven years. As the Governor told me, he was a model prisoner. With full remission he’d be out by the end of the month. That is, unless he was convicted on the charge I was now concerned with. If the Board of Visitors did him for dangerous assault on a prison warden, he’d forfeit a large chunk of his remission.
‘The incident we have to talk about,’ I said, ‘happened in the carpenter’s shop.’
‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I suppose we have to talk about it.’
All subjects seemed to him, I guessed, flat, stale and unprofitable after the miracle of getting an illiterate East End prizefighter to enjoy acting Shakespeare. I remembered his account of the last quarrel with his wife. She had told him he was universally despised. She had mocked him for his pathetic sexual attainments while, at the same time, accusing him, quite without foundation, of abusing his child by a previous marriage. He had heard it all many, many times before. It was only when she told him that he had produced Hamlet as though it were a television situation comedy that their quarrel ended in violence.
‘Yes, the carpenter’s shop.’ Matthew Gribble sighed. Then he cheered up slightly and said, ‘We were building the set for the Dream.’
I had a note of the case given to me by the Governor. There were only four members of the cast working on the scenery, one civilian carpenter and a prison officer in overall charge. His name was Steve Barrington.
‘Do you know’ – my client’s voice was full of wonder – ‘Barrington gave up a job as a teacher to become a screw? Isn’t that extraordinary?’
‘Do you think he regrets it? He may not have got chisels thrown at him in class, with any luck.’
What was thrown was undoubtedly the tool which Matthew had been using. The screw was talking to one of the carpenters and didn’t see the missile before it struck his cheek. The other cast members, except for one, said they were busy and didn’t see who launched the attack.
‘I put the chisel on the bench and I was just turning round to tack the false turf on to the mound we’d built. I didn’t see who threw it. I only know that I didn’t. I told you the truth in the other case. Why should I lie to you about this?’
Because you don’t want to spend another unnecessary minute as a guest of Her Majesty, I thought of saying, but resisted the temptation. It was not for me to pass judgement, not at any stage of the proceedings. My problem was that there was a witness who said he’d seen Matthew Gribble throw the chisel. A witness who seemed to have no reason to tell lies about his friend and educator. It was Bob Weaver who had made the journey from illiteracy to Shakespeare, and been rewarded with the part of bully Bottom.
‘Rumpole, a terrible thing has happened in Chambers!’ Mizz Liz Probert sat on the edge of my client’s chair, her face pale but determined, her hands locked as though in prayer, her voice low and doom-laden. It was as though she were announcing, to waiting relations on the quayside, the fact that the Titanic had struck an iceberg.
‘Not the nailbrush disappeared again?’
‘Rumpole, can’t you ever be serious?’
‘Hardly ever when it comes to things that have happened in Chambers.’
‘Well, this time, perhaps your attitude will be more helpful.’
‘It depends on whether I want to be helpful. What is it? Don’t tell me. Henry blew the coffee money on a dud horse?’
‘Claude has committed the unforgivable sin.’
‘You mean, adultery? Well, that’s something of an achievement. His attempts usually end in all-round frustration.’
‘That too, most probably. No. This is what he said in the clerk’s room.’
‘Go on. Shock me.’
‘Kate Inglefield, who’s an assistant solicitor in Damiens, heard him say it. And, of course, she was tremendously distressed.’
‘Can you tell me what he said?’ I wondered. ‘Or are you too embarrassed? Would you prefer to write it down?’
‘Don’t be silly, Rumpole. He asked Henry if he’d seen his fat pupil about recently.’
There followed a heavy silence, during which I thought I was meant to say something. So I said, ‘Go on.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Go on till you get to the bit that caused Kate Inglefield – not, I would have thought, a girl who distresses easily – such pain.’
‘Rumpole, I’ve said it. Do I have to say it again?’
‘Perhaps if you do, I’ll be able to follow your argument.’
‘Erskine-Brown said to Henry, “Have you seen my fat pupil?”’
‘Recently?’
‘What?’
‘He said recently.’
‘Really, Rumpole. Recently is hardly the point.’
‘So the point is my fat pupil?’
‘Of course it is!’
I took out a small cigar and placed it between the lips. Sorting out the precise nature of the charge against Claude would require a whiff of nicotine. ‘And he was referring – I merely ask for clarification – to his pupil Mizz Crump?’
‘Of course he meant Wendy, yes.’
‘And he called her fat?’
‘It was’ – Liz Probert described it as though murder had been committed – ‘an act of supreme chauvinism. It’s daring to assume that women should alter the shape of their bodies just for the sake of pleasing men. Disgusting!’
‘But isn’t it’ – I was prepared, as usual, to put forward the argument for the Defence – ‘a bit like saying the sky’s blue?’
‘It’s not at all like that. It’s judging a woman by her appearance.’
‘And isn’t the other judging the sky by its appearance?’
‘I suppose I should have known!’ Mizz Probert stood up, all her sorrow turned to anger. ‘There’s no crime so contemptible that you won’t say a few ill-chosen words in its favour. And, don’t you dare light that thing until I’m out of the room.’
‘I’m sure you’re busy.’
‘I certainly am. We’re having a special meeting tonight of the Sisterhood of Radical Lawyers. We aim to blacklist anyone who sends Claude briefs or appears in Court with him. We’re going to petition the Judges not to listen to his arguments and Ballard’s got to give him notice to quit.’
‘Mizz Liz,’ I said, ‘how would you describe me?’
‘As a defender of hopeless causes.’
‘No, I mean my personal appearance.’
‘Well, you’re fairly short.’ The Prosecutor gave me the once over. ‘Your nose is slightly purple, and your hair – what’s left of it – is curly and you’re . . .’
‘Go on, say it.’
‘Well, Rumpole. Let’s face it. You’re fat.’
‘You said it.’
‘Yes.’
‘So should I get you blackballed in Court?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re a man.’
‘I see.’
‘I shouldn’t think you do. I shouldn’t think you do for a moment.’
Mizz Probert left me then. Full of thought, I applied the match to the end of the small cigar.
It was some weeks later that Fred Timson, undisputed head of the Timson clan, was charged with receiving a stolen video recorder. The charge was, in itself, something of an insult to a person of Fred’s standing and sensitivity. It was rather as if I had been offered a brief in a case of a non-renewed television licence, or, indeed, of receiving a stolen video recorder. I only took the case because Fred is a valued client and, in many respects, an old family friend. I never tire of telling Hilda that a portion of our family beef, bread, marmalade and washing-up liquid depends on the long life of Fred Timson and his talent for getting caught on the windy side of the law. I can’t say that this home truth finds much favour with She Who Must Be Obeyed, who treats me, on these occasions, as though I were only a moderately successful petty thief working in Streatham and its immediate environs.
The Defence was elaborate, having to do with a repair job delivered to the wrong address, an alibi, and the fact that the chief prosecution witness was a distant relative of a member of the Molloy family – all bitter rivals and enemies of the Timsons. While Fred and I were drinking coffee in the Snaresbrook canteen, having left the Jury to sort out the complexities of this minor crime, I told him that I’d seen Tony Timson playing the King of the Fairies.
‘No, Mr Rumpole, you’re mistaken about that, I can assure you, sir. Our Tony is not that way inclined.’
‘No, in Midsummer Night’s Dream. An entirely heterosexual fairy. Married to the Fairy Queen.’
Fred Timson said nothing, but shook his head in anxious disbelief. I decided to change the subject. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard of one of Tony’s fellow prisoners. Bob Weaver, a huge fellow. Started off as a boxer?’
‘Battering Bob Weaver!’ Fred seemed to find the memory amusing. ‘That’s how he was known. Used to do bare-knuckle fights on an old airfield near Colchester. And my cousin Percy Timson’s young Mavis married Battering Bob’s brother, Billy Weaver, as was wrongly fingered for the brains behind the Dagenham dairy-depot job. To be quite candid with you, Mr Rumpole, Billy Weaver is not equipped to be the brains behind anything. Pity about Battering Bob, though.’
‘You mean the way he went down for the Deptford minicab murder?’
‘Not that exactly. That’s over and done with. No. The way he’s deteriorated in the nick.’
‘Deteriorated?’
‘According as Mavis tells Percy, he has. Can’t hold a decent conversation when they visits. It’s all about books and that.’
‘I heard he’s learnt to read.’
‘Mavis says the family’s worried desperate. Bob spent all her visit telling her a poem about a nightingale. Well, what’s the point of that? I mean, there can’t be all that many nightingales round Worsfield Prison. Course, it’s the other bloke they put it down to.’
‘Matthew Gribble?’
‘Is that the name? Anyway, seems Bob thinks the world of this chap. Says he’s changed his life and that he worships him, Mr Rumpole. But Mavis reckons he’s been a bad influence on Bob. I mean that Gribble’s got terrible form. Didn’t he kill his wife? No one in our family ever did that.’
‘Of course not. Although Tony Timson was rumoured to have attempted it.’
‘Between the attempt and the deed, as you well know, Mr Rumpole, there is a great gulf fixed. Isn’t that true?’
‘Very true, Fred.’
‘And Mavis says Bob’s been worse for the last three months. Nervous and depressed like as though he was dreading something.’ What, I wondered, had been bugging Battering Bob? It couldn’t have been the fact that his friend was in trouble for attacking a warden; that had only happened a month before. ‘I suppose,’ I suggested, ‘it was stage-fright. They started rehearsing Midsummer Night’s Dream around three months ago.’
‘You mean like he was scared of being in a play?’
‘He might have been.’
‘I hardly think a bloke what went single-handed against six Molloys during the minicab war would be scared of a bit of a play.’
It was then that the tireless Bernard came to tell me that the Jury were back with a verdict. Fred stood up, gave his jacket a tug, and strolled off as though he’d just been called in to dinner at the local Rotary Club. And I was left wondering again why Battering Bob Weaver should decide to be the sole witness against a man he had worshipped.
I got back to Chambers in a reasonably cheerful mood, the Jury having decided to give Uncle Fred the generous benefit of a rather small supply of doubt, and there waiting in my client’s chair was another bundle of trouble. None other than Wendy Crump, Claude’s pupil, clearly in considerable distress. ‘I had to talk to you,’ she said, ‘because it’s all so terribly unfair!’
Was unfair the right word, I wondered. Unkind, perhaps, but not unfair, unless she meant it as a general rebuke to the Almighty who handed out sylphlike beauty to the undiscerning few with absolutely no regard for academic attainment or moral worth. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I think you look very attractive.’
‘What?’ She looked at me surprised and, I thought, a little shocked.
‘In the days of Sir Peter Paul Rubens,’ I assured her, ‘a girl with your dimensions would have been on page three of the Sun, if not on the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall.’
‘Please, Rumpole,’ she said, ‘there are more important things to talk about.’
‘Well, exactly,’ I assured her. ‘People have suggested that I’m a little overweight. They have- hinted that from time to time, but do I let it worry me? Do I decline the mashed spuds or the fried slice with my breakfast bacon? I do not. I let such remarks slide off me like water off a duck’s back.’
‘Rumpole!’ she said, a little sharply, I thought. ‘I don’t think your physical appearance is anything to do with all this trouble.’
‘Is it not? I just thought that we’re birds of a feather.’
‘I doubt it!’ This Mizz Crump could be very positive at times. ‘I came to see you about Erskine-Brown.’
‘Of course, he shouldn’t have said it.’ I was prepared, as I have said, to accept the brief for the Defence. ‘It was just one of those unfortunate slips of the tongue.’
‘You mean he shouldn’t have told me about Kate Inglefield?’
‘What’s he told you about Mizz Inglefield? You mean that rather bright young solicitor from Damiens? She’s quite skinny, as far as I can remember.’
‘Rumpole, why do you keep harping on people’s personal appearances?’
‘Well, didn’t Claude say . . .?’
‘Claude told me that Kate Inglefield had decided never to brief him again. And she’s taken his VAT fraud away from him. And Christine Dewsbury, who’s meant to be his junior in a long robbery, has said she’ll never work with him again, and Mr Ballard . . .’
‘The whited sepulchre who is Head of our Chambers?’
‘Mr Ballard has been giving him some quite poisonous looks.’
‘Those aren’t poisonous looks. That’s Soapy Sam’s usual happy expression.’
‘He’s hinted that Erskine-Brown may have to look for other Chambers. He’s such a wonderful advocate, Rumpole!’
‘Well now, let’s say he’s an advocate of sorts.’
‘And a fine man! A man with very high principles.’ I listened in some surprise. Was this the Claude I had seen stumbling into trouble and lying his way out of it over the last twenty years? ‘And he has absolutely no idea why he is being victimized.’
‘Has he not?’
‘None whatever.’
‘But you know?’
‘No, really. I have no idea.’
‘Well’ – I breathed a sigh of relief – ‘that’s all right then.’
‘No, it’s not all right.’ She stood up, her cheeks flushed, her voice clear and determined. Mizz Crump might be no oil painting, but I thought I saw in her the makings of a fighter. ‘We’ve got to find out why all this is happening. And we’ve got to save him. Will you help me get him out of trouble? Whatever it is.’
‘Helping people in trouble,’ I assured her, ‘has been my job for almost half a century.’
‘So you’re with me, Rumpole?’ She was, I was glad to see, a determined young woman who might go far in the law.
‘Of course I am. We fat people should stick together.’ Naturally, I regretted it the moment I had said it.
‘The Governor says you’re a model prisoner.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s a kind of tribute.’
‘Not exactly what I wanted to be when I was at university. I’d just done my first Twelfth Night. I suppose I wanted to be a great director. I saw myself at the National or the R.S.C. If I couldn’t do that, I wanted to be an unforgettable teacher of English and open the eyes of generations to Shakespeare. I never thought I’d end up as a model prisoner.’
‘Life is full of surprises.’ That didn’t seem too much of a comfort to Matthew Gribble as we sat together, back in the prison interview room. Spring sunshine was fighting its way through windows that needed cleaning. I had sat in the train, trees with leaves just turning green, sunlight on the grass. A good time to think of freedom, starting a new life and forgetting the past. ‘If we can get you off this little bit of trouble, you should be out of here by the end of the month.’
‘Out. To do what?’ He was smiling gently, but I thought quite without amusement, as he stared into the future. ‘I shouldn’t think they’ll ever ask me to direct a play for the Cowshott amateurs. “You’d better watch out for this one, darling,” I can just hear them whispering at the read through. “He stabbed his wife to death with a kitchen knife.” ’
‘There may be other drama groups.’
‘Not for me. Do you think they’d have me back at the poly? Not a hope.’
‘Anyway’ – I tried to cheer him up – ‘you did a pretty good job with A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’
‘Shakespeare with violent criminals, deputy-governors’ wives and wardens’ daughters. Not the R.S.C. exactly, but I can put on a good show in Worsfield gaol. Wasn’t Bob Weaver marvellous?’
‘Extraordinary.’
‘And you know what I discovered? He responds to the sound of poetry. He’s got to know it by heart. Great chunks of it.’ From Battering Bob to Babbling Bob, I thought, treating his bewildered visitors to great chunks of John Keats. It was funny, of course, but in its way a huge achievement. Matthew Gribble appeared to agree. ‘I suppose I’m proud of that.’ He thought about it and seemed satisfied. I turned back to the business in hand.
‘Those other cast members in the carpenter’s helping make the scenery – Tony Timson, the young Molloy? Do you think either of them saw who threw the chisel?’
‘If they did, they’re not saying. Grassing’s a sin in prison.’
‘But your protégé Babbling Bob is prepared to grass on you?’
‘Seems like it.’ He was, I thought, resigned and strangely unconcerned.
‘Have you talked to him about it?’
‘Yes. Once.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told him to always be truthful. That’s the secret of acting, to tell the truth about the character. I told him that.’
‘Forget about acting for a moment. Did you ask him why he said you attacked the screw?’
There was a silence. Matthew Gribble seemed to be looking past me, at something far away. At last he said, ‘Yes, I asked him that.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said’ – my client gave a small, not particularly happy smile – ‘he said we’d always be friends, wouldn’t we?’
The master-pupil relationship – the instructing of a younger, less experienced person in the mysteries of some art, theatrical or legal – seemed a situation fraught with danger. While Matthew Gribble’s devoted pupil was turning on his master with damaging allegations, Wendy Crump’s pupil master was in increasing trouble, being treated by the Sisterhood of Radical Lawyers as a male pariah. As yet, neither Erskine-Brown, nor his alleged victim, had been informed of the charges against him, although Mizz Probert and her supporters were about to raise the matter before the Bar Council as a serious piece of professional misconduct by the unfortunate Claude, who sat, brooding and unemployed in his room, wondering what it was that his best friend wouldn’t tell him which had led to him being shunned by female lawyers. I learnt about the proposed petitioning of the Bar Council when I visited the Soapy Head of our Chambers in order to scotch any plan to drive the unfortunate sinner from that paradise which is 4 Equity Court.
‘There is no doubt whatever’ – here Ballard put on his carefully modulated tone of sorrowful condemnation – ‘that Erskine-Brown has erred grievously.’
‘Which one of the Ten Commandments is it exactly, if I may be so bold as to ask, which forbids us to call our neighbour fat?’
‘There is such a thing, Rumpole’ – Ballard gave me the look with which a missionary might reprove a cannibal – ‘as gender awareness.’
‘Is there, really? And who told you about that then? I’ll lay you a hundred to one it was Mizz Liz Probert.’
‘Lady lawyers take it extremely seriously, Rumpole. Which is why we’re in danger of losing all our work from Damiens.’
‘The all-female solicitors? Not a man in the whole of the firm. Is that being gender aware?’
‘However the firm is composed, Rumpole, they provide a great deal of valuable work for all of us.’
‘Well, I’m aware of gender,’ I told Soapy Sam, ‘at least I think I am. You’re a man from what I can remember.’
‘That remark would be taken very much amiss, Rumpole. If made to a woman.’
‘But it’s not made to a woman, it’s made to you, Ballard. Are you going to stand for this religious persecution of the unfortunate Claude?’
‘What he said about Wendy Crump was extremely wounding.’
‘Nonsense! She wasn’t wounded in the least. None of these avenging angels has bothered to tell her what her pupil master said.’
‘Did you tell her?’
‘Well, no, I didn’t, actually.’
‘Did you tell Wendy Crump that Erskine-Brown had called her fat?’ For about the first time in his life Soapy Sam had asked a good question in cross-examination. I was reduced, for a moment at least, to silence. ‘Why didn’t you repeat those highly offensive words to her?’
I knew the answer, but I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of hearing it from me.
‘It was because you didn’t want to hurt her feelings, did you, Rumpole? And you knew how much it would wound her.’ Ballard was triumphant. ‘You showed a rare flash of gender awareness and I congratulate you for it!’
Although a potential outcast from the gender-aware society, Claude hadn’t been entirely deprived of his practice. New briefs were slow in arriving, but he still had some of his old cases to finish off. One of these was a complex and not particularly fascinating fraud on a bookmaker in which Claude and I were briefed for two of the alleged fraudsters. I needn’t go into the details of the case except to say that the Prosecution was in the hands of the dashing and handsome Nick Davenant who had a large and shapely nose, brown hair billowing from under his wig, and knowing and melting eyes. It was Nick’s slimline pupil, Jenny Attienzer, whom Claude had hopelessly coveted. This fragile beauty was not in Court on the day in question; whether she thought the place out of bounds because of the gender-unaware Claude, I’m unable to say. But Claude was being assisted by the able but comfortably furnished (slenderly challenged) Wendy Crump and I was on my own.
The case -was being tried by her Honour Judge Emma MacNaught, Q.C., sitting as an Old Bailey judge, who had treated Claude, from the start of the case, to a number of withering looks and, when addressing him in person became inevitable, to a tone of icy contempt. This circus judge turned out to have been the author of a slender handbook entitled ‘Sexual Harassment in the Legal Profession’. (Wendy Crump told me, some time later, that she would challenge anyone to know whether they had been sexually harassed or not unless they’d read the book.)
Nick Davenant called the alleged victim of our clients’ fraud – a panting and sweating bookmaker whose physical attributes I am too gender aware to refer to – and his last question was,
‘Mr Aldworth, have you ever been in trouble with the police?’
‘No. Certainly not. Not with the police.’ On which note of honesty Nick sat down and Claude rose to cross-examine. Before he could open his mouth, however, Wendy was half standing, pulling at his gown and commanding, in a penetrating whisper, that he ask Aldworth if he’d ever been in trouble with anyone else.
‘Are you intending to ask any question, Mr Erskine-Brown?’ Judge MacNaught had closed her eyes to avoid the pain of looking at the learned chauvinist pig.
‘Have you been in trouble with anyone else?’ Claude plunged in, clay in the hands of the gown-tugger behind him.
‘Only with my wife. On Derby night.’ For this, Mr Aldworth was rewarded by a laugh from the Jury, and Claude by a look of contempt from the Judge.
‘Ask him if he’s ever been reported to Tattersall’s.’ The insistent pupil behind Claude gave another helping tug. Claude clearly didn’t think things could get any worse.
‘Have you ever been reported to Tattersall’s?’ he asked, adding ‘the racing authority’ by way of an unnecessary explanation.
‘Well, yes. As far as I can remember,’ Mr Aldworth admitted in a fluster, and the Jury stopped laughing.
‘Ask him how many times!’
‘How many times?’ Wendy Crump was now Claude’s pupil master.
‘I don’t know I can rightly remember.’
‘Do your best,’ Wendy suggested.
‘Well, do your best,’ Claude asked.
‘Ten or a dozen times . . . Perhaps twenty.’
I sat back in gratitude. The chief prosecution witness had been holed below the waterline, without my speaking a word, and our co-defendants might well be home and dry.
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 tolerance 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 five-thirty.’
‘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 ten-thirty.’
‘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.’
‘Your client, as I remember, was found guilty of the manslaughter of his wife.’ The handsome bishop was clearly the one to look out for.
‘For that,’ I said, ‘he has almost paid his debt to society. Next week, subject to the dismissal of these unnecessary charges, that debt will be fully and finally settled and, as I’m sure the Governor will tell you, during his time in Worsfield he has been a model prisoner.’
Quintus did his stuff and whispered to the Chairwoman. She found her glasses, yanked them on to her nose and said that, in all the circumstances, my client’s handcuffs might be removed.
After that the proceedings settled down like an ordinary trial in a Magistrates Court, except for the fact that we were all in gaol already. Mr Fraplington nervously opened the simple facts. Then Steve Barrington, the screw who received the flying chisel, clumped his way to the witness stand and gave the evidence which might keep Matthew Gribble behind bars for a good deal longer. He hadn’t seen the chisel thrown. The first he knew about it was when he was struck on the cheek. Gribble had been the only prisoner working with a chisel and he had seen him using it immediately before he turned away to answer a request from prisoner D41 Molloy. Later he took statements from the prisoners, and in particular from B19 Weaver. What Weaver told him led to the present charges against A13 Gribble. What Weaver told him, I rose to point out, had better come from Weaver himself.
‘Mr Barrington’ – I began my cross-examination – ‘you were a teacher once?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘And you gave it up to become a prison officer?’
‘I did.’
‘Is that because you found teaching too difficult?’
‘I wonder if this is a relevant question?’ Young Fraplington had obviously been told to make his presence felt and interrupt the Defence whenever possible.
‘Mr Fraplington, perchance you wonder at this question? But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.’
‘Mr Rumpole, I’m not exactly sure what you mean.’ The Chairwoman’s glasses were pulled off and swung gently.
‘Then you didn’t see A Midsummer Night’s Dream? You missed a treat, Madam. Produced brilliantly by my client and starring Prisoner Weaver as bully Bottom. You enjoyed it, didn’t you, Mr Barrington?’
‘I thought they did rather well, yes.’
‘And I don’t suppose, as a teacher who gave up the struggle, you could have taught a group of hard-boiled villains to play Shakespeare?’
‘Mr Rumpole, I must agree with Mr Fraplington. How is this in the least relevant to the charge of assault?’ The Bishop came in on the act.
‘Because I think we may find, Bishop, that this isn’t a case about assault, it’s a case about teaching. Mr Barrington, you would agree that my client took Weaver and taught him to read, taught him about poetry and finally taught him to act?’
‘To my knowledge, yes, he did.’
‘And since this pupillage and this friendship began, Weaver, too, has been a model prisoner?’
‘We haven’t had any trouble from him lately. No.’
‘Whereas before the pupillage, he was a general nuisance?’
‘He was a handful. Yes. That’s fair enough. He’s a big man and . . .’
‘Alarming when out of control?’
‘I’d have to agree with you.’
‘Good. I’m glad we see eye to eye, Mr Barrington. So before Matthew Gribble took him on, so to speak, there’d been several cases of assault, three of breaking up furniture, disobeying reasonable orders, throwing food. An endless list?’
‘He was constantly in trouble. Yes.’
‘And since he and Gribble became friends, nothing?’
‘I believe that’s right.’
‘So you believe Matthew Gribble’s influence on Weaver has been entirely for the good.’
‘I said, so far as I know.’
‘So far as you know. Well, we’ll see if anyone knows better. Now, you questioned the other prisoners, Timson and Molloy, about this incident in the carpenter’s shop?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And what did they tell you?’
‘They said they hadn’t seen anything.’
‘And did you believe them?’
‘Do I have to answer that question?’
‘I have asked the question, and I’ll trouble you to answer it.’
‘No, I didn’t altogether believe it.’
‘Because prisoners don’t grass.’
‘What was that, Rumpole?’ The Chairwoman asked for an explanation.
‘Prisoners don’t tell tales. They don’t give evidence against each other. On the whole. Isn’t that true, Mr Barrington?’
‘I thought they might have seen something, but they were sheltering the culprit. Yes.’
‘So Timson might have seen Molloy do it. Or Molloy might have seen Timson do it. Or either of them might have seen Weaver do it. But they weren’t telling. Is that possible?’
‘I suppose it’s possible. Yes.’
‘Or Weaver might have seen Timson or Molloy do it and blamed it on Gribble to protect them?’
‘He wouldn’t have done that.’ There was an agitated whisper from my client and I stooped to give him an ear.
‘What?’
‘He wouldn’t have blamed it on me. I know Bob wouldn’t do that.’
‘Matthew,’ I whispered sternly, ‘your time to give evidence will come later. Until it does, I’d be much obliged if you’d take a temporary vow of silence.’ I went back to work. ‘Yes, officer. What was your answer to my question?’
‘B19 Weaver had a particular admiration for A13 Gribble, sir. I don’t think he’d have blamed him. Not just to protect the other two.’
‘He wouldn’t have blamed him just to protect the other two, eh?’ The Bishop, who seemed to have cast himself as the avenging angel, dictated a note to himself with resonant authority.
Bottom the Weaver towered over the small witness table and the screws that stood behind him. He looked at the Visitors, his head slightly on one side, his nose broken and never properly set, and smiled nervously, as he had stood before the court of Duke Theseus, awkward, on his best behaviour, likely to be a bore, but somehow endearing. He didn’t look at A13 Gribble, but my client looked constantly at him, not particularly in anger but with curiosity and as if prepared to be amused. That was the way, I thought, he might have watched Bob Weaver rehearsing the play.
Mr Fraplington had no trouble in getting the witness to tell his story. He was in the carpenter’s shop in the morning in question. They were making the scenery. He was enjoying himself as he enjoyed everything about the play. Although he was dead nervous about doing it, it was the best time he’d ever had in his life. A13 Gribble was a fantastic producer, absolutely brilliant, and had changed his life for him. ‘Made me see a new world’, was the way he put it. Well, that morning when all the others were busy working and Mr Barrington was turned away, he’d seen A13 Gribble pick up the chisel and throw it. It struck the prison officer on the cheek, causing bleeding which he fully believed was later seen to by the hospital matron. He kept quiet for a week, because he was reluctant to get the best friend he ever had into trouble. But then he’d told the investigating officer exactly what he saw. He felt he had to do it. Doing the play was the best day in his life. Standing there, telling the tale against his friend, was the worst. Sometimes he thought he’d rather be dead than do it. That was the honest truth. To say that Battering Bob was a good witness is an understatement. He was as good a witness as he was a Bottom; he didn’t seem to be acting at all.
‘The first question, of course, is why?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Why do you think your friend Matthew threw a chisel at the officer? Can you help me about that?’ It would have been no use trying to batter the batterer – he had clearly won the hearts of the Visitors – so I came at him gently and full of smiles. ‘He’s always been a model prisoner. Not a hint of violence.’
‘Perhaps’ – Bob Weaver closed one eye, giving me his careful consideration – ‘he kind of had it bottled up, his resentment against Mr Barrington.’
‘We haven’t heard he resented Mr Barrington?’
‘Well, we all did to an extent. All of us actors.’
‘Why was that?’
‘He put Jimmy Molloy on a charge, so he lost two weeks’ rehearsal with Puck.’
The Visitors smiled. I had gone and provided my client with a motive. Up to now this cross-examination seemed a likely candidate for the worst in my career so I tried another tack.
‘All right. Another why.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘If you feel you’d rather be dead than do it, why did you decide to grass against your friend?’
‘I don’t know why you have adopted the phrase “grass” from prison argot, Mr Rumpole.’ The Bishop was clearly a circus judge manqué. ‘This inmate has come here to give evidence.’
‘Evidence which may or may not turn out to be the truth. Very well then. The Bishop has told us to forget the argot.’
‘Forget the what?’ Bob looked amicably confused and the Bishop smiled tolerantly. ‘Slang,’ he translated. ‘I should have called it slang.’
‘Why did you decide to give evidence against your friend?’
‘Let me tell you this quite honestly.’ The Batterer turned from me and faced the Visitors. ‘Years ago, I might not have done it. In fact, I wouldn’t. Grass on a fellow inmate. Never. Might have given him a bit of a hiding like. If I’d felt the need of it. But never told the tale. Rather have had me tongue cut out. But then . . . Well, then I got to know Matthew. I’d still like to call him that. With all respect. And he taught me . . . Well, he taught me everything. He taught me to read. Yes. He taught me to like poetry, which I’d thought worse than a punch in the kidneys. Then he taught me to act and to enjoy myself like I never did even in the old days of the minicab battles, which now seem a complete waste of time, quite honestly. But Matthew taught me more than that. “You have to be truthful, Bob”, those were his words to me. Well, that’s what I remembered. So, when it came to it, I remembered his words. That’s all I’ve got to say.’
‘You took his advice and told the truth.’ The Bishop was clearly delighted, but I was looking at Bob. It had never happened before. It certainly didn’t happen when he performed in the Dream, but now I knew that he was an actor playing a part.
And then something clicked in my mind. A picture of Dodo Mackintosh at school, not wanting to let her heroine go, and I knew what the truth really was.
‘You’ve told us Matthew Gribble is the friend who meant most to you.’
‘Meant everything to me.’
‘The only real friend you’ve ever had. Would you go as far as to say that?’
‘I would agree with that, sir. Every word of it.’
‘And one who has let you into a new world.’
‘He’s already told us that, Mr Rumpole.’ I prayed for the Bishop to address himself to God and leave me alone.
‘It’s too true. Too very true.’
‘I don’t suppose life in Worsfield Category A Prison could ever be compared to a holiday in the Seychelles, but he has made your life here bearable?’
‘More than that, Mr Rumpole. I wouldn’t have missed it.’
‘And in a week, if he is acquitted on this charge, Matthew Gribble will be free.’
It was as if I had got in a sudden, unexpectedly powerful blow in the ring. Bob closed his eyes and almost seemed to stop breathing. When he shook his head and answered, he had come back, it seemed to me, to the truth.
‘I don’t want to think about it.’
‘Because you may never see him again?’
‘Visits. There might be visits.’
‘Are you afraid there might not be?’ Matthew appeared to be about to say something, or utter some protest. I shot some sotto voce advice into his earhole to the effect that if he uttered another sound, I would walk off the case. Then I looked back at the Batterer. He seemed not to have recovered from the punch and was still breathless.
‘It crossed my mind.’
‘And did it cross your mind that he might move away, to another part of England, get a new job, work with a new drama group and put on new plays with no parts in them for you? Did you think he might forget the friend he’d made in prison?’
There was a long silence. Bob was getting his breath back, preparing to get up for the last round, but with defeat staring him in the face.
He said, ‘Things like that do happen, don’t they?’
‘Oh yes, Bob Weaver. They happen very often. If a man wants to make a new life, he doesn’t care to be reminded of the people he met inside. Did that thought occur to you?’
‘I did worry about that, I suppose. I did worry.’
‘And did you worry that all that rich, fascinating new world might vanish into thin air? And you’d be left with only a few old lags and failed boxers for company?’
There was silence then. Bob didn’t answer. He was saved by the bell. Rung, of course, by the Bishop.
‘Where’s all this leading up to, Mr Rumpole?’
‘Let me suggest where it led you, Bob.’ I ignored the cleric and concentrated on the witness. ‘It led you to think of the one way you could stop Matthew Gribble leaving you.’
‘How was I going to do that?’
‘Quite a simple idea but it seems to have worked. Up to now. The way to do it was to get him into trouble.’
‘Trouble?’
‘Serious trouble. So he’d lose his remission. I expect you thought of that some time ago and you waited for an opportunity. It came, didn’t it, in the carpenter’s shop?’
‘Did it?’
‘Matthew turned away to fix the grass covering on the mound. No one else was looking when you picked up his chisel. No one saw you throw it. Like all successful crimes it was helped by a good deal of luck.’
‘Crime? Me? What are you talking about? I done no crime.’ Bob looked at the Visitors. For once even the Bishop was silent.
‘I suppose I’m talking about perverting the course of justice. Of assaulting a prison officer. I’ve got to hand it to you, Bob. You did it for the best of motives. You did it to keep a friend.’
Bob’s head was lowered, but now he made an effort to raise it and looked at the Visitors. ‘I didn’t do it. I swear to God I didn’t. Matthew did it and he’s got to stay here. You can’t let him go.’ By then I think even they thought he was acting. But that wasn’t the end of the story.
‘Why did you do it?’ The trial, if you could call it a trial, was over. Matthew and I were together for the last time in the interview room. We were there to say goodbye.
‘I told you. What’ve I got outside? Schools that won’t employ me. Actors and actresses who wouldn’t want to work with me. What would they think? If I didn’t like their performances, I might stab them. They’d be talking about me, whispering, laughing perhaps. And I’d come in the room and they’d be silent or look afraid. Here, they all want to be in my plays. They want to work with me, and I want to work with them. I thought of Much Ado next. Won’t Bob make a marvellous Dogberry? Then, I don’t know, do you think he could possibly do a Falstaff?’
‘Become an old English gent? Who knows. You’ve got plenty of time. They knocked a year and a half off your remission.’
‘Yes. A long time together. You were asking me why I threw the chisel?’
He knew I wasn’t asking him that. At the end of Battering Bob’s evidence I had to decide whether or not to call my client. Matthew had kept quiet when I’d told him to, and I knew he’d make a good impression. He walked to the witness table, took the oath and looked at me with patient expectation.
‘Matthew Gribble. We’ve heard you were a model prisoner.’
‘I’ve never been in trouble here, if that’s what you mean.’
‘And of all you’ve done for Bob Weaver.’
‘I think it’s been a rewarding experience for both of us.’
‘And you are due to be released next week.’
‘I believe I am.’
I drew in a deep breath and asked the question to which I felt sure I knew the answer. ‘Matthew, did you ever throw that chisel at Prison Officer Barrington?’
The answer, when it came, was another punch in the stomach, this time for me. ‘Yes, I did. I threw it.’ Matthew looked at the Visitors and said it as though he was talking about a not very interesting part of the prison routine. ‘I did it because I couldn’t forgive him for putting Puck on a charge.’ After that, the case was over and Matthew’s exit from Worsfield inevitably postponed.
‘You know I wasn’t asking you why you threw the chisel because you didn’t throw it. I’m asking you why you said you did.’
‘I told you. I’ve decided to stay on.’
‘You knew Battering Bob did it and he blamed you to keep you here because he thought he needed you.’
‘Don’t you think that’s rather an extraordinary tribute to a friendship?’
There seemed no answer to that. I didn’t know whether to curse Matthew Gribble or to praise him. I didn’t know if he was the best or the worst client I ever had. I knew I had lost a case unnecessarily, and that is something I don’t like to happen.
‘You can’t win them all, Mr Rumpole, can you?’ Steve Barrington looked gratified at the result. He took me to the gate and, as he waited for the long unlocking process to finish, he said, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever go back to teaching. They seem half barmy, some of them.’
At last the gates and the small door in the big one were open. I was out and I went out. Matthew was in and he stayed in. Damiens sent a brief in a long case to Claude and I told him he had a brilliant pupil.
‘I suppose she’ll be wanting a place in Chambers soon?’ Claude didn’t seem to welcome the idea.
‘So far as I’m concerned she can have one now.’
‘Young Jenny Attienzer is apparently not happy with Nick Davenant over in King’s Bench Walk. Do you think I might take her on as a pupil?’
‘I think,’ I told him, ‘that it would be a very bad idea indeed. I’m sure Philly wouldn’t like it, and I’d have to start charging for defending you.’
‘Rumpole’ – Claude was thoughtful – ‘do you know why everyone went off me in that peculiar way?’
‘Not really.’
But Claude had his own solution. ‘It never ceases to amaze me,’ the poor old darling said, ‘how jealous everyone is of success.’
Six months later I saw a production of Much Ado About Nothing in Worsfield gaol with Bob Weaver as Dogberry. I enjoyed it very much indeed.