"Mortimer, John - Rumpole A La Carte" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

'Rumpole. A word with you.' Sam Ballard accosted me one morning. 'I wanted to let you know. Heather Whittaker has 168 sfeoined us as Erskine-Brown's pupil.' He uttered this news with good deal of awe and wonder, as though announcing that the Queen Mother had agreed to drop in afternoons to answer the telephone. 'I just wanted to explain this to you. She's not voung. She's taking up the Bar in middle life. And she is a thoroughly nice type of person.' 'Oh good,' I told him. 'We could do with a few of those around here.' 'I think you were away when we had the Chambers meeting and agreed to take her.' 'Yes,' I remembered, 'I was dying.' 'Oh, really?' I was afraid I detected, in Soapy Sam's eye, a glimmer of hope.

'Yes. But I changed my mind. I'm not dying any more.

Sorry to disappoint you.' 'Well, I want to make this quite clear to you. Mrs Whittaker is, well, not the sort of person who would enjoy rough behaviour in Chambers. Members coming in, perhaps from some wine bar, singing and so on.' 'You mean she doesn't like Dame Vera Lynn?' 'And I don't suppose she'd relish a working environment where people scribble obscenities on notices pinned up in the clerk's room.' 'Does it occur to you, Ballard, that the Whittaker woman may have joined the wrong profession?' 'She was at Girton', this news seemed to me quite irrelevant, 'with my cousin Joyce.' 'Well, this isn't Girton. She'll be in daily contact with murder, grievous bodily harm and indecent exposure. She'll have to take in incest, adultery and dubious magazines with her tea and buns. You're not seriously suggesting she's going to scream with horror at a bit of graffiti on the notice-board? yway, it wasn't obscene.' 'I'm glad you admit you wrote it!' Ballard looked triumphant.

I admit nothing,' I said. 'So what's this new pupil going to specialize in? The theft of knitting patterns? Excuse me, Bol I m off to confer about a bit of gross indecency on the 169 National Health. Don't tell La Whittaker. She might have a fit of the vapours.' In fact I had a conference in a type of litigation new to me.

During a life spent earning my crusts before some pretty unlikely tribunals, I had never yet appeared before the General Medical Council. But Dr Rahmat had telephoned me and told me he was in trouble. I had fixed him up with the dependable Bernard as an instructing solicitor and he was even then waiting for me in my consulting room, an ailing medic who hoped that Rumpole would work the miracle cure.

'In all my troubles and tribulations I had one thought to comfort me. I know an absolutely wizard barrister-at-law!' Dr Rahmat was no longer smiling. He sat in my client's armchair, looking somewhat thinner and older than when he had stood at my bedside. But he was still playing the Indian doctor in a way which he seemed to hope I would find entertaining. 'How could I be accused of such a dreadful thing? Me, Ghulam Rahmat? All my life I have been a peaceful fellow. I have been anxious to please and to make trouble for no one!' Perhaps you were too anxious to do what you thought would please Miss Liptrott, I felt like saying. Instead, I asked him to tell me about himself. He told me about his training in Bombay, his coming to England and discovering there was a vacancy in old MacClintock's practice.

'Dr MacClintock was a man who showed no prejudices at all. I said, "Do you mind taking on an Indian doctor in your very British practice?" "Certainly not," he told me. "You can be as Indian as you damn well please."' I looked at the smiling client and had the strange idea that the exaggerated accent and vocabulary had been put on to oblige Dr MacClintock, who wanted to demonstrate his open-mindedness. 'And how are things,' I asked, 'since Dr Cogger's taken over?' i 'Just the same.' The smile continued. 'Dr Tim Cogger is a thoroughly good man. A chap with a fine sense of humour.

You know what they say of him at Barts? He was a great practical joker. Perhaps not a brilliant doctor but...' 'Are you?' 'What?' 'A brilliant doctor?' 'Most of us are not. Most of us are at a loss, more than we like to admit. But we try to be kind and cheerful and wait for the disease to go away. To be perfectly frank, that is how I treated the great barrister-at-law.' 'I'm afraid', I had to break the news to him, 'Miss Marietta Liptrott doesn't seem likely to go away.' 'No, dash it all.' His cheerfulness, which had come back as he described his professional life so candidly, had drained away like bathwater, leaving him disconsolate again. 'What a pain in the neck. If I can be so jolly rude about a young lady.' 'Had you seen her before?' 'No. And if I have to be honest with you, I hope and pray I never see her again.' 'What did she look like?' For an answer he took out his wallet and handed me a cutting from the Daily Beacon. 'First time,' he said ruefully, 'that I ever got my name in the paper.' indian doctor TRIED TO STRIP AND MAKE LOVE TO ME. NANNY TELLS OF surgery antics blared the headline. The story went on: Children's nurse. Marietta Liptrott, 27, who works for a wealthy Kensington family, only had a sore throat but Dr Rahmat had his own ideas about treatment. He made her lie down on a couch, she said in her complaint to the General Medical Council, and wanted her to pull down her knickers.

Dr Ghulam Rahmat, 50, who only came to England 12 years ago said, 'I have the best barrister in the country and I shall fight this every inch of the way.' I was looking at Miss Liptrott's photograph: a pale face with 'arge, trusting eyes and an upper lip drawn over slightly protruding teeth. This gave her a breathless and eager look.

'I never took a shine to her, Mr Rumpole, to be perfectly irank with you.' What's your situation. Doctor? Have you a wife?' "ad, Mr Rumpole. There is poor hygiene in some of our 171 hospitals and I lost her. My son is in Bombay, studying. He hopes, in his humble way, to be a barrister-at-law, third-class merely. Not in your league, I may say.' To my embarrassment I saw tears in the eyes behind his heavy spectacles. We hacks see clients at their most emotional moments, but remain oddly embarrassed when they start weeping.

'So. What's our defence?' I was anxious to get back to business.

'The same,' he announced with great satisfaction, 'as in E. M. Forster's fine work, A Passage to India.' When I was up at Oxford, studying night and day for my record-breaking fourth in law, I remembered a chap called Perkins, who greatly admired this Forster. He told me that personal relationships were all important and if he had to choose between betraying his country or Rumpole, he hoped he'd choose his country. Happily, Perkins became a clergyman in Wales and didn't have to make this agonizing decision, but he did get me to read A Passage to India, the gist of which had, I was ashamed to say, now slipped my mind.

'Of course,' I said, 'just remind me of the plot.' 'This English lady accuses an Indian doctor of raping her in the Marabar caves,' the Doctor reminded me.

'Ah, yes, of course. It all comes back to me. And what was his defence exactly?' 'That it all went on in her fevered imagination.' 'I see.' I was a little doubtful. 'And how did it work out?' 'He was acquitted! You will enjoy a similar triumph, great barrister-at-law.' 'Well, let's hope so.' I was by no means convinced. 'We've got to remember that was a work of fiction.' I then brought the Doctor down to earth by trying to get his exact clinical reasons for asking a patient who had come in to complain of a sore throat to remove her knickers.

When Dr Rahmat had left me he was in a mood of unbridled optimism. I wandered out into the passage with my mind set on a little refreshment at Pommeroy's. The door of ErskineBrown's room opened and out stepped a well-groomed, neatly 172Hressed, grey-haired lady, who greeted me with a friendly smile and carefully controlled cry of 'Mr Rumpole, isn't it?' 'A piece of him,' I told her.

'I've been so longing to meet you. I'm Heather Whittaker, Frskine-Brown's pupil. I've taken to the Bar rather late in life I'm afraid.' 'It's probably a profession for the aged,' I consoled her.

'The young can't stand the pace.' 'You're a legend, Mr Rumpole. Of course you know that.

I'm absolutely dying to hear you on your feet.' 'Well,' I said hospitably, 'why not pop along to the General Medical Council? I've got a doctor in trouble.' 'Oh, I'd love that.' She seemed genuinely enthusiastic. 'Of course, I've heard Erskine-Brown on his feet.' 'Oh, really? And did you manage to keep awake?' 'Just about.' She allowed herself a small but charming giggle.

'With you I'm sure I should be on the edge of my seat. What's your doctor been up to?' 'I'd better not tell you. Our Head of Chambers says you shock easily.' 'What nonsense!' Her smile widened. 'I want to know all the gory details.' I must say that Ballard was right about one thing. Our new pupil, Mrs Heather Whittaker, seemed a nice type of person.

My life at that time was bedevilled by women. Not only had a person of that persuasion got my unfortunate doctor in trouble, but a client of mine, similarly constituted, was becoming a pain in my neck.

'So. She's been ringing up again,' said She Who Must Be Obeyed in threatening tones as I got home that evening.

'She?' I asked with carefully simulated innocence. 'Who on earth's she?' Of course, I knew perfectly well. She was the worst driver who ever skidded her gleaming white Volkswagen 0 t the Uxbridge Road, mounted the pavement, terrorized the sers-by, hit a municipal waste disposal bin and someone's "lie shopping-basket, and finally crashed into a lamppost. rhe driver's name was Mrs Bambi Etheridge. Only i73 Rumpole's skill, and the fact that the chief prosecution witness lectured the lady Chairman of the Bench on the hopeless incompetence of woman drivers, led to her triumphant acquittal on the grounds of poor road surface and fast oncoming traffic. Whatever might be said other as a driver, Mrs Etheridge was a social menace. She was a generously built lady who, as she moved, clattered with what I believe is known as costume jewellery and gave off a deafening smell of what she was at pains to tell me was Deadly Sins by St Just. Her hair was unconvincingly blonde and her make-up strove to represent the effect of too much sunbathing in Florida. She spoke as though she were trying to attract the attention of a deaf and uncooperative waiter on the far side of a noisy dining-room.

'Mr Rumpole,' she bellowed, as we came out of Court 'you are an absolute sweetie. How can I reward you, Mr Rumpole, darling?' I told her that it was normal to do it with a cheque sent through her solicitors.

'But I mean something more personal. What about a naughty lunch? Just the two of us. Could you get a long afternoon off?

And do you enjoy scrumptious desserts as much as I do? Oh, good. All men enjoy scrumptious desserts, don't they? That's settled then. I'll give you a tinkle. Are you in the book? I'm sure you are.' 'Lunch,' I said regretfully for I'm particularly fond of lunch, 'no, I'm afraid that's impossible. The pressure of work, you see.' 'Oh, come on, Mr Rumpole. Give yourself a bit of fun, why don't you? Has anyone ever told you, you're a very cuddly sort of barrister?' My blood ran cold. I saw Mr Bernard, our admirable instructing solicitor, avert his eyes in shame. And this woman was going in search of my telephone number. I fervently wished I had lost her case and she was even now being led off to the dun, t geons. iB 'Mrs Etheridge, please don't trouble yourself to telephone.