"Mortimer, John - Rumpole A La Carte" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)
'What did you say?' 'I said I suppose I was feeling out of sorts.' I had changed my mind about taking Hilda into my confidence. It would have taken too long and she might well not have accepted my evidence.
'Well, if you're feeling out of sorts, stop complaining to me about it. Go and see Dr Cogger tomorrow evening, on your way home from Chambers. Do try and have a bit of sense, Rumpole.' So evening surgery found me, ever obedient, waiting for the green light to flash beside Dr Cogger's name. I sat among people with varying degrees of illness, coughing and sneezing their way through outdated copies of Punch, the Sunday Fortress cooking supplement. Good Housekeeping and the Illustrated London News. Pale children played with the brokendown toys provided, an antique Chinaman clutched the handle of his walking-stick and muttered ferociously to himself, a very thin girl bit her lip and sat holding her boyfriend's hand. The flats and bedsits around the Gloucester Road had 1 handed over their sick and dying. Then I put down the back number of Country Life which hadn't been holding my attention and saw what surely must have been an unusual sight in a doctor's waiting-room, the lurid cover of Casanova. ' 182'I) you take this regularly?' I approached the receptionist witbhe dubious periodical in my hand.
'It at all. It shouldn't have been left out there. Of course it'd pset the old people.' F)m Miss Dankwerts's look of pity, I could see I was being take for one of the easily upset old people. 'You mean', my curisity was aroused, 'Casanova isn't normally available in the 'airing-room?' 'C course not. As a matter of fact,' she gave a small smile at the tpense of the medical men from whom she obviously felt as 3)of as she did from her patients, and whispered, 'the cleaing lady found it in one of the doctors' rooms. It should new ? have been put out.' 'C course. The advertisements are rather interesting thoh. You might find a friend.' And, before she could deal withhis outrageous suggestion, the green light flashed and I wasdmitted into Dr Cogger's presence with the folded Casanoofiwelling my jacket pocket.
'Nell, Mr Rumpole. What seems to be the trouble?' The Door was as cheerful and hearty as ever. ,.
'Bon't know. Failing eyesight, perhaps. I thought I saw you havig lunch in the Savoy Grill, but I must've been mistaken.
Yodidn't seem to recognize me when I raised my glass to you.' 'Tie Savoy Grill?' He smiled at me, a big man with huge hans and a surprisingly gentle voice. 'That's a bit out of the clasofa struggling G.P.' '& it wasn't you then?' 'lhardly think so.' He shook his head. 'Now', he was turrng over my notes, 'it seems your wife made this appointmer.
What does she think is wrong with you?' '?meone told her I was behaving rather strangely in my Chitibers.' 'phaving strangely?' He was adding these words to the log of pmpole's weaknesses, where they would be immortalized tog(her with my weight. 'What sort of strangeness?' ell, ringing up escort agencies.' 'pcort agencies? But, Mr Rumpole, why ever should you do thai' 183 ': 'I suppose they thought I was looking for escorts.' 'You mean, young girls to take out to dinner? That sort of thing?' 'That sort of thing. Yes.' 'My dear Mr Rumpole', he leant back in his chair and his smile was entirely kindly, 'I shouldn't let that worry you in the least. A lot of men, perfectly decent chaps, in my experience, feel the need of young, fresh, well, young company.
It doesn't mean they're sick in any way. It's perfectly natural.' 'Is that what you think?' 'Oh, yes. I do, quite honestly.' 'I thought it might be.' 'Oh, did you?' His smile faded and he gave me a look, I thought, of some unease. Of course, that may have been because I was being such a terse and unforthcoming patient.
'Yes. When I saw that magazine Casanova in your waitingroom.' 'Oh, that!' He was smiling again, at full beam. 'I can't think how it got there.' 'It's full of advertisements for escorts, companions, people for nights out on the town. All that sort of thing.' 'Is it? I didn't look. It seems to have interested you.' 'Yes, it did. Your receptionist said it was found in one of the doctors' rooms.' 'Well, Mr Rumpole, my partners are big boys now. I really can't be expected to nanny them. Perhaps I should have, though. When I think of the trouble poor old Rahmat's got himself into, Now', he looked at his watch and seemed to decide that his time was being wasted in idle chatter, 'what would you say your problem is, medically?' 'Medically,' I told him, 'I can't sleep. I seem to wake up around one o'clock in the morning and worry about poor old Rahmat, as you rightly call him.' * 'My dear Mr Rumpole. Why should you worry?' 'I suppose, because I'm defending him.' For the first time Dr Cogger looked startled and unsure of himself. 'You are?' He frowned. 'I hadn't realized that. Perhaps 184we shouldn't have been talking about it. I've been asked to give evidence.' 'For the Doctor? I didn't think we'd asked you.' 'No. Well, for the Council. I just told them what I knew. I certainly don't want to make things any more difficult for Rahmat. Look. I'll write you out some pills. Perfectly harmless. Just take one when you wake up in the middle of the night. At least that should stop you worrying.' 'About Dr Rahmat?' 'If you can manage it. I know. It's distressing for all of us when a doctor goes off the rails.' 'Rumpole, I'm terribly worried.' 'Oh, dear.' 'Worried and frankly mystified.' It didn't take much to mystify Erskine-Brown, and as we sat together in Pommeroy's, our day's work done, I waited to hear what detail of our life on earth was puzzling him at the moment.
'It's about Philly. She's taken to calling herself "The Rut".' 'The what?' ; 'The Rut! I come home and there'll be a note: gone ROUND TO MARGOT'S, SO I DON'T BORE YOU TO DEATH.
"the rut". Why do you think she calls herself "The Rut"?' 'I have no idea.' 'Do you think it has some amorous significance? I looked it up in The Oxford English in the Bar library. It refers, Rumpole, to periods of sexual excitement in certain animals.' 'Didn't you ask your wife what she meant?' 'Of course.' 'What did she say?' 'That I should know, if anyone did.' 'And you found that reply enigmatic?' 'I certainly did.' I looked at the man. I wouldn't have thought Claude had y special talent for lying, but he spoke with apparent convictlon d not an eyelid was batted.
Ql, "
ne s also begun to ask me about country walks.' ay again.' 185 Rumpole a h Carte 'She says, "When are you going out for another country walk, Claud?" She knows that country walks are just not my scene.' 'I shouldithave thought so.' 'They tirii'ou out and you get your shoes dirty. Whatever gave her the idea I want to go tramping around the countryside?' 'Are you sire you didn't?' For an aisiver he shook his head sadly and said, 'Do you know I reall'fun worried about Philly. Do you think she ought to see a docnr?' 'I think,' Itold him, 'that she's about to see about a dozen of them. In the&eneral Medical Council. And I'm sure she'll do this case life she does all her cases, brilliantly.' And she'll have you stiriied up too, Claude, I thought as I looked at the man who still seemed to be seeing his perilous situation through a gliss darkly.
I left Pomeroy's and when I disembarked from the bus and was making my way towards the mansion flat, I saw Dr Rahmat hurring along the street in front of me. I called out and he turned like a startled hare and then managed a smile of greeting. 'Tie barrister-at-law. And looking extremely fit, if I may say so.' 'I wanted(r) see you. There's a question that I should have asked. Mr Icrnard was trying to get hold of you at the surgery.' 'Alas, I an seldom there now. The patients don't seem too dead keen on seeing me. But shall we walk along? I have an appointment.' 'All right It's about Dr Cogger,' I said, when we were on the move. 'Bid you and he ever quarrel about anything?' Dr Rahmat warn a few steps in silence and I prompted him, 'If I'm going tcaefend you, you'd better trust me.' 'Well,' headmitted, 'we had a few words once. About the drugs.' 'What about the drugs?' 'He was alrays wanting me to prescribe...' Here he mentioned a number of long. Latinized trade names which went, I 186have to confess, in at one of my ears and out at the other.
'They were very expensive drugs, most of them from Marchmain's, and I told him that my patients would be just as well off with a few kind words and a couple of aspirins.' 'How did he react to that?' 'Badly. He got in a most terrible bait. He went so far as to saw that he didn't want partners who were so pig ignorant on the subject of new drugs. I'm sure it was said in the heat of the moment and he didn't mean it exactly.' We had reached the Star of Hyderabad, our local Indian eatery, and Dr Rahmat stopped in front of its red and gold door. 'I am most reluctant to part from you, great barrister-atlaw, but, alas, I have an appointment.' 'I'll come in with you for a moment. You can buy me a beer.' 'It would be a pleasure, but some other time, I'm afraid.
This is an appointment of a private nature.' He then bolted into the Star of Hyderabad and, resisting all temptations to peer in and see who he was dating, I headed off to an empty house, for it was one of the nights when Hilda was at her bridge lesson with Marigold Featherstone.
At about nine o'clock the phone rang and a familiar voice said, 'Is Horace there? It's Bambi.' 'This is a recorded message,' I answered in a nasal and mechanical tone. 'I'm afraid we are not available at the moment, but if you will leave your name and telephone number, we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Please speak after the tone. Bleep.' I then held the instrument at arm's length and, when it had finished twittering, laid it to rest.
I woke up at one in the morning with Dr Rahmat's case going round and round in my head. I wondered about mononucleosis, Dr Cogger's strange reluctance to be recognized in the Savoy Grill and his practical jokes at Barts. What exactly had he done there? I imagined in those feverish hours a live lady, substituted for a corpse on the dissecting table, who sat up suddenly d made several students faint. I imagined trying to connect an escoTt agency with a row about prescribing expensive drugs with g names, and sleep eluded me. At about two thirty I ook one ofDr Cogger's pills, which had no effect on me at all.
187 The General Medical Council rules from an imposing headquarters in that mecca of doctors, the purlieus around Harlev Street. I crossed Portland Place, walked down Hallam Street and entered, wigless and without gown, the building in which the top medics, playing, for a while, the parts of judges, decide the fate of their fellow quacks.
Up the stairs I found an imposing square chamber, decorated with the portraits and busts of solemn, whiskered old darlings "ho, no doubt, bled their customers with leeches and passed oa the information to alarmed small boys that self-abuse leads to blindness. A large stained-glass window bore the image of a ministering angel and two balconies, decorated with Adamstyle plaster-work, held up the visiting public and a large body of journalists from such scandalsheets as the Daily Beacon, whose ears were pricked up for all the details of Dr Rahmat's unusual medical treatment. At tables round three sides of a rectangle sat the eleven judges, a few of whom were not doctors, but lay brothers or sisters from allied worlds, such as nursing or sociology. Presiding at the top table was a lean and elderly Scot, the distinguished saw-bones. Sir Hector MacAuliffe, who looked as though he would have found Calvin himself a bit of a libertine.
I found myself seated at a small table, as in an American courtroom, with Dr Rahmat in embarrassing proximity to me. I have always found it a great advantage to sit as far away from clients as possible, as their suggestions on how to conduct the rial, if adopted, almost always prove fatal. On my other side, Mrs Whittaker, grey-haired and clad in a decent black suit, was ready to take a note, a task she was to perform with admirable efficiency.
At a table opposite me sat our Portia and the prosecution team. Between us, in the wide open spaces of the room, was the solitary chair and small table at which the witnesses gave evidence in some comfort. We were all provided with heavy(.
duty microphones, so that our voices boomed and echoed as mough we were in a swimming-pool.
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