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

Before I left Chambers an event occurred which caused me deep satisfaction. I made for the downstairs lavatory, and although the door was open, I found it occupied by Uncle Tom who was busily engaged at the basin washing his collection of golf balls and scrubbing each one to a gleaming whiteness with a nail-brush. He had been putting each one, when cleaned, into a biscuit tin and as I entered he dropped the nailbrush in also.

'Uncle Tom!', I recognized the article at once, 'that's the Chambers nail-brush! Soapy Sam's having kittens about it.' 'Oh, dear. Is it, really? I must have taken it without remembering.

I'll leave it on the basin.' But I persuaded him to let me have it for safekeeping, saying I longed to see Ballard's little face light up with joy when it was restored to him.

When I arrived at La Maison the disputes seemed to have become a great deal more dramatic than even in Equity Court.

The place was not yet open for dinner, but I was let in as the (' restaurant's legal adviser and I heard raised voices and sounds of a struggle from the kitchen. Pushing the door open, I found Jean-Pierre in the act of forcibly removing a knife from the hands of lan, the sous chef, at whom an excited Alphonse 22 Pascal, his lock of black hair falling into his eyes, was shouting huse in French. My arrival created a diversion in which both men calmed down and Jean-Pierre passed judgment on them.

'Bloody lunatics!' he said. 'Haven't they done this place enough harm already? They have to start slaughtering each other. Behave yourselves. Soyez sages! And what can I do for you, Mr Rumpole?' 'Perhaps we could have a little chat,' I suggested as the tumult died down. 'I thought I'd call in. My wife's away, you see, and I haven't done much about dinner.' 'Then what would you like?' 'Oh, anything. Just a snack.' 'Some pate, perhaps? And a bottle of champagne?' I thought he'd never ask.

When we were seated at a table in a corner of the empty restaurant, the patron told me more about the quarrel. 'They were fighting again over Mary Skelton.' I looked across at the desk, where the unmemorable girl was getting out her calculator and preparing for her evening's work. 'She doesn't look the type, exactly,' I suggested.

'Perhaps,' Jean-Pierre speculated, 'she has a warm heart?

My wife Simone looks the type, but she's got a heart like an ice-cube.' SK 'Your wife. The vengeful woman?' I remembered what Mr Bernard had told me.

'Why should she be vengeful to me, Mr Rumpole? When I'm a particularly tolerant and easy-going type of individual?' At which point a couple of middle-aged Americans, who had strayed in off the street, appeared at the door of the restaurant and asked Jean-Pierre if he were serving dinner. 'At six thirty? No! And we don't do teas, either.' He shouted across at them, in a momentary return to his old ways, 'Cretins!' Of course,' I told him, 'you're a very parfait, gentle cook.' A great artist needs admiration. He needs almost incessant Praise.' And with Simone,' I suggested, 'the admiration flowed like ment?' sys 23 'You've got it. Had some experience of wives, have you?' 'You might say, a lifetime's experience. Do you mind?' I poured myself another glass of unwonted champagne.

'No, no, of course. And your wife doesn't understand you?' 'Oh, I'm afraid she does. That's the worrying thing about it.

She blames me for being a "character".' 'They'd blame you for anything. Come to divorce, has it?' 'Not quite reached your stage, Mr O'Higgins.' I looked round the restaurant. 'So, I suppose you have to keep these tables full to pay Simone her alimony.' 'Not exactly. You see she'll own half La Maison.' That hadn't been entirely clear to me and I asked him to explain.

'When we started off, I was a young man. All I wanted to do was to get up early, go to Smithfield and Billingsgate, feel the lobsters and smell the fresh scallops, create new dishes, and dream of sauces. Simone was the one with the business sense.

Well, she's French, so she insisted on us getting married in France.' 'Was that wrong?' 'Oh, no. It was absolutely right, for Simone. Because they have a damned thing there called "community of property". I had to agree to give her half of everything if we ever broke up.

You know about the law, of course.' 'Well, not everything about it.' Community of property, I must confess, came as news to me. 'I always found knowing the law a bit of a handicap for a barrister.' 'Simone knew all about it. She had her beady eye on the future.' He emptied his glass and then looked at me pleadingly.

'You're going to get us out of this little trouble, aren't you, Mr Rumpole? This affair of the mouse?' 'Oh, the mouse!' I did my best to reassure him. 'The mouse seems to be the least of your worries.' Soon Jean-Pierre had to go back to his kitchen. On his way, he stopped at the cash desk and said something to the girl, ('' Mary. She looked up at him with, I thought, unqualified adoration. He patted her arm and went back to his sauces, having reassured her, I suppose, about the quarrel that had been going on in her honour.

I did justice to the rest of the champagne and pate de foie and started off for home. In the restaurant entrance hall I saw the lady who minded the cloaks take a suitcase from Gaston Leblanc, who had just arrived out of breath and wearing a mackintosh. Although large, the suitcase seemed very light and he asked her to look after it.

Several evenings later I was lying on my couch in the livingroom of the mansion flat, a small cigar between my fingers and a glass of Chateau Fleet Street on the floor beside me. I was in vacant or in pensive mood as I heard a ring at the front-door bell. I started up, afraid that the delights of haute cuisine had palled for Hilda, and then I remembered that She would undoubtedly have come armed with a latchkey. I approached the front door, puzzled at the sound of young and excited voices without, combined with loud music. I got the door open and found myself face to face with Liz Probert, Dave Inchcape and five or six other junior hacks, all wearing sweatshirts with a picture of a wig and young radical lawyers written on them. Dianne was also there in trousers and a glittery top, escorted by my clerk. Henry, wearing jeans and doing his best to appear young and swinging. The party was carrying various bottles and an article we know well down the Bailey (because it so often appears in lists of stolen property) as a ghetto blaster. It was from this contraption that the loud music emerged.

'It's a surprise party!' Mizz Liz Probert announced with considerable pride. 'We've come to cheer you up in your great loneliness.' Nothing I could say would stem the well-meaning invasion.

Within minutes the staid precincts of Froxbury Mansions were transformed into the sort of disco which is patronized by Wder-thirties on a package to the Costa del Sol. Bizarre drinks, ch as rum and blackcurrant juice or advocaat and lemonade, re being mixed in what remained of our tumblers, supplemented by toothmugs from the bathroom. Scarves dimmed the lights, the ghetto blaster blasted ceaselessly and dancers gyrated in a self-absorbed manner, apparently oblivious of 25 each other. Only Henry and Dianne, practising a more oldfashioned ritual, clung together, almost motionless, and carried on a lively conversation with me as I stood on the outskirts of the revelry, drinking the best of the wine they had brought and trying to look tolerantly convivial.

'We heard as how Mrs Rumpole has done a bunk, sir.' Dianne looked sympathetic, to which Henry added sourly, 'Some people have all the luck!' 'Why? Where's your wife tonight. Henry?' I asked my clerk.

The cross he has to bear is that his spouse has pursued an ambitious career in local government so that, whereas she is now the Mayor of Bexleyheath, he is officially her Mayoress.

'My wife's at a dinner of South London mayors in the Mansion House, Mr Rumpole. No consorts allowed, thank God!' Henry told me.

'Which is why we're both on the loose tonight. Makes you feel young again, doesn't it, Mr Rumpole?' Dianne asked me as she danced minimally.

'Well, not particularly young, as a matter of fact.' The music yawned between me and my guests as an unbridgeable generation gap. And then one of the more intense of the young lady radicals approached me, as a senior member of the Bar, to ask what the hell the Lord Chief Justice knew about being pregnant and on probation at the moment your boyfriend's arrested for dope. 'Very little, I should imagine,' I had to tell her, and then, as the telephone was bleating pathetically beneath the din, I excused myself and moved to answer it. As I went, a Y.R.L. sweatshirt whirled past me, Liz, dancing energetically, had pulled it off and was gyrating in what appeared to be an ancient string-vest and a pair of jeans.