"Mortimer, John - Rumpole and the Alternative Society" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

' She might expect it.'

'You're going to "Nirvana"?'

'Eventually. Aren't we all? No, Friendly. I shall steer clear of the lotus eaters of No. 34 Balaclava Road. A land, I rather imagine, in which it seems always afternoon. Bring the client for a con at my hotel. After dinner. Nine o'clock suit you?'

' You'll be at the George ? That's where the Bar put up.'

'Then if it's where the Bar put up, I shall avoid it. I'm staying with old mates, from my days in the R.A.F. They run a stately pleasure-dome known as the Crooked Billet.'

'The little pub place out on the bay?' I noticed Friendly smiled when he spoke of the Dogherty's delight, a place, I had no doubt, of a high reputation. The taxi had stopped now, and I was wrestling with the door. When I had it open, I was in a high and holiday mood.

' Out on the bay indeed! With no sound but the sea sighing and the muted love call of the lobster. Know what I say. Friendly? When you get a bit of decent crime at the seaside... Relax and enjoy it!'

Friendly was staring after me, perhaps understandably bewildered, as I drove away.

The taxi took me out to the Crooked Billet and back about twenty-five years. The pub was on the top of some cliffs, above a sandy beach and a leaden sea. From the outside it seemed an ordinary enough building, off-white, battered, with a neglected patch of garden; but inside it was almost a museum to the great days of World War Two. Behind the bar were Sam's trophies, a Nazi helmet, a plaster Mr Churchill which could actually puff a cigar, a model Spitfire dangled from the ceiling, there were framed photographs of ex-Pilot Officer Dogherty in his flying jacket, standing by his beloved Lancaster and a signed portrait of Vera Lynn at the height of her career. Even the pin-table appeared to be an antique, looted from some NAAFI. There was also an old piano, a string of fairy lights round the bottles and a comforting smell of stale booze. Someone was clanking bottles behind the bar, but I could see no more than a comfortable bottom in old blue slacks. I put out a red alert.

' Calling all air crew! Calling all air crew! Parade immediately.' At which Bobby Dogherty turned, straightened up and smiled.

Age had not actually withered her, but it had added to the generosity of her curves. Her blonde hair looked more metallic than of old, and the lines of laughter round her mouth and eyes had settled into permanent scars. She had a tipped cigarette in her mouth and her head was tilted to keep the smoke out of her eyes. She looked, as always, irrepressibly cheerful, as if middle age, like the War, was a sort of joke, and there to be enjoyed.

'Rumpole. You old devil!'

'You look beautiful,' I said, as I had often done in the past, and meant it just as much.

' Liar! Drop of rum ?' I didn't see why not and perched myself on a bar stool while she milked the rum bottle. Soon Rumpole was in reminiscent mood.

'Takes me right back to the NAAFI hop. New Year's Eve, 1943. Sam was out bombing something and I had you entirely to myself- for a couple of hours of the Boomps-a-Daisy... Not to mention the Lambeth Walk.' I raised my glass and gave our old salutation,' Here's to the good old duke!'

'The good old duke.' Bobby was on her second gin and tonic, and she remembered. 'You never took advantage.'

I lit a small cigar. It caught me in the back of the throat. ' Something I shall regret till the day I cough myself into extinction. How's old Sam ? How's ex-Pilot Officer' Three-Fingers' Dogherty?'

'Bloody doctor!' For the first time, Bobby looked less than contented.

'Doctor?'

'Doctor Mackay. Came here with a face like an undertaker.' She gave a passable imitation of a gloomy Scottish medico.' "Mrs Dogherty, your husband's got to get out of the licensing trade or I'll not give him more than another year. Get him into a small bungalow and on to soft drinks." Can you imagine Sam in a bungalow?'

' Or on soft drinks! The mind boggles!'

' He'll find lime juice and soda has a pleasant little kick to it. That's what the doctor told me.'

'The kick of a mouse, I should imagine. In carpet slippers.'

' I told the quack, Sam's not scared. Sam used to go out every night to kill himself. He misses the war dreadfully.'

' I expect he does.'