"Mortimer, John - Rumpole and the Married Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

John Mortimer - Rumpole and the Married Lady

From "Rumpole of the Bailey"

Life at the Bar has its ups and downs, and there are times when there is an appalling decrease in crime, when all the decent villains seem to have gone on holiday to the Costa Brava, and lawfulness breaks out. At such times, Rumpole is unemployed, as I was one morning when I got up late and sat in the kitchen dawdling over breakfast in my dressing gown and slippers, much to the annoyance of She Who Must Be Obeyed who was getting the coffee cups shipshape so that they could be piped on board to do duty as teacups later in the day. I was winning my daily battle with the tormented mind who writes The Times crossword, when Hilda, not for the first time in our joint lives, compared me unfavourably with her late father.

'Daddy got to Chambers dead at nine every day of his life!'

'Your old dad, old C. H. Wystan, got to Chambers dead on nine and spent the morning on The Times crossword. I do it at home, that's the difference between us. You should be grateful.'

' Grateful?' Hilda frowned.

'For the companionship,' I suggested.

' I want you out of the house, Rumpole. Don't you understand that? So I can clear up the kitchen!'

' O woman ! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy and hard to please.' Hilda doesn't like poetry, I could tell by her heavy sigh.

'Just a little peace. So I can be alone. To get on with things.'

'And when I come home a little late in the evenings. When I stop for a moment in Pommeroy's Wine Bar, to give myself strength to face the Inner Circle. You never seem particularly grateful to have been left alone in the house. To get on with things!'

'You've been wasting time. That's what I resent.'

'/ wasted Time - and now doth Time waste me.' I switched from Scott to Shakespeare. The reaction of my life-mate was no better.

'Chattering to that idiot George Frobisher! I really don't know why you bother to come home at all. Now Nick's gone it seems quite unnecessary.'

'Nick?' It was a year since Nick had gone to America and we hadn't had a letter since Christmas.

'You know what I mean! We used to be a family. We had to try at least, for Nick's sake. Oh, why don't you go to work?'

'Nick'll be back.' I moved from the table and put an arm on her shoulder. She shook it off.

'Do you believe that? When he's got married? When he's got his job at the University of Baltimore? Why on earth should he want to come back to Gloucester Road?'

'He'll want to come back sometime. To see us. He'll want to hear all our news. What I've been doing in Court,' I said, giving Hilda her opening.

'What you've been doing in Court? You haven't been doing anything in Court apparently!'

At which moment the phone rang in our living-room and Hilda, who loves activity, dashed to answer it. I heard her telling the most appalling lies through the open door.

'No, it's Mrs Rumpole. I'll see if I can catch him. He's just rushing out of the door on his way to work.'

I joined her in my dressing gown; it was my new clerk, the energetic Henry. He wanted me to come into Chambers for a conference, and I asked him if the world had come to its senses and crime was back in its proper place in society. No, he told me, as a matter of fact it wasn't crime at all.

'You haven't even shaved!' Hilda rebuked me. 'Daddy'd never have spoken to his clerk on the telephone before he'd had a shave!'

I put down the telephone and gave Mrs Rumpole a look which I hoped was enigmatic.' It's a divorce,' I told her.