"Mortimer, John - Rumpole and the Old Familiar Faces" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

"Is that all?" The transatlantic judge still seemed puzzled.

"All I can remember."

"I think you're wrong, Mr. Rumpole."

"What?"

"I think you're wrong and those lines do indeed have some significance along the lines I suggested." And the Judge fell silent, contemplating the unusual acts suggested.

"I see they're doingAladdin at the Tufnell Park Empire. Do you think the twins might enjoyit, Rumpole?"

The speaker was Mrs. Justice Erskine-Brown (PhillidaTrant as she was in happier days when I called her the Portia of our Chambers), still possessed of a beauty that would break the hearts of the toughest prosecutors and make old lags swoon with lust even as she passed a stiff custodial sentence. The twins she spoke of were Tristan and Isolde, so named by her opera-loving hus-band Claude, who was now bending Hilda's ear on the subject of Covent Garden's latest Ring cycle.

"I think the twins would adoreit. Just the thing to cure the Wagnerian death-wish and bring them into a world of sanity."

"Sanity?" The visiting judge sounded doubtful. "With old guys dressed up as mothers?"

"I promise you, they'll love every minute ofit." And then

I made another promise that sounded rash even as I spoke the words. "I know I would. I'll take them myself."

"Thank you, Rumpole." Phillida spoke in her gentlest judi-cial voice, but I knew my fate was sealed. "We'll keep you to that."

"It'll have to be after Christmas," Hilda said. "We've been invited up to Norfolk for the holiday."

As she said the word "Norfolk" a cold, sweeping wind seemed to cut through the central heating of the Erskne-Browns' Islington dining room and I felt a warning shiver.

I have no rooted objection to Christmas Day, but I must say it's an occasion when time tends to hang particularly heavily on the hands. From the early morning alarm call of carols piping on Radio Four to the closing headlines and a restless, liverish sleep, the day can seem as long as a fraud on the post office tried before Mr. Injustice Graves.

It takes less than no time for me to unwrap the tie which I will seldom wear, and for Hilda to receive the annual bottle of lavender water which she lays down rather than puts to immedi-ate use. The highlights after that are the Queen's speech, when I lay bets with myself as to whether Hilda will stand to attention when the television plays the National Anthem, and the thawed-out Safeway bird followed by port (an annual gift from my faithful solicitor Bonny Bernard) and pudding. I suppose what I have against Christmas Day is that the Courts are all shut and no one is being tried for anything.

That Christmas, Hilda had decided on a complete change of routine. She announcedit in a circuitous fashion by saying, one late November evening, "I was at school with Poppy Longstaff."

"What's that got to do withit?" I knew the answer to this question, of course. Hilda's old school has this in common with polar expeditions, natural disasters, and the last war; those who have lived throughit are bound together for life and can always call on each other for mutual assistance.

"Poppy's Eric is Rector of Coldsands, And for some reason or other he seems to want to meet you, Rumpole."

"Meet me?"

"That's what she said."

"So does that mean I have to spend Christmas in the Arc-tic Circle and miss our festivities?"

"It's not the Arctic Circle. It's Norfolk, Rumpole. And our festivities aren't all that festive. So, yes. You have to go." It was a judgement f6r which there was no possible appeal.

My first impression of Coldsands was a gaunt church tower, presumably of great age, pointing an accusing finger to heaven from a cluster of houses on the edge of a sullen, gunmetal sea. My second was one of intense cold. As soon as we got out of the taxi, we were slapped around the face by a wind which must have started in freezing Siberia and gained nothing in the way of warmth on its journey across the plains of Europe.

"In the bleak mid-winterI Frosty winds made moan... wrote that sad old darling Christina Rossetti. Frosty winds made considerable moan round the rectory at Coldsands, owing to the doors that stopped about an inch short of the stone floors and the windows which never shut properly, causing the curtains to billow like the sails of a ship at sea.