"Mortimer, John Clifford - Rumpole 01 - Rumpole of the Bailey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

'Now then, Horace. Your practice no doubt requires a good deal of skill.' ' Skill? Who said " skill" ?' I glared round at the learned friends. 'Any fool could do it! It's only a matter of life and death. That's all it is. Crime? It's a sort of a game. How can you compare it to the real world of Off Shore Securities. And Deductible Expenses?' 'All you young men in Chambers can learn an enormous amount from Horace Rumpole, when it comes to crime.' Wystan now seemed to be the only one who was still smiling. I turned on him.

'You make me sound just like Fred Timson!"

'Really? Whoever's Fred Timson?' I told you Wystan never had much of a practice at the Bar, consequently he had never met the Timsons. Erskine-Brown supplied the information.

'The Timsons are Rumpole's favourite family.' 'An industrious clan of South London criminals, aren't they, Rumpole,' Hoskins added.

Wystan looked particularly pained.' South London criminals?

' I mean, do we want people like the Timsons forever hanging about in our waiting room? I merely ask the question.' He was not bad, this Erskine-Brown, with a big future in the nastier sort of Breach of Trust cases.

'Do you? Do you merely ask it?" I heard the pained bellow of a distant Rumpole.

'The Timsons ... and their like, are no doubt grist to Rumpole's mill,' Wystan was starting on the summing up. 'But it's the balance that counts. Now, you'll be looking for a new Head of Chambers.' 'Are we still looking?' My friend George Frobisher had the decency to ask. And Wystan told him,' I'd like you all to think it over carefully. And put your views to me in writing. We should all try and remembei. It's the good of the Chambers that matters. Not the feelings, however deep they may be, of any particular person.' He then called on Albert's assistance to raise him to his feet, lifted his glass with an effort of pure will and oifered us a toast to the good of Chambers. I joined in, and drank deep, it having been a good thirty seconds since I had had a glass to my lips. As the bubbles exploded against the tongue I noticed that the Featherstones were holding hands, and the brand new artificial silk was looking particularly delighted. Something, and perhaps not only his suspender belt, seemed to be giving him special pleasure.

Some weeks later, when I gave Hilda the news, she was deeply shocked.

'Guthrie Featherstonel Head of Chambers!' We were at breakfast. In fact Nick was due back at school that day. He was neglecting his cornflakes and reading a book.

'By general acclaim.' ' I'm sorry.' Hilda looked at me, as if she'd just discovered that I'd contracted an incurable disease.

'He can have the headaches, working out Albert's extraordinary book-keeping system.' I thought for a moment, yes, I'd like to have been Head of Chambers, and then put the thought from me.

' If only you could have become a Q.C.' She was now pouring me an unsolicited cup of coffee.

'Q.C.? C.T. That's enough to keep me busy.' 'C.T.? Whatever's C.T.?' 'Counsel for the Timsons!' I tried to say it as proudly as I could. Then I reminded Nick that I'd promised to see him off at Liverpool Street, finished my cooling coffee, stood up and took a glance at the book that was absorbing him, expecting it to be, perhaps, that spine-chilling adventure relating to the Footprints of an Enormous Hound. To my amazement the shocker in question was entitled simply Studies in Sociology.

'It's interesting,' Nick sounded apologetic.

'You astonish me.' 'Old Bagnold was talking about what I should read if I get into Oxford.' ' Of course you're going to read law, Nick. We're going to keep it in the family.' Hilda the barrister's daughter was clearing away deafeningly.

' I thought perhaps P.P.E. and then go on to Sociology.' Nick sounded curiously confident. Before Hilda could get in another word I made my position clear.

'P.P.E., that's very good, Nick! That's very good indeed! For God's sake. Let's stop keeping things in the family!' Later, as we walked across the barren stretches of Liverpool Street Station, with my son in his school uniform and me in my old striped trousers and black jacket, I tried to explain what I meant.

'That's what's wrong, Nick. That's the devil of it! They're being born around us all the time. Little Mr Justice Everglades ... Little Timsons ... Little Guthrie Featherstones. All being set off... to follow in father's footsteps.' We were at the barrier, shaking hands awkwardly.' Let's have no more of that! No more following in father's footsteps. No more.' Nick smiled, although I have no idea if he understood what I was trying to say. I'm not totally sure that I understood it either. Then the train removed him from me. I waved for a little, but he didn't wave back. That sort of thing is embarrassing for a boy. I lit a small cigar and went by tube to the Bailey. I was doing a long firm fraud then; a particularly nasty business, out of which I got a certain amount of harmless fun.

Rumpole and the Alternative Society In some ways the coppers, the Fuzz, Old Bill, whatever you may care to call them, are a very conservative body. When they verbal up the criminal classes, and report their alleged confessions in the Nick, they still use the sort of Cockney argot that went out at the turn of the century, and perfectly well-educated bank robbers, who go to the ballet at Covent Garden and holidays in Corfu, are still reported as having cried,' It's a fair cop, guv,' or 'You got me bang to rights,' at the moment they're apprehended. In the early 19705 however, when Flower Power flooded the country with a mass of long hair, long dresses and the sweet smell of the old quarter of Marrakesh, the Fuzz showed itself remarkably open to new ideas. Provincial drug squads were issued with beads, Afghan waistcoats, headbands and guitars along with their size eleven boots, and took lessons in a new language, learning to say,' Cool it man,' or' Make love not war,' instead of 'You got me bang to rights.' It was also a time when the figures of the establishment fell into disrepute and to be a barrister, however close to the criminal fraternity, was to be regarded by the young as a sort of undesirable cross between Judge Jeffries and Mr Nixon, as I knew from the sullen looks of the young ladies Nick, who was then at Oxford and reading P.P.E., brought home in the holidays. I have never felt so clearly the number of different countries, all speaking private languages and with no diplomatic relations, into which England is divided. I cannot think for instance of a world more remote from the Temple or the Inns of Court than that tumble-down Victorian house in the west country (No. 34 Balaclava Road, Coldsands) which the community who inhabited it had christened 'Nirvana', and which contained a tortoise who looked to me heavily drugged, a number of babies, some surprisingly clean young men and women, a pain-in-the-neck named Dave, and a girl called Kathy Trelawny whom I never met until she came to be indicted in the Coldsands Crown Court on a charge of handling a phenomenal amount of cannabis resin, valued at about ten thousand pounds.

Coldsands is a rather unpopular resort in the west of England with a high rainfall, a few Regency terraces, a large number of old people's homes, and a string quartet at tea-time in the Winter Gardens] on the face of it an unlikely place for crime to flourish. But a number of young people did form a community there at 'Nirvana', a place which the local inhabitants regarded as the scene of numerous orgies. To this house came a dealer named Jack, resplendent in his hippie attire, to place a large order for cannabis which Kathy Trelawny set about fulfilling, with the aid of a couple of Persian law students with whom she had made contact at Bristol University. Very soon after the deal was done, and a large quantity of money handed over, Jack the Hippie was revealed as Detective Sergeant Jack Smedley of the local force, the strong arm of the law descended on 'Nirvana', the Persian law students decamped to an unknown address in Morocco, and Rumpole, who had had a few notable successes with dangerous drugs, was dug out of Old Bailey and placed upon the 12.15 from Paddington to Coldsands, enjoying the lare luxury of a quiet corner seat in the first-class luncheon car, by courtesy of the Legal Aid Fund of Great Britain.

I could afford the first-class luncheon, and spread myself the more readily, as I was staying in a little pub on the coast not five miles from Coldsands kept by my old mates and companions in arms (if my three years in the R.A.F. ground staff can be dignified by so military a title), ex-Pilot Officer 'Three-Fingers' Dogherty and his wife Bobby, CX-WAAF, unchallenged beauty queen of the station at Dungeness, who was well known to look like Betty Grable from behind and Phyllis Dixey from the front and to have a charm, a refreshing impertinence and a contempt for danger unrivalled, I am sure, by either of those famous pinups from Reveille. I have spoken of Bobby already in these reminiscences and I am not ashamed to say that, although I was already married to Hilda when we met, she captured my heart, and continued to hold it fast long after the handsome Pilot Officer captured hers. I was therefore keenly Booking forward to renewing my acquaintance with Bobby; we had had a desultory correspondence but we hadn't met for many years. I was also looking forward to a holiday at the seaside, for which Miss Trelawny's little trouble seemed merely to provide the excuse and the financial assistance.

So I was, as you can imagine, in a good mood as we rattled past Reading and cows began to be visible, standing in fields, chewing the cud, as though there were no law courts or judges in the world. You very rarely see a cow down the Bailey, which is one of the reasons I enjoy an occasional case on circuit. Circuit takes you away from Chambers, away from the benevolent despotism of Albert the clerk, above all, away from the constant surveillance of She Who Must Be Obeyed (Mrs Hilda Rumpole). I began to look forward to a good, old-fashioned railway lunch. I thought of a touch of Brown Windsor soup, rapidly followed by steamed cod, castle pudding, mouse-trap, cream crackers and celery, all to be washed down with a vintage bottle of Chateau Great Western as we charged past Didcot.

A furtive-looking man, in a short off-white jacket which showed his braces and a mournful expression, looked down at me.

'Ah waiter. Brown Windsor soup, I fancy, to start with."