Rumpole Rests His Case (23 page)

It was in the sitting-room that it was going on. I remembered whom I'd lent a key to while Hilda was in Cornwall, far away from the corruption of the e-mails. Owen Oswald from Wales was on drums, other Pithead Stompers were blowing and scraping hell out of a saxophone, a clarinet and a double bass. In the centre of it all, in his shirt sleeves and slapping a guitar, Bonzo Ballard was calling loudly on some unknown baby to light his fire.

I went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of Château Thames Embankment. How long would it be, I wondered, before these middle-aged men grew up and forgot the girls they might have known in the past? Lacking Hilda's determination, I couldn't turn them out. I poured myself a large glass and hoped for sleep.

‘Members of the Jury. This case has occupied only ten days of your lives. In a week or two you will have forgotten every detail about the dead budgerigar, the torn-up photograph of Sean Connery, the mouldering poached egg on toast behind the sitting-room curtain and the mysterious cry (was it a call for help, as the prosecution invite you to believe, or the delighted shriek produced by a moment of sexual ecstasy?) which could be heard issuing from 42B Mandela Buildings on that sultry and fatal night of July the twenty-third. All this has been but a part, a fleeting moment perhaps, of your lives, but for the woman I represent, the woman who has endured every scrap of innuendo, scandal and abuse the almighty Crown Prosecution Service can dredge up, with the vast resources of the State at their disposal, for her this case represents the whole of her future life. That and nothing less than that is at stake in this trial. And it is her life I now leave, Members of the Jury, in your hands, confident that she will hear from your foreman, in the fullness of time, the words that will give the remainder of her life back to her: “Not Guilty!” So I thank you for listening to me, Members of the Jury. I rest my case.'

The sweetest moment of an advocate's life comes when he sits down after his final speech, legs tired of standing, shirt damp with honest sweat, mouth dried up with words. He sits back and a great weight slides off his shoulders. There's absolutely nothing more that he can do. All the decisions, the unanswered questions, the responsibility for banging up a fellow human being, have now shifted to the Judge and the Jury. The defence has rested and the Old Bailey hack can rest with it.

As I sat, relaxed, and placed my neck comfortably against the wooden rail behind me, I removed the wig, scratched my head for comfort, and put it on again. As I rested, I looked for a moment at His Honour Judge Bullingham, an Old Bailey Judge now promoted to trying murders. To call them trials is perhaps to flatter the learned Judge, who conducts the proceedings as though the Old Bailey were a somewhat prejudiced and summary offshoot of the Spanish Inquisition. One of my first jobs as a defending counsel in the present case was to taunt and tempt, by many daring passes of the cape and neat side-steps in the sand, the bellowing and red-eyed bull to come out as such a tireless fighter on behalf of the prosecution that the Jury began to see him as I did. They might, perhaps, acquit my client because an ill-tempered Judge was making it so desperately clear that he wanted her convicted.

But who had killed the budgerigar, a bird which, it seemed, had stood equally high in the regard of both the husband and the wife? It was as I toyed with this question, in an increasingly detached sort of way, that I closed my eyes and found not darkness but a sudden flood of bright golden light into which the familiar furnishings of Court Number One at the Old Bailey seemed to have melted away and vanished. Then I saw a small black dot which, rushing towards me like a shooting star, grew rapidly into the face of His Honour Judge Bullingham, who filled the landscape wearing the complacent expression of a man about to pass a sentence of life imprisonment. Then I heard a voice, deeper and more alarming than that of any clerk of the Court I had ever heard before, saying, ‘Have you reached a verdict on which you all agree?' ‘We have,' some faint voice answered. ‘Do you find the defendant Rumpole guilty or not guilty?' But before the answer could be given, the great light faded, and Bullingham's face melted away with it. There was a stab of pain in my chest, night fell and I became, I suppose, unconscious.

 

Undoubtedly, this was a dramatic way of ending a closing speech. Mrs Ballard, known round the Bailey as Matey, was soon on the scene, as I understand it loosening my collar and pulling off my wig. The prosecutor rose to ask His Honour what steps he wished to take in view of the complete collapse of Mr Rumpole.

‘He's not dead. I'm sure of that.' Bullingham declined to accept the evidence. ‘He's tried that one on me before.' This was strictly true, when, many years before, the stubborn old Bull dug his heels in and refused an adjournment, so I had to feign death as the only legal loophole left if I wanted to delay the proceedings.
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I put on, as I thought, a pretty good performance on that occasion. But this was no gesture of theatrical advocacy. Matey made the appropriate telephone call. An ambulance, howling with delight, was enjoying its usual dangerous driving round Ludgate Circus. Strong men in uniform, impeded by offers of incompetent help from the prosecution team no doubt thankful to see the back of me, rolled me out of my usual seat and on to a stretcher. So I left Court (was it for the last time?) feet first.

 

 

‘I know what this is,' I thought as I looked upon the vision of hell. My chest was still crunching with pain. There was a freezing draught blowing scraps of torn-up and discarded paper across the lino, and a strong smell composed of equal parts rubber and disinfectant. I saw some shadowy figures, a mother with a child on her lap, a white-faced girl with staring eyes and a scarlet mouth, an old man, his tattered coat tied with string, who seemed to have abandoned all hope and was muttering to himself, a patient Chinese couple, the woman holding up a hand swathed in a bloodstained bandage. They all sat beneath a notice which read: ‘Warning. The average waiting time here is four and a half hours.' It seemed a relatively short period measured against eternity. If this place wasn't hell, I thought, it was, at least, some purgatorial anteroom.

When I had opened my eyes I had found myself staring at the ceiling, yellow plaster mysteriously stained, a globe surrounding a light in which, it seemed, all the neighbourhood insects had come to die. Then I realized, with a sudden pang, that I was lying on some particularly hard surface. It felt like metal and plastic and I was more or less covered with a blanket. Then a vision appeared, a beautiful Indian girl with a clipboard, wearing a white coat and a look of heavenly confusion. Perhaps this wasn't hell after all.

‘Hello, Mr Robinson. Are you quite comfortable?'

‘No.' I still had, so it seemed, retained the gift of speech.

‘No, you're not comfortable?'

‘No, and I'm not Mr Robinson either.'

‘Oh. So that's all right then.' She made a tick somewhere on her clipboard and vanished. I missed her but could no longer worry. I stirred with discomfort and went back to sleep.

When I woke up again, it must have been much later. The windows which once let in faint daylight were now black. The old man who had once sat quietly was now wandering round the room, muttering complaints and, from time to time, shouting ‘Vengeance is mine!' or ‘Up the Arsenal!'. There was a clattering as of a milk cart parking, and a formidable machine was wheeled up beside me, a thing of dials and trailing wires steered by a young man this time, also in a white coat. He had a large chin, gingery hair and an expression of thinly disguised panic. He also had another clipboard which he consulted.

‘Ted Robinson?'

‘No.'

‘Collapsed in the workplace?'

‘If you call the Old Bailey a workplace. Which I certainly never do.'

‘All the same, you collapsed, didn't you?'

He'd got me there. ‘Yes,' I had to admit. ‘I collapsed completely.'

‘All right, Mr Robinson. I'll just get you wired up.'

‘But I'm really not...'

‘You'll make it much easier for both of us if you don't talk. Just lie still and relax.'

I lay still as wires were fixed to me. I watched a line on a flickering screen which seemed to be on a perpetual downward curve. The stranger in the white coat was also watching. In the end the machine handed him a scrap of paper.

‘Rest. A time in bed,' he told me. ‘That's the best we can do for you.'

‘But I haven't got a bed.'

‘Neither have we.' He began to laugh, holding on to my arm as though he wanted me to join in the joke. ‘Neither have we.' He repeated the phrase, as though to squeeze the last drops of laughter out of it. ‘I expect someone, sometime, will do something about it. In the meantime, your job is to rest. Have you got that, Mr Rumpole?'

‘You know my name?'

‘Of course I do. We've got it written down. I don't know why you kept calling yourself Robinson all the time.'

No doubt the man worked unsociable hours. He wandered away from me in a sort of daze. Everything became terribly silent and, once again, I fell asleep despite the crunching pain.

My sleep was not undisturbed. Half awake and only a little conscious, I felt that I was on the move. I opened my eyes for a moment and saw the ceiling of a long passage gliding past. Then gates clanged. Was I at last going the way of too many of my customers? Was I being banged up? It was a possibility I chose to ignore until I felt myself rolled over again. I caught a glimpse of a kindly black face, the brilliant white teeth and hands pulling, in a determined way, at what was left of my clothing. Then I was alone again in the darkness, and I heard, like the waves of a distant sea, the sounds of low incessant snores, and the expulsion of breath was like the rattle of small stones on the beach as the waves retreat.

 

 

‘I didn't bring you grapes, Rumpole. I thought you wouldn't want grapes.'

‘No interest in grapes.' My voice, as I heard it, came out in a hoarse whisper, a ghostly shadow of the rich courtroom baritone which had charmed Juries and rattled the smoothest bent copper telling the smoothest lies. ‘I'm only interested in grapes when they've been trodden underfoot, carefully fermented and bottled for use in Pommeroy's Wine Bar.'

‘Don't talk so much. That's a lesson you'll have to learn from now on, Rumpole.'

I looked at Hilda. She had smartened herself up for this hospital visit, wearing her earrings, a new silk blouse and smelling a great deal more strongly than usual of her Violetta Eau de Toilette.

‘I thought you wouldn't want flowers, Rumpole.'

‘No. You're right, Hilda, I wouldn't want flowers.' Plenty of time for flowers, I thought, later.

‘Flowers always look so sick in a hospital.'

‘That's right, of course. Most of us do!'

Conversation between myself and She Who Must Be Obeyed was flowing like cement. It wasn't that we were embarrassed by the presence of other men on the ward. The snorer, the tooth-grinder, the serial urinator had headphones glued to their ears, their heads nodding gently to the beat of the easy listening. The young man who had lost a kidney held the hand of his visiting girlfriend; they only spoke occasionally and in whispers. The other youngish man, perhaps in his thirties, brown-haired with soft, appealing eyes and a perpetually puzzled expression, lay in the bed next to mine. His was a face I recognized from newspapers and the television, and I knew his name was David Stoker and that he had been operated on as a result of gunshot wounds.

‘Let this be a lesson to you, Rumpole,' Hilda went on remorselessly. ‘You've got to give it all up.'

This was how she spoke to me at home and she made no effort to moderate her tone, although the much-bandaged Stoker was well within earshot.

‘Give what up, Hilda? I don't really mind giving up anything, so long as it's not small cigars or Pommeroy's very ordinary or the Bar.'

‘That's the one!'

‘Which one?'

‘The Bar. That's what you've got to give up. Well, after this business it's perfectly obvious you can't go on with it. All these criminals you're so fond of defending will just have to go off to prison quietly, and about time too, if you want my opinion, Rumpole.'

‘Of course I want your opinion, Hilda. But ...'

‘No “but” about it. I've spoken to the doctor here.'

‘That was nice of you. How is he?'

‘He's perfectly well, Rumpole. Which is more than can be said about you. It's your heart. You've put too great a strain on it. You do understand that, don't you?'

‘Is that what he said?'

‘His very words.'

‘He called me Robinson.' I thought of the most likely explanation for this ridiculous verdict. ‘He's seriously overworked. I don't think, Hilda, you should attach the slightest importance to his evidence.'

‘That woman you were defending when you passed out. Your last case, Rumpole. The woman who stabbed her husband. You got her off.'

‘I know,' I said. ‘They let me read the Sunday papers. The Jury found she didn't mean to stab him. She held the knife to keep him away and he stumbled and fell on it. That's what the Jury believed.'

‘What you persuaded them to believe.'

‘I have a certain skill, as an advocate.'

‘A skill that'll finish you off, Rumpole, if you don't give it up entirely.'

‘Anyway, he wasn't a particularly nice man. He wrung her budgerigar's neck.'

‘Oh, well, then I suppose he deserved it.' She was easily persuaded. ‘But now you've given it all up, you'll be able to enjoy life.'