John Mortimer - Rumpole A La Carte Read online

  John Mortimer - Rumpole A La Carte

  I suppose, when I have time to think about it, which is not often during the long day's trudge round the Bailey and more down-market venues such as the Uxbridge Magistrates Court, the law represents some attempt, however fumbling, to impose order on a chaotic universe. Chaos, in the form of human waywardness and uncontrollable passion, is ever bubbling away just beneath the surface and its sporadic outbreaks are what provide me with my daily crust, and even a glass or two ofPommeroy's plonk to go with it. I have often noticed, in the accounts of the many crimes with which I have been concerned, that some small sign of disorder, an unusual number of milk bottles on a doorstep, a car parked on a double yellow line by a normally law-abiding citizen, even, in the Penge Bungalow Murders, someone else's mackintosh taken from an office peg, has been the first indication of anarchy taking over. The clue that such dark forces were at work in La Maison JeanPierre, one of the few London eateries to have achieved three Michelin stars and to charge more for a bite of dinner for two than I get for a legal aid theft, was very small indeed.

  Now my wife, Hilda, is a good, plain cook. In saying that, I'm not referring to She Who Must Be Obeyed's moral values I or passing any judgment on her personal appearance. What I can tell you is that she cooks without flights of fancy. She is not, in any way, a woman who lacks imagination. Indeed some of the things she imagines Rumpole gets up to when out of her sight are colourful in the extreme, but she doesn't apply such gifts to a chop or a potato, being quite content to grill the one and boil the other. She can also boil a cabbage into submission fry fish. The nearest her cooking comes to the poetic is, perhaps, in her baked jam roll, which I have always found to be an emotion best recollected in tranquillity. From all this, you will gather that Hilda's honest cooking is sufficient but not exotic, and that happily the terrible curse of nouvelle cuisine has not infected Froxbury Mansions in the Gloucester Road.

  So it is not often that I am confronted with the sort of fare photographed in the Sunday supplements. I scarcely ever sit down to an octagonal plate on which a sliver of monkfish is arranged in a composition of pastel shades, which also features a brush stroke of pink sauce, a single peeled prawn and a sprig of dill. Such gluttony is, happily, beyond my means. It wasn't, however, beyond the means of Hilda's cousin Everard, who was visiting us from Canada, where he carried on a thriving trade as a company lawyer. He told us that he felt we stood in dire need of what he called 'a taste of gracious living' and booked a table for three at La Maison JeanPierre.

  So we found ourselves in an elegantly appointed room with subdued lighting and even more subdued conversation, where the waiters padded around like priests and the customers behaved as though they were in church. The climax of the ritual came when the dishes were set on the table under silvery domes, which were lifted to the whispered command of (Un, deux, trois!' to reveal the somewhat mingy portions on offer.

  Cousin Everard was a grey-haired man in a pale grey suiting who talked about his legal experiences in greyish tones. He entertained us with a long account of a takeover bid for the Winnipeg Soap Company which had cleared four million dollars for his clients, the Great Elk Bank of Canada. Hearing this, Hilda said accusingly, 'You've never cleared four million dollars for a client, have you, Rumpole? You should be a company lawyer like Everard.' 'Oh, I think I'll stick to crime,' I told them. 'At least it's a more honest type of robbery.' 'Nonsense. Robbery has never got us a dinner at La Maison Jean-Pierre. We'd never be here if Cousin Everard hadn't come all the way from Saskatchewan to visit us.' ' 'Yes, indeed. Prom the town of Saskatoon, Hilda.' Everard gave her a greyish smile.

  'You see, Hilda. Saskatoon as in spittoon.' 'Crime doesn't pay, Horace,' the man from the land of the igloos told me. 'You should know that by now. Of course, we have several fine-dining restaurants in Saskatoon these days, but nothing to touch this.' He continued his inspection of the menu. 'Hilda, may I make so bold as to ask, what is your pleasure?' During the ensuing discussion my attention strayed. Staring idly round the consecrated area I was startled to see, in the gloaming, a distinct sign of human passion in revolt against the forces of law and order. At a table for two I recognized Claude Erskine-Brown, opera buff, hopeless cross-examiner and long-time member of our Chambers in Equity Court. But was he dining tete-a-tete with his wife, the handsome and successful Q.C., Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, the Portia of our group, as law and order demanded? The answer to that was no. He was entertaining a young and decorative lady solicitor named Patricia (known to herself as Tricia) Benbow.

  Her long golden hair (which often provoked whistles from the cruder junior clerks round the Old Bailey) hung over her slim and suntanned shoulders and one generously ringed hand rested on Claude's as she gazed, in her usual appealing way, up into his eyes. She couldn't gaze into them for long as Claude, no doubt becoming uneasily aware of the unexpected presence of a couple of Rumpoles in the room, hid his face behind a hefty wine list.

  At that moment an extremely superior brand of French head waiter manifested himself beside our table, announced his presence with a discreet cough, and led off with, 'Madame, messieurs. Tonight Jean-Pierre recommends, for the main course, la poesie de la poitrine du canard aux celeris et epinards crus.' ft Poesie...' Hilda sounded delighted and kindly explained, 'That's poetry, Rumpole. Tastes a good deal better than that old Wordsworth of yours, I shouldn't be surprised.' 'Tell us about it, Georges.' Everard smiled at the waiter.

  'Whet our appetites.' 'This is just a few wafer-thin slices of breast of duck, marinated in a drop or two of Armagnac, delicately grilled and served with a celery remoulade and some leaves of spinach lightly steamed...' 'And mash...?'! interrupted the man to ask.

  'Excusez-moi?' The fellow seemed unable to believe his ears.

  'Mashed spuds come with it, do they?' 'Ssh, Rumpole!' Hilda was displeased with me, but turned all her charms on Georges. 'I will have the poesie. It sounds delicious.' 'A culinary experience, Hilda. Yes. Poesie for me too, please.' Everard fell into line.

  'I would like a poesie of steak and kidney pudding, not pie, with mashed potatoes and a big scoop of boiled cabbage. English mustard, if you have it.' It seemed a reasonable enough request.

  'Rumpole!' Hilda's whisper was menacing. 'Behave yourself!' 'This... "pudding"', Georges was puzzled, 'is not on our menu.' ' "Your pleasure is our delight". It says that on your menu.

  Couldn't you ask Cookie if she could delight me? Along those lines.' ' "Cookie"? I do not know who M'sieur means by "Cookie".

  Our maitre de cuisine is Jean-Pierre O'Higgins himself. He is in the kitchen now.' 'How very convenient. Have a word in his shell-like, why don't you?' For a tense moment it seemed as though the looming, priestly figure of Georges was about to excommunicate me, drive me out of the Temple, or at least curse me by bell, book and candle. However, after muttering, 'Si vous Ie voulez.

  Excusez-moi,' he went off in search of higher authority. Hilda apologized for my behaviour and told Cousin Everard that she supposed I thought I was being funny. I assured her that there was nothing particularly funny about a steak and kidney pudding.

  Then I was aware of a huge presence at my elbow. A tall, fat, red-faced man in a chef's costume was standing with his hands on his hips and asking, 'Is there someone here wants to lodge a complaint?' Jean-Pierre O'Higgins, I was later to discover, was the product of an Irish father and a French mother. He spoke in the tones of those Irishmen who come up in a menacing manner and stand far too close to you in pubs. He was well known, I had already heard it rumoured, for dominating both his kitchen and his customers; his phenomenal rudeness to his guests seemed to be regarded as one of the attractions of his estab
lishment. The gourmets of London didn't feel that their dinners had been entirely satisfactory unless they were served up, by way of a savoury, with a couple of insults from JeanPierre O'Higgins.

  'Well, yes,' I said. 'There is someone.' 'Oh, yes?' O'Higgins had clearly never heard of the old adage about the customer always being right. 'And are you the joker that requested mash?' 'Am I to understand you to be saying,' I inquired as politely as I knew how, 'that there are to be no mashed spuds for my delight?' 'Look here, my friend. I don't know who you are...' JeanPierre went on in an unfriendly fashion and Everard did his best to introduce me. 'Oh, this is Horace Rumpole, JeanPierre.

  The criminal lawyer.' Criminal lawyer, eh?' Jean-Pierre was unappeased. 'Well, don't commit your crimes in my restaurant. If you want "mashed spuds", I suggest you move down to the workingmen's caff at the end of the street.' 'That's a very helpful suggestion.' I was, as you see, trying to be as pleasant as possible.

  'You might get a few bangers while you're about it. And a bottle of OK sauce. That suit your delicate palate, would it?' 'Very well indeed! I'm not a great one for wafer-thin slices of anything.' 'You don't look it. Now, let's get this straight. People who come into my restaurant damn well eat as I tell them to!' 'And I'm sure you win them all over with your irresistible charm.' I gave him the retort courteous. As the chef seemed about to explode, Hilda weighed in with a well-meaning 'I'm sure my husband doesn't mean to be rude. It's just, well, we don't dine out very often. And this is such a delightful room, isn't it?' 'Your husband?' Jean-Pierre looked at She Who Must Be Obeyed with deep pity. 'You have all my sympathy, you unfortunate woman. Let me tell you, Mr Rumpole, this is La Maison Jean-Pierre. I have three stars in the Michelin. I have thrown out an Arabian king because he ordered filet mignon well cooked. I have sent film stars away in tears because they dared to mention Thousand Island dressing. I am JeanPierre O'Higgins, the greatest culinary genius now working in England!' I must confess that during this speech from the patron I found my attention straying. The other diners, as is the way with the English at the trough, were clearly straining their ears to catch every detail of the row whilst ostentatiously concentrating on their plates. The pale, bespectacled girl making up the bills behind the desk in the corner seemed to have no such inhibitions. She was staring across the room and looking at me, I thought, as though I had thoroughly deserved the O'Higgins rebuke. And then I saw two waiters approach ErskineBrown's table with domed dishes, which they laid on the table with due solemnity.

  'And let me tell you,' Jean-Pierre's oration continued, 'I started my career with salads at La Grande Bouffe in Lyons under the great Ducasse. I was rotisseur in Le Crillon, Boston.

  I have run this restaurant for twenty years and I have never, let me tell you, in my whole career, served up a mashed spud!' The climax of his speech was dramatic but not nearly as startling as the events which took place at Erskine-Brown's table. To the count of 'Un, deux, trois!' the waiters removed the silver covers and from under the one in front of Tricia Benbow sprang a small, alarmed brown mouse, perfectly visible by the light of a table candle, which had presumably been nibbling at the poesie. At this, the elegant lady solicitor uttered a piercing scream and leapt on to her chair. There she stood, with her skirt held down to as near her knees as possible, screaming in an ever-rising scale towards some ultimate crescendo.

  Meanwhile the stricken Claude looked just as a man who'd planned to have a quiet dinner with a lady and wanted to attract no one's attention would look under such circumstances.

  'Please, Tricia,' I could hear his plaintive whisper, 'don't scream! People are noticing us.' 'I say, old darling,' I couldn't help saying to that three-star man O'Higgins, 'they had a mouse on that table. Is it the speciality de la maisony A few days later, at breakfast in the mansion flat, glancing through the post (mainly bills and begging letters from Her Majesty, who seemed to be pushed for a couple of quid and would be greatly obliged if I'd let her have a little tax money on account), I saw a glossy brochure for a hotel in the Lake District. Although in the homeland of my favourite poet, Le Chateau Duddon, 'Lakeland's Paradise of Gracious Living', didn't sound like old Wordsworth's cup of tea, despite the 'king-sized four-poster in the Samuel Taylor Coleridge suite'.

  'Cousin Everard wants to take me up there for a break.' Hilda, who was clearing away, removed a half-drunk cup of tea from my hand.

  'A break from what?' I was mystified.

  'From you, Rumpole. Don't you think I need it? After that disastrous evening at La Maison?' 'Was it a disaster? I quite enjoyed it. England's greatest chef laboured and gave birth to a ridiculous mouse. People'd pay good money to see a trick like that.' ' You were the disaster, Rumpole,' she said, as she consigned my last piece of toast to the tidy-bin. 'You were unforgivable.

  Mashed spuds! Why ever did you use such a vulgar expression?' 'Hilda,' I protested, I thought, reasonably, 'I have heard some fairly fruity language round the Courts in the course of a long life of crime. But I've never heard it suggested that the words "mashed spuds" would bring a blush to the cheek of the tenderest virgin.' 'Don't try to be funny, Rumpole. You upset that brilliant chef, Mr O'Higgins. You deeply upset Cousin Everard!' 'Well', I had to put the case for the Defence, 'Everard kept on suggesting I didn't make enough to feed you properly.

  Typical commercial lawyer. Criminal law is about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Commercial law is about money.

  That's what I think, anyway.' Hilda looked at me, weighed up the evidence and summed up, not entirely in my favour. 'I don't think you made that terrible fuss because of what you thought about the commercial law,' she said. 'You did it because you have to be a "character", don't you? Wherever you go. Well, I don't know if I'm going to be able to put up with your "character" much longer.' I don't know why but what she said made me feel, quite suddenly and in a most unusual way, uncertain of myself.

  What was Hilda talking about exactly? I asked for further and better particulars.

  'You have to be one all the time, don't you?' She was clearly getting into her stride. 'With your cigar ash and steak and kidney and Pommeroy's Ordinary Red and your arguments.

  Always arguments! Why do you have to go on arguing, Rumpole?' 'Arguing?

  It's been my life, Hilda,' I tried to explain.

  'Well, it's not mine! Not any more. Cousin Everard doesn't argue in public. He is quiet and polite.' 'If you like that sort of thing.' The subject of Cousin Everard was starting to pall on me.

  'Yes, Rumpole. Yes, I do. That's why I agreed to go on this trip.' 'Trip?' 'Everard and I are going to tour all the restaurants in England with stars. We're going to Bath and York and Devizes.

  And you can stay here and eat all the mashed spuds you want.' 'What?' I hadn't up till then taken Le Chateau Duddon entirely seriously. 'You really mean it?' 'Oh, yes. I think so. The living is hardly gracious here, is it?' v". '•' ' • ' On the way to my place of work I spent an uncomfortable quarter of in hour thinking over what She Who Must Be Obeyed had said about me having to be a 'character'. It seemed an unfair charge. I drink Chateau Thames Embankment because it's all I can afford. It keeps me regular and blots out certain painful memories, such as a bad day in Court in front of Tudge Graves, an old darling who undoubtedly passes iced water every time he goes to the Gents. I enjoy the fragrance of a small cigar. I relish an argument. This is the way of life I have chosen. I don't have to do any of these things in order to be a character. Do I?

  I was jerked out of this unaccustomed introspection on my arrival in the clerk's room at Chambers. Henry, our clerk, was striking bargains with solicitors over the telephone whilst Dianne sat in front of her typewriter, her head bowed over a lengthy and elaborate manicure. Uncle Tom, our oldest inhabitant, who hasn't had a brief in Court since anyone can remember, was working hard at improving his putting skills with an old mashie niblick and a clutch of golf balls, the hole being represented by the waste-paper basket laid on its side.

  Almost as soon as I got into this familiar
environment I was comforted by the sight of a man who seemed to be in far deeper trouble than I was. Claude Erskine-Brown came up to me in a manner that I can only describe as furtive.

  'Rumpole,' he said, 'as you may know, Philly is away in Cardiff doing a long fraud.' 'Your wife,' I congratulated the man, 'goes from strength to strength.' 'What I mean is, Rumpole', Claude's voice sank below the level of Henry's telephone calls, 'you may have noticed me the other night. In La Maison JeanPierre.' 'Noticed you, Claude? Of course not! You were only in the company of a lady who stood on a chair and screamed like a banshee with toothache. No one could have possibly noticed you.' I did my best to comfort the man. 'It was purely a business arrangement,' he reassured me.

  'Pretty rum way of conducting business.' 'The lady was Miss Tricia Benbow. My instructing solicitor in the V.A.T. case,' he told me, as though that explained everyAing.

  'Claude, I have had some experience of the law and it's a good plan, when entertaining solicitors in order to tout for briefs, not to introduce mice into their plats dujour.' The telephone by Dianne's typewriter rang. She blew on her nail lacquer and answered it, as Claude's voice rose in anguished protest. 'Good heavens. You don't think I did that, do you, Rumpole? The whole thing was a disaster! An absolute tragedy! Which may have appalling consequences...' 'Your wife on the phone, Mr Erskine-Brown,' Dianne interrupted him and Claude went to answer the call with all the eager cheerfulness of a French aristocrat who is told the tumbril is at the door. As he was telling his wife he hoped things were going splendidly in Cardiff, and that he rarely went out in the evenings, in fact usually settled down to a scrambled egg in front of the telly, there was a sound of rushing water without and our Head of Chambers joined us.