Rumpole and the Angel of Death (29 page)

‘You must be a quick worker.'

‘What?'

‘I said you must be a quick worker. Didn't you arrive today?'

‘Oh, no. I've been here a few days. Getting used to the atmosphere. I must say, it's all been quite stimulating.'

‘A few days?' I raised my eyebrows at a complacently smiling Ballard. ‘I'm surprised that Marguerite let you off the leash for so long.'

‘I have to confess' – Soapy Sam didn't look at all ashamed – ‘I wasn't entirely candid about the date of our
cause célebre
.'

‘You mean you told her that Hashimi started last Wednesday?'

‘Something like that, yes.'

‘I bet they've got that written down, in the great charge- sheet in the sky.'

‘The God I believe in,' he had the nerve to tell me, ‘is deeply understanding of human frailty. You only flew over this morning, did you? That must be exhausting for you, at your age. I expect you're longing for your bed. Well, mustn't keep you.'

‘So what are
you
going to do? Hang around until the clock strikes another hour?'

‘Never you mind, Rumpole. There are better things to do in Strasburg than to wait for the clock to strike, I'm bound to tell you.'

As I left the cathedral, I saw, in the shadows of an empty pew, a fair head bent in prayer. To my surprise, Betsi Hoprecht was kneeling, no doubt interdenominationally calling on the God of the clock to ally Himself with the Merciful, the Compassionate, for the protection of Amin Hashimi.

It was a short walk to the Hotel D'Ange Rouge, and from my bedroom I could still hear the odd calls of love from the backpackers who loitered round the cathedral or staggered home singing. I lay in bed reading the written brief to the Court of Human Rights, a somewhat long document prepared by Fishlock with an analysis of all the British cases on bias. The Judges were welcome to it. What I profoundly hoped would stir them out of their international coma would be the Rumpole address, the rallying cry against injustice, the devastating destruction of Billy Bloxham with which I expected to win the day. I heard the cathedral clock strike one and then I turned out my light.

It was a warm spring night and the window on to the little balcony that overlooked the square was open and the curtain flapping. The window of the next room must have been open also, and I heard the sound of a strong woman, who sounded very much like Betsi Hoprecht, laughing. The full and disturbing significance of this was not revealed to me until the next morning, however, when, setting out eagerly for breakfast, I saw none other than Soapy Sam Ballard emerge from the next- door room in question. He was shaved, bathed and, I had a shrewd suspicion, slightly perfumed. He was wearing his
Droits de l'Homme
anorak and looked like the cat that had got at the cream.

It was Sunday, a day of rest and respite before battle was joined between myself, a freelance, and the Government of Her Britannic Majesty, in the person of its improbable champion, Soapy Sam Ballard, Q.C. Breakfast was held in a small, hot room which I found to be crowded. Ballard was at a table in the corner with some unremarkable person I thought to be connected with H.M.G. The only seat I could find was at a table set for three at which the curly-headed Poppy was already installed, smiling vaguely and peeling an orange. I asked if I could sit down.

‘Why not? Jeremy won't be here for hours. He's sleeping off the choucroute.'

I put in a request for ham and eggs and looked thoughtfully back towards my Head of Chambers. I tried to see him in a new light: Casanova Ballard, Soapy Don Juan, Lord Byron Ballard, bedroom Ballard, high in the list of the world's great lovers, and then the mind, I have to confess it, boggled. It also failed to come to terms with the idea of that slimmed-down Betsi Hoprecht on her way to Ballard's bed, even though she was kneeling, as though hoping for a miracle, in prayer as a necessary preliminary.

‘Bloody Europe!'

I looked around for the source of this condemnation and decided it could only have come from the smiling Poppy, whose orange, by now, was neatly peeled and quartered.

‘So you're a Euro-sceptic?' I thought she was, on the whole, preferable to that grumpy group of M.P.s who had appointed themselves the Prosecutors of the Common Market.

‘Sceptic's not the word for it! Other people get taken to the Seychelles, or the Caribbean, or even Acapulco.'

‘Other people?'

‘Other people's girlfriends, I mean. When my daughter starts looking for a lover, I'll say I don't give a toss what he is doing, just so long as he's not a Euro M.P. I wouldn't even mind Jeremy being an M.P. if he took me out in England, but at home he's always at terrible black-tie dinners where we mustn't be seen together. He has to go on holiday with his wife and dear little Sebastian, who has to get postcards from everywhere and last-minute presents at the airport. All I see of the world is Brussels and Luxemburg and Strasburg, where there's nothing to do except eat until the brass buttons on your Chanel suit shoot off like bullets. You've left your wife at home?'

I had to admit it.

‘I thought so! Everyone leaves their wives at home when they go to Strasburg. Jeremy's wife has taken little Sebastian to Brighton. God, how I envy them.'

‘Aren't we going on a trip round the wine towns?'

‘You haven't done that before?'

‘No.'

‘Jeremy and I've done it almost more times than we've had sex. Those little half-timbered buildings you wander round as though you were Hansel and bloody Gretel. And you know what the aim and object of the whole exercise is? Yes, you're right. A socking great lunch!'

At which point Betsi Hoprecht strode into the breakfast room, clapped her hands three times and announced that the bus would leave from the front entrance in exactly twenty-five minutes and would we make sure that we were on it. At her entrance, Ballard smiled in as sickly and ingratiating a manner as Malvolio in the play. Betsi returned this greeting with what I thought was an admirably contrived glare of nonrecognition.

The Tokay d'Alsace tasted of grapes, a gentle flavour far removed from the chemical impact of Pommeroy's Reasonable White. The sun shone on the restaurant terrace, it glittered on the glasses and ice-bucket, and was warm on our faces. Around us the tops of the pinkish, plastered houses bulged like huge bosoms, kept in place by the ribbons of dark oak. Their steep tiled roofs were pierced with the eyes of numberless dormer windows. Flowers clambered round a well in the centre of the square and, on the slender, sand-coloured church steeple, the clock stood at half past one. We had filled the minibus and now occupied another long restaurant table. The rimless professor was there, as was the man in the consular service and his gardener wife. Jeremy Jameson was there, smiling with a mixture of defiance and guilt. He had come downstairs late, buttoning his shirt, which was not satisfactorily tucked into his crumpled linen trousers. Poppy was smiling, sipping Tokay, and reading the
Mail on Sunday,
hot from the morning plane and greeted by her like a missing child.

‘Our whole team is here.' I was sitting next to Betsi and she was giving me her full and flattering attention. ‘All of us are behind you, Mr Rumpole. Cheering you on!'

‘Not that little chap from the consular service, surely? Isn't he on the side of H.M. Government?'

‘Well, he should be, of course. That is where his duty lies. But his heart is with us, Mr Rumpole. He has read all of your memoirs, he tells me. Some of them twice over.'

‘Is that really so?' I looked down the table at Eddie Parsloe with a new respect.

‘“We must be free or die.” He says the spirit of your poet Wordsworth breathes through you.'

‘Well, that's remarkably civil of him.'

‘And Lady Mary, she's what you would call a hoot, isn't she?'

‘And do you know your Common Market's only going to allow us three varieties of bloody begonia?' Lady Mary Parsloe was hooting at the unfortunate Nordic professor. ‘It's a disgrace. They'll be at our floribunda roses next.'

‘What about Samuel Bollard, Q.C.? You didn't think of inviting him?'

‘Mr
Ballard,
I have to correct you. Ballard is his name.'

‘I know that perfectly well.'

‘So why do you call him by the wrong name then?'

‘I suppose in the hope of irritating him.'

‘But he is a very nice man.' To my distress, a faraway look came into her pale blue eyes. She was wearing a crisp white dress, which showed off her brown arms to advantage. She smelt of clean linen and rustled like a hospital nurse. ‘Also, he is your boss, I think.'

‘You think wrong,' I had to tell her.

‘He is Head of your Chambers?'

‘Bollard has made himself responsible for the coffee machine and the paper clips. But I am a free spirit and a freelance advocate.'

‘You are not afraid of him?'

‘Of course not.' I felt full of courage, though I must confess that we had got through a number of bottles of Tokay with considerable help from me. ‘An advocate can't afford to be afraid.'

‘So' – Betsi gave me a display of blindingly white teeth – ‘you are afraid of nothing or nobody?'

‘Except sometimes,' I had to confess, ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed.'

‘Who is this she?'

‘As a matter of fact, my wife, Hilda.'

‘And you have to obey?'

‘Well. No. Of course not.'

‘So why do you call her that? Is it to irritate her?'

‘It seems to describe her.'

‘I feel it describes certain aspects of your character more. You are very English, Mr Rumpole. That's your characteristic, I think.'

I wanted to ask her if she found Soapy Sam Ballard was a good lover but my courage failed me. In any event we were interrupted by an even louder hoot from Lady Mary.

‘That shower running Europe couldn't organize a village fête in Gloucestershire, I have to tell you.'

‘You've got to admit, Lady Mary' – Peter Fishlock came galloping to the defence of Europe – ‘The Common Market has kept peace in Europe.'

‘Oh, yes? Didn't I read somewhere they're blowing each other up in Bosnia – or whatever you call it. Shooting children in playgrounds. Ethnic cleansing. But I suppose Yugoslavia's not in Europe. Where is it? China or somewhere?'

‘Worse than that.' Poppy was reading a bit out of her
Mail on Sunday.
‘Saddam Hussein's buying stolen Russian nuclear weapons. We're all going to get blown up.'

There was a sudden, strangely uncomfortable silence, as though we had all been brought face to face with the ending of the world. And then Betsi leaned across the table and took the paper out of Poppy's hands. Poppy looked disappointed, as though deprived of a favourite toy, but said nothing.

‘Neither Russia nor Iraq,' my instructing solicitor reminded us, ‘is in the European Common Market.'

Poppy said, ‘Lucky old them.' And Betsi, turning the pages of the paper, said, ‘Here's some
really
important news. Your Princess Fergie is short of cash!' They all relaxed. The world crisis was clearly over, forgotten in the
important news.

‘You must have got to know Bollard before I arrived?' I said to Betsi.

‘He is a very charming man.'

‘Do you really think so? Charming in what sort of way exactly?'

‘Perhaps' – Betsi was thoughtful – ‘like all Englishmen, the charm lies in the innocence.'

‘And you say you only got to know him a little?' I remembered the laughter from the bedroom with a certain pang.

‘Quite enough to know that he will take a civilized attitude tomorrow. I think you will find him very reasonable.'

‘He asked me to be reasonable too.'

‘What did you say?'

‘I said I had no intention of being reasonable. I intend to fight him with every weapon at my command.'

‘You know' – Betsi looked at me thoughtfully – ‘I asked Mr Fishlock why he didn't employ a more important barrister than you, a barrister of the same rank as Mr Ballard.'

‘Oh, really?' I did my best to appear cool and hoped that I didn't sound envious of Soapy Sam. ‘And what did Fishlock say?'

‘He said he had every faith in you as a defender of human rights.'

It was at that point that the bill arrived and was grabbed by Jeremy Jameson, M.E.P., with a cry of ‘I need this for my expenses.' He slapped his pocket and discovered that he'd left his credit cards in his other jacket and announced that he was writing out a cheque and could he borrow a pen from someone. I lent him mine and happened to see a cheque book of an unusual mauve variety. I also saw that our lunch was to be paid for by funds lodged in Netherbank of Queen Victoria Street, London.

Fresh air, Tokay and dislike of myself for feeling jealous of Soapy Sam Ballard ended in exhaustion as I sat in my room and tried to compose a rousing speech about the human rights of Amin Hashimi. I had decided to call it a day, sink into bed and rely in Court on the inspiration of the moment (such moments have rarely let me down), when the telephone rang and what sounded much like a voice from the tomb said, ‘Is that you, Horace? This is Billy speaking. I say, could you spare me five minutes, old fellow? I'm in a bar quite near your hotel.' It was this sudden use of Christian names that startled me about the beleaguered Judge. I didn't want to talk to him. I certainly didn't want to see him. Any contact between us at that moment could only lead to embarrassment. And yet I had to go and meet the old idiot. It was no longer a visit to a Judge; it was almost like the daily duty of a trip down the cells to cheer up an unsuccessful villain facing trial for a serious offence. I put my jacket on, stuffed my back pocket with a handful of francs, and went off to the tryst. I hadn't far to go, a small dark bar in the rue des Juifs close to the cathedral.