Free Rumpole Misbehaves by John Mortimer Page A

hope your application for silk goes well, Rumpole,’ he said. ‘I can’t be sure what view the committee’ll take of you. They haven’t had many barristers who’ve been given an ASBO by the members of their own chambers. We’ll have to see how that works out.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got to rush. Dinner at the Swedish Embassy. That’ll hardly be a laugh a minute.’
    Then he left me to think back on our conversation, which I hadn’t found particularly amusing either.

18
    WELL-KNOWN CRIMINAL BARRISTER
FACES JAIL FOR BREAK OF ASBO!
    Mr Horace Rumpole, famous for his defence tactics in some high-profile murder cases, is having to defend a new client in the magistrates’ court today–himself!
    The news was blasted to its readers by the Daily Fortress . And now I found myself what I had never thought to be, a defendant before a ‘district judge’ (stipendiary magistrates we used to call them), rising to make a final speech on behalf of that dangerous and determined criminal Horace Rumpole, BA (the letters added after a rather poor study of the law at Keble College).
    Of course I had not taken the ASBO seriously. Who could have? I kept a bottle or two of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary in the filing cabinet and I lit up my small cigars without noticing any rise in the water level along the Thames Embankment.
    I did notice an embarrassed silence when I entered the client’s room. Mizz Liz Probert seemed too embarrassed to speak to me as I picked up some documents concerning my ASBO and filed them in the wastepaper basket, unread. But when I asked our clerk, Henry, if I was in court next week, he told me that I was, in order to attend my own trial.
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    The prosecution was undertaken by a certain Lesley Perkins, a lady counsel who had to be corrected by me several times during her opening address. I had not even been paid the compliment of a competent prosecutor. No one from my chambers had the time to turn up at the proceedings. The press benches, however, were full of excited scribblers eager to join in the persecution of the Lion of the Old Bailey.
    What surprised me more was that Hilda had been particularly sympathetic as I left at breakfast time to face my final humiliation. She knew there were those in my chambers who were hellbent on destroying my reputation. ‘They won’t win, Rumpole,’ she said as we parted and after she had cooked me a couple of eggs on a fried slice to give me strength for the fight to come. ‘We’ll get you out of this somehow,’ she went on, in what I then thought was a vain promise, intended only to raise false hopes.
    I had helpfully admitted the truth of all the complaints brought before the court. Now the district judge, a pale figure with a long, inquisitive nose who had clearly enjoyed my prosecution more than his normal trade of drink-driving and soliciting in the streets, said, ‘Well, Mr Rumpole, what have you got to say for yourself?’
    â€˜I don’t speak for myself, sir. I speak for all those unfortunate enough to be caught up in this new type of illegal procedure.’
    â€˜Are you calling the ASBO rules “illegal”? You’d better go back to Parliament and tell them they made a mistake.’
    This unhappy attempt at a joke by the judge was aimed at the journalists, who rewarded it with suppressed titters.
    â€˜No need for that,’ I told him. ‘But you must see the absurdity of this nonsensical and inept piece of legislation. What is my crime? I have looked through the statutes over and over again and nowhere do I find that eating at your desk is a criminal activity.
    â€˜I keep a bottle or two of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary claret in my filing cabinet drawer. This is not Pichon-Longueville perhaps, but drinking it if you have the courage and the stamina is surely not a criminal offence.
    â€˜We live in an unhappy period when the government