Rumpole and the Primrose Path Read Online Free Page A

Primrose Path far behind me. I’m in Chambers.’
    ‘You’re in Chambers? Whatever are you doing in Chambers? Go back to the nursing home at once!’ Hilda’s orders were clear and to be disobeyed at my peril. I took the risk.
    ‘Certainly not. I’m coming home to Gloucester Road. And I don’t need nursing any more.’
     
    It would be untrue to say that there was - at first, anyway - a hero’s welcome for the returning Rumpole. There were no flowers, cheers, or celebratory bottles opened. There was the expected denunciation of the defendant Rumpole as selfish, ungrateful, irresponsible, opinionated, wilful and, not to put too fine a point upon it, a pain in the neck to all who had to deal with him. But behind these stiff sentences, I got the strange and unusual feeling that Hilda was fairly pleased to see me alive and kicking and to discover that I had, so far as could be seen, passed out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death and had come back home, no doubt to give trouble, probably to fail to cooperate with her best-laid schemes, but at least not gone for ever.
    I have to admit that our married life has not been altogether plain sailing. There have been many occasions when the icy winds of Hilda’s disapproval have blown round Froxbury Mansions. There have been moments when the journey home from the Temple felt like a trip up to the front line during a war which seemed to have no discernible ending. But, in all fairness, I have to say that her behaviour in the matter of the Rumpole Memorial Service was beyond reproach. She told me of the impending visit of the two QC s, and when Ballard let her know, over the telephone, that they planned a ‘fitting tribute to Rumpole’s life’, she guessed what they were after and even suffered, she admitted with apparent surprise, a curious feeling of loss. She had telephoned the Primrose Path and spoken to Sister Sheila, who was able to tell her, much to her relief, that ‘Mr Rumpole was being as awkward as ever!’ Now that I appeared to be back in the land of the living, she was prepared to fall in with my master plan and enable me to eavesdrop, as the two leading pomposities of our Chambers unfolded their plans to mark the end of Rumpole’s life on earth.
    Accordingly, I was shut away in the kitchen when Ballard and Erskine-Brown arrived. Hilda left the sitting-room door ajar, and I moved into the hall to enjoy the conversation recorded here.
     
    ‘We’re sure you would like to join us in offering up thanks for the gift of Rumpole’s life, Mrs Rumpole,’ Soapy Sam started in hushed and respectful tones.
    ‘A gift?’ She Who Must Be Obeyed sounded doubtful. ‘Not a free gift, certainly. It had to be paid for with a certain amount of irritation.’
    ‘That,’ Ballard had to concede, ‘is strictly true. But one has to admit that Horace achieved a noticeable position in the Courts. Notwithstanding the fact that he remained a member of the Junior Bar.’
    ‘Albeit a rather elderly member of the Junior Bar,’ Claude had to remind Hilda.
    ‘It’s true that he never took a silk gown or joined us in the front row. The Lord Chancellor never made him a QC,’ Ballard admitted.
    ‘His face didn’t fit,’ Claude put it somewhat brutally, I thought, ‘with the establishment.’
    ‘All the same, many of the cases he did brought him -’ Ballard hesitated and Claude supplied the word:
    ‘Notoriety.’
    ‘So we want to arrange a Memorial Service. In the Temple Church.’
    It was at this point that She Who Must Be Obeyed offered a short, incredulous laugh. ‘You mean a Memorial Service for Rumpole?’
    ‘That, Mrs Rumpole, Hilda if I may,’ Ballard seemed relieved that the conversation had, at last, achieved a certain clarity, ‘is exactly what we mean.’
    ‘We’re sure that you, of course, Hilda, and Rumpole’s family and friends would wish to join us in this act of celebration.’
    ‘Friends?’ Hilda sounded doubtful and added, I thought unkindly,