John Mortimer - Rumpole And The Alternative Society

From "Rumpole of the Bailey"

In some ways the coppers, the Fuzz, Old Bill, whatever you may care to call them, are a very conservative body. When they verbal up the criminal classes, and report their alleged confessions in the Nick, they still use the sort of Cockney argot that went out at the turn of the century, and perfectly well-educated bank robbers, who go to the ballet at Covent Garden and holidays in Corfu, are still reported as having cried,' It's a fair cop, guv,' or 'You got me bang to rights,' at the moment they're apprehended. In the early 19705 however, when Flower Power flooded the country with a mass of long hair, long dresses and the sweet smell of the old quarter of Marrakesh, the Fuzz showed itself remarkably open to new ideas. Provincial drug squads were issued with beads, Afghan waistcoats, headbands and guitars along with their size eleven boots, and took lessons in a new language, learning to say,' Cool it man,' or' Make love not war,' instead of 'You got me bang to rights.'

It was also a time when the figures of the establishment fell into disrepute and to be a barrister, however close to the criminal fraternity, was to be regarded by the young as a sort of undesirable cross between Judge Jeffries and Mr Nixon, as I knew from the sullen looks of the young ladies Nick, who was then at Oxford and reading P.P.E., brought home in the holidays. I have never felt so clearly the number of different countries, all speaking private languages and with no diplomatic relations, into which England is divided. I cannot think for instance of a world more remote from the Temple or the Inns of Court than that tumble-down Victorian house in the west country (No. 34 Balaclava Road, Coldsands) which the community who inhabited it had christened 'Nirvana', and which contained a tortoise who looked to me heavily drugged, a number of babies, some surprisingly clean young men and women, a pain-in-the-neck named Dave, and a girl called Kathy Trelawny whom I never met until she came to be indicted in the Coldsands Crown Court on a charge of handling a phenomenal amount of cannabis resin, valued at about ten thousand pounds.

Coldsands is a rather unpopular resort in the west of England with a high rainfall, a few Regency terraces, a large number of old people's homes, and a string quartet at tea-time in the Winter Gardens] on the face of it an unlikely place for crime to flourish. But a number of young people did form a community there at 'Nirvana', a place which the local inhabitants regarded as the scene of numerous orgies. To this house came a dealer named Jack, resplendent in his hippie attire, to place a large order for cannabis which Kathy Trelawny set about fulfilling, with the aid of a couple of Persian law students with whom she had made contact at Bristol University. Very soon after the deal was done, and a large quantity of money handed over, Jack the Hippie was revealed as Detective Sergeant Jack Smedley of the local force, the strong arm of the law descended on 'Nirvana', the Persian law students decamped to an unknown address in Morocco, and Rumpole, who had had a few notable successes with dangerous drugs, was dug out of Old Bailey and placed upon the 12.15 from Paddington to Coldsands, enjoying the lare luxury of a quiet corner seat in the first-class luncheon car, by courtesy of the Legal Aid Fund of Great Britain.

I could afford the first-class luncheon, and spread myself the more readily, as I was staying in a little pub on the coast not five miles from Coldsands kept by my old mates and companions in arms (if my three years in the R.A.F. ground staff can be dignified by so military a title), ex-Pilot Officer 'Three-Fingers' Dogherty and his wife Bobby, CX-WAAF, unchallenged beauty queen of the station at Dungeness, who was well known to look like Betty Grable from behind and Phyllis Dixey from the front and to have a charm, a refreshing impertinence and a contempt for danger unrivalled, I am sure, by either of those famous pinups from Reveille. I have spoken of Bobby already in these reminiscences and I am not ashamed to say that, although I was already married to Hilda when we met, she captured my heart, and continued to hold it fast long after the handsome Pilot Officer captured hers. I was therefore keenly Booking forward to renewing my acquaintance with Bobby; we had had a desultory correspondence but we hadn't met for many years. I was also looking forward to a holiday at the seaside, for which Miss Trelawny's little trouble seemed merely to provide the excuse and the financial assistance.

So I was, as you can imagine, in a good mood as we rattled past Reading and cows began to be visible, standing in fields, chewing the cud, as though there were no law courts or judges in the world. You very rarely see a cow down the Bailey, which is one of the reasons I enjoy an occasional case on circuit. Circuit takes you away from Chambers, away from the benevolent despotism of Albert the clerk, above all, away from the constant surveillance of She Who Must Be Obeyed (Mrs Hilda Rumpole). I began to look forward to a good, old-fashioned railway lunch. I thought of a touch of Brown Windsor soup, rapidly followed by steamed cod, castle pudding, mouse-trap, cream crackers and celery, all to be washed down with a vintage bottle of Chateau Great Western as we charged past Didcot.

A furtive-looking man, in a short off-white jacket which showed his braces and a mournful expression, looked down at me.

'Ah waiter. Brown Windsor soup, I fancy, to start with."

' We're just doing the Grilled Platter, sir.' I detected, in the man's voice, a certain gloomy satisfaction.

'Grilled-what?'

' Fried egg and brunch-burger, served with chips and a nice tomato.'

'A nice tomato! Oh, very well.' Perhaps with a suitable anaesthetic the brunch-burger could be taken. 'And to drink. A reasonable railway claret?'

'No wines on this journey, sir. We got gin in miniatures.'

'I don't care for gin, at lunchtime, especially in miniatures.'

Regretfully I came to the conclusion that circuit life had deteriorated and wondered what the devil they had done with all the Brown Windsor soup.

At Coldsands Station a middle-aged man in a neat suit and rimless glasses was there to meet me. He spoke with a distinct and reassuring west-country accent.

'Air Horace Rumpole? I'm Friendly.'

' Thank God someone is!'

'I was warned you liked your little joke, Mr Rumpole, by London agents. They recommended you as a learned counsel who has had some success with drugs.'

'Oh, I have had considerable success with drugs. And a bit of luck with murder, rape and other offences against the person.'

'I'm afraid we don't do much crime at Friendly, Sanderson and Friendly. We're mainly conveyancing. By the way, I think there's a couple of typing errors in the instructions to counsel.' Mr Friendly looked deeply apologetic.

I hastened to reassure him.' Fear not, Friendly. I never read the instructions to counsel. I find they blur the judgtment and confuse the mind.'

We were outside the Station now, and a battered taxi rattled into view.

' You'll want to see the client?' Friendly sounded resigned.

' She might expect it.'

'You're going to "Nirvana"?'

'Eventually. Aren't we all? No, Friendly. I shall steer clear of the lotus eaters of No. 34 Balaclava Road. A land, I rather imagine, in which it seems always afternoon. Bring the client for a con at my hotel. After dinner. Nine o'clock suit you?'

' You'll be at the George ? That's where the Bar put up.'

'Then if it's where the Bar put up, I shall avoid it. I'm staying with old mates, from my days in the R.A.F. They run a stately pleasure-dome known as the Crooked Billet.'

'The little pub place out on the bay?' I noticed Friendly smiled when he spoke of the Dogherty's delight, a place, I had no doubt, of a high reputation. The taxi had stopped now, and I was wrestling with the door. When I had it open, I was in a high and holiday mood.

' Out on the bay indeed! With no sound but the sea sighing and the muted love call of the lobster. Know what I say. Friendly? When you get a bit of decent crime at the seaside... Relax and enjoy it!'

Friendly was staring after me, perhaps understandably bewildered, as I drove away.

The taxi took me out to the Crooked Billet and back about twenty-five years. The pub was on the top of some cliffs, above a sandy beach and a leaden sea. From the outside it seemed an ordinary enough building, off-white, battered, with a neglected patch of garden; but inside it was almost a museum to the great days of World War Two. Behind the bar were Sam's trophies, a Nazi helmet, a plaster Mr Churchill which could actually puff a cigar, a model Spitfire dangled from the ceiling, there were framed photographs of ex-Pilot Officer Dogherty in his flying jacket, standing by his beloved Lancaster and a signed portrait of Vera Lynn at the height of her career. Even the pin-table appeared to be an antique, looted from some NAAFI. There was also an old piano, a string of fairy lights round the bottles and a comforting smell of stale booze. Someone was clanking bottles behind the bar, but I could see no more than a comfortable bottom in old blue slacks. I put out a red alert.

' Calling all air crew! Calling all air crew! Parade immediately.' At which Bobby Dogherty turned, straightened up and smiled.

Age had not actually withered her, but it had added to the generosity of her curves. Her blonde hair looked more metallic than of old, and the lines of laughter round her mouth and eyes had settled into permanent scars. She had a tipped cigarette in her mouth and her head was tilted to keep the smoke out of her eyes. She looked, as always, irrepressibly cheerful, as if middle age, like the War, was a sort of joke, and there to be enjoyed.

'Rumpole. You old devil!'

'You look beautiful,' I said, as I had often done in the past, and meant it just as much.

' Liar! Drop of rum ?' I didn't see why not and perched myself on a bar stool while she milked the rum bottle. Soon Rumpole was in reminiscent mood.

'Takes me right back to the NAAFI hop. New Year's Eve, 1943. Sam was out bombing something and I had you entirely to myself- for a couple of hours of the Boomps-a-Daisy... Not to mention the Lambeth Walk.' I raised my glass and gave our old salutation,' Here's to the good old duke!'

'The good old duke.' Bobby was on her second gin and tonic, and she remembered. 'You never took advantage.'

I lit a small cigar. It caught me in the back of the throat. ' Something I shall regret till the day I cough myself into extinction. How's old Sam ? How's ex-Pilot Officer' Three-Fingers' Dogherty?'

'Bloody doctor!' For the first time, Bobby looked less than contented.

'Doctor?'

'Doctor Mackay. Came here with a face like an undertaker.' She gave a passable imitation of a gloomy Scottish medico.' "Mrs Dogherty, your husband's got to get out of the licensing trade or I'll not give him more than another year. Get him into a small bungalow and on to soft drinks." Can you imagine Sam in a bungalow?'

' Or on soft drinks! The mind boggles!'

' He'll find lime juice and soda has a pleasant little kick to it. That's what the doctor told me.'

'The kick of a mouse, I should imagine. In carpet slippers.'

' I told the quack, Sam's not scared. Sam used to go out every night to kill himself. He misses the war dreadfully.'

' I expect he does.'

' Saturday night in the Crooked Billet and a bloody good piss-up. It's the nearest he gets to the old days in the R.A.F.'

'You want to be careful... he doesn't rush out and bomb Torquay,' I warned her, and was delighted to see her laugh.

' You're not joking! The point is... should I tell Sam?'

'Won't your Doctor Mackay tell him?'

'You know how Sam is. He won't see hide nor hair of the doctor. So what should I do?'

' Why ask me ?' I looked at her, having no advice to give.

'You're the bloody lawyer, darling. You're meant to know everything!'

At which point I was aware that, behind us, a man had come into the bar. I turned and saw him scowling at us. He was wearing a blazer, an R.A.F. scarf in an open shirt and scuffed suede shoes. I saw a good-looking face, grey hair and a grey moustache, all gone slightly to seed. It was none other than ex-Pilot Officer Sam' Three-Fingers' Dogherty.

'We're not open yet!' He seemed to have not yet completely awakened from a deep afternoon kip, as he advanced on us, blinking at the lights round the bar.

' Sam! Can't you see who it is ?' Bobby said, and her husband, who had at last identified the invasion, roared at me.

'My God, it's old grounded Rumpole! Rumpole of the ops room!' He moved rapidly to behind the bar and treated himself to a large Teachers which he downed rapidly. 'What the hell brings you to this neck of the woods?'

'He wrote us a letter.'

'Never read letters. Here's to the good old duke!' He was on his second whisky, and considerably more relaxed.

'What brings me? A lady... you might say, a damsel in bloody great distress.'

'You're not still after Bobby, are you?' Sam was only pretending to be suspicious.

' Of course. Till the day I die. But your wife's not in distress exactly.'

'Aren't I?' Bobby looked down into the depths of her gin and tonic, and I filled them in on the nature of my mission.

'The lady in question is a certain Miss Kathy Trelawny. One of the lotus eaters of "Nirvana", 34 Balaclava Road. Done for the possession of a suitcase full of cannabis resin.'

I had put up, as we used to say in the old days, a Black. If I had asked the Reverend Ian Paisley to pray for the Pope, I couldn't have invited an icier gaze of disapproval than Sam gave me as he said,' You're defending her ?'

'Against your crafty constabulary. Come in here, does she?'

'Not bloody likely! That crowd from Balaclava Road wouldn't get past the door. Anyway, they don't drink.' The glass of Teachers was recharged to banish the vision of the lotus eaters invading the Crooked Billet.

'Dear me. Is there no end to their decadence? But you know my client?'

'Never clapped eyes on her, thank God! No doubt she's about as glamorous as an unmade bed.'

'Oh, no doubt at all.' Gloomily, I thought he was almost certainly right, something peering through glasses, I thought, out of a mop of unwashed hair. Sam came out from behind the bar and started to bang about, straightening chairs and tables, switching on more lights.

' How can you defend that creature?'

'Easy! Prop myself to my feet in Court and do my best.'

' But you know damn well she's guilty!'

It's the one great error everyone makes about my learned profession; they think we defend people who have told us they did the deed. This legend doesn't add to the esteem in which barristers are held, and I sighed a little as I exploded the myth for the thousandth time.

'Ah, there you're wrong. I don't know that at all.'

'Pull the other one!" Sam shared the usual public view of legal eagles.

'I don't know. And if she ever admitted it to me, I'd have to make her surrender and plead " Guilty". We've got a few rules, old sweetheart. We don't deceive Courts, not on purpose.'

'You mean, you think she's innocent?' Sam made it clear that no one who lived in a commune called 'Nirvana' could possibly be innocent of anything.

'He told you, Sam! He's got rules about it.' Bobby was polishing glasses and coming to the rescue of an old friend.

'At the moment I think she's the victim of a trick by the police. That's what I'll have to go on thinking, until she tells me otherwise.'

'That's ridiculous! The police don't trick people. Not in England.' Sam clearly felt he'd not delivered us from the Nazi hordes for nothing.

'Never had a plain clothes copper come in here and order a large Scotch after closing time?' I asked him.

' The bastards! But that's entirely different.'

'Yes, of course.'

'Anyway, who's paying you to defend Miss Slag-Heap? That's what I'd like to know.' Sam was triumphant. It hurt me, but I had to tell him.

'Fasten your seat belt, old darling. You are! Miss Kathy Trelawny is on legal aid. And I am here by courtesy of the ratepayers of Coldsands.' I lifted my rum in Sam's direction. 'Thank you, "Three-Fingers." Thank you for your hospitality.'

'Bloody hell.' Sam sounded more sorrowful than angry, and it gave him an excuse to turn the handle once more on the Teachers.

'We don't mind, do we, Sam?' As always Bobby's was the voice of tolerance. 'We don't mind buying Horace the odd drink occasionally.'

Later I sat in the residents' lounge, a small room which opened off the bar, and tried to shut out the considerable noise made by Sam's regular customers, middle-aged men mostly, in a sort of uniform of cavalry twill trousers and hacking jackets. I was working on my brief and already I had a plan of campaign. When the Detective Sergeant went to buy Miss Trelawny's cannabis he was disguised as a hippie and acting, I was quite prepared to argue, as an agent provocateur. If I could establish that my client would never have committed any sort of crime unless the police had invited her to I might, given a fair wind and a sympathetic judge, have the whole of the police evidence excluded which would lead to the collapse of the prosecution, a Zen service of thanksgiving at 'Nirvana', and Rumpole triumphant. I had brought a number of law reports on the question of agent provocateur and was interested to discover that it was the old hanging judges who regarded these beasts with particular disfavour; it's odd how gentler days have somehow dimmed our passion for liberty.

I had worked out an argument that might appeal to a judge who still had some of the old spark left in him when the door from the bar opened to admit Mr Friendly and my client.

I had, I felt, known Miss Kathy Trelawny for a long time. She had floated before my eyes from my early days with the old Oxford Book of English Verse, as Herrick's Julia, or Lovelace's Lucasta, or 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', or the 'Lady of Shallot'. As she smiled, she reminded me strongly of Rosalind in the forest of Arden, or Viola comforting the love-sick Duke. She had a long, slender neck, a mass of copper-coloured hair, friendly blue eyes and she was exceedingly clean. As soon as I saw her I decided that my one ambition in life was to keep her out of Holloway. I had to take a quick gulp from the glass beside me before I could steady my nerve to read out a passage from the depositions. Miss Trelawny was sitting quietly looking at me as if I was the one man in the world she had always wanted to meet, and she hoped we would soon be finished with the boring case so we could talk about something interesting, and deeply personal.

'"Real cool house, man,"' I was reading out the Detective Sergeant's evidence with disgust. '"You can't score nothing in this hick town. You don't get no trouble from the Fuzz"?' 'Just from the way the old darling talked, didn't you twig he was a Sergeant from the local Drug Squad?'

Miss Trelawny showed no particular reaction, and Friendly quickly filled the silence. 'My client has never come up against the police before.'

' We'll have a bit of fun with this case,' I told them.

'What sort of fun exactly?' Friendly sounded doubtful, as if he didn't exactly look on the coming trial as the annual dinner dance of the Coldsands Rotary.

'A preliminary point! In the absence of the jury we will ask the judge to rule the whole of Detective Sergeant Jack Smedley, alias Jack the Hippie's evidence inadmissable. On the sole ground...'

' On what sole ground ?'

'That it was obtained contrary to natural justice, in that it constituted a trick. That it is the testimony of an agent provocateur.'

' We don't get many of those in conveyancing.' Friendly looked distinctly out of his depth.

'A nasty foreign expression, for a nasty foreign thing. Spies and infiltrators! Policemen in disguise who worm their way into an Englishman's home and trap him into crime!'

'Why should they do that, Mr Rumpole?' I stood up and directed my answer at my client. Her warm and all-embracing smile, and her total silence, were beginning to unnerve me. ' So they can clap innocent citizens into chokey and notch up another conviction on their collective braces! Bloody unBritish - like bidets and eating your pud after the cheese! Now, I mean your average circuit judge... Circus judges... we call them down the Bailey.'

Friendly consulted a note. 'It's his Honour James Crispin-Rice tomorrow.'

We were in luck. I knew old Rice Crispies well at the Bar. He was a thoroughly decent chap, who had once stood as a Liberal candidate. He was the product of the Navy and a minor public school. No doubt he'd had it firmly implanted in him in the fourth form - never trust a sneak.

They had left the door slightly open, and through it I could hear the old familiar sound of Bobby thumping the piano.

' You think he might rule out the evidence ?'

I got up and shut the door, blotting out some remarkable tuneless rendering of the Golden Oldies which had started up a cote de Chez Dogherty.

' If we can implant a strong dislike of Sergeant Smedley in the old darling,' I told them. 'Disgusting behaviour, your Honour. The police are there to detect crime, not manufacture it. What's the country coming to? Constables tricked out in beads and singing to a small guitar conning an innocent girl into making

huge collections of cannabis resin from some Persian pushers she met at Bristol University. She'd never have done it if the policeman hadn't asked her!'

'Wouldn't you. Miss Trelawny?' Friendly gave her the cue to speak. She ignored it, so on I went showing her my quality.

'Withdraw the evidence from the jury, your Honour! It's un-English, unethical and clearly shows that this crime was deliberately created by the police. The whole business is a vile outrage to our age-old liberties.' Wordsworth crept into my mind and I didn't send him about his business. 'It is not to be thought of that the Flood Of British freedom, which to the open sea...' I paused, insecure on the words and then, very quietly and for the first time, Miss Kathy Trelawny spoke, with words appropriattly supplied by the old sheep of the Lake District.

'Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity Hath flowed, "with pomp of waters unwithstood,"... Should perish.'

She looked at me, I took over.

' We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake...' I decided I'd had enough of Wordsworth, and asked her, surprised, 'You know it?'

'Wordsworth? A little.'

'I thought no one did nowadays. Whenever I come out with him in the Bar Mess they look amazed. Unusual, for a client to know Wordsworth.'

' I teach kids English.'

'Oh yes. Of course you do.' I had learned from the brief that all the inhabitants of' Nirvana' were in work.

'There's one thing I wanted to ask you.' Now she had broken the ice, there seemed to be no holding her, but Friendly stood up, as if anxious to bring the conference to an end.

' Well, we shouldn't keep Mr Rumpole any longer.'

'Ask me, Miss Trelawny?'

'Yes.' Her smile was unwavering. 'What do you want me to say exactly?'

'Say? Say nothing! Look... rely on me, with a little help from Wordsworth. And keep your mouth firmly closed.'

I opened the door. Great gusts of singing blew in on us from the bar. Bobby's voice was leading, ' We'll meet again Don't know where Don't know when, But we're bound to meet again Some sunny day.'

I remembered my craven cowardice in not speaking to Bobby on the occasion of the NAAFI hop, and I asked Miss Trelawny to join me for a drink. Fortunately, Friendly remembered that his wife would be waiting up for him, and I took my client alone into the bar.

As we sat at the counter, Sam came up to us swaying only slightly, like a captain on the deck of his well-loved ship. He looked at Kathy Trelawny with amazed approval.

' Where did you get this popsy, Rumpole ?' He leant across the bar to chat to my client intimately. 'You shouldn't be with the ground staff, my dear. You're definitely officer material. What's it to be?'

' I'll have a coke. I don't drink really." She was smiling at him, the smile I thought, uncomfortably, of universal love bestowed on everyone, regardless of age or sex.

'Oh,don'tyou? You don't drink!' Sam took offence. 'There's nothing else you don't do, is there?'

' Quite a lot of things.' Sam ignored this and recalled the Good Old Days as he passed me a rum.

'Remember, Rumpole? We used to divide the popsies into beer WAAFS and gin WAAFS.' He winked at Kathy Trelawny. ' In my opinion you're a large pink gin.'

' She told you, Sam. She doesn't drink,' I reminded Sam. He was getting impatient.

'Did you pick up this beautiful bit of crackling in a bloody Baptist Chapel?' He poured Miss Trelawny a Coca-Cola.

'Take no notice of him, my dear. You can be teetotal with Rumpole. But let's launch our friendship on a sea of sparkling shampoo!'

' I'd probably sink,' Kathy Trelawny smiled at him.

'Not with me you wouldn't. Let me introduce myself. Pilot Officer "Three-Fingers"Dogherty. "Three-Fingers" refers to the measures of my whisky. My hands are in perfect order.' To demonstrate this he put a hand on hers across the bar.

' I haven't met many pilot officers."

Kathy, I feel I know her well enough to call her Kathy for the rest of this narrative} withdrew her hand. She was still smiling.

'Well, you've met me, my dear!' Sam rambled on undiscour-aged.' One of the glamour boys. One of the Brylcreem brigade. One of the very, very few.' He stood himself another Teachers. 'And if I had a crate available, I'd bloody well smuggle you up in the sky for a couple of victory rolls. You see him... You see "Groundstaff Rumpole?" Well, we'd leave him far below us! Grounded!'

' I don't think we should do that,' Kathy protested. The only time she stopped smiling was when Sam made a joke.

'Why ever not?' Sam frowned.

'I think I'm going to need him.' As she said this I felt ridiculously honoured.

'Rumpole? Why ever should you need Rumpole? What did you say your name was ?'

'I didn't.'

Now my time had come. I had great pleasure in performing the introduction.

'This is Miss Kathy Trelawny. Of "Nirvana", 34 Balaclava Road.' And I added, in a whisper to Sam, 'the well-known unmade bed'.

Sam looked like a man who has just lifted what he imagined was a glass of vintage champagne and discovered it contained nothing but Seven Up. He looked at Kathy with pronounced distaste and said,' No bloody wonder you don't drink.'

' It's just something I don't like doing.' She smiled back at him.

'Naturally. Naturally you won't have a pink gin like a normal girl. Excuse me.' He moved away from us, shouting, 'Drink up please. Haven't any of you lot got homes ?'

The piano stopped, people started to drift out into the night.

'Was that meant to be a joke... All that "pilot officer" business?' Kathy asked me.

'No joke at all. Sam was a great man on bombers. He could find any target you'd care to mention, in the pitch dark, on three fingers of whisky... He was good, Sam. Extremely good.'

'You mean good at killing people?' When she put it like that, I supposed that was what I did mean. Kathy turned to look at Bobby, who was sitting on the piano stool, lighting a cigarette. She asked me and I told her that was Sam's wife and I used to think she was gorgeous.

' Gorgeous for the war time, anyway. Things were a bit utility then.'

'And now?'

I looked at her.' Children seem to grow up more beautiful. It must be the orange juice.'

'Or the peace?'

Sam gave us a crescendo version of 'Time Please' and I walked my client to the bus shelter. It was a still, rather warm September night. The sea murmured perpetually, and the moonlight lit up the headland and whitened the strip of beach. There were only very few words for it, and I recited them to Kathy as we moved away from the cars starting up round the Crooked Billet.

' It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration -'

'We read poetry. At the house,' Kathy told me. 'It's a good way to end the day. Someone reads a poem. Anything.' And then she shivered on that warm night, and said, 'They won't lock me up will they?"

' I told you. We'll knock out the evidence! Put your trust in Rumpole!' I tried to sound as cheerful as possible, but she stood still, trembling slightly, her hand on my arm.

'My brother Pete's locked up in Turkey... twelve years. He was always such a scared kid. He couldn't sleep with the door shut. Neither of us could.'

' What on earth did your brother do in Turkey?'

'Drugs,' she said, and I wondered what sort of an idiot her brother must be. Then she asked me,' Will it be over soon?'

'It'll be over.'

There were lights coming up the hill, to take her away from me.

'That's my bus... why don't you come and see me in "Nirvana"?'

Then the most strange thing happened, she leant forward and kissed me, quite carefully on the cheek. Then she was gone, and I was saying to myself, "Nirvana"? Why ever not?' I walked back to the Crooked Billet in a state of ridiculous happiness. Flower power that year was exceedingly potent.

I was up early the next morning, sinking a boiled egg in the residents' lounge as the sun sparkled on the sea and Bobby fussed around me, pouring tea. Sam was still asleep, God was in his heaven and with old Rice Crispies on the bench I could find nothing particularly wrong with the world. After breakfast I put a drop of eau-de-cologne on the handkerchief, ran a comb through the remaining hair and set off for the Coldsands seat of justice.

When I got down to the Shire Hall, and into the wig and gown, I had my first view of the inhabitants of 'Nirvana', the lotus eaters of 34 Balaclava Road. They were out in force, clean jeans, Mexican-looking shawls, the statutory baby. One tall coloured boy whom I later discovered to be called 'Oswald' was carrying a small flute. I just hoped they weren't going to mistake the whole business for a bit of harmless fun round the South African Embassy.

'Morning. You must be Rumpole. Welcome to the Western Circuit.' I was being addressed by a tall fellow with a rustic tan beneath his wig, a gentleman farmer and gentleman barrister. I looked down to discover if he had jodphur boots on under the pinstripes.

' Tooke. Vernon Tooke's my name. I'm prosecuting you.'

'Awfully decent of you.' I smiled at him.

Tooke glanced disapprovingly at my supporters club.

' I say, Rumpole. Where did you get that shower from? Rent-a-hippie. What a life, eh... Gang-bangs on the National Assistance?'

Did I detect in Farmer Tooke's voice - a note of envy ?

'Used to be a decent area,' he continued, 'Balaclava Road. Until that lot got their foot in the door. Squatters, are they?'

'They've got a nine-year lease. And they've all got jobs. The only fellows scrounging off the State, Tooke, are you and I!'

' Really Rumpole ?' Tooke looked pained.

' Well, they're paying you on the rates, aren't they?'

'Most amusing!' He looked as if I'd pointed out a bad case of foot and mouth in the herd, but he offered me a cigarette from a gold case. I refused and produced the remains of a small cigar from the waistcoat pocket. Tooke ignited it with a gold lighter.

'Is this going to take long?" he asked anxiously. 'Coldsands gymkhana tomorrow. We tend to make it rather a day out.'

'Take long? I don't suppose so. It's quite a simple point of law.'

'Law, Rumpole... Did you say law?" The casually dropped word seemed to fill Tooke with a certain amount of dread.

' That's right. You do have law, I suppose, down on the Western Circuit?'

I left Tooke and moved towards the commune. A young man with dark hair and a permanent frown who seemed to be their leader greeted me, as I thought, in an unfriendly fashion.

' You her lawyer ?'

I admitted it, Kathy, smiling as ever, introduced him to me as a friend of hers, named Dave Hawkins. I speculated, with a ridiculous stab of regret, that the friendship was a close one.

'This is Dave.'

'Oh yes?'

'Will she be going in today?" Dave wanted to be put in the picture.

'In?'

'Into the witness box. I mean, there's something I want her to say. It's pretty important.'

I was accustomed to being the sole person in charge of my cases. I put Dave right patiently. 'Dave. May I call you Mr Hawkins? If I were a doctor taking out your appendix, old darling, you wouldn't want Kathy, would you, telling me where to put the knife?' At this point the usher came out of court and called,

' Katherine Trelawny.'

'You'd better answer your bail.' As I said this Kathy gave a little shiver and asked me.' Will they lock me up now?'

' Of course not. Trust me.'

The usher called her again. I dropped the remnants of the small cigar on the marble floor of the Shire Hall and ground it underfoot. The lance was in the rest, Sir Galahad Rumpole was about to do battle for the damsel in distress, or words to that effect.

Half-way through the afternoon things were going pretty well. Rice Crispies, doing his job in a very decent fashion, was decidedly interested in the point of agent provocateur. Kathy was smiling in the dock, the commune were gripped by the spectacle, and outside the Court room the baby, unaware of the solemnity of the occasion, was yelling lustily. In the witness box, Detective Sergeant Jack Smedley was looking extremely square, clean shaven and in his natty Old Bill uniform.

' I see Detective Sergeant,' I had the pleasure to put to him, 'you are no longer wearing your beads.'

' Beads ? What beads are those ?' The judge was puzzled.

'I was wearing beads, your Honour - on the occasion of my visits to 34 Balaclava Road.'

'Beads! With the uniform?' His Honour couldn't believe his ears. No one had sported beads in the Navy.

'Not with the uniform! With the embroidered jeans, and the waistcoat of Afghan goat, and the purple silk drapery knotted round your neck.' I pursued my advantage.

' I was in plain clothes, your Honour.'

'Plain clothes, Sergeant? You were in fancy dress!' I rode over a titter from the commune. 'Now perhaps you'll tell the Court. What's happened to your gaucho moustache ?'

'I... I shaved it off.'

'Why?'

'In view of certain comments, your Honour, passed in the Station. It wasn't a gaucho. More a Viva Zapata, actually.'

'A Viva, what was that, Mr Rumpole?' The judge seemed to feel the world slipping away from him.

'The officer was affecting the moustache, your Honour, of a well-known South American revolutionary.' This news worried the old darling on the bench deeply.

'A South American! Can you tell me, officer, what was the purpose of this elaborate disguise?' The witness paused. I filled the gap with my humble submission.

'May I suggest an answer, Sergeant? You took it into your head to pose as a drug dealer in order to trap this quite innocent young woman...' I had the pleasure of pointing out Kathy in the dock... 'into taking part in a filthy trade she wouldn't otherwise have dreamed of."

'Well yes, but...'

'What did he say?' Rice Crispies pounced on the grudging admission.

'Your Honour.' The witness tried to start again.

' Shorthand writer, just read me that answer.'

There was a long pause while the elderly lady shuffled through her notes, but at last the passage was reproduced.

'... in order to trap this quite innocent young woman into taking part in a filthy trade.'' Well yes, but..."

The judge made a note of that. I could have kissed the old darling. However, I pressed on.

' But what, Sergeant?'

' She wasn't so innocent.'

' What reason had you to suppose that?'

'Her way of life, your Honour.'

' What I want you to tell me, officer, is this.' The judge weighed in in support of Rumpole. 'Did you have any reason to believe that this young woman was dealing in drugs before you went there in your Viva... What?'

' Zapata, your Honour," I helped him along.

'Thank you, Mr Rumpole. I'm much obliged.'

'We had received certain information.' The sergeant did his best to make it sound sinister.

'And will you let us into the secret, officer. What was this information?'

' That Miss Trelawny was the type to get involved.'

' Involved by you?'

' Involved already.'

Tooke, who seemed to feel the case was eluding his grasp, rose to his feet. 'I shall be calling the evidence, your Honour, of the neighbour. Miss Tigwell.'

' Very well, Mr Tooke.'

'But if the evidence shows no previous attempt to deal in drugs, then you would agree the whole of this crime was a result of your fertile imagination.' I fired a final salvo at the witness but the judge interrupted me, perfectly fairly.

'Doesn't that rather depend, Mr Rumpole, on the effect of Miss Tigwell's evidence ? When we hear it ?'

' If your Honour pleases. Of course, as always, your Honour is perfectly right!' I rewarded that upright fellow Rice Crispies with a low bow and sat down in a mood of quiet self-congratulation. I hadn't been sitting long before the man, Dave, was at my side, whispering furiously, 'Is that all you're going to ask?'

'You want to have a go?' I whispered back. 'Do borrow the wig, old darling.'

The evidence of Kathy's previous malpractices was offered to us in the person of Miss Tigwell who lived opposite at No. 33 Balaclava Road, and whose idea of entertainment appeared to be gazing into the windows of' Nirvana' in the daily hope of moral indignation.

' I could tell exactly what they were.'

'What were they, Miss Tigwell?'

'Perverted. All living higgledy-piggledy. Men and women, black and white.'

'Did your supervision include the bedrooms?'

' Well... No. But they all sat together in the front room.'

' Sat together? What did they talk about?'

' I couldn't hear that.'

"They were a community, that's what it comes to. They might well have been Trappist monks for all you knew.'

'I don't know if Air Rumpole is suggesting his client is a Trappist monk.' Tooke made a mistake, he should have left the jokes to me. Rice Crispies didn't smile.

'Now, Miss Tigwell, apart from the fact that persons of different sex, sat together... Did you ever observe anything suspicious from your post in the crow's nest?'

'I saw a man giving her money.' Miss Tigwell was playing her King.' Quite a lot of money. It was in ten pound notes.'

'Was this the first time you had ever seen money passing or any sort of dealing going on in " Nirvana " ?'

'The first time, yes.'

The judge was making a note. I decided to play my Ace and prayed that I wouldn't be trumped by the prosecution.

' Can you describe to his Honour the man you saw passing the money?'

'Dreadful-looking person. A clear criminal type. Looked as if he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards.'

'Longhair?'

'And a horrible sort of moustache.'

'Beads? Embroidered jeans? Afghan goat's hair and purple silk fancy for the neck?' I saw Detective Sergeant ex-hippie Smedley bow his head in shame, and I knew I was home and dry.

'Disgusting! I saw it all quite distinctly!' Miss Tigwell ended in triumph.

'Congratulations, madam. You have now given us a perfectly accurate description of Detective Smedley of the local force.'

As I took off the wig in the robing room. Farmer Tooke was looking distinctly worried. I did my best to cheer him up. 'Ah, Tooke... I have good news for you. Hope to get you all off in time for the gymkhana tomorrow. Got a daughter, have you, in the potato race?'

'Do you think the judge is agin me?' Tooke felt all was not well with the prosecution.

' Not you, personally. But I know what he's thinking.'

'Do you?'

'Encourage that sort of police officer and he'll be out in a frock on the Prom tomorrow - soliciting the chairman of the bench.'

Tooke saw the point. 'I say. I suppose that sort of thing is worrying.'

' Not English, if you want my opinion.'

At which Tooke, climbing into his Burberry, put the law behind him and extended an invitation.

'What are you doing tonight, Rumpole? I mean, there'll be a few of us dining at the Bar hotel... With the leader of the Circuit.'

' Roast lamb, sea shanties and old jokes from Quarter Sessions ? No. Not tonight, Tooke.'

'Oh well. I'm sorry. We like to give our visitors a little hospitality.'

'Tonight, I am dropping out.'

Dinner at 'Nirvana' was a distinct surprise. I'd expected nut cutlets and carrot juice. I got an excellent steak and kidney pud and a very drinkable claret. Oswald had told me he was something of a ' wine freak'. The house was clean and the big cushions and old sofas remarkably comfortable. The babies were good enough to withdraw from the company, the record-player gave us unobtrusive flute music from the Andes and Kathy tended to all my needs, filling my glass and lighting my cigar, and remained a perpetual pleasure to the eye. I began to think that I'd rather live at 34 Balaclava Road than at the Gloucester Road mansion flat with She Who Must Be Obeyed; I'd rather sit back on the scatter cushions at 'Nirvana' and let my mind go a complete blank than drag myself down to the Bailey on a wet Monday morning to defend some over-excited Pakistani accused of raping his social worker. In fact I thought that for tuppence, for a packet of small cigars, I'd give up the law and spend the rest of my life in a pair of old plimsolls and grey flannel bags, shrimping on the beach at Coldsands. The only fly in this soothing ointment was the fellow Dave.

When I told Kathy she wouldn't even have to go into the witness box if we won our agent provocateur argument, Dave said, 'I'm not sure I agree with that.' I told him firmly that I wasn't sure he had to.

'When we brought you here I thought you'd understand... It's not just another case,' Dave protested. Protesting seemed to be his main occupation.

'Every case is just another case,' I told him. 'To you, all right! To us it's a chance to say what we have to. Can't we put the law straight - on the drug scene?'

'I mean, this isn't a den of thieves, is it? You've seen "Nirvana"!' Oswald put the point more gently. He was right, of course, I had seen 'Nirvana'.

'Now's our only chance to get through to the law,' Dave told me. I decided to instruct him on the facts of life.

'The law? You know where the law is now? Down in the George Hotel drinking the Circuit port and singing " What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor". The law is talking about the comical way the old Lord Chief passed a death sentence. The law is in another world; but it thinks it's the whole world. Just as you lot think the world's nothing but poetry, and perhaps the occasional puff of a dangerous cigarette.'

'That's what we've got you for. To put our point of view across.' Dave had mistaken my function.

'You've got me to get you out of trouble. That's what you've got me for. I'm not going to get up tomorrow and teach old Rice Crispies to sing protest songs... to a small guitar.'

'You're just not taking this case seriously!' Dave was totally wrong, and I told him so.

'Oh yes I am. I am seriously determined to keep Kathy out of prison.'

At which Miss Trelawny said it was time for their nightly poem. She found a book and gave it to me open.

'Me?'

'You like this. Read it to us...'

So I read to the lotus eaters, quietly at first and then with more emphasis, enjoying the sound of my own voice. 'It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity.'

They were all listening as though they actually enjoyed it, except for Dave who was whispering to Kathy.

'Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought...'

Kathy was shushing Dave, making him listen to the old sheep. I looked at her as I read the last lines.

' Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.'

I slammed the book shut. I needed to sleep before Court in the morning.

'The Officer was only doing his duty. Active, your Honour, in the pursuit of crime!' Tooke was making his final speech on the point of evidence, to an unenthusiastic audience.

'Or in the manufacture of a crime? That's what troubles me." The judge was really troubled, bless him. He went on. 'If I thought this young woman only collected drugs... only got in touch with any sort of supplier because of the trap set for her -then would you concede, Mr Tooke, I would have to reject the evidence?'

' I think your Honour would.'

Tooke was a lovely prosecutor. Everything was going extremely well when Rice Crispies adjourned for lunch. So I was in festive mood when I set off for a crab sandwich and a nourishing stout in the pub opposite the Shire Hall, looking forward to whetting my whistle and putting the final touch on my clinching argument. But I was stopped by Friendly who said the client wanted to see me as a matter of urgency. He led me into a small room, decorated with old framed leases and eighteenth-century maps of Coldsands, and there, clearly bursting with news to impart, were Miss Kathy Trelawny and her friend Dave.

'We want to tell the truth.' I closed the door carefully and looked at her Dave without encouragement.

'What truth?'

'It's the only way I can get Peter's case across,' Kathy said. She was smiling no longer.

'Peter?'

'My brother. I told you. He was busted.'

'In Turkey. I remember. Well, this isn't Turkey. And it's not Peter's case or anyone else's.' I looked at Kathy.' It's yours.'

'Kathy wants you to know why she did it.'

She was about to speak, and I almost shouted at her, hoping it still wasn't too late.

'Shut up!'

'You see I had...'

'The conference is over! Got to get a bite of lunch. Come on. Friendly.' I moved to the door.

' It appears we have new instructions, Mr Rumpole." Friendly looked concerned, not half so concerned as I was.

'The old instructions are doing very nicely, thank you. Don't say a word until this evening. When it's all over tell me what you like.'

'She wants everyone to know. How else can we get Pete's case into the papers?'

Dave, like an idiot, had moved between me and the door. I had no way of escaping the fusillade of truth which Kathy then let fly.

'I got the stuff last year after Pete got busted in Istanbul. I was going to sell it anyway. It was going to cost ten thousand pounds to get him out in lawyers' fees and...' she looked at me almost accusingly, 'bribes, I suppose... He got twelve years. We've got to get people to care about Peter!'

So it was quite clear, she was telling me that she hadn't committed her crime as the result of a request from an agent provocateur. She had the stuff before Detective Sergeant Smedley of the west country Drug Squad first came to 'Nirvana'. That was the truth, the last thing in the world I wanted to know. I looked at my watch, and turned to Friendly.

'What is there - a 2.25 back to London? Friendly, run outside, for God's sake, and see if you can't whistle me up a taxi. I'm retiring from this case.'

Friendly, totally puzzled by the turn of events, left us.

'Running out on us?' Dave never made an unexpected remark.

'Why, for God's sake?' Kathy asked me, and I had to tell her. 'Let me try and explain. My existence is bound by a small blue volume handed down like the Tablets on the day of my Call to the Bar by a Master of my Inn in a haze of port and general excitement.'

'What the hell's he talking about!' Dave couldn't resist interrupting, but Kathy told him to listen. I went on with such calm as I could muster.

'Barristers down the ages have killed. They have certainly committed adultery. Although that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me some may well have coveted their neighbours' camels and no doubt worshipped graven images. But I don't believe there's one of us who has ever gone on to fight a case after our client has told us, in clear crystal ringing tones, that they actually did the deed.'

'You mean - you won't help me?' Kathy looked as if it had never occurred to her.

'I can't now.'

'But Kathy wants to tell the judge the pot law's ridiculous. And about Pete.'

'It's my duty to preside over your acquittal, not your martyrdom to the dubious cause of intoxication,' I told her. 'I'll see the judge and tell him I can't act for you any longer... personal reasons.'

'The old fool'll think you fancy her.' I can't imagine where Dave got that far-fetched idea, and I went on ignoring him.

'You'll get another barrister. What you tell him is your business. I'll ask the judge to adjourn for a week or two... You'll still be on bail.'

'What's the matter? Afraid to stick your neck out? Or would you starve to death if they made pot legal?' Dave was about to start on another of his political speeches, but Kathy silenced him. She asked him to leave us alone, and I told him to go and find Friendly and my taxi. He went. He had smashed my defence and I was alone with Kathy, looking at the pieces.

' I thought... We got along together.' Kathy was smiling again. I couldn't help admiring her courage. ' I mean, you keep talking about clients. I didn't think I was a client. I thought I was more of a friend, actually.'

'Never have friends for clients. That really ought to be one of the Ten Commandments.'

'I don't suppose you could forget what I told you?'

' Of course I could. I'd like nothing more than to forget it. I'd forget it at once if I wasn't a bloody barrister!'

'And there's nothing more important than that in your life? Being a barrister.'

I thought about this very carefully. Unfortunately, there was only one answer.

'No.'

' Poetry doesn't mean a damn thing to you! Friendship doesn't mean anything. You're just an old man with a heart full of a book about legal etiquette!' Kathy was angry now, she'd stopped smiling.

'You're saying just what I have long suspected,' I had to agree with her.

'Why don't you do something about it?'

'What do you suggest?' She moved away from me, and went and looked out of the window, at the sunshine and the municipal begonias. At last she said, 'I might leave Coldsands and come up to London. Do a language course.'

'And Dave? Would Dave be coming with you?"

'Dave's stuck here organizing the house. I want to get away. Have a bit of a rest from home-made muesli and debates about the geezer. I thought. Well. I'd get a flat in London. I could come and have lunch with you sometimes. When you're in the Old Bailey.'

'Every man has his price. Is that mine? A lunch down the Old Bailey?'

'Not enough?'

'More than enough. Probably, much more. Something to think about, in the long cold nights with She Who Must Be Obeyed.'

She suddenly turned on me, she was holding on to my arm, as if afraid of falling.

'I'm not going to prison! You won't let them send me to prison!'

There was only one way, now Dave had done his damnedest.

' I can go and see the judge. He might agree to a suspended sentence. I don't know. I can go and see him.'

'That's right! He likes you. I could see you get along. Go and see him. Please go and see him.' She was smiling again, eager. I had to tell her the facts of life.

'You know what it means. If I go and see the judge for you?'

'I... I plead guilty.' She knew. I left her then and went to the door. We still had our trump card. Dear old Rice Crispies was simply aching to get away to the gymkhana.

His Honour Judge Crispin-Rice was delighted to see Rumpole and the prosecuting Tooke. He made us Nescaf6 with the electric kettle in his room. He looked younger with his wig off, and, when we had settled such vital matters as how much milk and no sugar thank you, he and Tooke tried to make me envious of their previous night's revelry in the Bar Mess.

'We had a good evening. You should have been with us, Rumpole. Didn't we have a splendid evening, Vernon?'

'The leader gave us "The Floral Dance".' Tooke relived the great moment.

'Old Pascoe is wonderful for 75. He entertained us in song.' The judge offered us a Senior Service. 'You'd have enjoyed it.'

'A splendid evening! We fined little Moreton a dozen bottles of claret for talking shop at dinner.' Tooke was bubbling at the memory.

'We then started hacking away at the penalty! How many bottles were left?'

'None, Judge. As far as I remember'

I thought the time had come to return their thoughts to the business in hand.

'Look here, Judge,' I said. 'At the risk of being fined for talking shop. If... If it so happened I could persuade my client to plead guilty..." His Honour was stirring his cup, giving me no great assistance. 'You might be grateful for a short afternoon.' Even this didn't hook him. I went on, a little desperately. ' She's a remarkable girl.'

'So I can see.' Old Rice Crispies smiled then. Perhaps, I thought, I could rope him into 'Nirvana'.

'Knows a good deal about Wordsworth.' I didn't know if this would sway the judicial mind.

'Wordsworth? Is he a mitigating factor?'

'Poor old sheep of the Lake District. He can't afford to lose admirers.'

'No. Well. She'd get the full benefit of pleading guilty.' He was using his judge's voice. I stood up, like a barrister.

'Can't you tell me any more than that?'

'There are rules.'

'I thought you might indicate...'

'The tariff? You know the tariff. How much was it? Twenty pounds weight. A fair wallop!'

'It was only cannabis.' I tried to make it sound like broken biscuits. 'They use the stuff just like whisky. It doesn't occur to them...'

'But it isn't whisky, is it?' The Judge's voice again. 'It's a Class B drug as defined by the Dangerous Drugs Act.'

'But what do we know about it?'

'That it's illegal. Isn't that all we need to know?' He looked at me then, and gave me a charming smile. 'My God, Rumpole. Are we going to see you turning up in Court in beads?'

' She's got a good character.' I played my last card.

The judge drained his Nescafe. 'Well, you know about a "good character". Everyone had a "good character" once... I mean, if we let everyone out because of their "good character" no one would ever go inside.'

'ThatM be a scandal. All those empty prisons.' I said it with too much feeling. Rice Crispies looked at me as if I were coming out in a rash.

'I say, Rumpole. You're not getting involved in this case, are you?'

'Involved? Of course not. No, naturally. But I was thinking possibly a suspended sentence?' At which his Honour Judge Crispin-Rice put his wig back on and said something which was no help at all.

'You've got your job to do, Rumpole, and I've got mine.'

I sweated my guts out in my speech in mitigation, and the judge listened to me with perfect courtesy. He then gave Kathy Trelawny three years in the nicest possible way, and she was taken down to the cells. Vernon Tooke came up to me in the robing room. He was on his way to the gymkhana.

'Well. Ended nice and quick.'

'Yes, Tooke, very quickly.'

'Going back to London?'

'Tomorrow. I'll be going back tomorrow.'

'Quite an attractive sort of person, your client.'

'Yes, Tooke.'

'All the same. To prison she had to go.'

When I came out into the main hall the commune was standing in a little group. Oswald was playing a lament on his flute and the baby was silent. None of them spoke to me, but I heard a voice at my elbow say, 'It seems a shame, sir. A girl like that.' It was Detective Sergeant Jack the Hippie Smedley. And he added what we both knew, 'It's an evil place, Hollo-way.'

Out in the street I was nearly run over by a police car. Miss Kathy Trelawny was sitting in the back and saw me. She was still smiling.

Joviality was at its height in the Crooked Billet that night. Sam told all his old stories, and Bobby played the piano. I stood beside her, my glass of rum on the piano top, and in a pause she looked across at her husband.

'Look at Sam,' she said. 'He's happy as a tick! What's he want with a slow death on lime juice in a bungalow? I made up my mind. I'm not going to tell him. Are you in favour of that?'

'People not telling people things? People not scattering information like bombs? Oh yes,' I told her. 'I'm all in favour of that.'

Then she played 'Roll out the Barrel' and we all joined in, our voices floating out over the sea until Sam called 'Time Please'. I never saw the people from 'Nirvana' again.

The End