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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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Where
There’s A Will by John Mortimer |
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Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Testament Any reader familiar with
the writing of John Mortimer (of Rumpole fame) will
understand at once that a conversational memoir from him will not be weighty,
but will capture human nature in revealing ways. The thirty two reflections
on the pages of Where
There’s A Will are structured to provide a legacy for his heirs, the
lessons Mortimer has learned over eighty years. All topics are up for grabs,
and Mortimer provides his anecdotes, memories and perspectives with relish.
Here’s an excerpt, all of Chapter 9, “Listening,” pp. 59-64: The world’s full of
talkers, with not nearly enough listeners. This leads to many lonely people
wandering from room to room in their quiet empty houses, asking and answering
questions from and to themselves. Too many of us
rabbit on about ourselves, repeating what we know already, arid fail to
discover anything about the curious lives and the unopened histories of the
passenger in the corner seat, the sad-eyed, lonely drinker at the end of the
bar or the apparently ill-assorted couples in the holiday hotel. The art of listening is
one that has to be learned by lawyers. You may think of Rumpole’s
life as one of incessant chatter, forever up on his hind legs making
speeches or asking questions. Yet a good half of a barrister’s life is spent
listening in silence in his chambers room or during a prison visit. It was as a divorce
barrister that I learned of the hotelier husband who fixed up a lengthy
trough from his bedroom window to the vegetable garden, so that he could
urinate in comfort and water the runner beans at the same time. This device
caused embarrassment to the hotel’s visitors who were taking tea in the
garden. His wife, not unnaturally, wanted to end the marriage. At the trial
the husband asked if he might give evidence standing on his head. This
request was curtly refused. I heard from the lady who joined a wife-swapping
club in Croydon, ‘mainly to give my husband some
sort of interest in life’, and fell deeply in love with her swap. I learned
more than perhaps I needed to know about the husband who armed his children
with lavatory brushes and put them through small-arms drill with these
implements every morning before sending them off to school. I also heard much
of the husband who would write letters to his wife’s furniture which he then
pinned to it, such as, ‘You are a cheap and vulgar little sideboard. Please
return to whatever bargain basement you came from! You are certainly not
wanted in this establishment.’ I listened carefully to
the elderly man who carried out a number of alleged ‘mercy killings’ who told
me his evidence would be given by his ‘puppet master’, who would speak
through a hole in my client’s head. I defended a certain Anthony Sorely Cramm, of whom the judge said, ‘Best name for a bugger I
ever heard’, and, being in a merciful mood, said he might go instead of
prison to a Salvation Army hostel, at which Mr Cramm called out in desperation from the dock, ‘For God’s
sake, send me to prison!’ I learned how a talented artist came to invent a
non-existent Victorian photographer and forged a large number of photographs
of the slum children of Victorian London which completely fooled the National
Portrait Gallery. I also heard the story of a rich young man who, when asked
what he had done when he stabbed his mother, said, ‘I have either murdered a
prostitute or killed a peacock in paradise.’ But strange, almost
unbelievable stories are not available only to lawyers. They are all around
you if you are prepared to listen. After a brief acquaintance a friend told
me that, when he was a youngish boy, his mother left his father. The father,
a correct and presumably sane army officer, told his son that his mother was
dead. This is what he believed until he was in his late twenties, and was
staying in a house in It’s not only friends,
however casual, but total strangers who, in the first chance encounter, have
told me about their unhappy marriages, their request to God for advice on
divorce and even about the size, often a disappointment to them, of their
virile members. All that is needed to open the floodgates is a look of rapt
attention and an opening request which can be as unsubtie
as, ‘Do please tell me the story of your life? Ten to one, no one has ever
asked them this and they’ve been longing to tell it. All this will be of great
assistance to you if you’re thinking of going in for the business of
writing; at least it will convince you that there is no such thing as an
ordinary life. Such encounters may be of even more direct assistance. I
found myself sitting at lunch next to a grey-bearded, energetic-looking man
who started the conversation by asking me a question. ‘What do you do he
said, ‘when your boat meets a force eight gale in the Channel — what do you do with your female crew?’ I confessed that I had no
experience of yachting and asked him what lie would do. ‘Double my fist, punch her
on the chin and stun her.’ He spoke as though it was the most obvious course
to take. ‘If she’s unconscious she’s far less likely to slip overboard.’ ‘And what do you do when
she wakes up?’ ‘Get her to make a cup of
tea.’ It was time to ask if his
sport of yachting wasn’t extremely dangerous. ‘It’s not dangerous at all
if you can’t swim,’ he told me. ‘If you can swim you try to swim to the shore
and invariably drown. If you can’t swim, you cling to the wreckage and
they’ll send out a helicopter for you.’ So he gave me the title of a book
called Clinging to the Wreckage. It was at the same lunch table that
an elderly man, who had remained silent throughout the meal, suddenly asked
me, in a loud voice, if I could get my gamekeeper to eat rooks. So there’s no better
occupation than listening, only interrupting to ask for further and better
particulars. An acquaintance came up to me with a friend and asked if I knew
‘Baghdad Price’. ‘No, I don’t know Mr Price I had to confess, and was lucky enough to ask
why he was called ‘ ‘No. It’s just that he’s a
most terrible shot. And when out shooting once he shot his father by mistake.
So they call him Bag Dad.’
There aren’t many Iraqi jokes around at the moment, so this was one
worth listening for. There are thirty one more episodes like
this one to entertain readers, so pick up a copy of Where
There’s a Will and enjoy eavesdropping on Mortimer’s legacy to his heirs.
Steve Hopkins,
October 25, 2005 |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the November 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Where
There's A Will.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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