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regulation black instrument.
    â€˜Business booming, I’m glad to see. You’ve had to install another telephone.’
    â€˜It’s a hotline, Rumpole.’
    â€˜Hot?’ I gave it a tentative touch.
    â€˜I mean it’s private. For the use of women in Chambers only.’
    â€˜It doesn’t respond to the touch of the male finger.’
    â€˜It’s so we can report harassment, discrimination and verbally aggressive male barrister or clerk conduct direct to the S.R.L. office.’
    The S -?’
    â€˜Sisterhood of Radical Lawyers.’
    â€˜And what will they do? Send for the police? Call the fire brigade to douse masculine ardour?’
    â€˜They will record the episode fully. Then we shall meet the victim and decide on action.’
    â€˜I thought you decided on action before you met Wendy Crump.’
    â€˜Her case was particularly clear. Now she’s coming to the meeting of the Sisterhood at five-thirty.’
    â€˜Ah, yes. She told me about that. I think she’s got quite a lot to say.’
    â€˜I’m sure she has. Now what do you want, Rumpole? I’m before the Divisional Court at ten-thirty.’
    â€˜Good for you! I just came in to ask you a favour.’
    â€˜Not self-induced drunkenness as a defence? Crump told me she had to look that up for you.’
    â€˜It’s not the law. Although I do hear you work for other barristers for nothing, and so deprive their lady pupils of the beginnings of a practice.’
    Mizz Probert looked, I thought, a little shaken, but she picked up a pencil, underlined something in her brief and prepared to ignore me.
    â€˜Is that what you came to complain about?’ she asked without looking at me.
    â€˜No. I’ve come to tell you I bought Hello! magazine.’
    â€˜Why on earth did you do that?’ She looked up and was surprised to see me holding out the publication in question.
    â€˜I heard you read it during long stretches of intense boredom. I thought I might do the same when Mr Injustice Graves sums up to the Jury.’
    â€˜I don’t have long moments of boredom.’ Mizz Liz sounded businesslike.
    â€˜Don’t you really? Not when you have to sit for hours in Monte’s beauty parlour in Ken High Street?’
    â€˜I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .’ The protest came faintly. Mizz Probert was visibly shaken.
    â€˜It must be awfully uncomfortable. I mean, I don’t think I’d want to sit for hours in a solution of couscous and assorted stewed herbs with the whole thing wrapped up in tinfoil. I suppose Hello! magazine is a bit of a comfort in those circumstances. But is it worth it? I mean, all that trouble to change what a bountiful nature gave you – for the sake of pleasing men?’
    I didn’t enjoy asking this fatal question. I brought Mizz Liz up in the law and I still have respect and affection for her. On a good day she can be an excellent ally. But I was acting for the underdog, an undernourished hound by the name of Claude Erskine-Brown. And the question had its effect. As the old- fashioned crime writers used to say in their ghoulish way, the shadow of the noose seemed to fall across the witness-box.
    â€˜No one’s mentioned that to the S.R.L.?’
    â€˜I thought I could pick up the hotline, but then it might be more appropriate if Wendy Crump raised it at your meeting this afternoon. That would give you an opportunity to reply. And I suppose Jenny Attienzer might want to raise the complaint about her pupil work.’
    â€˜What are you up to, Rumpole?’
    â€˜Just doing my best to protect the rights of lady barristers.’
    â€˜Anyone else’s rights?’
    â€˜Well, I suppose, looking at the matter from an entirely detached point of view, the rights of one unfortunate male.’
    â€˜The case against Erskine-Brown has raised strong feelings in the Sisterhood. I’m not sure I can persuade them