Scene Ten
"So Alice,It's your turn to go up and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" Trisha asked the slightly nervous other woman as she ran her fingers through a lock of her dark hair that fell over her if to keep her worries at bay, she wore a glamorous low cut long dress that showed her statuesque figure to her best advantage.
They were relaxing in the comfortably furnished VIP lounge of Chix where they'd drifted up while Sally-Anne held the fort liked Alice's soothing manner and could see why George was so smitten with that aspect of her friend alone so it was a surprise to see this other side of her.
"It's the first time I've given evidence in court," the other woman frankly confessed. "I may live with a top class glamorous lady barrister but I know I'll have to hack it on my own when I'm on the witness stand. It's one thing to be in the witness gallery but it's quite another to be in the hot seat."
"Relax, Alice I'm sure you'll be all right on the night. It isn't as if you're on trial yourself," Trisha urged, trying to conjure up her best attempt at reassurance. To her astonishment, Alice coloured and shut late, she remembered how it was only nine months that they had watched Helen fighting for her freedom in the Old Bailey against the establishment's vindictive desire to nail an identified troublemaker by using the oldest trick in the book, the Official Secrets Act. It was easy to overlook this when she and Nikki were living their lives away from the perils of the theatre of political drama and settling down to start a family. The heartbeat pulse of the music pulsing away downstairs helped to detract from the embarrassing silence.
"If it might help you understand, I'm giving character evidence in support of one of my one-time clients who's been involved in what you might call a crime of passion and which is technically called Grievous Bodily Harm. I have the horrible suspicion that my evidence will be contemptuously tossed aside. I'm probably getting things out of proportion,"Alice finally said at last in an unsteady rush of words. George put her arm round her lover's waist and gently comforted her, taking her out of the limelight. She knew only too well the peculiar stresses of this case. The other women companionably left them on their own.
"So how are the proud prospective parents feeling?" joked Karen from behind them as Nikki floated towards her on Helen's arm. "It's a long time since you've come down here." Trisha turned round to see her friend at her most radiant and sun tanned, blond hair immaculately shaped, a gorgeous black dress showing plenty of thigh.
"We had a period of turning in on ourselves, trying to get our heads around the prospects of being parents, getting the flat sorted out, that sort of thing," Nikki said apologetically while Helen left her to it to front for them.
"And now you've proved yourselves to yourselves after, dare I say, severely neglecting your friends?" lectured Trisha sternly with an underlying affectionate tone. She'd missed her old friend's mentally stimulating company.
"We looked around us and suddenly realised that we screwed up. I say better late than never. Besides, Helen told me the hundreth time not to treat her as a piece of Dresden china, outside bed as well as inside it," Nikki confessed with an impish grin as she adroitly worked them out of that hole. "Anyway, It's lovely to see you, babes," she added, kissing her friend affectionately on both cheeks.
"So how do you, as one of the country's hard working nurses, manage to look so suntanned? I thought you doughty warriers for the NHS were permanently shackled to your rightful place in the hospital,"George cut in, surprisingly late to join in the general banter.
"Oh, I'm just lucky, I tan easily. This weather's been so glorious," came Karen's studiously misleading attempt at modesty.
"I still can't work it out,"broke in Helen. "When you're not working, you must be having great sex with Beth but you both live in a that takes time-unless you've got access to the roof."
"Pardon me Helen but what we do in bed is secret-though I'm sure your vivid imagination can work it out," cut back Beth to be greeted by Helen's notoriously dirty laugh that amused them all. Only Alice kept quiet as she had her share of problems.
Alice's place of work was the Town Hall, a classic thirties edifice that had been impressive in its time but looked as if it was gradually running to building was cold in winter and overheated in summer and the inhabitants had got used to grumbling about the series of minor faults in a very British fashion. Her own office was one floor up at the back of the building which she shared with her colleagues. Everywhere looked cluttered with papers and disorganised even though the onward march of computers could not be denied even in this organisation. There was a feeling of people passing through, only using their desks, phones and computers to write up notes, make phone calls and pick each other's brains until grabbing their briefcases and hurtling out on the road again.
Alice was seated on a swivel chair, and drumming her biro against her finger nails. She had been posed a very difficult professional and personal problem that was dangerously intertwined. Looking back on it, she had been led into it so easily.
It had all started from a routine visit, sparked from a home help worrying about the level of care provided to one of their elderly female residents. Unthinkingly, Alice had taken up the reference and had set off in her car, in professional mode of thinking. Years of doing her job had disabused her of thinking that they were sweet white haired granny figures, sitting by the idealised hearth knitting bootees for grandchildren. She had found out that they came from the cross section of the population, good bad or indifferent each of whom had their own histories. Her safest way of operation was, above all, to make no assumptions. The name Mrs Constance Elliott meant nothing to her.
Sure enough, she took the route towards a small council house enclave and the nondescript array of council bungalows, each with their front hedge, uniform wooden gate, concrete front path, the white lace front curtain and finally, the plain green front door. Up till that point, everything was inside the front door, beyond a certain amount of preparation, she would have to wing posed no problem to her as she had learnt the skills of putting people at their ease in additional to her own natural warm-hearted personality. From the second she got into the house, her instincts told her there might be trouble.
As soon as she entered the front room, a sense of chaos impinged on her straightaway. She sensed immediately that the conscientious efforts of the home helps had been set at nought by the old woman's determinedly perverse efforts to undo all their handiwork.
"What are you doing here?" a sharp, querelous voice demanded of her. "You're a spy. The neighbours have been telling tales on me." The beady eyed woman sat hunched up in her tall narrow armchair which Alice concluded she spent a lot of her time.
"Not at all," Alice had replied smoothly. "I'm paid by the council to organise help for anyone who might be struggling with their lives and not to impose on them in any way. Here's my identity card if you want to be sure of yourself."
The old woman had adjusted her glasses and had peered closely at the card displaying the photograph had resembled the smiling faced woman who presented herself before her she had concluded that this stranger might not have been trying to catch her off guard. The writing had told her a lot of official gobbledegook which had gone clean past her but she hadn't wanted to show that she'd been ignorant as hell of all this mumbo jumbo. She had decided to play crafty so a slight smile had creased her face.
"So you might be who you say you are. What if I tell you that I'm fine on my own?"
"You've been twice admitted to hospital because you've fallen over and the doctors say you've not been feeding yourself," Alice had replied as gently as she could for fear of offending the woman's sense of independence. The bandaged up right leg had born ample testament to the truth of her remark. As Alice got her bearings in the situation, it struck her that Mrs Elliott looked twenty years older than her actual age.
"True," she had sighed,"I can't get around as I used to. I don't see a soul for weeks on end-apart from the local busybodies,"...whom Alice had interpreted as the home help,"...and of course, my good for nothing daughter."
This had given Alice the lead in for this crotchety old woman to start to open up. As she started to ramble away, it created a picture of a heartless daughter who picked arguments with her deliberately to upset her, who only came round to sponge off her, to make her irregular visit out of duty, who refused to provide her a granddaughter like all her friend's families all the back of it, Alice had gathered that this woman's daughter had a particular lifestyle that she disapproved of but for the life of it, she couldn't really glean exactly what it was. Alice had made mental notes that this woman's mental health might not be all that it should be. She noticed that, on the mantlepiece which was crowded out by bric a brac, there wasn't one framed photograph. This had struck her as odd.
As Alice reflected on the scene in retrospect, this moment had been a misleadingly normal moment of her day when compared with what was to follow.
As John sat on his own at the dinner table in the digs, he was meditating on his life, wondering where it was taking him. There were various constants in his life which oriented him in his sense of direction. He was energised and confirmed in his values by the way the political establishment hated his guts but, thanks to the solid support of the brethren, meant that he was becoming untouchable. His relationship with the women in his life had always been problematic and this was starting to resolve itself for the better. His relationship with George had improved out of all recognition now that she had a female lover and its knock on effect on Charlie and Joseph was instantly strange development had brought on that curious development, the female friends in his life. From time to time, Nikki and Helen and their friends intersected with his life, giving him very warm sisterly support, the mutual admiration society that he had formed with Nikki being a guiding beacon. Most unusually for him, he had agreed to become a sperm donor for Nikki and Helen which gave him the chance to unselfishly help his friends. He knew that this was going to be the one and only involvement in his friend's family plans beyond their comfortable, easy going friendship. The trouble was that they floated in and out of his life and so did their friends. No matter how comfortable they were with each other, John couldn't get away from the feeling that they were different species and it mildly bothered him. At the end of the day, he was a hot blooded heterosexual male and he had his own needs to consider. This had always been driving principle as much as his passionate lifelong devotion to justice...
"John, you're just the person I wanted to see. I can see that you're a million miles away from here," called out a familiar voice from out of the distant haze of John's meditation.
"In my thoughts only, Monty. I have now landed back on earth,"John dryly observed.
"There's a bit of a fix that's come up. I've just been told that Newton's been laid up with an ankle injury. He was carried away with one of his flights of oratory when he was lecturing the up and coming judges at Warwick University only he walked off the stage."
"Talk about riding for a fall, "John retorted, making an effort to straighten his face after his first chuckle at the mental image conjored up."There but the Grace of God went John Deed."
"You can see where this is going. The University is crying out for a fill in judge who can grab the reins of a bolted horse at short notice. I must assure you," hastened Monty remembering John's previous exile there. "This is not some devious scheme to spirit you out of the way. You know by now that Joseph and I are quite able to repel the forces of reaction and after the severe drubbing that they've had at our hands with the able assistance of Nikki and Helen and their charming friends, they wouldn't dare try it goes without saying that the brethren will cover your load."
John pondered his options briefly and went for it. He had got to trust Monty implicitly by now. It also crossed his mind that this would fit in with the strategy that he and Jo had worked out of taking things slowly. Absence makes the heart grow fonder or so he thought of pastures new was an attractive one, especially as he knew Newton would be champing at the bit to get up on his podium again and that their approaches to the law were pretty the whole, accepting the offer was a sound choice.
"I accept, Monty. From what I recall, there's nothing too earth shattering in the trials I've got listed that another judge couldn't handle."
"Good man," Monty replied, beaming all over his face. "Have you eaten yet?"
"To be honest. I quite forgot but I'm happy to join you for dinner."
The sense of easy familiarity and the consciousness of his own niche in the great scheme of things made for a congenial atmosphere at the end of the day.