Brian Cantwell wasted no time in eliciting from Helen details of her personal circumstances, which she detailed crisply and promptly.
"Ms Stewart," he asked making the buzzing sound of her title sound like a subtle put down of feminism, "Has it occurred to you that you might have a problem, as a lesbian, in relating to men?"
"That's laughable," Helen retorted a wide grin splitting her face in two." I used to be a straight woman, always getting near the altar, never committing myself to get married. It was only when I met Nikki Wade that I fell in love with a woman for the first time. I am on good terms with men I work with, with friends outside work."
Brian Cantwell was visibly unprepared for this retort. John Wade had picked up on Fenner's venomous denunciations of this witness and his mental picture of the typical caricature lesbian had been passed on to him. He saw that he had miscalculated so he shifted his point of attack.
"Was it proper that you, as a supposedly, rule respecting wing governor of a prison fell in love with a female prisoner while being her jailor?""Not at all proper. It is the sole blot on my record and, in my defence, I never used it for personal advantage and neither did Nikki. It isn't something I did lightly and it took a lot of soul searching to enter into such a relationship." "I bet you did. I suppose you fell into each others arms, proclaiming undying love for each other and let your professional obligations go hang," Brian Cantwell cut back with acid sarcasm."No, Mr. Cantwell," Helen shot back passionately with glowing eyes," Nikki proved herself the truest and most loyal friend that I've ever had in my entire life. While I threatened to stumble and fall as the 'Old Boys' network sought to sabotage my attempts to treat prisoners decently, Nikki stopped me from going over the edge. By contrast, my fiancée was full of bland well-meaning nothings. That's what really makes for true love. For all that, I had an enormous battle between what I saw as my duty and my feelings of love for Nikki." "But the fact remains that your attitude to Nikki Wade, a prisoner, was unprofessional or at least, had an unprofessional element about it," Brian Cantwell retorted, stacking up his logic with deadly precision. "Yeah," Helen said slowly," I can't deny that last option." This took the wind out of the barrister's sails. He realized that Helen's transparent honesty was making a strong favourable impression on the jury. She had neatly avoided the trap of being shifty and evasive. Beneath his impassive exterior, John was totally inspired by Helen's passionate sincerity and he couldn't help but think that if George felt the same way about Alice, then she had a point. In turn, George was bowled over by Helen's fierce defence of herself. She cut the air with bold simple word shapes."You really didn't like Mr. Fenner, did you? One could say that there was a personal motive in your criticisms of him."
"I remember finding out how he fixed the random drugs tests of inmates to target drugs free prisoners and fiddle the figures. That says everything about the man – and the way he justified it by saying other prisons do the same. That was par for the course with Jim Fenner," came Helen's derisive reply.
While Brian Cantwell scowled, John Deed was in severe danger of laughing out loud at how Helen's outrageous honesty so vividly echoed his own experiences. His kinship with both women shone all the brighter at moments like this.
"In which case, how can you explain, as resident psychiatrist, how the defendant is unable to see through such transparent manoeuvrings? In making such scathing remarks against Mr. Fenner, your thesis is undone by the defendant's supposed character and therefore the credibility of your arguments."
Helen had to hand it to the man how he came back like lightning after she had so discomforted him. She had to repay him in kind.
"I really wish I knew the answer to your very valid question. Karen is an intelligent woman, one who came up through the ranks, took a part time degree course and yet had that one blind spot for Jim Fenner. It sounds like a contradiction but I would have thought that it's up to the jury to decide that on their experience of real life that such people do exist."
"Miss Stewart, grateful as I am for your contribution, I must say that you are in danger of stealing my thunder in giving directions to the jury." Judge Deeds interjected.
"Oh God, I'm sorry," Helen started to say; her hand in front of her mouth while John smilingly waved aside her apology. George was grinning broadly at the tables being turned so neatly on John. It was about time it happened to him. Brian Cantwell shook his head in irritation at the way this woman blew a hole through one of his logical masterstrokes. He decided to cut to the chase.
"Let's come to the night of the crime in question. You have consistently stated that the defendant wasn't driving her own car. What makes you think that the driver wasn't the accused? You have given evidence to positively identify the car as belonging to the accused. You have even given evidence that she ran into the back of your car. You are saying that the driver had long fair hair. Other witnesses have positively identified her so why don't you?"
"I maintain that the driver looked like Karen but, to repeat myself, I'm not prepared to swear that it was Karen behind the wheel," retorted Helen fiercely, the light of battle in her eyes."
"Is it the case that you have a history of friendship with the accused and don't want to incriminate her? It's all very laudable but the court is here to establish the truth, not pander to sentiment."
"You've tried to say that my hostile testimony against Fenner is personal prejudice as opposed to my relationship with Karen. I am stating that, yes, I started out being friends with Karen but we gradually fell out over her siding with Jim Fenner, yet I'm now being biased in the defendant's favour. You can't have it both ways, Mr. Cantwell," Helen riposted with that final parry, getting through the barrister's guard.
The man turned red in the face and stopped dead in the tracks. It annoyed him intensely that this verbal rapier thrust had got through his guard and he had no counter to it.
"Have you any questions to ask, Ms Channing?"
"I could not possibly improve on Helen's observations," George replied with that satisfied tone in her voice. Her total admiration for the woman prompted that lapse in court etiquette. The smaller woman couldn't believe it when she was permitted to leave the dock. Everything was going round in her head and her first thought was that she wanted some fresh air outside with Nikki.
********
Blind instinct made Karen, Nikki and Helen adjourn to the pub across the road from the Old Bailey, which was large and capacious. Nikki reached out for her packet of cigarettes and offered it to Karen while Helen brought in the drinks. So long as the jukebox enfolded them with music that wouldn't jar on their nerves, then no spaces were left open for Helen's dormant worries at watching Nikki take the stand.
Karen at last had the company that she knew that she craved and Nikki blindly reached for the conviviality to sharpen up her mind to cross swords with the opposing barrister. Sharp as a razor, Helen warned her. She kept it in mind that she worked for the Howard League for Penal Reform and even more so than normal, can look anyone in the eye.
********
With a feeling of unreality, Nikki was sworn in, realizing vaguely that she wasn't testifying for her own life but someone else's. George swiftly took her through the preliminary introductions, her personal background until the real questioning started.
"Ms Wade, it would help if you could explain your background as a prisoner at Larkhall. It isn't common for a jury to hear such evidence, not to say barristers and judges," George asked in clear tones. With a sudden mental blink, Nikki realized for the first time that she was dealing with the professional Ms Channing, QC rather than George, Alice's partner, that she was so used to."Okay, losing your liberty is where it starts. I know this both personally and professionally. I don't know if any of you in the jury have been at school where the teacher is trying to put you down, no matter how hard you're trying because your face doesn't fit. Prison's a hundred times worse than that. I hadn't accepted the guilt of taking out the policeman who would have most certainly raped by then girlfriend if I hadn't been around. On top of that, all the nasty tabloids assassinated my character. I finally ended up in Larkhall Prison, a version of a corrupt banana republic, one where standing up for basic rights, questioning authority landed me many times being shoved down in a segregation block, trussed up in clothing called 'strips' so I could hardly move. Fenner was at the back of directly discriminating against me and favouring another prisoner who was effectively his prostitute. She was just another one of his women on the inside and he went home to his wife and kids. That's Fenner in a nutshell. I ran up against him as I have this very traditional English belief of not abiding favouritism. Then Helen Stewart came along and treated me justly. She put me onto an Open University degree course, which I completed and got my release on appeal and later complete exoneration. I updated my office skills in an ordinary job and secured a research job with the Howard League for Penal Reform. In a more systematic, research based form I'm doing again what I did as an ordinary prisoner. My work reminds me constantly of injustice. Having been a witness to a senselessly cruel murder really brought it home to me that Fenner thinks he can get away with anything, in the past at Larkhall and now, and, for me, that's what the present case is all about."
Nikki's slow, fluent, well-paced delivery pushed George's list of questions along by leaps and bounds and she mentally crossed through some as senseless repetition.
To George's great satisfaction, Nikki then chatted away about her perception of the hit and run murder in a conversational yet lucid style as if her profession was giving evidence in court. She hardly needed any prompting to keep her narration on track. There were really no loose ends, George marvelled as part of her mind detached herself to try and figure out just how Brian Cantwell might try to attack the testimony.
*******
"Seeing as you have been most forthcoming about everyone else's background, you can't object if I ask you a few questions about your own background. You don't mind if one or two of them are personal," Brian Cantwell asked in smooth tones, which loudly rang danger bells inside Nikki's head. Instinct told him how much of a trickster this man was.
"Go ahead."
"Your partner, Helen Stewart has given very touching evidence as to how she fell in love with a woman for the first time in her life. Was being a lesbian a new experience for you as well?"
"No. I came out, that is publicly acknowledged my sexuality when I was thirteen, fourteen, at boarding school. Men have never been my flavour," Nikki said politely, George made an approving mental note of Nikki's flexibility in rapidly translating for the benefit of a straight jury.
"So you are an experienced lesbian, aren't you," Brian Cantwell said with the air of finding out an important fact.
"Yeah, in the same way that you are an experienced heterosexual, at least I assume you are," came Nikki's cool reply to Helen's very visible delight from the gallery and a snigger from the jury.
"So would it be true to say that you've spent all your life around women and that men are strange to you, in how they think, in how you interpret their behaviour?" Brian Cantwell retorted insistently, eager to push his point of view home.
"There have been variations. After I left home, I had to make it as a barmaid, any job that paid the rent so female separatism was a luxury I couldn't afford. I've had male friends, even early on in life. When I was running a lesbian club with Trisha Williams, my then partner, I must admit that my life revolved almost exclusively round lesbians, as friends and lovers. In my time in Larkhall, I was with both straight and gay women and male and female prison officers. I hated Fenner not because I had a weird attitude to men but because he was, well, a bastard. After Helen came on the scene, she revived my faith in human nature… I got to be pretty friendly with Dominic McAllister a decent guy, great prison officer. Since I got my freedom, I have increasingly gained quite a number of male friends. There's Tony Foster who I worked with in my first job, my present boss Paul Williams who's a really great guy, very fair with as much real understanding as any woman I've ever known. There's Claire Walker's husband Peter with who I socialize with a lot. There's ……."
"Quite," Brian Cantwell cut in coldly, furious how this woman's blandly reasonable manner was going down so well. There was a faint smirk on her face and her eyelashes were lowered as she avoided John's studiously interested gaze. Her brother John Wade looked coldly into the distant horizon while his infuriating sister tied this barrister up in knots. Claire Walker smiled approvingly at this mildly formidable woman whose demeanour was cool, unruffled.
"You sound all very innocent but isn't the truth is that you are studiously avoiding, that you sought to ensnare a serving member of the prison service for your own ends. For the benefit of the court, it would be interesting how you came to live with your partner, Helen Stewart? It casts doubt on her own professionalism, as she was forced to admit."
Nikki was momentarily startled at what Helen had said in court but she trusted to her instinct to play a straight bat when in an awkward situation.
"I never expected to fall in love with a woman while being banged up, least of all a prison officer, a screw as they are known. All I did was to follow the instincts of my heart. I have been retrospectively judged to be totally innocent. Excuse me but I don't see the problem."
"Aren't you guilty of favouritism towards Karen?" snapped the man, starting to lose patience.
"Not especially. I was treated fairly by her and she shook my hand and wished me the best when I left Larkhall. I went my way and I never anticipated her coming back into my life."
"Why can't you admit that if you recognized the car, then it must have been Karen driving her?" Brian Cantwell suddenly shot at her from out of the blue.
"I had a clearer view of Karen's car but I couldn't positively say it was her. What sticks out in my mind are my memories of how careful and correct she was at Larkhall and how the car was being driven in a dangerously out of control fashion. It didn't add up. You have to understand that prison's a funny place. You're locked up twenty hour seven with other prisoners and also with prison officers nearly as much. People in ordinary jobs can hide a side of their personality from each other. That doesn't work in such a goldfish bowl existence like Larkhall. That's why Helen and I can be so definite.""I have one final question. Did you coach each other in what you were going to say in court? The way your stories fit together so pat, it must be contrived," Brian Cantwell said in suddenly more spiteful tones as he clutched at straws.
"Huh?" Nikki said in tones of utter incomprehension." Whatever Helen said was for real, that's so like her. I was brought up to tell the truth. That is what true intimacy is all about. We can't be blamed if we agree with each other."
Temporarily forgetting herself, Helen started spontaneously clapping at Nikki's splendid finale until one look from John Deed froze her hands. He had a wry smile on his face and Helen's experience told her that he, too, had to cover his private sentiments under an official facade. For the second time in court, Karen permitted herself to smile. At least for the moment, things were starting to look up in her life.