It was on a normal Sunday morning when Rita first knew that the attitude of their neighbours had suddenly changed towards them. She and Elaine had lived in the area for a good number of years and lived quietly. This was a respectable neighbourhood where people kept themselves to themselves. Such social contact that they enjoyed consisted of the occasional conversation while ach was attending to the garden or occasionally in the street. She and Elaine traveled to work on different routes with a good number of them on the Cricklewood train into the center of London where a number of them worked. It wasn't as if they were especially close to any of them. Both of them had taken it for granted that that they needed to fit into the neighbourhood. It was Rita who had first started to question this assumption without having fully worked out where it would lead.
She enjoyed her stroll to the local newsagent to pay for the newspapers that she and Elaine read, drinking in the fresh air. It gave her a sense of well being, of being out in the wide world instead of being cloistered in the rarefied world of the legal system. The newsagent had its usual selection of celebrity magazines, TV guides and tea, coffee and sugar and presented a good opportunity to browse round the shelves. As opposed to her right thinking neighbours who ordered the Daily Mail religiously, their choice wavered between the Independent and the Times as their choice of the window on the world.
Rita moved forward briskly and expected to be greeted by the bright smile, the inconsequential chat about the weather and to pay the bill just like any other occasion. She hadn't expected to be kept waiting for no accountable reason, to face the downcast look and chilly reception.
"That's five pounds thirty," came the muttered surly greeting.
For a second, Rita was overtaken by a sense of unreality that this couldn't be happening until she glanced around her and took in the people that she vaguely knew only studying her with sidelong glances or of being ostentatiously busy. For a second, she was taken aback until something in her took fire. She was expected to make a sheepish exit and to feel diminished and to apologies for being publicly censured. Very unusually for such a diplomatic woman, she responded with a bit of direct action as she dived for the nearest gardening magazine on the shelves.
"I really need to find out where I've been going wrong in looking after my roses. They are looking a bit straggly, don't you think," she called out loudly to nobody in particular." I wonder if this magazine will give me what I want. Of course, I could as easily ask my neighbours. I'm sure they'd help"
She leant against the shelf, continuing to leaf her way through the pages in the magazine of her choice. A slow sense of revelation spread through her system as she saw the weak spot in all these silently censorious people. She sensed from snatched of remembered conversations that they were very good at pronouncing judgment on people, of pontificating, of supposing how people led their lives without putting their views to the ultimate test. What they were no good at was in talking to people, of directly engaging with people and putting themselves on the line. Each one of them was paralyzed on the spot, waiting in vain for someone to say something. Further images swirled out of memories of talking with Margaret, Helen and Nikki and all their friends. All of them without exception looked her in the eye and were compassionate. Rita felt a million miles away from them, while the geographical distance between them was a matter of feet.
"I'll have this magazine if you don't mind. Just add it onto my bill for next week," she called out with infinite satisfaction." Oh yes, I'll buy these tea bags while I'm here."
She quietly forced the woman to grumpily accept her money and turned around. On her way out, she smiled sweetly at everyone and none of them could look her in the eye. Walking back home gave her a peculiar feeling. Either she or the world had been mysteriously transformed but for the life of her, she couldn't work out which was the right one.
"How terrible for you, dear," Elaine exclaimed, concern written all over her face. She had glanced once at Rita when she entered the door and knew it was trouble. She had heard the fair-haired woman tell her brief tale and had gently taken her partner into a soft embrace.
"I suppose it had to happen sometime," she stated in a flat matter of fact tone of voice.
"How do you work that out?" Rita questioned, intrigued at what lay beneath the lines.
"You think about it. Coming home from Chix one night, rather the worse for wear and embracing on the doorstep was bound to start tongues wagging."
"I suppose it did though God knows what perverse dedication there is in peeking through net curtains and keeping us under surveillance."
"The thought of discovery has frightened me all this time until you forced me to confront my fears. Don't forget, you pushed us into this one."
"And now?" Rita asked. The fair-haired woman was highly conscious of performing a ritual dance round her partner in crime. There was one thing she was sure of and that was that neither of them had control over the movements. This dance would spin round in whatever direction in which they were both propelled.
"We're becoming social outcasts round this neighbourhood. We had better accustom ourselves to the reality. Your problem, Rita, was that you hadn't reasoned out the reality of what we were bound to face. It was all theory with you."
"It doesn't stop me rising to the occasion…any more than it stops you," Rita said in her silkiest tone of voice, a broad grin on her face.
"For some reason, the thought of being a social outcast isn't as frightening as I first thought, dear," Elaine said in her most composed tones as she did the proper thing and gently straightened out a curly lock of displaced fair hair. "There isn't as much to fear as I found out."
"So what's changed your mind for you or should I say that you did it yourself," Rita asked with all the delicious certainty of being able to afford to be direct. At that moment, the sun shone brightly into the front living room window and bathed the two women in a golden glow. It matched their heightened feelings of joy.
"Without the friendship of all these charming friends of ours at Chix, I wouldn't have the nerve to be as we are," Elaine said, laying her glasses to one side." They are our neighbours now. All those who live on the same street, well, they're only people we're stuck with."
"Whereas we made our choices,"
"And are we going to stick with the same newsagents?"
"You bet we are. They're going to be the ones who we are going to make feel awkward. We're good paying customers and I don't see why they are going to put us out. We're going to stick it out here," Rita said in determined tones.
*********
John hesitated as he picked up his mobile. He was deeply concerned that in making a business phone call on a sunny Sunday afternoon, that his call might not be well timed, however good the intentions. Finally, he decided to go ahead with it, knowing that if the woman on the other end of the call found it inconvenient, she would say so. Finally, he pressed the necessary buttons and dialed the call.
Nikki was laying back on the recliner giving her back a break from tidying up their back garden while Helen was busying herself with a picnic meal. Her mobile phone lay in the pocket of her jacket, which, in turn, was suspended from the key on the shed door. Most surprisingly on a Sunday afternoon, its demanding tones resonated across the still summer air. Grumbling to herself, Nikki rolled off sideways off the recliner and tottered to her aching feet, if for no other reason to shut the device up. She laughed ironically to herself that while in Larkhall, at least she didn't have this oh so onerous problem.
"The joys of freedom," she muttered to herself, partly self mockingly, knowing how trivial her inconvenience was. It was when she saw John's name flashing that she changed her mind radically. This must be serious business.
"I hope you don't mind me disturbing you on a weekend but I thought it best not to disturb you at work," sounded John's precise tones meekly into her ear.
"Hi, John," Nikki's clear warm voice spoke into his ear to his relief. "It must be serious for you to phone me up like this."
"It isn't something you have to be involved with, you or Helen but I thought you might be interested for old times sake."
"Spill the beans, judge, and we'll be the best judge of what we're interested in," chimed in Nikki. John was not to know that since she was a little girl, Nikki had hated guessing games. Smiling a bit foolishly, John came to the point. In the meantime, Helen came down the short flight of steps to the back garden hand her sharp ears caught the drift of the conversation. And to think, Ms Wade, that you once damned them ass as 'pricks in wigs.'
"All right, Nikki, it's like this. There's to be a public forum coming up in the near future called 'imprisonment and modernization.'"
"Modernization?" echoes Nikki incredulously, picking up on the tone of derision in the judge's voice and on her own suspicions." Has time passed quicker than I thought but didn't you first meet Helen at that 'Crime and Punishment' conference? What can they possibly say now that they didn't say then?"
Helen picked up speed with some nice heel to toe action in carrying the tray as she hastened to be in on this conversation.
"I couldn't have put it any clearer than that. The whole thing is a put up job designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the British public. I'm going to be there anyway."
"Can't they argue that you've had your turn and you should give another judge his turn?" questioned Nikki.
"They've tried that on already and failed miserably," laughed John in his free and easy fashion." Besides, the brethren- my fellow judges- have elected me chief troublemaker, the one destined to lay down hard truths. Two of a kind, you might say."
Nikki laughed in response exposing her row of white teeth and her brilliant smile. The guy was a good listener and the prospect of both of them going into battle appealed to her.
"So where do I come in, I mean Helen and I at this 'Imprisonment and Modernization' conference? It's John on the phone,' explained Nikki to Helen whose face darkened. She had come across this buzzword before.
"My daughter compares me to Spiderman. She thinks I'm all-powerful. Fondly though she thinks of me, I'm realistic enough to consider that one person can only achieve so much. My gut instinct is that they'll use every dirty trick in the book to try and get the results they want."
"And what's that, judge?"
"I'd say they're after justice on the cheap, the Home Office will dictate what judges do and the prisons will be full to the brim in no time at all and the 'hang them and flog them' brigade in the tabloids will be appeased as much as raw meat flung to the sharks ever does so. That's just thinking off the top of my head."
Nikki shuddered at the thought. She knew that the judge wasn't given to dramatics. A surge of anger swept through her system.
"What do you want us to do then?"
"Coope will send you a copy of the brochure and you'll see what I mean. It stinks to high heaven. I know that you have a network of friends. We need to get as many on our side to be there. You look at the brochure and we'll take it from here."
Nikki looked round at the leaves and branches of the trees, the feel of the sunshine and the gentle breeze, the neat borders of the garden, the lovely flat, her circle of interesting friends and most of all, the beauty of her beloved whose presence she silently blessed every day. Life needn't have turned out that way.
"You've overheard me talk to John about this 'Imprisonment and Modernization' conference? John's asking us to help him disrupt it in the nicest possible way," Nikki said with an impish smile on her face.
"I think I'm up for that," Helen said. In her organized fashion, she relished the prospect of this confrontation before mentally consigning it as 'future business.' Right now, she intended to wallow in present pleasures while she could do so."Now let's sit back and enjoy ourselves with a nice Sunday afternoon picnic, just like mother makes."
Nikki lay back on the recliner and drank in the simple pleasure of the moment. Helen was right.
***********
Later on that day, Coope was out in the front garden, pruning the roses and picking out a few weeds with her hoe. An Englishwoman's house is her castle, she vowed, daring the invisible eyes to come out of cover. She was happy as she was as Elaine came out with a refreshing cup of tea.