From that moment onwards, events started to unroll forward with a momentum all of its own, as a gentle surge building up to an irresistible onwards rush to the future.
John was on the phone to Helen the very next day and was expounding enthusiastically on his plans to rope in as many of her friends when Helen stopped him short.
"We need to all be able to talk this over, judge. We simply cannot rely on a series of phone conversations to rally support for coming to this conference. You're talking to the converted in Nikki and I. We're natural troublemakers, willing to go forth to the breach but you can't assume others will see things the same way. You're talking about a conference for a start."
"I don't understand," John said in bewildered tones at Helen's unexpected opposition.
"If you talk to the average woman on the street or man for that matter, just what do conferences convey? It summons up an image of drinking rubbish coffee, sitting in a stuffy hall while speakers drone on and on at length about high faluting stuff that has nothing to say about anyone's life. It's a party political broadcast written large and who voluntarily watches those? You need to understand that friends of mine would rather drift round the shops trying on dresses, gossiping in open air cafes, or dancing our frustrations off at 'Chix'"
"Se do we have a meeting then, Helen?" John said, taken aback by this formidable woman's obvious truths.
"The question is where, judge. I bet you've got the idea of meeting in your chambers."
"I had been thinking of that, as it happens Helen," John confessed frankly. He couldn't for the life of him see where this conversation was heading but suspected that Helen did.
"If you want my outrageous lesbian friends to join us then we should meet at Chix, on home ground."
"Wait a minute, Helen," anxiously protested John." I'm not against the idea but…."
"But what?" Helen retorted with obvious amusement in her voice.
"I'm not against the idea in principle but we need somewhere quiet to talk. I for one am not going to spend the evening yelling over extremely loud club music. Think over the practicalities."
"Nikki and I have thought it over. Trisha and Sally Anne will lend us the VIP room in the club. It's on the floor above the dance floor. There'll be a bit of residual sounds coming through the ceiling but it's ideally designed for this very purpose. We've road tested it and it's ideal. There will be our captive audience that we only have to lure upstairs. Trust me, judge."
To Helen's amusement, there was a long silence on the other end of the phone as Helen had neatly tossed John's practical problems out the window. On a more generous slant, Helen judged that John needed a little time to turn the unexpected idea over in his mind.
"OK, it's a deal. I appreciate the occasion when you and Nikki braved yourselves in calling at the Old Bailey and entering my world. What you suggest is only fair and, as you say, practical. The only question I have is whether or not you've approached Margaret. Somehow, I feel she could be very useful."
.
"You're very insistent on Margaret coming," pursued Helen, sensing the underlying urgency of his suggestion behind his apparently easygoing tones.
"You know and I know that Margaret is a very quick witted woman and is extraordinarily astute. In the art of being dangerous, she has more experience than any of us. At the same time, she looks like a harmless old woman. I also get the feeling that it would be good for her. It's just my intuition at work."
"I'm happy to trust your male intuition. Just don't be late yourself," warned Helen jokingly while secretly impressed by his logic.
"I don't go back on my promise, Helen. You should know that," John answered in mild, easy tones that promised the earth and would deliver. It recalled fond memories of John interceding selflessly on hers and Nikki's behalf to get their chance of freedom.
***********
"Well, sweetheart, it looks as if it's up to us to persuade Margaret to come along to the conference," Helen mechanically stated to Nikki that night as if reading from a script before breaking off, a puzzled note in her voice." Incidentally, just why did the judge tell me that his intuition feels that it would do her good to be there?"
Nikki put her fingers to her forehead in working through the labyrinthine logic that Helen deployed before finding her voice. "You mean, what do I think of it?"
"Yeah, that's what I meant," Helen said, a smirk on her face as she poured two drinks and sprawled full length on the lushly coloured red sofa.
"Well, I suppose, it would give her a purpose in life, no scratch that, because her sense of justice is similar to ours, well just because. I guess the judge is right," Nikki answered as she coiled herself round Helen. Somehow, this was the best thinking she could come up with right now.
"So how are we going to persuade her? If we can't put it into words at our leisure, how
the hell can we do it face to face," she said, feeling her partner safe in her arms.
"The words will find themselves. It all depends if she's angry enough at the way things are," Nikki said gently kissing her lover's neck.
***********
"You mean, go to some stuffy conference and hear all these pompous men lecture us endlessly about how everything's safe in their hands. I don't want to be patted on the head and patronized, to be told that everything's safe in their hands?" exploded Margaret. She couldn't believe what her young friends were telling her.
"That's exactly what we don't mean, Margaret. We know that this is one huge confidence trick, which we intend to bust wide open. I mean the two of us, John and as many friends of ours we can persuade to join us. We want you to come along as well."
Nikki's quiet tones and the correspondingly determined expression on Helen's face clearly impressed the older woman with its soft deliberate sense of purpose. It made sense as far as it went.
"I've never been really political, watching Election Night on television and that sort of thing. Julia and I only bought a television in the nineteen sixties only because we didn't want to feel like complete freaks of nature, well more than we did anyway."
"You've got good values, strong feelings of justice and a sharp eye as to the way we should live. That's political," countered Helen very effectively.
"I'm beginning to sound like Julia's family in saying that the country's going to the dogs," she admitted in wry tones." I never thought I'd see the day when I'd hear myself saying this."
"You're not the traditional 'Disgusted of Tonbridge Wells' but well, like the rest of us. There's an insidious attempt to take away all our freedoms and this makes a nice convenient start with a group of people who always get a bad press."
Margaret ran through her hair in a state of distraction. Everything her two friends were saying resonated with everything she held dear. She pulled a final thought out of the tangle of thought that whirled round inside her head.
"You both mean well and it's very touching that you think so well of me but I've never been to an event like this. It's all outside my experience. I'm no expert on prisons."
"You think they are?" questioned Helen with deadly accuracy." You've been around for a long time. If you come, we'd never dream of leaving you on your own. You don't have to speak if you don't want to but you can if you want to. At least come with us and we'll all get together and talk it over."
"So where are we meeting? That is if I agree to come" Margaret asked at last.
"We've just persuaded John to meet in the VIP room at Chix. I think you'll need to hold his hand, or something and comfort him, as he's very nervous about coming. He will come as he's given his word."
Margaret laughed out loud at the little grin on Nikki's face and Helen's laughter. Suddenly, her mind was made up. The final thought that swayed her was that she had never wanted to miss out on any party. A flood of affection swept through her at her friends' thoughtfulness. She embraced them one at a time and kissed each of them on their cheek.
*********
John really didn't know what to expect. He seriously debated what to wear, one sign of insecurity and at one point opted for his favourite dark blue suit and white shirt before figuring out that this display of formality only heightened his insecurity. Finally realizing that he was taking himself to a realm where he had no robes of office, no wig, no paraphernalia of law, just himself and his quick wits. Tearing off his tie and his jacket, he headed off in his open top sports car, the directions carefully worked out and something to focus his mind on.
As he neared his destination, he reasoned to himself that he'd been to the soiree and made the acquaintance of several charming women at Margaret's house. The only difference was that the venue was going to be slightly different. As he trod the silent street and headed for the prominent 'Chix' sign, his walking pace slackened as doubts started to crowd his mind. It was only after a little while that the sounds of clicking high heels intruded into his consciousness.
"Hiya, judge," the familiar warm Scottish brogue burst into his consciousness so welcomingly. "I'm glad you made it."
"Thank goodness, you're here," he heard himself saying in unashamedly gratified tones, taking in Helen's swirling low cut dress, her glossy look and Nikki's very attractive white suit. Margaret appeared out of the corner of his eye, wearing flowing robes and a flamboyant patterned silk scarf, looking curiously like an excited child.
"It's my first time too, judge. At least at this club," she explained.
Helen led the way and waved them through admission and John's senses were immediately assaulted by a blast of some of the cheaply seductive sounds that his daughter Charlie played him in the days when he chauffeured her around. He smiled slightly to himself that this time, he was technically clubbing, not her.
It took John a little while for John to get used to the gloom, which was fitfully lit by flashing coloured lights. It was for this reason that John didn't immediately recognize the comfortable looking middle-aged woman in a white suit on the arm of another woman wearing a green dress. The sudden smile on her face seemed to indicate that she knew him though John was mystified.
"Don't you recognize me, judge?" called out a familiar voice from an utterly unfamiliar context. To John, it felt as if he were walking down a country lane and he was suddenly overtaken by a red London double decker bus. He knew what it was but the unexpected context took him by surprise.
"Why Coope. Fancy seeing you here," exclaimed John, the first words coming to his lips straight off the top of his head. It was the look of total surprise on the judge's face and the fact that he was on her home ground that caused Rita to seize the moment with her courage. The moment would never come again like this.
"I'm Rita here, judge. Allow me to introduce you to my partner Elaine. We've been together years and she's heard such a lot about you."
John laughed easily in friendly tones, mostly at himself. That moment broke the ice.
"Why don't the two of you know each other?" Nikki called out mischievously and John laughed again. At that moment, he was conscious of all the others in the club. They didn't know who the hell this guy was but he gave out good vibrations as did the flamboyantly dressed older woman, whose eyes gleamed with fascination of what lay before her. They were in the mood to let everything flow, which felt good. This was freedom, personified.
"While you talk to each other," mouthed Nikki into his ear just above the music and gesturing to Rita and Elaine," Trisha and Sally Anne are rounding up some likely accomplices to our schemes. For your act of courage in coming here, we'll buy the drinks so what are you having."
"Since I'm driving, an orange juice," John replied quickly. At least he could handle this one.