Part Sixty Four
More than ever before , the week after the Atkins Merriman trial made George wonder if there was a home to go home to even though she owned it. George's working week was becoming the enjoyable part of her day with fragments of warmth and liveliness of those around her who at least appreciated her sparkling conversation. She could handle the daily hard slog of the verbal cut and thrust of court work. She was always the sort of woman who threw herself into her work, especially after Charlie was born and provide for Charlie in the same way that Daddy provided the best for her. Even the Deed was at least good company whenever she ran into him, infuriating though the man could be. At least he was a human being. It was going home each night that was becoming the problem.
When she let herself into the house, Neil's mask of disapproval was tangible and hit her like a blast of cold air. The man would never just get any grievance properly out of his system unless it was especially bad and then his idea of a row was a short cold list of things she had done wrong to harm his precious position in the Cabinet. The argument would always fizzle out with nothing ever resolved. He was used to his minions doing everything for him, his aide keeping his diary of events, his letters typed for him only to sign without ever properly reading them and the civil service doing what he wanted. On the other hand, he shamelessly toadied to those above him and it was this cosseted dishonest lifestyle which made him such a poor consort. That word said everything about their relationship, the emptiness of feelings, the focus on career moves and official duties. It was all this that made him so inadequate at home when he had to emerge from behind the shelter of his official identity and deal with things himself. Even the sex was average when they had first got together and was now frequently lacklustre. She had heard how power was such an aphrodisiac and she had expected him to be as good between the sheets as John had been and look what she had ended up with. On the occasional nights in bed that Neil turned in her direction, the lovemaking had been short and perfunctory. He might be all right , reflected George, as he lay gasping on top of her but she did not exactly feel that she was the female lead in a D H Lawrence novel as she gazed upward at the large picture above their bed.
Julie Johnson was in tears as she received a letter from her Rhiannon. Since her pimp, Damian had gone out of her life, she worried how her beloved daughter was getting on. It was one thing in the first rush of guilt for Rhiannon to promise to get through college, but it was quite another thing to sustain that. It was these fears for Rhiannon that made her feel desperately that she wanted to be around her to advise her not to end up with the wrong fella as she had done with her ex. In a way, girls could be more of a worry than boys as she knew from her own experience of what she had been like.
"……………I'm sticking at college still but I'm writing from a Women's Refuge. I met this boy who I thought was the answer to ,my dreams, the kind you read about in the magazines, well the kind I read anyway. He told me that he was in love with me and couldn't live without me and begged me to move in with him. I agreed to as he seemed to be the real thing. Only when I started living with him, he had this weird streak in him and would lash out without warning when he had a few too many to drink. It was as if he became a different person altogether. I did my best to understand him, I really did and tried to talk to him to get him to understand himself and he promised he would never do it again. Only he did and it was this up and down relationship I had with him. All my college friends told me that he'll never change. I agree with them now that I'm out of the relationship but I was trapped as I needed someone to love. I came to this refuge when the police were called in and I'm really getting better now. The women there are really helpful and the college are giving me time to catch up with this years course work. I'm on the Social which isn't much but is something to live on. I'm getting better now, mum, honest as I'm finding my feet. I'm sorry I never told you about all this but I knew you would feel helpless and guilty that you couldn't help me.
I'll come in if you send me a VO and give my love to Auntie Julie. I've not forgotten my promise to her.
Your loving daughter
Rhiannon".
"Kids, eh. You never stop worrying about them no matter how old they get." Julie Johnson wept into Julie Saunders's shoulder who comforted her and held her tight like she always had.
Neil flung down on the dining room table today's Daily Telegraph with the latest critical headline -'Larkhall prison firebombers double suicide- has the government lost its grip?'
"Just look at this headline, George. I've had to face some very awkward questions in the Cabinet about this. The one event I entrust to you and it blows up in my face," his cold voice abruptly started in on her.
"When I'm in court, I do have all the paperwork I need to read before I speak so when I come home it isn't too much to ask for you to let me read the article, darling, before being cross examined," George replied, her tones empty of affection and the use of the word darling, merely a formality.
George took the paper and in an unhurried way, scanned the columns of coverage. Who writes these headlines anyway, some anally retentive man with an obsession for control. I don't do, I am, George reflected to herself. She scanned the columns of political bile that banged on about the sloppy security in prisons and that the trial had been left to flounder with no sense of proper direction. She agreed with the rest of the paper that she wanted to keep her taxes down and didn't like the euro. It's that living with a career politician awakened in her liberal tendencies that she never knew that she had in her, especially as this time she could measure her own direct experience against the headlines. A quick peek over the conveniently large newspaper told her of the subtle signs of Neil's rising temper behind his cold façade.
"I wouldn't worry as a week is a long time in politics. Who knows, next week the Great British Public will be loving you again," George's icy voice accentuated the sarcasm in the way that her tone climbed up and down the scale.
Neil glared at George without speaking for a moment. He was having enough of this castrating bitch of a woman who had the exact way of belittling his strongly held feelings which were too strong for him to be ever able to put into words. He and George weren't getting along right now. She was turning out different from what he had wanted and a different model, softer, more pliable and more disposed to admire him as he felt was his rightful due. How long ago was it that they first met?
There was something attractive and alluring about Georgia Channing when he first laid eyes on her at a charity do that they were both invited to and he was flattered in the interest that she took in him. In his eyes, they made a brilliant team, he the rising star in New Labour and she, the brilliant talented barrister whose undoubted abilities matched the perfect way that she handled social affairs. They were destined for the top until this recent crisis. It all started from his boast that this brilliant barrister could pull the Government out of an embarrassing fix. He had bragged about her to the Attorney General in an ante room at the House of Commons. It seemed a good idea at the time and it was fixed up that if Cantwell, the then Government favourite, dropped out, George was next in the running. Of course, he didn't trouble her pretty head about it as he had other matters to keep him busy. It was an understood thing between him and the Attorney General, not for anyone else's ears.
"That's not good enough, George," Neil replied shortly. "I live in a world where we are expected to get results with no excuses."
"You mean other people do the hard work for you to get results and you take all the glory if everything goes well and you put the blame on someone else if things go badly. I am such a useful alibi for you." George, in her last stinging attack on Neil's integrity, didn't fully register how she was causing his temper to escalate. It was the sarcastic twist in the tone that she said 'such' that rammed her point home. A part of her was still back in the time when she lived with John and they had flaming rows of operatic proportions and each could give vent to their feelings. Neil had no passionate impulse in his body apart from his insatiable ambition.
"You know that's not true," Neil dismissively brushed her aside.
"Neil, can you explain one thing to me," George pursued making the supreme effort to be reasonable. "If this court case was such a life or death matter, why wasn't I put on the case at the outset so that I had enough time to prepare for it and so that I didn't have to pick up the pieces after Brian Cantwell threw in the towel. Did you find out from the Attorney General just why he gave up the case and why I was told about it? Don't you think the writing was on the wall even then?"
Neil's feelings of anger and frustration rocketed. A calmly reasonable George making her case was just as intolerable as a sarcastic George sticking in the knife. This was humiliating as he had always been evasive to his Cabinet colleagues when they had talked about how marvellous and supportive their wives had been and smoothed out the troubled brow with oozing sympathy when they got home from a hard day's work at the their Ministries and a hard evening's drinking in the House of Commons bar in the relentlessly competitive world. No, it wasn't the Conservative opposition they had to worry about but their own colleagues who were secretly trying to take their jobs. There was an increasing crowd of New Labour ex ministers on the back benches speculating on who would be the next minister to be replaced.
"In the last war," Neil replied stiffly. "people got on with their jobs without complaining. That Battle of Britain spirit was what preserved the democratic freedoms for our generation to hand on."
George laughed incredulously at that. The image of a glamorous fighter ace, Neil Houghton dressed in a blue RAF uniform, complete with goggles climbing into his Spitfire and revving his engine desperately to take off and confront the Nazi bombers above him was just too absurd to imagine.
"You must be joking. You can't even change a fuse. Why only last week, you had to call out the electrician. Besides, anyone fighting a war as you put it, must by necessity be endowed with a certain amount of stamminer."
"That's enough, George," Neil's choked voice tried to suppress this dangerous woman who was maliciously attacking his masculinity.
"You poor, poor man. John always said that you acted like a spoilt little boy who if he didn't get his own way, went off in a sulk and he's right." George's crowning insult lashed back at him as she grew utterly sick and tired of the man who a split second instinct told her she loathed and for whom she felt a total and utter lack of respect.
Something was switched on in Neil's mind that unaccountably caused him to lash out in total frustration. Maybe it was the spectacle of George going dangerously out of control that caused him to panic or the fear that in his well ordered world, one element was threatening him. Something burst in his mind and he found that he had lunged forward at George to drive away that voice and his hand must have connected with her face. It was so unlike him as he had never done that sort of thing for ages, it must be the build up of this stress in him which every medical journal said was a killer. More than that, he reassured himself, it was George of all people, taking sides with that disreputable Deed character who always mocked and challenged him even in the contemptuous way that he looked at him without speaking.
George had that strange disconnected feeling in her as the pain spread outwards from the blow near her eye and looked at the stranger who had hit her. Then she turned and walked away from Neil who stood rooted to the spot like a paralysed actor in a play that had gone wrong.
"You be out of my house by the time I get home tomorrow." The words leapt from her mouth without her thinking about it and she made an instinctive grab for her mobile phone.
"Where are you going?" Neil asked automatically without thinking.
"Somewhere, anywhere in the world where you aren't," George fired back and she thrust aside the front door without shutting it and escaped into the darkness.
More than ever before , the week after the Atkins Merriman trial made George wonder if there was a home to go home to even though she owned it. George's working week was becoming the enjoyable part of her day with fragments of warmth and liveliness of those around her who at least appreciated her sparkling conversation. She could handle the daily hard slog of the verbal cut and thrust of court work. She was always the sort of woman who threw herself into her work, especially after Charlie was born and provide for Charlie in the same way that Daddy provided the best for her. Even the Deed was at least good company whenever she ran into him, infuriating though the man could be. At least he was a human being. It was going home each night that was becoming the problem.
When she let herself into the house, Neil's mask of disapproval was tangible and hit her like a blast of cold air. The man would never just get any grievance properly out of his system unless it was especially bad and then his idea of a row was a short cold list of things she had done wrong to harm his precious position in the Cabinet. The argument would always fizzle out with nothing ever resolved. He was used to his minions doing everything for him, his aide keeping his diary of events, his letters typed for him only to sign without ever properly reading them and the civil service doing what he wanted. On the other hand, he shamelessly toadied to those above him and it was this cosseted dishonest lifestyle which made him such a poor consort. That word said everything about their relationship, the emptiness of feelings, the focus on career moves and official duties. It was all this that made him so inadequate at home when he had to emerge from behind the shelter of his official identity and deal with things himself. Even the sex was average when they had first got together and was now frequently lacklustre. She had heard how power was such an aphrodisiac and she had expected him to be as good between the sheets as John had been and look what she had ended up with. On the occasional nights in bed that Neil turned in her direction, the lovemaking had been short and perfunctory. He might be all right , reflected George, as he lay gasping on top of her but she did not exactly feel that she was the female lead in a D H Lawrence novel as she gazed upward at the large picture above their bed.
Julie Johnson was in tears as she received a letter from her Rhiannon. Since her pimp, Damian had gone out of her life, she worried how her beloved daughter was getting on. It was one thing in the first rush of guilt for Rhiannon to promise to get through college, but it was quite another thing to sustain that. It was these fears for Rhiannon that made her feel desperately that she wanted to be around her to advise her not to end up with the wrong fella as she had done with her ex. In a way, girls could be more of a worry than boys as she knew from her own experience of what she had been like.
"……………I'm sticking at college still but I'm writing from a Women's Refuge. I met this boy who I thought was the answer to ,my dreams, the kind you read about in the magazines, well the kind I read anyway. He told me that he was in love with me and couldn't live without me and begged me to move in with him. I agreed to as he seemed to be the real thing. Only when I started living with him, he had this weird streak in him and would lash out without warning when he had a few too many to drink. It was as if he became a different person altogether. I did my best to understand him, I really did and tried to talk to him to get him to understand himself and he promised he would never do it again. Only he did and it was this up and down relationship I had with him. All my college friends told me that he'll never change. I agree with them now that I'm out of the relationship but I was trapped as I needed someone to love. I came to this refuge when the police were called in and I'm really getting better now. The women there are really helpful and the college are giving me time to catch up with this years course work. I'm on the Social which isn't much but is something to live on. I'm getting better now, mum, honest as I'm finding my feet. I'm sorry I never told you about all this but I knew you would feel helpless and guilty that you couldn't help me.
I'll come in if you send me a VO and give my love to Auntie Julie. I've not forgotten my promise to her.
Your loving daughter
Rhiannon".
"Kids, eh. You never stop worrying about them no matter how old they get." Julie Johnson wept into Julie Saunders's shoulder who comforted her and held her tight like she always had.
Neil flung down on the dining room table today's Daily Telegraph with the latest critical headline -'Larkhall prison firebombers double suicide- has the government lost its grip?'
"Just look at this headline, George. I've had to face some very awkward questions in the Cabinet about this. The one event I entrust to you and it blows up in my face," his cold voice abruptly started in on her.
"When I'm in court, I do have all the paperwork I need to read before I speak so when I come home it isn't too much to ask for you to let me read the article, darling, before being cross examined," George replied, her tones empty of affection and the use of the word darling, merely a formality.
George took the paper and in an unhurried way, scanned the columns of coverage. Who writes these headlines anyway, some anally retentive man with an obsession for control. I don't do, I am, George reflected to herself. She scanned the columns of political bile that banged on about the sloppy security in prisons and that the trial had been left to flounder with no sense of proper direction. She agreed with the rest of the paper that she wanted to keep her taxes down and didn't like the euro. It's that living with a career politician awakened in her liberal tendencies that she never knew that she had in her, especially as this time she could measure her own direct experience against the headlines. A quick peek over the conveniently large newspaper told her of the subtle signs of Neil's rising temper behind his cold façade.
"I wouldn't worry as a week is a long time in politics. Who knows, next week the Great British Public will be loving you again," George's icy voice accentuated the sarcasm in the way that her tone climbed up and down the scale.
Neil glared at George without speaking for a moment. He was having enough of this castrating bitch of a woman who had the exact way of belittling his strongly held feelings which were too strong for him to be ever able to put into words. He and George weren't getting along right now. She was turning out different from what he had wanted and a different model, softer, more pliable and more disposed to admire him as he felt was his rightful due. How long ago was it that they first met?
There was something attractive and alluring about Georgia Channing when he first laid eyes on her at a charity do that they were both invited to and he was flattered in the interest that she took in him. In his eyes, they made a brilliant team, he the rising star in New Labour and she, the brilliant talented barrister whose undoubted abilities matched the perfect way that she handled social affairs. They were destined for the top until this recent crisis. It all started from his boast that this brilliant barrister could pull the Government out of an embarrassing fix. He had bragged about her to the Attorney General in an ante room at the House of Commons. It seemed a good idea at the time and it was fixed up that if Cantwell, the then Government favourite, dropped out, George was next in the running. Of course, he didn't trouble her pretty head about it as he had other matters to keep him busy. It was an understood thing between him and the Attorney General, not for anyone else's ears.
"That's not good enough, George," Neil replied shortly. "I live in a world where we are expected to get results with no excuses."
"You mean other people do the hard work for you to get results and you take all the glory if everything goes well and you put the blame on someone else if things go badly. I am such a useful alibi for you." George, in her last stinging attack on Neil's integrity, didn't fully register how she was causing his temper to escalate. It was the sarcastic twist in the tone that she said 'such' that rammed her point home. A part of her was still back in the time when she lived with John and they had flaming rows of operatic proportions and each could give vent to their feelings. Neil had no passionate impulse in his body apart from his insatiable ambition.
"You know that's not true," Neil dismissively brushed her aside.
"Neil, can you explain one thing to me," George pursued making the supreme effort to be reasonable. "If this court case was such a life or death matter, why wasn't I put on the case at the outset so that I had enough time to prepare for it and so that I didn't have to pick up the pieces after Brian Cantwell threw in the towel. Did you find out from the Attorney General just why he gave up the case and why I was told about it? Don't you think the writing was on the wall even then?"
Neil's feelings of anger and frustration rocketed. A calmly reasonable George making her case was just as intolerable as a sarcastic George sticking in the knife. This was humiliating as he had always been evasive to his Cabinet colleagues when they had talked about how marvellous and supportive their wives had been and smoothed out the troubled brow with oozing sympathy when they got home from a hard day's work at the their Ministries and a hard evening's drinking in the House of Commons bar in the relentlessly competitive world. No, it wasn't the Conservative opposition they had to worry about but their own colleagues who were secretly trying to take their jobs. There was an increasing crowd of New Labour ex ministers on the back benches speculating on who would be the next minister to be replaced.
"In the last war," Neil replied stiffly. "people got on with their jobs without complaining. That Battle of Britain spirit was what preserved the democratic freedoms for our generation to hand on."
George laughed incredulously at that. The image of a glamorous fighter ace, Neil Houghton dressed in a blue RAF uniform, complete with goggles climbing into his Spitfire and revving his engine desperately to take off and confront the Nazi bombers above him was just too absurd to imagine.
"You must be joking. You can't even change a fuse. Why only last week, you had to call out the electrician. Besides, anyone fighting a war as you put it, must by necessity be endowed with a certain amount of stamminer."
"That's enough, George," Neil's choked voice tried to suppress this dangerous woman who was maliciously attacking his masculinity.
"You poor, poor man. John always said that you acted like a spoilt little boy who if he didn't get his own way, went off in a sulk and he's right." George's crowning insult lashed back at him as she grew utterly sick and tired of the man who a split second instinct told her she loathed and for whom she felt a total and utter lack of respect.
Something was switched on in Neil's mind that unaccountably caused him to lash out in total frustration. Maybe it was the spectacle of George going dangerously out of control that caused him to panic or the fear that in his well ordered world, one element was threatening him. Something burst in his mind and he found that he had lunged forward at George to drive away that voice and his hand must have connected with her face. It was so unlike him as he had never done that sort of thing for ages, it must be the build up of this stress in him which every medical journal said was a killer. More than that, he reassured himself, it was George of all people, taking sides with that disreputable Deed character who always mocked and challenged him even in the contemptuous way that he looked at him without speaking.
George had that strange disconnected feeling in her as the pain spread outwards from the blow near her eye and looked at the stranger who had hit her. Then she turned and walked away from Neil who stood rooted to the spot like a paralysed actor in a play that had gone wrong.
"You be out of my house by the time I get home tomorrow." The words leapt from her mouth without her thinking about it and she made an instinctive grab for her mobile phone.
"Where are you going?" Neil asked automatically without thinking.
"Somewhere, anywhere in the world where you aren't," George fired back and she thrust aside the front door without shutting it and escaped into the darkness.