Part Ninety Four
George was floating in and out of a dream in which golden visions swam before her eyes and, inside her, that heightened feeling of physical satisfaction and sexual contentment felt natural to her and a normal part of her life. Outside the tall, narrow windows of their hotel in the ancient artistic Montmartre district of that fascinating city, the early morning sounds of the Parisian streets became a lazy background chorus to her physical union with John. Every minute spent on that holiday was on a slow moving idyll where they drifted through the days in the sights and sounds of Paris and the heat of the nights where they shared their double bed. They were first married together there by the exquisite feel of each other's skins before they performed the formal ceremony in the ancient church which only told them what they knew already. Oh yes, John was a wonderful lover at night and her life could only become more perfect than it was already. She felt the twin shapes of her engagement and marriage rings proudly on her finger as she delicately applied nail varnish as part of her morning ritual. She looked sideways at John as he lay there, his eyes only for that enchanting semi dressed vision, She remembered that, of course, she was on her honeymoon just recently married to the man who had given her so much satisfaction in her life and that they had come back to their favourite city.
John looked so different today in his immaculate grey suit complete with top hat alongside her as her long golden hair flowed down her back over her exquisite white lace wedding dress. Daddy, of course, was huffing and puffing as usual even then but was obviously proud to walk up the aisle with his own daughter on his arm to give her away. She was to marry a rising young barrister with good prospects. It was such a good match, so all her relatives said at the champagne reception afterwards.
She remembered in that delirious haze sitting outside in one of the endless cafes that adorned the wide streets. It was so civilised to spend the afternoon drinking red wine, which sparkled with their conversation, and a light breeze stirred the overhead canopy. Nearby, a guitar player's steel strings were strummed rhythmically against the haunting tones of the gypsy violinist as he flicked his dancing notes up and down the scales in a cascade of notes. The singer's French accented voice urgently and stridently declaimed over the compulsive rhythm that
'Here comes the story of the hurricane
the man the authorities came to blame
for something that he never done
put in a prison cell but one time he could have been
the champion of the world.'
She knew that John, like her, was dedicated to the music of the ancients written down so many years ago upon the five parallel lines, the dots and the upright stems in a language that they shared, she on the piano and him on his violin and his outrageous seductive charm that they would make music together the very first time that they got to know each other. Nevertheless, his inquisitive ear picked out the strange way that the notes rose and fell up and down the scale in a primitively fascinating way. The words of the song spoke of his dreams of social justice, John talking then in the way that he always did. She smiled to herself in satisfaction, half-listening, as it was not the theories that were alluring but John himself as she expounded them. Her piano and his violin would make music together but his Bob Dylan and her Abba, their pop music of the day, made a strange combination. Somehow everything fitted together in their lives, just the two of them alone to make of the future what they wanted. She felt young and life was opening its gates to a life of paradise.
Paris was the setting for their love which had an aching intensity about it, as John masterfully guided them round that magic city and half of him expounded the flashing idealistic dreams in an age when all was shiny minted and brand new between them. She could hear John's deep musical voice even now as she stretched herself out luxuriously in that Paris hotel. John would be there for her always. She knew that to be one of those unalterable destinies of her life.
"Wake up, George. We've got a busy day ahead of us."
"Not now, John, darling. We've got all day to go round the Louvre." She murmured sleepily, one eye a fraction open and blinking at the sunlight. She stretched out an arm to smooth the tangle of fair hair on her pillow but somehow today, that did not seem to be where she expected it to be.
The trouble was that George wasn't a morning person and had never been the easiest woman to wake. John lay across George's bed and heard George's reply as she lay there, the half smile on her face at peace with herself with that Mona Lisa quality. He had read books describing that quality and at last got to satisfy his curiosity. He was perplexed at her talk about the Louvre gallery. They had not been to Paris for many years.
"We've got to make a move now even though this time, you won't have to take the tube to work and have some lecherous old man leering at you."
That snapped George awake in a second. For a split second, George thought that he was referring to the clean clinical Paris Metro that they rode round in their discovery of the city. Then, the full horror came back to her of being squashed in the squalor of the London underground. The frustrated angry feelings welled up inside her as she remembered vainly calling out to some deaf cretinous jobsworth in a uniform to ask the way. She needed to know which direction she had to fight her way through the crowds to get to the right platform in this plague ridden smelly rabbit warren. In all her life, she had always been able to get her voice to carry at full volume to convey her wishes and to threaten unspeakable vengeance to anyone who dared to cross her. Her nanny was the first unfortunate victim of the well-hurled rattle being thrown out of the pram and her life after this was variation of this syndrome.
"What on earth are you doing here, John?" George snapped in as heartfelt way that any Negro blues singer could possibly convey with wailing harmonica, whining slide guitar and pain racked singing. Not that the relative aesthetics of the electric Chicago blues of Howling Wolf, Elmore James or Muddy Waters would have had any possible appeal to her. All she knew was that this impossible infuriating man was so cheerful and bright, first thing. He always had been but it didn't matter then somehow.
"I gave you three extremely good orgasms last night. Don't you remember?" John said quietly as he spotted the well-known danger signs. So you did," Drawled George, her face softening for a moment at the memory of his utterly addictive touch. Then, her face hardened again. Her dream had been so vivid, that she could have been back in those hedonistic days of their early marriage. But then he'd spoilt her dream. Observing her returning frown, he said,
"Still if you are regretting everything………….."
"I don't." The heartfelt tones wrenched from her, expressed all her desires for the one man who had once meant everything in her life. It was impossible for them to live together as she knew from her bitter experience of his infidelities. A traitorous voice within her was wondering if it was possible for them to ever live apart and be as really divorced from each other as the court order said in print that they were. A bittersweet flavour of her dreams still hung around like some heady perfume as she reflected on her guilt at her behaviour to Jo last night. This feeling grated up against her accumulated anger that, so many years ago, Jo had come between her and her Paris idyll with John. This time in the morning was not the best for deep introspection and she brushed her neat barely shoulder length blond hair and her thoughts out of her mind while she looked at herself in the mirror. It was true that her face had not greatly changed since the days of her youth, the same aristocratic, finely carved lines but the woman inside had changed, especially so in the past few weeks. "Do you really not feel any guilt for cheating on Jo? Still," she added on a hard, cynical note, "You must be used to it after all this time."
John was watching her nonchalantly as he buttoned up his stylish white shirt and slipped on his favourite grey Saville Row jacket, ready to face the day. He looked himself over in George's extremely wide and large dressing table mirror. Somehow the disheveling experience of a night of lovemaking with George didn't prevent him from looking his immaculate self, ready to climb into his judge's red robes the next day.
"Why should I feel guilty? Jo knows what I am like," John said while looking in the mirror to straighten his tie.
The reflection of George's large expressive eyes bounced back off the mirror and stared back at him. This was her way of saying that he was not able to avoid her eyes that easily.
"The day may come when you may feel guilty, John. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, not even for the largest barrister's fee I have ever earned if that ever happens to you." George's slowly articulated thoughtful voice and slightly open mouth breathed out the words.
"Guilt was never your strong suit, George," John said in his self assured voice, confident of everything as usual. "You've only ever done one kind of guilt, and that had nothing to do with any one of my women."
"Don't even go there," Said George, swivelling her gaze away from him.
"You were always the one to tell me that you worked as a barrister as you were in it for the money and that my absurd devotion to principles was foolish."
George looked over his shoulder to adjust her makeup after silently slipping her own clothes on. The man that she used to call the Deed was right though she loathed to admit it, those were her very words. There was such a similar mirror at the Old Bailey where she had first looked into her own soul and had started the process very dangerous to her of the beginnings of intellectual and emotional honesty. The only thing is that once you start the process, who knows where it will stop? Who knows how far the apple will fall?
"You never told me how you got on at Larkhall," John graciously offered her a cup of coffee and adroitly steered the conversation onto a safer, more neutral topic.
George took a large swig of the strong black cup of coffee that John had made her. With that inside her she was more able to face the day.
"Do you know that I talked to a prostitute who told me that her earnings are enough to send her son to Marlborough College, the same school that Daddy went to?"
John laughed out loud for a long time at that one. It appealed to his sense of what was apparently absurd happening to be the truth.
"If we had had a son called Charles and had sent him to Marlborough College to follow in Daddy's footsteps, they might have been best friends. Who knows?"
"I should think not, John," She snapped, her pervasive guilt being directed into a very convenient and habitual object of her anger. "If that had happened, I would have gone straight to the school and demanded from him that he must dissociate himself immediately from such unsuitable company."
"I am only joking, George," John held up his hands in a gesture of surrender and calculated the precise pause necessary for George's anger to subside.
"Did Karen Betts make you suitably contrite in your visit to Larkhall? I confess that I have never really thought up till now of what happened to all the men and women I have sent to prison," John spoke in a more serious vein.
"Like I'd been buried alive for a week," George shuddered. "It's a completely different world which makes my problems seem small in comparison. I certainly admire Karen, the way she manages to cope with everything. I can't complain about the hospitality I received. I was even offered a gin and tonic - with ice and lemon naturally - by an inmate."
"I take it that you won't need to revisit Larkhall compulsorily next time,"
John replied, smiling and shaking his head in puzzlement at George's revelation. This dislocated his entire conception of what prison life was like. He had some vision of life behind bars and solid walls that was grim and stark having discounted the right wing press conception of a hotel, three meals a day and colour TV.
George nodded as she opened her front door.
"We are going in separate cars, John," George said frostily.
"That is fine by me so long as your car doesn't break down like it did the other day," John said lightly and then flinched as one of George's best killer looks was directed his way.
George led the way in her car to assert her independence from him and John was hard put to keep up with George's aggressive driving style as she sliced in on the umpteenth car that she had overtaken. He winced at the way that she blew her horn at dithering pedestrians on zebra crossings and timid learner drivers who were the special victim of her anger in their indecisiveness in simply being in her way and sticking rigidly to the speed limit. Oh well, he thought, George won't be coming his way on a motoring offence, it will be some unfortunate bumbling magistrate instead that will have to suffer one of her tirades.
George's pulse was racing after her compulsion to arrive at court early to avoid the embarrassment of the other day when everything went so disastrously wrong. When she was most under pressure, the greater was her need to maintain a steely grip on her surroundings and, most of all, to exercise self-control. Nobody must see her when she looked less than perfect, when the expression on her face was out of control. Appearance to her was everything.
Surprisingly, John's car drew up alongside hers only a few minutes later as she had finally got herself ready to face another day in court. Infuriatingly, it took him only a matter of seconds for him to be ready.
"Are you coming, George?" he had the cheek to ask her.
George clattered down the stone tiled corridor on her high heels after John whose long stride ate up the yards to the central court area. When she'd just about caught up with him, out of breath, she caught sight of Jo.
"Hi Jo. If you don't mind, I want to have a word with the Deed before the trial starts. I won't be long." George smiled what she felt to be the most transparently false smile on her face which made her actions of last night as nakedly on display as she had been to John. It wouldn't have mattered 'back in the old days', as she was beginning to call them in her mind, the days when she and Jo were sworn enemies, the days when keeping up appearances was easy and when she didn't know how to behave differently.
"That's no problem, George," Jo called out casually in a way that only made it worse for George.
Despite her small stature, the force of her personality hustled him into his chambers where it propelled him into his chair and she stood facing him, breathing loudly.
"How can you face Jo Mills and look her in the eye after what happened last night?" George opened the battle.
"What happened last night was regrettable," John said in a low measured tone. "Perhaps you're right."
"Oh! Why are you being so maddeningly reasonable about everything? Why don't you get angry, argue back at me like you always used to ever since we first met," George stormed, her opening sound being one of pent up fury tailing off to the faint memories of her dream which still seemed very real to her.
"You know, you look beautiful when you're angry George," John's answer had that maddening hint of flirtatiousness, even at a moment like this.
"You can't run away from yourself forever," George persisted, not quite knowing what she meant by that statement which popped out straight from her unconscious to the words which escaped her mouth.
"no, and neither can you. I am very good at controlling my emotions as you know. I suggest that you do the same especially as we are both appearing in court very soon," John retorted as Coope entered the chamber to prepare him for his scarlet robes as the theatrical props so that he could pass judgement on others. George turned on her heel and let the sprung door shut behind her.
The fading sunlight of a chill October evening dazzled John's eyes as he drove through the city traffic on the way to the House of Commons. It didn't take him long to walk to the car park to catch sight of the finely etched and detailed shape of Big Ben towering over the city streets. The similarly styled complex of the House of Commons nestled at the feet of the fine upstanding clock tower even though it dwarfed in turn the other grey stone buildings on the other side of the road. His mission was the public entrance to the building where generations of the more politically conscious had queued up in their endeavour to reassert the old fashioned human voice, human contact for the minutiae of the anonymous statistical findings of the modern day focus groups and opinion polls. He entered the huge stone mouth of the complex and patiently submitted to the security checks and the metal detector which told of an age where the blind anger and danger of the bomb was a fact of modern life. He made his way through to the Central Lobby which was a vast domed room which sparkled and dazzled in gold from which corridors ran off, north, south, east and west. Marbles statues of famous parliamentarians of the past added their solid roots to the myths of the oldest parliamentary democracy that he was taught in school, years ago. He wondered cynically whether or not his distinguished career would result in him being so dignified for immortality on public display somewhere and decided probably not. He made his way to the lobby clerk and gave in his name in connection with Neil Houghton and of his safe Labour constituency that he could afford to patronise from a distance being a busy cabinet minister.
"It's John Deed for Mr Houghton," John explained. He looked like an average smartly dressed man at whom the bored clerk flicked up an eye and handed him the card to complete. He wondered what sort of political axe to grind this man had. "Judge John Deed," He added with a bit of an edge.
Immediately, the man jumped into life and made the enquiries amongst the rabbit warren of England's seats of democracy.
John sat back in one of the few comfortable chairs in the place which was clearly not designed for crowds of the public who wanted to lobby their MP. The logistics of this sort of direct democracy was clearly designed to be small scale, especially in an age before the electronic aids for tracing the respective MP were available.
"John, this is an unexpected pleasure," drawled Neil. "Come, I'll show you to the House of Commons bar personally."
The man is clearly rattled to see his worst nightmare pop up in an environment where he is worried about what I might say or do and he has good reason to feel that way, John thought. He is also nervous about his political cronies witnessing the sort of scene that he might create which might harm his image.
"Can we talk somewhere private, Neil?" John asked politely.
Neil led him past the ancient drawings of history in the making commissioned by the ruling class who also decided what went into the history books. He pushed open the double swing doors and, once inside, John didn't beat about the bush.
"I want the front door key to George's house. She told me you've got it. Come on, hand it over."
"What, so you can go round whenever you want as a change from seeing your current girlfriend?" Sneered Neil.
"No," Came the contemptuous reply. George must have been very bored to have taken up with a drip like this. "In actual fact, George is nervous about security ever since you hit her and doesn't like loose keys floating around. Who knows, some burglar might come and steal the "Adam and Eve painting" which hangs in her bedroom. It is a fine painting though I say it myself."
Neil turned white with anger while he fumbled in his inside pocket for the key. Anything to get rid of the man. He had thought that after sending flowers round, it might be useful for him to make the personal approach but it looked like he was wasting time that was precious to him.
"How the devil do you know about the picture, John?" Neil's hostile edgy voice demanded of John.
"George told me that she needed something more inspiring to look at when she was in bed with you," John grinned. "Thank you, Neil, for your guided tour."
And then he was gone.
George was floating in and out of a dream in which golden visions swam before her eyes and, inside her, that heightened feeling of physical satisfaction and sexual contentment felt natural to her and a normal part of her life. Outside the tall, narrow windows of their hotel in the ancient artistic Montmartre district of that fascinating city, the early morning sounds of the Parisian streets became a lazy background chorus to her physical union with John. Every minute spent on that holiday was on a slow moving idyll where they drifted through the days in the sights and sounds of Paris and the heat of the nights where they shared their double bed. They were first married together there by the exquisite feel of each other's skins before they performed the formal ceremony in the ancient church which only told them what they knew already. Oh yes, John was a wonderful lover at night and her life could only become more perfect than it was already. She felt the twin shapes of her engagement and marriage rings proudly on her finger as she delicately applied nail varnish as part of her morning ritual. She looked sideways at John as he lay there, his eyes only for that enchanting semi dressed vision, She remembered that, of course, she was on her honeymoon just recently married to the man who had given her so much satisfaction in her life and that they had come back to their favourite city.
John looked so different today in his immaculate grey suit complete with top hat alongside her as her long golden hair flowed down her back over her exquisite white lace wedding dress. Daddy, of course, was huffing and puffing as usual even then but was obviously proud to walk up the aisle with his own daughter on his arm to give her away. She was to marry a rising young barrister with good prospects. It was such a good match, so all her relatives said at the champagne reception afterwards.
She remembered in that delirious haze sitting outside in one of the endless cafes that adorned the wide streets. It was so civilised to spend the afternoon drinking red wine, which sparkled with their conversation, and a light breeze stirred the overhead canopy. Nearby, a guitar player's steel strings were strummed rhythmically against the haunting tones of the gypsy violinist as he flicked his dancing notes up and down the scales in a cascade of notes. The singer's French accented voice urgently and stridently declaimed over the compulsive rhythm that
'Here comes the story of the hurricane
the man the authorities came to blame
for something that he never done
put in a prison cell but one time he could have been
the champion of the world.'
She knew that John, like her, was dedicated to the music of the ancients written down so many years ago upon the five parallel lines, the dots and the upright stems in a language that they shared, she on the piano and him on his violin and his outrageous seductive charm that they would make music together the very first time that they got to know each other. Nevertheless, his inquisitive ear picked out the strange way that the notes rose and fell up and down the scale in a primitively fascinating way. The words of the song spoke of his dreams of social justice, John talking then in the way that he always did. She smiled to herself in satisfaction, half-listening, as it was not the theories that were alluring but John himself as she expounded them. Her piano and his violin would make music together but his Bob Dylan and her Abba, their pop music of the day, made a strange combination. Somehow everything fitted together in their lives, just the two of them alone to make of the future what they wanted. She felt young and life was opening its gates to a life of paradise.
Paris was the setting for their love which had an aching intensity about it, as John masterfully guided them round that magic city and half of him expounded the flashing idealistic dreams in an age when all was shiny minted and brand new between them. She could hear John's deep musical voice even now as she stretched herself out luxuriously in that Paris hotel. John would be there for her always. She knew that to be one of those unalterable destinies of her life.
"Wake up, George. We've got a busy day ahead of us."
"Not now, John, darling. We've got all day to go round the Louvre." She murmured sleepily, one eye a fraction open and blinking at the sunlight. She stretched out an arm to smooth the tangle of fair hair on her pillow but somehow today, that did not seem to be where she expected it to be.
The trouble was that George wasn't a morning person and had never been the easiest woman to wake. John lay across George's bed and heard George's reply as she lay there, the half smile on her face at peace with herself with that Mona Lisa quality. He had read books describing that quality and at last got to satisfy his curiosity. He was perplexed at her talk about the Louvre gallery. They had not been to Paris for many years.
"We've got to make a move now even though this time, you won't have to take the tube to work and have some lecherous old man leering at you."
That snapped George awake in a second. For a split second, George thought that he was referring to the clean clinical Paris Metro that they rode round in their discovery of the city. Then, the full horror came back to her of being squashed in the squalor of the London underground. The frustrated angry feelings welled up inside her as she remembered vainly calling out to some deaf cretinous jobsworth in a uniform to ask the way. She needed to know which direction she had to fight her way through the crowds to get to the right platform in this plague ridden smelly rabbit warren. In all her life, she had always been able to get her voice to carry at full volume to convey her wishes and to threaten unspeakable vengeance to anyone who dared to cross her. Her nanny was the first unfortunate victim of the well-hurled rattle being thrown out of the pram and her life after this was variation of this syndrome.
"What on earth are you doing here, John?" George snapped in as heartfelt way that any Negro blues singer could possibly convey with wailing harmonica, whining slide guitar and pain racked singing. Not that the relative aesthetics of the electric Chicago blues of Howling Wolf, Elmore James or Muddy Waters would have had any possible appeal to her. All she knew was that this impossible infuriating man was so cheerful and bright, first thing. He always had been but it didn't matter then somehow.
"I gave you three extremely good orgasms last night. Don't you remember?" John said quietly as he spotted the well-known danger signs. So you did," Drawled George, her face softening for a moment at the memory of his utterly addictive touch. Then, her face hardened again. Her dream had been so vivid, that she could have been back in those hedonistic days of their early marriage. But then he'd spoilt her dream. Observing her returning frown, he said,
"Still if you are regretting everything………….."
"I don't." The heartfelt tones wrenched from her, expressed all her desires for the one man who had once meant everything in her life. It was impossible for them to live together as she knew from her bitter experience of his infidelities. A traitorous voice within her was wondering if it was possible for them to ever live apart and be as really divorced from each other as the court order said in print that they were. A bittersweet flavour of her dreams still hung around like some heady perfume as she reflected on her guilt at her behaviour to Jo last night. This feeling grated up against her accumulated anger that, so many years ago, Jo had come between her and her Paris idyll with John. This time in the morning was not the best for deep introspection and she brushed her neat barely shoulder length blond hair and her thoughts out of her mind while she looked at herself in the mirror. It was true that her face had not greatly changed since the days of her youth, the same aristocratic, finely carved lines but the woman inside had changed, especially so in the past few weeks. "Do you really not feel any guilt for cheating on Jo? Still," she added on a hard, cynical note, "You must be used to it after all this time."
John was watching her nonchalantly as he buttoned up his stylish white shirt and slipped on his favourite grey Saville Row jacket, ready to face the day. He looked himself over in George's extremely wide and large dressing table mirror. Somehow the disheveling experience of a night of lovemaking with George didn't prevent him from looking his immaculate self, ready to climb into his judge's red robes the next day.
"Why should I feel guilty? Jo knows what I am like," John said while looking in the mirror to straighten his tie.
The reflection of George's large expressive eyes bounced back off the mirror and stared back at him. This was her way of saying that he was not able to avoid her eyes that easily.
"The day may come when you may feel guilty, John. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, not even for the largest barrister's fee I have ever earned if that ever happens to you." George's slowly articulated thoughtful voice and slightly open mouth breathed out the words.
"Guilt was never your strong suit, George," John said in his self assured voice, confident of everything as usual. "You've only ever done one kind of guilt, and that had nothing to do with any one of my women."
"Don't even go there," Said George, swivelling her gaze away from him.
"You were always the one to tell me that you worked as a barrister as you were in it for the money and that my absurd devotion to principles was foolish."
George looked over his shoulder to adjust her makeup after silently slipping her own clothes on. The man that she used to call the Deed was right though she loathed to admit it, those were her very words. There was such a similar mirror at the Old Bailey where she had first looked into her own soul and had started the process very dangerous to her of the beginnings of intellectual and emotional honesty. The only thing is that once you start the process, who knows where it will stop? Who knows how far the apple will fall?
"You never told me how you got on at Larkhall," John graciously offered her a cup of coffee and adroitly steered the conversation onto a safer, more neutral topic.
George took a large swig of the strong black cup of coffee that John had made her. With that inside her she was more able to face the day.
"Do you know that I talked to a prostitute who told me that her earnings are enough to send her son to Marlborough College, the same school that Daddy went to?"
John laughed out loud for a long time at that one. It appealed to his sense of what was apparently absurd happening to be the truth.
"If we had had a son called Charles and had sent him to Marlborough College to follow in Daddy's footsteps, they might have been best friends. Who knows?"
"I should think not, John," She snapped, her pervasive guilt being directed into a very convenient and habitual object of her anger. "If that had happened, I would have gone straight to the school and demanded from him that he must dissociate himself immediately from such unsuitable company."
"I am only joking, George," John held up his hands in a gesture of surrender and calculated the precise pause necessary for George's anger to subside.
"Did Karen Betts make you suitably contrite in your visit to Larkhall? I confess that I have never really thought up till now of what happened to all the men and women I have sent to prison," John spoke in a more serious vein.
"Like I'd been buried alive for a week," George shuddered. "It's a completely different world which makes my problems seem small in comparison. I certainly admire Karen, the way she manages to cope with everything. I can't complain about the hospitality I received. I was even offered a gin and tonic - with ice and lemon naturally - by an inmate."
"I take it that you won't need to revisit Larkhall compulsorily next time,"
John replied, smiling and shaking his head in puzzlement at George's revelation. This dislocated his entire conception of what prison life was like. He had some vision of life behind bars and solid walls that was grim and stark having discounted the right wing press conception of a hotel, three meals a day and colour TV.
George nodded as she opened her front door.
"We are going in separate cars, John," George said frostily.
"That is fine by me so long as your car doesn't break down like it did the other day," John said lightly and then flinched as one of George's best killer looks was directed his way.
George led the way in her car to assert her independence from him and John was hard put to keep up with George's aggressive driving style as she sliced in on the umpteenth car that she had overtaken. He winced at the way that she blew her horn at dithering pedestrians on zebra crossings and timid learner drivers who were the special victim of her anger in their indecisiveness in simply being in her way and sticking rigidly to the speed limit. Oh well, he thought, George won't be coming his way on a motoring offence, it will be some unfortunate bumbling magistrate instead that will have to suffer one of her tirades.
George's pulse was racing after her compulsion to arrive at court early to avoid the embarrassment of the other day when everything went so disastrously wrong. When she was most under pressure, the greater was her need to maintain a steely grip on her surroundings and, most of all, to exercise self-control. Nobody must see her when she looked less than perfect, when the expression on her face was out of control. Appearance to her was everything.
Surprisingly, John's car drew up alongside hers only a few minutes later as she had finally got herself ready to face another day in court. Infuriatingly, it took him only a matter of seconds for him to be ready.
"Are you coming, George?" he had the cheek to ask her.
George clattered down the stone tiled corridor on her high heels after John whose long stride ate up the yards to the central court area. When she'd just about caught up with him, out of breath, she caught sight of Jo.
"Hi Jo. If you don't mind, I want to have a word with the Deed before the trial starts. I won't be long." George smiled what she felt to be the most transparently false smile on her face which made her actions of last night as nakedly on display as she had been to John. It wouldn't have mattered 'back in the old days', as she was beginning to call them in her mind, the days when she and Jo were sworn enemies, the days when keeping up appearances was easy and when she didn't know how to behave differently.
"That's no problem, George," Jo called out casually in a way that only made it worse for George.
Despite her small stature, the force of her personality hustled him into his chambers where it propelled him into his chair and she stood facing him, breathing loudly.
"How can you face Jo Mills and look her in the eye after what happened last night?" George opened the battle.
"What happened last night was regrettable," John said in a low measured tone. "Perhaps you're right."
"Oh! Why are you being so maddeningly reasonable about everything? Why don't you get angry, argue back at me like you always used to ever since we first met," George stormed, her opening sound being one of pent up fury tailing off to the faint memories of her dream which still seemed very real to her.
"You know, you look beautiful when you're angry George," John's answer had that maddening hint of flirtatiousness, even at a moment like this.
"You can't run away from yourself forever," George persisted, not quite knowing what she meant by that statement which popped out straight from her unconscious to the words which escaped her mouth.
"no, and neither can you. I am very good at controlling my emotions as you know. I suggest that you do the same especially as we are both appearing in court very soon," John retorted as Coope entered the chamber to prepare him for his scarlet robes as the theatrical props so that he could pass judgement on others. George turned on her heel and let the sprung door shut behind her.
The fading sunlight of a chill October evening dazzled John's eyes as he drove through the city traffic on the way to the House of Commons. It didn't take him long to walk to the car park to catch sight of the finely etched and detailed shape of Big Ben towering over the city streets. The similarly styled complex of the House of Commons nestled at the feet of the fine upstanding clock tower even though it dwarfed in turn the other grey stone buildings on the other side of the road. His mission was the public entrance to the building where generations of the more politically conscious had queued up in their endeavour to reassert the old fashioned human voice, human contact for the minutiae of the anonymous statistical findings of the modern day focus groups and opinion polls. He entered the huge stone mouth of the complex and patiently submitted to the security checks and the metal detector which told of an age where the blind anger and danger of the bomb was a fact of modern life. He made his way through to the Central Lobby which was a vast domed room which sparkled and dazzled in gold from which corridors ran off, north, south, east and west. Marbles statues of famous parliamentarians of the past added their solid roots to the myths of the oldest parliamentary democracy that he was taught in school, years ago. He wondered cynically whether or not his distinguished career would result in him being so dignified for immortality on public display somewhere and decided probably not. He made his way to the lobby clerk and gave in his name in connection with Neil Houghton and of his safe Labour constituency that he could afford to patronise from a distance being a busy cabinet minister.
"It's John Deed for Mr Houghton," John explained. He looked like an average smartly dressed man at whom the bored clerk flicked up an eye and handed him the card to complete. He wondered what sort of political axe to grind this man had. "Judge John Deed," He added with a bit of an edge.
Immediately, the man jumped into life and made the enquiries amongst the rabbit warren of England's seats of democracy.
John sat back in one of the few comfortable chairs in the place which was clearly not designed for crowds of the public who wanted to lobby their MP. The logistics of this sort of direct democracy was clearly designed to be small scale, especially in an age before the electronic aids for tracing the respective MP were available.
"John, this is an unexpected pleasure," drawled Neil. "Come, I'll show you to the House of Commons bar personally."
The man is clearly rattled to see his worst nightmare pop up in an environment where he is worried about what I might say or do and he has good reason to feel that way, John thought. He is also nervous about his political cronies witnessing the sort of scene that he might create which might harm his image.
"Can we talk somewhere private, Neil?" John asked politely.
Neil led him past the ancient drawings of history in the making commissioned by the ruling class who also decided what went into the history books. He pushed open the double swing doors and, once inside, John didn't beat about the bush.
"I want the front door key to George's house. She told me you've got it. Come on, hand it over."
"What, so you can go round whenever you want as a change from seeing your current girlfriend?" Sneered Neil.
"No," Came the contemptuous reply. George must have been very bored to have taken up with a drip like this. "In actual fact, George is nervous about security ever since you hit her and doesn't like loose keys floating around. Who knows, some burglar might come and steal the "Adam and Eve painting" which hangs in her bedroom. It is a fine painting though I say it myself."
Neil turned white with anger while he fumbled in his inside pocket for the key. Anything to get rid of the man. He had thought that after sending flowers round, it might be useful for him to make the personal approach but it looked like he was wasting time that was precious to him.
"How the devil do you know about the picture, John?" Neil's hostile edgy voice demanded of John.
"George told me that she needed something more inspiring to look at when she was in bed with you," John grinned. "Thank you, Neil, for your guided tour."
And then he was gone.