Part One Hundred and Thirty Four
"The LCd must have been slipping when they let you take on the Rogers case. What they wanted from their point of view was a nice compliant judge who knows full well that sending down a football hero would not please his lords and masters. And what do they get but you," Jo's amused tones set the seal on the scene of cosy intimacy of an evening at her house in the same way as they had shared so many evenings.
The expression on John's face was a combination of a naughty schoolboy, revelling in his badness and the idealistic man whose steady unflinching gaze was fixed on life's far horizons rather than on the short sighted perspectives of self interest.
"I am willing to be persuaded to the contrary by facts as the trial unfolds," John calmly pontificated, not altogether convincingly. "But the essence of the case is of a common lout, his sense of self importance inflated by his publicist and by a fawning press, who has come to think that he is exempt from normal moral restraints and, above all, from justice. He finds himself in a bar surrounded by a pack of his accomplices and hangers on and, in an unprovoked assault, leaves an innocent man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time so seriously injured that he is unable to continue his normal more humble occupation."
"You risk not only having the establishment ranged against you but popular opinion who will call for your blood, on both the front page of the tabloids and in the sports sections," Jo urged caution, knowing full well how wasted her advice was.
"'The people who have conquered the world now have two interests - bread and circuses.' So wrote Juvenal, a great writer of the games that took place on the circus Maximus which consumed the misplaced dreams of the Roman mob which the Caesars used cynically to keep them in line. That quotation echoed down the generations, through the Dark ages and to the present day while the names of the charioteers, so famous in their time, are forgotten." The rolling tones in John's voice conveyed the scorn and the passion in him and, after all these years, his durable and unbreakable idealism.
"Your public school education has taken interesting forms, John," Jo's amused tones nevertheless respected his strong feelings.
John nodded his agreement rather than spoke as he recalled the other strand of unorthodoxy in his thinking, his research through the more arid stretches of the Bible until he came across the relative oasis of the Songs of Solomon.
"On the top of the Old Bailey stands the statue of the scales of justice which should be evenly balanced, not weighted towards the famous and the politically powerful. If the Attorney General were at least honest, he would have that symbol recast in a form more appropriate for his corrupt thinking."
Jo shook her head in admiration, dragged back for fear of what trouble he could finally land himself in. She knew that, in this mode of conversation, John meant every word that he said in his uncompromising tones which did not hesitate. There was no other man whom she knew who would not carry on to the bitter end and this was a large part of her attraction for him.
"If David Beckham were in the dock and found guilty of a similar offence, you would send him down as you did in the Armatige case, wouldn't you," Jo articulated the words to describe a scenario that she barely dared to think that even John was capable of.
"Of course, Jo. What else is British justice there for?" John proclaimed with total certainty and assurance.
"In that case, John, it wouldn't be too much trouble to ask you to dispense your sort of justice nearer home. I'm talking about me, you and George. It doesn't begin and end in court, you know."
A sudden chilly silence froze over the warm feelings of gentle intimacy. It hung in the air
While Jo waited for the words from John which were a long time in coming while the expression on his face turned blank and remote.
"Is this what you've been leading up to, Jo? And just how far is George in on this plot?"
John's low voice heavily accentuating the consonents expressed powerful emotions of suppressed anger.
"John, there's such an obvious contradiction running right through you and you either don't acknowledge it or even see it. Place you in front of a moral dilemma where nineteen other men would compromise their moral values in a matter of injustice, you do the opposite and fight to put right that injustice regardless of taking on powerful people in high places. In contrast to that extraordinary hard, courageous decision, if you have the choice of whether or not to chase after other women, you take the easy way out every time, for example you end up sleeping with your therapist of all people. And when you do come clean about her, when you could have shown some shame and embarrassment and explain why you acted that way, you came over as so glib and matter of fact, which was really hurtful. You could have spoken up but you didn't. Aren't I someone whom you should battle to treat justly, John? This has been a long time in coming," rounded out Jo in her most powerful summing up with all the passion in her nature. "Talking to George gave me the final push to just come out and say it."
"I promise I'll stop looking at other women, Jo. I'll change. We'll get married if that is what you want," John's dry tones spoke with an utter lack of conviction.
"This concerns George as well," Jo replied equally quietly, suppressing a reaction to vent her annoyance in an inarticulate sound of frustration.
John looked sharply at Jo through half closed lids which subconsciously aided his desire not to be too closely watched.
"Oh, and might I ask you how you work that one out?"
Jo took a deep breath now that she was rounding into the matter that she had rehearsed to herself and John's possible reactions and got to the point.
"I know you, John, only too well. I don't believe that you can change overnight just like that. I need you to explain to me just exactly why you slept with George, not once but twice, the same woman whom you have fought with like cat and dog for years. As I say, you take the easy way out when you're not in court unless you can convince me otherwise."
John was silent for two of the longest minutes in his life as he gathered his thoughts together for what looked like an unpleasant scene just when he least expected it.
"I don't know what you want me to say, Jo," He led off in a hesitant fashion.
"How about the truth?" Came Jo's immediate angry response before she softened her approach in a more sorrowful tone. "I have to know why you slept with George and how you feel about her."
"I love her as Charlie's mother," he eventually replied, taking a seat as he found standing up in front of Jo uncomfortable as he did not know where to put himself. "I know that we can never live together. Too much water has gone under the bridge."
"But can you and George live apart," Jo pursued, not bothering to confront the meaningless metaphor of John's last sentence. "And, if you can't, is that why you slept with her?"
It was Jo's crystal clear, wide-open blue eyes, which gave John's studied, mannered demeanour and half closed eyes no respite. It was as if a searchlight was trained into his eyes yet this was only the same woman whom he was accustomed to viewing from on high, day in day out in court.
"All right," John admitted with a touch of impatience, "George came round one night and she practically threw herself at me."
"And being John, you couldn't resist. Come on, admit it."
John got up from his armchair, turned his back on Jo and took slow, deliberate paces round the far corner of the room before talking in Jo's direction.
"All right, my powers of resistance to an attractive woman like George are not all that they might be. Does that satisfy you?"
"So, you are still in love with her," Jo answered softly to which John made a barely perceptible nod of his head.
"And when you saw her again, that was the reason? Not just sex, like all the other women you have had one night stands with. If you sleep with the same woman more than once, it must mean something."
The expression on John's face was a barely perceptible assent.
"Good. We're getting somewhere, John. You're doing fine," Jo's much softer voice stroked John's emotional wounds which, for the first time in his life, were exposed to the surface.
"You're more deadly than my therapist, Jo," John managed a weak smile and a shaky laugh.
"That's because I know you better, John, and I'm not too close to you so that I become part of the problem and not part of the solution. I am fighting you for your soul as in Don Giovanni. Remember the way that he ruthlessly dismissed Donna Elvira all the way through the opera while he pursues Donna Anna and, at the end, the statue of the Commendatore comes to life, burns down the castle and condemns Giovanni to hell. Among the ruins of the castle, those who are left plan their futures and recite the last chorus, the moral "Such is the fate of a wrong doer." With your record of fighting the LCD, I would rather Sir Ian Rochester and Lawrence James are cast down into the depths of hell rather than you."
"I am grateful for your sense of justice, Jo. When you become a judge, wrongdoers who come before you will be grateful for your sense of justice even though it may leave severe emotional lacerations behind," John's sense of irony was tempered by the feelings of his nerve endings ruthlessly exposed.
"I have talked to George and you need to know that George still loves you but she thinks that you could never possibly love her, because of how she feels as a bad mother who is unworthy of love."
"I never reproached her," John protested.
"I know you wouldn't and I do not have to question you about that as it is so like you," Jo's voice softened into tenderness, "but you have to know how George would feel about herself. She would feel that you were trying to be kind to her and that would make her feel worse than ever. Have you considered that George sought you out at a point in her life when her self esteem was at rock bottom and she wanted to go to bed with you to make herself feel loved?"
John found himself increasingly unable to deal with the conversation. He was used to Jo's bitter reproaches at his having strayed but was not used to the idea that Jo was trying to propel him into George's bed and taking her side so much. This wasn't what he was accustomed to in his relationships, both casual and as permanent as relationships ever were.
"I don't understand you, Jo," He confessed.
"That must be the first time in your life that you have ever said these words. In our relationship, in and out of court, you are accustomed to being the teacher."
"All right, Jo. Can I make you a drink?"
"A cup of coffee only but don't think that you are using that to escape me," Jo admonished sternly.
"The thought would never cross my mind," John's little boyish, innocent voice replied.
"That's because now you know you wouldn't ever get away with it," Jo laughed.
A more companionable silence fell upon the room while John pottered round in the kitchen while Jo sank back in relief and exhaustion. Going five rounds with John demanded every resource in her body as sheer physical endurance and a mental flexibility second to none. Only till recently had Jo emerged as just about equal to John.
"Can I ask you one last question, John?" Jo said while she stirred the coffee with an ornate silver teaspoon. "Did you ever say to George that I was not as adventurous in bed as she was?" Jo admonished John. "I have heard George's version of the conversation and I had to drag it out of her only as she wanted to spare my feelings."
For the first time in his life, John was flooded with a very rare feeling of total embarrassment and he could swear that he was blushing. For decades, the suit of armour of his public school upbringing had served him magnificently in ever confronting those feelings of awkwardness that plagued him when he was first transplanted from his provincial background to that training ground of the elite and studied the languid manners of the sixth form prefects who affected such lordly assurance. It was only this moment that let the real John Deed emerge from beneath his artificial self-creation.
Jo could see how profoundly uncomfortable he felt and how he was embarrassed, not in being caught out in the way he denounced his more gutless immoral brethren but for having belittled Jo. John's profound loyalty towards Jo was brought to the surface, a feeling so deep rooted in him that it was so hard for him to look at it and confront himself.
"I'm really sorry, Jo. I didn't mean it to come out that way. You deserve better from me," John's voice was choked with emotion.
"Don't worry, John," Jo said tenderly in a way that made him feel worse about himself. "George said that that wasn't anything to feel guilty about and that in fact she sometimes feels that she goes too far the other way, and feels like a whore."
"I wish she wouldn't talk like that," He said as an aside.
"I'm not sure if she said it because that's how she really feels, or if she was simply trying to make me feel better," Replied Jo. "But I feel sorry for George and that is why I'm coming to the last thing that I want to talk to you about. And then both of us can be at peace."
"And what might that be, Jo? I've learned to become very worried when you say words like that."
Jo paused for a minute and grinned, partly because of the effect on john that she had and partly out of a touch of nerves in terms of precisely how to approach what seemed like climbing the last spur to the white topped peak of Mount Everest. The end was in sight but she needed that last spurt of energy.
"John, I told you earlier on that I don't believe you when you say that you will stay faithful to just one woman, myself…….."
"You underrate me, Jo," John declared in ringing tones which Jo dismissed in her own mind as worth far less than the more subdued, heartfelt confessions which she had wrung out of him. "If I put my mind to it in the same way that I pursue injustice, I can change and my better half can lead me and show me the error of my ways."
"You will last one week, perhaps two at the outside, before that compulsion to steal away and seduce the first available woman takes over. You have an addiction where sex is concerned and it is time that you faced that reality. I have been trying in various ways to tell you about this side of you and never once have you acknowledged this."
John maintained a stolid silence where the anger and hurt pride in him fought silently with the words like jewels as if they were written in his soul. Despite himself, he was forced to listen.
"The only way that I will be able to continue with a long term relationship is only if you are allowed to stray within certain limits. Otherwise, I know that you will hurt me one time too many by your womanising and that will be the end of the two of us. If you are honest with yourself, as much as you are in court, you must know in your heart that this is true, You must know that a fairly conventional woman like myself is not enough for you and never will be. Don't come out with your usual argument that I am your ideal woman as you know that it isn't true."
"So what are you suggesting?" John asked warily. His state of confusion was such that he could not for the life of him see what direction Jo was aiming at.
"That comes back to George. She loves you but knows that she will never live with you. George and I have agreed," Jo said with perfect aplomb as if they were agreeing how the aborted court case should be handled between the two of them. "That your urge to stray will be limited to George and no one else," Jo finished in a very emphatic, decided tone.
"George has agreed to this?" John's incredulous voice rose dramatically to an unheard of pitch. He was utterly incapable of layering over this bolt out of the blue with any pretense of being unflappable.
"Yes. And what's wrong with it. It was my idea in the first place. But I must make it utterly clear that George and I will keep tabs on the situation and there is no possibility that you will not be found out if you renege on this agreement."
"Do I have to sign this with my blood?" John's mistimed flippancy drew a lightning reaction from Jo.
"Your word will and must be enough. Remember the way you talked once about Roe Colmore and what your word means to you. It must mean the same out of court, too."
"Why did you come up with this one, Jo?" John asked, totally honestly and frankly, all pretenses and artifices laid bare.
"Because George is someone who I know and who I can deal with," Jo said simply. "I know where I am with her."
"Why do you bother with someone as unreliable as me?" John asked, looking into the eyes of this immensely strong and compassionate woman. All the time that he had known her, he had felt that no matter how bright and intelligent she was, he was the master. Now, he wondered how much his learning and erudition really amounted to.
Jo went over to him and gently slid her arms round his bowed shoulders while his face brushed against her body in a gesture of simple human affection.
"Because the judge side of you is a very fine human being, the best man whom I have ever known in my life. You need to give the rest of you a chance and let it catch up with you," Her gentle tones soothed and caressed his divided soul. As he drew her down on to his lap, he said,
"Are you sure this is what you really want?"
"If it means I can begin to trust you after all these years, then yes, it is." As he began kissing her, he knew this was where he wanted to be.
"And George really did agree to this?" He murmured with a smile in his voice.
"Oh, she took some persuading," Jo said lightly. "But I think she needs you in her life as much as I do. I know you, John Deed, and I know that you feel far more for her than you're willing to admit too, but you need to convince her of that."
"What have I done to deserve you?" He said in to her hair.
"Sometimes I wonder," She said with a smile. "But as long as you keep to the deal, you've got me for as long as you want me."
"The LCd must have been slipping when they let you take on the Rogers case. What they wanted from their point of view was a nice compliant judge who knows full well that sending down a football hero would not please his lords and masters. And what do they get but you," Jo's amused tones set the seal on the scene of cosy intimacy of an evening at her house in the same way as they had shared so many evenings.
The expression on John's face was a combination of a naughty schoolboy, revelling in his badness and the idealistic man whose steady unflinching gaze was fixed on life's far horizons rather than on the short sighted perspectives of self interest.
"I am willing to be persuaded to the contrary by facts as the trial unfolds," John calmly pontificated, not altogether convincingly. "But the essence of the case is of a common lout, his sense of self importance inflated by his publicist and by a fawning press, who has come to think that he is exempt from normal moral restraints and, above all, from justice. He finds himself in a bar surrounded by a pack of his accomplices and hangers on and, in an unprovoked assault, leaves an innocent man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time so seriously injured that he is unable to continue his normal more humble occupation."
"You risk not only having the establishment ranged against you but popular opinion who will call for your blood, on both the front page of the tabloids and in the sports sections," Jo urged caution, knowing full well how wasted her advice was.
"'The people who have conquered the world now have two interests - bread and circuses.' So wrote Juvenal, a great writer of the games that took place on the circus Maximus which consumed the misplaced dreams of the Roman mob which the Caesars used cynically to keep them in line. That quotation echoed down the generations, through the Dark ages and to the present day while the names of the charioteers, so famous in their time, are forgotten." The rolling tones in John's voice conveyed the scorn and the passion in him and, after all these years, his durable and unbreakable idealism.
"Your public school education has taken interesting forms, John," Jo's amused tones nevertheless respected his strong feelings.
John nodded his agreement rather than spoke as he recalled the other strand of unorthodoxy in his thinking, his research through the more arid stretches of the Bible until he came across the relative oasis of the Songs of Solomon.
"On the top of the Old Bailey stands the statue of the scales of justice which should be evenly balanced, not weighted towards the famous and the politically powerful. If the Attorney General were at least honest, he would have that symbol recast in a form more appropriate for his corrupt thinking."
Jo shook her head in admiration, dragged back for fear of what trouble he could finally land himself in. She knew that, in this mode of conversation, John meant every word that he said in his uncompromising tones which did not hesitate. There was no other man whom she knew who would not carry on to the bitter end and this was a large part of her attraction for him.
"If David Beckham were in the dock and found guilty of a similar offence, you would send him down as you did in the Armatige case, wouldn't you," Jo articulated the words to describe a scenario that she barely dared to think that even John was capable of.
"Of course, Jo. What else is British justice there for?" John proclaimed with total certainty and assurance.
"In that case, John, it wouldn't be too much trouble to ask you to dispense your sort of justice nearer home. I'm talking about me, you and George. It doesn't begin and end in court, you know."
A sudden chilly silence froze over the warm feelings of gentle intimacy. It hung in the air
While Jo waited for the words from John which were a long time in coming while the expression on his face turned blank and remote.
"Is this what you've been leading up to, Jo? And just how far is George in on this plot?"
John's low voice heavily accentuating the consonents expressed powerful emotions of suppressed anger.
"John, there's such an obvious contradiction running right through you and you either don't acknowledge it or even see it. Place you in front of a moral dilemma where nineteen other men would compromise their moral values in a matter of injustice, you do the opposite and fight to put right that injustice regardless of taking on powerful people in high places. In contrast to that extraordinary hard, courageous decision, if you have the choice of whether or not to chase after other women, you take the easy way out every time, for example you end up sleeping with your therapist of all people. And when you do come clean about her, when you could have shown some shame and embarrassment and explain why you acted that way, you came over as so glib and matter of fact, which was really hurtful. You could have spoken up but you didn't. Aren't I someone whom you should battle to treat justly, John? This has been a long time in coming," rounded out Jo in her most powerful summing up with all the passion in her nature. "Talking to George gave me the final push to just come out and say it."
"I promise I'll stop looking at other women, Jo. I'll change. We'll get married if that is what you want," John's dry tones spoke with an utter lack of conviction.
"This concerns George as well," Jo replied equally quietly, suppressing a reaction to vent her annoyance in an inarticulate sound of frustration.
John looked sharply at Jo through half closed lids which subconsciously aided his desire not to be too closely watched.
"Oh, and might I ask you how you work that one out?"
Jo took a deep breath now that she was rounding into the matter that she had rehearsed to herself and John's possible reactions and got to the point.
"I know you, John, only too well. I don't believe that you can change overnight just like that. I need you to explain to me just exactly why you slept with George, not once but twice, the same woman whom you have fought with like cat and dog for years. As I say, you take the easy way out when you're not in court unless you can convince me otherwise."
John was silent for two of the longest minutes in his life as he gathered his thoughts together for what looked like an unpleasant scene just when he least expected it.
"I don't know what you want me to say, Jo," He led off in a hesitant fashion.
"How about the truth?" Came Jo's immediate angry response before she softened her approach in a more sorrowful tone. "I have to know why you slept with George and how you feel about her."
"I love her as Charlie's mother," he eventually replied, taking a seat as he found standing up in front of Jo uncomfortable as he did not know where to put himself. "I know that we can never live together. Too much water has gone under the bridge."
"But can you and George live apart," Jo pursued, not bothering to confront the meaningless metaphor of John's last sentence. "And, if you can't, is that why you slept with her?"
It was Jo's crystal clear, wide-open blue eyes, which gave John's studied, mannered demeanour and half closed eyes no respite. It was as if a searchlight was trained into his eyes yet this was only the same woman whom he was accustomed to viewing from on high, day in day out in court.
"All right," John admitted with a touch of impatience, "George came round one night and she practically threw herself at me."
"And being John, you couldn't resist. Come on, admit it."
John got up from his armchair, turned his back on Jo and took slow, deliberate paces round the far corner of the room before talking in Jo's direction.
"All right, my powers of resistance to an attractive woman like George are not all that they might be. Does that satisfy you?"
"So, you are still in love with her," Jo answered softly to which John made a barely perceptible nod of his head.
"And when you saw her again, that was the reason? Not just sex, like all the other women you have had one night stands with. If you sleep with the same woman more than once, it must mean something."
The expression on John's face was a barely perceptible assent.
"Good. We're getting somewhere, John. You're doing fine," Jo's much softer voice stroked John's emotional wounds which, for the first time in his life, were exposed to the surface.
"You're more deadly than my therapist, Jo," John managed a weak smile and a shaky laugh.
"That's because I know you better, John, and I'm not too close to you so that I become part of the problem and not part of the solution. I am fighting you for your soul as in Don Giovanni. Remember the way that he ruthlessly dismissed Donna Elvira all the way through the opera while he pursues Donna Anna and, at the end, the statue of the Commendatore comes to life, burns down the castle and condemns Giovanni to hell. Among the ruins of the castle, those who are left plan their futures and recite the last chorus, the moral "Such is the fate of a wrong doer." With your record of fighting the LCD, I would rather Sir Ian Rochester and Lawrence James are cast down into the depths of hell rather than you."
"I am grateful for your sense of justice, Jo. When you become a judge, wrongdoers who come before you will be grateful for your sense of justice even though it may leave severe emotional lacerations behind," John's sense of irony was tempered by the feelings of his nerve endings ruthlessly exposed.
"I have talked to George and you need to know that George still loves you but she thinks that you could never possibly love her, because of how she feels as a bad mother who is unworthy of love."
"I never reproached her," John protested.
"I know you wouldn't and I do not have to question you about that as it is so like you," Jo's voice softened into tenderness, "but you have to know how George would feel about herself. She would feel that you were trying to be kind to her and that would make her feel worse than ever. Have you considered that George sought you out at a point in her life when her self esteem was at rock bottom and she wanted to go to bed with you to make herself feel loved?"
John found himself increasingly unable to deal with the conversation. He was used to Jo's bitter reproaches at his having strayed but was not used to the idea that Jo was trying to propel him into George's bed and taking her side so much. This wasn't what he was accustomed to in his relationships, both casual and as permanent as relationships ever were.
"I don't understand you, Jo," He confessed.
"That must be the first time in your life that you have ever said these words. In our relationship, in and out of court, you are accustomed to being the teacher."
"All right, Jo. Can I make you a drink?"
"A cup of coffee only but don't think that you are using that to escape me," Jo admonished sternly.
"The thought would never cross my mind," John's little boyish, innocent voice replied.
"That's because now you know you wouldn't ever get away with it," Jo laughed.
A more companionable silence fell upon the room while John pottered round in the kitchen while Jo sank back in relief and exhaustion. Going five rounds with John demanded every resource in her body as sheer physical endurance and a mental flexibility second to none. Only till recently had Jo emerged as just about equal to John.
"Can I ask you one last question, John?" Jo said while she stirred the coffee with an ornate silver teaspoon. "Did you ever say to George that I was not as adventurous in bed as she was?" Jo admonished John. "I have heard George's version of the conversation and I had to drag it out of her only as she wanted to spare my feelings."
For the first time in his life, John was flooded with a very rare feeling of total embarrassment and he could swear that he was blushing. For decades, the suit of armour of his public school upbringing had served him magnificently in ever confronting those feelings of awkwardness that plagued him when he was first transplanted from his provincial background to that training ground of the elite and studied the languid manners of the sixth form prefects who affected such lordly assurance. It was only this moment that let the real John Deed emerge from beneath his artificial self-creation.
Jo could see how profoundly uncomfortable he felt and how he was embarrassed, not in being caught out in the way he denounced his more gutless immoral brethren but for having belittled Jo. John's profound loyalty towards Jo was brought to the surface, a feeling so deep rooted in him that it was so hard for him to look at it and confront himself.
"I'm really sorry, Jo. I didn't mean it to come out that way. You deserve better from me," John's voice was choked with emotion.
"Don't worry, John," Jo said tenderly in a way that made him feel worse about himself. "George said that that wasn't anything to feel guilty about and that in fact she sometimes feels that she goes too far the other way, and feels like a whore."
"I wish she wouldn't talk like that," He said as an aside.
"I'm not sure if she said it because that's how she really feels, or if she was simply trying to make me feel better," Replied Jo. "But I feel sorry for George and that is why I'm coming to the last thing that I want to talk to you about. And then both of us can be at peace."
"And what might that be, Jo? I've learned to become very worried when you say words like that."
Jo paused for a minute and grinned, partly because of the effect on john that she had and partly out of a touch of nerves in terms of precisely how to approach what seemed like climbing the last spur to the white topped peak of Mount Everest. The end was in sight but she needed that last spurt of energy.
"John, I told you earlier on that I don't believe you when you say that you will stay faithful to just one woman, myself…….."
"You underrate me, Jo," John declared in ringing tones which Jo dismissed in her own mind as worth far less than the more subdued, heartfelt confessions which she had wrung out of him. "If I put my mind to it in the same way that I pursue injustice, I can change and my better half can lead me and show me the error of my ways."
"You will last one week, perhaps two at the outside, before that compulsion to steal away and seduce the first available woman takes over. You have an addiction where sex is concerned and it is time that you faced that reality. I have been trying in various ways to tell you about this side of you and never once have you acknowledged this."
John maintained a stolid silence where the anger and hurt pride in him fought silently with the words like jewels as if they were written in his soul. Despite himself, he was forced to listen.
"The only way that I will be able to continue with a long term relationship is only if you are allowed to stray within certain limits. Otherwise, I know that you will hurt me one time too many by your womanising and that will be the end of the two of us. If you are honest with yourself, as much as you are in court, you must know in your heart that this is true, You must know that a fairly conventional woman like myself is not enough for you and never will be. Don't come out with your usual argument that I am your ideal woman as you know that it isn't true."
"So what are you suggesting?" John asked warily. His state of confusion was such that he could not for the life of him see what direction Jo was aiming at.
"That comes back to George. She loves you but knows that she will never live with you. George and I have agreed," Jo said with perfect aplomb as if they were agreeing how the aborted court case should be handled between the two of them. "That your urge to stray will be limited to George and no one else," Jo finished in a very emphatic, decided tone.
"George has agreed to this?" John's incredulous voice rose dramatically to an unheard of pitch. He was utterly incapable of layering over this bolt out of the blue with any pretense of being unflappable.
"Yes. And what's wrong with it. It was my idea in the first place. But I must make it utterly clear that George and I will keep tabs on the situation and there is no possibility that you will not be found out if you renege on this agreement."
"Do I have to sign this with my blood?" John's mistimed flippancy drew a lightning reaction from Jo.
"Your word will and must be enough. Remember the way you talked once about Roe Colmore and what your word means to you. It must mean the same out of court, too."
"Why did you come up with this one, Jo?" John asked, totally honestly and frankly, all pretenses and artifices laid bare.
"Because George is someone who I know and who I can deal with," Jo said simply. "I know where I am with her."
"Why do you bother with someone as unreliable as me?" John asked, looking into the eyes of this immensely strong and compassionate woman. All the time that he had known her, he had felt that no matter how bright and intelligent she was, he was the master. Now, he wondered how much his learning and erudition really amounted to.
Jo went over to him and gently slid her arms round his bowed shoulders while his face brushed against her body in a gesture of simple human affection.
"Because the judge side of you is a very fine human being, the best man whom I have ever known in my life. You need to give the rest of you a chance and let it catch up with you," Her gentle tones soothed and caressed his divided soul. As he drew her down on to his lap, he said,
"Are you sure this is what you really want?"
"If it means I can begin to trust you after all these years, then yes, it is." As he began kissing her, he knew this was where he wanted to be.
"And George really did agree to this?" He murmured with a smile in his voice.
"Oh, she took some persuading," Jo said lightly. "But I think she needs you in her life as much as I do. I know you, John Deed, and I know that you feel far more for her than you're willing to admit too, but you need to convince her of that."
"What have I done to deserve you?" He said in to her hair.
"Sometimes I wonder," She said with a smile. "But as long as you keep to the deal, you've got me for as long as you want me."