Part Twelve
Nikki was the last in the line of the spectators in the gallery waiting to shuffle along the narrow space between the long bench and the balcony when her sharp eye spotted Karen's handbag. She grabbed it and queued up the flight of stairs to the door at the back. "Thanks, Nikki, for keeping your eyes open." "Is everyone up for a drink?" Nikki asked.
"I'm sorry, I've got someone to see but, another time I will," Came the polite reply.
As the crowd moved off, she looked over her shoulder and saw Karen striding off in a determined fashion towards the corridor that led to the judge's chambers. "Same pub as before. This looks like being our regular," Yvonne directed them.
These words struck a chord with Nikki in indicating a long timespan ahead of them, which was something new to her. It was lucky that Trisha's previous experience of two years visiting Nikki at Larkhall had caused her to loathe Fenner and, for once, wasn't kicking up at having to run the club by herself. "I must say, this is more enjoyable than making polite conversation at a vicarage tea party," Babs said enthusiastically. At this time of day, the dark was closing down on London and the streetlights were starting to come alive just as the working London population were crowding their way into the overloaded claustrophobic tube stations. There was every reason for them to chill out quite apart from drinking the heady spirits of the "class of Larkhall" sorority reunion. Passers by scuttled on their straight line journeys to destinations homewards and saw nothing out of the corners of their eye other than a group of smartly dressed women heading someplace else. Nikki and Yvonne commandeered a large table while Cassie, Roisin and Babs went to the long wooden bar to get in the first round.
"You've done this sort of thing before?" Nikki enquired. "Yeah," Yvonne exhaled the words with the first drag of a much needed cigarette. "This was the best bit of when we were there for when that murdering tart, Snowball Merriman, helped by my son, blew up Larkhall library to spring her out of prison. She was in for trying to smuggle a truck load of Bolivian marching powder through customs." "The library? Jesus, some of my happier hours were spent there. I remember reading about it in the papers. Snowball Merriman, is she for real with a name like that." That shocked and angered her as she tried to imagine all that accumulated store of learning, even if some of it was second rate being wiped out in a single act of destruction. She had a real reverence for the written word. There, too, had been the art room where she and Helen had first declared their physical love for each other. That was holy ground to them, which no amount of physical rebuilding could properly restore. "Believe you me, Nikki," Yvonne's face darkened. "She was no joke…..First my son in the dock and now my daughter." Nikki impulsively put her arm round Yvonne's shoulders, as she knew how much her family meant to her, starting with her Charlie at one time. That sort of deep family bond was beyond her experience but not beyond her ability to sympathise with someone else's troubles.
"What do you think of George?" Nikki asked to get her mind off her troubles.
"It's really strange, as we've seen her before as I told you earlier. If she had asked to join us for a drink last time round, I would have spat in her eye and told her to go hang around her stuck up friends. She's really changed. Try and imagine Charlotte Middleton twenty years on, pushy, hard faced and doesn't give a shit about anyone who was 'beneath her'. She's become sort of nicer, more human and dead nervous of us. It really mattered to her that we were going to be friendly when once, she would never have given us the time of day. She's all right," Yvonne finished in her laconic way.
They stretched out in the comfortable pub chairs, able to ease the aches and pains of long hours sitting on hard benches and tired from close concentration from following the trial. "Cheers, Cassie," as a glass of white wine was held out in front of them.
"Talking about George, I didn't know that they made female barristers like that. She's totally gorgeous. I could really fancy a woman like that." "Cassie's always like that, Babs, if you remember," laughed Roisin who knew that Cassie, when not being the mum, had a reputation to maintain and was not backward in expressing her open admiration of the female form. Babs felt a strange sensation coming back here. She had married Henry and had settled down in a quiet village on the outskirts of London, and immersed herself in the blissful peace of the countryside with ancient thatched cottages, little shops and the fifteenth century stone church with stained glassed windows. Part of it attracted her as this time around with Henry, she could live without that lurking fear of discovery, which had marred her otherwise blissful life with her late husband Peter. She had felt married to him but she knew Peter's vindictive and spiteful children by his first marriage would not see matters the same way. Her fears had become concrete in the way that they mercilessly delivered her into the hands of the police for what she knew God would forgive as an act of mercy. Now, all the ghosts of the past were laid and those utter hypocrites had sulked off into the sunset forever out of her life. Yet a corner of her mind had never forgotten the razor edged excitement of those companions of her strange times at Larkhall. Even when her fingers delicately pressed the ancient black and white keys of the church organ and the reflective sustained chords filled out the huge space above and around her and inside her soul, flickers of memories came back to bless her. She loved Henry's gently Christian beliefs, which gently reasoned him to ensure that she kept faith with those who were dear to her and trusted to her good sense. It let her have her holiday on her own without any hidden and misplaced possessiveness. He knew as he had been there also. At moments like those, she could sit back and happily listen to conversations, which were somewhat different from the polite conversation of vicarage tea parties.
"But she's straight," Yvonne said, the first time in her life that she used the word to draw distinctions.
"That's a load of bollocks," Nikki judged with a practised eye. "She doesn't know it yet but she'll wake up and find out different. Take it from me." "But she used to be married to the judge. It ain't possible," Yvonne reasoned.
"So? You used to be married to Charlie, didn't you." Yvonne shook her head in wonder. Living with Charlie seemed to be a very long time ago except that the bastard still haunted her through the way Ritchie and then Lauren lived their lives. Lauren was always the sensible one, the one who saw through Charlie earlier than she had, the one whom she was most hopeful of breaking with their past, until that night where that image of Lauren swinging her gun casually still haunted her dreams.
"How's the trial going so far?" Yvonne dared to ask. "It ain't easy sitting in a waiting room imagining what's going on. Cassie's great in trying to make me laugh though." "It's early days, Yvonne but I would lay good money that the judge is one of the good ones even if he did have his eye on me as someone who was likely to cause trouble…." "…as if, Nikki," Yvonne managed a faint smile.
"Did he really have George banged up for contempt of court?" Nikki asked in half puzzled, half-admiring tones. "That's ten out of ten for style. I didn't think that judges did that sort of thing, not even the best of them." "She's even gobbier than you, Nikki, if that is possible," Was Yvonne's very accurate comparison.
"This judge would have anyone banged up but only if they deserved it. Yvonne actually got cautioned by him and I wasn't far behind her. I suppose being out of the court will keep me out of trouble. Tell you what, Nikki, if you behave yourself, you might set a good example for me when I get to sit in the gallery." That outrageously improbable line from Cassie was the other thing that pulled Yvonne out of her dark mood. She didn't say anything but her head turned sharply round to face her and just looked at her with that disbelieving smile at the corner of her lips.
"We'll have a couple of us to keep us in line, Karen and Helen from Wednesday when she gets time off. You know, two strong Wing Governors to keep the old lags in order." "Are you sure that they won't be worse than the rest of us? You know, all those years of having to be the good girl might just make them go wild once they're let off the leash?" teased Cassie.
Nikki dug an elbow into Cassie's ribs to shut her up. The other woman was worse than she was and she had never thought that one was possible.
"So how's it gone so far apart from that?" Yvonne asked anxiously. It was obvious that she was deeply worried about Lauren now the time of the trial had come and the limbo period had ended. The fact that Lauren's future, her life was in the balance made her fret so that her mind had got one track that it would run. The others understood and respected that feeling. "It's funny but last time I was, we were here, I wanted so much to see the judge send Ritchie down for a good long stretch together with that murdering tart Merriman. Now I want more than anything to see Lauren beat this rap but they are both my kids. It don't make sense." "Of course we understand," Roisin's Irish lilt emphasised how heartfelt were her words. "We know our children are younger than yours but I get worried sometimes when they aren't around us as to what might be happening to them, especially when they were with Aiden and his precious mother." "Michael can be a perfect spoiled brat at times," added Cassie while Roisin smiled at the way those words described Cassie as she used to be. "But even after a bloody big row, I can't stop loving him. Of course, when they become teenagers….." Cassie shuddered, remembering what a hormonal, gobby teenager she had been and wondering how she would manage on the receiving end of temper tantrums.
"I'm afraid the parent child bit is a bit beyond me," Nikki smiled gently. "When I was thirteen, fourteen, I was that terrible teenager, the despair of my parents but, then again when I was outed as a lesbian when I was sixteen and was kicked out of boarding school, it was a case of goodbye parents, hello big wide world. I didn't have a lot of choice about that one." "I came out at twelve," Replied the very precocious Cassie very smugly.
"What a smart arse," Nikki joked back at her and the conversation flowed its way ever onwards.
The evening wore on surprisingly decorously considering. Despite appearances otherwise, all of them were going to get into a routine of not getting pissed and no late nights. They all knew that this was going to be a very gruelling experience, sitting up in the visitor's gallery emotionally hanging on the ups and downs of the trial. The sheer mental concentration was going to be bad enough without having to go up on the stand. By now, Yvonne had a lot of experience of this but this wasn't going to make it any easier this time around than it would for Cassie's one experience of being in the dock. Perhaps even if they had tried to get plastered, something within each of them would have found it impossible to fully let go.
"See you in the morning, Yvonne."" Love you." "Be strong." The ragged chorus of encouragement as they made their separate ways from outside the pub when the streets of London were wide open and dark and cold took them all back to the time in their lives when these words were sent like prayers out of their narrow prison windows high up and barred from the outside world, the night calls out into the air which practice carried them to their destination.
Tears came to Yvonne's eyes at the friends who were with her. It didn't occur to her to tell her she was being soft.
Nikki was the last in the line of the spectators in the gallery waiting to shuffle along the narrow space between the long bench and the balcony when her sharp eye spotted Karen's handbag. She grabbed it and queued up the flight of stairs to the door at the back. "Thanks, Nikki, for keeping your eyes open." "Is everyone up for a drink?" Nikki asked.
"I'm sorry, I've got someone to see but, another time I will," Came the polite reply.
As the crowd moved off, she looked over her shoulder and saw Karen striding off in a determined fashion towards the corridor that led to the judge's chambers. "Same pub as before. This looks like being our regular," Yvonne directed them.
These words struck a chord with Nikki in indicating a long timespan ahead of them, which was something new to her. It was lucky that Trisha's previous experience of two years visiting Nikki at Larkhall had caused her to loathe Fenner and, for once, wasn't kicking up at having to run the club by herself. "I must say, this is more enjoyable than making polite conversation at a vicarage tea party," Babs said enthusiastically. At this time of day, the dark was closing down on London and the streetlights were starting to come alive just as the working London population were crowding their way into the overloaded claustrophobic tube stations. There was every reason for them to chill out quite apart from drinking the heady spirits of the "class of Larkhall" sorority reunion. Passers by scuttled on their straight line journeys to destinations homewards and saw nothing out of the corners of their eye other than a group of smartly dressed women heading someplace else. Nikki and Yvonne commandeered a large table while Cassie, Roisin and Babs went to the long wooden bar to get in the first round.
"You've done this sort of thing before?" Nikki enquired. "Yeah," Yvonne exhaled the words with the first drag of a much needed cigarette. "This was the best bit of when we were there for when that murdering tart, Snowball Merriman, helped by my son, blew up Larkhall library to spring her out of prison. She was in for trying to smuggle a truck load of Bolivian marching powder through customs." "The library? Jesus, some of my happier hours were spent there. I remember reading about it in the papers. Snowball Merriman, is she for real with a name like that." That shocked and angered her as she tried to imagine all that accumulated store of learning, even if some of it was second rate being wiped out in a single act of destruction. She had a real reverence for the written word. There, too, had been the art room where she and Helen had first declared their physical love for each other. That was holy ground to them, which no amount of physical rebuilding could properly restore. "Believe you me, Nikki," Yvonne's face darkened. "She was no joke…..First my son in the dock and now my daughter." Nikki impulsively put her arm round Yvonne's shoulders, as she knew how much her family meant to her, starting with her Charlie at one time. That sort of deep family bond was beyond her experience but not beyond her ability to sympathise with someone else's troubles.
"What do you think of George?" Nikki asked to get her mind off her troubles.
"It's really strange, as we've seen her before as I told you earlier. If she had asked to join us for a drink last time round, I would have spat in her eye and told her to go hang around her stuck up friends. She's really changed. Try and imagine Charlotte Middleton twenty years on, pushy, hard faced and doesn't give a shit about anyone who was 'beneath her'. She's become sort of nicer, more human and dead nervous of us. It really mattered to her that we were going to be friendly when once, she would never have given us the time of day. She's all right," Yvonne finished in her laconic way.
They stretched out in the comfortable pub chairs, able to ease the aches and pains of long hours sitting on hard benches and tired from close concentration from following the trial. "Cheers, Cassie," as a glass of white wine was held out in front of them.
"Talking about George, I didn't know that they made female barristers like that. She's totally gorgeous. I could really fancy a woman like that." "Cassie's always like that, Babs, if you remember," laughed Roisin who knew that Cassie, when not being the mum, had a reputation to maintain and was not backward in expressing her open admiration of the female form. Babs felt a strange sensation coming back here. She had married Henry and had settled down in a quiet village on the outskirts of London, and immersed herself in the blissful peace of the countryside with ancient thatched cottages, little shops and the fifteenth century stone church with stained glassed windows. Part of it attracted her as this time around with Henry, she could live without that lurking fear of discovery, which had marred her otherwise blissful life with her late husband Peter. She had felt married to him but she knew Peter's vindictive and spiteful children by his first marriage would not see matters the same way. Her fears had become concrete in the way that they mercilessly delivered her into the hands of the police for what she knew God would forgive as an act of mercy. Now, all the ghosts of the past were laid and those utter hypocrites had sulked off into the sunset forever out of her life. Yet a corner of her mind had never forgotten the razor edged excitement of those companions of her strange times at Larkhall. Even when her fingers delicately pressed the ancient black and white keys of the church organ and the reflective sustained chords filled out the huge space above and around her and inside her soul, flickers of memories came back to bless her. She loved Henry's gently Christian beliefs, which gently reasoned him to ensure that she kept faith with those who were dear to her and trusted to her good sense. It let her have her holiday on her own without any hidden and misplaced possessiveness. He knew as he had been there also. At moments like those, she could sit back and happily listen to conversations, which were somewhat different from the polite conversation of vicarage tea parties.
"But she's straight," Yvonne said, the first time in her life that she used the word to draw distinctions.
"That's a load of bollocks," Nikki judged with a practised eye. "She doesn't know it yet but she'll wake up and find out different. Take it from me." "But she used to be married to the judge. It ain't possible," Yvonne reasoned.
"So? You used to be married to Charlie, didn't you." Yvonne shook her head in wonder. Living with Charlie seemed to be a very long time ago except that the bastard still haunted her through the way Ritchie and then Lauren lived their lives. Lauren was always the sensible one, the one who saw through Charlie earlier than she had, the one whom she was most hopeful of breaking with their past, until that night where that image of Lauren swinging her gun casually still haunted her dreams.
"How's the trial going so far?" Yvonne dared to ask. "It ain't easy sitting in a waiting room imagining what's going on. Cassie's great in trying to make me laugh though." "It's early days, Yvonne but I would lay good money that the judge is one of the good ones even if he did have his eye on me as someone who was likely to cause trouble…." "…as if, Nikki," Yvonne managed a faint smile.
"Did he really have George banged up for contempt of court?" Nikki asked in half puzzled, half-admiring tones. "That's ten out of ten for style. I didn't think that judges did that sort of thing, not even the best of them." "She's even gobbier than you, Nikki, if that is possible," Was Yvonne's very accurate comparison.
"This judge would have anyone banged up but only if they deserved it. Yvonne actually got cautioned by him and I wasn't far behind her. I suppose being out of the court will keep me out of trouble. Tell you what, Nikki, if you behave yourself, you might set a good example for me when I get to sit in the gallery." That outrageously improbable line from Cassie was the other thing that pulled Yvonne out of her dark mood. She didn't say anything but her head turned sharply round to face her and just looked at her with that disbelieving smile at the corner of her lips.
"We'll have a couple of us to keep us in line, Karen and Helen from Wednesday when she gets time off. You know, two strong Wing Governors to keep the old lags in order." "Are you sure that they won't be worse than the rest of us? You know, all those years of having to be the good girl might just make them go wild once they're let off the leash?" teased Cassie.
Nikki dug an elbow into Cassie's ribs to shut her up. The other woman was worse than she was and she had never thought that one was possible.
"So how's it gone so far apart from that?" Yvonne asked anxiously. It was obvious that she was deeply worried about Lauren now the time of the trial had come and the limbo period had ended. The fact that Lauren's future, her life was in the balance made her fret so that her mind had got one track that it would run. The others understood and respected that feeling. "It's funny but last time I was, we were here, I wanted so much to see the judge send Ritchie down for a good long stretch together with that murdering tart Merriman. Now I want more than anything to see Lauren beat this rap but they are both my kids. It don't make sense." "Of course we understand," Roisin's Irish lilt emphasised how heartfelt were her words. "We know our children are younger than yours but I get worried sometimes when they aren't around us as to what might be happening to them, especially when they were with Aiden and his precious mother." "Michael can be a perfect spoiled brat at times," added Cassie while Roisin smiled at the way those words described Cassie as she used to be. "But even after a bloody big row, I can't stop loving him. Of course, when they become teenagers….." Cassie shuddered, remembering what a hormonal, gobby teenager she had been and wondering how she would manage on the receiving end of temper tantrums.
"I'm afraid the parent child bit is a bit beyond me," Nikki smiled gently. "When I was thirteen, fourteen, I was that terrible teenager, the despair of my parents but, then again when I was outed as a lesbian when I was sixteen and was kicked out of boarding school, it was a case of goodbye parents, hello big wide world. I didn't have a lot of choice about that one." "I came out at twelve," Replied the very precocious Cassie very smugly.
"What a smart arse," Nikki joked back at her and the conversation flowed its way ever onwards.
The evening wore on surprisingly decorously considering. Despite appearances otherwise, all of them were going to get into a routine of not getting pissed and no late nights. They all knew that this was going to be a very gruelling experience, sitting up in the visitor's gallery emotionally hanging on the ups and downs of the trial. The sheer mental concentration was going to be bad enough without having to go up on the stand. By now, Yvonne had a lot of experience of this but this wasn't going to make it any easier this time around than it would for Cassie's one experience of being in the dock. Perhaps even if they had tried to get plastered, something within each of them would have found it impossible to fully let go.
"See you in the morning, Yvonne."" Love you." "Be strong." The ragged chorus of encouragement as they made their separate ways from outside the pub when the streets of London were wide open and dark and cold took them all back to the time in their lives when these words were sent like prayers out of their narrow prison windows high up and barred from the outside world, the night calls out into the air which practice carried them to their destination.
Tears came to Yvonne's eyes at the friends who were with her. It didn't occur to her to tell her she was being soft.