A/N: Credits to the Beatles for the song lyrics
Part Sixty-Three
John's grey convertible sped through the traffic towards his favourite florist, the one place where the tangible ability to demonstrate love was made manifest. He prided himself on the bunch of red roses that he would take to Jo. He was looking forward to her soothing company after the recent mental experience of being cross-examined under hot lights. He never knew that a friend like her could be so tough on him as Karen could be. She had that disconcerting knack of seeing through all the elaborate disguises which he fondly thought placed some distance between himself and the world. It was ironical when he compared her to the friend that Roe Colmore used to be. The man had spent a lifetime climbing his own particular ladder in the police force of all institutions and yet he used to enjoy a fuzzy cameraderie with him. In fact all John's male friends sprang from a shared easy familiarity of some kind, whether it be the string quintet of which he was the acknowledged leader or of any of the friendships over the years. There was a sense of cosy adjustment to each other and a sense of comradeship in one activity or another. Karen was different. She was intellectually challenging but she did not give quarter in the same way that he was used to and yet there was a sense of compassion about her. It came in strange and unfamiliar guises, that's all.
In contrast, his etched defined relationship with Karen never let anything past her and this was disturbing. After all, it was his profession to hand down precisely crafted judgements. He shook his head in wonder as it was only inadvertently that he had started a friendship with Karen which had progressed of its own momentum by no process that he could define, except that he respected her. A random train of thought made him ask himself exactly what he felt about the nameless women with whom he had slept over the years. By chance, the traffic lights suddenly turned red and he had to brake sharply to avoid running into the back of the car ahead of him.
The young receptionist behind the desk was utterly charming and soon found him the selection of flowers that he was after which he carefully laid on the passenger seat. It was no time at all that he stood at Jo's front door as he always had done, for so many years. Jo's house on Valentine's day was a special day to be set aside for her, no matter what irregularities there were in his life. He prepared himself to be ready to slip into the familiar mould of the past where the unsettling experience of a few hours ago would be soothed away.
After Jo's effusive greeting and a hug and a kiss, he made his way into Jo's front room and sank into the comfortable settee, which he could remember of old. The candlelit dinner with John's flowers in pride of place brought on those dreamy feelings for a simple uncomplicated life. His Valentine card occupied pride of place on the mantlepiece. After all, he had sleepwalked his way through life and why had he not just done the simple straightforward thing of simply proposing marriage to her. Why not indeed, his fuzzy mind grappled with something insoluble? Both ate the delicious meal in a calm atmosphere of old friends who could enjoy a companionable silence. While the front room curtains were drawn, John could imagine that the world was shut out and didn't exist and at that moment, it didn't. "Life seems strangely peaceful and undramatic with the trial I am involved with at present," Jo said inconsequentially when they lay back on the sofa, comfortably full up. "It is cut and dried with the inevitability of the ticking clock of Big Ben." "Are you complaining, Jo?" John's smooth melodious tones wrapped themselves round Jo in the same comforting way that his arm encircled Jo's shoulder.
"It's not that, John. It's that I'll always have warm memories of all those women from Larkhall. I've never come across that sort of warmth and strength before. They make the rest of chambers seem pale and colourless in comparison, that everything in life has been handed to them on a plate." "I've had more recent experience than you, Jo. I just happened to pop into Larkhall today," John said in far too elaborately casual manner for Jo to pass that one up.
"Oh, and how is your favourite Wing Governor these days?" Jo teased.
"My relationship with Karen is purely platonic," John said a little stiffly. He was a little tired of the assumption that when he happened to mention a woman's name, he must have a sexual interest in that woman. He sipped at the glass of wine to the side of him and ruminated on the day he had spent there. He needed to talk about it to get everything properly in proportion.
"I've visited Larkhall before but today was a real eye opener." John started the conversation and stopped not knowing how to proceed.
"I've been there recently. It is a different world and I can remember Karen having to physically restrain Denny from setting about Al McKenzie. 'These little spats breaking out all over the place,' as it was explained to me." John opened his eyes wide as he struggled to get his head round that one.
"At least the highlight of your visit didn't directly involve you. I was being subjected to Denny Blood's very frank expression of her views." Jo sighed inwardly at John's studiedly detached shorthand description of the scene, which was far too much the male approach to storytelling. It got the essence of the story right but it missed out on all the dialogue and the description of feelings. It was like the collected works of Shakespeare being summarised down to a cheap novel on sale at a British Railway station bookshop.
"And?" Jo enquired with a half smile and a raised eyebrow.
"Well I only tried to help her by advising her that her late partner wouldn't want her to be hurting inside," John admitted sheepishly.
"John darling, full marks for compassion but two out of ten for sensitivity and timing. On Valentine's Day of all days, when Denny would miss her most." "I just wanted to do something practical to help. I couldn't stand around and ignore her as if she didn't exist," John protested, looking visibly discomforted.
Jo wrapped her arms round John and gave him a big hug. That impulse in John however expressed in his measured tones was at the source of all the good that she ever saw in him. She never forgot the way he had helped out her father many years ago. Walking on past a human tragedy in the main street of life was alien to him. John visibly relaxed as Jo held him. "What was Karen's opinion?" In a discomforted voice, John slowly articulated the words. "Her precise words, as far as I recall were, 'Sometimes I think that I know the answer to everything, and I don't.'"
"So the reason you went round to see Karen at Larkhall was to be criticised for your lack of technique as the Florence Nightingale of healing words?" Jo grinned impishly at the way that John stared in shocked surprise. She knew John of old. When he has something to talk about that he feels uncomfortable with, his invariable approach was to ample his way into a learned discourse on the distantly related aspect of it which he was most comfortable to talk about. The more impersonal he is, the more uncomfortable he was. Jo had long learnt to give him so much rope and to gently draw him in.
"Well, there was a reason why I called and you ought to be proud of me. I apologised to Karen for the way I had behaved to her about George." John's curt throwaway description was capable of two interpretations. Either he was shutting off the feelings that were really there or else his apology was typically throwaway. For the good of his soul, this must be pursued with method.
"Oh you apologised? In your normal throwaway style?" Jo's dry ironical manner provoked a far stronger reaction in John than she expected. He sprang to his feet and his face was flushed.
"For God's sake, Jo, I told her that I was really, truly sorry. I meant every word. What kind of man do you take me for? Do I have to get on my knees and beg over and over again for forgiveness?" For a sickening moment, John thought that Jo might actually ask him to beg for forgiveness in such an ungainly, undignified fashion that he had himself described. He had never had to apologise in such an abject way to Roe Colmore. Is this what a friendship with a woman amounted to? He felt as if he were a stranger to a foreign land and struggling with an alien language. "John, I believe you. I'm sorry for doubting your word. Come here." It was the way that she said those words and her body language, which led his mouth to seek out hers and their tongues to deeply explore each other's. The faint smell of her perfume and the delicate pattern her fingertips traced on his shoulders persuaded him that he was finally home as the card smiled down gently on them…
…….By contrast, Yvonne moodily fidgeted her way round her house in a disconnected way. She turned the telly on occasionally but the sunbronzed young kids who presented daytime television were not only talking about bloody valentine's day but were shouting it out at the top of their lungs. Stupid wankers. She wasn't sure if it was her getting old and grumpy or everyone else getting brain dead. She wouldn't wish her back in Larkhall with all the bastard screws around but if she was down, the Julies or Nikki or someone would come around to cheer her up. She had had a brief flavour of that again when everyone was all together for her Lauren. They all promised each other to stay in contact after the trial but it hadn't happened yet. It may happen in future but not when there were so many couples amongst them, Babs and Henry, Crystal and Josh, Helen and Nikki, Cassie and Roisin. So where did that leave her, Yvonne and…….. that brutally truncated cutting short of what should have been there really got to her at that moment. She didn't want to be bleeding smothered or feel joined at the hip but without anything, she felt like some kind of a freak. They'll all be at home or going out to some fancy restaurant or whatever. Everyone but her.
She glanced at the empty mantlepiece, which stared back at her like an accusation. In a fury of activity, she tore round the house to at least stop the place turning into a dump. She owed it to herself to keep up appearances that way in the same way that she put on her makeup to feel better. She sipped at her generous measure of alcohol that was at her side as she stuck on a CD. She didn't even know what it was but she thought she'd take pot luck and let chance take over. Out of her sound system, there came the sweetly flowing guitar sounds and the high pitched sounds of a man in love started to sing. "Something in the way she moves Attracts me like no other lover Something in the way she woos me I don't want to leave her now You know I believe………"
It got right on her tits and sounded too bleeding sickly sentimental and the guy was sounding as if he was deliberately trying to rub it in. Yvonne clicked the remote control on and another more nasal voice sounded as if it had really got it on him.
"Help me if you can, I'm feeling down And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me."
For Christ's sake, he's really down in the dumps and I can't be doing with having that rubbed in my face, Yvonne groaned and had one last shot at the remote control. Hey, this sounds a bit more promising, she thought, this guy was talking about human sympathy that means something to her.
"Hey Jude, don't make it bad.
Take a sad song and make it better.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.
And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool By making his world a little colder.
So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin,
You're waiting for someone to perform with.
And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do,
The movement you need is on your shoulder...
Yeah, that part of the song as the crazy exhaltation with which the song drove through all the shit and despair and Yvonne jumped to her feet and danced around as the band steamrollered its way through to the end and that barrage of sound lifted her out of herself. The group was with her to give her the help that she needed. She just needed something to carry her through to the end of the bloody day and life would get normal. Visiting Lauren in prison for a start………
Cassie and Roisin's house was a riotous assembly of activity. They were crouched on the floor while Michael and Niamh were busy as only children can be. Michael was cutting out shapes in coloured paper while Niamh was impatiently urging him to hurry up so that she could glue the shapes onto the huge stiff cardboard of the greetings card.
"Have we got to wait a year till Auntie Lauren gets out of prison. A year is such a long way off," Niamh urged Cassie and Roisin.
"That is what the court said, kids. It may be less than that if she gets time off for good behaviour," Cassie said.
"What sort of good behaviour? Won't some of those horrible people in charge of the prison stop her?" "It's not so bad these days. There are nicer people around these days." "Don't ask us to make any promises we can't keep, kids. You know that she'll do her best to get out as early as she can but its not in our hands or Lauren's. As soon as we know for definite, we'll tell you. We promise that one." Cassie stood up suddenly as she was getting stiff, crouched on the ground. She looked round the room where two huge Valentine cards took pride of place. This was a time of the year when they could openly admit their love for each other in front of the kids. It was always there in a pervasive form in the simple human affection that Roisin and Cassie showed each other. Roisin knew that the children were all the more stable because of it from the way they were when they came out of prison. at that stage they were very clingy as if they were both afraid that she was going to suddenly disappear out of their lives and Aiden's heavy handed parenting hadn't helped. Cassie stretched her back and saw the children start to colour in the card with felt-tip pens with huge bubble writing.
"Cassie, have we got the prison bars right?" Michael asked They were portraying a smiling Lauren being seen through a huge window with vertical bars. "You've got them exactly right," Cassie's invariable encouragement answered them brightly. Too exact for comfort, Cassie reflected with an inward shiver. "What does Valentine's Day mean, mum?" Niamh asked quite out of the blue like children do.
"It's the day when two people in love remind themselves what they've got between each other. You take people for granted if you don't watch out." The children nodded in understanding at the straightforward explanation.
"How about 'We love you and we'll wait for you, Auntie Lauren." "That's lovely," Roisin exclaimed enthusiastically.
The children worked furiously away until they were tired out at bedtime. By that time, Cassie and Roisin could resume their vows of love with each other in the mysterious darkness of night in the bed that they shared. It was the physical expression, the tender touch and the intensity of the love that they felt for each other. It would be nice one day to have a romantic candlelit dinner for two at the Ivy but since Larkhall, Cassie had learned to put her love of material things second place to the rounded lifestyle that mattered most of all to them.
Part Sixty-Three
John's grey convertible sped through the traffic towards his favourite florist, the one place where the tangible ability to demonstrate love was made manifest. He prided himself on the bunch of red roses that he would take to Jo. He was looking forward to her soothing company after the recent mental experience of being cross-examined under hot lights. He never knew that a friend like her could be so tough on him as Karen could be. She had that disconcerting knack of seeing through all the elaborate disguises which he fondly thought placed some distance between himself and the world. It was ironical when he compared her to the friend that Roe Colmore used to be. The man had spent a lifetime climbing his own particular ladder in the police force of all institutions and yet he used to enjoy a fuzzy cameraderie with him. In fact all John's male friends sprang from a shared easy familiarity of some kind, whether it be the string quintet of which he was the acknowledged leader or of any of the friendships over the years. There was a sense of cosy adjustment to each other and a sense of comradeship in one activity or another. Karen was different. She was intellectually challenging but she did not give quarter in the same way that he was used to and yet there was a sense of compassion about her. It came in strange and unfamiliar guises, that's all.
In contrast, his etched defined relationship with Karen never let anything past her and this was disturbing. After all, it was his profession to hand down precisely crafted judgements. He shook his head in wonder as it was only inadvertently that he had started a friendship with Karen which had progressed of its own momentum by no process that he could define, except that he respected her. A random train of thought made him ask himself exactly what he felt about the nameless women with whom he had slept over the years. By chance, the traffic lights suddenly turned red and he had to brake sharply to avoid running into the back of the car ahead of him.
The young receptionist behind the desk was utterly charming and soon found him the selection of flowers that he was after which he carefully laid on the passenger seat. It was no time at all that he stood at Jo's front door as he always had done, for so many years. Jo's house on Valentine's day was a special day to be set aside for her, no matter what irregularities there were in his life. He prepared himself to be ready to slip into the familiar mould of the past where the unsettling experience of a few hours ago would be soothed away.
After Jo's effusive greeting and a hug and a kiss, he made his way into Jo's front room and sank into the comfortable settee, which he could remember of old. The candlelit dinner with John's flowers in pride of place brought on those dreamy feelings for a simple uncomplicated life. His Valentine card occupied pride of place on the mantlepiece. After all, he had sleepwalked his way through life and why had he not just done the simple straightforward thing of simply proposing marriage to her. Why not indeed, his fuzzy mind grappled with something insoluble? Both ate the delicious meal in a calm atmosphere of old friends who could enjoy a companionable silence. While the front room curtains were drawn, John could imagine that the world was shut out and didn't exist and at that moment, it didn't. "Life seems strangely peaceful and undramatic with the trial I am involved with at present," Jo said inconsequentially when they lay back on the sofa, comfortably full up. "It is cut and dried with the inevitability of the ticking clock of Big Ben." "Are you complaining, Jo?" John's smooth melodious tones wrapped themselves round Jo in the same comforting way that his arm encircled Jo's shoulder.
"It's not that, John. It's that I'll always have warm memories of all those women from Larkhall. I've never come across that sort of warmth and strength before. They make the rest of chambers seem pale and colourless in comparison, that everything in life has been handed to them on a plate." "I've had more recent experience than you, Jo. I just happened to pop into Larkhall today," John said in far too elaborately casual manner for Jo to pass that one up.
"Oh, and how is your favourite Wing Governor these days?" Jo teased.
"My relationship with Karen is purely platonic," John said a little stiffly. He was a little tired of the assumption that when he happened to mention a woman's name, he must have a sexual interest in that woman. He sipped at the glass of wine to the side of him and ruminated on the day he had spent there. He needed to talk about it to get everything properly in proportion.
"I've visited Larkhall before but today was a real eye opener." John started the conversation and stopped not knowing how to proceed.
"I've been there recently. It is a different world and I can remember Karen having to physically restrain Denny from setting about Al McKenzie. 'These little spats breaking out all over the place,' as it was explained to me." John opened his eyes wide as he struggled to get his head round that one.
"At least the highlight of your visit didn't directly involve you. I was being subjected to Denny Blood's very frank expression of her views." Jo sighed inwardly at John's studiedly detached shorthand description of the scene, which was far too much the male approach to storytelling. It got the essence of the story right but it missed out on all the dialogue and the description of feelings. It was like the collected works of Shakespeare being summarised down to a cheap novel on sale at a British Railway station bookshop.
"And?" Jo enquired with a half smile and a raised eyebrow.
"Well I only tried to help her by advising her that her late partner wouldn't want her to be hurting inside," John admitted sheepishly.
"John darling, full marks for compassion but two out of ten for sensitivity and timing. On Valentine's Day of all days, when Denny would miss her most." "I just wanted to do something practical to help. I couldn't stand around and ignore her as if she didn't exist," John protested, looking visibly discomforted.
Jo wrapped her arms round John and gave him a big hug. That impulse in John however expressed in his measured tones was at the source of all the good that she ever saw in him. She never forgot the way he had helped out her father many years ago. Walking on past a human tragedy in the main street of life was alien to him. John visibly relaxed as Jo held him. "What was Karen's opinion?" In a discomforted voice, John slowly articulated the words. "Her precise words, as far as I recall were, 'Sometimes I think that I know the answer to everything, and I don't.'"
"So the reason you went round to see Karen at Larkhall was to be criticised for your lack of technique as the Florence Nightingale of healing words?" Jo grinned impishly at the way that John stared in shocked surprise. She knew John of old. When he has something to talk about that he feels uncomfortable with, his invariable approach was to ample his way into a learned discourse on the distantly related aspect of it which he was most comfortable to talk about. The more impersonal he is, the more uncomfortable he was. Jo had long learnt to give him so much rope and to gently draw him in.
"Well, there was a reason why I called and you ought to be proud of me. I apologised to Karen for the way I had behaved to her about George." John's curt throwaway description was capable of two interpretations. Either he was shutting off the feelings that were really there or else his apology was typically throwaway. For the good of his soul, this must be pursued with method.
"Oh you apologised? In your normal throwaway style?" Jo's dry ironical manner provoked a far stronger reaction in John than she expected. He sprang to his feet and his face was flushed.
"For God's sake, Jo, I told her that I was really, truly sorry. I meant every word. What kind of man do you take me for? Do I have to get on my knees and beg over and over again for forgiveness?" For a sickening moment, John thought that Jo might actually ask him to beg for forgiveness in such an ungainly, undignified fashion that he had himself described. He had never had to apologise in such an abject way to Roe Colmore. Is this what a friendship with a woman amounted to? He felt as if he were a stranger to a foreign land and struggling with an alien language. "John, I believe you. I'm sorry for doubting your word. Come here." It was the way that she said those words and her body language, which led his mouth to seek out hers and their tongues to deeply explore each other's. The faint smell of her perfume and the delicate pattern her fingertips traced on his shoulders persuaded him that he was finally home as the card smiled down gently on them…
…….By contrast, Yvonne moodily fidgeted her way round her house in a disconnected way. She turned the telly on occasionally but the sunbronzed young kids who presented daytime television were not only talking about bloody valentine's day but were shouting it out at the top of their lungs. Stupid wankers. She wasn't sure if it was her getting old and grumpy or everyone else getting brain dead. She wouldn't wish her back in Larkhall with all the bastard screws around but if she was down, the Julies or Nikki or someone would come around to cheer her up. She had had a brief flavour of that again when everyone was all together for her Lauren. They all promised each other to stay in contact after the trial but it hadn't happened yet. It may happen in future but not when there were so many couples amongst them, Babs and Henry, Crystal and Josh, Helen and Nikki, Cassie and Roisin. So where did that leave her, Yvonne and…….. that brutally truncated cutting short of what should have been there really got to her at that moment. She didn't want to be bleeding smothered or feel joined at the hip but without anything, she felt like some kind of a freak. They'll all be at home or going out to some fancy restaurant or whatever. Everyone but her.
She glanced at the empty mantlepiece, which stared back at her like an accusation. In a fury of activity, she tore round the house to at least stop the place turning into a dump. She owed it to herself to keep up appearances that way in the same way that she put on her makeup to feel better. She sipped at her generous measure of alcohol that was at her side as she stuck on a CD. She didn't even know what it was but she thought she'd take pot luck and let chance take over. Out of her sound system, there came the sweetly flowing guitar sounds and the high pitched sounds of a man in love started to sing. "Something in the way she moves Attracts me like no other lover Something in the way she woos me I don't want to leave her now You know I believe………"
It got right on her tits and sounded too bleeding sickly sentimental and the guy was sounding as if he was deliberately trying to rub it in. Yvonne clicked the remote control on and another more nasal voice sounded as if it had really got it on him.
"Help me if you can, I'm feeling down And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me."
For Christ's sake, he's really down in the dumps and I can't be doing with having that rubbed in my face, Yvonne groaned and had one last shot at the remote control. Hey, this sounds a bit more promising, she thought, this guy was talking about human sympathy that means something to her.
"Hey Jude, don't make it bad.
Take a sad song and make it better.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.
And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool By making his world a little colder.
So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin,
You're waiting for someone to perform with.
And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do,
The movement you need is on your shoulder...
Yeah, that part of the song as the crazy exhaltation with which the song drove through all the shit and despair and Yvonne jumped to her feet and danced around as the band steamrollered its way through to the end and that barrage of sound lifted her out of herself. The group was with her to give her the help that she needed. She just needed something to carry her through to the end of the bloody day and life would get normal. Visiting Lauren in prison for a start………
Cassie and Roisin's house was a riotous assembly of activity. They were crouched on the floor while Michael and Niamh were busy as only children can be. Michael was cutting out shapes in coloured paper while Niamh was impatiently urging him to hurry up so that she could glue the shapes onto the huge stiff cardboard of the greetings card.
"Have we got to wait a year till Auntie Lauren gets out of prison. A year is such a long way off," Niamh urged Cassie and Roisin.
"That is what the court said, kids. It may be less than that if she gets time off for good behaviour," Cassie said.
"What sort of good behaviour? Won't some of those horrible people in charge of the prison stop her?" "It's not so bad these days. There are nicer people around these days." "Don't ask us to make any promises we can't keep, kids. You know that she'll do her best to get out as early as she can but its not in our hands or Lauren's. As soon as we know for definite, we'll tell you. We promise that one." Cassie stood up suddenly as she was getting stiff, crouched on the ground. She looked round the room where two huge Valentine cards took pride of place. This was a time of the year when they could openly admit their love for each other in front of the kids. It was always there in a pervasive form in the simple human affection that Roisin and Cassie showed each other. Roisin knew that the children were all the more stable because of it from the way they were when they came out of prison. at that stage they were very clingy as if they were both afraid that she was going to suddenly disappear out of their lives and Aiden's heavy handed parenting hadn't helped. Cassie stretched her back and saw the children start to colour in the card with felt-tip pens with huge bubble writing.
"Cassie, have we got the prison bars right?" Michael asked They were portraying a smiling Lauren being seen through a huge window with vertical bars. "You've got them exactly right," Cassie's invariable encouragement answered them brightly. Too exact for comfort, Cassie reflected with an inward shiver. "What does Valentine's Day mean, mum?" Niamh asked quite out of the blue like children do.
"It's the day when two people in love remind themselves what they've got between each other. You take people for granted if you don't watch out." The children nodded in understanding at the straightforward explanation.
"How about 'We love you and we'll wait for you, Auntie Lauren." "That's lovely," Roisin exclaimed enthusiastically.
The children worked furiously away until they were tired out at bedtime. By that time, Cassie and Roisin could resume their vows of love with each other in the mysterious darkness of night in the bed that they shared. It was the physical expression, the tender touch and the intensity of the love that they felt for each other. It would be nice one day to have a romantic candlelit dinner for two at the Ivy but since Larkhall, Cassie had learned to put her love of material things second place to the rounded lifestyle that mattered most of all to them.