Henry had that finely attuned hearing which could pick out the light footsteps of his beloved Barbara as she stepped across the parquet flooring after silently opening the large oak door of the vicarage. He removed his glasses as his tired eyes had had enough of poring over his large family sized Bible for inspiration for future sermons. He felt that it was incumbent upon him to venture beyond the same stale set phrases that he could recite in his sleep.
�Do you want a cup of tea or some such refreshment after your labours?� Henry enquired with his usual brand of gentlemanliness.
Babs accepted the cup of tea gratefully after sinking back into her favourite high-backed armchair.
�And how did you fare with all those high powered barristers?� He asked in enthusiastic tones. The whole event sounded as grand as if he were asked to perform similarly with bishops, bedecked in their red robes.
Babs smiled wanly but didn�t answer. Immediately, Henry felt guilty for the bad timing of his question, as she had clearly not had a very good time at the rehearsal. They both fell to talking of lighter inconsequential matters and a nice cup of tea restored both their flagging spirits. Henry switched on Radio 4 but pitched it low. It made for a restful Saturday evening.
Babs reflected on how she had come to be in her present situation. She had played the organ on and off during her marriages for years, as something that gave her spiritual release as her quiet brand of Christianity and uplifting music went hand in hand, both as a solace in bad times and as a celebration in good times. Even during her spell at Larkhall, the tiny electric organ in the shabby chapel had kept her hand in. To take up her duties on the church organ was like driving a stately Rolls Royce in comparison with the functional Mini. The huge spreading size of the church organ summoned up the full stateliness of the music as a full-scale portraiture in depth compared with the sketchpad of the little electric organ. However, having dropped into the comfortable routine of playing the familiar well-worn hymns on the church organ she soon found this part of her duties as a vicar�s wife in a rural congregation effortless. Some spark had made her volunteer to play the harpsichord to tackle something more demanding, that she could give herself to. Yet the severe sharp baroque precision of that instrument enthralled her, as did the idea of her taking part in such a grand undertaking. The second rehearsal ought to have been a celebration yet she had mixed emotions, a slightly let down feeling which she couldn�t explain easily. Thank heaven, Henry had the good sense to allow her some space.
�A penny for your thoughts?� Henry said at last, hours later, his melodious voice breaking in on her meditations.
�It�s about the rehearsals,� Babs started and then stopped.
Henry looked with concern at his wife. She was unfailingly polite and courteous unless she was pushed to the point where she could speak her mind. He had found that to his cost early in his first acquaintance with her. He was the very na�ve new vicar of Larkhall and she was�..that very remarkable woman who came to fill that empty space in his heart when his first wife had died. He chose to wait for the moment when Barbara was ready to talk. It would be unchristian to exert any kind of pressure on her, even for the best of motives. He had long learned to examine his own heart for the reasons why he acted or failed to act. It was a life long search as a practising Christian that, with God�s guidance he could become the human being that he aspired to. In his private moments, he did not think by any stretch of imagination that he held life�s answers in his hand, or alternatively, in his knowledge of the scriptures.
�Don�t worry, Henry. I felt comfortable. I found that my musicianship was at the level expected of me. It is entirely a new experience to play in a full orchestra.�
Babs smiled more freely as she heard again in her mind the power of the orchestra all around her. A part of her was inclined to sit back and listen and applaud the others. Everything was magnificent- until the music stopped.
�It was nice seeing some familiar, reassuring faces. Roisin played the violin of course and Karen the viola and Jo the cello. George was ever so kind to two newcomers to the fold like Roisin and myself��..�
Babs chattered brightly as she emphasised the positive side of the rehearsal, as only her sense of charity would permit her. Henry let her chatter on and only decided to intervene when the way that conversation suddenly ground to a halt signalled more complex feelings.
�There is something wrong, Barbara. I would not normally press you on the matter but I would say that a problem shared is one that is halved.�
Babs sighed and removed her glasses, cleaning them automatically on a cloth from her glasses case before she started to talk.
�It goes back a long way, Henry. I can still remember growing up as a little girl in my home town of Sudbury. It looked like a child�s picture book, straight out of an Enid Blyton story. I can still see the village policeman walking down the street and he seemed enormous. The headmaster at the village school where I went was this august presence. I felt happy, secure and safe in such an ordered world��..�
�The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker�.. And, like me, you looked up to those who were in charge,� Murmured Henry as memory took him backwards.
�Nikki once described me as �Mrs. Middle England.� She was right. The only thing is that deep down, Nikki is a little like that too only she would never admit it,� Reflected Babs warmly. �There�s something about that style in her that I could see a mile away.�
She paused for a sip of tea while Henry waited.
�I never questioned such certainties when I was growing up and my faith in them was every bit as strong as my religious beliefs. I never needed to tell the world about either of them. It was just accepted in the same way as a cooked breakfast and a nice cup of tea was always the only civilised start to the day. I felt that my fate was in safe hands as long as good order ruled. I remember so clearly the school prize day when I won a form prize in English composition and received a book presented by my headmaster. I would do anything to please him. You�ll still find that book in pride of place in the bookcase in the study. It was so easy to make your way effortlessly through life then and for some people it still might be�..Until I was sent to Larkhall.�
A sixth sense of knowing Barbara so well had taught Henry that her apparently long detours had its point. He believed that patience was an old fashioned virtue which wasn�t much respected these days in the wide world but it did had its just reward.
�I bitterly resented that hard hearted judge who sent me to prison. He had not an ounce of Christian charity or understanding and had no right to lecture me the way he did from his throne up on high. Everything I was brought up to believe in left me totally unprepared for what he said. Even to you, Henry, I cannot repeat his words��.�
The unexpected force of the long pent up anger overflowed all Babs� emotions in all directions. She had never talked about it to Henry or to anyone else except, not even her diary. It was a hidden wound in her heart, which had suddenly been exposed at that one shocking moment.
�You must have felt betrayed, didn�t you? I remember everything that you grew up with to also believe in my life.�
Babs nodded, unable to speak at that moment. She dabbed at her eyes with a tiny lace handkerchief. Surprisingly soon, Babs Christian fortitude led her to carry on, initially unsteady in her voice to begin with.
�Not only had Peter been taken away from me - you know how that feels,� Babs smiled quickly as she sought to make what she felt totally real to her very patient husband. ��.but I lost my freedom when the police came to arrest me one dark evening. If that wasn�t bad enough, I ended up locked up inside a mobile cubicle the size of a rabbit hutch and driven away to God knew where. The full horror of the situation combined with my loss of faith in half of what I had grown up believing in. It brought on the worst claustrophobic attack in my life. After that stupid woman Bodybag had mixed me up with a homicidal maniac, I was locked up in what seemed like a dungeon. I was pumped full of drugs, which knocked me for six by a man in a doctor�s gown. He was the sort of person I would have placed my life unthinkingly in his hands. I had thought that the worst had happened to me. But oh, no.�
Babs had gradually built up her tirade from barely articulate grief to a crescendo of full-fledged anger at a deep-seated personal betrayal. It would have made Henry uncomfortable, he reflected, if he had not seen events with his own eyes which had educated him more of life than his past fifty or so years of effortlessly tranquil assumption of his present position in life of vicar in a rural community. Even life�s tragedy of when his first wife had died of cancer had not prepared him for Larkhall.
�The crowning moment, the turning point in my life, was when I was stupidly worried out of my skin of the thought of sharing a cell with a supposedly notorious lesbian. I turned to the one man in charge who seemed to be that embodiment of male authority, which I had grown up to trust and look up to. I spoke to him in strict confidence.�
Babs paused to swallow a mouthful of tea as her voice was getting dry. She sensed when she should push forward and talk and when to pause by sheer instinct.
�Yet he immediately broke that trust to exploit a personal grudge in the meanest fashion imaginable. With it, he broke what I thought was my last respect for authority. The woman I shared a cell with was my truest friend and protector. It was Nikki. That prison officer was the late, very unlamented Mr. Fenner.�
�This is all very true, Barbara. I don�t quite understand how all this relates to the rehearsal?
�I thought I had lost all respect for authority if it weren�t for Karen, Karen Betts, you know. As you remember, I was finally released and we settled down in this parish where we have been happy. Yet I have not been able to leave it all behind, not when we both were called to the stand over that dreadful affair. You remember when Snowball Merriman and Yvonne�s son conspired to set that bomb off on G Wing and when Fenner was killed. I did see a possible brighter side at that trial when I saw a real judge on the throne and felt, once again, that admiration that I used to feel. I was happy, spending time with all those dear friends from Larkhall from that time which so strangely had resulted from such a personal disaster. Truly, God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. So I went to the rehearsal, my faith restored. George was standing in as the conductor and she was fine. She obviously knew what she was doing and all she was trying to do was to get the best out of the orchestra.�
Henry noticed immediately that Barbara had clearly identified with the perspective of George�s point of view, of assumption of responsibility, of duty, of commitment to the matter in hand.
��..Yet two of the most unspeakable members of the orchestra were the very same men who were at the back of the visitor�s gallery at the court who were clearly of high authority. Yet they were exposed by George for exchanging notes between each other making the sort of personal remarks that only nasty immature schoolboys are capable of. Not content with that, one of them had clearly not practised enough and had to be publicly and rightfully rebuked.�
�There is bound to be the occasional bad apple in any organisation. It is, alas, something which one must expect,� Henry replied with far too much a sense of charity and understanding. If they had any differences of opinion, it was on this.
�One bad apple, Henry, not a sense of rottenness from those who, after all, I was taught to believe in. Those most guilty are all without exception people of high authority, who go about their daily duty in judgement over other human beings. That�s what worries me, Henry. I wouldn�t trust some of them further than I could throw them. There was an underlying unpleasant atmosphere and an atmosphere of backstabbing. The man who played timpani was clearly playing games with George, enticing her to conduct and sing at the same time and set her up for a fall.�
�And did she try?�
�She had the sense not to rise to the bait.�
�Do you think that there are enough right thinking people so that justice and fair dealing will prevail and above all else, that the rehearsals will bear fruit for the final performance?�
Babs smiled faintly. She had not thought of that.
�I think so. The judge, George. Jo, Karen and Roisin for a start are all on the same side, the right side.�
�And will any unpleasantness come your way. That is what I am most concerned about.�
Babs shook her head confidently. Her harpsichord parts were most evident in the recitatives when only her harpsichord and the cellos played. The very misleading mildness and unobtrusiveness of her personality left her to blend instinctively into the background and watch. This was a role that came easily to her. Now she came to think about it, it was only when she was alone once when David faced Goliath in the shape of a very spiteful Shell Dockley. Somehow, she summoned up the strength inside herself, to lash out and to throw Dockley across the room and result in her breaking her arm. That was a defining moment in her life when something in her reached out for a quality in her that she never knew that she possessed to take direct physical action. It was so against the grain of her self image of the law abiding citizen but, then again so was procuring cannabis plants from Nikki to alleviate the dying Zandra Plackett�s pain and easing Peter out of his earthly hell of pain to a salvation forever more. It was all in a good cause. Everything she had ever done in her life was always in a good cause. It was just that definitions could be legitimately stretched in directions she had never known of before.
It had not taken Yvonne, for one, to take Babs� measure that she was tougher than she thought that she was and would always stand up with the rest of them out of conviction when others would hang back. In both the two major demonstrations at Larkhall, Babs took a surprisingly forceful backup role in the G Wing prisoner�s leadership even if her self-deprecating personality did not give her full credit.
�No, I don�t think I will be in the firing line. When I think about it, Henry, if the situation ever arose, I know that I will know what to do even if I can�t see it at present.�
�You don�t suppose that it will come out that you were once in prison - and Roisin also?� questioned Henry.
�Karen would never say anything about that - nor would Neil.�
�Neil?�
This last aside of Babs went totally past Henry�s understanding.
�Neil Grayling, the Governing Governor of Larkhall in our time. He is taking the part of Adam and a very fine singer as well. Not only that but he was thoroughly amenable and unassuming. The cellos and I back him on his solo parts. I�m confident that I can hold my own with any one of them.�
�So fight the good fight then, Barbara?�
Babs grinned for the first time that day. That did sum her up very well.
�I�m truly sorry, Henry. I did not wish to impose on you. It�s just that there was a lot in my mind that I wanted to get clear now I don�t write a diary these days. I thought that I never needed to.�
�We are all God�s creatures, Barbara. You know that those who are placed in authority are not necessarily better human beings than those less fortunate are. I have to restrain my feelings when I hear some of the sentiments expressed by some of the less charitable members of the congregation that they should thank Heaven for what they have in life and not to elevate into a major catastrophe, what is clearly nothing of the sort. When I remember my lime of vicar of Larkhall prison��� he started to say.
Henry suddenly went red in the face as a coughing bout deprived him of the power of speech. Anxiously, Babs rushed to fetch a glass of water and to pat his back until he recovered. It was so like him to get angry and protective on her behalf, never on his own account.
As Babs relaxed back in her armchair, she smiled fondly at that supremely understanding man who sat so close to her and with whom she was destined to share their autumn years together. What would she do without him, without his wise council?