The empty church hall was a conventionally rectangular room with varnished parquet flooring and had an infinite capacity to adapt itself to the diverse needs of the parish which it served. One Saturday would see it convert to a children's party complete with the amateur disco and flashing lights only to be cleared away for the tables for the Sunday bring and buy sale. The Friday following next would see the metal framed chairs being set out for the amateur theatrical society. On sporadic occasions in between while, these chairs would be stacked up in piles in the corner to make as much space as a rehearsal room for the amateur orchestra just as the Bar Council had directed a mere three months or so ago.
Joe studied the room, which looked quite ordinary enough as the naked fluorescent strip lights cast its everyday light down on everyone with no sense of the unusual. When the music started, Joe felt the prosaic magically transform itself into the magical. The hall fitted in snugly the massed arrays of music stands and instruments at the ready, all arranged according to the traditional game plan the classical world over to produce the pre technological stereo effect for the audience and, pride of place, the rostrum where Joe Channing felt increasingly accustomed to stand. It felt as natural as his central throne in the carved stone majesty of the Appeal Court, that cathedral like structure as much set in its place in the Strand as Joe Channing felt when he held his prized baton in his hand.
He had arrived early to run his thoughts over the last major rehearsal without the chorus, before the performance. There was an added spring in his step since he had found the courage to detach that fearful woman from her tenacious grasp onto his beloved orchestra. He placed the well-thumbed volume of sheet music on the table and remained deep in thought while he charted the uncertain progress of the orchestra up until this point in time. He had that feeling that they had turned the corner onto the home run. One discreet final push would see the orchestra finally pulling together as one, much though he loathed that modern expression. The last performance had seen sparks flying between Karen and Sir Ian but that damned fool had asked for all the trouble he had got in picking on a woman like her who would be sure to give back as good as she received. On the other hand, somehow, he would have placed a solid bet that John and Sir Ian would never managed to coexist in the same room and voluntary give of their own time much less play in the same orchestra without coming to blows.
Karen's black eye had gone through all the colours of the rainbow but had settled down to normal to her relief. She smiled briefly as she entered the hall early and was halfway towards her place when Lady Rochester intercepted her.
"Your display at the last rehearsal certainly added a bit of spice to the often humdrum lives that we members of the legal profession and various consorts lead. It must come from locking up prisoners for a living."
Karen took instant dislike to this woman who damned her with faint praise in that honeyed voice of hers.
"When you work in a prison, Francesca, you haven't time for playing games and false fronts. I would recommend it to anyone to visit my prison to find that out unless they knew that one already."
John was immediately behind Karen and could see at a glance the mischief that this devious woman was up to and chimed in straightaway.
"I would heartily agree with what Karen is saying from my own experiences of visiting Larkhall. What I find fascinating is that you meet people from all walks of life, from the most lowly to the well to do. You would do well to reflect on what twists and turns our lives can lead and who knows which way the wind blows."
In one split second, John caught sight of Joe Channing looking in his direction and with an effort, he jammed the lid on the anger that was boiling up inside him.
Right now, before the performance is the one time in your life when I won't call you to account for your reprehensible behaviour. Don't think it is out of any latitude, which you can exploit. It's only because you are a musician so I expect you to play like one."
John's curt words were expressed in curiously clipped tones that plainly warned her to not speak so lightly of prison. This was especially telling as they both knew that she had walked out of court with a suspended sentence while her more expendable boyfriend Giles Rowley was sent down for his share in defrauding her aunt Dorothy Lomax. Sir Ian saw what was going on and drew his wife away from the situation in some embarrassment and whispered fiercely in her ear to leave well enough alone and not bring up reminders before company of the most acutely embarrassing incident in his life.
George greeted her with her usual dazzling smile and they immediately helped themselves to a cup of weak tea, the best that the church hall had to offer.
"You know, when I see Sir Ian with that woman, spineless though he is, I almost feel sorry for him."
"Yeah well, if she'd said one more word more, it would have been her turn to have her face decorated."
It was very rare that such an instinctive feeling of repulsion swept over and her and explained the vengeful way that Karen spoke. It was the combination of her smooth as honey voice coming from that oh so innocent lips and knowing that she was as devious and as calculating as they came. The only other woman she knew that was remotely similar to her was Di Barker, sisters under the skin despite outward differences in appearance.
John had circulated quickly over to Joe, after settling accounts with that dangerous woman. He supposed that he wanted to talk to John about it as well as to run over a few details on the rehearsal. When he got there, Joe greeted him with a welcoming smile.
"I know very well how you feel about that damnable woman but I'm glad you restrained yourself and remembered that we have an orchestra to run rather than settle a private score, however justifiable it might be." "It didn't feel that way," John admitted frankly. He was surprised that he had appeared more restrained than he felt inside. A furious torrent of emotions ran through him, his loathing of himself for being so easily led into her schemes, his detestation of the enormity of what she did and of the pressure he was put under to restrain his emotions for the sake of a higher good. He suspected that she knew exactly he would feel so constrained and that only fuelled his anger.
"I'm frankly a little nervous already at this stage of the run up to the big performance. Knowing what we know about Karen's son doesn't make it any easier when she knows nothing of the matter. However, these are side issues. The main reason why I called you over was entirely musical……… "
It was evident that Joe needed a lot of moral support after catching sight of a happy and contented Karen. It had been easy for him to hold forth abstractly about what seemed to be something like a matter of law until he saw Karen in the flesh. It wasn't a guilty secret that they shared but it certainly felt like one. They could see Karen laughing in an utterly unconcerned fashion and chatting to George. Somehow, Joe was glad that Karen had his daughter close to her or whatever new fangled way they talked about such things. In the light of the secret that he and John shared, nothing else seemed to matter.
Sir Ian did not linger long in his wife's company. The terms of his parent's will kept her shackled to his destiny but he did not see why that precluded him from circulating round the fellow members of the orchestra when need arose. He finished his whispered row with Francesca interspersed with false smiles for anyone drifting past. His errand was only marginally more agreeable and that was to approach George on Neil Haughton's behalf. There had been a distinct coolness ever since he presumed on his services immediately after he had struck George in an argument to ensure that there were no legal repercussions. A few days ago, he had suddenly turned up and with a display of false charm, tried to inveigle him to get him a ticket for the performance. It was funny how Neil Haughton was the one man who made him feel unaccountable prickles of conscience in revealing a level of cynicism that made him feel positively virtuous in comparison. He remembered bristling up at him and made a condition of it that he would personally ask George about it first.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you, George but I have a little private matter to discuss with you."
He felt awkward as his conciliatory smile felt all wrong as if an inept tailor had badly sewn it to his face.
"I haven't any reason to give you any special favours, Ian. I haven't forgiven or forgotten the pathetic adolescent performance the other day, of either you or your little helper who tags after you carrying your briefcase."
"Yes, yes, George, but this is urgent and a matter I am performing out of a reluctant sense of duty rather than pleasure. Just three minutes and I'll be off."
"Go on," George replied in a far less contemptuous tone of voice. He had not tried to verbally retaliate in his usual weak, ineffective fashion. "I'm listening."
"I'll be to the point. I have had a request by your very much of an ex, Neil Haughton, enquiring after a ticket. He wanted me to get him one and rather than suggest that he approach Vera for a ticket, I made it plain with him that I would run it past you. I make no special pleading for the man but he is a potential customer but I thought it more than a little off for you to perform and see him on the front row without prewarning you."
"Why are you doing me this favour, Ian?" George questioned him, her penetrating eye closely examining his manner. The man sounded unusually candid but then again, he had had a lifetime in selling his soul to the nearest bidder.
"No matter how much Francesca may have tried to discredit me, I would never raise my hand to her. Anyway, I leave it up to you to think over. There's no hurry and I have discharged my duty."
Sir Ian gave a quick tight smile and promptly departed to look out for Lawrence James.
The crowded room dissolved away into nothingness in front of George. This unexpectedly touching gesture from Sir Ian came from the obsequious weasel whom she had long despised even when she was on the right side of the establishment. That capacity for embarrassment reached out from the depths of her and choked her. It was because Sir Ian had known of that moment of utter humiliation and frightening feeling of powerlessness. The fact that Sir Ian genuinely pitied her for the plight she had been in didn't make her feelings any clearer. She didn't care to think of that repulsive man coming anywhere near her life again, certainly as he still occasionally haunted her dreams.
"What's wrong, George?" Karen's mellow husky tones broke over her like the gentle surf on the beach and dragged her gently up from underwater.
"I'm all right now,," George's dazzling smile also answered. She would have said 'darling' if they weren't so constrained by an increasing preponderance of brethren coming in through the church hall front doors. Their attitudes to sexual matters were not exactly enlightened as the emblems of their profession suggested.
"I know."
To George, those two brief words told her everything that Karen was there for her.
John was on the way back to talk to Jo when he spied Grayling enter the room. His sense of gratitude for his intervention made him walk briskly over to him and shake him by the hand.
"I was going to thank you for stepping forward to back up Joe in slaying that fearful dragon of all time, Vera Everard. There's not many men who would have that sort of nerve even with assistance. You have done us all a favour."
"Don't mention it, John," Grayling smiled broadly. "I have been a born again radical, being a thorn in the flesh of my superior, Alison Warner, spreading sedition in the higher echelons of the Home Office. You get used to it after a while, especially after a previous career at various levels in the prison service."
"You sound like a man after my own heart," John said enthusiastically recognising a kindred spirit. What was strange to him was that a man like Grayling whose character ran counter to had that indefinable studied ambiguity demeanour.
"Within limits, John," Grayling observed drily. "I don't share your liking for the fairer sex, for example."
"So I remember hearing," John said in a faint reflective tone of voice. It had seemed months ago that George had flung it in his face when he had had that almighty row a couple of months ago about the nature of her relationship with him and he had later challenged Neil about it in not so many words. The words were there in his retentive memory but they had failed to connect with him. It seemed like as much a midsummer enchantment in the way that Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" had taken command only in reverse. He had read the play at school but had never given it much credence as somewhat improbable. Now he understood as some reversal spell of enchantment fell from his eyes only it was that insecurity which he would never have thought would be a problem, not where women were concerned. Oh well, you live and learn.
"Are you all right, John?" Grayling asked in a concerned tone. He had seen that very astute man's blue eyes turn remote and distant as if he were not really there.
"No, everything's fine……By the way, I was going to ask you if you had any dealings with Karen after that unfortunate incident when she was assaulted?"
The expression in John's eyes resumed his sharpness and he smiled. The question had popped into his mind as he was sure that Grayling would know the answer.
"She came to area and the subject was broached. I was supportive of someone who is a very fine officer and told her not to beat herself up about a matter where she took a calculated risk, which misfired, and I sent her home for the afternoon. I'm very fond of Karen and I'll back her to the hilt."
"You are a good man, Neil.I'm glad you are around for her. And now, it's time to take our places, judging by the time."
The last of the orchestra finally filed their way into the hall and the usual round of pleasantries were cut short as if by collective agreement. It was obvious that they were aware of the need not to waste valuable time. In that frame of mind as conductor, Joe felt that a last few well chosen words might well gently remind them that their bounden duty was to answer a greater calling that they originally pursued of their own free will.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I mean fellow musicians," Joe Channing's voice boomed out and like any actor played his pause for just the right split seconds. A feeling of pride rippled through the orchestra from the more sensitive to the more reluctant of them. "I am sure you don't need reminding that this is the last rehearsal but one before the performance. I feel it in my bones that, despite some of the hiccups that have inevitably accompanied the rehearsals, we will prove that we are ready for the big night. Are you all in agreement with me?"
A sound half way between a murmur and a cheer echoed back to Joe in affirmation as the members of the orchestra made themselves ready. Sir Ian on clarinet had exchanged a glance with Lawrence James. Both he and Francesca Rochester on oboe were at last with the others they let themselves be swept along by the collective mood as Joe Channing raised his baton to let the music commence.