Bedtime for John, when it was a solitary occupation, was to him, a place of rest and contemplation. It took him peacefully into the void so that he emerged, recharged the next day. Tonight would prove an unpleasant and unexpected exception.
He had buried himself for a while in reading the case notes for a forthcoming trial and digested the essential points, which he committed to the one place that was safe and sure, his memory. He had taken a break from too much close concentration by taking Mimi for a walk much to her delight. When he got back home, he had turned to his watch and clicked on his TV, which featured an old black and white cowboy film of the sort he enjoyed. He lay back in his chair and watched the hero wearing the white hat gallop furiously past the bluff outcrop of rock that towered into the sky and hell bent in pursuit of the villain of the piece, his black hat slanted over his eye who occasionally turning round and his gun cracked a shot past the hero's ears in a way that John could feel. He could relate to the film and lose himself in that sense of urgency. Finally, the last thing at night, which he turned to, was the majestic and sweeping strings and faint harpsichord of Vivaldi's "The four seasons." So why was he later lying in bed, his mind as sharp and alert as if he were in court, his eyes wide awake and the bed, for once damned uncomfortable and feeling out of sorts with his body? This was highly unusual, so he reasoned to himself, and totally unwelcome for a Saturday night when he needed to recharge his batteries ready for the next week in court. He lay on his back, staring at the straight geometric lines of the ceiling as it slanted away from him but that didn't work. He had never slid off to sleep lying on his back anyway.
After a while, he concluded that this situation was absurd and ridiculous and had never happened to him before. There must be a rational explanation for it. He should be able to switch off his mind and just glide away but the more he got annoyed with a perverse situation, the more his mind remained unsettled. The more he tried to will himself to sleep, the less he was able to do so. His body started to twist and turn around as he wrestled with his recalcitrant mind, which would not let him be. He tried this for perhaps twenty minutes before he realised that his iron will had, for once, met his match. There had to be another way.
As he rested and stared at the amorphous blackness out there, cool reason started coming to his aid. For a start, the pillows might be uncomfortable or his sleeping position might not be as it should be or he had not taken as much exercise as he might have done, for example fencing. He could hardly do press ups this time of night so he tried his hand at practical analysis of the situation. In the end, he got out of bed and considered how inadequate it may be as an aid to rest and relaxation. For a start, the pillows were all twisted and flattened and for another, the quilt was disarranged. He set to work to straighten that out until everything was smooth and symmetrical. At last, he swept aside the corner of the quilt and with a sigh of satisfaction, stretched back on the cool surface and waited for sleep to take him over. It was in this more restful physical state that odd snippets of conversations started to float their way into his reduced level of consciousnessHe .
"Both of you?" The words popped into his mind, his astonishment at this time as sharp edged as when he had first heard the words from an incoherent George. This was a reference to the evening before which he had thought he had satisfactorily blotted out….blotted out….in the press of business.
At once, he cursed himself for using those words. They made him sound as if he had something to hide from himself, that needed investigating by his own sure mind, seeking out the truth. He was just tired and had worked himself too hard, even in the evening, which was not his habit.
George's face swam before his eyes, unbidden. She was openly afraid of him and terrified of upsetting his feelings. That accounted for the roundabout way she had broached the matter. She had said,
"You have loved Jo absolutely without question, for near enough the last twenty years. I don't want anything to cast a shadow on what you feel for Jo, because even now, even after all this time, it's so thoroughly untainted that it makes anything else look pretty pointless. I need you to understand, that what you have with Jo, isn't in any way threatened by what I might feel for her."
Yes, he had been touched by the delicate way George had spoken of his feelings for Jo. It had touched him at the time. He had been steadfast for Jo in his own fashion and she had been the unacknowledged rock of security in his existence for so many years. It had never crossed his mind before, not even when the last couple of years had brought him so much closer to George than he had been for many years.
"I'm not really sure what to think. I'm not angry with either of you. Most of the feelings I have about this are positive, because if this works out as I hope it will, I can't think of anything that would make me happier."
He had spoken those measured words to reassure George and himself. Surely the portrait of him as some unapproachable monster was not as he would have portrayed himself. He was a rational being and always had been. The problem was that, left alone at night, he did not always manage to fool, or rather reassure himself. In the daylight hours, he could pretend to be the suave, sophisticated man and let the mirrored image of himself reflect back that impression. The trouble was that at nighttime, the truth will out.
He carried on wrestling with his anxieties, of being alone, of those who he held dear being suddenly snatched from him in circumstances that were beyond his control, both as a man and as a judge. He tried his best to sleep until, worn out with his anxieties, he drifted off into vague unpleasant reveries which he could not frame or shape in his mind or remember when he woke far too late for his liking.
John did not have much recollections of the Sunday morning except that it passed in a tired out blur and it was not till the afternoon that he resolved, in his impulsive fashion, that he needed to talk to Jo. Exactly what he was going to say, what questions he was going to ask, escaped him as he drove round to her flat. He was totally unprepared and some instinct prompted him to decide that whatever came out of his mouth was what he was going to say. He couldn't face another night with only himself to ask questions.
"John, well this is a surprise," Were Jo's first words when he phoned from his mobile just outside her flat. "When are you coming over?" "Very soon," Came John's dry response.
He lay back in his car seat and opened both front windows so that a gentle breeze could blow across him. He needed that short period of time to seek refreshment of his tired senses for about five minutes before he resolved to face whatever he had to face.
"John. How nice it is to see you."
That familiar smile was the same as ever, the same as she had ever greeted him with over the years. John said nothing but smiled briefly and followed her into her comfortable living room. With a sigh of satisfaction, he reclined in a chair.
"You look tired. Want a coffee?" Jo asked in concern. There was something different about him, something troubled which she could not put her finger on. Of course, he
was impeccably behaved and no one who didn't know him closely would have spotted it.
"Please."
Jo said no more but turned round and pottered about in the kitchen area of the flat while John sat back and watched her from behind busying herself.
"You have the air of someone about to make an important announcement and not knowing quite how," Jo probed in her best low-key cross-examination mode.
"Hardly." John backed away from the direct question, earlier than he would have liked. After taking a sip, he got up and walked about her flat in a random pattern, sometimes facing away from her.
"Not so much a statement but I would appreciate your help in trying to get some answers to a riddle I've been puzzling over."
Jo stopped herself in time from asking the obvious question, personal or professional, as that would have pinned John down far too early. Something was really bothering him.
"I'm more than happy to help with whatever you want. That is, if I can help you. I'm certainly willing to try."
A shadow flitted across John's face as Jo expressed her doubts but he smiled in temporary reassurance when Jo's warm tones reassured him just when he needed it.
"I don't know where to start. It all stems from a chat I had with George last night."
That means personal for certain despite his elaborately casual tone. Jo started to get a faint suspicion as to where this was leading.
"Go on."
"I've never seen George less able to get to the point. After all the years of marriage and verbal sparring matches, both in and out of court, if there is one faculty in her that will never desert her, it is her capacity and fluency in speaking."
There's another one, Jo smiled as John rambled his way into tiptoeing into emotional hot water, an inch at a time.
"To put it in George's own words, she finally said and here I quote. 'Both Jo, and I, have feelings for each other, that neither of us ever expected.'"
John stopped abruptly, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, with a faint smile on his face and a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.
"Ah. So George finally did tell you."
"After a tension ridden and superb rendition of the 'Appassionata Sonata', which she clearly delivered to use the music as an outlet."
Jo sighed and sat back in her chair. She wished that John would stop pacing around but this was clearly his version of struggling with very uncomfortable feelings that his upbringing had taught him to deny in himself. All the men in her professional circle came from that upper class public school background where a languid, mannered sophisticated exterior ran like a gene deep into their fundamental nature. It gave them that air of confidence, of effortless superiority. It was decreed in not so many words that all must conform to that mould. John had done an excellent job in conforming to tribal expectations but his emotions ran closer to the surface. It was what made him care about injustice more than any man she had ever known and what she had admired from when she had first laid eyes on him.
"Is there anything that you wish to know about George and me…..and you?"
John's eyes opened wide incredulously at those two last words. Jo surely couldn't mean him.
"Am I in the frame?"
"Most definitely so. It is very rare when I have talked to George that either one of the other of us won't talk about you."
Jo's clear blue eyes intermittently held John's own wavering glances whenever he was facing her. He was highly aware of it and couldn't make up his mind to be afraid of it or feel protected by it. Probably both, he sneakingly admitted to himself.
"What I really wanted to know was why you never told me of your feelings for George?"
The words came out of his mouth clumsily, which embarrassed him. He had done better than he knew at the time in censoring the very pompous words 'saw fit to' which would have made him appear more superior and patronising but in reality be less honest with himself and Jo.
"You've known me nearly half of my life. I've been married, brought up two children on my own, more conventional than I would probably have liked, feeling inferior to George precisely because of it as a lover. I ask you that, in my forties, is it something that I would find easy in owning up to myself, let alone anyone else, in finding another woman attractive. I always thought that is something that happens to….I mean that if feelings of desire grow in you in another woman, they are going to happen in your teens. I'm starting pretty late in life, you must admit, John."
"Since you put it that way, there is a lot of justice in your point of view, but why was I the last to know? That was what hurt me."
"John, do you have to know everything?"
"Yes, if it is important and personal."
"Why?" Was Jo's blunt question
"Doesn't everyone want to know what goes on around them in their lives?"
"Not like you, John. You are like a dog with a bone. Both George and I know you of old. Once your insatiable curiosity is roused, you never give up. You will try every trick in the book to wheedle and cajole the truth out of anyone by fair means or foul. It's the same when you are up there on your throne in court. You can never resist asking a question once it crosses your mind even if it means bending the rules of court etiquette and absolutely infuriating every barrister that crosses your path. You know very well what your public reputation is like in that respect."
John smiled to himself with a certain smug satisfaction. He was like that in court and it was his incisive and penetrating ability to ask the right questions which had led to his professional success.
"But you are just as bad out of court where such a quality is not laudable and can be and often is, intrusive. Just once in my life, I wanted something of my own to share with George especially when I was trying to work out in my head just exactly where I was going. How could I possibly explain something to you when I was struggling to explain it to myself?"
The smile on John's face faded instantly. He felt as if he was being shut out and it hurt, not just George but Jo as well.
"Why do you have to know everything, John? I really think that you need it to feel more secure."
Jo's soft gentle words felt like a burning hot light being trained right into his eyes at close quarters. They hit straight at his vulnerabilities, something you didn't own up to, not in his circle of acquaintances.
"I can tell that you think I'm being intrusive in my turn…."
John's mute nod agreed with her
" ………so I'll back off that one so long as now you know how it feels."
The atmosphere in the room fell into a brooding silence. Jo felt that John was getting more and more defensive as time went on and that wasn't helping. He would really hate to be told this but he was wearing his feelings on his sleeve and he felt as uncomfortable and as naked as he had ever been. Jo sipped her cup of lukewarm coffee as the only prop she had to hand to come to the aid of her own uncertainties as to how to handle the situation.
"I've known that George has had feelings for you, Jo," John said at last out of nowhere. "I never expected that you would feel the same way."
Jo resisted the temptation to ask John why it was fine for George and not for her. That was a very valid question but would not achieve anything at this point. Instead she opted for keeping it light.
"Neither did I, John. It wasn't so many years ago that we strained your patience inside and outside the court, in seeking to scratch each other's eyes out," Joked Jo.
John laughed more easily at one of life's little ironies. Without knowing why, this was something that was easier to deal with, presented this way.
"So how did this all come about? I'm merely asking so I can understand."
Jo was touched that there was real humility in John's tone of voice. It rang true that he was in the position of knowing that he did not know what lay before his eyes and asking for enlightenment, being prepared for whatever it might mean.
"How can I describe it? I was dreaming of lying out in the open, with George next to me, and there she was utterly enchanting and later on, this became real……..John, what's wrong?" Jo added as the nostalgic smile on her face turned to one of real concern. This was too much, too soon as the expression of her spontaneous feelings outmatched her sense of discretion.
"I know what's troubling you. I think that I have a duty to say it."
Jo's soft voice even managed to take the hard edge off the word 'duty' which, on another level, justified to John why she must speak.
"You have long since fantasised about the possibilities of the three of us making love, admit it John. I will not forget in a hurry that domestic little foursome, George and Karen together and the two of us. It's not really just George and I. It's the feeling that if George and I took the relationship beyond a certain point, neither George or I will need you any longer. Believe you me, you couldn't be more wrong about both of us."
The words silkily caressed John's feelings but he had turned to stone inside at that fear of being left. It had happened once before by his mother who died on him. She cannot have cared for him, not really, or she would never have abandoned the ten year old John who lived in his Alice in Wonderland shrunken world, the enormities of a bafflingly huge grown up world where no one explained anything, no one could see how hurt he was inside. He dared not risk that ever happening to him again. It cannot be he who is left on his own. He carried on pacing the room, utterly unable to settle down.
"John, we both know how infuriating you can be, but you are too deep in our lives to remove you even if we wanted to. Why else do we end up talking about you? George desperately needs you as one of the very few people she could ever turn to in crisis and, in your own way, someone who knows her behind that façade. She's been changing over the last couple of years. She's stopped trying to put on that act that she's hard and uncaring and only values what a fat fee will buy her. In her way, she's being influenced to think that there are higher values that matter in life and she's stopped being scared of showing it. Where has she got all that from if not from you? Or if she is being influenced by me then where did I get that from if not from you. You have got the idea that the only way of feeling good about yourself is through sex, as if what you do in court has no value. Sex isn't everything in life no matter how much you use that as a solution to everything"
With all the eloquence within her to speak from the heart, Jo urged John to open up his eyes and look around with all the force of her passionately caring nature. John's eyes looked briefly out to the distant horizons out of the window instead of at his feet, mentally dazed as the products of his labours were reflected back at him. Somehow, he had done what he had done as he had gone through life with a total reticence to be too self regarding and Jo's clear exposition was the first demonstration in his life of what he was worth with him not being aware of it or being around to see it for what it was. He risked turning back to Jo and, at last, took a seat that faced her directly.
"We both need you more than any one night stand could possibly do for us, much more than your temporary affairs in the past could ever mean. That hasn't changed from when we drew up the agreement ages ago to stop you from picking up some nameless woman. Just because I have growing feelings for George, that will never take away from what both of us feel for you."
John shook his head in wonderment. That paralysing fear inside him needed almost continual emotional stroking from Jo. He found it impossible to put his mind in the place of the other person, either Jo or George. That was what the undertow of the emotions did, to drag him down to a bottomless pit where nothing had meaning, nothing was certain and nothing could be defined or circumscribed.
"I really thought it was I that you were dreaming of that night."
"Just goes to show you how wrong you can be," Jo teased. "Mind you, I have often had dreams of you when I have been on my own and you are somewhere else and I dare say I'll have them again."
"You never told me that," John said in wonder.
"You didn't ask," Jo teased back.
"I really thought I knew everything about you," John mused. He felt more vaguely centred than he had been having made that discovery and better about himself. For the first time, he leant back in his chair rather than sat up, tense and rigid.
"And you think that if there is nothing that is not unknown to you, you will feel safe."
"I suppose there is something in what you say," John conceded in measured tones.
"You have to learn to trust that what you don't know won't harm or threaten you," Jo urged tenderly, placing an arm round his shoulders. "You have to learn to trust to life at times, to intuition and faith where you do not directly know. Our profession, with its emphasis on irrefutable evidence, on solid certainties does not exactly encourage this alternative mode of thinking and it spills over into our private lives."
John nodded, unable to speak. The thought of it was all very well in theory but harder to achieve in practice. He wanted to get past this part of the conversation.
"From George's account, you have taken your time in your ……relationship."
Jo was pleased by John's response. At least he had given it a name, in tones, which were approximately sympathetic as opposed to cold and clinical.
"That is all down to George. For a start, she feels guilty about it because of Karen even if she has always known that Karen has never wanted a heavy relationship. With what has happened to Karen's son has only make matters more complicated. You are very important in George's eyes, as I've explained. Also important is that she is very careful that I might inadvertently be rushed into something that I was not ready for. She wants to get it absolutely right for me. You do know that George once refused me when I kissed her? Believe it or not, I made the first move not George."
John smiled faintly at seeing the expression of incredulity on Jo's face as she recalled the moment.
"That sounds very unexpected."
"I know that this runs totally counter to your lifetime's experience," Laughed Jo. "…but believe it or not, we both want to take our time and see where it goes or where it doesn't. George refused me as she thought that I was not ready and she's probably right."
"She told me that she's terrified of not being good enough for you," John said right from out of the blue.
"Could you ever imagine George to take pains over other people's feelings, whether yours or mine. That's the measure of how much she's changed."
The sheer undeniability of Jo's soothing words finally started to get through to John at last. They lapsed into a more companionable silence, both of them tired out. John was not used to this amount of soul baring which wasn't his cup of tea but he felt that somehow he had scraped through the situation by the skin of his teeth.