Part Sixty
As Helen waited for John to arrive for his last session before Christmas, she tried to plan out what they would discuss this time. This was always a pretty fruitless task, because what they would talk about always depended on how John was feeling, and what answers he would give to the occasional salient question. These were both things that from her point of view were entirely unpredictable. But one thing was clear in her mind. John had seemed fairly relaxed in the last session, as though he was becoming used to the situation, not a state of being that would probably lead to any major confessions. It was always in the unexpected, the unintended, the slips of the tongue and the words that rushed forth with no more planning than a river hurtles down a mountainside, that Helen was able to pierce his iron hard exterior. John was extremely adept at maintaining his outer facade, and the more relaxed he was, the more likely he was to be able to do this. But if she rattled him, got him either on the defensive or simply afraid of her probing, he would almost always give away some little titbit of information that she could use to tease away at his armour. She wasn't especially proud of this mode of attack, but it always guaranteed her a modicum of success with someone like John.
When he was yet again sitting in the chair opposite her, she regarded him thoughtfully. "Last time you were here," She began carefully. "We were talking about the differences between the persona you hold in court, and the one you fulfil out of it. You said that you needed some time to think about that, which is perfectly understandable, and which is why we left the session where we did." "I did think about what you said," He told her tentatively. "And I am utterly loath to admit that you were right in your assessment of the situation." "I suppose there has to be a first time, Judge," She said with a smile, trying to put him at his ease. "It's not something I consciously think about, the difference between my in court and out of court personas, I merely behave in the manner I think befits the occasion. I have never stayed within recommended, conventional guidelines where my personal life is concerned, not since my days of protests and sit-ins at university." "I can just see you on a sit-in," Helen said with a smile. "It would entirely fit with your current striving for social and actual justice. The way you won't automatically fall in with the views of the rest of your brethren, the way you'll fight and fight to achieve what you think is right and proper, that part of you is something for the ordinary, mere mortal to admire." "Thank you," John said in sincere appreciation. "So, now that I've thoroughly flattered your ego," Helen said with the weight of an approaching storm. "I want you to take it apart. I would like you to give me your explanation of your usual behaviour with women."
Needing to think about this very carefully, John sat perfectly still for a while, but then rose to his feet, beginning to pace the length of the room between the window and the door. "I am aware," He began eventually, "that some of my actions where women are concerned are thoroughly reprehensible." "What makes you say that?" Helen asked him quietly. "I have hurt Jo, and George, far more times than I could ever count. George to some extent managed to get used to it, but Jo never did. Every time I do it, it hurts her almost as much as if it were the first time it had happened. When I was married to George, she got into the habit of completely ignoring the fact that I was picking up other women on a regular basis. She knew I was doing it, but chose to act as though she didn't." "Why do you think that was?" Helen wanted to know, marvelling at the different reactions of two women to the same problem. "George initially thought that my straying was her fault," John said regretfully, standing now with his face to the window and his back to Helen. "She thought that I couldn't possibly still love her if I knew how she felt about Charlie, which also made her think that she didn't deserve my love. That was partly why she kept her distance from me." "So," Helen said meditatively, trying to put the fractured pieces together. "You began picking up other women, because George wouldn't sleep with you after Charlie was born?" Her voice was flat, clinical, utterly devoid of emotion, but John could feel the vibes of disapproval as though it was a struggle for her to suppress them. "Yes," He confirmed bitterly. "Sounds pretty unfeeling and pathetic, doesn't it." "I didn't say that, Judge." "You thought it though, didn't you," He replied a little cynically. "What I think is neither important nor relevant," Helen told him firmly. "Tell me, how did this situation resolve itself, if it did, that is?" "George began sleeping with me again, because she didn't want me to go away from her altogether, not that I ever would have done. Then, after I discovered what she was doing to herself and why, I tried so hard to show her that I still loved her, to tell her that I didn't think her the terrible mother she thought she was. But I never again quite managed to make her believe that she deserved to be loved, not while we were married, and I'm not even sure that she believes it now. However, in spite of my protestations that I loved her, I couldn't quite abandon the chase." "You'd become hooked, just like any other addict," Helen starkly spelt out for him. "Yes," He said, still with his back to her, and she could hear just how difficult it was for him to maintain control over his feelings. "Why did you keep doing it?" She asked. "Was it some form of escapism, or was it simply a need to fulfil what you weren't getting so often at home?" Turning on his heel to face her, John looked momentarily furious. "Do you have to discuss my complete lack of virtue as though I am some kind of loathsome individual who betrayed his wife just when she needed him most?" "Is that how you see yourself?" Helen asked him calmly, not remotely put off by his anger. This question seemed to deflate his ire, removing all the wind from his sails. "I don't know," He said very quietly. "Is that because you don't want to admit that you might be that man you've just described, or is that because you're really not sure?" "George didn't deserve what I did to her, on so many occasions," John said, moving back to sit in his chair. "She did her absolute best to care for Charlie, in spite of how she felt about her. That wasn't George's fault, just as it wasn't Charlie's." "It wasn't yours either, Judge," Helen told him gently. "You couldn't have predicted that George wouldn't love the child you'd given her." "Perhaps not," He replied dismissively. "But neither did she deserve to be betrayed time and time again, just because I thought she didn't love me." "You made that problem about you, when it wasn't really connected to you at all," Helen clarified. "Yes, I suppose I did. But isn't that the prerogative of men the world over?" He added a little morosely. "A few too many of you, yes, it does appear to be," Helen said with a wan smile. "Men sometimes have this way of assuming that everything is about them," She continued in a meditative voice that made him think she was looking inwards, not across the room at him. "They think that if a problem with a relationship doesn't concern them, then it's not important, when in actual fact, it can be the most important thing in the world." "Is that what happened with Nikki?" John asked gently, seeing that Helen had strayed into a memory of her own. But this seemed to bring her out of her introspection. "I'm sorry," She said, her eyes widening for a moment. "I shouldn't have said any of that." "It doesn't matter," John told her quietly, seeing that this was to Helen a severe professional blunder. "Back to you," Helen said decisively. "And you might be able to pluck this immediately out of the air, though it could of course take some time to work out. What was the worst thing you ever said to George during the time of your marriage?"
John stared at her, having been thrown a little off course by her sudden return to normality. But he didn't have to waver for long. He knew what the worst thing was that he'd ever said, and it wasn't something he'd ever forget. "It was the day George found out about Jo," He said into the silence. "She had come to court after picking Charlie up from school as a surprise. But when she pulled into the car park, she saw me kissing Jo on the front steps. I didn't know any of this until I got home. I didn't know it then, but Jo was the final straw for George, because according to her, we looked so right together. She told me years afterwards that it had finally hit home that she could no longer make me happy, and that some other woman would be far better at it. I've seen George's displays of anger on many occasions, most of them in court, but nothing has ever come close to how she was that night. She was so furious with me to cover up the hurt, but that was something I refused to see. George worships her expensive possessions, so it astonished me when she purposefully smashed a Ming vase, not something she would ever do under normal circumstances. When she asked me why Jo, why that particular woman, I said something to her that I will regret for the rest of my life. I told George that I was in love with Jo, because she had a heart." There was a long, awful pause after these words were uttered, and Helen couldn't prevent the wince that made her suck in a sharp breath. "The awful thing was," John continued, "that she didn't disagree with me. Those words seemed to shatter any anger George had left. Neither of us slept very much that night because I think we knew that our marriage was finally, irretrievably over. She took Charlie to school the next day, but then turned up to see me during the court adjournment. I apologised for what I'd said to her the night before, because I really hadn't meant it to come out the way it had, but she dismissed it as though it had meant nothing to her. That was just another sign of how much it really had hurt her. George went away for a week, taking her car with her, but I still don't know where she went. In truth, I was terrified that she would never come back, that some day soon there would be a story in the paper of an abandoned car by the top of a cliff. But she came back, as she said she would, and told me that she wanted a divorce. There was no question that George could look after Charlie fulltime on her own, so I found somewhere for the two of us and eventually moved out. George locked all her feelings away inside her, so that she appeared to have no feelings at all from that day forth. That was why Charlie gave her the name of The Ice Maiden. I hated it whenever I heard Charlie use that name, because I knew that George had the capacity to be as vibrant and loving as any woman I'd ever known."
He stopped, seeming to have completely run out of words. Helen remained silent, giving him a few minutes to compose himself and to calm his thoughts, before saying, "You still carry an awful lot of guilt about your marriage to George, don't you." "Believe me, it is well deserved," He told her bitterly. "Guilt feeds on itself, Judge," She told him matter-of-factly. "So that the longer you feel it, the more deep-seated it becomes. At some point in the next few months, there's something I'd like you to do for me. Try talking to George, try talking about your marriage and the things that went wrong with it. You can bet that she's still got as much guilt and hurt inside her about it as you have. You both need to let it go and move on with the relationship you have now, but neither of you will be able to do this with any meaning until you've got every bad feeling finally out in the open."