She would wake up early, muttered Barbara to herself when she woke and looked at her watch. It was six o'clock and total blackness looked outside her window. She had had a restless night and really needed all the sleep she could get for such a testing day. She had recovered her nerve to some extent but not enough to not fear the prospect of standing in the dock. It was freezing cold in her cell which made her try and huddle up and retain as much of her body heat as the thin prison blankets permitted while her thoughts flitted all over the place in an incoherent mush. Everywhere in the prison was as quiet as the grave at this hour, not the most fortunate expression but appropriate enough.
As time crawled onwards, Barbara realized that she was getting no more relaxation than if she were dressed so that she did just that. Pride within her made her dress immaculately and, as Dominic made the early morning call, Barbara was ready. She glanced at her latest volume of her diary but dared not write anything in it, right now but though it better to leave it for tonight, if she could face it. The slight advantage of being up early was that she was first in the queue for breakfast and the Julies smiled kindly at her.
"Sausage and eggs, today, Babs"
"Just one sausage, Julies please. I'm not very hungry today." Replied Barbara with a wan smile. She could not stomach the sort of generous portions that the Julies had in mind.
"A cup of tea?"
"I would love one." Barbara said with real feeling and a broader smile. A nice cup of tea was the one thing that Barbara found set her up for the day, even in the most trying moments. In that, she hadn't forgotten her Middle England roots.
After a slow and thoughtful breakfast, Nikki approached Barbara and addressed her in her soft sympathetic tones.
"I wanted to tell you that Gina and Dominic are going to be your escorts today. I thought, first day on, you certainly could do with escorts who will look after you"
"Thank you ever so much for your kindness, Nikki"
"It's nothing,"Nikki said self deprecatingly and uncomfortably. "You did the same for me once." While Barbara's mind was vague and confused, Nikki remembered vividly how Barbara had looked after her at her first trial and was there for her. If only she could be with her, she sighed to herself. Reason told her that she had a wing to run so she had selected the two next best alternatives.
At another house, vengeful puritanical audience justice was taking shape in the forms of Greg and Amanda Hunt. They sat stiffly upright in their carved mahogany dining chairs and Amanda poured a cup of tea into the finest chinaware instead of the institutional prison mug.
"It's fortunate that my partner will cover me so that we can witness the comeuppance of that gold digging ex stepmother. God has watched over her and will ensure that justice will be visited on her at last." He pronounced his cold piety in authoritative tones.
"It will make up for the chunk of money she salted away before we secured it. It drives me mad the way our father worked so hard all his life to provide a roof over our head. Accidents don't happen twice no matter what she might try and say. It's only a pity that you couldn't give evidence as a character witness, Greg, from what we know about that woman." Amanda added venomously.
"Come on, we'd better get going." Greg replied, looking precisely and officiously at his watch, as a man of business should. "We need to set off in precisely, eleven minutes."
As Barbara was driven to the entrance of the Old Bailey, Barbara dared not reflect on the fact that she had last seen the inside of the old Bailey from the visitor's gallery and her memory of the elegant flight of steps and the chequer board design black and white flagstones that led down from it. This time, her entrance was in a much more workmanlike part of the massive complex. She waited patiently while the security matters were completed and for Dominic and Gina to escort her into court at the appointed hour.
John and Monty had met up at the Old Bailey earlier than was their habit. They had punctiliously arranged for each other to have reasonable time to examine the trial papers and Monty had hospitably invited John to his own chambers. This was going to be a new experience for them however much they had talked in theory of Monty being 'the winger.' The practice was not new to either of them but in previous experiences, the 'winger' was clearly in the position of being more senior, more learned, the fount of wisdom. In this situation, both of them could not help but feel that the role of the 'the winger' was very problematical. The possibilities spanned the spectrum of the menial assistant functioning as a cardboard cut out on the one extreme or, on the other, the power behind the throne the occupant of which repeated the words whispered to him.
"I don't mind admitting, John that this trial is making me damned nervous." Confided Monty who sipped his coffee the offer of which John had politely declined.
"Is it the prospect of trying Barbara Mills or is it the two of us trying the case together?" John politely enquired with raised eyebrow.
"Both, John. I'm glad that you have come to the point so quickly"
"I feel pretty well the same as you, Monty." John confessed.
"You do?" asked Monty in amazement. While he was conscious that the anger that periodically boiled up inside him could be the reaction to nerves, he had always thought that John was positively Buddha like in his serenity unless his passions were inflamed.
"You don't believe me? Well, let it pass. As to the second, it is easily dealt with in theory. We sink or swim together and I will do my utmost to allow you the space that you are entitled to and work with you. It will be a new experience but I'm prepared to learn as we go along. As for the first, we must put our faith in fortune or whatever we believe in to give us the wisdom….and now, shall we refresh our memories by having a last look at the papers, Monty"
Monty was touched by John's civility and sensitivity, which cleared his thoughts and calmed him down. Their robes of office were hung up, ready for them to assume their respective judicial personas.
In another part of the court, Yvonne and Roisin trod the flagstones of the building whose grip on their consciousnesses was assuming the grip and intensity of Larkhall. Once they were swallowed up in the huge bowels of the Old Bailey, it claimed them for its own. They were on the lookout for Jo and George amidst the scurrying figures of witnesses, barristers and solicitors criss-crossing through the ancient foyer until George's sharp eyes and the wave of her hand attracted Yvonne's attention. Yvonne's face split into a broad grin and Jo led the way to a convenient side room.
"I ought to have asked you before but, just out of interest like, which bastard are you up against"
"Brian Cantwell." commented George shortly. "From what I hear, he'll pick up a fat fee so that's salved his conscience. Still, we'll have fun with him"
"I remember crossing swords with him at the time we were getting Merriman banged to rights." Yvonne said reminiscently." Jesus, that was a few years ago. Well, at least he's an honest bastard. If there's one thing I can't stand it's hypocrites who'll smile to your face and stab you in the back."
At a moment like this Jo was getting into pre trial thinking mode, focusing her thoughts tightly as senior partner on the trial and nothing else. The memory of Yvonne's swift riposte made her smile at the way she had achieved the unusual feat of taking the wind out of Brian Cantwell's sails.
"Getting to know all of us, Yvonne."Jo grinned.
"Are you the only one who will be in the gallery? John will be so relieved," put in George
"That reminds me, Roisin said she'll be coming now. She said she'd be here a bit late. I ought to be on the lookout for her"
"What about those two creeps that give the judge a load of grief, you know, those clowns who haunt the place from the top row of the visitor's gallery?" Yvonne demanded.
George grinned at that apt description. Since the temporary display of unity at the performance of "The Creation," they had reverted to type in their sniffish disapproval and, once news had got out that George had become close to Jo and were working on the case together, she expected to be tarred with the same brush as them in social gatherings. It amused George that her very aristocratic manners and opulent lifestyle would yet enable her to be bracketed with dangerous mavericks like Jo and John who were threatening the very fabric of society.
"Sir Ian and Lawrence James are bound to be there, Yvonne. They have their orders."
Sir Ian and Lawrence James were nothing, if not predictable. By now, they were used to long hours sitting on hard painful benches in the course of duty but this trial was different from their vain attempts to browbeat, bully, patronize and persuade John to at least try and to be sound, remember the Old School Tie, now there's a good fellow. Curiously enough, that while such entreaties had succeeded with his brethren, John had always been singularly impervious. It wasn't as if he were some uncouth outsider, beyond the pale but while he could melt so easily into the cultish ways that their schooldays had first engendered, he had that perverse obstinate streak in him that his extreme maverick views only hardened. This time, Monty was with him and they felt constrained to hold a watching brief. To present an unusual twist to the situation was their acquaintance with the accused. In another area of life, past acquaintances could be dropped when convenient but the peculiar calling of fellow musicians made that more embarrassing. Sir Ian's emotional solution to these difficulties was to become more prickly with Lawrence James than normal and he, likewise with his subordinates, yet at the same time they were forced to occupy some dark corner of the foyer to deliberate and keep well out of the way.
Eventually, Roisin clattered her way across the flagstones to be hugged by Yvonne just in time as the court session was about to commence. The important players in the theatrical display funnelled into the entrance. George swept on ahead into the chamber next to Jo and she glanced at Brian Cantwell in a mocking way as if to say that "we can do better than you." From the back door to the court, John and Monty entered and were up on high, resplendent in crimson robes and took their places at the bench, John in the centre and Monty asymmetrically to the side. At that second, as Yvonne stared down from the visitor's gallery at the back she saw in a split second flash image not the august personage but a very different John immediately above her, naked and sexually ecstatic at the point of orgasm, incredibly capable in bed and with as much self possession there as in his throne.
"Yvonne, take a look to the right. Who the hell are they?" Roisin whispered in Yvonne's ear.
"Tell you later, Roisin." She whispered back out of the side of her mouth.
With a shock, Yvonne concluded that they must be Babs's hated stepchildren Greg and Amanda Hunt. They must be, from that stony glare of disapproval downwards in Babs's general direction. Thank God that she can't see them and that she's got decent screws like Dominic and Gina to look after her was her first thankful thought. To counterpoint that was the reflection that they had better have learnt their lesson from Babs' right hander and the anonymous phone calls from Larkhall threatening violence and torture if they didn't let up on Babs. She had the sinking feeling that they hadn't and, in comparison, those two legal type creeps behind them weren't all bad.
With a characteristic sound half way between a shuffle and a low rumble, everyone stood to their feet, unified in that gesture if totally splintered in their attitudes. The trial was about to commence.