"Coming round tonight?" George asked Jo on the phone with that audible smile in her voice." We've worked frightfully hard all week and on a Saturday night, this means that we absolutely must relax and take it easy"
To George's surprise, Jo failed to respond. She could tell it in her voice, which remained totally serious.
"Not for me, George. We've got a long way to go and I need to catch up after my little lapse on Monday night"
Jo's words rang instant alarm bells in George's mind. The carefully turned phrase was a dangerous euphemism, a more realistic description of events being that that Jo had been on an alcoholic bender. The words rang false and all the time she'd known Jo, she had been truthful even to the point of what George once conceived as insufferable priggishness. This time she was lying, to herself as to George.
"You can hardly say that Kay and I will be exactly hard work, especially when you know that you can sit back and let me do the cooking"
'It's very nice of you but I really feel as if I need space to myself. It's nothing personal"
Jo stumbled in reply as words failed to come easily. She was audibly blushing.
"Just as you will. If you want to change your mind, feel free to come round."
George urged her in her most reassuring tones and her voice drifted away into the distance. When it was just that split second too late, Jo regretted her words but she felt she was too late to do anything about it as she had irrevocably committed herself .The other side of her was glad to be in the safety and security of her own home.
In turn, George drummed her fingers on the phone table as her mind was racing. She was sure that Jo wouldn't change her mind, not in the frame of mind she was in. The answer popped into her mind. She would have to speak to John, instead and she grabbed for the phone.
"John darling, I wanted to talk to you."
For some inexplicable reason, John mistook George's eagerness to talk as her being peremptory and sparked off a perverse and mulish desire to resist what she might have to say to him.
"I thought you wanted some time apart from me. You told me as such and a lot more on my computer."
"Will you listen, John?" George said in impatient tones. The man was being infuriatingly obtuse and awkward and she was compelled to add extra emphasis by adopting her 'one syllable' style. "I don't want to talk about you sleeping with Connie as I have said my piece on that subject. I wanted to phone you to check up that you will go round and see Jo exactly as I told you to"
"In the middle of a trial when she is appearing before me? That sounds very reckless"
"John, I don't care if I am sounding contradictory. You should know by now that I am accustomed to having my cake and eating it whenever I feel like it"
"Don't I just know it"
"Just go round and see Jo and hang the consequences of being caught, because you owe it to her. She has told me that she 'wants space for herself.' This, at a time when she is right in the middle of a trial when she has far too much time to brood"
"Have I the right to stand in the way of Jo's wishes?" John queried, doubtfully.
"John, just forget your lily livered, oh so trendy liberal politics for just one moment. She may want time on her own, she may want to drink far too much than is good for her but what she needs is you right now. She may very easily end up drinking her way through the entire weekend and end up in a frightful mess and it could be worse than that. In case you had overlooked the matter, there's a trial at stake and, dare I say it, Barbara's freedom. Of course I am telling you to stick your oar in. After all, it's what you're best at."
The force of George's scorn and exasperation burnt its way down the telephone wires and into John's ear. She was right, of course.
"All right, George, I'll go right over and I'll do my best."
"Phone me before Monday and let me know how you've gone on." George concluded, put the phone down and sighed in total relief and sank back into her armchair.
As John knotted his tie and stared in the mirror, he was perplexed at what or who he should be. He really wasn't sure if he was supposed to be the lover, friend or nursemaid or all three rolled into one. It wasn't until he went to step out of his front door when he realized that he should react according to what state of mind he found Jo in when he got there. A rush of memories were relentlessly threaded together as he realized the profundity of the hard truths that George had given him, a kind of tough love. While there was an element of risk to this undertaking, to not act with courage would put Jo in far more perilous danger. As he looped his conclusions together, his internal anxiety had given way to a state of heightened awareness and a purposeful readiness to face any possibility by the time he knocked at Jo's front door.
"Well, this is a surprise, John. I would have thought you would have immersed yourself in the trial papers as is your habit"
"Hang the papers, Jo"
"Isn't this a little dangerous, John. Right in the middle of the trial"
"If you remember, I lived in the digs at the time. That officious busybody must have been brainwashed by reading far too many cheap expose magazines when she took pictures for the LCD to get their grubby hands on. This flat is far more discreet and well off the beaten track. Besides, I have thoroughly immersed myself in the trial and am completely prepared. Therefore my attitude is 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof"
"Meaning?" Jo interjected, a suspicion of a smile playing on her lips.
"That it's all there in my head and I don't need to do anymore. I came round to see you instead. I wanted to say that I've realized that I'm taking for granted what's right under my very nose and that is both you and George"
Jo caught John's glance tray from her face and flit round to her sideboard. A half full whisky bottle was left out on the side. John asked himself anxiously if it was because it happened to not have been put away or whether it was left out for Jo to carry on her reckless path of life to drink herself to death. As for John, he classed himself as a moderate drinker, confined to pleasant evening company, social events and weekends but only if he felt like it. He was now only too aware that Jo was different. As he stared, his words had dragged up from the depths of his memory, the enormous glass of whisky, which Jo had downed in one gulp when she came round to his digs to berate him over his conduct of the Jason Powell trial. At the time, John put down her reaction to the very emotional way she had reacted to the death of the young man, all the more so as he had felt pretty emotional himself.
"Do you want a drink, John?" Jo asked. Her self-defensiveness could feel a faint feeling of disapproval emanating from John while she was touched by the uncharacteristic way that John wore his heart on his sleeve. The cross cutting emotions made her feel edgy.
"Not for me, Jo"
"For someone who has been a total reprobate when it comes to women," Jo pronounced, her arms crossed across her chest, "You can be remarkably puritanical about smoking, alcohol and keeping fit"
"No, no, it's just that smoking and drinking have never greatly appealed to me. I cannot claim any special virtue for that. I like fencing because it appeals to the competitive spirit in me. I tend to do only what I feel like." John replied in the most detached, self-deprecating fashion possible.
"So when it comes to sex and drugs and rock and roll, only sex appeals to you." Jo threw back at him in a bantering tone of voice.
"I confess that I listen to Black Sabbath with Charlie and, as for the other, well, you know me by now. Right now, there's something that's more important than my personal failings." John evaded in a distracted fashion, trying not to listen too closely to Jo's description of himself, which had unpleasant resonances of his past foolishness with Connie Beauchamp.
"And what might that be, John?"
"A special evening in with you." John's low melodious voice answered. He played his pause to perfection and finally took Jo in his arms, drew her to him and kissed her. Jo luxuriated in the feel of being held by John and momentarily feeling that little bit better about herself before both good fortune and John had just knocked at her front door.
"Mmm, this feels like many years ago when we first started going out together." Jo said in a self-satisfied way as her arms reached round John while John clasped her in his arms.
"Not so long ago." John murmured. "We are as young as we feel"
Jo gave up asking questions of herself, her own far too easy identification with Barbara and the growing intensity of the roller coaster that this trial had created. She was about to surrender to feelings of sensuous pleasure, the parameters of which had been widened more than she had ever known even existed at one point.
Their path to Jo's bed was an erratic trail of scattered blouse, discarded white shirt, decorative bra cast aside until the two of them were naked and along in Jo's bed. How slender and shapely was Jo's body that he caressed and their mouths made contact with more fervency than Jo was used to. Their tongues became intertwined .She ran her fingers throughout his thick graying hair and her eyes took in those familiar chiseled features up above her, highlighted against the gloom by the moonlight shining through her bedroom window. She was lucky, she thought, that he was looking only more distinguished and attractive with age. Nothing was more certain that he was perfectly aware of this infuriating fact but on this night, John felt particularly sensitive and tender in his lovemaking. She could feel his lips move delicately across her skin with all the loving devotion of an artist at work. As such, he had always been comfortable with his facility in that direction but, this time, his feelings were suffused with tenderness for Jo as his tongue flicked over Jo's right nipple. The touch of his lips delicately caressed Jo's hardening nipples, one after the other and he was gratified to feel her body start to move. At least, while she was moaning with pleasure, he knew that she was safe. .
Time took its hands off the bedside clock and slowed down so that there was all the time in the world as John moved down Jo's slender torso, veered off to her hip and entered Jo's moistness with her eager collaboration. With practiced ease, his tongue teased at her clitoris and coaxed her to that state of glorious arousal.
As they lay on that effortless magic carpet of space and time, they moved next to each other and started caressing each other. John was touched to see that smile of satisfaction on Jo's face rather than that worrying expression of despair in her eyes that troubled her so much. He knew every inch of her body as much as her mind and he felt as if he was coming home to himself while he lay with her. Her legs parted eagerly as John's assured and patient hardness entered smoothly into Jo. While it gratified him to feel Jo's body up against hers as their body rhythms meshed together, now as much as any time in their lives. John could feel the lightness and delicacy of Jo's fingertips as they traced a pattern on his back. He knew beyond any reasonable doubt that she expressed her contrary desire for the man who had burst into her world at just the right time when her space needed so desperately to be invaded. It wasn't just his skill in giving exquisite sexual pleasure. He knew that he was expressing his desire to make amends in his life in the way that he was most confident in expressing in deeds rather than words. Taking all the time in the world, he gradually took them both all the way upward and over the top to an explosive orgasm that left them spent and gasping for breath.
"I've realized that I've so much to lose." John said at last while Jo's arms cradled him in their afterglow of sexual passion.
"How do you mean, John"
"From what happened to Barbara," John replied shortly, as if to chop off the train of thought. Jo was silent for a while. The trial was only half way through. Now was not the time for introspection when they had to be strong and George also. Besides, John was in danger of letting his mind race too quickly, to will away the weekend. This was the wrong time to say it but it felt good to Jo that John had felt something of the same emotions that had scarred her. They were in the same emotional room together.
"You don't usually talk when you make love." Jo said softly, adroitly changing the conversation.
"Does it matter?"
"Nothing matters right now except that you're here."Jo answered with feeling and with a sensation of peace and calm. True, it might not last, she admitted to herself but tomorrow was another day.
John lay his cheek next to her neck and immersed himself in those sensations of comfort which, he had to admit to himself, he might need as much as anyone. Such confessions to himself were easiest at moments like this. He was at peace with himself in the knowledge that he had kept his faith with a distant George that was somewhere out there but whom he visualized as smiling kindly down on both of them.