Part One Hundred and Sixty Seven
Life was all so different a month ago. She had traveled up to York for the weekend to visit her two sons who were at university there. The place was ideal as they were on the self- contained modern concrete university campus in a 200-acre landscaped park. All the colleges and academic buildings were on a flat level site within comfortable walking distance of each other, with all the facilities on site. She had been put up in a sparse shaped spare room with a wonderful panoramic view over the lake. She enjoyed strolling round the cloistered world of academia and being given the guided tour by Tom and Mark as the archetypal proud parent. It made her feel young as a throwback to her youth. She had time apart from that to stroll round the city walls of York and visit the famous Viking center. The wine she sipped in the evening was that of celebration of the brightness of her mood.
That weekend was a month ago, and it was an eternity in space away from her. Despite the sunny day, Jo could not help but feel that, this Wednesday that it wasn't shining on her. These moods came from somewhere out of the blue and there was nothing she could do about it. Not that it was easy for others to see the outward manifestation of this beneath the public perception of the level-headed, sensible Jo whose career option was to care deeply about the victims of society. It crossed her mind that sometimes, that victim, told a story which was far too close to home which happened where Barbara Mills' second and third husbands had died a lingering and painful death from cancer, just as her husband had. She had had too much to drink so that George had had to temporarily take over the running of the case. Given time, she had learnt to dismiss that was just a 'one off' incident, a few months ago.
Instinct told Jo to help herself to a stiff shot of whisky as soon as she got home to get over the rigours of the day. To anyone outside the brethren, it appeared that they were all consummate professionals without a trace of stage nerves, just like any actor. Their role in court was to convey that totally assured sense of knowledge and no one but a fellow brethren realized that there were times that all of them had 'winged it' at some time or other. Afterwards, that was all business that was done and disposed of, prior to the next day. Whichever way the court case went that day, there was the normal matter of winding down after a hard day and different barristers handled it in different ways.
As she settled down in the evening, on a Wednesday evening, that dull feeling of deflation came over her, so that home and hearth did not have that attraction, quite the reverse. She couldn't put finger on it as she refilled her glass but it dawned upon her that this was one of her occasions when she would have welcomed company, only that it wasn't there when she needed it. It had been a pattern throughout Jo's life that there were times when she wanted her own company, and other times when she needed company and it wasn't around. The times when she wanted her freedom most was when she feared being sucked in by John's dangerous attractions. Theoretically, since she, John and George shared each other she ought to be having the best of all worlds but there were sometimes when for some reason that she could not name, life didn't feel that way.
What was totally arbitrary, so Jo reflected in a contemplative haze was the way that she, George and John came together in various combinations, in ways unplanned, unthought out and how often, the ring on her mobile or her phone call to others was the precursor. In such a situation, she could hardly wait to drive over to John's flat or George's house or else she would wait in keen anticipation for either or both of the others to come to her. The only curse of the modern age was the disembodied replacement of the real person, leaving their prerecorded message that they weren't available and please can a message be left and the call would be returned. That sense of being let down, of bitter disappointment had happened to her before and at one time, what was worse was that John would be out there in the wide world chasing some anonymous woman who 'meant nothing to her.' It was then that she knew what the blues were about. She, Jo Mills, was its author of that song far too many times than she wanted to remember.
Once again, she picked up her mobile and dialed George's number. She could do with a chat, not about anything in particular, but just in general. The familiar dial tone sounded and yet again, George's voice which was not really a voice drawled her message to' leave a message for her and she would return the call.' Some absurd instinct in her almost wanted her to believe that George had really heard her voice but when her voice faded away, she knew that she was only deceiving herself.
A temporary feeling of positivism welled up inside her to be positive, and she clicked into the next course of action, to phone John. After all, midweek wasn't his likeliest time to be out and about. Impatiently, she waited for John to pick up the phone with that lazily indolent mannerism that she always remembered when she was there with him. "Hi, John…" she started to say when she was greeted by the same mechanically empty tones, a hateful electronic impersonation of the human being, only that he had said the words in the first place to set up the ring tone. It died away into nothingness, leaving her to clutch the phone in vague impotent fury at the world around her. To assuage her wounded feelings, she reached out for the bottle again.
It was when she knocked back another glass of neat spirits after the last one that she realized that the alcohol was starting to go to her head. She was starting to lose count. It was as well that she didn't need to walk anywhere in a hurry, as she realized that she was far too rooted in her chair. Never mind, her hazy dreamy thoughts reassured herself, she had everything she needed, herself, a comfortable armchair, a glass and a bottle of whisky. She didn't need anyone else, or so the alcohol running through her veins was trying to tell her.
As the room was suddenly moved into closer focus, she tried to look at the whisky bottle. The label wavered in front of her. It hazily occurred to her that perhaps the real reason why she couldn't get her eyes to focus properly was that she needed glasses. It happened to everyone sooner or later. This was the reason why she had trouble in focusing on the dividing line, that separated the amber spirit from the clear air. The colours weren't that different or else she might be worried at how much she had drunk.
As she lay in her chair, that evening, she couldn't shift that core emotion within her of that total depression of spirit. No matter how much she had drunk, somehow, she couldn't escape from herself and her emotions sank down into feelings of defeat.