"So how outrageously controversial have you been at your conference? Have you persuaded your continental friends to form a Bolshevik Revival party?" George gently mocked John in seductive tones.
"Moderately so," came John's nonchalant reply. "I have, of course, found like-minded radical judges and have compared notes with just how repressive our respective countries are. It is curious, for example, how France is equally haunted by the oppressive spirit of Napoleon as much as it is inspired by the storming of the Bastille. Naturally, I prefer inspiration"
"You always were a rebel." George laughed.
"Otherwise I have been extremely good while I've been away"
"No one young enough or attractive enough for your taste"
"For the first time, I have approached a conference in a purely platonic spirit of the meeting of like minded people and the opportunity to widen my perspective. It is too easy to think that the Old Bailey and its immediate surroundings is the hub of the universe. It isn't and I have had most interesting, far reaching conversations"
"Which are bound to be transmitted back to that wonderful ex of mine"
"It will give him something to do, something more to get paranoid and aggressive about"
"Have you been to Florence while you've been on your travels, John"
"There's been no chance of that. We've been urged to work especially hard in true Spartan fashion except for an afternoon out sightseeing in Milan. Florence will have to regrettably wait for another opportunity. I trust that you have been looking after yourself while I'm away"
"Still making lots of money as usual. I've been feeling reasonably well so long as I'm careful and don't overdo things. I have actually followed the advice from the hospital to the letter."
"That must be a first." Grinned John. "What about Jo? I've tried to phone her a couple of times but haven't been able to get an answer"
"She's fine. I saw her a couple of days ago." Lied George with perfect aplomb. "She's very engrossed with a particular case, which is taking up a lot of her time. Knowing Jo, I expect she's forgotten to charge up her mobile. Anyway, Charlie sends you her love and encouragement to you to be as politically badly behaved as I know that you are bound to be"
"How's Charlie getting on"
"She's got a new boyfriend who thankfully isn't too spineless and too easily walked over"
John laughed down the phone at George's comforting voice, while a faint trace of breeze stirred the profusion of geraniums on the elegant terrace. The sun was beating down and he thought that a glass of his favourite Italian wine wouldn't come amiss. There was an interesting conversation developing somewhere behind him which allowed him time to catch upon some reading later on.
"I've got to go, George. Needless to say, I really miss you and Jo not being around"
George was both touched and discomforted by John's curious mixture of the nonchalant and the sincere before she made a suitably polite reply. It reminded her to consider that she ought to go round to Jo to help her while prompting her nervousness as to her abilities in that direction. Her track record, as a carer didn't feel extensive or give her a great deal of confidence in herself.
She made an immediate decision to stay inside rather than chase the sun. Staying out of the sun suited her purposes as it helped her to meditate on Jo's situation with time on her hands on a tranquil Sunday. While the sun shone down brightly outside George's house, thanks to the solid old walls of the house, the living room was especially cool. It suited her purposes as much as other occasions when she would sunbathe in the back garden or else soak up the heat on the natural sun trap of the terrace with a dry Martini on the table. She headed for the living room, went to her piano and played a Chopin prelude in a desultory fashion before giving up and lying back on the sofa. It wasn't giving her inspiration. She needed time and the right atmosphere in order to think and sprawling full length on the sofa was the right place to be. As she stared at the chandelier above her, it felt to her that she had only heard fragments of Jo, not the complete picture. Even now, she felt that she had only considered pat explanations. She enjoyed her alcohol as much as anyone else and had been mildly drunk from time to time. That was not a problem for her but it was for Jo. She couldn't really understand why this was the case, certainly nothing she could feel as opposed to perceiving an intellectual response. Since when did any addiction relate to a fully engaged intelligence, she asked herself as the cigarette ash started to drop into the rather full glass ash tray.
Suddenly, memories came back to her of the events of over two years ago when she had been confronted by her own demons. Hadn't she only recently been given a black eye by her frightful ex, ironically now the Home Office minister which had finally given impetus to her own downward anorexic spiral and that it was John and Jo who had saved her? Hadn't she done her damnedness to keep up appearances, to calculate just how unobservant people were of how little she ate, aided and abetted by the modern fashion for slimming diets and sylph-like figures. The ironic thought struck her that anorexia would have been a sheer impossibility in the age of Renoir's rounded beauties. Very well, if she wanted to truly get inside Jo's mind to try to help heal her, oughtn't she take a good look at what had happened to herself? As these buried memories started to surface, long forgotten conversations came back to her mind, helped by the excellent memory that her profession had encouraged.
"You are the last person I want to see what a total wreck I am. Ever since John met you, I've had it made pretty bloody clear to me just how much of a failure I am compared to you," she had said to Jo at the time.
She vaguely remembered Jo's reply in that cool as a cucumber tone of voice while George was drowning in her own torments.
"……..I had a termination …………so you see, I haven't always been the perfect mother….you dream about it, wake up seeing it, and all you're left with is the what ifs….he drove me to the clinic…….my husband was terminally ill, and I had two young children to look after…..for a while after the termination and after my husband died, I didn't think I could cope with Mark and Tom……I was so depressed and so exhausted, that I asked my mother to have them, but she wouldn't………I certainly wouldn't say I was a good mother then"
At the time, George put it down to the sort of thing that a comforter would say but now it started to have new resonances. She knew well enough that her own anorexia was deep rooted. Likewise, John's addiction to sex went far back into John's own life story so why should the same not be true for Jo?
It was time for her to act and as good a time as any while John was away at the Human Rights seminar in Milan. It was as matter of minutes to phone Jo up to say that she was coming and rather longer to get ready to go. She remembered how John had always been apt to get fidgety and impatient while George arranged herself to perfection.
Jo kissed George warmly when she opened the door and welcomed her in perfectly naturally.
"Want a drink, George"
"Thanks, the usual dry Martini for me. That has always been my favourite poison of choice"
Immediately, George bitterly regretted her flippant and unthinking choice of words but she concealed her feelings behind her carefully composed features
"Each to her own. I'm having a glass of mineral water. It's too hot and sweaty to have anything alcoholic, don't you think"
"I'm a woman of moods as you very well know from down the years." George retorted, a wide if a little uncertain smile playing on her lips.
The conversation immediately wandered along the erratic path of formless chitchat as George was not entirely at her ease. It took a little while for Jo's sharp mind to pick up on the subtext and a broad knowing smile spread across her face.
"Come on, George, tell me the real reason why you came over much though I love having your company"
"No reason at all. What earthly reason would I have to come apart from the pleasure of seeing you"
George was immediately conscious that her tone of voice was a little too forced, too exaggerated for her own liking. Jesus, she could see through herself in seconds.
"Come off it, George. I know you far too well for that"
"Am I so transparent"
"More so than you think"
In an earlier era, George would have brazened out the pretense for as long as she could have got away with it. Since at that time she had trouble in being totally honest with herself, how much worse was she in engaging with those whom she was less intimate? However much the after effects of her breast cancer might hold her back, she was more adept in emotionally rising to the occasion than she used to be.
"I've been thinking back over two years ago when you and John forced me to face myself, who I was when I fainted in court after one of my bouts of anorexia. It took a lot to realize that it was not as impossible to discard that suit of armour as I first feared. I had always thought that it was protecting myself but all I was doing was to straightjacket myself. I remember that being made to stand on a pair of scales and letting that show up what I'd done to myself. That was hardly my idea of fun, " George started to say in slow deliberate tones while she was feeling her way. Her eyes were focused on Jo's face, to watch out for the slightest emotional reaction.
"I thought I'd explained myself to everyone," Jo replied shortly. "It's nothing I haven't done before"
"……like my periodic bouts of anorexia." Countered George's soft low tones. "I had been doing that on and off since I was fifteen but the fact of that explains nothing. Your approach to drinking doesn't explain anything and does nothing to help you"
"Do you think that I need professional help"
While Jo had stood up automatically to meet her challenge, George followed suit to meet Jo on her ground. She paused and past memories shaped her words slowly and deliberately to confess and unashamedly expose her own vulnerability.
"Everyone needs help at some time or another. I did. Even that revolting ex of mine might need help to get a personality bypass operation if he ever wanted it," drawled George.
"I'll get better by myself. I always do if I'm left to myself"
"Darling, just don't shut me out. I did that with John when Charlie was born and I paid heavily for that for years. It was so easy just to tell John how I felt about being a mother but it took till when Charlie was six for him to find out. By that time, the damage was done. Everyone suffered for my mistake, me most of all"
George's incredible display of tenderness and that aching tone in her voice took Jo by surprise. A few tears formed in her eyes before she lowered her head to hide them. George wrapped Jo in her arms and silently held her, her fingers tracing delicate patterns on the blouse that she wore. The growing tension in the air died down as the sunlight poured in through the near window. Everywhere was still.
"You have to talk, darling." George gently urged her. "I should know. I found out the hard way"
Gently, she drew Jo down onto the sofa. She sensed that Jo had to be in the right physical situation before she could talk.
"What do you want to know"
"Just what exactly led you to drink more than was safe for you to do"
Jo thought long and hard, her brows knitted before she spoke at last.
"Some of it is fairly obvious. If you are set to defend a woman who is accused of shortening the life of her dear husband who is in dreadful pain and the laws of the country see fit to put that woman up on trial rather than be infinitely sorry for her, it is no wonder that the trial will get to you sooner or later"
"And how did you feel about it, Jo," came the persistent question. The deliberately impersonal way in which Jo spoke rang loud alarm bells in George's mind. Dealing with Jo's obstinacy felt like a dentist trying to extract a particularly tenacious tooth.
"Well, naturally, I feel the same way too. You have to drink to wind down after an exhausting trial. That's obvious"
"Jo, I know how much you have a deserved reputation for caring for your clients while there are those who still think of me as a money chasing, power mad mercenary"
"You're being unfair to yourself"
"Well, perhaps there's a grain of truth in me being power mad. I just use it responsibly these days. Wouldn't it be true to say that your caring feelings come at least as close to home as anywhere? Take my breast cancer for example"
"You know that I was as scared rigid at the thought of losing you from the first time I heard the news. I just did a good job of covering up my feelings as I felt that I had to be strong for you"
"You were marvellous at helping me pull through that event, Jo." George responded warmly as the sound of panic in Jo's voice revealed that her tension level was going through the roof. "That's why I am trying to help you now"
"And this is your way of trying to help me?"
"We never really got round to talking properly about how you felt at the time of Barbara Mills' trial- or my recent breast cancer, come to think of that"
George carefully shaped those words from her mind to pass through her lips. They hung in the air for ages while Jo's eyes flicked nervously and her face remained taut and strained. In that split second, George realized that she had moved too far, too quickly.
"There's little to tell about the trial." Jo responded shortly. "You must know that, quite without intending or foreseeing it, I ended up reliving that part of my life that is best forgotten. You know very well that I started an affair with John at the very same time when my husband was dying. Oh yes, thanks to John, I had to have an abortion. It hardly makes me a model citizen as everyone thinks that I am."
The contempt in Jo's terse tones was clearly self directed and was felt very intensely. She pressed her hands to her eyes for a few minutes as if trying to blot out the memory. Suddenly, with a sharp angry movement, she turned to face George and looked her in the eyes and spoke at a machine gun pace.
"I know that you're going to ask me how I came to take too many sleeping tablets. Well the answer is very simple. I have been used to taking a nightcap or two before I go to bed and despite all that, I have had trouble in sleeping. I went to the doctor for some sleeping tablets and, like a fool, didn't bother reading the instructions that you aren't supposed to mix them. I must have taken more sleeping tablets than I thought I had which was a really stupid mistake. I'll never do that again."
George gave up as she slid her arm round Jo's shoulder. It was obvious what incredible barriers Jo was putting up in talking about it in any meaningful way and how unsuccessfully she had tried to bury the memory for years. It would take a lot more than her powers of persuasion to break down the barriers.