Scene Twenty-Three
John had felt on top of the world after the triumphant outcome of the judge's strike. Everything he had been saying for years about the need to take a stand against the apparatchiks and that, bit by bit, liberties were being whittled away a bit at a time had been proven right. He had felt for a long time as if he were a lone voice crying in the wilderness while his fellow judges mockingly patronized him behind his back.
He now noticed the respectful look in his fellow judge's eyes and, by contrast, Huntley was a total outcast. He was treated as if he didn't exist. Likewise, John trod the corridors with a jaunty step whenever Sir Ian and Lawrence James came into view. They slunk away and didn't dare to lecture him or give him unasked for opinions as to how his cases should be handled. Only the niceties were observed.
It was in this ebullient mood that John asked George out for a meal and to his astonished delight, she agreed. He couldn't believe his luck after the time when George had very flirtatiously explained to him how she had politically changed sides yet had kept her distance. When John entered the restaurant and straightened his tie, catching a reflection of himself in the glass door, he was delighted to see George in her very best flowing black, off the shoulders dress. His spirits were full to overflowing and who knows how the evening would progress. The night was full of promise as was the light in George's eyes.
The thousand twinkling lights of an expensive restaurant bathed George and John in an inviting glow and the two of them sat down to a meal, accompanied by the finest wine. Their conversation sparkled in much the same way as the wine and George found herself laughing at his witticisms. She had not laughed for a long time.
'Do you know, John, you are in danger of getting positively bigheaded? You'll have trouble in fitting yourself through doors."
"Nonsense," John retorted with aplomb." I have had to be a lone voice for a long time and have sustained my beliefs from my own convictions. I have had to learn to be self reliant."
"You are not exactly the solitary monk in a cave, darling. I know you only too well. I have heard of Frances Rochester for instance."
"She has been recruited to holding Ian's miserable hand in his hour of crisis. He has no spine," John said contemptuously.
"What about Little Miss Oxfam?" George enquired. This was her scathing description of Jo Mills, his one time lover who had finally broken up her marriage to John and the smile disappeared from John's face.
"She is keeping her distance. She has problems in believing in my capacity for fidelity."
George's mind was working overtime in filling in the gaps. It did explain the way John had unexpectedly come back into her life. It had been the pattern of their relationship since they had divorced.
"I know exactly what you're thinking. You are so predictable." George admonished him with a taunting smile.
'I am completely inscrutable," John argued back. "Not even you will know what I will do next. Sometimes not even I know."
"That reminds me how absolutely infuriating you are. You pretend that you are freewheeling through life and making some kind of artistic statement."
"So what is wrong about that? It would do some of us good to be a little spontaneous," John murmured, his eyes twinkling mischievously at George. The dim light shone on his distinguished features, which only improved with age. His graying hair only made him look distinguished. Likewise, George's beauty had hardly changed over the years.
"At this moment, you want me to ever so spontaneously want to go to bed with you."
"You must admit that I am a step up from Lover Boy."
"Anyone is a step up from Lover Boy. After all, I should know from first hand experience."
"So you concede my point," John came back smoothly. This was in keeping with their conversations, which had been like the perpetual ping-pong game.
"It goes deeper than that. You are definitely more cheerful these days than you used to be. I know very well that you are totally overjoyed that my temporary detour with Neil Houghton is at an end……."
"…….You must be as well, dearest."
"As politicians say, I refuse to comment. I have also done something unheard for me of acting as roadie for your middle aged delinquents plotting revolution. I have heard tales of your sit in days at university."
"I have splendid memories of shaking the very bastions of power. There was never a cause that I didn't believe in. Today's students are apathetic by comparison."
"I am sure that you were also very much attracted to the revolutionary doctrine of 'free love'- that is freedom for you to make as many possible conquests of wide eyed, long haired women with slim legs with rapacious sexual appetites."
"I did have the good taste to only marry the only most expert in that direction," John said smoothly.
George grinned freely at John in frank confession of their past until she thought about her past and the grin faded from her face. She admitted to herself that nostalgia was so very attractive. If she let herself, she could almost see those magic days of the past through misty eyes. She then remembered the feelings of hurt and anger when his first sexual infidelity came to light. What was worst was his blasé manner, then his studious apologies and promise to make amends - until the next time. The crowning moment came when he took up a teaching position in a London Law School and the wide-eyed eager eyed blonde called Jo Mills who came into their lives. He even spoke of her as the most promising student that he had come across. Foolishly, she had supposed that because she was married and had two very young children, she would be safe for him to platonically respect her talents. How wrong she had been, she had thought to herself bitterly over the years. Her experiences over the years had turned her into a realist, scornful of romantic make believe.
"There may be much that came later that I became prepared to forgive but that does not mean that I have forgotten it," George added in polite but firm tones. Her pride would not let her soften up for John's sake.
"I can see that you think that we'll end up together after all these years. We started as a married professional couple with an offspring which both of us were proud of. We started to make our way in the world and I became this money mad barrister attracted to the material things in life. Then comes the process of discord and disruption when your series of adulteries finally sunk our marriage and we took different partners. In the meantime, you became this infuriating 'new age' man with your radical causes and not letting your principles get in the way of the series of women who pass through your bed. In public life, we became standard cardboard cut out characters in an upper class soap opera, hurling abuse at each other, inside and outside the courtroom. Then comes the possible happy ending. After being the evil sinner all my life in my alliances with the 'wealth creators,' I join the common mood of repentance. I'm sure that you've heard that I've taken on the Sally Anne Howe case.'
"I am familiar with it," John said in even tones.
"I don't suppose you know the details, John. I'll tell them to you. A one-time policewoman was raped by a policeman, the very same animal who Nikki Wade stabbed to defend her girlfriend who was on the point of being mistreated the same way. She was shamefully treated both by her colleagues and through the line of accountability right to the top. After years of suffering in silence, she came forward to testify for Nikki and has now had the courage to seek compensation and possible reinstatement in the Metropolitan police."
John's eyes opened wide with astonishment. This was not his George talking but a completely different woman who felt passionately about the case. She cared.
"It does mean that I can put myself in the mind of a barrister who will try and fend off the claim. After all, the obvious target is the Head of Personnel and it is no easy matter to make that person culpable. I'll find a way though."
"I could assist you," John murmured.
"Is this the way you used to behave with Jo Mills," George laughed." You must remember my infamous pride. That hasn't changed."
"Nothing changes between us ultimately. We were destined to reunite with each other."
"No John," George said more firmly this time.
"You see us dancing the same familiar waltz together and apart. Round and round we go. Finally, we fall into each other's loving arms and we can supposedly forget the past as if the sum total of feelings can be wiped clean as if it were a blackboard. Life doesn't work that way. The problem is that you haven't changed."
"I can reform. Anyone can."
"You're deluding yourself. You have always been a serial womanizer and always will be. You might conceivably get worse as you try to recapture your lost youth."
"You can make me reform, George. After all the women I have chased, I realize now that you are the only woman for me," John said with a slightly shaking voice. For a second, George nearly softened as her newfound ways let her more open to emotion.
"I ask myself if you are the only man for me, John."
"Will you get a better offer?"
"No John. I am not a vessel waiting to be filled by you," George insisted more firmly. You have noticed that I am moving on, that I am changing my ways. You must consider what I want out of life. You cannot run my life in your ever so charming way and get me into bed the same way."
"So what do you want out of life?"
"A pleasant evening where we act like friends and friends only. Our relations should continue the same way. There should be no need for the verbal fireworks in court between each other and I suppose there will be a cease fire between Jo Mills and I if she's willing."
"But what do you want to do with your life, George?" John asked with a look of mystification and concern in his eyes." Sometimes, I worry for you."
"Were you worried for me when I was with Haughton?" George challenged.
"In some ways," John frankly admitted." I used to worry that you would marry the man and live to regret it. Alternatively, you might not regret it and become like the unutterably callous hard hearted people he surrounds himself."
"And am I not hard hearted?" George grinned playfully, daring him to disagree with her.
"Ultimately not or I wouldn't have married you," John said shortly.
This short remark rocked George to her foundations. What John said was perfectly true. How did she never spot this obvious truth about herself? Her thoughts started turning over and over in her mind. Completely out of the blue, her thoughts were given immediate voice. This was so unlike her.
"I need to work out what I want to do with my life, who I am, where I belong. I need to question everything and to get some answers for myself," George said, a look of distraction on her face. She had totally dropped her normal cool, command. It unsettled and disturbed John who wasn't ready to deal with this.
"I went through this phase when I went to university," John said in smooth tones, trying to be understanding. After all, it fitted life's pattern to his way of thinking.
George felt like smacking him across the face but restrained herself just in time. This wasn't what she had meant or felt at all. Her experience felt very unique to a female professional divorcee and mother to a student daughter. She had this mad impulse to get out of there but restrained herself. There would be time later on to think when she was on her own.
John noticed the flash of anger on George's face and knew immediately that his planned for sexual celebration of his triumph wasn't going to happen. George meant every word she said about striking out on her own. It wiped away his feelings of satisfaction and completeness as he realized that that comforting circularity of life's pattern was being firmly rejected by George. He hoped that this would be a temporary phase and that that sense of completion in his life would be restored.
Together, they chatted away inconsequentially over the finest wines for the rest of the evening or so this couple looked as such to the outside observer.