Nikki could never work out just why Helen suddenly developed this fevered wish to immediately drive up to Scotland that July weekend. True, they had vaguely talked about the matter a month ago and Nikki recalled mentioning it to her own father. Nevertheless, they were off at the crack of dawn, complete with road maps and a comparatively light load of clothes. Once their red Peugeot had hauled off the huge roundabout that marked the start of the M1, Nikki noted the light of exploration in Helen's eyes as she sat behind the wheel, alert, and poised and she was curious just why Helen's vision was trained ahead of her, occasionally flicking to her mirrors.
They chatted awhile as their car gradually ate up the miles driving north and accompanied the massed ranks of fellow travelers, either in cars or juggernaut lorries. At other times, one or either of then slipped on a favourite CD of theirs and let the soothing melodies of Tori Amos articulate their thoughts. Helen drove them fast, passing one car after another and bypassed by one service station after another. When they had clocked up more than a hundred and fifty miles, Nikki politely pointed out the next service station. Reluctantly, Helen lifted her foot off the accelerator and swung the car off the road. They made their way to the toilet and next to the cafeteria to have a refreshing cup of coffee. Helen's fingers were drumming restlessly on the table and she was fidgety until Nikki finally broached the proposal that she had been turning over in her mind.
"Want me to drive for a while, darling and give you a rest?"
"I'm fine. I'll be OK to drive a bit longer," Helen insisted politely but firmly.
Nikki had figured out by now just why Helen was so single mindedly determined to drive them all the way up to that remote parish in Stirling. Just why she wanted to take them in the first place would clarify itself in time. One of the delights of living together was that neither of them had to be a burning hurry to find out what they didn't understand in the other.
"I know you're doing this to keep yourself occupied till you meet your father but three hundred odd miles is a long way to drive. You'll be dead beat when you see him. Come on, you normally do most of the driving round London but just you sit back, trust yourself to me and relax."
"Nikki, it's the last part I'm having problems with," Helen said in a strained tone of voice.
"OK, you're a woman on a mission to say something to your father which you might as well do sooner rather than later. I had to do the same for my parents and you helped me through that one. Tell you what, you choose the CD for the next stage of the journey while I drive."
Helen breathed outwards and smiled faintly for the first time since they set off. She felt that this compromise could work.
"To tell you the truth, I haven't the faintest idea why we're up here but now that we are, we press on to the end. It's what we've always done."
"Let's clear our thought a bit," Nikki said decisively." While we're here, we might as well have a bit of a holiday break and explore the countryside even if visiting your father goes pear shaped. We need part of this visit for us. We have a perfect right to it."
"Keep talking that way, Nikki. Perhaps that Methodist father of mine, always doing 'good works' in a guilt ridden way has been more of an influence than I ever thought," Helen answered in a relieved tone of voice as inspiration suddenly dawned on her.
"You think of that naval captain father of mine and how easily I can take command
of a situation," Nikki laughed in a tone of tender affection and a nod of appreciation at Helen's sharp perception.
"There's something else going on here and we're alike in this," continued Nikki in a leisurely discursive fashion as she sipped her coffee."We both feel that we've got to be around all the time for our friends. It doesn't have to be the case, not always. Right now, we can't help Sally Anne or Trisha or John. If any of them come around when we're back in London, we'll be there for them. Perhaps this visit to your father might also be your roundabout way of checking that we're strong enough for them?"
"And aren't we, sweetheart?"
"I know but it doesn't harm to put it to the test. This sounds like a mixture of duty and pleasure and we might as well go with the flow."
Helen drained the last of her coffee with a sense of satisfaction and order in her mind and placed their cups and saucers in the tray. It was her cue to call time for them to set off down the road again.
The last stage up to the Scottish border passed smoothly enough. Helen snuggled herself in the passenger seat and rested her head on the window as she saw Nikki take capable command of the wheel. The smooth and assured way that Nikki drove instantly reassured the smaller woman, her presence plus the soothing strains of Alison Krauss's smooth American country tones relaxed Helen more than she had thought possible. They were in limbo land, on the way to her father's but not necessarily purposefully heading that way. The sensation of travelling was arrival enough.
It was a shock when Helen took over to drive along the narrow twisting country roads and bare upland heath lands, criss crossed by stone walls and dotted with sheep. This was where Helen had first learnt to drive and it portended the unforgiving, grey granite stone structure of the mansevicaragewhere she had come from. Helen's pulse started racing straightaway as she sensed that they were coming up to her village, if she could call it that.
"Take it easy, sweetheart," came Nikki's soothing voice. "I know how you're feeling."
Helen turned her head to smile quickly at Nikki and then swerved to avoid the stonewall lining the road. From anyone else, the words would sound lame but Helen knew through to the core of her soul the wealth of feelings being conveyed to her.
"Everywhere looks like a child's model village," she exclaimed," but I know how real it felt at the time."
Nikki laid her hand on Helen's sleeve reassuringly and they finally came to a rest with a slight scrunching of gravel and the reality of her one time home hit her. Helen paused for that slight moment of time before she slid her seat belt aside and threw open the door. To Nikki's eyes, they were dressed decorously enough in dark trousers, sensible tops and light jackets, hardly Brighton Pride material. Despite all of that, they were shown into the large study with chilly formality where the heat of the day was kept excluded by the high severely white plastered room where only the piled up bookcase added any visual counterpoint. Nikki's eager eye was disappointed by the ancient volumes of a religious nature. After the polite formalities, Helen's father showed his colours quickly enough.
"I suppose that you were responsible for my daughter's present sinful life."
"Helen is a hard working woman who's doing great in her career," Nikki spoke eagerly until the penny dropped slowly but surely." Oh, you mean you're getting at the fact that that we're living together as a couple. I suppose your religious views have trouble in accommodating the fact."
"That's part of the problem. The other is that you have committed a crime."
"That's what you said last time I spoke to you on the phone after Nikki's reappeal. Still the same stuck record," Helen retorted, stony faced.
"You know, that last point is an interesting one, reverend," intervened Nikki with dangerous and unexpected politeness. "I appeared before two appeal courts. The first one gave me my freedom and the second wiped the slate clean. These consist of three high court judges of about your age. The second one cross examined me at length and got to the truth. In the law of the land, I'm innocent."
Helen was constrained to appear very decorous and formal in her father's house for she could not in all justice, deny her father the right to set the rules in his house. However, she marvelled at the way that Nikki ever so tactfully and smoothly combatted his right to lay down the way anyone in his house believed. Unlike Nikki's days in Larkhall where she fought back with passionate blazing anger, this battle was mounted with a smiling face and the politest of manners.
"Even high court judges cannot make judgments on moral guilt. It is not their preserve."
"So what I did is not moral but it is legal? That is a strange proposition. I'm not formally religious but I've always read a lot and, thanks to Helen, got my English degree. There's something I read about once that has always interested me, the idea of atonement for your actions, the idea that you can make things right if you work at it. I'd be interested to hear your views on it and also my job as a researcher for the Howard League for Penal Reform."
At this point, Helen couldn't restrain an open grin on her face, thankfully on the sidelines as Nikki quietly asserted herself. It crossed her mind that, since she left home, her father had been simply unused to anyone disagreeing with him, not his parishioners and not the rest of the village. She gained a perspective of entering the village from the outside world, that it was tucked at the base of huge jagged mountains that thrust upwards into the sky and locked out the modern world. She almost felt sorry for her father but, typical of him, he tried to deny the reality that was being laid on him. If only he weren't so bloody obstinate, she thought, and realize that making concessions won't plunge his immortal soul into the fires of hell. She stared at his stiff, angular features, which looked like a piece of carved granite and typified his whole personality. Her mind drifted back to the present when her father inevitably raised the question of their sexuality.
"There's another point, Helen knows that the Good Book is very firm on the subject that God permits only a man and woman to live together in a state of holy matrimony."
"There is a whole wealth of religious learning in your bookcases. Perhaps you could show me where it states that two women who live in a loving relationship are committing a sin?"
She shook her head in wonder as he skittered away from that point. Emboldened, she spoke out for the first time.
"Besides, we both chose to live together. Nikki is my first real love. We care for each other. Surely that can't be wrong?"
The reply she received showed her that his approval was a lost cause and that her own self-approval was ultimately what counted. She knew that all along but it helped her to put that to the test. Presently, his housekeeper came in at just the right time and served three cups of tea and the preoccupation with politely sipping the liquid filled up the blank very nicely. The atmosphere felt strained and uncomfortable until Nikki broke the silence.
"Well, Mr. Stewart. One reason I came here was that I was dying to walk in the lovely country around here. As the daughter of a Naval Captain growing up around London, this is an entirely different world for me."
"I am sure that Helen will still remember her roots here and will be able to show you the glories of the countryside. I would do it myself but unfortunately, I have the Sunday service to prepare for."
The hasty way he said those words made both women feel sure that the Reverend Stewart was perhaps being less than honest, considering that he might very well want to escape from his unreasoning prejudices being put to the test. The flicker in his eye showed how disconcerted he was at the respectability of Nikki's background. He was not to know how new it was to Nikki to invoke her family background in an argument.
The heat of the day enfolded them as they set off into the car and headed off for the mountains, stopping occasionally to let a flock of sheep cross the road into the field. When they had climbed up high enough into the peaks, Helen found a convenient lay by and parked the car.
The view took Nikki's breath away. She had not experienced before the intensity of the clear blue sky and the feel of the fresh country air. Down below her, the roof of the manse vicarage could be picked out as if it were a toy house. The craggy mountains etched a jagged line against the horizon, coloured in the greys of jagged outcrops and patches of greens, denoting the tenacious vegetation that could cling on with their roots. There was not a trace of a human being was in sight until their vision looked down on the isolated slate roofs of outlying farms, the clumps of odd trees and narrow lanes that zig zagged their way.
"It's beautiful," breathed Nikki. "I never knew you came from somewhere like this."
"Wonderful views are fine enough if there is the human warmth to go with it," observed Helen." That was why I left home. Let's go for a walk."
Companionably, they slid their arms round each other's waists and the human contact told Helen that, yes, if she'd met Nikki here, she could have settled down in her home village. She laughed to herself at the impossibility of such a notion, that it was a miracle that they'd ever met in the first place. Their feet trod the tough tarmac while their eyes feasted on the glorious richness of colours around them.
"You know that soon, we'll have to be there for Sally Anne and Trisha when their trial comes up," murmured Nikki, hating to detract from nature's glories, which surrounded them.
"I know. We needed to get away for the weekend, freshen ourselves up and then we'll do what needs doing. This is the first time I've been here and everything feels right."
The utter stillness of being right on top of the world in such ancient lands overawed them. They didn't want to go back to the manse vicarage but the time had to come like it did for everything that happened in their lives.
For the one night, the two women were forced to sleep in separate bedrooms and single beds. Both women felt totally unnatural, as if part of each of them were amputated. Both of them longed for the sweet normality of their double bed in London.
Nikki never did find out what Helen's father's Christian name was. Her experience of John Deed made it so much easier to frame an indictment of this poor representative of men, one generation above her. Helen's father never made one concession to their point of view. It said everything.