After the previous night's discussion with Monty, John's mind was made up. A purposeful feeling flowed through him while he let Coope do the finishing adjustments to his red robes that he'd let far too much time slip by and he had to make contact with Helen and Nikki again. They'd become part of the very close circle of friends who nurtured each other who meant a whole lot more than his casual affairs. He knew that phoning or e mailing would not do and he chose to visit Nikki at her place of work at the first opportunity.
Meanwhile, his exterior self was contentedly running the trial with a little more sharpness of purpose than normal. Two thirds of the way through the afternoon session, George announced a glitch in the trial, that her key witness wasn't available for the trial but would be available the following day.
"In which case, it hardly seems appropriate to continue. I would have preferred her in any case to start fresh in the morning and run through to the end. Court is adjourned."
"John's been unusually dominant and masterful," drawled George to Jo on the way out of court, relieved that he'd reacted graciously to the spanner in the works.
"There goes a man on a mission," observed Jo as she saw him make haste for his chambers.
In the lunchtime interval, John had waited with feverish impatience for electronic contact to be made down the phoneline. He laughed slightly at himself as he'd been far more relaxed when arranging a date considering all the one night stands he'd initiated in his life and this woman was hopefully at best a friend.
"Hey, you can't possibly be John Deed after all these years Helen and I have known you. It's lovely to hear you," that well modulated voice sounded in his ear with her wraparound warmth.
"I'd like to do more than that. I'd like to meet you and Helen again. I phoned you as I hadn't got Helen's details," John blurted out sounding excruciatingly clumsy.
"There's no time like the present. I remember how your day is in the lap of the gods but perhaps you could drive over to my place of work about three thirty? You're well remembered by the Howard League " suggested Nikki with her infinite tact in smoothing things over. This delighted John so after the trial he phgoned Nikki back and was soon on his way. Lawrence James and new circuit administrator, Tim Smithson were passing by outside and sourly gazed at a cheerful John in his open top convertible and speculated on the nature of his assignation.
Once a slightly windswept John had paced into the reception and announced his purpose, he didn't have too long to wait when a radiant Nikki dressed in her favourite charcoal grey trouser suit came lightly down the flight of stairs, shook his hand warmly and drew him into an unexpected embrace. He'd not expected so warm a reaction.
"Hey, you're lucky I didn't personally roll out a red carpet but we haven't any in stock. Come up and join me for a cup of tea and my boss Paul Armstrong will likely pop his head round. He gets to hear things," Nikki said in her most humorous, affectionate fashion. Unexpectedly, a tear or two pricked John's eye.
John let himself be led to the homely brewing up point, complete with two hard chairs and a round table. He watched his friend move gracefully around and serve up two mugs full of tea and he took a sip. He knew that now was the moment of decision and he knew he had to account for his unexplained silence over the years.
"It's so good to see you again but I feel I ought to explain my disappearing act when Rose was born. It might seem incredibly foolish but I was afraid that if I saw yours and Helen's child, I would be overcome with irrational paternal feelings when I know full well as a rational fact that you and Helen are her mothers. I kept away for fear of that happening. I didn't want the slightest possibility of being where I wasn't wanted..."
A deathly silence elapsed that seemed to last an eternity. John screwed up his eyes as he sounded to his ears to have uttered the most incredibly clumsy and ill-judged stream of nonsence.
"Since when did you stop being friends with Helen and I? Some friendships never die and can be picked up so easily. Besides, you and I are surprisingly similar. You and I have always known that, John," Nikki said very tenderly, placing her hand lightly on John's fist. He opened his eyes to see his friend's face full of understanding and he felt he was coming home.
"We are?" was all he could say. Nikki knew that, as always, John was for real.
"Helen and I worked it out and knew that the time would be right."
A great weight slid off John's shoulders. He felt so relieved and a broad grin spread across his face. This was time for the next part of Nikki's proposition as her mind had turned things over with Helen's help ever since lunchtime.
"We've thought a lot about Rose and what she needs out of life. As you might imagine, Rose has a lot to do with our female friends who come round. She does see my father and my brother but Helen and I know that a male friend of ours would do her a power of good and who better than you? I know you've got your own life so there's no pressure. I'm sure you'll find everything fine when you meet Rose as you've been through something like this yourself from being adopted. "
"I'd be delighted," John said enthusiastically as a shaft of sunlight emerged through the clouds and shone in through the window."You've made things sound possible."
"You'll enjoy it. Between you and me, we wonder if Rose is some kind of visitation. She's a real live wire and will keep you on your toes. She's incredibly individual and misses nothing."
A deep feeling of joy spread through John's system as they nattered away just like the old days and fixed up for when John was going to visit them. He had warm feelings for his friends' flat where they'd generously let him stop the night. It reinforced everything Nikki had said.
It had happened. John Deed lifted his glass of whisky upwards at a jaunty angle and drank it down in the sanctuary of the judges digs along with his friend, fellow judge Monty Everard. Thanks to a sequence of recent , he'd regained his sense of purpose in the world that had slipped through his fingers over the last number of years. He chuckled to himself that a part of it was that conflict and confrontation that had restored one of his vital driving forces, the other one being his was fortunate that Monty Everard had returned with him the other night to celebrate as his friend's barely connected wife Vera Everard was fortunately elsewhere so they could go off and clink glasses together to celebrate their victory. Moreover, the prospect of catching up with Nikki and Helen's family gave him an added sense of belonging. As he settled back in a comfortably old-fashioned armchair, he reflected on the turbulent goings on at the judge's bash tonight whose intent to draw everyone together had not functioned as it had been intended.
John was as sociable as the next person but he'd grown averse to the false bonhomie that sought to grease the wheels of business to the executive's advantage. Memories floated back into his mind when he was a young barrister of self-satisfied elderly judges standing cheek by jowl with LCD civil servants and the odd government minister. They talked loftily over glasses of malt whisky of their shared perspectives of the lower plains from their shared perspectives of the eagle's eyrie. It wasn't that the majority of them had been to Oxford University as he'd been there himself but that corruptionm did not come in the form of a cold-eyed summons to sign your soul away but an infinity of affable conversations edging the supplicant for favours on mutually undwerstood terms. When John became a high court judge, he intruded his lively presence into the proceedings once he'd persuaded others of the growing threat of Great Britain PLC. After that, an extra spice of subversion had been introduced when George Channing, his ex-wife, had started bringing her attractive dark-haired consort Alice Swinburne and Jo Mills defiantly partnered the very luscious Jane Lancaster. Their presence always caused a rustle of disquiet to swirl round the room as a bold challenge to normality. Why, these women could easily be taken for normal if they hadn't partnered each other, they muttered later behind closed doors. Of course Jo Mills might be expected to jump across some earnest bandwaggon but George was a renegade who stared disapproval down her acquiline nose.
However, the latest additive to this combustible mix was the advent of 'young fogeys' like Jackson and his friends who'd recently come out of judges school. John freely admitted that his depressed mood had delayed him recognising their danger till recently.
"I come up against pipsqueak judges like Tim Jackson, son of the original hanging judge who sent Nikki down for life and he's so new I can still see the indentation of his school cap yet he's got promotion so fast it makes you blink," John had said years ago. The trouble was that he hadn't seen how times had changed though, strangely enough, neither had the establishment in the form of Sir Alan Peasemarsh and Lawrence James.
"This is where everyone treats us as Martians," observed George acidly as she and Alice prepared themselves to cross the threshold into the realm of the legal establishment."Still John Deed is there and he's never forgotten what Nikki and Helen dinned into his proud intellect." Just because of the possible friction, she entered the room, defiantly hand in hand with Alice. Making a dramatic entrance had always come easily to her and the spicing of defiance helped.
Jane Lancaster made her wide-eyed entrance with Jo as she took the same step only she was taking on the polished mahogany world of the judiciary. Though she continued to be an ordinary working nurse, years of living with Jo had broadened her horizons. Her naturally combative nature didn't stop her from being prepared to discreetly rock the boat if push came to shove if her partner didn't suffer the consequences. Jo Mills found herself in the delightful position of her partner who judged the situation right in being there for her. Prior to that, she'd be stuck in the hated position in being the voice of reason in tactfully covering up some major gaffe. These days were behind her now as she floated serenerly into the large chamber on her partner's arm to take two glasses of chilled white wine.
"Still together?" Vera Everard enquired of the two women only as the crods trapped them into having to advance in her direction. The younger woman raised a hand in front of her mouth to conceal her grin at this ogre wearing preposterously loud coloured clothes topped off by died ginger hair.
"Doesn't it looks like we are?" Jo smoothly and icily replied.
"I would have thought that biology doesn't help your kind," Vera said in her most dismissive tones.
A scornful laugh broke out from behind Vera's back. George Channing's edgy mood was provoked by this idiot so she couldn't help butting in.
"Haven't you given up yet Vera? Youi haven't a clue what lesbians do between the sheets. You couldn't possibly imagine it so perhaps we could enlighten you."
Vera recoiled in horror at the wicked grin on George's face and the meaningful smiles on the faces of the other three women. It grated on her that they'd not lost her looks which were simply wasted in her limited perspective. Far actross the room, John Deed had been engaged in animated discussion with John Wade and he smiled at this amusing incident after which the participants drifted apart.
"I'm glad you're doing well in Claire Walker's practice," John Deed was saying.
"She's improved it out of all recognition or so I'm told by those who've been there longer than me. I felt I could breathe properly the first day I entered the front door. Claire is very kind and helpful and runs things without appearing to do so."
"You mean you like the clash of the gladiators presided over by the royal throne?" joked John with self-deprecating humour.
"Now I'm on the right side and have put behind all those trials years ago when, in effect, I did the government's bidding without thinking. My problem is that perhaps I'm getting old but some judges are starting to look younger and last trial I was at wasn't a good experience even though I was working with Jo Mills," John Wade said slowly and thoughtfully. They were seated at a corner table, a little removed from the hubbub.
"You mean Jackson and his crowd of admirers?" John said, cynically pointing to the young man dressed up to the nines and basking in the admiration of his cronies to whom Lawrence James and his sidekick, the circuit administrator, Tim Smithson. They'd made a particular point of staying in their corner out of harm's way. "I feel I'm getting old when I catch myself thinking that the country's going to the dogs but of course, it's those who regard themselves as the upper echelons in society. They have a repellent facility for dressing up political expediency with tattered extracts from lawbooks selected to suit their purposes. They have no proper legal grounding. Even the old time reactionaries never transgressed certain limits. What's worse is that they are attracting new blood to them and I've been slow in waking up to the fact that they pose a threat."
"You can't be serious?" questioned John Wade. To him, they looked like overgrown public schoolboys whose charm was skin deep as was their understanding of life which he and his friends had learnt the hard way. They'd been cosseted by life's experiences.
"The establishment would like to see the back of us only we're too useful to them. They think that, given time, they'd supercede us as we're getting on in years even though we don't feel it. However, I suspect they're going to come up against unexpected female opposition who are quite beyond their comprehension," John replied with amusement having seen George Channing, Jo Mills and their partners having set themselves on slow but inevitable collision course with the forces of social reaction.
John Wade gravitated back to the security comfort zone of Claire and Peter Walker. The three of them were junior participants to the clash of wills amongst the judges.
"So how do you feel at events like these?" John asked of his friends. To him, they were a perfect couple and a poignant reminder of how dysfunctional Gill's and his relationship had been.
"In court, everything is circumscribed and it takes exceptional force of character to break through like John Deed does. I have admired him from afar for years."
"this event is supposed to grease the wheels of justice with bonhomie and a liberal dose of high quality wine and LCD officers in attendance. I suppose that is how things used to be," observed Peter quietly as the first words that crossed his mind jumped out of his mouth. They hung on the air despite the background chatter all around them.
"It's certainly not working now," Claire pursued as she gestured to the various groups with backs turned to each other."You see resignations and failed political coups as headline news. God knows where this is heading."
"We stick to our guns, war without end," John found himself saying as the glasses clinked and soft light reflected off rich red mahogany and framed portraits of past judges. It was possible to imagine their ghosts looking down with superior, self-satisfied voices and olympian judgment and sensing that their world was changing irrevocably.