The Programme

CHAPTER SIX-1

CHAPTER SIX“I’ve been trying to ring you.” Emily. Nearly one o’clock. Carey was just through the door.

“I’ve been out,” Carey smiled, peeling off her jacket with her other hand, getting comfortable, settling down to talk. “I’m sorry.” She realised how much she had been missing her.

“Where have you been?” Emily demanded.

“At The Programme,” Carey admitted.

“I didn’t know, well, you were still into that.”

“Oh,” Carey sighed, “I don’t know that I am.” A long silence while she thought about what she had said, realised it was no longer true: it was beginning to take over her thoughts entirely when she was not at work.

“Richard rang,” Emily announced. “Tonight. I saw him again.” At work: after all, she had gone back to her job. “He wants to come round.”

“He can’t,” Carey snapped back into lawyer mode.

“I know,” Emily said. “He knows, too. He was lucky last time.” The judge had sentenced Richard to three months in prison for breach of the injunction, suspended so long as there was no repetition.

Carey asked:

“Do you want him to come around?”

“God, no,” Emily cried. “It’s hard enough when he’s not here.” She was still vulnerable to him. “The further it gets.” As the pain faded, and memories of the good times together resurged, she was worried she would weaken. “I’d like to meet up, Carey. I mean, if that’s all right?”

“Me too.”

“In France. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that close to someone else. I mean, apart from Richard. It was frightening. Do you understand?” Another long silence. “I didn’t want to be alone; I still don’t,” Emily added.

“Are you all right now? Do you want to come over? Do you want me to come over?”

“No,” Emily answered languidly, reassured: “I just wanted to talk. Tell me about The Programme.”

“I don’t know really. Part of the time, I find myself really resisting it: then I think, oh, it’s just a place, just people, somewhere that’s different and kind. The main thing is, it doesn’t make any demands on me. I go there and drink coffee and talk with people and that’s all I have to do. It feels a bit like starting over: no one’s got any expectations of me.”

“I’d like to come.”

“Come tomorrow; come tomorrow evening, say about eight? We can eat; have coffee.” The idea of someone with whom to share The Programme thrilled her.

“Tell me the address.”

It was happening too fast. Later, she would find it difficult to arrange events in any kind of order.

“Well, the food’s nice. And the coffee.”

“I didn’t have time to eat today,” Carey said. “The client treadmill. Some days seem like a tour of the legal system. It’s hard enough to keep my own head above water. Let alone clients’.”

Emily was wearing a simple white blouse, no jewellery, short, khaki skirt, bare legs, flat shoes, negligible make-up: she was showing off her natural good looks and, despite her complaints, she was glowing. Carey told her so.

“I go through a dozen moods a day. Sometimes, if I’m in the wrong mood, I go into work looking like a nun; oh, not that smart; like a bag lady.” Carey pulled a face: she doubted Emily ever looked like a bag lady. “At other times, I look at myself in the mirror and,” she glanced around to make sure no one was listening: “I do feel like that, glowing, and I want to go out like that, the best I can be.” She gestured towards her body.

“No one’s stopping you; don’t let him beat you.” Not for the first time, Carey thought it was about the worse choice of all possible words. She glanced at her friend, embarrassed: “Sorry.”

“No, you’re right, I did let him beat me.” She leaned back in their upstairs booth, the one at the end where Carey usually sat. “So, what are we now, beatniks, hippies, left bank artists?”

“Something like that. We didn’t do so well as career women.”

“You’ve kept it together. I worry, sometimes, you’ve let us get close, you’ve let the thing with Richard get to you, I worry that it’s my fault what’s happening with you.”

“What is happening with me?”

“I’m not sure. When we were away, it was, well, one of the best times of my life. Even though, you know, I knew you weren’t happy.”

“I’ll tell you what I feel like: I feel like someone coming to the end of a terribly long prison sentence, and I feel excited and anxious, and I’m not sure how to behave, but the one thing I don’t feel is unhappy.”

Emily watched her, eyes wide with pleasure: Carey strong was how she had first seen her and begun to love her.

“Well, that’s telling me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to attack.”

“No, it’s fine. None of us really knows what we mean when we try and talk to our friends about what we think’s going on with them. We just use the words that come closest to what we see and hope it, well, punches a button.” Emily giggled. “And to think, I haven’t even had a drink.”

“That’s the power of The Programme,” Carey laughed.

“Well, it is about letting go, isn’t it? I mean, letting go of the conventions, letting go of our assumptions, our inhibitions, too. The freedom to be anyone you want to be.”

Carey raised her eyebrows in surprise. Emily shrugged.

“Hey, you think you’re the only one can surf the Internet?”

“Is that why you came into my room in Antibes?”

Emily reddened, shrugged again.

“Perhaps. I don’t know. I’m not, well, I mean, I don’t think I am, I mean, I haven’t ever, oh, you know what I’m saying. But I didn’t want to be alone, and I wanted comfort and, yes, I suppose I mean I wanted comforting physically.”

Carey frowned: for a moment, Emily thought she had offended or upset her, shot to the edge of panic. Instead, Carey asked:

“Then why didn’t you stay?”

“It’s difficult to explain. I can’t honestly say it wasn’t a little bit s****l; but it wasn’t, just the same. I mean,” she stubbed her cigarette out angry that she couldn’t find the right words, “I mean, I didn’t want to, you know, do anything, well, you know what I mean.” She was flustered beyond words. Carey reached across the table for her hand, held it.

Carey nodded, affected by the emotion and by Emily’s candour.

“There are similarities with what The Programme is about, why I like being here; it’s about different ways, for different bits of ourselves; and, no,” she preempted, “I don’t mean sexually, either.” She waited a moment, then looked up, grinning. “So, you never answered my question?”

Emily looked confused for a moment, then laughed.

“Why I didn’t stay?”

“Sure. Why didn’t you?”

“Was it up to me?”

“Don’t get out of it like that - a question with a question; I’ll answer for me; you answer for you.”

“How come you get to ask all the questions?”

“It’s my job,” Carey was still holding Emily’s hand. “I wasn’t sure. At the last moment, I wasn’t sure.” She knew she was still being evasive, so she went on before Carey could ask again: “I wasn’t sure it was all I did want.”

“And you thought I’d mind?”

“Something like that.”

“Is this a private love affair, or can anyone butt in?” Matthew asked, hovering at their table. Carey and Emily burst out laughing simultaneously.

Emily asked:

“Is this place bugged?”

“Sit down, Matthew,” Carey said. “I’d like you to meet Emily. She’s the friend I went...”

“Yes, to France with.” Matthew slid into the booth next to Carey, until their legs were touching, put one hand on Carey’s and held out the other for Emily to take.

Spontaneously, and again simultaneously, Carey and Emily took each other’s free hand, completing the circle.

Http://www.the-programme.org.uk ( turn on sound if available).

There are references to fear in more than fifty books of the Bible. Sometimes it seems to be all about fear.“I will send my fear before thee,” Exodus 23:27. Or: “Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God,” Leviticus 19:14. And: “Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but though shall fear thy God for I am the Lord your God,” Leviticus 25:17. “Only fear the Lord and serve him in truth with all your heart,” Samuel 12:23. “Fear is on every side,” Jeremiah 6:25. “And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever,” Jeremiah 32:39.

It is the notion of the need to stick to a single route - enforced by this fear of straying - that is fundamental to the traditional religions and that ultimately defeats them. In the west, religion fails; in the east, modern society is put to the sword by fundamentalism; gradually, western social values are moving eastwards and fundamentalism into the west and where they cross shall be Armageddon.

The final h*******t is inevitable; no sane person - spiritualist or rationalist - believes that the world can continue the same blind rush to destruction without finally arriving. We see it happening every day: global warming causing seasonal change and the Arctic to melt, pollution causing breathing sickness and destroying the plant-life, feeding habits creating new diseases - for none of them do we have the beginnings of a solution. Meanwhile, around us, we decimate our numbers in genocidal wars, bursting into flame like bush fires with no apparent warning until - when we can ignore them no more - we tell each other it was a disaster waiting to happen. There is always an historical explanation - we never do anything about it in time.

“How are you, Andrew?”

Lunch. Simpsons-in-the-Strand. Carnivore heaven.

“I’m well, Charles,” he rose awkwardly in the narrow space between bench and table to shake hands with his friend’s father: he had known him since college days. “And you?”

“This is Alistair Matheson.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you; I’m glad to meet you. Can I introduce Jessica Harvey? She’s one of my partners and, well, part of my team.” Jessica was a small, dark, attractive woman of about Andrew’s and Colin’s age, doing her best to appear nonchalant but on edge, glancing around nervously, failing to meet the men’s eyes.

“And Colin makes five,” Colin arrived, separately but only slightly late, holding out his hand to Andrew’s partner and slipping in beside his father.

They made small talk until they had ordered but Charles had no intention of putting off the main conversation until dessert.

“Colin tells me you’re planning to set up your own firm.”

“Is that what he told you?” Alistair concealed a smile: he already liked the young man.

Charles scowled to hide his own amusement.

“Among other things.”

“Ah, well, then, we’re on the same wavelength.”

“I thought that was what we were here to find out?”

“We could certainly benefit from any advice you could give us.”

“We sell advice, don’t we, Andrew?”

Jessica, for the first time, looked directly across the table, at Colin, and studied his expression with wonder: as in, is he always like this?

Colin winked: they were just warming up.

“I’ve never really made up my mind about Europe,” Charles said. “What is it that fascinates you about it?”

“It’s there,” Andrew said. “We can’t make it go away. It doesn’t matter if we’re in or out: we have to deal with it.”

Colin studied the wine list and ordered without consulting anyone else.

Jessica asked quietly for a bottle of mineral water. Colin would have liked to talk with her, get a handle on their work that was not pitched by Andrew; he felt a sense of affinity with her: around this table, they were the junior partners. Jessica smiled to acknowledge the moment, then turned her head to remind him they ought to be paying attention to their leaders.

Andrew continued:

“Part of what made me think about Arnotts was the volume of European work we’re involved in which touches some of your own: competition law, equal social and employment rights, environmental issues. We’re also increasingly involved in Convention work.” The European Convention on Human Rights, now embodied in domestic law.

“Even if it touches some of our areas of work, it doesn’t mean we want the same things out of it,” Charles replied.

“I don’t think the future is necessarily about conflict,” Jessica asserted herself. “Anyway, not the traditional conflicts between, say, employer and employee for example. The conflicts are much bigger, between whole industries and between nations. The employer and the employee want the same thing: the laws that suit them, in their industry, to allow them to make the most out of it for themselves.”

“And you think that’s right, that’s the way it should be, do you?” Charles engaged amusedly.

“I’m a woman, Mr Arnott. It’s not for me to decide how things should be. I just get on with things the way they are.”

For a split second, no one else around the table knew how to take her answer, then Charles bellowed with laughter.

“That’s right. None of us can, right, that’s what you’re saying?”

Not even the great Charles Arnott himself.

“Something like that.”

“So tell me what we have in common, Jessica? Arnotts and you.”

“I don’t know that we do have anything in common,” she answered thoughtfully. “But if you take any more than half a dozen lawyers, none of them has that much in common with all of the others and yet you can put them together in almost any combination you like.”

She paused to gather her thoughts: