CHAPTER 71
This was starting to get silly. I had dug myself into a hole, it seemed, where almost everyone around me was pair-bonding, breeding, marrying or just worrying about religious affiliations.

I thought back to the chat–the lecture-- my Dad had given me. Was I pushing too hard? Janet and Pat seemed to have found their own way, as did Andy and Bev, but I was pushing Anne, and to an extent Suzy, and I almost cringed at trying to hurry Arwel along. I rewound that conversation; had I said anything to push him along to a deeper relationship? Her words stuck in my mind, even as slurred as they had been in the hospital: ‘great dark man’.

The way she spoke about him at her most vulnerable, I could only guess that she was falling for my uncle. Poor girl, out in the open at last, just as I had been, and my reward had been Joe. I remembered thinking all my Christmases had come, that I was free, in my little blouse and heels, impressing queen bitch and pulling a fit lad, that my new life had finally arrived. Then the coming down, the realisation that Sam would never be gone, not really. And as for Alice, even with her new little breasts she could never make more than a rather dumpy near-pensioner in a wig.

Shit, why can’t real life be a little easier? My own judgement had been warped, it seemed, by my luck, by Arris, and Tony, and I was projecting my dreams onto Alice. I needed to talk it through with her before she got too deep, and too hurt.

I mentally slapped myself, ‘let her make her own choices’. Seeing her in that state once was once too many times for me, and pretty obviously was something she would hope never to repeat.

I took the Kwak out to hers after work one evening, and made an excuse to push her down to the local shops ‘for some air’. She was still in wire and plaster, but her doctor had said it would come off the following week, at which point the physiotherapy would start. I didn’t envy her. She was straight to the point.

“What is it that you wanted me alone for? Your uncle?”

“Er, yeah…Alice, look, I’m just worried I’ve been interfering a bit, and I don’t want people I love to get hurt, like I did, and, well, stuff!”

She laughed through her teeth. “You’re worried I’m going to levitate this body upstairs to my bed that he’s filling and ravish him, somehow, with an arm and a leg stuck out straight? I even have my mouth wired shut, so THAT’s out of the question as well!”

I blushed, but as I was behind her she didn’t notice. I hoped.

“Look, I do realise you have the hots for him, but, well, he’s just a bit sort of completely straight”

Before she could complain, I rushed on. “I know, I know, but all I am talking about is his perception. Men can be very visual creatures, and, well, undressed. It happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you”

Alice sighed deeply. “Sar, I come back time and again to Crisp’s dream, and yes, he is my Great Dark Man, and I know what you fear. You and Janet, even that Stephanie, have been lucky in your bodies. I haven’t. But, nevertheless, here I am dressed the way I know to be right, treated as I wish to be treated, and despite this recent nastiness I am happy. I am not going to throw that away, not for a bit of fleshly comforts.

“Look, the thing about Crisp’s fantasy figure was that he could never exist. By fancying him, he wouldn’t be the man he dreamed of. Arwel will never fancy me, but he is fond of me, I believe, and he looks after me, and every now and again a girl gets to see him with his shirt off….”

She chuckled in a particularly lascivious way. “No, girl, I have no illusions, just dreams, and what he gives me is more than I could ever have expected. The doctor tells me he said he was my gentleman friend, and, well, he is both, and that pleases me. So, Sarah, for once in your life stop worrying about others and let them make their own mistakes. Please.”

I opened my mouth to try and say something at least partially rational, but she was on a roll.

“He told me about your little chat”

Oh shit.

“We talk, Sarah, that is our intercourse, we talk and we make our own choices. I know you care about me, and I love you for that, and for so much more, but please let two old farts make their own mistakes”

There wasn’t really much I could say to any of that. I felt well and truly put in my place. On our return, Arwel just grinned at me, and I left them to their evening meal and whizzed off home for my own.

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As promised, a week later and Alice was finally freed from one torture and ready to start the delights of physio. Arwel headed off back West at last once she was mobile, but I suspected there would be more visits. I felt relieved, in a way, at the thought of some distance between them at last, but I clung onto my new resolution, and tried to stay out of their affairs. We had two events coming on apace, Ripley’s trial and the first wedding, and my mind was occupied.

The trial came along the week after Alice was released from her bindings, which was unfortunate. She would have made a much bigger impression on the jury in a chair with wire and plaster, but there was nothing that could be done. Dawn told us that she suspected the defence barrister had dragged things out specifically to avoid such a scene. Whatever the reason, as promised Tony, Dad, Arwel, Hywel and Steve were along to sit in the public area and smile nicely at Ripley. It was all quite amusing, allowing for the circumstances; I was obviously outside the court as he gave his evidence, but Bev told me that all through his stint in the witness box he kept staring at the boys, which did tickle me. We had rather a large turn-out, so wherever he looked, he’d have seen one or more of her family or friends.

My time came, after Alice, and I was led to the box and through the oath. The usher quietly indicated a box of tissues that she had placed on the shelf, and I realised what she was hinting at. It seemed Mr Ripley was rather well known to the court staff, and she was clearly hinting that a few tears might sort of help the jury along to the right verdict. It was all a stitch-up, but I could not have cared less. We went through my evidence, did Mr Prosecutor and me, and then Ms Defence started on me. I clung hard to Bev’s advice: don’t talk to the barrister, just listen to their questions, look at the jury, find someone sympathetic there and hold eye contact, and give THEM the answer. Answers short, simple, clear. I found a middle-aged lady in the front row, who I noticed dab her eyes a few times when I described how Alice had been thrown across the road like one of her own rag dolls.

“Why did she step out into the road when the red man was showing?”
It was green.

“Why did you launch an attack on Mr Ripley?”
I didn’t.

“Did you not make to strike him first?”
Yes, but I was on my knees in the road and he looked as if he was going to hit me.

“Was he not merely warding off your blow?”
Only if blocking a blow to his nuts meant punching me in the face.

And so on. Mrs Juror was dabbing like a good’un when I had finished. I noticed a few of the other jurors giving Ripley dirty looks as well; my helpless girly persona was doing the job. I was released, so was able to join Alice in the public gallery as Dawn came on to do her stuff, followed by Barry, and we heard a tale of her waving goodbye to her local chemist just as the Subaru jumped the red light, of seeing Ripley not only hit me in the face but pull back his foot to kick me just before she began to use reasonable force as defined in the Association of Chief Police Officers guidelines. Of how he had resisted and fought even at the Custody desk, resulting in the use of pepper spray to subdue him, and so on.

She was followed by three ‘civilian’ witnesses, all of whom repeated slightly different versions of his comment about insurance, and I saw more of the jurors sneer at him. I doubt he noticed, because our boys seemed to have caught his attention like a rabbit in headlights. I caught Tony’s whisper; leaning over to the lads either side of him, and nodding to Ripley, he passed along the question “Fancy a pint afterwards?”

Ripley, of course, must have assumed they were planning some unspeakably nasty torment for him, and I didn’t see the point in enlightening him. The jury took half an hour to convict him of all charges. The Judge….

Oh, she was acerbic enough to have skinned him alive with her words. I was watching the jury, at this point, several of whom had looked up towards me and Alice and nodded in recognition. I was so involved I missed the request for the Victim’s Impact statement. I stumbled through mine, which I felt was too full of soppy platitudes, but still noticed Mrs Juror, who was wiping her eyes. Alice gave a very flat response, and asked if Arwel could do it for her. He nodded, and rumbled off down to the witness box.

“I am Arwel Powell, the uncle of Mrs Sarah Hall who is the girl that that lovely man chose to punch in the face while she was kneeling over a dying friend. I am also the gentleman friend of the lady he drove his car into while on his rounds selling drugs, the lady who was perfectly happily and legally crossing the road when he drove through a red light at speed. I could go into more detail of my opinion of Mr Ripley, but it is not a high one, and I would think from the verdict that these good people have returned that that opinion is now quite widely shared.

“Now, one thing that offended me greatly here was the way he spoke of her as ‘some tranny’. I am a man of traditional values, a hard worker, a hard player, and from the time I first met Alice she has seemed to me nothing other than an absolutely charming lady of a certain age. In her youth, she dreamed of Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits, in her later years she indulged herself in her adopted nephew, and the friends she made once a few…unfortunate social and physical problems were cleared up. The day of the events we are here for she had just been advised that she was on the list for some surgery to help clear up some physical imperfections. She was bubbling away with happiness, as I knew because I was the first person she telephoned with the news.”

Now there was a surprise! He continued.

“So, my friends, your honour, please see the picture we have: a woman elated beyond words, her life, her true life, just starting, and then she meets Mr Ripley. Mrs Hall, there, who sees a long term friend and adoptive family member, smashed into and thrown through the air by someone whose following actions and words said so much about his remorse and lack of it.

“We have a little boy, whose adoptive aunty’s body has been shattered so badly that he has to be prevented from seeing her to avoid further trauma to his little mind”

Mrs juror, and a couple of others, were now weeping openly. The usher passed up my tissue box.

“Finally, we have myself. I am a widower, with one son, who is divorced. Because of this lady here, Alice, my son has met someone he has fallen deeply in love with and hopes to marry next year. Because of that, I have met Alice herself, who has charmed me out of an old widower’s bitterness and isolation and back into my own second go at life, someone I can talk to, and share with, someone who has brought together many parts of my family who had drifted apart.

“That is Alice. That is the person that Mr Ripley here very nearly killed. If not for the wonderful medical staff who cared for her, and the ambulance crew, she would have died, and all that I have just described would have been torn apart.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your honesty. Your honour, thank you for giving me the opportunity to say how much this case has affected our friends and family.”

Unspoken, it hovered: please bang him up and throw away the key.

The judge adjourned sentence for reports, remanding the little shit in custody for the time being.. Ripley was still fixed in the boys’ glare as they took him down. As for us, we all went for that pint. Bev was grinning, as Arwel hugged her.

“We plotted that one together, and I wrote it, but all the sentiments were from Arwel here. He does take stage directions well, doesn’t he?”