Chapter 32

Thus began the hardest working period of my entire life - which had not been noted for work at all, until I came out on parole. It began gradually, with a visit to Elvestone Hall that gave me exactly the answer I had hoped for, from a woman who I discovered had never lost faith in me, even when her daughter had given up and decided to drink herself to death.

"Oh Em! At last! So this why I haven't seen you for two whole weeks!" Lady H exclaimed when she opened the door to us. "I was so worried ... and all I got were those bloody awful cryptic messages in the night on that answerphone thing. You look so much better! And, Oh my goodness, I think I'm going to cry ... you've brought dear Jill with you! How did you do it Jill? Where did you spring from? What on earth did you say to her? Did you do this? She's a hopeless drinker, you know, can't hold a candle to a seasoned old soak like me. Oh Em, I was so terribly worried!"

Lady H gabbled and fussed, and Em accepted it in a way I would have thought quite natural for concerned mother and recently sick daughter, had I not known them previously, or the circumstances of their lives. I glowed a little as they turned and looked at me. I had helped make this possible.

"My dear, dear Jill, I just knew you'd show up again one day! The way you two were together for those wonderful months before you ... went away ... you were like to halves of ... bloody words ... the memory is not enhanced by alcohol you know. You were like concentric circles, fitting within one another ... or does that sound too suggestive?"

"Of course it does, which is exactly how things should be Lady H!" I laughed. It was wonderful to hear the old woman in full flow again, with her tipsy innuendoes and sudden insights. I had already gathered from Margaret that her mother was drinking much less these days. When Em began to slide her mother had at least partly found her feet again, pulled herself together to face adversity. She was still insulated from the harsher realities by gin and old Alice, but she'd learned to make do without Em's blanket protection.

I broached the question of Elvestone Hall's finances over sherry, striking while my enthusiasm was still at its peak. Lady H looked dumbfounded that I should ask such questions, money was not something the upper classes like to discuss, whether they have it or not. She shook her head. I nodded mine, firmly, as if she was Lady Margaret. After a while of listening, she wilted, coughed, and tugged a handkerchief from her sleeve to dab her eyes.

"The house belongs to a dreadful finance company, they tell me they're going to put it on the market, but now they say what it's worth is less than what I owe them, which can't be so, can it? They tell me they're just days from foreclosing. I'm mortgaged to absolute the hilt my dear, have been for years. Em kept us afloat somehow, but since she's been ... not well ... the beasts have gained on us little by little, and now ... well, the only part of the estate that will remain in Hunter hands by the end of the year is dear little Keepers, because I managed to give that to Em for her 21st birthday..."

"Stop right there Lady H," I broke in, "how would you feel if I told you that I wanted to buy the estate, debts and all, and I before you ask, I definitely have the funds available. I want to turn it into a sort of ... convalescent home ... for women who have had a hard time in prison, the wrongly accused, the persecuted ... victims..."

I tried not to babble with excitement, to give her a chance to hear me and understand, but it was very difficult. I heard myself speaking, outlining my raw plans, and watched in an oddly detached way as darling Lady H's face assumed an expression of astonishment, followed by interest, and finally amusement as I rattled on determinedly, as if to stop might jeopardise my chances.

" ... and of course I want you to stay here, it would mean so much to me to know you were still nearby, and it'd still be your home, or a bit of it would, anyway..."

"Jill, Jill, Jill ... give your voice a break, let me catch up! I've only just welcomed you home, and now you really are overwhelming me!"

"I'm sorry Lady H, just tell me to shut up if you want, but..."

"Yes, please shut up for a moment. Let me take it all in ... and give me a hug for goodness sake."

Je Reviens, gin, tobacco ... so achingly familiar, the scent of Lady Hunter. I held her close, and she squeezed me back with surprising strength.

She agreed, and even though she had little option really, she seemed genuinely happy that the estate would in an unconventional way, stay in the family. For a while one or other of us, and more often it was me, visited her nearly every day, and each time I came back feeling better. I hadn't had grandparents for very long. Dad's were long gone - they were killed in the blitz, and Mum's never liked Dad, they thought he was a dodgy parvernu, so we rarely saw them. They might well have still been alive back in the seventies, but I had lost touch completely after the funeral, and had no curiosity about their fate. Lady H became a surrogate for all the grandparents, aunts and uncles I had ever had and lost through natural or unnatural causes. Frankly, I doted on her.

We had a small lifetime of experiences to share since we'd last seen each other, and we slipped straight back into our usual candour. Eventually I told her things about prison, about Sarah and Steve, that I couldn't even share with Margaret, and knew that even if she didn't keep them secret forever, she would filter them kindly for her daughter's ears. We hit the gin together sometimes and had raucous little parties a deux, where we both let off steam. Em found that terribly difficult at first, but she was getting better, so her punishments for my intimacy with her mother tempered, and became subtler with time.

The Hall was in a dire state, financially and materially, and I had to move fast. The deeply unpleasant loan company took some convincing, and well-informed threats of legal action for usury before they accepted a sensible figure. The Bank were grateful, but the council were extremely reluctant to give permission for any development let alone the one I had in mind. A petition was organised against us by locals, until Lady H called a public meeting in Elvestone Village Hall, and proved her worth ten times over. The petition was quietly dropped. The only remaining protestors were recent in-comers, commuters and the like. The locals gave their near feudal loyalty to the lady of the manor.

I approached various bodies at the Home Office for additional funding. I was quite happy to pay for the fabric of the building and much of the renovations, but I really felt that the at least some running costs and equipment should be government funded. I hounded committee after committee, and for the first few months seemed to be getting nowhere, until I wrote to the Home Secretary himself, and suggested that I might call a press conference to discuss the anti-female bias in after-prison care, and perhaps I while I had the press's attention, which I seemed to have little trouble in attracting these days, I might also mention a dear friend whose appeal had remained unheard because of her untimely demise due to a suspicious breakdown in the prison service chain of command. I took the risk of naming a name or two, and also told the now nervous Secretary that copies of my letters and much else besides would find their way to all manner of unlikely an not necessarily sympathetic journalists and lawyers if anything should happen to me, or the people who worked for me.

"Don't you think we could deal with that? It's not difficult to gag the press you know." Was the smug response.

"And the law society? And the Vicar of Elvestone? And the women in Holloway Prison? Wouldn't it be easier for you to pay what we're asking, make sure a certain senile old judge retires as soon as possible, and then we'll pretend that none of you have ever done anything wrong? It sounds pretty reasonable to me. You might shut me up in the end, but I'm a sexy lesbian campaigner, thousands of woman are right behind me these days, they like me, and they don't like you."

The final, begrudging reply gave me precisely the financial package I had been asking for, and an apology for the delays in responding to my altogether reasonable requests. Amazing what knowledge, a few hard lessons in life, and a little nerve can achieve...

One afternoon when Em was in London on WOOP business, I decided to take a break from supervising the workmen now tearing the Hall apart in an attempt to halt the depredations of time and dry rot, before the full conversion, and offered to drive Lady H over to Keepers for tea. I was deeply shocked when she shyly admitted that she hadn't set foot over its threshold since the late 1950's.

"I think I shall dare defy your daughter's edict ... be it on my own head!" I responded bravely.

I would most probably be severely disciplined for this, but I was due a session in the punishment shed, anyway.

"It's so ghastly here at the moment, and I can't hear myself think over that bloody power-hammer, come on Lady H, let's go and get some peace and quiet!"

I drove Lady H down the track to Keepers in the Landrover.

"I've seen the outside of course, on my walks, but Em is so protective of her privacy. I suppose I understand, all things considered, but I would so much have liked to share a little more with her."

All things considered ... so many things about the Hunters of which I knew almost nothing. I led her into the library, and sat her on the sofa while I made some tea and poured her a large gin and tonic.