Protection

by S A Reid

  “Hallo.” Joey sat down across from her. The greeting sounded absurd, but it was all he could manage as he looked into Julia’s face. She was made up, of course, with sooty eyelashes and a swipe of rouge on her cheeks. But her painted red lips pulled down at the corners no matter how valiantly she tried to smile.

  “Joey. Are you quite well?”

  His smile, at least, was genuine. It had been so long since anyone addressed him in that once-familiar manner – the unmistakable cadence of an educated person – he was overcome with gratitude.

  “Perfectly well, thank you. Did you get my letter?”

  Julia nodded. She was as lovely as ever. Those brown eyes stared at Joey as if he’d returned from the dead.

  “I must apologize for mine,” she said stiffly, as if repeating words long rehearsed. “It was never meant to be sent. I was just pouring out my feelings. My confusion. But Dora took it and posted it and said done was done. And—” Julia looked away, swallowing. “And the truth is, I was relieved. I thought the cord was cut. That I’d never see or speak to you again.”

  “Julia, I told you before I was sentenced. Our engagement ceased the moment I was convicted. I understand how important loyalty is to you.” Joey wished Julia would look at him, but didn’t dare reach across the table for her hand. If she cried out or made any sign of distress, the guards would advance and their visit would conclude, no questions asked. “But I’ve released you from your promise. I’m happy you’ve started a new life.”

  Julia blinked twice, eyes filling with tears. “Oh, God. You mean that, don’t you? I came here to beg your forgiveness but now I don’t think I can – can—”

  “Julia.” Casting a quick look at the guards, Joey passed a clean cotton handkerchief across the table. “If you go to pieces, they’ll assume I’m to blame and escort you out. So please, be strong. Don’t cry.”

  Seizing the handkerchief, Julia gave a quick, violent nod. As she stared at an imaginary point in space, fighting back tears, Joey glanced across the room. At the front sat Gabriel with a heavyset, plain woman who could only be Rebecca Eisenberg. Her magenta dress clung to her in all the wrong spots; the peacock feather on her hat drooped sadly. But the animated way she moved her hands while talking to Gabriel, eyes alight, confirmed Joey’s suspicions.

  Joey was surprised by the tightness in his chest. Of course Rebecca Eisenberg was charmed by her former client. Gabriel was younger, fit and handsome. That Irish lilt could make even a dirty word sound poetic, turn even a snarl half-romantic.

  “Joey. I’m better now. Thank you.” Julia dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

  “I’m glad,” Joey said, attention shifting back to his former fiancée. After watching Gabriel with Rebecca, he suddenly saw Julia not through the filter of memory but with acute new eyes. She was overheated in her shapeless coat, yet kept it on. Two new lines had formed across her once-smooth brow. She looked tired and frightened, complexion shining with feverish vitality.

  “Oh, God,” Joey whispered. After adapting to Wentworth he’d believed nothing could startle him, but for a split second, Joey was shaken all the same. Then he cast about within, locating his physician self and pulling it out of mothballs.

  “Julia. We’ve known one another for a long time. But I’m also a doctor. If there’s anything you want to confide in me …,” Joey paused, holding her gaze. “There’s nothing I haven’t heard before. Nothing you can say will shock me.”

  Ironically, it had been Dr. Pfiser himself who taught Joey that phrase, explaining that even the most frightened woman would relent if such words were spoken kindly enough. And true to Dr. Pfiser’s wisdom, Julia’s shoulders sagged with relief.

  “I – I’m five months gone. Perhaps six,” she said, opening her coat enough for Joey to see the curve of her belly within. “And he won’t marry me. He’s married already. He won’t leave his wife for me.”

  Joey nodded, waiting to feel betrayed, to feel angry. During their long courtship, Julia had permitted him certain liberties, but intercourse had been out of the question. She’d been saving herself for their wedding night, and he’d accepted her decision. Yet as Joey gazed on Julia, all he could think of was Gabriel – nights of mutual need when falling asleep in Gabriel’s arms had been the greatest comfort in the world. Surely Julia had craved the same. She’d once loved Joey, he had no doubt of it, yet lost him through no sin of her own. Practically alone in London, existing under a cloud of disgrace, was it any surprise she’d sought comfort in a new man?

  “I didn’t know Frank was married,” Julia whispered, eyes wide, desperate to make Joey understand. “He was separated from his wife and l—li-lied …” She broke off, controlling herself. “I thought we’d be married. That he was a good man. But once he knew I was … was—” Julia stopped again, shaking her head and clutching the borrowed handkerchief tight.

  Joey glanced at the guards. Neither was paying them the slightest attention. His eyes flicked to Gabriel. The other man stared back at him with hooded eyes and compressed lips. But the moment their gazes locked, Gabriel turned back to Rebecca, beaming his most charming smile.

  “What about Dora?” Joey asked. “Does she know?”

  Julia’s laugh was alarmingly high-pitched. “Of course. Two women can’t live together without one knowing if the other’s monthly visitor doesn’t call. Dora gave me six weeks to change Frank’s mind. But the day I started to show, she put me out.”

  “What?”

  “I’m staying at the Nautilus Hotel. It’s not terrible. Very modern. The manager never asks questions. I couldn’t be luckier. Joey,” Julia said suddenly, reaching across the table to take his hand. “When you’re released, you can start over. Men can do that; they can marry and start a family at any age. When I read your letter, when I felt how good and honest you were, I knew I had to come. To prove how lucky you are to be shut of me.”

  Joey blinked. “Bollocks.”

  “What?” Julia sniffed, startled.

  “I never heard anything so – so medieval,” Joey said. “Nor so perfectly foolish. You fell in love with a man. He lied to you. Now you’re …,” Joey forced his voice lower, “you’re going to have a baby. This isn’t a penny dreadful, Julia. It’s the history of half the human race.” Squeezing her hands, Joey stared into her frightened eyes. “If you weren’t six months gone, you might have another option. It’s very clandestine, mind you, very secret—”

  “No.” Julia shook her head. “I wouldn’t have that on my conscience, even if it were possible. I think perhaps God has something different in mind. That perhaps He’s …,” her gaze slid away, “calling me to Him. Me and the baby.”

  “Julia.”

  Her head jerked up, shocked by the authority in Joey’s voice.

  “If there is a God, which I doubt, He didn’t do this to you. And the last thing He wants is for a healthy young woman to give up her life before it’s begun. If we concentrate,” Joey said more gently, still holding her hand, “we can devise a plan. A way for you to go forward.”

  “I won’t go home to my mother,” Julia said defiantly. “Dora wrote her a letter. I’ll throw myself off a roof before I face Mum now. Besides, the village turned on you, Joey. I despise them for it, I always will.”

  “Julia. Did you tell everyone we were finished?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do they understand Wentworth’s rules? That you couldn’t even visit before now?”

  “No.”

  Joey leaned back in his chair, thinking hard. “Right. First. Go to the guard. Ask for a pen and paper. Write down your address and telephone exchange for me. And I may not be able to contact you directly, so be sure to accept any message from Wentworth.”

  * * *

  Joey and Gabriel ate supper in uncharacteristic silence. The meal was enlivened only by Lonnie, who seemed uncomfortable when more than a minute ticked by without someone speaking. The meal was boiled fish, prompting Lonnie to compose a poem that rhymed “Joey Cooper�
�� with “tasty grouper.” When Gabriel ignored that, Lonnie challenged him to arm wrestling, struggling comically against Gabriel’s most gentle pressure. By the time Joey and Gabriel returned to their unlocked cell, the unspoken tension had mostly dissipated. Then Joey opened their small cupboard and drew out his copy of the Wentworth Prisoners’ Handbook. Until now he’d refused to read it, believing that the moment he did, he accepted his lot. But suppose it contained the answers he needed?

  Joey read until lights out, plowing through page after page without any luck. The handbook was haphazardly organized, Wentworth’s rules and regulations enumerated in the order the authors remembered them. Once they were plunged into darkness, Joey considered asking Gabriel for the electric torch, then thought better of it. Gabriel hadn’t enjoyed seeing Joey with Julia. And Joey hadn’t liked watching Gabriel flirt with Rebecca Eisenberg. Demanding use of the torch would be asking for a fight.

  “Well?” Gabriel demanded, already stripped and stretched out on the bottom bunk.

  “Well, what?” Joey shrugged out of his shirt. His pajamas remained folded in the cupboard; he never bothered with them anymore.

  “What act of God or man prompted you to crack the handbook?”

  “I was wondering.” Joey stepped out of his trousers. Peeling off his shorts, he slid into Gabriel’s warm, hard embrace, closing his eyes as the other man kissed him.

  “Wondering what?”

  Joey pulled back, squinting as he tried to see Gabriel’s face in the gloom. “If the governor would allow me to get married.”

  * * *

  It took considerable effort to secure permission, but Joey was determined. First he petitioned the lieutenant governor, then Wentworth’s chaplain, then Governor Sanderson himself, who initially declined to see Joey. It was Gabriel’s suggestion – dropping the name Rebecca Eisenberg – that turned the tide. Her organization British Women for Prison Reform was always looking into prisoner complaints, bombarding the Home Office with letters, phone calls, and threats of legal action. Governor Sanderson was already fighting Rebecca on two fronts: “slopping out” and corporal punishment. He was in no hurry to add a third.

  “You understand this is most irregular,” Governor Sanderson began. A big, bullish man with salt-and-pepper hair, he was the sort whose coat and tie always looked rumpled, even at ten in the morning.

  “I do.” Since coming to Wentworth, Joey had fallen back on his boyhood speech patterns in an effort to fit in. Now he deliberately took up his Oxford manner, the crisper dialect that allowed him to mix with children of privilege. “But you understand time is of the essence. While awaiting trial I behaved badly. Now my fiancée has presented me with the consequences. Perhaps she, like I, deserves the social punishment that must come. But not the child.” Pausing, Joey held Governor Sanderson’s gaze. “The child has done nothing wrong. Yet he’ll grow up a bastard, as I did. And perhaps find himself here, as I have, after formative years without a good name to call his own.”

  The argument was more nonsense than truth. Joey wasn’t bitter over his boyhood. He’d had his looks and his wits; so many other children had neither, and the stain of illegitimacy to boot. But Gabriel had explained the men in charge of Wentworth wouldn’t be moved by the pleas of a fornicating couple – one of them a convict – suddenly desperate for the sacrament of marriage. Only by invoking the innocent unborn child could Joey hope to secure permission. And true to Gabriel’s prediction, Governor Sanderson relented.

  After another meeting to determine the logistics, Joey and Julia were permitted to wed in Wentworth’s small chapel. The ceremony took place on a Sunday evening at eight thirty. To Joey’s relief, none of the inmates were permitted to attend. It was odd enough, marrying a former lover in Wentworth’s poky little chapel while the lieutenant governor and Governor Sanderson looked on, both dressed in the dark suits they wore to executions. Adding Gabriel’s cold eyes and false smile to the occasion would have rendered it unbearable.

  After signing the necessary documents, Joey and Julia were led to Wentworth’s visitors’ hall, where family members of dying or condemned inmates were permitted to temporarily reside. They were given a room with a double bed, a bathtub and a flushing toilet. The guard stationed outside the unlocked door would allow them to remain until six o’clock. Then Joey would be escorted back to F-block and Julia would exit Wentworth as Mrs. Joseph Cooper.

  “I’m sorry I wore such a tent,” Julia said, meaning her enormous A-line shift, as soon as they were alone. “But since I’m meant to be eight months pregnant, I wanted to look the part.”

  “You’re lovely.” Joey sat down on the foot of the bed, clasping his hands on his lap.

  “So it’s real. We’re married.” Julia sat down on the other side. For a little while she was silent. Then, seeming to realize the distance between them, she scooted an inch closer to Joey. “Thank you.”

  Julia was still blushing from their brief, ceremonial kiss. So was he. Joey tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to him as they studied one another across their marriage bed.

  * * *

  Next morning, Joey returned to the cell by a quarter after six, but Gabriel was already gone. Expecting to find the other man in the cafeteria, Joey went through the line, choosing rubbery eggs and fried bread, only to realize Gabriel wasn’t at any of the tables. After breakfast, Joey reported to Mr. Cranston, who congratulated him on his nuptials before setting Joey to repotting seedlings. By midwinter Wentworth’s cafeteria would gain a glorious infusion of herbs and spices.

  Joey didn’t see Gabriel at dinner or supper. Nor was he embroiled in the card games during common time. Frustrated, Joey finally went to their cell and found the other man at the table, Bible open to the Book of Revelations.

  “I’ve been looking for you.” Joey smiled. Gabriel didn’t look up.

  “Sure and you’ve found me.”

  Joey sat down across from Gabriel. A minute passed, silent, excruciating.

  “Gabe. Don’t tell me you’re planning to read the goddamn Bible all night long.”

  The other man’s eyes flicked up. “Surely you didn’t just mock the word of God and take the Lord’s name in vain all in one breath.”

  “I mocked you, not the word of God,” Joey said firmly. “As for taking the Lord’s name in vain – I’ve news for you, you’re just as guilty, even if you always pronounce it ‘Jay-sus.’”

  Gabriel closed his Bible. Lifting his chin, he gave Joey a tight smile. “You’re right. I should say sorry. I’ve no call to be rude, I’m just jealous. I’ll never bed another woman. How was it? Spare me no details.”

  Joey stood up. Going to the bucket, he had a piss. After, Joey washed his hands in the basin and splashed water on his face. He knew what he would do. He’d change into his pajamas, climb into the top bunk and resume reading Lost Horizon. He was sharing it with Gabriel, as Wentworth’s library had only one copy. And just let Gabriel object. Let him say one word, make one sound, and then they’d have it out. Then Joey would—

  Joey glanced at Gabriel. The Bible was open to the same page; he was only pretending to read. And the first two fingers of his right hand were more yellowed than ever. He’d been smoking up a storm.

  Joey stepped behind Gabriel. He meant to put his hands on Gabriel’s shoulders and whisper “You Irish ass” in his ear. The last time they’d quarreled, over some miniscule issue only two men sharing a locked cell could find worthy of dispute, that phrase had made Gabriel relent.

  Joey expected resistance, even a halfhearted blow. But the moment his hands touched Gabriel’s shoulders, the other man relaxed. This was a new power of Joey’s, one that seemed to deepen each day – to soften Gabriel, to disarm him with a touch.

  “I love you,” Joey heard himself say. It surprised him, frightened him and made him desperately happy, all at once.

  Gabriel drew in his breath. Then he stood up, turning in a blink and pulling Joey close. “Say it again.”

  Joey’s h
eart was pounding fast. Being held by Gabriel still thrilled him to the marrow. “I love you, you great Irish ass.”

  Gabriel kissed him. Joey was pushing his tongue into the other man’s mouth when he heard Buckland call, “Oh, for Chrissake! MacKenna, Cooper, none of that! Let the lieutenant governor see and you’ll both get the lash!”

  Buckland strolled up to the open cell as Gabriel pulled his face away, still holding Joey in his arms. “And you a newlywed, Cooper. For shame,” Buckland added without real censure.

  “Shame? Here’s what I say to that.” Gabriel dipped Joey all way back, supporting him as if they were on a dance floor instead of a prison. Then he kissed Joey, open-mouthed, as the nearest inmates burst into applause.

  Buckland walked off shaking his head. “I’d write my memoir, but nobody would believe it.”

  After lights out and the nightly bed check, Gabriel climbed into Joey’s bunk. Already engorged and unable to wait, he threw a leg over Joey and had him, thrusts deep, swift and desperate. Coming hard, Gabriel fell into Joey’s arms, kissing the other man’s throat and whispering to him in Gaelic.

  “You’ve said those words before,” Joey murmured. Gabriel had gone too fast for Joey to climax, but his turn would come. And to be needed so urgently meant more than his personal satisfaction, anyway. “What do they mean?”

  “My own love.” Gabriel traced a finger along Joey’s hairline, pushing an errant strand back in place. “My only love.”

  Joey shifted, turning in Gabriel’s arms so they fit like spoons. Gabriel dug his fingers into Joey’s hair, running his nails along the scalp with delicate, tantalizing scrapes until Joey gave a little moan. Then Gabriel was kneading Joey’s shoulders, working the knotted muscles. Those callused, long-fingered hands felt so good, Joey’s cock stiffened. His asshole, slick with cum and still throbbing from hard use, clenched with a sublime mixture of pain and pleasure. Then Gabriel’s hands slid over his nipples, twisting each nub between thumb and forefinger until Joey stifled a groan.