The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘Felicitations on a splendid painting!’ the bishop said, gripping his hand like an arm-wrestler. ‘I feel discomposed… unsettled. Its aesthetic qualities demand respect, even if one questions its theology. I’m sure it will make the prisoners think.’

  ‘And maybe even think better of themselves?’ Clement said. ‘It’s really important for the men in here to accept the Christ within… to see themselves as saviours as well as sinners.’ He felt a pang at the thought of his doomed attempt to save Shlomo.

  ‘I suppose you learnt that from your father?’

  ‘In one way. But in another way from my mother.’

  ‘Of course. A most remarkable woman. I must go and greet her. We share an interest in battered wives.’ Clement led him to his mother, who was chatting to Desmond, their physical disparity so marked that they seemed to have stepped out of a cartoon. While the bishop and his mother talked, Clement took the first opportunity after nine months segregation to assure Desmond that Stick’s attack had been no reflection on his vigilance. Just as his words appeared to be having some effect, the governor dragged him off to meet the journalists. For all his horror at being paraded like a performing seal, he regretted the governor’s departure, which licensed the group to throw off all semblance of artistic concern and quiz him on his relationship with Stick, the origin of his scar and life among the paedophiles. Finally, relying on her youth and gender to mitigate the offence, one of them asked outright if he had been buggered.

  ‘Not lately,’ he replied. ‘Why? Have you?’

  Feeling as sullied as by Dusty’s advances, he hurried away to rescue Carla from a mild-mannered bigamist, seizing the chance to ask about her trip to the East. ‘Thanks so much for all the postcards. I especially liked the one where the rocks were shaped like snakes.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s Yangleshö, where Guru Rinpoche battled with wrathful spirits and demons.’

  ‘I feel as if I’ve been doing a fair amount of that myself.’

  ‘He won.’

  ‘Ah, that’s another matter! But it obviously agreed with you. You look so rested.’

  ‘So would you after a retreat in a Himalayan gompa. Five blissful days of meditation and prayer and flower and light offerings.’

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘I discovered what I was looking for.’

  He registered the distinction. ‘Will you go back?’

  ‘Who knows? On the coach I read the White Lotus Sutra. The title alone is supposed to invoke Enlightenment.’

  Before he could reply, his mother walked up with Mike. ‘We’ve been taking a closer look at the painting,’ she said, linking arms. ‘It really is remarkable, darling. Dangerous and true and full of love.’

  ‘That’s what worries me,’ Mike said.

  ‘Love of humanity,’ she added quickly.

  Stick sauntered up to them, his tracksuit weighed down with rock cakes. ‘This your old lady, then, boss?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And this your mate?’

  ‘Yes, this is Mike. And my sister-in-law, Carla. This is Stick.’

  ‘It’s me… I’m the one in the painting,’ Stick said, a claim Clement trusted was superfluous.

  ‘You did very well,’ his mother said. ‘I’ve sat for Clement myself, so I know how hard a taskmaster he can be.’

  ‘Handsomest geezer in the nick! That’s why he chose me. That, and of course cos I’m cheap,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I mean for a model, like.’

  ‘We understand,’ Mike said with a smile.

  ‘Here, I’ve got a joke for you.’

  ‘Not now, Stick,’ Clement said.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s religious. There’s this geezer, see. He spills bleach on a priest. What do you suppose happens?’

  ‘I don’t know. What does happen?’ Carla asked.

  ‘He gets done for bleach of the priest. Hang about! I think I should have said he’s Chinese.’

  ‘It still made me laugh,’ Carla said.

  ‘I’m not worried any more,’ Mike whispered to Clement.

  Their conversation was interrupted by the bishop, who came up to take his leave. ‘This must be your model,’ he said, holding out his hand which Stick took innocently.

  ‘That’s right,’ he replied, wincing, ‘handsomest geezer in the nick.’

  ‘He’s certainly done you proud.’

  ‘Would you sign my Bible then?’ Stick asked. ‘I wasn’t sure I wanted you to and then I thought to myself, Stick old son, how many times do you get to meet a bishop?’

  Clement exchanged a glance with his mother.

  ‘I’d be honoured,’ the bishop said.

  ‘Make sure you put Bishop and not just your name, won’t you? Or how will anyone know?’

  ‘Who should I make the greeting to?’

  ‘Me of course! Oh I see…’ He laughed. ‘Nigel,’ he said, gazing around defensively. ‘Our mum would never forgive us if you wrote Stick.’

  Looking as proud as if it had been signed by St Paul, Stick rushed off to show the inscription to Willis. ‘Now I really must make a move,’ the bishop said. ‘I’ve a fête to open in Faringdon. Such a pity your father couldn’t have been with us today.’

  ‘For so many reasons,’ Clement replied.

  ‘When we were both ordained, he and I, we took it on ourselves to stand in the person of Christ. Christ raised Lazarus from the dead. I like to think that, in other circumstances, He would have put him gently to sleep.’

  He clasped Clement’s hand with a force that anticipation failed to temper, and followed the governor out. The officers swiftly rounded up their charges, allowing Clement to say a brief farewell to his family before taking him back to his cell.

  His final days in prison passed without incident. Freedom was such a momentous prospect that he preferred to concentrate on the practicalities: requesting the laundering of his clothes prior to his release; using up his remaining canteen allowance to buy chocolates and sweets to dispense on the Unit; lobbying for a chance to say goodbye to Stick. After being summarily turned down by the principal and senior officers, he appealed to the chaplain, who arranged for them to meet in the art room.

  ‘Do I get my £2.60 for coming?’ Stick asked anxiously, as their escorts converged.

  ‘I’m afraid not. You’ll just have to tell yourself that the best things in life are free.’

  ‘You’re a laugh, you are.’

  ‘But I did wonder if you might like my watch. Something to remember me by.’

  ‘You serious?’

  ‘I’m almost embarrassed to mention it. It’s nothing special.’

  ‘Course it is. It’s Darth Vader! Cool!’

  ‘And I know you’ll be fine. You’re on top of things now.’

  ‘Course I am. Well not quite on the straight and narrow,’ he said, with a grin. ‘Sometimes I need stuff so bad I do things. There’s this geezer on the wing. He’s almost as posh as you. I see him right in here and he’s going to fix me up with a flat on the out.’ Clement bit his lip. ‘But I’m going to chapel regular. So when I think I might do summet wrong, I’ll look at myself in the picture and see what I can be.’

  They talked stiffly for several minutes, until the chaplain moved away from the window and warned them that it was time for the officers to take them back to their cells.

  ‘Good luck then,’ Clement said, giving Stick a clumsy hug.

  ‘Leave it out!’ Stick said, affronted. ‘I ain’t bent!’ Then, poking Clement gently in the ribs, he asked: ‘Do you want to hear my joke?’

  ‘Why not?’ he said flatly.

  ‘There are three kinds of people in the world: them that can count and them that can’t. Good ain’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Stick, I think that that one really is.’

  Clement spent his last day in prison gripped by a sense of foreboding. He was haunted by thoughts of Wilfred Owen dying a week before the Armistice. His fears seemed to be borne out when, at five o’cl
ock, Dusty knocked on his door and entered his cell.

  ‘Only one more night to go then?’

  ‘Fingers crossed.’

  ‘Come down to my pad. I got something fabulous to show you.’

  ‘Not now, I’m sorry. I’m busy.’

  ‘Busy doing nothing more like!’

  ‘I’m sorting things out in my head.’ All Clement’s instincts told him to stay put.

  ‘Think you’re too good for us, do you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Now you’re getting out, it’s so long and fuck off to all your old friends!’

  ‘Not at all,’ Clement said, taken aback by Dusty’s presumption.

  ‘Come with me then. I don’t charge.’

  Afraid of appearing aloof, Clement walked slowly out on to the landing, where he was seized by a gang of four or five men (panic made precision impossible) and half-dragged, half-propelled down the corridor. He put up a spirited fight, grabbing hold of a doorpost and lashing out with his feet, until his fingers were prised away, his arms twisted behind his back, and he was frogmarched to the showers. A terror of meeting the same fate as Shlomo gripped him after they passed an officer who, far from intervening, waved them on with a smirk. He wanted to shout that they had made a mistake: he was an ODC sent to the Unit for his own protection; but there was an arm choking his windpipe. Besides, unable to see his assailants’ faces, he had no way of knowing whether his protestations would carry weight.

  He lost his bearings, conscious only that he had been flung on to a tiled floor beneath a shower. Expecting a jet of either scalding water or boiling sugar, he was doubly disorientated by the icy torrent streaming over him. The friendly faces and gales of laughter confirmed that, rather than taking a last chance to settle imaginary scores, they were giving him a traditional send-off. He felt a rush of relief, followed by anxiety about his soaking clothes and, finally, a sense of schoolboy abandon as he fought back, drenching his attackers, who ran from the room in mock horror. He staggered to his feet, wringing the worst of the water from his tracksuit, and made his way, dripping and squelching, to his cell, only to find that it had been invaded in his absence, with his furniture turned upside down and ‘Good Luck!’ and three smiley faces scrawled in shaving foam on the wall.

  At seven thirty the next morning, he was led down to reception where he changed into his own clothes, retrieved his property and filled in a questionnaire on his treatment in prison. Having affirmed that he had no complaints, he received his meagre discharge grant and was taken to the main gate, where he shook hands with the escorting officer, who suddenly seemed no more intimidating than a hotel porter. He stepped outside and, ignoring both the fluttering in his stomach and the cluster of waiting photographers, made straight for Mike. After a welcoming kiss, to the accompaniment of clicking shutters, Mike drove him the few miles to Beckley, where he insisted on walking over to the church before lunch. With Mike and his mother on either arm, they took the path through the woods, the variegated colours a joyful corrective to the ubiquitous prison grey. On arrival, Mike waited in the yard and his mother in the nave while he went down into the crypt alone. Adjusting his eyes to the gloom, he drew up a prie-dieu beside the grille and sat to commune with his father.

  ‘Well, it’s over! To be honest, there were a few rough patches in prison, when I started to wonder if it had been worth losing fifteen months of my life to spare you two or three. But, now that I’m out, I realise it was worth every minute. I did what we both knew was right. And besides, what’s fifteen months? A nanosecond in the face of eternity! So you see, Pa, I haven’t lost anything. Not even time.’

  He knelt in prayer, until the memory of his companions brought him up short. Promising his father to return soon, he made his way up to the nave.

  ‘Sorry I’ve kept you.’

  ‘Not me, darling,’ his mother said. ‘But I worry about Mrs Shepherd. She’s pulling out all the stops.’

  ‘Then we’d better go back via the cottages,’ Clement said. ‘It’ll be quickest. Even if we pop in on Karen.’

  ‘Must we?’ Mike asked. ‘Today of all days.’

  ‘No, of course not… not if you don’t want to.’

  ‘In any case she won’t be there,’ his mother said. ‘She spends most of her time in Headington. She’s besotted with Darren.’

  ‘The busk… the boyfriend?’ Clement asked.

  ‘That’s right. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got engaged. The other day she told me, apropos of I don’t know what, that “That which is solitary is barren.” I thought it was code for “I’m pregnant,” but, apparently, it’s in the Wicca creed.’

  They walked home, with no diversions or encounters. ‘I can’t believe how quiet it is after prison,’ Clement said. ‘One thing you never get used to is the noise… incessant, insufferable noise!’

  ‘Then why not stay here for a while, darling?’ his mother asked, making the appeal he dreaded. ‘You’ll find London equally noisy. And, besides, Mike will be out all day at school. Don’t you agree, Mike?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Clement should recuperate here where it’s peaceful and we can all look after him.’

  ‘Whatever he wants. It’s up to him.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Clement said, giving him a dark look. Although the last thing he wanted was to offend his mother, after fifteen months away, he was determined to sleep in his own bed. Moreover he had the perfect excuse. ‘Don’t forget this,’ he said, lifting his left trouser leg to reveal the electronic tag. ‘I have to be home every night at seven.’

  ‘Oh, darling!’ his mother said. ‘How barbaric! Does it chafe your skin?’

  ‘Not at all, I promise. They only put it on me this morning and, already, I hardly notice it.’

  It’s inhumane… inhuman.’

  ‘It’s only for ninety days. And then I’ll be as free as air.’

  ‘They’ll be fitting you with a microchip next!’

  Clement gazed uneasily at Mike, wondering what it was in his mother’s past that made her find a tag so repugnant. To his relief, she let the matter drop, and they returned indoors for a celebratory lunch, which he would have relished even if it hadn’t been his first decent meal in fifteen months. Mrs Shepherd had excelled herself; nevertheless, as she pressed him to extra slices of pâté and duck and spoonfuls of apple charlotte, he was forced to ask for a doggy bag to avoid either upsetting his stomach or wounding her pride.

  Two hours later, armed with enough soups, casseroles, pies and cakes to feed an entire Bullingdon wing, he said goodbye to his mother and drove up to London with Mike. The sluggish traffic gave him time to consider his position. It wasn’t just the tag on his ankle that kept him tied to prison. The better part of his imagination was locked up with Dwayne and Parker and Dusty and Stick.

  ‘A penny for them,’ Mike said.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s all so bewildering. To be a name again instead of a number. To be able to look ahead without worrying who might be creeping up behind. And the air’s so pure.’

  ‘It’s ninety-nine per cent diesel!

  ‘Trust me, it’s a tonic after Bullingdon. I’m sorry. Take no notice. I’ll be fine as soon as I’m home.’

  Having braced himself for a seismic surge of emotion on reaching the house, he was distressed when, far from the soaring chords of the Ode To Joy, he didn’t even hear the theme tune to The Archers. His impassivity made him fear for his future both as a man and an artist. It didn’t help that his homecoming was so low-key. For all his insistence that there should be no fuss and veto of an early-release party, he hadn’t expected Mike to take him so literally that he had failed to buy a single flower. Curbing his disappointment, he made a desultory stab at opening his mail while Mike prepared dinner. His spirits rose when they sat down to eat, the candlelight supplying the romance that the lima bean casserole lacked. The mood was marred only by his fit of sneezing, which Mike attributed to stray hairs left by Carla’s cat.

  ‘She wasn’t allowed in t
he bedroom, I promise.’

  ‘Is that a hint?’

  ‘How about an offer?’

  ‘In which case it’s the best I’ve had in fifteen months.’

  He was suddenly overcome by exhaustion, leading Mike, who was convinced that it was a ploy, to suggest that they abandon the pudding and head upstairs. The instant he slipped into bed, he was hit by all the emotion to which he had thought himself dead. The fresh sheets, warm duvet and soft pillow moved him deeply, even before he slid into arms which assured him that nothing was different while allowing him to acknowledge what had changed. Savouring Mike’s kiss, at once protective and arousing, he felt his body regain its integrity. He switched off the light, swearing that he had not grown shy but, rather, that after fifteen months of nothing but seeing and hearing (he refrained from adding smelling) he wanted to trust to taste and touch. He explored Mike’s flesh with his fingers, tongue and penis. He giggled and sighed and groaned before breaking down in sobs, which Mike comforted with his caresses. Then he lay back, while Mike rekindled his passion so effortlessly that he blushed. Moments of tenderness gave way to moments of delirium, after which they stretched out, limbs intertwined and trunks united in a newly germinated tree of life.

  The next morning, after Mike left for work, Clement stayed in bed, balancing the urge to visit the studio against others to stroll through the park and simply loll around the house, before realising that what he wanted was not to choose so much as to enjoy the luxury of choice. Struck by a craving for anchovies and pineapple that would have been perverse even in pregnancy, he went down to the kitchen. He had just filled his plate when, by a coincidence at once sublime and disconcerting, his mother rang to tell him that Shoana had given birth.

  ‘He’s perfect. A boy. Five pounds seven ounces. No, I mean seven pounds five ounces! Shoana’s fine. Even the labour was straightforward. Zvi was there.’

  ‘I’m very happy, Ma. For Shoana. For you. Even for Zvi.’

  ‘He wasn’t due until next week. I’d planned to come down to help out.’

  ‘You can come now… whenever. There’s always a room for you here.’