Calling Mrs Christmas

by Carole Matthews

  Goodness only knows why my mum had two children – I am sure both Gaby and I were unplanned. She was never deliberately neglectful, but we did spend many of our formative years eating crisps for breakfast and, for dinner, frozen ready meals followed by Angel Delight. I’ve probably got chemical-based arteries filled with pure lard. Gaby, at the age of twelve, stepped in and took over the cooking, the cleaning and the laundry. I helped as best I could. And that suited my mother. It left her free to pursue unsuitable men who could pay our bills.

  I think that’s why my sister is as she is now. Her children are blanketed in love, get fed the finest of organic foods and take part in every conceivable after-school activity known to man. Gaby and Ryan will go without themselves rather than let a shadow fall on their children’s lives. And, though they could have turned into spoiled brats, they are polite, balanced and very entertaining children. I want two just like them. I want to be the kind of mother Gaby is too.

  I cross the road to Mrs Ledbury’s cottage. It’s white, half-timbered and set back from the road, beautiful, but slightly fraying round the edges. The small garden at the front is a little overgrown. When I ring the doorbell, it doesn’t work, so I rap the knocker. After a few long minutes, Mrs Ledbury answers the door. She’s a tiny, frail old lady, smartly dressed in a tweed skirt and pearls.

  I hold out my hand. ‘Cassie Smith,’ I say. ‘I’m here from Calling Mrs Christmas!’

  ‘Oh, hello, dearie,’ she says. ‘That was jolly quick.’

  ‘No time like the present.’

  ‘I know it’s perhaps a bit early, but I do like to be organised for Christmas and I’ve got cards that have to go overseas. Come on in.’

  I slip into step behind her and follow her shuffling gait through to the small dining room, crammed with dark wood furniture.

  ‘I’ve set them out already.’

  Sure enough, there’s a pile of cards all ready and waiting for me. I get out my cache of writing equipment.

  ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea while you work?’ she asks.

  ‘Maybe afterwards,’ I say. ‘I’d be worried about spilling it on the cards. They’re beautiful.’

  ‘I don’t send many out these days – all my friends are dying off.’ Her laughter sounds tired. ‘So I can afford to buy some nicer ones. The trouble is my handwriting is so awful these days.’ She holds out her gnarled and twisted fingers. ‘Arthritis,’ she tuts at herself. ‘I can hardly grip a pen now. It took me so long to write my cards last year that my hands would throb. Even then half of the people I sent them to couldn’t read who they were from.’ She smiles sadly at that. ‘I was delighted to pick up one of your leaflets in the card shop. Now the writing can be smart too.’

  As I settle down to write the cards with a flutter of nerves, I’m glad that I’ve been practising my calligraphy faithfully every evening. I don’t want to mess up even one of these as I can tell that Mrs Ledbury has spent quite a bit on them.

  ‘Can you read my address book?’

  The handwriting is spidery, but I think I can make out most things. ‘Can you sit with me and I’ll read them out to double-check before I commit pen to paper?’

  ‘What a splendid idea. You’re very organised, young lady.’

  Mrs Ledbury moves the lace runner and the bowl of fruit to the sideboard and we take our seats at the table. I check the pen is filled with black ink and then write the cards, making my handwriting meticulously clear, adding a few of the flourishes that I’ve honed over the last fortnight. I address all the envelopes neatly, checking the details of the recipients with my client. I concentrate so hard that I feel a bead of sweat on my forehead. When I’ve finished, Mrs Ledbury admires my handiwork. ‘That’s really very lovely,’ she says.

  ‘I can get stamps and post them for you too,’ I say. ‘I’ll check the posting dates for overseas and then could put the rest of them to one side until the beginning of December.’

  ‘You won’t forget?’

  ‘No. Definitely not.’

  ‘You’re a darling girl. That would be something else I don’t have to think about.’

  ‘Call it done.’

  ‘Would you like that cup of tea now?’

  ‘Yes, please. Shall I make it for us?’

  ‘Why not? I’ll show you where everything is.’

  So I make us both a cuppa in delicate china cups. While we drink it, I ask, ‘Do you decorate your cottage for Christmas?’

  ‘Not any more,’ Mrs Ledbury says ruefully. ‘Again, it’s too much trouble with these hands of mine and I daren’t venture into my loft. If I fell, who would know? My son used to come and do it, but he’s so busy himself now.’ She sighs. ‘It is a crying shame as this cottage looks so pretty in its festive finery.’

  ‘I could help you with that as well,’ I offer.

  ‘I used to so love having all my decorations up,’ she says, wistfully. Her eyes mist over. ‘I used to buy one wherever I went. The whole of my life in Christmas decorations is in my loft.’

  ‘It wouldn’t cost very much if you wanted me to come back and do it.’ I’ve made sure that I’ve priced my services keenly.

  ‘Really?’ Her eyes light up. ‘That would be wonderful. I’m at home by myself this Christmas. My daughter’s in Australia. My son and his wife are going to Thailand for the season. I’ve been dreading it. How miserable would it be without a tree up or even a little bit of tinsel?’

  ‘Shall we make an appointment then?’

  ‘Yes, let’s.’ Mrs Ledbury claps her hands excitedly. ‘This is getting me quite in the mood for Christmas, Cassie.’

  I can’t wait for it either. The fun, the laughter, the excesses of food, maybe some presents if I can keep busy. If we’re lucky, we might even get a sprinkling of festive snow.

  I smile back at her. ‘Me too,’ I say.

  Chapter Seven

  Jim Maddison pulled up in the car park outside Bovingdale Young Offenders’ Unit. He’d had to go to the bank today before his shift and now he was running late. It would take so long to get through the barrage of security gates until he was on his wing, but it was a routine that he was well used to.

  Unfortunately, he’d had no choice but to pay the branch a visit today. Their overdraft was mounting steadily and he’d needed to go in to ask the bank to extend it. He didn’t want to risk that chat with some faceless call-centre person based in Mumbai or somewhere. He wanted to speak to a real human being who knew him and had known him for years. But they were becoming more rare now. Of course, after making him beg a bit, the bank had agreed to extend their overdraft. It was now running much higher than Jim was happy with and it meant that the bank charges they paid were horrendous. Only a lottery win would clear this little lot. Jim sighed to himself. The money he earned as a prison officer would never run to holidays in the Bahamas and this debt had been racked up just by keeping their heads above water. The sooner that Cassie could start earning again, the better. Jim glanced at his watch. Mission accomplished, but it would have to be a quick change into his uniform as soon as he was inside.

  He stared ahead at the unit. The steel-mesh walls were high and topped by rolled razor wire. Sniffer dogs patrolled the inner boundary, trying to catch the scent of the drugs parcels that kindly relatives or friends attempted to throw over the wall to their loved ones. It was on a depressingly regular basis that they had to call in the security team to do a sweep of the place to clean it up.

  The unit housed lads from the age of fifteen to eighteen – juvenile offenders to give them their proper title – but, to all intents and purposes, it was a prison. Bovingdale was a mixed Young Offenders’ and Category C adult facility that was home to five hundred inmates. In the Young Offenders’ Unit alone, there were some of the most dangerous and disturbed kids in the country. Jim gave one last glance at the clear blue winter sky and headed inside. It was time to go to work.

  He nodded at one of the other officers as he went through the main gates, ‘Afternoon, Bill.’
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br />   The man nodded back. At every stage as he got closer to his wing, a set of hefty security gates shut firmly behind him. The dead clang of impenetrable metal, the rattle and thunk of the heavy keys, all noises that provide the soundtrack to prison life. The sound of freedom fading. It was something that, even after all this time, he’d never got used to. But at least he would get to leave again at the end of his working day.

  Jim had been in the army for ten years. He’d joined up when he left school only because he hadn’t really known what else to do and, back then, university hadn’t really been an option. He was from a working-class background and no one in his family had ever gone on to higher education. His family saw no reason for anyone to start now. Then he’d done enough tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq to realise that war was a mug’s game. After a decade of dodging bullets, he’d come back onto civvy street, still with no idea of what he might want to do with the rest of his life.

  Someone suggested the prison service and he’d signed on the dotted line. The thinking was that it was steady employment to buy him some time while he thought of a suitable career. He’d considered training as a sports instructor or a PE teacher, but never had. He’d been at the same unit now for the last ten years. Despite the fact that an increasingly large part of his career involved being loathed, spat at and disrespected by the motley crew of youngsters who passed through these gates, Jim felt he had found his niche in life. He was a good prison officer and, God willing, that’s probably what he’d remain until he picked up his pension.

  His own wing, Starling, which housed thirty lads, stank of stale chip fat, sweaty teenagers and too much testosterone. The cells, their solid doors fitted with small inspection windows, ran on two tiers. They were joyless places, all painted the same dirty-cream colour and usually stained with unspeakable brown patches from what were known as dirty protests. The lads were allowed to put up posters – most of which were naked women with the occasional Ferrari thrown in – but they weren’t allowed glue. So they stuck them to the walls with chewing gum, toothpaste and, sometimes, when desperate, their own body fluids. One of the worst jobs that Jim ever had to do was kitting up in his white suit and scrubbing down a cell. He did it quite a lot.

  Each cell, not even three metres square, was home to two lads. If they both kept their noses clean and earned privileges, they could share a telly. The bunks were hard, the sheets dark brown, which hid a multitude of sins. The open metal toilet stood in an alcove with no door. If anyone thought Bovingdale was some kind of holiday camp, they should try paying it a visit sometime.

  Ready to start his day, Jim strode out into the association area, a space between the cells where the lads could socialise – or fight. It contained a pool table, its faded green baize almost worn through. Lads were huddled in groups, probably all scheming against the others. Gang warfare was one of the unit’s biggest problems – and there were many gangs to choose from.

  Sometimes Bovingdale got Home Office directives that dictated that officers should call the lads by other names. ‘Clients’ had been one. Currently it was ‘children’. But it was hard to see what was childlike about some of the kids who’d passed through. Quite a few were over six feet tall and built like brick outhouses. In among the burglars, the brawlers and the persistently bad drivers were rapists, murderers and drug dealers. Their faces were aged, lined by a thousand years of experience already fitted into their short and brutal lives. They were hardened against society before they’d even begun to know what it was. Some had tragic upbringings that had left them in the wrong place at the wrong time, making the wrong choices. Others were just evil buggers who’d graduate from the unit to spend their remaining years in and out of prison until, for one reason or another, they became lifers and would never see the light of day again. Only a politician sitting in London behind a mahogany desk could think of this bunch as ‘children’. So, whatever the directive, at the unit their charges were always known as ‘lads’.

  If you had to be banged up at all, then Bovingdale was a relatively good place to be. It had one or two institutionalised, borderline sadistic officers – you got them everywhere – but the majority were right enough. Most of the officers went for the softly-softly approach, happier to be father figures rather than wielding the baton. Jim always treated the lads as he’d want his own son to be treated – if he was lucky enough to have one in the future – if the boy ever had the misfortune to get into trouble. Everyone makes mistakes. Here the inmates got a chance to learn from them.

  The governor David Hornshaw, a youngish bloke, was sound with progressive views. He placed good store on education and, as a result, the reoffending rate – usually eight in ten nationwide – was much lower. Bovingdale had won awards for its education programme. Most of the lads couldn’t even read or write when they came in, so what chance was there for them to escape a life of crime when they were on the outside again? Out of sixty thousand prisoners currently on remand, it was reckoned that forty thousand were unemployable, mostly because they were illiterate.

  Two lads played pool, one leaning insolently on his cue while the other was bent over the table, deep in concentration. Each wore the standard-issue uniform of a grey tracksuit and trainers.

  ‘All right, lads?’ Jim said, affably. ‘Who’s winning?’

  They both grinned at him. ‘Rozzer as usual,’ the younger lad said.

  Rozzer. The seventeen-year-old son of a policeman who’d got caught way too many times buying and selling weed to his mates and was now on his second stint.

  Jim watched the lads pot a few more holes.

  ‘Give us a game?’ they asked.

  Jim laughed. ‘You know that I’d thrash you both,’ he said good-naturedly.

  Sometimes there were lads in here who simply shouldn’t be. You could see it in their eyes that they were essentially good kids. By now, Jim thought himself a pretty good judge of character. You could tell instantly who were the ones beyond hope. Similarly, you could tell who were the ones who, with a bit of help and a following wind, could turn their lives around.

  Rozzer, otherwise known as Andrew Walton, had learned his lesson this time. He wouldn’t be back inside again, Jim was sure. It was a tough lesson for one so young.

  Since his incarceration, his family had disowned him, which was going to be hard for him to get over. When he’d come to Bovingdale the first time, he used to smarten himself up every week ready for his family to visit. His hair would be combed, his face scrubbed until it shone. They never came. Not one of them. No man wanted to see his son locked up and, for a policeman, it must be doubly difficult. Jim could understand, at a push, why a father wouldn’t want to visit the prison that held his boy. But what mother could stay away? There were some bad lads in here who’d done terrible things, but their mams still came to visit them. It had been heartbreaking to witness his disappointment every week. In those first few months, Rozzer had been on suicide watch more times than Jim cared to remember. Being the son of a policeman was never going to make for an easy life inside. He was frequently beaten black and blue, as Jim had to record in his reports time and again. Jim wondered if it could have turned out differently if his parents had supported him more – or at all. But then you never knew what went on in someone’s home. Now Rozzer never even mentioned his family.

  The second lad at the pool table was Kieran Holman. He had just turned sixteen and was slight, from years of under-nourishment, probably. His blond hair and boyish good looks made him a favourite of the gay inmates, which he hated. He was terrified of their attention – a legacy from the streets, perhaps, where he’d been forced to turn tricks to survive. The mental-health nurses were on to it, anyway, and kept a close eye on him.

  Kieran had been living rough in a wheelie bin with nothing to his name but a sleeping bag that he’d stolen from Millets. He’d been light-fingered once too often – mainly stealing food and booze from Tesco – and had eventually ended up in Bovingdale on a six-month stretch. He was known as
Smudge because the grey griminess of the street remained embedded in his skin. The soap that could get rid of that hadn’t yet been invented. The minute Kieran had got out last time, he’d smashed all the windows of the cars in the staff car park and had found himself straight back inside. The second time he’d come into the unit, there was only relief in his eyes. He shared a cell with Rozzer who was then serving a year. It had been a lucky move for both of them as they’d bonded instantly and had become more like brothers than close friends. Even so, Smudge was still scared of his own shadow and had screaming nightmares on a nightly basis. He was a lad who had no visitors either.