‘Not necessarily. Honesty’s quite important in our sort of work.’
‘You think I should be a probation officer?’
‘You might be quite a good probation officer with all your experience of prisons. Unfortunately it seems that your convictions make it impossible. Though I have thought of one job,’ he was actually smiling at me, ‘where you might just possibly be rather successful.’
‘What’s that?’ I wasn’t expecting very much.
‘I just have to consult a few people,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
38
It was hard work saying goodbye.
I really didn’t want to leave them, particularly as it now seemed I was going out into a world where I found it hard to remember what to do exactly. It was a question I hardly dared ask, let alone answer. Anyway, the goodbyes came first.
Devira gave me a handkerchief she had embroidered for me and held her hands together in what I supposed was a sort of blessing when I left her to her life sentence.
I promised Martine that I’d set about finding out where they’d put Nick, though I’d no idea how to do that or even where to begin. Of course I promised to write to her. ‘Hell’ the screw told me about all the good times I’d missed and the privileges I’d done without by not being a bit more cooperative, and I allowed her a kiss, strictly confined to my left cheekbone.
They were a bit slow in the office that morning and it took a long time to give me back the clothes I wore when I was arrested - the jeans and sweater and trainers which I’d put on to climb into Robin Thirkell’s house for the sake of excitement and the picture of Madame Bonnard drying herself after the bath.
And then the screw with the big jangling bunch of keys unlocked the door and let me out into an uncertain future with a travel warrant and £46.75 and not too much of a prospect of getting back to work in the advertising business.
It was a grey, damp morning early in the year and the traffic outside Holloway, after the calm silences of prison, sounded almost unbearably loud. I only had time for one quick look round before I saw him. I don’t know why but I found it irritating that he hadn’t changed at all. He still had dark curly hair and he’d fixed on a determinedly cheerful smile as he bore down on me.
And then he said, as though it was a joke, ‘You must be Lucy Purefoy.’
‘What the hell,’ I asked him, ‘do you think you’re talking about, you know damn well who I am.’
‘But you don’t know who I am.’ He gave me the news as though he thought he was giving me good news. ‘I’m your praeceptor.’
‘My what?’
‘Of course you know what a praeceptor is, you did Latin at school. It means I’m your guide, philosopher and friend, although Mr Markby warned me not to get too friendly, at least at first. I’m here to see you get a job, settle you back in the flat, see you never go inside that place again.’
‘Well, don’t bother!’ I felt I had to tell him. ‘Anyway, what’s Mr Markby got to do with it?’
‘He’s the new chair of SCRAP. I told you he got the job after Chippy did a great big runner. I was having a hard time getting a job on account of my record so he found me one at SCRAP. Paid praeceptor in charge of special cases. You’re one of them.’
‘I’m certainly not!’
‘I’m only here to help you.’
‘Then go back to the Scrubs and help some other poor bugger. I don’t need your help now, Terry.’
‘That’s what they always say.’
‘All right. I’ve said it.’
‘You know perfectly well 85 per cent of prisoners reoffend within two years of their release. I’m going to help you stop that habit of stealing things.’
‘You mean you’re here to reform me?’
‘You could say that, yes.’
‘Well, you can fuck off then.’
Just as he had once long ago, Terry looked surprised and pained as I said that. I know what he meant. Women weren’t meant to swear or do the burglaries, those were jobs for men. Terry’s male chauvinism was coming out again. This time, though, he was making a bit of an effort to control it.
‘All right then,’ he said, ‘if that’s the way you feel, that’s all right. All I’d suggest is we do one thing together. If you don’t want to see me after that, I’ll piss off and leave you alone.’
‘One thing?’ I was extremely doubtful. Did he mean sex? What was this one thing?
‘I got up early to get here on time and I missed breakfast. Are you feeling hungry? What would you say to a burger?’
The rain was falling steadily and the traffic was even noisier. A crowd of children were running down the pavement on their way to school. I was facing a day with nothing much to do. Also I suddenly felt, having been too busy saying goodbye to eat breakfast, unexpectedly hungry. I looked at Terry and for another inexplicable moment I didn’t want to disappoint him.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘If you mean just one hamburger.’
‘Just one,’ he promised. ‘But a whopper!’
There was a taxi passing and SCRAP must have been paying expenses because he stopped it.
And that’s where this story begins again.
39
So there I was, waiting outside the gates of Holloway Prison quite early one grey morning with the rain coming down. And then I saw her coming towards me, not much changed, I have to admit, but a bit paler. People coming out of prison always seem paler than those of us on the outside, but still her, still how she was when she left the dock after she turned her back on me. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. As Mr Markby said, ‘To be honest, our job’s never easy.’ She didn’t look at all pleased to see me.
‘You must be Lucy Purefoy,’ I said. I thought she might see the joke. I thought she might remember how she greeted me when she was waiting for me outside the Scrubs what seemed like all those years ago. She either didn’t see it or wasn’t in the mood for laughter. ‘You know damn well who I am,’ was what she said.
Then I explained to her about Mr Markby. How he’d given me the job at SCRAP and got me to be paid wages so I could give all my time to it and not be tempted to reoffend. So I’d tried to help a collection of poor old sods and cocky youths who came out of prison with nothing much provided for them. And then he told me he had this in mind for me, to take Lucy on as a special case. He was impressed by my determination to cure her of the criminal habits she’d got herself into. Well, I told her I was the praeceptor now, her guide, philosopher and friend.
You know, she didn’t take it well. But I suppose, to be honest, I didn’t take it well when she said she was going to get me to go straight when we first met outside the Scrubs. But so much had happened between us since then that I sort of hoped she’d have been thinking about that and changed her attitude.
No way, in fact no way at all. She said she didn’t need my help. Then she actually asked if I planned to reform her. I had to admit that she could say that. It was then she told me to fuck off. It’s true I didn’t like hearing her say that, just as I don’t like the idea of women doing serious crimes. It doesn’t suit women somehow, at least that’s the way I look at it. I still expect women to be feminine, if you know what I mean. I think it suits them better.
But I didn’t get anywhere with her. ‘Never lose your temper with a client,’ Mr Markby had told me. ‘Never give him, or her, that particular satisfaction.’ I’d gone to all sorts of lectures and meetings at SCRAP, I’d read books and magazines about the aftercare of criminals to help me in my new work, and in particular for the job which had brought me to the gate of Holloway, all to be told to fuck off. This would have made me very angry if I hadn’t followed Mr Markby’s advice.
So, instead of telling Lucy what I thought of her, I suddenly had a new idea. I told her that if she really felt like that I’d piss off and leave her alone. But I felt we ought to do just one thing together before that was decided on.
Of course she thought I meant sex but I didn’t mean that at
all. At SCRAP they made it clear that the praeceptor mustn’t have sex with the client. Well, not during the reforming process anyway. So, instead of any talk about sex, and remembering how we first met, I told her I hadn’t had breakfast, which was nothing but the truth, and if she was at all hungry, what about a hamburger.
She thought about it and I was anxious, much too anxious, about how she’d take to this suggestion. In the end she said, ‘If you mean just one hamburger.’
‘Just one,’ I said. ‘But a whopper!’
So there it was. It was a start. I had money for expenses and a taxi was crawling by in the rain so I flicked my fingers and we set off towards Notting Hill and the Burger King. At least we were together.
And that’s where this story begins again.
By the Same Author
Charade
Rumming Park
Answer Yes or No
Like Men Betrayed
Three Winters
The Narrowing Stream
Will Shakespeare (An Entertainment)
Paradise Postponed
Summer’s Lease
Titmuss Regained
Dunster
Felix in the Underworld
The Sound of Trumpets
Rumpole of the Bailey
The Trials of Rumpole
Rumpole for the Defence
Rumpole’s Return
Rumpole and the Golden Thread
Rumpole’s Last Case
Rumpole and the Age of Miracles
Rumpole à la Carte
Rumpole on Trial
The Best of Rumpole
Rumpole and the Angel of Death
Rumpole Rests His Case
Rumpole and the Primrose Path
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders
Under the Hammer
With Love and Lizards (with Penelope Mortimer)
Clinging to the Wreckage
Murderers and Other Friends
The Summer of a Dormouse
Where There’s a Will
In Character
Character Parts
PLAYS
A Voyage Round My Father
The Dock Brief
What Shall We Tell Caroline?
The Wrong Side of the Park
Two Stars for Comfort
The Judge
Collaborators
Edwin, Bermondsey, Marble
Arch, Fear of Heaven
The Prince of Darkness
Naked Justice
Hock and Soda Water
Quite Honestly Page 20
