by Dawson, Jill
No provocation whatsoever. Tony fired at the ceiling. It’s only when I read this, feeling relief, that I realize that I’d been imagining something far worse. I’d thought, I’d not wanted to think, but I’d heard the shots, and Tony had been panting and running, and I’d wondered . . .
I shake this from my head. I feel certain that I know Tony. I know he’s got a temper; that he gets mad sometimes. Gets the dead needle, as Nan used to say about Dad. I don’t like it, but it’s part of the deal. You can’t just love bits of someone. All of me, why not take all of me—isn’t that what the song says? I know just exactly how bad Tony can be and well, if he can love me like he does, despite my faults, well . . . I can do the same for him.
That night our money comes through, our payment, and that’s all that matters. Tony brings it, and Stella and me are really quiet like schoolgirls as we open the envelope, sitting on the cream carpet in my flat; stubbing our cigarettes in this glass ashtray Stella loves, with the big red letters “CINZANO” on the side, and a bottle of champagne beside us, then whooping as we see the notes and suddenly, Stella leaps up, showering me with money. She sticks a roll of tenners in her hair like a curler. She pretends to eat it. She sticks some down her bra and glances up at Tony, sticking out her tits.
“Smell it, Queenie—go on, gel, tell us, what does money smell like?” she says, tumbling backwards onto the rug, laughing.
I pick up a few notes where they’ve landed and sniff them. What does money smell like? Paper, I suppose. I sniff again, try harder. “It smells inky and sweaty,” I say. “Or maybe just new.” I don’t know. God, it smells like disbelief.
After all that. To be nicked a month later by a young shop walker and a policeman for such a silly, small-scale thing. A teddy bear. Some booties. Baby stuff, literally. A pair of the loveliest white cashmere booties. And I tried to find a soft white rabbit, like the one Dad gave me when I was born, but had to settle for a teddy, a very small one, serious-looking, with chocolate brown eyes. I’m in some sort of dream, I’m sliding around like I’m on castors, maybe it’s the hormones, because for once my talent—or should I say my luck—deserts me; a shop walker spots me right away.
Well, there’s one other thing, another reason why I’m there. Tony and I had another big fight. It starts because the tension is so high, the waiting, and one night I say something about that Luger again, about Tony losing it, and his temper and maybe—I can’t remember—I think I might have said something to him like “you’re a fucking liability.” I was shouting, I think, and before I know it, Tony has kicked me, really hard, kicked me under my ribs, and I’m doubling up and I can hardly breathe. I’m trying to say, but I can’t catch my breath, the words won’t come out properly: “The baby, the baby—what about the baby . . .” And Tony has smacked me in the face, slammed the door, and left.
So it’s later, it’s after that, after I’ve calmed down, and smoked every one of my cigarettes, and bitten my nails down to the quick, and worried about the baby and run my hand over my stomach and wondered and wondered: is everything all right? It’s to make everything OK. That’s the reason I do it. I could have paid for them a thousand times over, the cashmere booties, the teddy, but that’s not it, that won’t work the magic. I have to chance my arm. The baby is fine, I tell myself. And just to prove it, I’ll go and get it some things, some baby things, and then it—she will be real. I close my eyes and that’s when it comes to me powerfully that I’m having a girl, and I see her: a baby, with black hair and blue eyes like Tony’s, and fully formed arms and legs, and a little heart that beats.
So now, here I am, and I’m cold again, with that icy feeling in my skin, and a sort of blur in front of my eyes that I can’t shake. I’m marched to an office, in the back of the department store, and that teddy is plonked on the table between us, where he sits, staring severely at me through the glaze in front of my eyes.
I’m thinking, as they’re talking to me, thank Christ there’s nothing to link me to the jewelry robbery. Nothing at all. After the fight with Tony I went to see Gloria. I gave her a big envelope with my money in it and asked her to keep it safe for me. She looked at me, she was worried about me she said, but there were no bruises on me, so she didn’t ask any questions. “You’re the only person I know with money of your own,” I told her. I didn’t add: so you won’t be tempted to dip into it.
Someone brings me a cup of tea. Staring at the booties, I tell them about the baby, but it cuts no ice. If anything, the policeman they’ve called in hardens his gaze, taps his pen that much more sharply on the table, disapprovingly. The shop walker glances at the store manager and they all look back at me. They tell me I can call my brief but I’ll be denied bail. It’s a night in the police cells and then remand at Holloway, given my track record in “absconding.” They mean from Approved School.
“Not exactly a first-time offender, are you, miss? We’ve got officers at your place right now,” the bloke says, nastily. “What do you think we’ll find there?”
Full skirts and net petticoats and scarves and bikinis and ballet pumps from Gamba, in every color under the sun. A whole hoard of things nicked over the last few months; I’m picturing them, as the airless grey room I’m in gets smaller and smaller, and I stare into my cup of tea. I want to close my eyes. I say nothing, but I’m shaking my head. I know I’ve done something too stupid to believe. I can barely believe it myself. But at least the cozzers won’t find the tiniest speck of a sparkler. Not one note of the money. That’s what I keep thinking, as I sit there, swallowing my grey tea, and my heart sinking, sinking, sinking. Whoever said it was right: I am my own worst enemy. Didn’t we almost get away with it? I’m the only one who had to test things to the limit, who had to push her luck just that tiny bit further, the only one who had to do this.
That night I sleep in the police cell at Shoreditch. A police doctor has examined me, to see if I’m telling the truth about the baby. He does it dangling a fag from his mouth; ash crumbling from the end and dripping onto my chest. I know for sure I’ve clicked by then; I didn’t need the bastard of a doctor to confirm it. I feel so sleepy, sort of drowsy and thickened, slower. I dream all night long of jewels, dancing in front of me. I’m stretching out my white gloved hand towards them and then my hand feels strange to me, like it’s not mine at all. I stare at it and follow the arm, the velvet sleeve, and see that I’m right: the hand belongs to someone else, someone who looks like Princess Margaret, a dark-haired woman who is sitting on a table, like a stuffed toy, staring severely at me. Then she bursts into her twinkly royal laugh and I wake up.
Holloway, remand wing. Noisy and hellish. Always women shouting, or crying, or screaming at one another. No one thinks they should be in here. Bellyaching about their innocence or the unfairness of it all, worrying about their kids or their old man, that’s all they do night and day. And there’s no peace in routine like the other wings; it’s all coming and going, visits from dock briefs; there’s always a screw pressing the panic button and other screws arriving like a swarm of ants, to press some poor screaming wretch back into her cell. People being let out for court appearances, family visiting, new prisoners arriving; it’s disturbing. The ceilings outside the cells are so high that walking into lunch along the narrow corridor the sound bounces and the place is alive with ranting and echoes.
I remembered it well from that brief visit years ago. The central atrium, the four radiating wings and, you know, right in the middle a great showoff staircase, as if the whole bleeding place is some kind of fancy film set. The choking feeling of the artificial lights, how everyone’s skin soon looks grey and strange, as if we’re all underwater. The metal pimples along the walls—emergency buttons—how tempting it is to push one yourself, just to get into some trouble, just to bring on an event. It’s so frenetic in remand that you almost long to be a lifer, to live on the top floor where things are quiet and regular. We all live for the arrival of the Jolly Trolley, six
o’clock, with whatever sweeties we’ve been allowed by On-site Pharmaceuticals. In my case it’s just sleeping tablets, but it’s still the highlight of the day.
So, Dad and Annie come to visit me, and bring Gracie. I have a second court date soon, and they’re here to “keep my spirits up,” Dad says. He’s grey these days; he’s nearly fifty. His eyebrows have stayed black and bushy, and with a more solid build, and all that pent-up strength, he looks like he should be twirling up the lather in the Russian baths—but he still has his old sparkle, and he manages to make me laugh, picking on one of the woman screws “built like a brick shit-house,” he says, and looking like Uncle Charlie in drag. Dad laughs—looks shiftily up and down the room—then coughs and heaves, and Annie worriedly pats him on the back.
“Your dad’s got to take it easy,” Annie says. “The doctor says.”
He’s had a health scare, I gather, his ticker. And—he doesn’t tell me this himself, but Annie does, she says it proudly. He’s got a stall on the Roman Road. Flowers.
“Blinkin’ hell, Dad—don’t tell me . . .” I say. “You’re not planning to go straight?”
He looks embarrassed, shifts in his seat, says “nah,” and then, catching a sharp look from Annie, shrugs. Gracie sits there, quiet in her jeans and striped top, always watchful. Gracie is ten now, and clever, Annie says, “like you, Queenie.” You know Grace is listening and you know that Annie and Dad haven’t quite got her measure. Grace could stay in school, even pass her Eleven Plus, the way she’s going, according to Annie. Dad swells up a bit, looks proud, when Annie says this. I feel a stab of something fierce, but I say nothing.
“I don’t understand how you’re back in here,” Annie chats on, not noticing. “Why didn’t she sentence you then and there?”
“Oh, it’s because they asked for other offenses to be taken into account. Or something. That was just appearing in court to be charged, but, you know, they found out about—well, quite a few other occasions.”
Twenty-two other occasions of hoisting, to be exact. They’re so determined to hang that on me, they never even looked around the club. Never sniffed out anything at all; so obsessed with catching this one girl, this hoister; they missed a whole industry.
“So, that woman—the magistrate—she said something about not being able to give me a sentence as long as I deserved. Can you believe that? And they’re waiting for further reports or something. I don’t know. I think it might be to do with, you know . . .”
“Oh, yeah. How you keeping in yourself?” Annie says, which is her way of asking about the baby. She was there in court. She heard the prison doctor’s report read out. Dad looks down, glances at his watch. I know I don’t show yet but my hand drifts towards my stomach and since I can’t think what to say I just leave it there. A bun in the oven. For some reason I think of Nan.
“Stella’s been to see me,” I mutter. Annie replies too quickly: “That’s nice.”
“And Bobby.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Not Tony, though.”
“Oh.”
“We had a fight.”
“Well, Queenie, I think our time’s up,” Dad says, standing up, looking nervously behind him, as if expecting someone to put their hand on his shoulder. I knew he wasn’t listening, but does he have to make it so obvious that he wants to go?
“Isn’t this where, you know, that woman was hanged?” Gracie asks, suddenly.
“What?”
“Your dad’s right—we oughta be going,” Annie sweeps in, quickly.
“Take care of yourself.” Dad gives Gracie a shove towards the door.
“See you in court on Thursday,” Annie says. “We’ll be rooting for you.”
“Thanks,” I say. It comes out small and I clear my throat and try again, more heartily. “Yes. See you Thursday.”
Hard not to wonder how much Annie’s rooting is worth. Just as well that as usual, I’ve made my own plans.
What that magistrate said, about terrible childhoods, has hit home a little, but not in the way she meant. It has made me think about the baby. Never mind my childhood, too late to alter that—but there’s no way I’m going to have a baby born in prison. Women do, of course, all the time. And not just in novels like Moll Flanders, either. I once read a horrible statistic that babies born behind bars—to convicted mothers—had a 50 percent chance of ending up inside themselves, before the age of eighteen. Well, prison is not the neighborhood I’d want any child of mine to be raised in.
And then I thought again about Dad going straight, and Annie’s shy glance at him when I accused him of it, and what I caught in that look. Hopefulness. Optimism. And Gracie in her stripey t-shirt that she thinks makes her look Parisian but makes me think of a cartoon criminal, you know, carrying a bag of swag. The whole scene makes me angry, and sick. He can do this now, can he, do it for Annie and Gracie but not for me or Bobby, not for Mum? The truth is he’s just getting old and fat, lost his nerve, and he’s using Annie’s nagging as an excuse to give up. It troubles me. It makes me want to get him on his own and shout at him. It makes me want to get hold of Gracie, too, and shake her hard.
So it’s a long walk back down the winding stone steps to my cell, past the walls with the scratch marks in them from other desperate prisoners. Grace’s comment about Ruth flares up in my mind—last summer, we were standing by the radio at nine o’clock exactly, listening to the pips, and knowing that was the time, the exact minute . . . I crush that thought. If I give birth in there, I know I’ll never see my baby again. She’ll be adopted out in a jiffy, that’s what they always do. I’d serve out the rest of my sentence without her. My dock brief gave me the possibilities and even with a short sentence, that’s what I’m looking at. Giving birth in prison.
My cellmate, an old brass called Rita, is waiting for me, wanting to share her squares of chocolate and tell me about her little grandson Thomas, how well he’s doing, and all sorts of other crap I’m not interested in. I don’t want to think about Gracie with her piano lessons and Eleven Plus and Mummy and Daddy at home, just like in the storybooks. All I know is, no daughter of mine—I don’t know why I’m so certain it’s a daughter, but I am—is going to start life here. I thrash about on my thin cot, scrunching the blanket up to my ears and listening to the murmur of voices. Of clicky steps and keys jangling outside the door and the racket as the Jolly Trolley passes by. Then at last, a bit of a hush for the evening. The loneliest sounds in the world: the flap lifting and shutting on the spy holes as screws walk the corridors, checking up on us.
I drift off a little but my dreams since being pregnant have been so powerful that I’m not sure I’m sleeping or hallucinating bolt awake. I’m back in that high-castle place, where I visited Mum that day with Gloria. And there she is, as she’s been all this time, in her nightie. Crisp packets and fag-ends floating round her feet. Her face one minute vacant and depressed, hopeless; the next alive with spite and rage, as she could be, sometimes. Shall I send ya then, shall I? I’m saying to her, and laughing. Then she’s suddenly a girl herself, and giggling, and she has a white horse and flowers in her hair, and she’s in Ireland, a place I’ve never been, and we’re girls together now, skipping. We have new names, both of us, little girl names, I think we must be sisters, and I’m saying to her: come with me, don’t be left behind, come on to a better place, the one I’m going to with my new life and my new things, lovely things and not the bleak grey fog of your life, not the Docks, not the gutter—no, this place is full of books, everything is rose-pink and white here, full of cherry blossoms. Come with me, why don’t you?
But you really want to leave me behind, she says, and in the dream, I know at last. She’s dead. The spy hatch opens. I think perhaps I screamed, or shouted. The cell is black again and I can’t see Moll’s face, she’s just a dark shriveled child, a little girl with nothing, and I’m crying now, I know it was my fault. I’m a
n evil daughter, a bad girl. I took a new name, I took new things, grabbed at things, I wanted things. I rejected her, whatever she tried to give me that day I visited. I left her there holed up to rot. She didn’t leave me, give me up, as I always felt. I abandoned her.
Thursday comes and I’m dressed in my normal clothes to go to court, as remand prisoners always are. I’m flanked by two women guards, and they park up on a side street, outside the court. As we go into the building, I ask one of the warders if I can go to the lavatory. I’m lucky, as it’s the Mother Hen one, who knows I’m pregnant. She glances at my belly—quite flat actually, but I know she knows—and she nods at me, sort of embarrassed, and says she’ll wait outside. So far so good.
I’m inside the lavatory, and I listen quietly by the door. I start counting, I can’t help myself. Come on, Stella, come on. One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . .
Then I hear heels clicking down the corridor outside and Stella’s familiar cough, loud enough to let me know she’s there. I know she’ll be wearing a wig but there’s a moment when I think oh my God, maybe someone has recognized her, could they connect us somehow? I step inside a cubicle, lock the door, and stand on the closed toilet seat. The toilet chain dangles from the cistern and gently taps against me, as I lean forward, trying to wedge open the window. It’s green with the ivy growing on it outside, and has a stiff little catch at the bottom, encrusted with grease and rust. I prize at this, desperation rising in my stomach.
Keep talking, Stella.
This is my chance, this is it, the only one, I have to grab it now . . . I push and push at the catch, wedging my thumb under it to try and lever it up. It’s not locked, it’s just stuck with years of locked-down filth. And then—finally—it gives, with a spring, and one nail wobbles loose and drops to the floor with a clatter so loud I think my head will explode. I hold my breath, and heave myself towards the window. An envelope of window. It’s slim, but then, despite being four months pregnant, so am I. I push the glass out and upwards, like a door flap. I’ve taken my shoes off and left them on the lavatory floor, toes pointing outwards so that if Mother Hen looks underneath it might look for a moment as if I’m sitting there. That might give me valuable seconds.
