Open Your Eyes

by Paula Daly

  I calculated how much time I had – was there enough to take a look at Leon’s Word documents too?

  Fifteen minutes.

  I wagered I had enough time if—

  ‘Here you are.’

  I turned around fast in my seat and saw Leon standing in the doorway.

  ‘You scared me.’ I closed the file quickly.

  ‘What are you doing up here?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  I studied his face before replying. Was he challenging me? Was he becoming riled because he realized I was poking around in his personal effects and he knew there was something to hide in there?

  ‘I was looking for some stuff on creative writing exercises for prisoners,’ I stammered. ‘You know, for the class this afternoon?’

  Leon made a face to suggest that that particular memory sadly hadn’t been committed to his hard drive, and he gave me a rueful smile.

  I exhaled.

  ‘Well, you’d better come down,’ he said, ‘because Frankie Ridonikis is here.’

  ‘Tips?’ answered Frankie, a few minutes later.

  We were in the kitchen. ‘Yes, tips,’ I said, ‘pearls of wisdom that I can pass on to the inmates.’

  ‘Quit while you’re ahead,’ Frankie said. ‘That would be my tip.’

  Frankie was like this a lot of late – down on writing. I think it was since literary heavyweight Philip Roth told a newly published author that writing was torture and he should stop now while he still had the chance. I suspected Frankie had adopted the same stance as Roth because he thought it made him look like a better writer.

  ‘Frankie,’ I said, ‘these people aren’t wanting to be novelists. They’re in prison. They’ll just want a few pointers. What can you give me? You must have something useful to pass along. You’ve been doing it for long enough.’

  ‘Don’t do this to yourself,’ he said dramatically. ‘Tell them that. A writer’s life is so full of woe.’

  Frankie had come armed with his laptop, on the understanding he was here to babysit Leon while I went to work. He’d been pressured into it by Oona, who had phoned just after Leon had been discharged from the rehab unit, asking if she could do anything to help, and I’d said, ‘Well, there is one thing …’ and because she was required to be at Tate Liverpool practically every minute of every day, she passed the job on to Frankie.

  ‘He’s always claiming he can write absolutely anywhere,’ she said, ‘so let him.’

  It was probably just as well she’d passed the job on to Frankie because, pre-brain injury, Leon hadn’t liked modern art at all. ‘I don’t want to see anything in formaldehyde, and I don’t want to see Tracey Emin’s knickers,’ he used to say. Without his filter, he was now liable to air his opinions straight to Oona’s face.

  Frankie began arranging his stuff on the kitchen table. Laptop, memory stick, a spiral-bound notepad, two different-coloured pens.

  ‘What are you working on?’ I asked.

  ‘Can’t say, I’m afraid. One word about the new novel,’ he said, wiggling his fingers like a conjurer, ‘and poof … the magic is gone. I simply cannot write the bloody thing.’

  Frankie hadn’t always been so secretive.

  When I first met him, he could talk for hours and hours about his work-in-progress. Now, though still always good company, always ready for a drink and a laugh, I sensed that the writing no longer energized him as it once had. Frankie was like Leon in that some of the magic had gone out of the process.

  I would yell at the two of them: ‘Do you know how lucky you are to be able to do this? Day after day? To get paid to do the one thing that you love?’

  And Leon would try to explain to me: ‘You think, Jane,’ he would say, ‘that once you’re published all of your problems evaporate. You think your life will be complete, that you’ll have finally arrived at the point you’ve been trying to get to for so long. But that’s not how it works. Success is a slippery fucker. Every time you think: That’s what success looks like, whether it’s a publishing deal, work optioned for TV or film, a spot on the Sunday Times bestsellers list, by the time you’ve achieved it, the goal posts have moved. You’ve already set your sights on something else. Something bigger. Something further away, so you can never feel satisfied. Not ever.’ Then he added, ‘I think that’s why writers drink so much.’

  When Frankie got his first publishing deal he started to dress in a suit for every occasion. Always a black suit, and always with a white shirt, open at the collar, and no tie. He wore it no matter what the activity, and secretly Leon used to poke fun at him. Said it all went to creating this image he had of himself as a serious writer. When Frankie appeared in his suit today and failed to remove his jacket, Leon had looked him over and asked, earnestly, ‘Frankie, have you had to appear in court?’ and Frankie had looked really quite wounded.

  I let the cat out, showed Frankie how to operate the espresso machine, and told him I’d be back in around three hours’ time.

  ‘No rush,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get this edit done by the end of the week, so it suits me to be trapped here with no distractions.’ Then he lowered his voice, checked Leon was out of earshot, and said, ‘Did you find anything?’ And when I looked at him blankly, he added, ‘On Leon’s computer? Did you find anything? Oona told you to snoop. Did you snoop?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, understanding now. ‘I didn’t find much. Just a lot of short films of the street. I can’t really make sense of them.’

  Frankie was frowning. ‘Leon was filming the street?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Frankie shook his head as though he couldn’t make sense of it either. ‘What did Jon Grayling say?’ he asked.

  I closed my eyes briefly. Then I checked behind to make sure Leon was still out of the room. ‘He said there was no book,’ I whispered. ‘He said the reason we’ve not been paid is because Leon didn’t deliver his last book.’

  Frankie’s mouth dropped open. ‘Jesus,’ he said.

  ‘Did he ever say anything to you?’ I asked. ‘Did you have any inkling that Leon was having trouble with—’

  ‘No,’ shot Frankie. ‘No, of course not. I would have said. Are you really quite sure about all this, Jane? It just seems so out of character; I can’t understand why Leon didn’t talk to anyone about it.’

  I shrugged helplessly. ‘I can only assume that Leon was so blocked in his writing that he borrowed money to get by, and then when he got to the stage of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, it all got out of hand … Whoever came here that day must have shot him because he couldn’t pay them back and—’

  There was the sound of footsteps in the hallway. The slap of feet on the pine floor.

  ‘Thanks so much for doing this,’ I said in an over-loud voice, so Leon wouldn’t know we’d been talking about him. ‘It’s really good of you.’

  ‘Jane,’ Frankie said, ‘it’s nothing,’ and he furnished me with a sad, sympathetic smile. ‘Least I can do … Now go and show Her Majesty’s detainees exactly how it’s done.’

  19

  I had nine classes to teach in total, all within the Liverpool area. I would teach two per day, except today, when I had just one: Walton Gaol. The security checks in and out of the prison were pretty time-consuming, I was told, so it was impossible to fit another class in beforehand.

  ‘Anything I need to know?’ I’d asked Teresa, the course coordinator, with regards to dealing with offenders.

  ‘They’ll all tell you they’re innocent,’ she replied dryly. ‘As soon as the prison officer’s out of earshot, they’ll tell you they didn’t do it. They’ll tell you they’re being held there against their will. Just smile and nod,’ she said. ‘Smile and nod.’

  Walton Gaol – no one ever used its correct name: HM Prison Liverpool – was practically falling down. It was an ageing Victorian building, sinister-looking from every angle, sound echoing madly within its walls. I’d arrived there early, as instructed, and I now
had twenty minutes to kill until the start of the class. I’d been left alone, deemed trustworthy enough, it seemed, not to start a prison riot by pulling the television from its wall mounting, or setting the fire extinguisher off. I felt uneasy. I had the same feeling I’d get as a kid when left alone in an empty classroom: eight years old, skipping in from the playground to retrieve something from my bag, the classroom an empty, alien space without a teacher in it.

  I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes to go.

  The prison officer who delivered me to this room seemed to assume I was completely relaxed about standing up in front of a group of prisoners – not to be referred to as inmates. I was advised of this earlier when my bag was searched thoroughly and a packet of soluble paracetamol was confiscated. (Walton had a big drug problem. Drugs were easy to come by and had been found inside tennis balls thrown over perimeter fences, inside the carcasses of dead pigeons and, more recently, dropped from the sky by drones.) The prison officer spoke to me as if I was a professional delivering a much sought-after service, and even though I was apprehensive, at least being here was proving to be a good distraction from the myriad problems awaiting me at home. ‘They need a bit of culture now and again,’ the prison officer said when he showed me the classroom.

  ‘So, you think the programme’s beneficial?’

  He shrugged. ‘No one seems to have a clue what’s beneficial any more. Changes every year. But they seem to like it,’ he said, meaning the prisoners. ‘And it doesn’t do them any harm as far as I can tell, so give it your best. You’ll find them a very captive audience.’

  ‘What … what are they like? Not what they’ve done,’ I added quickly. ‘I don’t want to know that.’

  I’d decided it was best not to know. Walton Gaol is a closed, category B/C prison, housing males who do not require maximum security, but who do pose a threat to members of the community. I’d decided that, as with any student, they deserved to not be pre-judged, deserved to be evaluated only on their work and what they brought to each of the sessions.

  That’s what I told myself anyway.

  The truth was probably closer to the fact that I’d possibly have a full-blown panic attack if I were aware of just what these gentlemen had done.

  No one in here has murdered anybody, I told myself.

  The prison officer said, ‘There’s a few odd bods, but mostly you’ll find they’re your standard prisoners … Keep ’em busy,’ he said. ‘They have short attention spans, so you’ll want to keep them doing something. Other than that, I can’t see you having any problems. This lot are very well behaved, all things considered. And keep that personal alarm on you. Don’t leave it out of reach.’

  There would be no prison officer present during the sessions. All I had was the small push-button pocket-sized alarm. I thanked him, and he told me he’d be back shortly.

  I tapped my pen on the desk again and moments later the door opened and they began to filter in.

  I stood up.

  Dressed mostly in sweat pants and T-shirts, this all-white group was ranged in age from their early twenties to their late sixties. Immediately, I began to make judgements. A slow-moving, tired-looking soul of pension age, who wore his sentence with an air of resignation, shuffled past. I was wondering what he could have done to land him in here when a guy with a green ink tattoo on his neck asked what had happened to their usual teacher.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I lied. (She’d been signed off with stress.)

  When they were seated I introduced myself. ‘I’m Jane Campbell, your replacement teacher. It’s good to meet you. I hope I’ll be of some use in the weeks ahead and, as an amateur writer myself, I’d say we’re all in this together. I’m optimistic that we’ll learn from one another and I’m excited to get started.’

  No one looked particularly enthusiastic.

  ‘We were told you were published,’ said the tattoo guy. And then he looked around him at the other prisoners, who began nodding in unison. They seemed disappointed. ‘Our last teacher was published,’ he said. ‘We were told our new teacher would be published too.’

  I frowned. By the looks on their faces I think they’d been expecting James Patterson himself to walk in.

  I didn’t know their previous teacher was published. ‘What was her name?’ I asked.

  ‘Valerie Dowling.’

  I was too embarrassed to say I’d not heard of her.

  ‘So, you’re really not published?’ someone else asked, his tone suggesting he was quite put out.

  ‘I’m not, I’m afraid. But I have received lots of very positive comments from agents, and the opening chapters from one of my books won a competition in the Mail on Sunday. I’m yet to see my work in print though.’

  I delivered this news with a modest smile, expecting at least one of them to be marginally impressed, but instead there was a lot of shuffling of papers and exchanging of nervous glances.

  Why had I not been told about Valerie Dowling?

  And who was this altruistic author?

  Whoever she was I was wary of her. Who in their right mind does this job when they have a publishing contract? When they can stay at home all day in their pyjamas and make up stories for a living?

  I realized I was holding my breath.

  ‘Her books are really good,’ the neck tattoo went on. ‘We’ve all read her. She has five books published. All by Amazon … And you really can’t get better than that.’

  Ah.

  Valerie Dowling must have been using Amazon’s CreateSpace platform to self-publish her books. So she was not a published author in the traditional sense at all.

  ‘They’re really good books,’ said a dead-eyed guy on the table to the right. ‘She’s a pro. She said she had no trouble getting published. I wonder why you’ve been finding it so difficult?’

  I really didn’t want to start slagging off Valerie Dowling for misleading them so outrageously, but then I didn’t particularly want to defend myself either. They thought I was a bad writer. That I wasn’t good enough to teach them. They thought—

  There were raised voices from over by the door. The beginnings of an altercation.

  ‘You’re not even supposed to be in here!’

  ‘Since when do you decide what I do?’

  There were two guys. Both were late twenties, both with thick Scouse accents. The first was thin, scrawny as a pre-teen, and the second, stocky – and more sure of himself. He wore a red Liverpool Football Club cap pulled down low on his forehead.

  ‘He’s not allowed to join halfway through,’ said the first, vaguely in my direction. He had stringy hair and acne scarring around his neck.

  ‘Fuck off,’ replied the other. This guy had more swagger. He had a mean, irreverent look that suggested he was further up the pecking order. I went very still.

  I watched.

  The two prisoners were standing behind their chairs, unwilling, it seemed, to sit next to each other. The room was arranged into six areas; rectangular, melamine-topped tables were bolted to the floor and each had room for four prisoners.

  I gave a quick cast about the room, but every chair was filled. There were no empty spaces.

  The two surveyed each other with a simmering hostility and I got a feeling in my belly like I’d eaten something rotten.

  Could this turn nasty?

  In the outside world, a disagreement over seating would come to, at worst, some passive-aggressive exchanges and a bit of hurt pride. In here? I had no idea how far things could escalate.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, addressing the entire room, ‘is anyone prepared to switch?’

  Everyone looked down.

  The scrawny prisoner said, ‘No one’s allowed to start courses halfway through. It’s against the rules. He’s not supposed to be in here.’

  ‘I want to write a letter to my son,’ said the stocky guy. ‘Miss, you’d be able to help me with that, wouldn’t you? I don’t write so well. It’s his birthday and I want to write him a proper letter. He’s
only eight.’

  The other prisoner was shaking his head as if I shouldn’t even dignify this with a response.

  I said, ‘Of course I can help you with that. Why don’t you both sit down and we’ll get started.’

  ‘I’m not sitting next to him.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said the other, and took his seat.

  I looked around the room. It didn’t appear as if anyone was willing to switch.

  ‘How about,’ I said, ‘if you sit there just for today and next session I’ll randomly assign seats from the list of names? That seems a fair way to do it.’

  The prisoner with the neck tattoo who was now sitting at the table closest to my desk said, ‘No reason we should all have to move for the sake of them. These are our seats. We always sit in these seats.’

  I sighed. My instinct was to say, ‘What are you – children?’ but no one was finding this behaviour at all unreasonable.

  I held my breath. Then: ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I admitted.

  I sat down, giving them my best I’m beaten expression, hoping they’d have the good sense to sort it out between themselves. There followed a general shuffling in seats, clearing of throats, everyone suddenly interested in the one strip light that had a faint flicker in the corner of the room, and then the cause of our problem, the Liverpool FC cap-wearer, the would-be letter-writer, stood up and said, ‘What if I move my chair over to your desk instead then, miss?’

  And I said yes.

  Because what else could I say?

  This was the first time I’d led a class where no one wanted to give me their elevator pitch, or tell me the unique selling point of their novel, or tell me why their novel was so much better than (fill in bestselling novelist’s name here) and that said bestselling novelist didn’t deserve their success, because their books were truly awful, and it was just that they’d had a good marketing machine behind them.

  It was the first group I’d worked with who wanted to write for the sole purpose of writing. I asked them what they got out of it, because they’d been at this for six weeks or so now, under the tutelage of Valerie Dowling, and they were remarkably candid with their answers.