by Sonia Paige
Tuesday 18th December 3 pm
Raymond Goforth noticed the moment of sunshine from his office on the fourth floor of the Shellmex building, and picked up the phone:
‘I don’t think it’s settling, dear, I’ll be all right………. Yes, very ………. And I’ve ordered the curtain material………. ‘Threads’ at South End Green………… Probably after Christmas………. I hope so. We can watch cavemen hunting for their supper while we eat ours, it will whet the appetite………. He liked the report, so that’s a relief………. The usual time, unless I ring again………. Bye, my love.’
He licked the envelope of his completed letter to the Worthing Borough Treasurer and sealed it, then copied the address onto the front. He put it on the corner of his desk ready for Iris to post.
Tuesday 18th December 3 pm
On the scaffolding on Theobald’s Road, the painter in the fingerless gloves noticed more light seeping between the gaps in the tarpaulin onto the woodwork of the window he was rubbing down. He straightened up and scratched his head, shifting soft bulges of hidden dreadlocks under his brown woolly hat. With long carefully-shaped fingernails he pulled his glove away from the wrist to look at his watch and calculated he had only one more hour to work. He ran a pale pink tongue along his lips and started whistling ‘My Night Nurse’.
Tuesday 18th December 3 pm
In a shop in South End Green, a woman was speaking on the phone with a slight German accent.
‘Here is Ute at ‘Threads’. Hi. Is it too late now to make a delivery before Christmas?……… Number 19740A, the cavemen design……… OK, fine, it is not a problem. I’ll send the order over. Thank you.’ She put the phone down and noticed the moment of sunshine on the pavement outside.
When she came out of her shop, a 24 bus was slowing down as it reached the bus stop. Freddie jumped off it with open arms and crash-landed into her.
‘Woah! Sorry, sorry! I overstepped the mark!’ Freddie backed away lowering his arms. Then he held out one hand: ‘But since I’m here, would you care to dance?’
The woman’s lined face rearranged itself into an expression of mock formality and she raised one eyebrow as she declined with her head. ‘I thank you for the offer.’
‘I am to be guillotined this afternoon at Tyburn,’ said Freddie. ‘Tell everyone concerned that I forgive them for everything and I hope they feel guilty for the way they have treated me.’
She gave a broad smile. ‘Ach! A general absolution! This is what we need most of all.’
‘What else on a day like today?’ said Freddie. ‘Only polar bears seem to find the weather too hot.’ He tossed his long locks back from his face. ‘Since my invitation is rejected, as usual, I hope you will excuse me. I have a date with a snowman.’
Her eyes followed him as he ran off towards Hampstead Heath, sliding on any smooth patches of snow on his route.
Tuesday 18th December 3 pm
In the library, Morton was sitting at a desk by the window making notes on a book about E M Forster. In his neat italics he wrote: ‘H H Waggoner (1966) comments that the rooms of Henry James do not usually have a view… the eye of the reader is not carried beyond social/human concerns. E M Forster’s novels have more sense of the unknown…’
He broke from writing to scratch his lower leg, then carried on: ‘He suggests E M Forster uses coincidence to enlarge our vision, to show the connections between humans and to help us sense the interdependence of “matter” and “spirit”.… The coincidences are not without cause, but we can’t explain the cause.’
Morton put down his Parker ballpoint pen, pulled up his right trouser leg and examined three small red flea bites just above the ankle. ‘Bloody dog,’ he murmured, and went back to writing: ‘Death in Forster’s novels opens fissures in our illusion of security, through which we glimpse the dark vistas surrounding us…’
His page lightened. He looked up and noticed the crack opening in the sky outside the window. The brief moment of sunshine reached his desk in a pale shaft.
He leant back, sighed and started doodling on the bottom half of his sheet of paper. He drew a cartoon dog with fleas jumping off it. The dog was hairy and was curled round trying to use its back leg to dislodge the fleas. Morton started adding speech bubbles to the fleas. ‘This dog stinks!’ said one. ‘I’m getting out of hair,’ said another. He drew more speech bubbles and added: ‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,’ ‘Just hopping out, back soon,’ and ‘This dog is irritating.’
Tuesday 18th December 3 pm
On the kitchen floor Dusty was scratching herself with a brisk regular movement of her rear leg. Anthea had the back door open and was sitting on the step. The small garden was trimmed with white: a thin layer of mottled snow on what was once the lawn, with odd spikes of wintry grass peeking through; a thicker crust on the low brick walls on either side.
The diagonally-edged bone was cupped in the palm of Anthea’s left hand as she held it out towards the short moment of sunlight.
Dusty stopped scratching and came over to sniff.
‘No,’ said Anthea. ‘This is not one of yours.’ She closed her fingers around the bone and fondled the dog’s ear with the other hand. A wet nose burrowed into Anthea’s palm. ‘It’s thousands of years old. And I think it’s trying to tell me something. About danger. You probably understand. Most people don’t.’
Dusty rolled onto the ground of the patio where the snow had been cleared and offered her tummy, her long forepaws folded neatly in a begging position. Anthea rubbed the tummy.
‘Yes! Clever dog. You animals sense things. It was goats discovered the oracle of Delphi. It was.’ The dog whined with delight. ‘Goats acted strangely when they went near its chasm, they realized it was a special place. They did! That’s what Diodorus Siculus says anyway. Perhaps he had a goat.’ She stopped rubbing the tummy and the dog leapt to her feet. ‘Good girl. And the Greeks used to tell the future from the flight of birds. And from bones. You can probably sense things too. Yes! Good dog!’ Dusty went back to scratching herself.
Anthea opened the fingers of her left hand again and looked at the bone. ‘Whereas me, I’m too stupid. I can’t hear what it’s saying. I hold it and all I get a picture of is hills and stones and stones and hills. What does that tell me? Greece is full of hills and stones.’
Above her the clouds rolled in and closed the window of sunshine.
6
To Hell and Back
Tuesday 18th December 1990 3.10 pm
‘Never thought I’d be glad to get a pair of socks for Christmas,’ Mandy says as we walk back into the cell with Beverley. The key turns in the lock behind us. The cell looks bleak and the windows are already getting dark.
‘They’re men’s ones,’ says Debs, scrutinizing Mandy’s feet from her bed.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers. My feet were fucking freezing.’
‘So how d’you get them?’
‘She was handing them out, weren’t she, Corinne? The massage teacher.’ Mandy sits down on her bed and pulls her feet up after her. ‘The teacher goes “They’re not new, but they’re clean, help yourselves if you need a pair.”’ Mandy strokes her toes through the thick navy cotton.
‘So what d’ya do?’ asks Debs.
‘Massage and that. It was OK, we had a laugh. It cheered us up, eh Bev?’
‘I doan know ’bout you, but I would not say it made me cheerful.’ Beverley lies down on her bed and pulls the covers over her. ‘It set me to thinking.’
‘Come on,’ says Debs, ‘I’ve been stuck here for ages on my tod. Tell us all about it. Every little fucking thing. Who’s in, who’s down, what lucky sods got a massage…’
‘We all did,’ says Mandy. ‘I only put my name down to get out of the cell, but it was better than what I thought. They put us in the dining room. All the tables stacked up one end and the chairs round the edge. She had a big pile of mats to lie on. “Hi,” she goes “I’m Ren” – or some weird name like that – �
�Massage may be able to help your aches and pains, and relaxation can help you get through life in this shithouse,” except she didn’t use them words. How’d she put it, Corinne?’
I’m sitting on my bed enjoying a new sensation in my body. Something different pumping round it that isn’t alcohol. Something like sunshine. I don’t feel like talking. I shrug, ‘You tell it.’
Mandy carries on, ‘Next in comes that Kanga with the dark hair.’
‘The good looking one?’ asks Debs.
‘He’s an arsehole, don’t even think about it. Lisa said she was curled up on her bed the other night clucking bad, the bit where you want to die, and he looks through the hatch and laughs at her. Bloody sadist. That’s why they apply for these jobs.’
‘Why do they have men working in here?’ I ask.
‘Fuck knows. Don’t care about our modesty, do they?’ Mandy laughs.
‘So what he come in for?’ Debs asks.
‘Said the tables were blocking the panic button. For her to press in case we all went wild.’
‘They think we’re animals.’
‘So there we are in the dining room, all the mess from that fight cleared up, stank a bit though, didn’t it, Corinne? Disinfectant. Miss brought some plastic cups and water. “It’s from outside,” she goes, “Help yourself if you need some,” She had a headscarf, looked like she didn’t have no hair. Weird.
‘Then she goes, “You need to warm up. It might be easier if you take your shoes off.” That weird Janice with the long white lacy dress on, you seen her boots? White, up to the knee, with high heels? She couldn’t get them off and the teacher was helping her, tugging and tugging. When she finally gets them off, Janice can’t stand up and Miss has to heave her up off the floor.
‘Then Miss switches on the ghetto blaster. It wasn’t exactly rave music. Tamla Motown. “I’m Gonna Make you Love me,” her generation music. The girls were all like, “I can’t do without a fag for an hour,” and she goes “You might if your body could relax a bit,” and they’re going, “I’m not dancing to that, Miss,” “Got any House?” and she goes, “Listen and see if you can loosen up” and in the end most of us were doing a bit. That honey music kind of slides into you. That Janice is waving her arms about going, “I used to be able to do a handstand on one hand as a girl.” Then guess who comes in late? My mate Michelle from Peckham. My mate from school. I didn’t even know she was inside. The crime rate must have gone right down in south London with the two of us in here. She only goes and takes her track suit off and she’s dancing round in her bra, showing off her tattoos. One of the screws looks through the window and he’s rolling his eyes.
‘We’re all moving round and Ronnie’s staring at the teacher, muttering, “She needs a good shafting.”
‘Ronnie?’ asks Debs.
‘Butch-looking woman. Wears shorts. Thick red legs and Doc Martins. She’s got eight kids, half of them are inside.’
‘Ain’t seen her,’ says Debs.
‘Right now, she’s only on sleeping pills. Mind you, she drinks like a fish. Anyway, she got the hump about something and she tries to put her oar in. After the music goes on, she stands in front of the class and starts shouting. She goes, “Now you’ve all got to do what I say.” Then she goes “I can’t dance” and she starts dancing right behind the teacher imitating her, bum to bum, as if they were doing it. Teacher just turns round cool as you like with a smile and carries on dancing facing her as if they were in a club. Ronnie didn’t give her no more grief after that.
‘Then she gets us in a circle and you’re meant to be wiggling your feet, then your ankles, then your legs and all that. Warming up. Gets to the pelvis, she’s got us all doing the old pelvic movement, back and forward, the one we can all do.
‘“I know this one,” goes Michelle. “I’ve had private lessons. Harder! Harder!”
‘“OK,” goes the teacher, “Now see if you can do it softer, more fluid.”
‘Michelle starts going, “Oo, I’m a ballet dancer, I’m a ballet dancer…” Daft cow.
‘After all that Miss puts some chairs in a circle and we all sit down and she asks us if we got anything on our minds.
‘“Heroin, Miss,” goes that Cleo and we all laughed. Cleo, you know, the one in the pin-striped trousers.
‘“Apart from that,” Miss goes, “anything worrying you, like about yourself or your body or anything else.” Red rag to a bull. We’re all sitting there, twitching and shaking, shivering though it’s like an oven in there, load of whining woosies. Don’t all talk at once. It was like a tidal wave.
‘It starts with Cleo going on about how she’s been stripsearched three times in four days.
‘Then there was that pale-looking Irish woman. Kathleen. Long dark hair. She was whingeing because she needs a liver transplant and it’s been postponed because she hasn’t got enough white blood cells. She was in a right state. Missing her kids. Join the club. She’s doing five years for slicing up her boyfriend and his girl. Says she wishes she’d killed them and she’s got plans for when she gets out. If she lives that long.
‘She set them all off, going on about their kids. Miss is going: “Try to give time, to listen to each other.”
‘Then little Jules chips in.’
‘Jules?’ Debs screws up her nose.
Mandy stops in mid-flow and turns to Debs. ‘Juliette, calls herself Jules, don’t ya know her? Shaved head and baggies. Rings in her face. She says to Kathleen, “What do you want a boyfriend for anyway? There’s loads of cool women around.” She’s shagged most of them too. Little tart. “This prison is a really safe place,” she goes, “I come in here when I need a square meal.” Makes you wonder what she eats on the out.
‘Ronnie goes, “We all turn in this game. I never thought I would, but I did.”
‘Bev goes, “I got something on my mind constantly but it too personal to share.” I knew what it was, ’cause she told me. But I didn’t say nothing, did I? You can trust me, see! Sometimes.
‘Then Janice starts in her posh voice, running her fingers through her hair, la de da. Griping about how she lost some days remission. She was showing her arms – cut marks all over them, worse than yours, Debs, but then she’s twenty years older in’t she? She was going on about how much she’s got bottled up inside her and nowhere to let it out and sometimes a little thing makes you want to burst. She’s on anti-depressants, but they ain’t doing much good if you ask me. She can talk, that woman, I thought no-one else was going to get a word in.
‘There was a foreign woman. Can’t remember her name. From Portugal, I think. Tiny thing, skinny as a rake, little pretty face, delicate like my Mum’s best china. Tight yellow trousers. She got conned by some arsehole into bringing gear in through Customs. There was an Asian woman, can’t pronounce the name, she was worried about her court case. She keeps going “I want to go home. I want to go home.”
‘“Not me,” goes Ronnie. She reckons this is her first chance to get some time for herself. First time for months, she reckons.
‘And that sporty clean-looking girl. In a tracksuit. Jamie Lee. Had a towel on her head, was just washing her hair when they called her to the class. She was going like, she’s twenty-four and she wants to be a mother, she reckons it’s time she sorted her life out. Says she trained as a dancer and look at her now. She goes: “I’m clean at the minute and I want to stay clean. I want to find another way to overcome the pain and anger.”
‘All moaning on.
‘Anyway, after a while the teacher gets us doing some deep breathing.’
‘Heavy breathing?’ Debs giggles. ‘Here, how come you remember everything they said?’
‘I remember a bit,’ said Mandy, ‘and the rest I’m filling in with the general idea. Got a problem with that?’ She pauses. ‘You asked for what happened blow by blow, didn’t ya? You’ll get a blow on the nut if you carry on interrupting.’
‘Keep your hair on,’ mumbles Debs.
Mandy picks up her story. �
��Then Miss spreads out the mats and gets us to lie down on them. She goes, “Now you’ve got a few things off your chests, we’re going to try some relaxation. Lie down and close your eyes.” There was a racket going on outside, you know, keys clattering and that, screws in the corridor talking loud. Miss goes, “Notice the sounds in the prison, send your attention to those sounds.” I can make out some Kanga going on about his Escort. And another one banging on about Paul McCartney on Wogan last week. And then she goes, “Listen to the noises outside the prison.” I could hear the traffic on the main road and a dog barking somewhere. Weird what you notice when you’re not busy thinking about loads of other shit.
‘Then somebody in the next door cell starts shouting out the window: “Come on, Donna, you know you want it! Oi! Can you hear me?” she’s going. Don’t know who she was yelling to, must have been someone in the block across the yard. “I’ve got the hots for you,” she’s yelling, “If you can hear me, wave something out the window. Oi! Donna! Wave something! Anything, your knickers will do, Oi, Donna!” and the rest.
‘We all laughed. Miss laughed too. And she goes, “Now let your attention come back to the sounds in the room, the breathing and that,” and then she’s telling us to listen to the sounds in our own bodies. I tried not to fart. And she’s going “Find a quiet place inside you.”
‘Ronnie asks her what is a quiet place inside you.
‘And Michelle goes “It’s like meditation, ain’t it, Miss? It’s spiritual, I like all that. I’m psychic.”
‘Ronnie goes, “Yer a psycho.”
‘“No.” says Michelle. She starts telling them she knows things. What people are thinking. What’s gonna happen. She just knows.
‘She’s getting on Ronnie’s tits and Ronnie goes, “Can someone shut that witch up?”
‘Michelle carries on, saying how she can tell the future. And she goes, “Like Mandy here, I know she’s going to have a really big shock, a big problem.”
‘I go, “I got problems already, you don’t need to be psychic to see that.”
