Something Quite Beautiful

by Amanda Prowse

  Keegan spotted him first. ‘Oh God, here comes Hooray, where can we hide?’

  Warren, as ever, had sympathy for the underdog. ‘He’d seek you out wherever you went. He’s alright though—not like us, granted, but not any harm. I feel a bit sorry for the bloke, I can’t imagine he fits in anywhere.’

  ‘You are turning into my Nan! And the reason he doesn’t fit in anywhere is because he is a complete and utter dickhead.’

  ‘Hey, Bros!’ Henry appeared with a book in one hand and the other raised in the high-five position. They both declined the offer of a slap on the palm, and Warren visibly cringed. Keegan laughed as if Henry had more than proved his point.

  ‘Still with us, Hooray?’ Keegan winked at Warren. How long it would take before Hooray finally lost his marbles was a regular topic of conversation.

  ‘Yep, all present and correct, just doing my thing, hanging out. Who’s a complete and utter dickhead?’

  ‘Oh, one of the guards.’ Keegan smirked, he hadn’t realised Henry was close enough to hear.

  ‘What are you reading?’ Warren used the question as a diversion tactic.

  ‘It’s The Anglers Guide to River Fishing.’ Henry held up the cover, on which a large salmon jumped in an elegant arc, diamond droplets of water glinting from his pearlescent scales.

  Keegan laughed. ‘Well, that’ll be useful in here, did they not have one on bird watching?’

  ‘Ha! Funny man and talking of birds, I want a word with you, Binns!’

  ‘Oh, er, right. Fire away—although I should warn you I don’t know much about birds.’

  ‘No, that’s the one class you’re not taking right?’ Keegan grinned. ‘Wildlife studies? He’s taking everything else though, he’s a proper swot!’

  Warren shook his head. It was pointless trying to convince Keegan to enrol on anything, he had given up trying over a year ago now.

  ‘Ah, but I do not, in fact, refer to the feathered variety.’ Henry clarified.

  ‘Well, in that case, you must want to talk to me, cos when it comes to the fairer sex, I am more of an expert than Binns.’ Keegan laughed.

  ‘Thank you for the offer, Keegan, but its Warren I need to speak to. The question I have for you is this: who’s Amy?’

  Warren felt his pulse quicken. How the hell…? He shrugged, hoping his silence would be enough to shut Henry up. It wasn’t.

  ‘Come on man spill the beans—sharesy is fairsy. All we have in here is the joy of talking about it, so give!’

  ‘I dont know what you’re talking about.’ Warren turned his attention back to the game of basketball, motioning to Henry to move aside and stop blocking his view.

  Henry wasn’t done. ‘You are not getting out of it that easily. I walked past your room yesterday and peeked in, you were kipping like a baby and you started moaning, then… drum roll please... you called out Amy! Lucky, lucky Binns, I thought. I hope Amy is as good as he is making her sound. We could all do with a little slice of Amy around here, if you get my drift.’

  The flash of crimson behind Warren’s eyes clouded his view and his judgement. Fists clenched, he leapt on Henry, who screamed as he hit the floor with a bone-shattering crack. The guards appeared immediately, and by the time anyone realised what was happening, Warren was flat on the floor, his arms and legs bound with plastic cable ties that bit into his flesh and Henry, groaning loudly and clutching at his shoulder, was being carted off to the sanatorium on a stretcher, his arm hanging limply at his side at an odd angle. His book lay abandoned on the floor. Warren’s breath came in shallow pants. How dare he, how fucking dare he? He was vaguely aware of Keegan’s voice telling anyone that would listen that he had been provoked.

  ‘Henry started it, I saw everything! Warren’s not a scrapper, he’s my mate! Henry’s been asking for it, really winding him up for a long time now, in fact since we arrived. Any man would have done the same I swear! Warren ain’§t that sort, please, just let him calm down here, we can sort this out, there’s no need to take it any further. He’s my mate, please...’

  Warren bucked and twisted, trying to loosen the ties at his wrists and ankles but the more he pulled the deeper they cut. He listened to the tone of Keegan’s voice and couldn’t place the emotion. It was only later, as he lay, still bound, on his bed and replayed the scene in his head, that he realised his friend had sounded frightened.

  Warren was woken by the sound of his door being slid open. His eyelids were heavy, his head pounded and he felt exhausted. He had lost all sense of time; he might have been confined to his cell for minutes or hours.

  Angelo stood in the doorway. ‘Let’s get you up, Binns. Someone wants a word with you.’ He snipped the plastic ties and Warren lay for a minute, allowing the blood to flow back into his limbs. His whole body shook at the thought of going back into solitary. He didn’t know if he could hack it. He closed his eyes, fighting the desire to beg, knowing it made little difference, not now it had been escalated. What was it Bo said, I’ve been here since the beginning and I’m telling you my friend, that for all her cool politeness and fancy shirts, Justice is a cold, cold bitch...

  ‘Should I bring anything with me?’ For some reason, an image of Bo’s belongings in a black bin liner flashed into his mind.

  ‘You won’t be needing anything.’

  Warren felt his bowel spasm and fought hard to control the desire to relieve himself. It was his turn to be frightened. Suddenly the idea of solitary did not seem so bad; he guessed that there were things at Glenculloch that were far, far worse.

  He pulled on his bright blue tracksuit bottoms and matching jacket. He looked in the small rectangular mirror over his sink and raked his hair with his fingertips. The purple bruises on his knuckles stood out, marking him as an aggressor, he could only think what this might mean. His heart beat loudly in his ears.

  Clad in the usual restraints for arms and legs, Warren followed Angelo’s slow progression to the Principal’s office in something like a trance, his teeth chattering and his legs swaying as if with a will of their own. The adrenalin of the encounter with Henry had subsided, leaving him weakened, reflective and strangely tearful.

  Angelo knocked on the door and entered. The Principal sat behind her desk with a silver pen in her hand.

  ‘Thank you, Angelo; you may remove Mr Binns’ ironwear.’

  Angelo sat him in a chair and unlocked his handcuffs and leg-irons, before leaving him alone with the Principal. Warren didn’t want him to go, figuring that at least with a witness, she was unlikely to harm him. Her words from his induction day nearly two years earlier floated into his mind: There is not one angle, one nook or one cranny, with the exception of my office, that is not monitored twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. This is where they would do it. Warren gulped.

  It felt like an age before she placed the pen on the desk and spoke. ‘Are you afraid of me, Mr Binns?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I am... Ma... Mrs... Principal.’ His teeth shook in his gums. Warren did not want to die.

  She leant back in her chair and studied him. ‘It’s good that you are afraid, to know fear is what allows us to know peace. The fear of the fear can keep it at bay.’

  He had no idea what this meant, but nodded nonetheless.

  ‘How is your hand? It looks rather nasty.’

  Warren looked at the grape-like lumps on his knuckles; he flexed his swollen fingers, which throbbed.

  ‘It’s okay. Thank you, it looks worse than it is.’

  She breathed deeply. ‘Is there anything you would like to say to me, Mr Binns?’

  Warren looked at his feet and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry about what happened in the atrium. I’m really sorry. It all happened so quickly. He went too far, he did, but I know what he’s like; I should have walked away, cooled off or something. I’ve known him since day one and I shouldn’t have resorted to violence, I know that’s not the answer. I should have just walked away. Is Henry alright, did I hurt him? His sho
ulder looked pretty messed up.’

  Edwina Justice did not respond to his question, it was as if Warren hadn’t asked. ‘You are right; you should not have resorted to violence.’

  Warren stared at his feet.

  The Principal sat upright in her chair as though this required her full attention. ‘I would like you to tell me about the murder you committed and I would like you to give me a bit of background as to why. Can you do that?’

  He nodded.

  She gestured towards him with her palm, inviting him to begin.

  Warren took a deep breath. He didn’t know where to start. It wasn’t easy to talk about this stuff, and he had tried to bury certain details, many of which had resurfaced earlier with Henry’s words.

  ‘It’s hard to know how to start really, Ma’am.’

  ‘I’m sure it is, but please do try.’ Her voice was clipped and matter-of-fact, as if she was asking for his address rather than forcing him to pick open the stitches on a painful wound and relive the agony of that day, that moment.

  Warren wriggled in the seat, but his discomfort was nothing that a physical shift could cure. He could see that he had no alternative but to talk.

  ‘I... I grew up in Sheffield on the moors. It was quite bleak, but I loved it. I used to walk for miles, I was always out somewhere and at night I would sit looking out of my bedroom window and I could see the lights of the city twinkling down below us; they looked like stars that had fallen. I loved going to school, I know a lot of kids hate it, but I didn’t. I loved it. I mean, I didn’t really have friends and I was laughed at and all that, but I wanted to learn whatever they could teach me and I got lunch every day and that was nice. I used to watch the clock go round, waiting for lunch time.’ He felt his cheeks redden at the admission. ‘We were quite poor. We were very poor. It was just me, my mum and my Nan in the house and then just me and my mum after my Nan passed away. I never had a dad, but that was okay, because I’d never had one. I didn’t realise how poor we were until I saw how other people lived, if that makes any sense. I kind of looked after me and my mum and then Amy came along, that’s my baby sister.’ He looked up and smiled as he said her name. ‘There was still no bloke on the scene, but Amy was like a brilliant new present, I couldn’t believe that something so small could take up so much space, but she did and noisy, cor, she went from bawling all night as a baby to singing all day as a toddler, she hasn’t shut up yet I don’t think!’

  Edwina swallowed the bubble of envy that rose in her throat. You lucky thing, Mr Binns, your lucky mum! Oh to live in a house where a baby filled it with noise and a toddler filled it with song!

  Warren continued, unaware of the effect of his words. ‘She brightened up the place and was sharp as a button, smart, a proper little mimic. All she ever wanted was for me to read books to her; she liked that better than anything. She used to follow me everywhere, whatever the weather. I used to say she drove me mad and try and make her go back to the house, but I liked it really. She’d make me presents, like a picture of an owl made out of pasta that she stuck on with glue, and cards with sweet wrappers stuck on the front. I put the owl one up on my wall. She was like my own little fan club and she relied on me, so even though neither of us had a dad, it was like she did in some ways, because she had me and I told her I would always look after her.’ Warren paused and exhaled, he looked at his fingers which lay knitted in his lap. ‘And then when I was fourteen things changed a lot for me, for us. My mum hooked up with this bloke, Dave. He was alright at first and it was nice to get things, I must admit. He used to bring us sweets and he bought me a pair of football boots and I was dead chuffed, I’d never had a pair before. He bought Amy a pram for her dolls and that made me really happy, cos she never had stuff like that either. They got married and I was happy to have a dad at first, it was a really good day, my mum laughed all day long and I had to wear a suit. I thought it was the start of something really good, but he turned out to be a lazy pig, a really nasty piece of work. By the time I realised what he was really like it was too late. My mum had kind of shrunk, she just went quiet, and he called all the shots, even though it was our house, where we had always lived way before him, it was like he owned the place. We were all frightened of him. He started to knock my mum about and then started on me and I could have coped with that, I did cope with that for a number of years.’ Warren closed his eyes briefly and saw the fist coming towards his face; his mum’s voice in background, softly begging, Please Dave, leave him alone... no... no more...

  ‘I planned on leaving, I worked hard at school so I could get taken on in an apprenticeship, I was doing okay. I was just going to disappear one day and leave him wondering where I’d got to, not that he’d have cared. I wanted to take Amy with me, I was trying to work out how I could do it, just waiting for the chance. I think about that now and I can see that it wasn’t practical, I don’t know how I would have looked after her and done an apprenticeship and we didn’t have anywhere to live, plus of course my mum would probably have come and got her back. But, it was weird, it was like I couldn’t think straight and in my head, I convinced myself it was all possible and I was just waiting for the right time to escape. One day, I came home from college early and...’ Warren swallowed the sharp pull of tears that slid down his throat. He exhaled through bloated cheeks, trying to keep it together. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay, Warren, you take your time.’

  ‘I came home early and he was laying face down on the sofa. I could smell the drink on him, but that wasn’t unusual, he went up the club most lunchtimes and got pissed and then he’d sleep all afternoon until he could go back to the club and drink some more. I thought he was on his own, I was going to tiptoe up the stairs past him and leave him to it, but he wasn’t.’ Warren paused to swipe at the tears that now coursed freely down his cheeks, angry and embarrassed. ‘He wasn’t on his own. He was on top of Amy. I could see her little hand sticking out from under his fat gut; she was still holding her blanky, gripping it tightly. She’d painted her little fingernails and the polish had worn off; I could see these little blobs of pink, sparkly paint, hanging onto her blanky. She was seven years old—’ his mouth was contorted with crying now ‘—I didn’t think about what to do, I just did it. I ran to the cupboard under the stairs and grabbed the chisel from my toolbox. I went back into the front room and I reached under his gut and I stuck it in him, up under his ribs, just once, but I stabbed him hard. I meant to kill him, I did. I wanted him dead and that’s what I told the judge. She was seven and she was the only thing in our shitty little family that wasn’t broken, she was the only thing that was perfect and I had made a promise to look after her. But I broke that promise, I broke it, because I didn’t keep her safe, did I?’ Warren’s face was red and blotchy, and he hung his head to wipe furiously at his eyes.

  The Principal didn’t say a word, and so Warren carried on, injecting a false note of brightness into his voice as if trying to lighten the mood. ‘So that’s it! And now I’m here. And when Henry said something not very nice about Amy, I couldn’t handle it. I don’t mind a joke or the piss-taking that you expect in here, but not her, nothing about her. She’s just a little girl and she’s already been through too much.’ He fought to get his breath under control.

  Edwina Justice swung her leather swivel chair around and contemplated the collage on the corkboard behind her. The two sat in silence.

  It was some moments before she spoke. ‘I think when the very worst thing that can happen, happens, it puts your whole life in perspective in a way that’s impossible for others to understand.’ She pictured the moment Alan’s hand had gone limp inside her palm, she had squeezed it tightly and then tapped it with her fingertips, trying to bring him back. His eyes stared ahead, his jaw slack and she remembered asking him, Where have you gone? To which, of course, he didn’t reply.

  Warren listened.

  ‘I haven’t experienced anything like you, but my husband died; he got sick very suddenly a
nd died within two weeks. That was nearly twenty years ago. We had so much yet to achieve and I watched all our hopes and plans disappear in a heartbeat. It shocked me then and it shocks me now. I miss him every single day, I still expect him to phone me or to walk through the door and every time I remember that it is never going to happen, I start to grieve all over again. You would think it might get easier, but it doesn’t. I used to wonder what the point of carrying on was. It all felt so pointless when the person I wanted to live with was no longer here, the person who gave my life meaning, who welcomed me home. But then I realised that life is precious and you have to carry on, no matter how hard or how hurt or how much you long to disappear. You have to carry on, because life is precious.’ She turned the chair to face Warren. ‘Do you understand that?’ He nodded. She continued, ‘I believe some people are born bad...’

  Warren heard his stepdad’s words, You useless little bastard, just like your shit of a father...

  ‘And I believe some people simply find themselves in bad situations.’

  Warren nodded again, not trusting himself to speak, he got it, he was born bad. He half wanted it to be over, Go on get out your gun, just shoot me, I know I’m a useless little bastard and I know I failed, I broke my promise. I said I’d keep her safe and I didn’t. He hurt her and I wasn’t there to stop him...