The Society Game
Page 31
Trish was a big woman with short cropped hair, baggy jeans and football tops. She would shout from across the canteen to either greet or swear at someone. Depending on their response it determined whether she would express deep love for them or threaten a fight if they didn’t show respect. My eyes were permanently glued to the floor and I would pray the guards would intervene before another fight erupted around me.
Occasionally I saw your father who was there out of a sense of duty and love for my sister. He was awkward and he had very little to say to me other than the obligatory, ‘How are you doing?’ and updates on my case from my lawyer. I was grateful for his visits; Colin is a kind man and I’m sorry I sent this tsunami through your family. It’s a shame I had to put you through the agony of the trial. If I could have skipped trawling through the details of my actions in front of twelve men and women and instead elected merely to hear my sentence from the judge then I would have. I knew I was guilty when I pulled the trigger, I should have just been shuffled away to Durham prison the moment I was arrested.
So here I am, my dearest nephew. I am currently sitting at a desk with a small wardrobe to the side of me, a small thin single bed behind me, a small window high up the ceiling in a small peach-coloured cell at Durham prison where I have been since the day I was sentenced.
I’ve settled well into the routine and, unlike in Holloway, I’ve actually made a friend, Sue. Sue has taught me how to survive the boredom of living in a peach box.
She is helping me in many ways to remain calm and to shake away the depression I feel. It’s still there and when it comes it’s overwhelming and crippling to the point I cannot get out of bed, but Sue ensures I don’t leave a body mark in my bed the way I used to as the wife of Mark Mathew Hopkins.
But, today is a good day; today I’m writing to my nephew and later I have a visit from my James who has ventured up with his family. He has two daughters, his eldest, he says, may be bright enough to come to Durham University to study maths. I hope she’ll make it here then I could look out and imagine, in the very far distance, a pretty blonde girl in an undergraduate black gown, and I will smile for Rae.
On the wall in front of my desk are speckled flecks of old blue-tack from past residents. I’ve picked most of them off to make use of it to stick my pictures on the wall. There are five in total: one of my parents, another of Janet and Colin on their beautiful wedding day, one is of you Jason, wearing a blue sailor outfit on a beach in Cornwall. You were no more than three at the time and I can still hear the swell of the tide behind as you ran in and out chasing the waves. I can also hear your laughter, your sweet happy giggles that still mesmerise and soothe me even though, now, this holiday is a mere memory.
Another picture is of my James in Australia when we went to a concert in Adelaide, he’s raising a beer in the picture and, happily, I can clearly hear the words of love he declared to me on that day.
The final picture is of a plump ginger-haired girl. I’m sulking in the picture but around me are my parents looking at me adoringly, Janet is sitting in front of me with a huge smile and she is holding my hand. I see now that my sister was my support and she loved me but I wanted more than my family had to offer. What that ‘more’ was I didn’t know back then, but I found a possible answer in my magazines, which pointed towards happiness in the arms of riches. I felt loved by society but ignored and ridiculed by the people I shared this life with. If I had just accepted that I had everything I needed in the love of my family then maybe I would have been part of your life a little more and I would have recognised the love from James and realised that I loved him, and I would be visiting Durham as the mother of an undergraduate and not as an inmate of one of England’s prisons.
So, my final words to you are to love; recognise where it is and hold onto it. Love is not found in a bank balance, fine clothes, fast cars or large houses but it’s found in the quickening beat of your heart that tells you the person you are with is the person who will help to make life happy without the need to wear a smile but instead, to feel a smile.
Be happy sweet nephew and love.
My love,
Aunt Olivia
P.S. Please visit!
I’ve finished my beer, folded my aunt’s letter and returned it to my pocket. She talked of the society she lived in but I don’t recognise the people she spoke about. She was like a peacock amongst ducks. Her plumage was grander than anyone around her but she stood alone with her feathers and gold shining in the river reeds.
Around me are various members of London society: two men laughing over an incident in their office; there’s an old man deep in thought whilst enjoying his one pint of Guinness a day; and there’s a labourer in orange overalls napping in the afternoon sun with his pint of beer on the pub bench beside him. I’m watching this stranger sleeping and my mind drifts to the promotion that I’d been working towards for nearly a year. I’d laboured for months in front of my computer. I had a greater relationship with my desk than I did with Jessica. I missed seasons as I went to work before sunrise and left work after sunset. But today I learnt that the company I worked tirelessly for had chosen an outside candidate over me.
‘It was a tough decision,’ said my boss. His foot continuously tapped the floor causing his knee to bob up and down. Every so often his hand would rest on top to try to still it. But it pounded away.
‘We just decided that you weren’t quite there yet, Jason. There will be other opportunities. Consider this a time of reflection, as although your work is excellent maybe, and I’m only saying this to help you, maybe there are areas you can improve on.’ His knee pounded away. ‘There is the head of statistical accounting that maybe you could consider?’
This job was a side-step; the same grade and money just a different department, it’s known in the industry as flat-lining.
I was initially angry that I’d sacrificed a year of my life all for a humiliating refusal from a boss who cared as much about me as I do for him. But as I stare at the man sitting in front of me, content and asleep, and I think about the letter from my aunt, then maybe the loss of this job is not as crap as I initially thought. Fate was somewhere in that room; he’d not let himself known to me but I was confident he was there.
Dad told me from an early age that the secret to happiness was to find the right woman and, “when you’ve found her son, look after her and never think that there is something better under another woman’s skirt.”
I know the right woman for me is Jessica.
I spied her in the distance walking towards me. As she neared, my heart beat faster and I felt my smile grow across my face. I stood to greet her and when she was close enough my beautiful girl came into my arms.
‘I’m quitting my job,’ I burst out.
‘Seriously?’ she said.
‘Just decided it… Come travelling with me.’
‘…Why not!’ she replied. ‘Where to?’
‘Australia,’ I said and I felt her smile.
Society expects us all to conform to what it dictates is a suitable life, where we work to add pounds into our bank to buy the right house and ideal car and fill our wardrobe with what it tells us we should wear – regardless of whether it suits us. We’re each just a person living on this planet for the briefest of moments; just a blink in the history of time and we are gone, our possessions are thrown away or given to another without a thought for their origin. But if we’re lucky, whilst we’re here, enjoying the air we breathe, then perhaps we will recognise that the only people who truly care about who we are as a person, are not society, but the ones who love us and whom we choose to love in return. For me, they are my parents, my good friends and my beloved Jessica whom I will cherish and care for until the day I return to stardust.