by M J Dees
“I’m freezing,” Annabel confessed.
“This heating doesn’t work properly. I’m going to have a word with Allen, and he has the cheek to complain about the water.”
“Not tonight. Leave it till tomorrow, please.”
Chapter Twenty-Five - 11 years 10 months before the collapse
25th December 2040
Jim arrived with the smallest Christmas tree Annabel had ever seen. Olivia was still very excited as she always was, no matter how sparse their Christmas celebrations..
“It was the best I could do,” Jim apologised.
“At least we have booze,” said Annabel, showing the row of bottles on the table.
“Let’s get this party started,” said Mila, who entered without knocking.
Jim had made his usual nut roast and, given the shortage of meat, there were no complaints.
Annabel opened a package Mia Rodriguez had sent, which contained proper coffee, tea, and hot chocolate.
“I have a present too,” said Jim, retrieving a smaller package from its hiding place. “I got it from Wyatt who I think felt guilty for deducting money from the rent for repairs.”
Annabel opened it to reveal a selection of cheeses.
“Nice,” she said.
They drank the booze and ate the cheese. Eventually, even Mila stumbled back to her room, Olivia fell asleep and Annabel slipped into an oddly sombre mood.
“What is it?” asked Jim.
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. I can tell.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, look at you.”
“Leave me alone.”
“What is it? Tell me,” but the booze had gone to his head, and he had lost his patience. He got up and left, shutting the door a little hard for the early hour. He walked along the landing and was embarrassed to find Hunter sitting on the stairs.
“They become unbearable after the alcohol, don’t they?” Hunter said.
Jim just smiled apologetically, neither wanting to confirm or deny the assertion.
“Best to give them space,” he continued. “Around this time, Mother rants about the detention centre.”
“It must have been terrible.”
“Feel this,” Hunter pulled back his hair to reveal a scar.
Jim hesitated but, with more encouragement, he reached out and touched what he realised was an indentation.
“The detention centre?” asked Jim.
Hunter nodded.
“After a while, a first aid attendant gave me a dirty towel.”
“How long were you there for?”
“Six weeks. There were ten thousand packed in there. Nothing to do. We slept on wooden bunks with no blankets. The bunks were so shallow, you couldn’t sit up, only lie down. There was scarcely any water to drink and no water to wash. People were collecting rainwater until eventually we could buy soft drinks. No medical help.”
“You know, we, the British, invented camps in the Boer war, or was it the Zulu war?” said Jim. “They let disease do the job of getting rid of the prisoners, so they didn’t have to waste bullets on executions.”
“Don’t you hate this curfew?” Hunter complained. “Don’t you miss going outside at night and looking up at the stars?”
“You can’t see too many stars in the city, too much light pollution.”
“You can now with the power cuts. They turn off all non-essential lighting at night, you can see the milky way.”
“How do you know?”
“Sometimes I go out and gaze at the stars.”
“Are you not afraid of being caught?”
“Nah, I do it all the time. Come on, let’s go.”
“But it’s a week in custody if we get caught.”
“We won’t get caught. It’s Christmas Day, all the police officers will be at home sleeping off their Turkeys.”
Maybe it was the alcohol swimming around in his veins. Maybe it was the tiredness of being cooped up in the house every evening, only allowed to go out in the mornings, only an hour to do the shopping. Jim felt like a little civil disobedience.
“Okay, let’s do it,” he said, and he descended the stairs, past Hunter, and headed for the front door. “What are you waiting for?”
“Are you sure?” said Hunter, following a few steps behind.
“I thought you did this all the time?”
“It’s just that I didn’t think you would have the balls.”
“I’ll show you who’s got balls,” said Jim, opening the front door and stepping out into the dark, moonlit street. “Come on, then.”
Jim stepped out into the middle of the quiet road and looked up at the clear sky. Hunter had been right. The city was in darkness, illuminated by the moon, which was waning but still bright. The sky was full of stars, like the sky he remembered from the camping trips of his youth.
The front door slamming brought his reverie to an abrupt end. He managed one step towards it before he heard a shout.
“Stop there!”
He turned towards the voice and saw two police officers walking hurriedly towards him. He made to run back to the house, but they stopped him with another shout.
“Stay where you are!”
Following the anti-terror laws, they had armed police officers and their drones, and Jim did not wish to be shot attempting to escape.
“Show me your stretch,” one of them demanded.
“I don’t have one.”
“Don’t you know it’s an offence not to carry your stretch?” said the other.
“No, I mean, I don’t have one. They took it from me.”
“You’re a foreigner.”
“I have foreign heritage.”
“You know it’s against the law to be out after curfew?”
Jim nodded.
“I was just looking at the stars.”
“Where do you live?”
Jim pointed to the front door.
“You’re going to have to come with us.”
“But I live there, I was just looking at the stars.”
“Unless you want to add ‘resisting arrest’ to ‘breaking curfew’ I suggest you come with us.”
“Where to?”
“To the station.”
“But my wife...”
“She’ll work it out.”
The officer took a tight grip on Jim’s upper arm and marched him along to the end of the street, where they bundled him into the back of a van. They drove him, not to the police station as he had expected, but straight to Strangeways, where he was told to wait on a bench in a corridor while the police officers went into a room. After a while, one of them returned with a piece of paper.
“Eight days,” he said.
“What?” said Jim, amazed. “Don’t I even get a phone call?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” said the officer. “We have dealt with the matter, now please come with me.”
They led Jim down a corridor to an enormous iron door on which was printed ‘cells’. The officer rang a bell, and the door opened. An officer led Jim in and immediately left again, and locked the door behind him. He felt like he was in a different world, as if he was in a film. He stood in a large rectangular hall with a glass roof, galleries with metal floors, railings of steel rods, wire nets between the individual floors, to break a fall when required, and rows of dark blue doors set into white walls. Jim sat on a bench next to two men in prison uniforms. One of them whispered something to him in a language he did not understand. A prison officer sat writing in a booth and all around the hall rang with shouts of abuse. Prison officers moved along the galleries and up and down stairs. Jim noticed a door with the words ‘Police Doctor’ and another room, which looked like a cloakroom.
A young prison officer summoned Jim to the cloakroom.
“Remove your belt and shoelaces,” he ordered.
“How am I going to keep my trousers up?”
“With your hands. Cell 89, three flights, go.”
Jim ascended three flights of stairs and found door 89. An officer opened it for him and as he walked through the officer shut it behind him with the sound of a key turning and a latch falling into place.
The thickness of the door dulled the shouting of the hall, which was replaced with a tapping which Jim soon realised was the sound of the man above pacing his cell. Jim copied the rhythm, four long strides from the door to the wall below a high window. From side to side it was three paces, but furniture obstructed the sides. The walls were bare and gave an almost abstract feel to the cell. Jim stood with his back to the door. On his left was a bed, folded up against the wall, legs folded in. A bedcover, a woollen blanket, and a sheet were spread over the edge of the bed.
Jim, fed up with holding his trousers, buttoned them tighter. Opposite the bed was a fold-up table with one leg, a small stool, a shelf with a jug, a bowl, a beaker, half a bar of soap, a spoon and a metal salt shaker. Beneath the shelf were three pegs on one of which hung a towel. In the corner was a stainless steel toilet bowl, which made Jim wish he had brought his haemorrhoid cream. Jim examined the toilet and could not find a method of flushing. The smell of the room was not unpleasant, just stuffy.
Above the door, three pipes ran from wall to wall. One of these must be the method of heating the cell, Jim assumed, because it was not cold, even though this December had been mild, even by recent standards.
A light bulb, high in the ceiling, encased by a wire cage, illuminated the room. In one wall someone had scratched the Unity symbol, elsewhere, someone else presumably had tried to scratch the European stars but had not quite managed a circle.
There were also various names scratched into the walls, but Jim could not read them as he had left his glasses in the house when he had gone outside to look at the stars. He had realised their absence immediately after slamming the door on Annabel, but hadn’t thought he would need them.
Above the table was a sign which looked like it might contain a list of rules. These were also difficult to read without his glasses, but not being short of time, Jim leant close and attempted to decipher them.
The first line read: ‘Prisoners are forbidden from using the Unity greeting.’
That suited Jim very well.
The rest was a timetable.
6 am: Wake up. Tidy cell.
7 am: Morning meal.
11.30 am: Midday meal.
5.30 pm: Evening meal.
7 pm to 6 am: Bed may be used.
Below the timetable another rule: ‘All conversation is forbidden during exercise.’
Jim felt this suited him as well. At least it suggested exercise and fresh air.
The next line read: ‘Applications to the Inspector are to be made through the prison officers.’
Perhaps he could apply for his glasses, and maybe some books.
There was an inspection window in the door, covered by a smaller door.
“Officer,” Jim called, banging on the door.
“What is it,” came a voice as the small door opened.
“I’d like to apply to the Inspector.”
“It’s too late now,” came the reply. “You’ll have to do it in writing in the morning.”
The light went out, and it plunged Jim into almost darkness. Only the moonlight creeping through the high window provided enough illumination for him to work out how to set up his bed.
Once he was sure the bed would take his weight, he lay down and dropped off to sleep quickly.
*
The light coming back on woke him at 6 am. Remembering the rules, he spent some time working out how to fold the bed back up again.
At 7 am, the door opened.
“I’d like to apply to the Inspector,” said Jim at once, not wasting any time.
“Instead of sweeping out your cell, you make requests,” a grumpy officer replied. “You don’t make requests in prison.”
Two men in prison clothes entered the cell, one placed a little bread on the table. The other poured something into the jug. This turned out to be thin porridge. They left, and they shut the door.
At 8 am, the door opened again. Jim knew it was 8 am because there was an enormous clock on the wall opposite the cell door.
“I’d like to apply to the Inspector,” said Jim.
“Monday is writing day,” the officer replied. “Go over there.”
The officer was pointing towards a gangway which crossed the middle of the hall and led to an officers’ room between the cells.
In the room, the doctor examined Jim. Once the doctor had left, police officers took fingerprints and one took Jim’s statement. He had to lend Jim his own glasses so that Jim could sign the statement. They didn’t help much, but Jim thought it was a friendly gesture.
“You’ll probably get your glasses soon,” said the officer. “You are foreign, right?”
“I have foreign heritage.”
“Oh, I see,” the officer seemed to treat Jim with more respect after he realised he wasn’t an actual foreigner.
He led Jim back to his cell and Jim heard the latch fall again.
The time passed slowly until the door opened once more and a voice called out.
“Coffee.”
The men in prisoner’s clothes entered and left a bowl of potatoes with a small portion of cottage cheese and filled the beaker with coffee.
“I’d like to apply to the Inspector,” Jim tried again.
“I’ll consider it,” said a prison officer.
Jim sat in his cell and thought about how honourable it was to have been imprisoned under this regime. It would make a very good character reference once the regime collapsed. He contemplated that he was not guilty of anything, only of having refugee heritage. Whatever humiliation he was experiencing would stand him in good stead when the regime fell. But that did not ease the boredom of having to sit in his cell for hours on end with nothing to do. Above him began the tapping of the man pacing his cell. Jim wondered how many paces the prisoner must make in an hour.
The boredom was broken briefly at 5:30 pm when the door opened, and they handed him a bowl and filled the jug. It was herbal tea and slices of bread. This first full day had seemed an endless time and, before the door closed, he asked again whether he could apply to the Inspector.
The prison officer gave him a copy of the Unity newspaper.
“I can’t read it without my glasses,” Jim complained.
The officer took it back in silence and shut the door.
He felt like he was in a cage of emptiness, four paces of emptiness. Jim was thinking about what he and Annabel would usually do at this time of day. Given that it was Boxing Day Jim thought about the football, he wondered what the scores were. He wondered whether he should compose some poetry and then dismissed the thought as quickly as it had arisen. He thought about Carter, wondered how much time he had spent in prison, and wondered what he was doing at that moment.
The peephole flap opened and Jim could see the clock on the opposite wall was showing 8 pm.
“Go to sleep,” a voice said, and then the flap was closed again.
Jim set up the bed and lay down. He fell asleep almost immediately and when he awoke; they had switched the lights off and there was just a glimmer of moonlight from the high window. He heard a distant bell chiming the hours and counted them, nine; he had only slept an hour. He felt something on his skin and tried to brush whatever it was off, but found nothing.
From outside came the sounds of vehicles coming and going, from inside the sound of footsteps, of doors being opened and shut and the usual shouting. They were bringing new prisoners in.
Chapter Twenty-Seven – 11 years 10 months before the collapse
When Jim awoke again, they had turned on the caged light on the ceiling of the cell again. He searched his body for insect bites but could find nothing. The mattress too showed no signs of bedbugs.
Jim packed the bed away and washed himself from water in the jug, but it was a long time before
he heard the shout of ‘coffee’ from outside and the door opened. They ignored his request to apply to the Inspector.
He felt a little better after hot porridge and bread but then, before long, the empty loneliness returned. So far, the expected exercise, during which he was not meant to speak with other prisoners, had not materialised and he longed to see others, even if they prohibited him from speaking with them.
Jim tried to fill the hours thinking about his life that had already passed and what might lie in store in the future. He tried not to work out how much time was pacing and before long the pacing upstairs became only a background noise.
After what seemed like much longer than it should have been, there was another shout of ‘coffee’. The door opened and his bowl of potatoes arrived. They ignored his request again to apply to the Inspector.
Jim tried to make his meal last as long as possible, but it was over disappointingly quickly. He wondered what he was going to do to fill the hours until the next mealtime. He considered an afternoon nap, but not only was he not allowed to fold down the bed, but he didn’t feel in the least bit tired. The pacing from the room above re-entered his consciousness, and he did not know what to do to stop himself from counting the hours.
He tried meditation, sitting on the small stool and focussing on his breathing. At most, this must have wasted twenty minutes before he could not bear to do it any longer. If only he had his glasses and a pencil and a piece of paper or even a book, then he could have been quite content for hours on end.
Even reciting poetry was hopeless. He could never get past the second or third line and would end up repeating the phrase again. He was more successful with songs, although even in this respect he soon realised that his repertoire of songs to which he knew the words was disappointingly small.
Jim sat on the stool and rested his elbows on the table, his face in his hands, his beard unbrushed. He had momentarily seen his reflection in the washing bowl that morning and thought he looked how he imagined a convict might look, all unkempt.
The cell door opened. It couldn’t possibly be time for the evening meal already.
“Come out,” said a prison officer.
