Eager to Please

by Julie Parsons

  As pale as the face she saw reflected in the side mirror of Jackie’s car as they inched through the traffic towards the North Circular Road.

  I can’t do this, she said. I can never do this again. I won’t be able to leave the prison when the time comes. Please, Jackie, don’t make me.

  And why won’t you? The voice inside her asked. And the voice inside her answered. Because then I’ll have to face what happened, and I’ll have to find a way to make it right again. And now, after all these years, I don’t think I can do it. Ever.

  THE MIDDLE

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WAS AN interesting case, the Rachel Beckett case, Andrew Bowen thought as he got up from his desk and walked across the corridor to the kitchen to make the first of the day’s cups of coffee. It was a rare event in the mundane world of a probation officer to get a lifer on your books. It had only happened twice before in his career. And he’d never had to deal with a woman. Of course he’d had women sitting here in his office who’d killed. Quite a number of them. Killed their husbands or boyfriends, killed their children. But they had been judged to have killed on the spur of the moment. Out of fear, in self-defence, responding to aggression, reacting in anger or madness. Never the way the prosecution said Rachel Beckett had killed. Slowly, deliberately, precisely. With foreknowledge and premeditation. And now the Department of Justice, in its wisdom, had decided that she had shown due remorse and recognition of her crime and it was time they let her out. On licence of course. And at nine o’clock this morning, 10th May, she was coming to see him.

  Remorse, now there was an interesting concept. From the Latin verb remordere, to bite again. A second bite of the cherry, a second chance. An opportunity to make good the bad that had been done in the past. Or was it? He had always wondered about instances of remorse. He thought of the energy that went into denying the crime that had been committed. The elaborate defence that was put together for the court, expert witnesses produced and paid for, tearful delivery of evidence, hand-on-heart denials of wrongdoing. And then, somehow or other, years later, after the reality of prison life had begun to sink in, along came Mr Remordere, fresh and bright, and new, and good as gold.

  Please, sir, I didn’t mean to do it.

  Please, sir, I did it all right, but it was a mistake, an accident. I didn’t want it to be like this.

  Please, sir. OK, I admit it. I did it. I planned it. I thought it through, but let me out and I’ll be good, I promise.

  It was quiet in the kitchen at this early hour of the morning. He stood still for a moment and listened. He was alone. His other colleagues invariably drifted in a good hour after he had already made a start. They blamed their lateness on the traffic. He attributed his punctuality to the same traffic. He got up an hour and a half earlier to beat it, he said, and they all looked at him as if he had a screw loose. He didn’t care. They could manage their days whatever way they chose. Nominally he was in charge, but they all knew what kind of a boss he was. Benign to the point of disinterest. And that was fine by everyone. An easy life, that’s what they all wanted. And who was he to argue with that?

  He filled a glass Cona jug with water, and tipped ground coffee, Colombian, his favourite, into a new paper filter. He lifted the jug high, then poured the water down in one smooth movement, quickly placing the empty container underneath. He waited, listening to the faint hum of the machine, then walked around the small pine table to look at the noticeboard beside the window. The soles of his shoes peeled off the lino underfoot with a satisfyingly sticky sound. He straightened the various notices pinned haphazardly into the cork. There was a lecture series on young offenders beginning soon in UCD. It was part of their extramural programme. Night courses for adults. He noticed his own name next to two of the sessions. ‘Young Offenders – The Therapeutic Approach’ and ‘Young Offenders – Identification and Treatment’. Christ, he’d forgotten he’d agreed to take part. It would be awkward. He’d have to get someone in to sit with Clare. She didn’t like it when he went out at night. She was happy enough on her own at home all day. Especially as he had washed her and fed her and left her with everything she could possibly need within arm’s length before he went to work in the morning. But nighttimes were different, she was always telling him. She couldn’t bear the dark on her own.

  He sighed and felt that instant of release as he let go his breath. Just for a moment. He hadn’t realized he had been holding it in, holding on to it, keeping everything locked up tight. And then he felt the tears that came so easily these days, filling his eyes, blurring his vision. He felt in his pocket for a tissue. He blew his nose. Don’t start, he thought, just don’t start the day like this. It was so important to keep it all under control. That was what was so good about coming into work early. It got him away from the house. And Clare. Her illness, her pain, her despair, and her death to come. How soon would that be, he wondered, as he wondered every day. Perhaps when he got home this evening he would find her curled into a ball, her muscles already in a state of rigor. She would have tried to phone him, tried to get help. But she wouldn’t have realized that he had pulled out the telephone jack before he left, so there could be no help. From him or from anyone else. It would look like an accident, the inevitable consequence of the illness that had slowly destroyed her life over the last ten years. He knew how it would seem. He had thought it through. He had rehearsed what he would say. To the doctor, to the police. I can’t understand it. She was fine when I left this morning. Well, as fine as anyone who has advanced multiple sclerosis can possibly be. She said she would phone if there was a problem, but she didn’t. I was in the office most of the day, except for a couple of hours when I was in court. But Clare had my mobile number, and my secretary always knows where I am, and besides, if she couldn’t get me she would have phoned for an ambulance. She knew what to do.

  But it was too soon now. He knew that. Clare still had a way to go. She couldn’t stand or move without help. He thought of all the medical terms that had become familiar to them both over the last ten years. Paraesthesia, abnormal sensations without external cause, pins and needles to the uninitiated. Propriasaesthesia, the inability to judge the position of the limbs in relation to the rest of the body. Retrobulbar neuritis, the inflammation of the optic nerve, causing her sight to fail, and the pain behind her eyes which was increasingly dominating her life. She now had no control over her bladder, and she was finding it hard to swallow, hard to cough, hard to clear her chest. What lay ahead? They both knew. She had asked the doctor to spell it out. Pneumonia would kill her eventually, that and the urinary tract infections which were already making her miserable. But when? For how much longer could they bear it?

  The kitchen was alive with the smell of fresh coffee. He lifted the jug and poured himself a large mugful, adding milk from an opened carton in the small counter-top fridge. He walked back across the corridor to his office. He sat down and opened Rachel Beckett’s file. He noted her date of birth, 31 August 1957. She was forty-two. His age. And now she was getting her second chance, while she was young enough still to enjoy it. He remembered what she had looked like all those years ago when she had been tried for the murder of her husband, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He had seen her a number of times, on the front page of the newspaper, on television and in the Round Hall of the Four Courts, sitting with her daughter on her knee, her father by her side, waiting, waiting. He had been working in Mountjoy at the time, in and out of the courts all day, and she had been a curiosity. For everyone. She had been beautiful, he remembered. Delicate was the word to describe her. Such a contradiction between how she appeared and what she did. So everyone said. He had looked into Court Number Four during the trial, whenever he had a spare few minutes. And, as luck would have it, he was there when the jury returned, twenty-four hours after they had first retired. They had taken their time, been sequestered over night. It was a majority verdict, he remembered, ten to two. He remembered it all so well. One of the jurors was cryin
g. But Rachel Beckett didn’t cry. She just said very clearly and distinctly, No, I don’t believe it. And then she was gone. Barely time to say goodbye. Taken away by the prison officers. Removed from the gaze of decent people.

  A buzzer rang on his desk. He looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock exactly. That was good. She hadn’t lost the ability to be punctual. He looked up at the security monitor mounted on the wall in front of him. There was a camera aimed at the front door. He watched her as she waited to be let in. It was hard to tell in the grainy black and white how she looked. But her hair was different, he could see that much. And the way she stood, her stance, her posture. He pushed down the button. His secretary answered him.

  ‘You can tell my first client to come up now, Maggie,’ he said.

  He watched the monitor, the way she leaned forward to hear the voice that crackled from the intercom. He saw her reach out and push the door. The camera in the stairwell picked her up again. She was wearing a coat that looked too big for her and carrying a plastic bag in her hand. She looked ill and weak and out of place. ‘It’s your second chance, you stupid cow,’ he said out loud as he heard her knock on his door. ‘You’ve got yours, and I need mine.’ And he stepped away from his desk and walked towards her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HER BEDSIT MEASURED fourteen feet by twelve. She had paced it out. Fourteen by twelve was one hundred and sixty-eight square feet. She stood with her back to the wall and looked up at the ceiling. How high was it? She moved into the centre of the room, underneath the dangling light bulb, tilted her head, looked and judged. Fourteen foot six she thought. That would be about right for a house like this in Clarinda Park in Dun Laoghaire, mid-Victorian, built around 1860, three storeys at the front, four at the back. She compared it with her cell in the women’s prison. She had measured that out too. Ten feet by nine feet. Ninety square feet in all. In which to sleep, eat, shit. A net gain now of seventy-eight feet. And that didn’t include the bathroom next door, with lavatory, washbasin, an old-fashioned full-size freestanding bath with a shower attachment. And a lock on the door.

  She put her hand in the pocket of her jeans and felt the satisfying weight of the bunch of keys that her landlord had given her that morning.

  ‘Just don’t lose them,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to have the lock on the front door changed, and it’ll be added to your rent if it’s you who’s responsible. OK?’

  She had just smiled at him. She had no intention of ever letting those keys out of her grasp. Now she held them in front of her and shook them gently. They jangled together, a gentle musical sound, not like the ugly clatter of the huge and heavy keys that had dominated her life for so many years. The first sound that woke her every morning at seven-thirty. One chamber of the double lock being opened on the cell door. The solid satisfying thunk as it slid smoothly back into its casing. The squeak of the screw’s rubber-soled shoes on the polished lino of the landing. But the door still shut tight, unmoveable until breakfast time at eight, when the second lock would be opened and the door would be flung back, this time with a shout and a roar.

  ‘Come on, ladies, get up, rise and shine. Shake a leg. Breakfast is waiting.’

  The first time she had been punished. Lost all her privileges. No letters, no phone calls, no visits. The Governor had shaken his head at her, his expression a model of sorrow rather than anger. ‘I’m surprised at you, Rachel.’ His voice was so low that she had to lean forward to hear what he was saying. ‘Very surprised. A woman of your education and advantages. What on earth came over you?’

  It was simple really. It was rage and a scalding, overwhelming desire to hurt. Something she hadn’t felt since she was a child, when the playground bullies had picked on her, or the teacher had treated her unfairly. She had learned how to control her temper, how to channel it, dampen it down, hide it behind a cold, shuttered face. But not this time. Now she wanted to stop that stupid woman’s mouth with her fist, close off her patronizing, holiday-camp repartee. What was it the others called them? Kangaroos, standing up on their hind legs, safe inside their blue uniforms, with their badges of rank, their bunches of keys, their camaraderie and banter. Rachel had never hit a woman before. She had balled her hand and smashed it into the screw’s soft, ample solar plexus, knocked the wind out of her, so she began to gasp and sob, backing out of the cell, her face red, her legs crumpling beneath her in shock. The response had been swift and brutal. One of the other officers had grabbed her hair, twisting her head back. Another had snatched at her hands, pulling them behind her waist, both her small wrists jammed together in the grasp.

  ‘Fucking little cow. Who do you think you are? Miss fuckin’ high and mighty, is that it?’

  She had been dumped in the pad and left there, while all around she heard the boos and whistles, the cheers and catcalls of the women who until now had laughed at her, whispered about her, mocked her, sneered at her. Now she was one of them. There was no doubt about it.

  And now she was here, in this room on the top floor of an old house in Dun Laoghaire with something she hadn’t had for twelve years. A view. And such a view. It was so beautiful that she was scared to move in case it turned out to be an illusion, or the kind of hallucination that came to her often when she woke out of a dream. The room’s single window was a large three-sided bay, hung with sagging cotton curtains. The glass in the panes was smeared and cobwebs decorated each corner. She moved closer, slowly, pausing between each step. She closed her eyes for a moment, squeezing them tightly together so that bright worms of light wriggled across her eyelids. Then she opened them and gasped out loud at the sight. It was the sea, spreading to the horizon. It was a blue that made her cry out with joy. The blue of the hydrangeas that her mother had grown in a tub outside their front door, tinged with streaks of purple and mauve.

  She took another step forward and turned her head first to the right and then to the left. On one side she could see across to the crocodile-shaped hill of Howth, on the other to the smooth walls of the stone quarry on the Dalkey side of Killiney Hill. Below her spread red-tiled roofs and the crowns of trees – chestnuts, sycamores, bright green now in early summer. She watched the traffic streaming down the hill, stopping at the lights at the bottom, and the pedestrians, straggling from one side of the road to the other, and she began to panic. She could never become like any of those people down there. She was fooling herself if she thought that she would ever be able to move among them as if she belonged, without feeling that she was being watched, spied upon, her every move and nuance of behaviour logged and noted.

  It had been like that this morning as she had stood outside the small office building just off George’s Street, where she had gone to meet her new probation officer. She had been early. She had misjudged how long it would take her to walk the quarter mile from Clarinda Park to the town centre. How far, how long, how much time to take? So she had given herself plenty. In case the traffic might be heavy and it took a while to cross the road. In case the footpaths were crowded and she wasn’t able to find the right way to manoeuvre around the person in front of her. In case, in case, in case. A thousand reasons why it could take her forever to make the short trip, and so she was early. At least ten minutes to wait before she needed to press the buzzer to announce her arrival. She stood outside the solid metal door and noticed the security camera angled, pointing directly at her. She looked up and away. She was familiar with cameras like these. They were all over the prison. To be ignored and disdained. But she wondered as she stood still, waiting, who was watching. In the prison she knew. She sometimes felt as if the cameras were two-way. When they looked at her she might as well have been looking back at them in their poky little guard room, the desk covered with piles of paperwork, mugs half filled with cold tea, cluttering up every surface. And the same officers, day after day, week after week, month and year after month and year, scanning the security monitors, flicking from camera to camera, as familiar to her now as her
own family once had been.

  She stood and waited until it was time to buzz and be admitted. A small plump woman appeared at the top of the steep staircase that led from street level. She introduced herself.

  ‘Maggie Byrne, Mr Bowen’s secretary. If you need anything at any time, you can always phone me,’ she said, her soft white face crumpling with concern. Then she pointed to the door behind her. ‘He’s expecting you.’ And she tapped on the brown veneered surface and pushed his door open.

  In prison her probation officers had always been women. Pleasant, friendly, concerned. She had watched them come and go over the years. Played little games with them, seen how much she could get them to reveal about their lives outside the prison, until invariably they copped on and stopped. It didn’t do to mix the personal with the professional. They had been warned.

  ‘Don’t let them know too much about you. It’s not good practice. They are inside. You are outside. Keep it separate.’

  But they let their guard slip with Rachel. She was different. She spoke their own language. And sometimes they forgot.

  Andrew Bowen wouldn’t forget, Rachel could see that immediately from the way he kept her standing while he flicked through the pile of paper on the desk in front of him. She stood still. She didn’t move. She waited. And then he raised his head, looked straight at her and smiled. He gestured to the chair set at an angle to his large polished desk. She sat. He was very thin. The collar of his white shirt looked far too big for his neck. His fingers were long and slender. His hands moved constantly, rolling a pencil backwards and forwards as he spoke. His voice was soft, so she had to lean forward to hear what he was saying. She shifted uneasily in the chair. He was telling her what her new life was going to be like. There was work for her, a job in the dry-cleaner’s in the big new shopping centre which had opened recently in the town. It would be simple and straightforward. She mustn’t worry that too much would be expected of her. To begin with she would need to come and see him every week.