A Song of Isolation

by Michael Malone

  That morning, before he’d gone out to work, her dad had a word with her about her friends coming over. It had never hap­pened before and they usually ended up at Helen or Simone’s houses, and every time Damaris had pleaded with her parents for her to take a turn they’d refused.

  Dad needs his sleep, was the usual response, and doesn’t want an army of girls on the floor above him giggling and gossiping into the next morning.

  But it was Dad who said yes. Damaris wasn’t dumb, she knew why he’d caved this time. Still, if he wanted to make it up to her for what had happened with Dave – whatever that was; she still didn’t have it worked out in her mind – she was more than happy to take advantage of the distraction.

  ‘Midnight,’ Dad said. ‘The TV goes off at midnight and you all go to sleep, right?’

  Damaris nodded her reply and smiled full beam while thinking, yeah, right, last time at Simone’s house they’d still been talking when the sun came up, and feeling quite pleased with themselves that they’d been grown up enough to last the full night.

  She heard her mother’s tread on the carpet outside her bedroom. The door opened.

  ‘D,’ her mum said from the open doorway, and Damaris heard an uh-oh in her head. Mum only ever used that short version of her name when something was wrong. ‘D, honey, I’ve just had a call from Vanda’s mum.’ She waggled her left hand with the phone still in it, by way of evidence. ‘Vanda and Louise can’t come tonight. They’ve got this sickness thing that’s going around.’

  Damaris felt her chest constrict with disappointment.

  ‘Helen’s mum phoned just before that to say they had surprise visitors arriving from America so she wouldn’t be here…’ Her mother’s face slumped with commiseration. ‘I’m so sorry, honey…’

  Her phone rang. She looked at the screen and mumbled, ‘Don’t recognise this number.’ She answered. ‘Hello?’

  Damaris could hear someone – a female someone – on the other end, but not what they were saying. Judging by how her mother’s face tightened it wasn’t good. Then her mother mouthed the words, ‘Jo’s mum.’ And judging by her expression this was another cancellation.

  Damaris felt her bottom lip tremble. She sucked it in behind her top teeth. She refused to allow herself to cry.

  Her mum closed the connection on her phone and looked as if she was about to throw the thing away. ‘I think you’ve worked who that was.’ Her eyes narrowed with irritation.

  Damaris nodded.

  ‘At least Jo’s mum had the decency not to try and make up some kind of crappy excuse.’

  Damaris sat down on her bed and thought about tearing the page she’d just written out of her notebook and scoring through the names and treats with her heaviest pen.

  The bed gave a little as her mother sat down beside her.

  ‘Don’t you worry about those little tramps,’ her mother said while putting an arm over her shoulder. ‘All you need is me, and we girls will have a lovely night together.’ Her voice grew lighter and her smile brighter and Damaris read that it was coming at a cost. ‘We can do our nails, catch up on all the gossip, eat lots of cake … and we can watch Twilight as many times as you want, okay?’

  Damaris knew this was an empty promise. Her mother would watch five minutes of the movie, moaning about how unrealistic the whole thing was the entire time, and then leave the room saying she was just going to fill up her glass, only returning when she heard the movie theme tune coming in at the end.

  Nonetheless, playing the role she was given, Damaris did her very best to swallow her disappointment and gave her mother her best smile.

  ‘Yeah, Mum, that will be fab.’

  Her mother patted her hand and then got to her feet. She crossed her arms.

  ‘You’ve been so brave, honey, after everything…’ She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘And as for those little brats, wait till I see—’

  ‘Please, Mum, don’t say anything,’ Damaris said. School was bad enough these days with everyone staring at her as if she had some strange disease.

  ‘Don’t worry, honey. I’ll say nothing. And anyway it’s the mothers’ faults,’ she said as she walked out of the room. Her mobile rang. She answered.

  ‘Hey, honey.’

  Damaris guessed it was her father and that he’d forgotten what he was to buy at the supermarket.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ her mother said as she continued out onto the landing. ‘It’s off.’

  Damaris got to her feet and silently followed.

  ‘I’ve been getting phone calls all bloody afternoon. One after another they’ve dropped out,’ her mother continued.

  Mum listened, nodding her head as Dad spoke.

  ‘I know, honey. Next time I see them I’ll be giving them a piece of my mind.’ Every word was clipped with anger. ‘You’d think it was bloody catching.’

  When her mother had gone, Damaris brought her notebook back out from its resting place and scored out all her writing, no­ticing that as her teardrops fell onto the paper they were doing as much damage to her friends’ names as the ink.

  Chapter 21

  Amelie was in the car and almost at the shopping centre before she wondered if it might be better if she was in disguise. For a moment she considered taking the next motorway exit and going home to change.

  ‘To hell with it,’ she said out loud. People could take her as she was. Which was probably a mistake given the recent interview on television.

  Lisa did her very best to mitigate the damage, speaking to every journalist she could find, but the damage was done, and as far as Amelie could see every media outlet on the planet was showing, over and over again, the moment when Vanessa Court said she felt uncomfortable around Dave.

  Which, ironically was true. He was a good man who’d never harm a child, but that was not the way the world saw him now, of course. She gripped the steering wheel. If she ever came across that woman again she’d find it difficult to keep her hands to herself.

  She heard the sound of a slap in her imagination, felt sudden heat in the palm of her hand and sat for a moment in satisfaction. A car horn sounded behind her. She looked in her mirror to see an angry driver behind her, gesticulating.

  Distracted by her imagined moment of revenge she’d taken her foot off the accelerator. Feeling her face warm up, she waved an apology at the guy and re-engaged her driving brain.

  At Waitrose she found a space and parked. Before she climbed out of the car she scanned the space around her for possible danger. Another bad habit she thought she’d lost. Few cars, a few people here and there. Most of them elderly as far as she could tell.

  Good. She breathed out her relief. It should be safe.

  Inside, she collected a basket and quickly went around the usual food stands, gathering her usual items. No one bothered her, but she did notice a couple of double-takes.

  As she approached the line of tills she judged which one had the fewest people queueing and moved in that direction. Out of the side of her vision she saw a couple heading towards her. Think­ing they were heading to the same queue, she slowed her pace to allow them in before her and turned her face to them in anticipa­tion of accepting their thanks.

  They were both white-haired, slim, well dressed and walking with a purpose that was almost military.

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ the man said.

  ‘Bitch,’ the woman said. And spat in her face.

  Chapter 22

  Dave was walking from E Hall to the communications hub and the library. For the first section of the walk, as always, he was acutely aware of the industrial nature of this part of the criminal justice system. Concrete walkways, leading past a group of massive, warehouse-like buildings, the sandstone, laid by the Victorians, stained to a sullen brown by more than a hundred years of city pollution. As he walked he noted the lines of small, barred windows and dark-slated
roofs topped by rows of tall chimneys. Beyond them the sky was painted a uniform grey, like a giant sheet of aluminium, as if nature had provided a roof to the complex, ensuring nothing within could ever reach the outside.

  The gloom of his thoughts brought his attention back down to the ground, and he looked at the potted plants dotted about everywhere. Red and yellow blooms hung from walls and squatted in large pots at the side of the path, like garish paint on the face of an overworked prostitute.

  His walk then took him through a space in the wall into a newer part of the prison compound and open air for about thirty strides before he reached the building that housed the library.

  Those few minutes were a welcome break for Dave, regardless of the weather. Through the cold and wet of the spring, and the warm and wet of the summer, it was the only way he could tell the passing of the seasons – he’d been brought here in early April and it was now well into August.

  Waiting for a guard to unlock the door and usher him into the library he thought about his recent chat with Graeme Corden, one of the listeners recommended by the governor.

  Graeme entered his cell with a broad smile. His head was as bare as his chin, and he looked like he regularly managed to wangle extra time in the gym.

  ‘Awright, mate,’ he said.

  Dave was on his bed, cross-legged, back against the other wall, wondering how this was going to work.

  ‘We can chat, or I can just sit here quietly and keep you company for a wee while…’ Graeme said.

  Dave crossed his arms.

  ‘How long you been in now, mate?’ Graeme asked.

  ‘Twenty weeks, four days and nine hours.’

  ‘But who’s counting, eh?’ Graeme laughed. ‘You’re on remand, aye? Any word on your court date?’

  ‘My lawyer’s due in at the end of the week. I’m hoping he’s got news on that score. What about you? How long have you done?’

  ‘Four years, eight months, four days and nine hours.’ Graeme cocked his head to the side. ‘Actually I haven’t done a proper count, but it is four years and eight months. I just added the rest in to match what you said.’

  ‘Much longer to go?’

  ‘Four months.’

  Dave assessed the other man, wondering what he was in for.

  ‘Rape,’ Graeme said. ‘It’s what we’re all wonderin’, eh? What the other guy’s in for, so I just tell folk.’ There was a weight to his words, a shadow behind his eyes, and a contrite line to his mouth as he spoke. He was stating a fact he was deeply ashamed of. ‘Not making excuses, like, but I was an angry young guy. So fucking angry. Both parents were on the smack. In and out of the jail all my life. I got into a right bad place and hurt somebody that de­served so much more from me.’

  Dave said nothing, simply allowing the silence that followed Graeme’s words to unfold.

  ‘What made you ask to join the listener programme?’ Dave asked eventually.

  ‘Gets you out of your cell, eh?’ Graeme replied, but Dave could see he was holding back.

  ‘I’m thinking there’s more to it than that,’ he said.

  Graeme uncrossed his arms and put his hands in his pockets. He looked up from the ground and into Dave’s eyes. ‘I’ll never be able to make it up to that lassie. She’ll be hurt by what I done for the rest of her life, but maybe I can help other people, you know?’

  Dave heard the truth in the other man’s words, but he also read the tactic. If he opened up, it might encourage Dave to do the same.

  ‘How about you, mate?’ Graeme asked. ‘I’m supposed to be doing the listenin’, no’ the talkin’.’ Graeme leaned forward from his perch. ‘How are you doin’? How are you gettin’ through your days?’

  ‘Books help.’ Dave inclined his head to the novel that sat just inches from Graeme.

  He picked it up. ‘Theory of War,’ he read, ‘by Joan Brady. What’s this aboot?’ He pressed a thumb against the side of the book, flick­ing through it and the sound of unspooling paper filled the cell. ‘The pages are going yellow, must be an old book.’

  ‘Came out in the nineties. The author’s grandfather was sold as a slave in America after the Civil War. But he was white.’

  ‘That happened?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Wow. Every day’s a school day. What made you pick this one up?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Dave gave a little shrug. ‘The slavery thing, maybe? Remind myself there are folk worse off than me.’

  ‘I hear you, mate.’

  Silence.

  ‘How are you, mate, really?’

  Dave thought about the anger held tight in his gut. His bewil­derment at the system, the police, the court, his fellow prisoners, Damaris’s parents, Damaris, himself for giving her any attention at all. He felt a sense of complete and utter helplessness weigh down his stomach, work into his chest, drying the air in his lungs, stifling the muscles of his throat. He coughed, preparing to speak, hoping that his voice wouldn’t be croaked, and cloaked in emotion.

  ‘Putting one foot in front of the other, mate. Just putting one foot in front of the other.’

  As day slumped into night, and noise around the prison block heaved almost to a halt, Dave lay on his bunk, turned to face the wall and pulled his knees up into the foetal position. Like most nights Damaris’s little face popped into his mind as if it had taken up residence behind his eyelids.

  How could people think he would hurt her?

  And again, like most nights, he ran through his experiences with the opposite sex, wondering what he could learn. Where he could have been better. There was Sandra McGregor in the third year at school, her breasts already like pillows, attracting attention and bullying comments from all the boys, and a few of the girls. Page Three McGregor was her nickname. Face a furious red, she’d simply stare at the ground when cruel comments were hurled at her and walk past as quickly as she could. In the few, rare, quiet moments he had with her she showed she had a quick mind, an abundancy of wit and a ready smile, and yet he’d joined in when the name calling started, a realisation that now had his face burn. Whatever happened to her? Last he’d spoken to her she was going to study to be a doctor. He hoped she’d made it and that men were less concerned with how she filled her tops than how she used her knowledge.

  And Carole Carver, a girl he occasionally slept with after a few beers at the rugby club. He didn’t call in between shags to see how she was, but then he’d turn on the charm when he was pissed after a night out with the boys. Whatever happened to her? Had she found a partner who treated her with respect? How did she now view her time with him?

  Then there was Amelie. Was he always his best self with her? He thought about those last few months and how, sensing her retreat from him, he’d tried to build his own emotional moat as protection, but encroached upon her space now and again to test where he was with her.

  The couple of times he cajoled his way past her ‘no’ until she relented with a sigh and a reluctant ‘okay’. His face heated with shame at the memory of the perfunctory couplings that followed; his forehead burrowed into the pillow at her shoulder until that last, hurried, quivering breath.

  Jesus. He felt shame bubble in his veins until it lay over his mind and heart and soul like a tombstone slab.

  He was better than that.

  He was a good guy, wasn’t he?

  Chapter 23

  Damaris knew this was serious. Both Mum and Dad were at the table, either side of her, both of them had their hands clasped in front of them and both of them were showing their worried faces.

  ‘Is Dave going to be okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course he is,’ said Mum.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ snapped Dad. Damaris caught the warning look her mum sent to him. In response he breathed out, squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at his head. ‘Sorry, wee love,’ he said as he leaned towards her. ‘Let’s go through this
one more time.’

  ‘Daaaad.’ As she said this part of her mind was assessing her father. He’d changed since all this happened. His face looked grey and his clothes were hanging on him now. Grown-ups lost weight when they were worried about stuff, didn’t they? She didn’t want her dad to worry.

  ‘Just once more,’ Mum said. ‘You’re giving evidence next week. And this guy has to go to jail for what he did to you.’

  Damaris leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. She just wanted to go up to her room and make plans for school going back next week. Holidays were boring when you were stuck at home all day and your parents worked and none of your friends were allowed to come and play with you.

  She liked all the stuff that came with her parents working: the two, sometimes three holidays a year; Dad’s sports car was sweet; and her friend Jo said living in this place must cost a bomb. But sometimes it would be nice if they had more time for her.

  Maybe once this lawyers’ meeting she had next week was over then her friends would be allowed to come over. Maybe when they were all back at school it would be back to the way it was before.

  ‘So, remind me what happens at this thing next week?’ Dad asked her mum. Damaris knew he knew. She also knew this was really for her benefit.

  ‘We’ll both be there, honey,’ Mum said in that slow and delib­erate tone that she used sometimes. When she spoke like that it really annoyed Damaris. She wasn’t five years old. ‘Two people will ask questions about what happened that day, the day the police came for Dave. And any other days he might have been…’ she paused while she searched for the right word; ‘…tricky with you.’ Her smile at this point was supposed to be reassuring, Damaris thought, but it came across as if Mum was trying to pretend her stomach wasn’t sore.

  ‘You were saying … two people?’ Dad pressed her along.

  ‘And we’ll both be there…’