by S. E. Lynes
We had to leave while he was asleep because he would be too cross otherwise.
Perhaps these shadowy truths will be enough, for now.
‘I won’t keep you talking,’ the warden whispers at the door of a room with a double bed and a put-me-up. ‘Try to sleep if you can and I’ll see you all in the morning, all right?’
Graham is quiet. Shell-shocked. Speaking is an effort for him at the best of times; no wonder silence is all he has just now. Nicky whispers constantly as Carol pulls the clothes from over her pyjamas.
Is this a hotel?
How long will we be here?
When are we going back home?
When is Daddy coming?
Carol bats her off as best she can. There are no ready answers, nothing concrete, only sand, slipping away as she picks it up.
I don’t know how long we’ll stay, love; we’ll have to see.
This is a special place for women whose husbands aren’t well.
Let’s wait until morning, eh?
Sleep now.
Night, night.
They collapse, first in two beds, then one: three of them, holding on to each other.
Refugees.
Eleven
Nicola
2019
From the mantelpiece I pick up a photo of my mother, Graham and me. My mother smiles doubtfully in the way she always did, as if she can’t trust her own happiness. It was taken on her sixtieth birthday, when we threw a party for her – a surprise; she would have panicked if we’d told her beforehand. It had to be held here, in her home – a posh hotel or restaurant would have had the same effect, plus she would have worried about the cost.
I drain my glass and think about that party, my mother’s particular fragile happiness. I think about the night she left my father and try to imagine myself running out of my home in the dead of night with my two girls, not knowing what lies ahead, fearing for my life and for theirs. And for all that I have since dealt with women like my mother, with families like mine, I can’t imagine it, not really, or if I can, it is but that: imagination. It is not real, not for me. I am forty-four years old, and only in the sudden silence of grief, of a house left empty, do I even have an inkling of what she went through, what it might be like to have to do what she did just to survive.
‘Mum,’ I whisper to the smiling image. ‘Mum. What you … what you did.’
It’s half past two in the morning, and here I stand, tired and tipsy, wet-eyed and sadder than I thought it possible to be. And something else. Proud. Yes. I am so proud of her. My packet of tissues long used up, I pull from my pocket a few sheets of loo roll I must have torn off at some point. I think tea would be better than wine at this hour. I have so much to do and only a few days to do it – Monday’s case is a juvenile accused of assaulting a shopkeeper, whose leg was already broken from a fall, with his own crutch. The kid says he didn’t do it. The evidence is circumstantial. His acquittal is my job.
I’m putting the kettle on when my mobile phone rings. It’s Graham. Awake then, like me.
‘Gray?’
‘All right?’ That’s how Graham says hello, always has, always will. Such a Scouser; I tease him for it. ‘Can’t sleep,’ he says.
‘Nor me.’ I answer the bleeding obvious with the bleeding obvious.
‘Funeral was all right, wasn’t it?’
‘Except for you making everyone cry with your speech.’ I hear him almost laugh. ‘No, you did a great job. She had such a lot of friends in the end, didn’t she?’
‘She did, yeah.’ I hear the suck and blow of his lips on a cigarette. At least it’s only tobacco he’s addicted to these days. ‘What you up to?’
‘Just … nothing. Looking through Mum’s things. I found Tommy’s handkerchief. You know, the one they used to bind Jim’s leg? And that got me thinking about … you know. That night.’
‘Wh-what do you want to think about that for?’
The merest hesitation over the wh of what. I smile to myself. If you didn’t know him, you’d never know he stuttered as badly as he did. Neither of us says anything for a moment. We both know what happened after that wedding, how it changed all of our lives for ever, how it shaped us in such different ways.
‘Don’t know where to start,’ I say, changing the subject. ‘Or if I’m even supposed to touch anything.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll come over tomorrow. I was going to come over anyway. There’s something … there’s some stuff I need to tell you.’
‘Sounds ominous.’
‘Ominous.’ He gives a derisive laugh. ‘Posh twat.’
He tells me he’ll come over at about nine in the morning. When he rings off, I realise that the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. Graham has always told me everything. Well, no, that’s not true. There were years when he told me nothing. And later, I would visit him and we would exchange only small talk. The polite distance of it used to make me cry in the car afterwards. We had been so close. I idolised him when we were kids. And when he told me not to visit him anymore, my heart broke. All our childhood confidences, our reliance on each other counted for nothing, it seemed, at that time. We were strangers. After he got out, I understood that, having killed a man, it was too difficult for him to talk to me, his little sister; that an actual stranger was what he needed to help him finally find the words.
Part Two
Twelve
Richard
Lancaster, 1992
Outside the prison, Richard sits in his mother’s car, listening to the volcanic rumbling of his guts. He should have eaten, but there was no food in the house. He could run into town and buy a sandwich, but no, he can’t risk being late, not on his first day. Instead, taking hold of the steering wheel, he bows his head and offers a short, silent prayer.
Lord, give me the strength to help those you send to me today. Help me listen without judgement, help me to help them find their own way out of darkness. Amen.
Outside, a grey stream of cobbles bubbles down from the castle, whose purpose these days is less to keep people out than to keep them in. In front of the gatehouse, framed by the windscreen of his mother’s old Ford Fiesta, clumps of people fidget, a motley tableau of tracksuits and cigarettes, hunched shoulders and screwed-up faces. On the bonnet of a rusted beige Astra, a cardboard tray of beer cans glistens with cellophane. In front of it, a man paces and smokes. Further down, a young woman in a tight skirt and high heels clutches an enormous bottle of champagne, the neck tied with pink ribbons that coil around her bony knuckles and fall away in shining ringlets.
Thursday is release day. That’s right, Vivian did tell him over the phone, but there was so much to take in. He gets out of the car and locks it with care. The grass verge gleams with dew in the early-September sun. He hitches up his rucksack and clears the grass in one jump.
Ahead, Lancaster Castle looms. Rugged squares of saw teeth crawl across the top. Slowly he moves towards it, thinking about how no one, given the choice, would want to enter here. But it’s too late to back out now.
He knocks on the black gate, turns and casts a last glance over the waiting crowd. Their faces have brightened with hope. But he has nothing to offer them.
In the internal courtyard, already the air feels thinner.
‘I’m Richard Crown,’ he says into the protective glass screen of the reception kiosk. ‘I’m here to see Vivian Wolff. I’m the new chaplain.’
‘Morning, Father.’
A glimpse of spectacles. He leans in closer to the glass. The spectacles belong to a slim-faced woman with dark brown hair.
‘I’m not a priest,’ he says gently. ‘I’m just … y’know, ordinary.’
The woman says she’ll take him up to the office this first time, to show him the ropes. Under her close supervision, he unlocks the first of the gates, closes it after himself and locks it again. This process he repeats a further four times, raising his eyes more than once to the curls of barbed wire that loop along the tops of the fences. Metal is everyw
here – spun, meshed and moulded; hard, pale and grey.
‘You’ll get used to it.’ She gives him a smile, for which he is grateful.
He follows her across the courtyard. She tells him that the walls here are six feet thick; that there is a back entrance for high-profile cases so as to avoid the press and all that malarkey. A small square of sunlight shines in the bottom corner of the yard; a bird of prey glides overhead. Another door waits at the base of a tower.
‘This is B Wing,’ the woman says, gesturing at the door, which Richard unlocks with the last of the keys and heaves open. ‘The office is at the top of the stairs. Viv’s expecting you. Good luck.’
‘Oh. Yes. Thank you so much.’
He closes the door behind him, locks it, checks that he’s done it correctly. The darkness is instantaneous. His eyes adjust, his nose twitching at the sour brew of trapped sweat, feet and hair. This, then, is the smell of enclosure, of institution. He wonders how long it will take him to get used to it; whether he ever will.
There are four flights of stairs. He is glad of his evening jogs; his fitness means he doesn’t have to inhale too deeply. At each floor, the courtyard drops away, the square of sunlight shrinks. As the staircase darkens, Richard has the impression that he is not ascending but descending, into a basement.
The door of the education office is open. Inside are two women – one blonde, the other with long black hair, a lone purple stripe flashing at the front – and a rather nondescript man with grey hair and glasses. Unsure how to call attention to himself, Richard hesitates. But then the blonde woman looks up, sees him and stands.
‘You must be Richard,’ she says, smiling. She is what his mother would have called comely, with a wench-like quality he finds reassuring. ‘I’m Viv. Nice to finally meet you. All set?’
‘I think so.’ He is still at the door.
‘This is Richard Crown, folks. The new chaplain. He’s going to be here Thursdays and Fridays, aren’t you, love?’
Richard nods.
‘Come in, come in,’ continues Viv. ‘Richard, this is Frank, Bernadette.’ She holds him lightly at the elbow, giggling a little every time she speaks.
Richard says hello. Hello, hello. He is glad of his beard, hopes it’s disguising the blush he can feel on his face and neck.
Viv gives him a copy of a pamphlet entitled Clink. ‘That’s the prison newsletter.’ She hands him another note. ‘Then that’s an invite for Kevin’s leaving drinks next Tuesday. He teaches decorating but he’s moving to Chester.’
Richard tries to hold his face in a smile, and to look at no one in particular. He knows he will throw the invitation in the bin the moment he gets home, but there’s no need to say that.
‘Thank you,’ he says, and, ‘Great.’
On the desks and shelves are stained coffee mugs, overflowing pencil pots. Folders spew out sheets of paper. The musty smell of damp adds itself to the mix. Plaster bubbles on the walls. The wallpaper on the ceiling peels at the corners, as if at any moment it will come unstuck and fall on top of them all. The public sector, he thinks, crumbling; and then thinks of Andrew, who would have teased him for seeing the metaphor in everything. Really, though, how different this place would be if the rich ever found themselves at the bottom of society.
Viv squeezes between two desks and rifles through a pigeonhole before sidling her way back and handing him another piece of paper: a short list of names.
‘It’s pretty relaxed,’ she says. ‘They put in an app to come to chapel; I think I said. Anyway, we give them the OK to get out of woodwork or maths or whatever it is. They might stay a few minutes, sometimes a lot longer, but if it gets towards lockdown, the guard will take them back. They’re unlocked at nine, so you’ll see them between ten and twelve, if they turn up, then they go back to their pads and are unlocked again at two for their afternoon sessions. They’re expecting a new chaplain, so they’ll be prepared.’
‘Great.’ He scans the list, apprehension blooming in his chest. These are the men who will come to him for spiritual support, for guidance, or just to talk. He wonders how many, if any, he can lead into the light.
* * *
Viv shows him to the chapel. Up and down yet more stone steps. Men in matching grey jogging suits file along the corridors, close-cropped hair, tattooed forearms, subdued expressions. Richard keeps his smile as neutral as he can. Viv makes a quick detour to the cells – the pads, as she calls them – to let him have a look. When they reach the block, Richard feels his breath hold in his chest. On long landings, blue door after blue door stands open. It is, of course, recognisable from programmes he’s seen on television. But the stark reality of it takes him aback, the smell so strong here that it is only politeness that keeps him from covering his nose with his sleeve.
‘The lads are in their classes just now,’ she explains. ‘They get paid to attend, in the hope that they’ll fill their time usefully while they’re here and learn, well, various things, as well as how to structure their days better.’ She waits, indicating that he should look inside one of the pads.
The door is thick, metal. He imagines it closing for the night, the bang it must make, the clunk of the key as it is locked from the outside. There are two thin bunks against a wall, a small desk and chair, screwed down, a tiny white sink and an open loo. There is no seat, no lid.
‘The toilet is inside their cell?’ he asks stupidly.
Viv nods, her lips pressed into a tight line.
‘So, they have to … in front of …’
‘In front of their pad-mate – yes, love, that’s right.’ A brief chuckle escapes her. ‘The Hilton this is not.’
A guard nods as they pass. Viv leads Richard back down more stairs, along a corridor, up yet more stairs. He is glad of his new trainers. She told him to make sure he had comfortable footwear, warning him over the phone that the floors were ‘a right pig’.
‘Here we are,’ she says, standing outside a door much like any other in a corridor much like any other in what feels increasingly like a concrete warren. ‘This is your manor.’
He steps inside.
The chapel is not the dim Norman crypt he envisaged. It is more like a classroom. It is a classroom: impersonal, with blue plastic chairs arranged in a circle. No wooden pews, no ancient confessionals, no thick slabs of stone. And the smell, the stale, closed-up damp stench that permeates every room. As he looks in dismay at the grim moulded seats, the cheap veneer tables and pallid green walls, he becomes conscious of his own romanticised notions of what form his new role might take. Books on self-help and spirituality line the dark shelves. But apart from the makeshift altar – a burgundy cloth thrown over a small square table – the only thing to distinguish the place as a chapel is one discreet cross on the wall.
In Mexico, there were crucifixes in the bars. Those eight months with Andrew were the best of his life. Would he still be with Andrew now, he wonders, if he hadn’t had to leave? Probably not. Andrew was too brave, too witty, too extraordinary not to get tired one day of Richard and his hesitations. Richard tried not to let show his conviction that sooner or later he would not be enough for a man like that. But even so, he thinks now, they might have had a little longer …
Viv taps his arm. ‘I’ll leave you here then, love, all right? Patrick, the last chaplain, used to run a little choir, if that’s of interest, and a mindfulness workshop; be at one with the moment type thing. Anyway, you’ve got Him upstairs for company, haven’t you, so I’d better skedaddle.’ She restrains herself from giggling and gives only a crazy smirk. ‘Toddle back to the office at lunch, all right? Will you find your way?’
‘Of course,’ he says, though he is unsure if he will. ‘Thank you.’
Viv makes her way out with the jolly gait of a baton twirler in a brass band. Once she has gone, the space fills with stillness and silence. All around is noise and movement – footsteps in other rooms, on the floor above, voices, the banging of doors. Walls are everywhere. Every window is sealed
, of course; why had he not thought of that before? Every surface is hard. Sound has nothing to sink into, smell has nowhere to dissipate.
He picks up two of the plastic chairs and places them in a separate arrangement. He sits on one and, satisfied that it is the right distance from the other, wedges his Bible under his left thigh. It is 9.55. His eyes wander back to the crucifix, his mind to the bar in San Cristóbal de las Casas, to Andrew. Andrew, again, always, inevitably.
‘Just tell her,’ he is saying, his pale neck no less long in Richard’s looping memory, the desire to put his lips to that neck no less strong. ‘Mum, I’m gay. It’s three words.’
‘Four. One’s an abbreviation of two.’
‘Pedant. Just tell her, for God’s sake. Live your life.’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Richard hears himself reply, and even in his memory his voice sounds weak. ‘I’m not like you, Andrew. I’m not … confident. And I wasn’t blessed with liberal parents.’ A flash of guilt – then, and now. He should not have criticised his mother and father, should not have compared them and found them wanting. He hadn’t meant to. No one can help what they are. If he’d ever had the courage to tell them, wouldn’t that have been the first argument in his own defence?
Andrew is swigging from the green glass bottle, his eyes half closing for a second. He puts the bottle down on the table, takes a handful of sunflower seeds, splits the husk of one with his teeth and spits it into the sawdust. A beggar girl of no more than six sidles up, eyes like chocolate buttons. Andrew gives her a coin, waves her away. ‘Vete. Fuera.’ Returns his gaze to Richard. ‘You regretted not telling your dad, didn’t you?’
‘She’s just ill,’ he replies, the words landing in the present like a cruel taunt. ‘It’s not like she’s dying or anything.’
A cough breaks the silence. A young man with the merest shadow of a black crew cut stands in the doorway. His shoulders are wide; his sweatshirt hangs from them as from a coat hanger. The rest of his body barely troubles his clothes. But most of all, it’s his eyes that Richard notices. They are those of an animal: deep brown pools of fear.