by Kate Bradley
We walked the long road that bordered the park and I enjoyed being out of the suffocating café and away from Irene’s. We walked amongst a line of sycamores, the russet, red and golden leaves lifting my spirits. I held Jack koala-close, pleased to have him to cling to. I breathed in his scrummy smell and kissed his face, allowing my tears to fall.
‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’
‘I’m just so happy to see you, darling,’ I said, wiping my eyes. ‘I really missed you this morning.’
Jack kissed my hand: ‘I always miss you, Mummy, when I’m not with you.’ I set him free to run around under the trees; I pressed the space under my belly button where Jack had grown. He’d been an impossible carry; but still I’d been sorry to give him up. I knew that each day that passed after his birth would see him move further and further away from me, until one day he’d be gone, leaving me all alone.
I always saw my parents’ flaws so clearly that I thought I’d be able to just be the opposite of them and it’d all be fine. It was as if they had given me a rule book on how not to be: I only had to apply it in reverse and I’d succeed where they had failed. But it seems that life is more complex than that: it seems that there’s more than one way to fail.
As Jack collected fallen leaves, I resolved to see my mother and ask for advice – she was the one person I could trust with the truth and still not feel judged by. Besides, she’d be able to tell if I was unhappy anyway – she always could. I could never hide anything from her, even though she’d been serving a life sentence since I was eight. I winced as I thought of the long journey from Brighton to Woking I’d have to make to see her, first by train, then by bus, to Send women’s prison. But I knew it would be worth it – she would help me make a plan.
Jack brought me his bundle of leaves and together we threw them into the wind. He laughed and jumped for them and I delighted in his joy. His game lifted my spirits and I found I could manage a smile at the thought of what Issy would say if she knew that my mother was imprisoned for murder. I wondered if it would make her view my marriage differently.
I rather thought it would – and that she’d possibly view me differently too.
nine:
– before –
Two weeks later, my visit to my mother was booked in.
Nothing would stop me from my monthly visit to see her: I loved my mum dearly. But this time it felt even more vital – this time I counted down the days because I needed her help.
I always took Jack with me, but now I needed to go alone. There was no question, I’d been galvanised by Issy and was determined to take action, but if Jack was with me, I wouldn’t be able to talk freely. If my mother was to help me make a plan, then she would need my innermost thoughts and feelings, and the details were not Jack-friendly.
First, I’d asked Irene if she could have Jack for the day, but it wasn’t her day to have him and she had a busy diary. Normally, I would’ve turned to one of my NCT friends to have him, but that was now out of the question. Then, unexpected joy of joys, I realised that Nick was rota’d a day off on visiting day, and I’d asked him: ‘Would you be able to have Jack?’
His response was to actually laugh. ‘Not on my day off, love. I’ve got golf with the boys from work.’
But he offered me the car so at least I’d be spared the hideous train journey followed by the seven mile prison visitor shuttle bus.
If I were to take Jack, then I accepted that I had to do our ‘usual’, as I so quaintly called it. When Nadia had flown with their baby on a plane, she’d confessed to us that she’d slipped her daughter a little antihistamine, knowing it would make her drowsy. I’d never taken Jack abroad, but she’d given me the idea and I’d tried it. It worked and became part of our ‘usual’ routine for travelling to prison, alongside buying him a new book and a packet of something chewy that would take an age to eat. I always felt lousy doing it, but children’s doses of antihistamine are pretty harmless and my training as a nurse gave me a little confidence that I knew what I was doing. I told myself that since he seemed to hate loud noises and the clanging and banging of metal doors could scare him, this would be better for him. That was true, but so was the fact that nothing was straightforward about visiting my mother in prison, so I found it easier to have him calm and a little drowsy. It worked so well, we even called it the Sleepy. ‘Time for Sleepy!’ I said, before telling him to ‘open wide!’ and feeding him the medicine.
He took the spoon from me and sucked it like a lolly. I’d tasted it: it was loaded with sugar. ‘Any more Sleepy?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No darling, that’s just the usual to help with the journey.’
‘We are going to see Nana today,’ he said knowledgably.
Yes, I answered silently. And she’s going to give us the solutions to our problems. I had a quick thought about what was ahead of me and then said: ‘Actually, give me the spoon back – now you’re a bigger boy you could probably have a fraction more.’
A couple of hours later, as I pulled my Maclaren pushchair and the shame of still using it out of the boot, I wondered if I’d been too generous with it. Jack had slept the whole journey. He must’ve been the only small child never to nod off in the car, but with the antihistamine, he had and as I pulled him out, hot and sweaty from his car seat, he didn’t even wake with the October air on him.
I put him gently into the pushchair. ‘Mummy loves you,’ I said, whispering into his hair. I felt terrible I was still relying on it for these journeys. He was three and should walk, but he was slow and would dawdle. I’d never got over the shame of walking into a prison to see my mum and I couldn’t bear anything that made it slower and more agonising. I wish I had got used to it, but I hadn’t. I was a bad daughter and a bad mother. Wanting to feel better by trying for a kiss, I didn’t dare, in case it woke him. I think if that had happened, and he’d woken with a cry, I would’ve put him back into his seat and driven all the way home. I was close to breaking. My confidence at talking to my mum was waning – the drive had given me time to think and I’d become edgy with too much caffeine and speculation of what she’d say when I smashed the image of her daughter’s perfect world.
But I couldn’t let go of the look in Issy’s eyes as she pulled up my sleeve and saw my bruise. My world had to change, whether I liked it or not.
And, as I approached the prison, the tension of disappointing my mum and yet needing a new authentic life, put me on the edge of breaking.
ten:
– before –
HM Send women’s prison was my mother’s favourite prison by far. She had been newly transferred here to this modern, brick building, which held the highest concentration of women lifers anywhere in the country. My mum said it was more relaxed, more respectful than the others she’d been in before, and she enjoyed the gardening detail she’d been assigned.
But even if she preferred it, the visitors were the same as the others: everyone drawn and pensive as we filed to go in. I always felt the oppressiveness of it, as I fell compliantly into line with the thin stream of visitors – mostly women, but some men and some children, too, as we stepped into the building. We’d file; we’d wait in line; bonelessly, we offered our bags and bodies, submissive to the searching. There, we were no longer in charge of ourselves.
I don’t think I ever visited a prison without half-expecting a hand to drop onto my shoulder and a guard to say that a mistake had been made and I was no longer at liberty to leave.
I could do the routine with my eyes shut. I knew the drill better than most.
I passed the prison officer my ID and he checked me off against the list. I waited as another officer asked me to sign a declaration that I wasn’t bringing in anything I shouldn’t and then I was checked again, patted down once more and my pockets checked. When she’d finished with me, she scrutinised Jack’s pushchair, and then I had to lift him out so she could examine where he sat, and also the back of him.
The first time I visited my mother in prison wi
th Jack, I was outraged. She was still in Holloway then, and the austere Victorian walls had frowned dourly upon prisoners and visitors alike. Before I’d been pregnant, I’d seen other prams searched, but never thought much about it. But when my son, tiny then at only a few weeks old, was searched, my maternal instincts had kicked in and I’d shouted at them, creating a scene. I couldn’t bear them searching his pram, running their hands over his Babygro back. It’d all felt so awfully Dickensian, so persecutory, as if the system was torturing the tiny and innocent.
But time has a habit of getting you used to things – things that once you’d never have believed you could possibly endure.
After submitting to the search, I pushed Jack’s pushchair into the corridor to the waiting room.
The room was overlit and filled with plastic stackable seats. Around it sat about thirty people, some I recognised, some I didn’t. When I first started visiting as a teenager, I hated the visiting rooms, because I never felt that my mother was the same as the other prisoners. But as the years went by, I changed my mind. As I got older, I got a clearer perspective and I realised that she was just like the other women. I think that prisons are stuffed full of women like my mother – women with similar tales of suffering, subjugation and careless violence – and always have been and always will be.
Sitting there waiting to be called in, with Jack still dozing in the pushchair, I rubbed a bruise I had hidden under my sleeve and realised I was probably more kith and kin with these female inmates than with Issy and the others. I just didn’t want that to be true.
I thought this as I gently pushed the sleeping Jack. I loved him when he was asleep. His eyelashes were longer than most children’s – longer than mine even – and they lay like a delicate kiss against his apricot cheeks. His mouth was a soft blush and if I leaned closer I could hear his gentle breaths.
My name was called by an officer with a clipboard. I got up with a small group and left the waiting room by a different door. Like obedient school children we filed down the corridor and stepped into the visiting hall.
Mesh covered the windows, restraining the bruised sky behind them. Harsh lighting glared. The room was dotted with low tables and grouped chairs, one orange chair amongst three grey chairs at each table.
I saw my mum lift her hand in greeting and I pushed Jack towards her.
She stood to meet me; she was taller than most women and broad-shouldered, perhaps a little overweight. She had chestnut brown hair that reached her shoulders when she wore it loose, but time seemed to stroke grey into it more and more each time I saw her. She gave me only the briefest of kisses: but it was warm and made me feel like I was wanted. It was all we were allowed in case I passed any contraband to her.
She held me briefly by the shoulders: ‘My darling girl.’ Then she stared at me closely, as if I wore my new loneliness as punch marks on my face. ‘How are you, Lisa?’
‘How are you, Mum?’
She stared at me with her conker-coloured eyes, seeing me better than anyone ever did. ‘You’ve ignored my question,’ she gently grumbled as she settled her large body back into her chair. She was wearing denim dungarees and they suited her. Her fringe had been cut shorter and I could see her eyebrows; they too seemed a little grey and I felt nerves crawl in my stomach that time was not standing still.
‘I’m just tired,’ I told her – this was safe ground. I was always tired.
She touched the skin on my cheekbones. ‘You need more iron. And more fun.’ It felt lovely to be touched by my mum – I’ve never had to doubt how much she loved me.
Her shrewd stare shifted to a sleeping Jack. ‘You shouldn’t let him nap during the day, then he’d sleep through the night. He’s turned three and far, far too old for it – and for the pram.’
‘Buggy, Mum – prams are for babies. All kids develop at different rates – boys can be a bit later with things. Besides, the travel here wears him out and trust me, nothing makes him sleep through the night – me and Nick have tried everything. Besides, if I woke him up now, he’d be a grumpy loud three-year-old.’
‘Nobody would mind.’
‘I would mind.’ Irritation itched: I wanted to talk about more important things than whether Jack napped.
‘You never slept either. Golly, you were a trial.’
‘Trust me, the trial is travelling here,’ I said, more stung now than irritated. ‘One more disrupted night is worth the peace for me driving on the motorway or queueing to get into this prison, or when I’m being searched. Schlepping us two hours here and two hours back takes it out of me, Mum, and if he’s asleep for some of it, then he’s one less thing to worry about.’
She held the pushchair, her thumb skating up and down as if she was thinking hard about something.
Instantly, I felt annoyed with myself. I didn’t want to admit I found the journey hard work, because I wanted to protect her from my anxieties. And this was not the mood I wanted to create. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, I love seeing you, so does Jack – you know that.’
‘I’m sorry that he has to see me here. I’m sorry that you did too. Hard for a little kid, I realise that.’
Hard for a daughter any age, I wanted to say, but instead I said: ‘It’s fine, I’m just grumpy, that’s all. Tired – like I said.’
‘I know you aren’t yourself, Lisa. Are you and Nick OK?’
I made the mistake of taking a minute to steady myself. A cup of tea would help. ‘Hold that thought,’ I told her, begged two minutes and grabbed my purse so I could buy us both a cup of tea from the WRVS ladies.
When I came back, I nearly dropped the two plastic cups of stewed tea I was carrying. My mother had Jack out of his pushchair and he was sitting on her lap, laughing. Clearly, the antihistamine had worn off. Jack was holding his chin up really high, and she was looking under it, pretending to look for something. ‘There! I found it – I knew the tickle was hiding there!’
‘More, more,’ he squealed and she gave him a last tickle before clasping him tightly to her large bosom.
Usually, I felt glad to see their bond as it made the journey worthwhile to reunite them both and I loved seeing how he responded to her, but right then, I felt cheated. I might be grown up, but I needed her.
I pouted, hating myself for it and for not speaking up: You said I could talk to you! I watched mutely as my mother started a new tickle game with him: ‘Naughty Jack! Hiding my tickle from me . . . let me see if I can find it!’ Jack laughed and begged for more.
I look round to catch the eye of one of the prison officers, but no one was paying attention to us.
‘Can I . . .?’ I said, reaching for him after a few minutes. I felt envious – of her or him, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t just that I wanted her attention and guidance, it was that Jack had been so tense recently, and seeing him happy with my mother just reinforced the idea that perhaps it was because of me, because we were so close (too close, Nick said). ‘I’ve got your tea here.’
‘I’m just saying hello.’ She continued her game without even looking up. ‘And if you can’t already tell, I’m ignoring you, Lisa, because you fuss too much. The tea will need to cool and Jack will not break –’ she paused to blow a raspberry on his neck and his scream of happiness was so loud it drew glances (except from the officers) – ‘nor will he smash or fall apart –’ another raspberry – ‘from a big, happy cuddle from his nana who loves him.’
I dropped my hands to my lap and waited, powerless.
The seconds and minutes ticked on.
Eventually, she handed Jack back. By the time she did, I was near tears with frustration. I had travelled for hours for one reason and it was being thwarted.
Apparently she noticed this: ‘You need to relax more.’ She set him up with his reading book and then reached for her tea. For a minute she simply sipped from her plastic cup and smiled at me. ‘You’re too tense,’ she finally announced. ‘I can tell you now, you don’t get that from me.’ She leaned forward, observing me like a
new type of animal, as if trying to classify it for the first time. ‘You get that from your father – he was always too uptight and it was not good for him. Now, come on, I want to hear from you. You’ve clearly got something on your mind and now Jack’s had his cuddle, I want to hear what’s what.’
I wanted to confide – felt desperate to – but how could I now Jack was awake? He sat settled, reading his book, but I never trusted that he wouldn’t soon pick up on what we were saying. It was crushing, because I desperately wanted to seek her counsel, but it was now out of the question – the chance was gone.
‘I’m fine,’ I said brightly, feeling anything but.
‘You know what fine means in therapy terms?’ She didn’t wait for me to answer: ‘Fucked up. Insecure. Neurotic and over-Emotional. Get it?’ She laughed and I burst into tears.
She dried my eyes, and I tried to laugh it off, but it was too accurate. Eventually, she said: ‘I’m sorry, darling. You’re so fragile.’ She dabbed at me with a tissue, kissed me on the cheek and then sent me a poison dart: ‘Perhaps you should go back to work, Lisa. At your age, you should be building your career.’
‘I hear that from Nick all the time.’
‘How’re your finances?’
I inhaled, trying to keep calm. I had not come here for this. ‘Well, two wages are better than one.’ I’d been hoping to sound sarcastic or ironic or something but it was lost on her because she nodded as if I was simply stating an obvious fact. ‘But if I went back to work, Jack would do what?’
‘What do other people do? Send their children to nursery?’ She smiled. ‘It’ll do you good to have a bit of time apart. You spend too much time together.’
I glanced at Jack – his eyes were dutifully following from left to right and after a pause, he turned a page. But I didn’t trust it. Jack was always so smart.
‘How could I spend “too much” time together with my own child?’
‘Because love needs time to breathe. It doesn’t hurt to miss someone a bit.’