The Star Witness

by Andy Hamilton

  “Let’s take a break, shall we, Louise?” She shoots me a look. “It’s very hot in here.”

  “Damn right,” says Pulse.

  “Of course.” She smiles. “Kevin’s right.”

  Around the drinks table, Dougie soon regains his composure, but he tells Louise he doesn’t want to spend any more time in the chair.

  “Sometimes looking back’s not so helpful for me, y’see, I can get a bit unmanageable.”

  Louise would clearly love to find out more, but she knows better than to force it now.

  “That just leaves you, Paul,” she says.

  Albie looks hesitant, to put it mildly.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I tell him.

  “It’s OK,” he mumbles.

  “You’re happy to do it?”

  He nods and puts down his drink. The operator shoulders the camera while Albie approaches the chair as if it is electrified.

  “You can stop whenever you want,” Louise reassures him. “Like Kevin did.”

  Another little nod from Albie, then he settles slowly into the chair. The camera starts to turn. Louise softens her voice.

  “So, when you were little…what did you want to be?”

  He looks as small and as hunted as I can remember.

  “I…erm…well…it’s odd.”

  “Odd?”

  “Yeh…I’ve been thinking and, um…” He shifts his weight in the chair. “…I, er…I can’t remember wanting to be anything.”

  His next sentence fades off to a mumbled whisper.

  “Sorry, Paul, what was the last bit? Didn’t catch that.” she asks.

  He raises the volume to barely audible.

  “Erm…I don’t think there was anything.”

  “As a child,” she presses, “there was nothing you wanted to be?”

  “…No.”

  “Why do you suppose that was?”

  Albie shrugs.

  “You have a beautiful voice, did it not occur to you that you could be, say, a singer?”

  Now Albie is staring at the floor, like Dougie was, as if it is screening his past.

  “I didn’t sing if people were around.”

  Again, his voice thins to nothing. Louise edges closer to him.

  “That’s quite unusual, Paul…for a boy to have no ideas about what he might like to be when he grows up.”

  Albie looks up, paler than ever, the light seems to be shining through him.

  “I know,” he mutters. And then the muttering starts to fade again.

  “Sorry, Paul, louder.”

  “I suppose I…I just never thought that I could be anything.”

  Albie’s words are still hanging in the air when, from the corner of the room, we hear a sharp-edged drawl.

  “Oh p-lease! Are we going to have to listen to much more of this shit?”

  Louise gestures to Gerald to be quiet, but he is walking forward now.

  “Oh, come on, this whole little-me routine of his is sick-making! I don’t believe a word of it. Ooh, I’m so pale, I’m so sad…” Now he is mimicking Albie’s expression. “I’m a startled fawn, give me a fucking break.”

  What’s he up to? Is he jealous of the attention Albie is getting? I decide to take control.

  “Gerald, this is Albie’s turn, just sit back down and-—”

  “He’s an act, all mysterious and enigmatic like some pathetic bloody sphinx, how come he’s the only one who we don’t know what he’s in for, eh? How come? He won’t tell us, no one will tell us. What’s all that about? Why’s he getting special treatment?”

  So, it is jealousy.

  “What did you do, Albie, eh, why are you here?”

  Albie is sitting, frozen with terror in the chair, his knuckles white as he grips the plastic, grips it hard.

  “Come on, Albie!” Gerald is shouting now, his shirt darkened with sweat. “Spill the beans!”

  Dougie steps forward, with great purpose.

  “Shut it, Gerald.”

  “Yeh, mind your own bis-ness,” calls Pulse.

  “Ignore him, Albie,” adds Simo.

  I feel sure Gerald is playing up for the cameras, because somehow he manages to skip around Dougie to taunt his prey.

  “How old are you, Albie? How much time you done?”

  Dougie grips Gerald firmly by the shoulder.

  “What’s it all about, eh?”

  Suddenly, Gerald is singing, loud and grating.

  “What’s it all a-bout, Al-bie?”

  The last note is cut short, when Dougie’s hand clutches Gerald by the throat and tosses him dismissively across the room. I am poised to hit the alarm button, but then I realise that there is not going to be a fight, Gerald is bent double, coughing and choking.

  “Is he OK?” asks the camera operator.

  “He’ll be fine,” says Dougie, like a man who knows about throat injuries. Then he turns to Louise with a warm smile. “I’d rather you didn’t include that last bit, Louise, only it could lose me some privileges.”

  She nods vigorously. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her looking truly scared. In a few minutes she’s witnessed both sides of Dougie, the innocence and the capacity for sudden violence. She knows she’s stepped into someone else’s world, somewhere beyond controls. The cameraman is already packing his kit away and the rehearsal breaks up in virtual silence, apart from Gerald’s strangled splutters as he curls up against the base of the wall.

  There was a bit of an atmosphere after that. Gerald knew better than to make a complaint of assault against Dougie – nobody likes a snitch – but every now and then he would give him a venomous glance. Dougie, on the other hand, seemed totally unaffected, as if the whole episode had never happened. Albie, I noticed, started giving Gerald a very wide berth, but seemed to relax a little whenever we were rehearsing music.

  Our rehearsals made steady progress. We had found ourselves a new accompanist, Mrs Braddock from the Administration Office. She wasn’t as good a pianist as the previous one, but she was less likely to end up in solitary. She thumped the keys gleefully through the numbers and looked transported whenever Albie started to sing. More pieces to camera were recorded but, though I watched her like a hawk, Louise did not put a foot wrong. Nothing she did was cheap or exploitative. There was still time, I told myself.

  Gerald’s stand-up routine got slicker each day, although I managed to persuade him to take out his impersonation of Dougie – which I thought might be a risk too far. Malcolm sat in on one rehearsal and laughed all the way through Gerald’s portrait of a prison governor. Was he really that happy to laugh at himself? Or did he want to look like a good sport?

  Everything seems to be going moderately smoothly, until, with a few days to go to the performance, Albie doesn’t appear at rehearsals.

  19

  The Final Rehearsal

  “Where the fuck is he?” yells Dougie, in an uncharacteristic panic. “We’ve got no show without him. No one’s seen him. He’s the star turn. What the fuck’s happened?”

  Then the rumours start to ping around the room. Simo’s heard that Albie’s in hospital, possibly with AIDS. Pulse has heard that he’s in solitary for stabbing someone.

  “Albie? Stabbing someone?” I query.

  “What I heard, man.”

  “Who did he stab?”

  “I dunno, some fella.”

  The door opens as a guard shows in Louise and her cameraman. Dougie tries to tap the officer for information about Dougie, but his questions go unanswered. I ask Louise if she knows anything.

  “First I’ve heard of it.”

  “Christ, we need to know,” hisses Dougie.

  “Perhaps he’s had some sort of breakdown,” drawls Gerald. “Let’s face it, mentally he’s a car-crash.”

  Dougie advances to within a few inches of Gerald’s face.

  “If anything of that nature has occurred, Gerald, I shall be holding you personally responsible.”

  “I thin
k that’s absurd,” flutes Gerald, on his toes, ready to move.

  “You stressed the boy out, you arrogant fucker.” At this moment, Mrs Braddock enters, to be met by a barrage of questions about Albie. She says she’s not sure if she’s allowed to tell us what’s happened and scuttles off to check with the governor.

  About twenty minutes later, I get a message to go see Malcolm.

  His office has two fans running, but the air still hangs limp and heavy.

  “I’m so sorry Kevin,” he begins, “I would have given you a heads-up about Paul, but the situation emerged without any warning.”

  “Is he sick?”

  “No, no, nothing of that nature, no, he’s on release for a couple of days for…compassionate reasons.”

  “Why, what’s happened?”

  “Well, I can’t tell you that I’m afraid. Don’t want to breach a confidence.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Well…hopefully by show day.”

  One of the fans starts to make a clicking sound as it half-rotates. Malcolm stares at it for a few moments, preoccupied.

  “He…um…when he comes back…Paul may…may be a little…fragile.”

  Where’s he going with this?

  “Fragile?”

  “Yes…”

  “Too fragile to do the show?”

  “Hard to say. You’ll have to keep an eye on him, y’know, use your judgement as to whether the pressure will be…containable for him…”

  “Perhaps we should just cancel the whole thing. Perhaps it’s just too much pressure all round. Everyone’s getting very tense and-”

  He stops me, holding his palms towards me, like I’m traffic.

  “Whoa, whoa, there. Let’s not jump the gun. Paul will probably be fine. And I think the show is looking great. You’ve done a brilliant job and I think everyone is going to get a lot out of it. Just keep an eye out, that’s all I’m saying.”

  He winks at me. Nobody winks any more, what does he think he’s doing? Nobody’s winked at me since my Uncle Ralph, who turned out to be a pervert.

  “I know I can rely on you,” he says, with no basis whatsoever.

  I leave his office confused and apprehensive. One of the few pluses of prison life had been the complete absence of responsibility. But now it seems that is over. Somehow I have been cast as the officer on the bridge. How the fuck did that happen?

  I go back to the room and we rehearse what little we can without Albie. Pulse demonstrates that he has really mastered his Shakespeare soliloquy, but Simo’s chaotic beat-box dancing seems to have got even more crazed.

  “You look like an epileptic. No offence,” offers Dougie.

  The group agrees that we will continue to rehearse as much as we can on the basis that Albie will be back in time to do the show. As we are packing up, Louise comes across to tell me not to worry and that she has a good feeling. Slowly I begin to recognise the anxiety I am experiencing: pre-performance nerves. How long had it been since I cared enough to have those?

  Come the day of the performance, at two in the afternoon, with just five hours to go, Albie walked through the door of the rehearsal room to ironic cheers and a bear-hug from Dougie. He seemed very disconcerted; although it probably didn’t help that everyone kept staring at him, trying to assess his state of mind. He received many offers of cups of tea etcetera and, with the obvious exception of Gerald, everyone made a real fuss of him.

  After about ten minutes of this, I clap my hands to start the rehearsal. Louise sits down, her cameraman gets in position and Mrs Braddock attacks the piano as we practise our new finale – “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat”.

  I am standing next to Albie and his voice is clear and confident. Maybe he’s pleased to be back with us. Seems Malcolm’s concerns were unwarranted.

  We sing the finale four of five times, then we spend some time going over “Hey Jude”, which is still a bit ragged. Gerald is not quite committing to it and, at one point, I catch him rolling his eyes. But morale seems reasonably high when we stop for our first break and I am pouring Simo some tea when I hear the sudden shuffle of feet behind me and I turn to find Albie, his eyes fluttering, being cradled in Dougie’s arms as he is lowered towards a chair.

  “It’s OK, son,” Dougie is saying “I’ve got you.”

  “The fella fainted,” explains Pulse.

  “You’re all right, aren’t you, let’s sit you down.”

  I hear movement to my right, which I know is the cameraman picking up his camera. I am about to pick a fight about it, but then Albie starts to groan like a stricken animal.

  “Is – is he – the – he’s—”

  “OK, Simo, stay calm, it’s under control,” I say, as Dougie and Pulse gently persuade Albie to put his head between his legs.

  “Shall I fetch a medic?” asks Mrs Braddock.

  “No…I’ll be OK” Albie is starting to lift his head now. “Just give me a sec.”

  “Can’t we open more windows?” asks Louise. She moves towards the windows, but realises they’re designed to only open a few degrees. “Sorry, silly question.”

  Simo flails his arms around, trying to vent his anger at the heat in choked-off sentences, until Mrs Braddock volunteers that there is a fan in her office and bustles off to fetch it.

  Albie’s breathing starts to become slower, less shallow, and he straightens up in the chair.

  “Sorry about that,” he sighs. He receives a friendly volley of reassurances.

  “When did you last eat?” I ask.

  “Erm…” He screws up his eyes, thinking back. “I, um…I had some crisps…just after the funeral.”

  “And when was the funeral? Yesterday?”

  “Erm…yeah.”

  “Was it someone close?”

  “Yeh…pretty close…her name was Carol.”

  Pulse squeezes his shoulder. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, fella.”

  “No” he replies, bold and loud, lifting his head. “No…that’s fine…I want to talk about her…tell her story.” He looks, fleetingly, at the camera. “No one else will.”

  “I don’t think we need to film this, Louise.” I say.

  “Hear, hear,” adds Gerald.

  Albie starts to shake his head. “No, let them film, I don’t care…she should be remembered.”

  Full of apologies, Mrs Braddock enters and plugs in the electric fan. It has little effect, other than to shunt warm air around. Albie breathes through his nose, hard, several times, as if he’s steeling himself against pain.

  “You don’t have to tell us now,” I whisper.

  “Yes, I do. Before I chicken out…This happened, like…a long time ago” he begins. “Long time, see…I’m a lot older than people think…been in prison…er, lots of prisons, long time now…they try to put me out but, like…I keep doing stuff to get back inside.”

  “Yah, we know, in-sti-tu-tion-al-ised,” says Pulse, trying to be supportive.

  “Yeh…um, anyway…before prison, y’know…um, they sent me to a special school…’cos I was backward…they don’t call it that now…and Carol, she was there an’ all, although I don’t think she was…well, she was clever, she knew stuff…but she, like…she got…bit panicky, y’know, around people…so we were different…but we were the same…and she liked me.”

  He clears his throat. He pauses, before looking up.

  “She was the first person who I felt really liked me…y’know…who wasn’t my mum.”

  Simo hands him a paper cup with water in.

  “Thanks…anyway, her dad was gone…like mine…and her mum was a bit sort of…mental…so she and me would hang out…y’know, just hang out, just chatting and stuff…she was nice…it felt nice…safe…”

  “How old were you?” asks Louise.

  “Erm…fifteen…then sixteen…we got engaged…” He smiles at the memory. “No one took us seriously…until…”

  An awful premonition pops into my mind a moment be
fore he confirms it.

  “…until Carol finds out she’s having a baby…we don’t mean to, it just happened…loads of people told her to get rid of it, but Carol…she wasn’t having that…she said no, she was keeping it…and I wanted to stand by her, y’know…because I…because she had no one else, we just had each other…well, and my mum…when she was sober…the Council kept saying, y’know, that the baby would have to be given away, like, but Carol just kept fighting…she said we’d take care of the baby…my mum said she’d help…so the Council gave us a flat, high up in a tower block, tiny, it was…and damp, but it was home, our home…and Carol had the baby, little boy, we named him Sean…and so there was three of us, me, Carol, and our little bundle, Sean, for us to look after and love.”

  His face breaks into a smile as he stares into the crackling fire of his memory.

  “He was lovely…well, no, he…well he was lovely, but…” His expression clouds a little and his speech gets a little faster. “Anyway, it didn’t turn out well, me and Carol, we…we went different ways and that’s – I haven’t seen her since – yesterday that was the first time since – yesterday, lying in that box…my Carol, only not my Carol…old-looking and…her liver packed up, they said…just drank and drank…all ’cos of me…’cos of me.”

  His hands are visibly trembling now. Mrs Braddock throws me an anxious look. She leans towards me.

  “I think I’ll go fetch a medic,” she says, before creeping quietly towards the door.

  “It wasn’t ’cos of you, we all make our own choices,” says Dougie. “She chose to drink.”

  “Hardly anyone was there to say goodbye…just me and three others.”

  “Was your son there?” asks Louise, softly.

  Albie runs a shaking hand through his hair. There is a painful little catch in his voice now, like the words are snagging on something.

  “No…no, he wasn’t, no…Sean had something wrong with him…in his tummy…it wasn’t joined up right…so he got a lot of pain…and you can’t explain things to a baby, can you…so he just got pain…and the pain would frighten him, so he’d cry…so me and Carol were up and down the hospital all the time, y’know, in those first weeks…and then Mum…died…sudden it was…fell down dead in the Post Office and the Social Services lady said maybe we wouldn’t be able to manage Sean, but Carol said he was our son and we’d look after him, but he kept crying and crying…and when he cried…it was like the pain went through you, through your body…we weren’t sleeping, none of us, and then…then Carol got down…really down…post…”