by Nikki Owen
I reach out, pick up a newspaper. Pain shoots down my arm. I flop back and exhale. The hospital wing is bright and rest is impossible, so I have taken to reading periodicals. They keep me alert. Yesterday, my legal counsel again refused to support my application for appeal and while I pleaded with them, while I begged them to help me, still they refused. Despite the Governor saying he would help, I do not know what I am going to do. I do not know anyone in this country. I have no friends here, no life. The appeal application deadline is fast approaching.
It is on page five of The Times that I see it. An article. A QC has secured a famous chef his freedom after he was found guilty of murdering his sous chef. New evidence. Following a lengthy trial, the conviction was overturned.
Overturned. I scan for the QC’s name.
Harry Warren.
Could this be it? My new counsel? Could he help me? There is a photograph of him next to the article. I study it: black skin, wide smile, round stomach. Good-looking, once. A man of money and paid help.
Metal clatters to my right. I glance up. A bedpan has been knocked to the floor.
I return my eyes to The Times and look closer. The man looks familiar, yet how can that be? To the right of the page there is a short biography. It says he is married, two grown-up children: twins. His wife is a solicitor. They are both fifty-eight, both charitable figures. But all that to me is irrelevant, because, to arrange an appointment with him, what I really want is right there, at the bottom.
His office: Brior’s Gate Chambers.
Which means Mr Warren works here. In London.
Chapter 7
Five days in the hospital wing and now I am out.
The guard links my arm like a crutch as I hobble to my cell. Inmates stare and whisper. No one comes near me, a leper, a marked woman, strange, weird. I hold my head up as much as I can as I shuffle forward, but inside I am lonely, sad, completely desolate.
I enter the cell to find that I have a new cellmate. Her name, the guard says, is Patricia. She is moving around the cell now as I sit on my bed and touch the Bible, the new hiding place for my notebook, tucked behind the cover. Thankfully, prison is not a place where people read scripture. There’s no room for God here.
‘Hello?’
This new person is standing before me. Her hair is shorn, fuzzy against her scalp like the blood-soaked fluff of a newborn chick.
‘Patricia O’Hanlon,’ she says, holding out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
I blink at her fingers.
‘Well, go on then. You’re supposed to take it.’
I shake her hand up and down five times, but my grip must have been too tight, because when I let go, she gives her arm a rub.
‘Jesus, you’ve got some muscles on you there.’
Curious, I study her arm in lieu of a reply. On her wrist there are two small tattoos. One is of a blackbird. The other is of the Virgin Mary. She is the only person I have seen with a virgin on their arm. Her body, when it moves, is lithe, like a piece of wire, and her head almost skims the ceiling. The last time I saw someone that tall they were playing basketball.
I bend forward to get a better look.
‘Whoa,’ she says, before taking a step back. ‘Getting a bit close there.’
‘Patricia,’ I say, stepping back. ‘It is the female form of Patrick. Patrick means “nobleman”.’
She pauses for a second then smiles. There is a gap where a tooth should be, her cheeks sit buoyant and bobbing on her face like two ripe red apples, and when I sniff her, a scent drifts out. It reminds me of soft towels, warm baths, talcum powder.
‘Your accent’s not English,’ she says. ‘Where you from?’
‘Salamanca. Spain. I am Dr Maria Martinez.’ A wave of exhaustion hits me. I rub my ribs.
‘I heard, by the way,’ she says.
I wince. ‘Heard what?’
‘S’all right. I know about that Croft woman. Word gets round.’ She runs a palm over her scalp.
I step straight back, a flicker of a memory in my head. ‘What do you know? What?’
‘Whoa! Calm down a little.’
I remember something now from the beating, something to do with accents and Father Reznik, but the memory is still smudged, unclear. I shake my head, try to nudge it out.
‘You okay?’
I gulp, focus. My breathing is heavy, my fists tight, cemented to my side. I sense Patricia moving slightly to the side, her head tilted. I make myself look at her and see that she is smiling, eyes crinkled, shoulders soft, hands loose. Will she hurt me, too? I look at her hands again. No fists.
‘So,’ she says, ‘you’re a handy woman to have around, Doc. Can I call you Doc?’
‘My name is Maria.’
‘I know. But would you mind if I call you Doc?’
I think about this. ‘It is okay.’
Patricia picks up a small duffel bag and begins to unpack. There is a toothbrush, toothpaste, toilet roll, two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts and six pairs of thick walking socks, too warm for prison. The last item she pulls out is a small family photograph in a cardboard frame. No glass allowed.
A buzzer sounds. ‘Ah, that’ll be lunch, then,’ Patricia says. She sets down the picture. ‘Come on, you need to eat.’
I stare, unmoving, still uncertain as to her intentions, still uneasy. ‘You’ll never survive here in one piece if you don’t eat.’
My eye sockets are beginning to throb and when I lift my arms they feel heavy, dead like two lumps of decaying meat. I ache all over. I want to go home. I want to stop time, or at least roll it back. And the canteen. Lunchtime. All those people, those sounds, smells, colours. I do not know how much of this I can take or for how long.
Patricia walks over to me. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘It’s all right. You’ll be fine. I’ll stay with you, okay?’
I glance to my bed. No pictures frame the wall. No family photographs stand on the table.
‘Come on, Doc,’ Patricia says. ‘Everything will be great.’
I am tired of being lonely. Ever since my father died, I have been lonely. The priest saw that in me, but he did what he did and died. Father Reznik left me, too. But, I cannot be on my own forever, can I? My papa had me and I had him. But he is long dead. So now who do I have?
Patricia holds out her hand. ‘Let me help you up, okay?’
I hesitate, then nodding, allow her to link her arm under my shoulder without flinching at her touch too much.
‘That’s the spirit.’
She helps me up and leads me through the door.
And in my brain, in my abnormal, high-functioning, emotionally challenged brain, all I can think of is the word ‘friend.’
I think I may have found a friend.
‘How would you define the word “friend”, Maria?’
Kurt has been asking non-stop questions. He has not moved. He has not once appeared to even breathe. It is exhausting. I need a break, but none are allowed. All part of the therapy technique, I am told.
I tap my foot. ‘Why do you ask this question?’
‘Because I want to know what you understand.’
‘Friend means companion—it is someone with whom you have a non-sexual relationship.’
Kurt keeps his eyes fixed on my face, my mouth, my cheeks, almost swallowing me like a cool drink. ‘A dictionary definition,’ he says finally. He puts his head straight and writes on his notepad. ‘And she was your first friend, this Patricia?’
‘Yes.’
He looks up. ‘Really?’
I place my hand on my throat. Talking about Patricia causes my chest to tighten, my eyes pool. She was my friend, Patricia, my friend, and I do not have too many of those.
‘You had no other—’ he pauses ‘—companions when you were growing up? When you were at work?’
‘No. Other than Father Reznik, no.’
‘Why?’
The reason. The reason is me. I am why I have had no friends. No one wants to be friends with a
social freak, the outcast, the pariah. ‘People do not understand me,’ I decide to say.
‘People do not understand you?’ He shakes his head. ‘By saying that, you do realise, don’t you, that you are implying it is the fault of others, not yours, that people are not your friends?’
‘No. I am not implying—’
He holds up a hand. ‘Would you say that you are the type of person who does not take responsibility for their own actions?’
The dread in my stomach is rising again. Kurt seems to be leaning closer to me. Just one or two centimetres, but I sense it.
‘Maria? I would like you to answer my question.’
‘I take responsibility for my actions. And I do not like your questions.’
He sits back. ‘Okay.’ He taps his pen. ‘Answer me this: what was it about Patricia that made her your friend?’
I glance down to my hands. ‘She used to touch me. If I was distressed, Patricia would lay her hands in front of mine so our fingertips touched.’
I press my palms into my thighs. ‘She understood me,’ I say. ‘She accepted me. I did not have to explain anything. I did not have to speak. She would just lay her hand in front of mine.’
Kurt coughs. When I raise my head, he is staring. A breeze blows in and lifts the cobwebs in the corner, making them float up and down like a dance, a tease. For the first time, Kurt’s eyes flicker to where they dangle, but I don’t know if he sees them as I do. He does not look at me. Does not speak.
‘There are no spiders on the cobwebs,’ I say.
‘You think you can see cobwebs?’ He picks up his Dictaphone. ‘Spiders can be dangerous.’
‘I can see them,’ I say. ‘I can.’ I glance back to the ceiling, and that is when the thought strikes me: if this room has been freshly painted, why are there cobwebs in the corner?
Each morning we awake. After I transcribe my dreams to my notepad, record any new codes that have appeared in my head, I use the toilet, then Patricia does the same. We clean our teeth, yawn and splash water on our faces. Patricia brushes her scalp, I comb my hair. Once dressed, Patricia collects the post. It is the nearest I have come here to establishing a routine; the nearest I have come to being myself. I feel better than I have done in weeks, not happy, but altered, say, like a petal in the wind, not attached to the flower it belongs to, but at least able to experience what it is to float in the air.
Today, Patricia returns dangling a white envelope.
I look up. ‘I have informed you already I do not want a pen pal.’
‘This isn’t a pen pal, Doc.’ She holds out the letter. An unmistakable blue embossment is stamped on the underside.
Patricia thrusts it to me. ‘It’s from—’
‘My mother.’
I take the envelope and immediately my hands betray me, wobbling, slippery. I steady myself as much as I can and study the paper. Green ink. Mont Blanc fountain pen. Only the best for Mother. My pulse speeds up. It is a long time since I have heard any word from home, since I have spoken to Mama, to my brother, my prison sentence breaking them, rendering them mute, the two of them blinking in the sunlight, shielding their eyes, knowing with me there is a storm on its way and that the clouds will always be black.
My pulse keeps racing and I need to calm down, so I look to Patricia. Numbers. Figures. ‘What is the sum of all the positive integers?’ I answer before she can reply. ‘You would assume infinite, would you not?’
‘Er—’
‘Well, you would be wrong. It is not infinite.’ I stand up, pace, turning the envelope over in my fingers over and over. Stopping, I slip one finger under the flap and rip it open. Its contents spill into my palm. ‘Only numbers are infinite,’ I babble. ‘Nothing else can continue forever.’ I blink at the letter, at the ivy-green ink.
‘Doc? You okay?’
I begin to read. The words—they swirl around my head like leaves caught in a crosswind.
‘Doc, you’re crying.’
I touch my eyes. They are moist, but how? I do not cry. Not me, not in front of people. It’s as if prison has changed me.
I read on. My mother says she is disappointed in me, upset for me, that she has prayed for me, begged the Lord for forgiveness on my behalf. She has attended mass at the cathedral in Salamanca, knelt in the pews, stooped at the foot of Jesus and asked him why this has happened. I wipe my eyes, the tears clouding my sight, my throat tight, raw. There is more. Ramon, she claims, has calmed the neighbours, friends, but, oh the worry. What will happen to me, she says. Hard to make sense of the world when your daughter has been convicted of murder. When your daughter is guilty of murder.
‘What is it?’ Patricia says, but I barely register her voice.
My heart rate accelerates. I do not move. I read the word. Then read it again. Guilty. G.U.I.L.T.Y.
‘Doc, you’re worrying me now.’
But my oesophagus is too taut to speak. I give the letter to Patricia. She reads it. I concentrate on breathing, on trying to push aside the words: disappointed, guilty, emotions I experience but cannot display. Emotions my mother feels and, in her distress, has told to me, in black and white.
Patricia scans the page. Her eyes go wide, then she looks to me. ‘Jesus, Doc, that’s…I’m so sorry.’ She looks again at the letter. ‘It says here she wants you to call her, wants to know how you are.’
I sniff, wipe my nose with my sleeve. ‘It does?’
Patricia hands me the letter.
‘She never attended my trial,’ I say after a moment. ‘She was ill for a while.’ I read the letter, the part where my mother requests I contact her. She was never close to me, Mama, but she was always there, looked after me day to day, checked I was where I needed to be. When I was with Papa, Mother hovered by the sides, like a bird on a window ledge, who, at any given moment, could lift her wings and fly away.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ Patricia says.
I shake my head. ‘My mother is a defence lawyer, did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
I nod. ‘She is a politician. She was voted last year into el Congreso, the Spanish congress. She is a Parlimentaria for the centre-right.’ I look at the green ink. ‘The Church backed her all the way. Decades after they joined leagues with Franco, the Catholic Church is still trying to keep control of Spain, of people’s lives.’ Then I laugh, but I don’t know why. The absurdity of it? The sickening truth?
‘Fecking religion,’ Patricia says, shaking her head. ‘Causes more bleedin’ problems than it solves. A heap of the Catholic priests in Ireland were found up to all sorts. And when people were poor and starving on the streets long back, there were the priests, fat and warm in their rectories.’
I rub my thumbs on the envelope, the paper.
‘I remember when I was nine,’ I say. ‘I had to accompany my mother to a meeting at Salamanca Cathedral. Our au pair was away. My mother told me to sit and wait in the seat outside Father Reznik’s office, but I could not. I walked into the vestry and that is when I saw them. My mother and the priest…kissing.’ My mother’s writing swims on the page. ‘She handed the Father a sealed package. I stood, watched, could not look away. For some reason, I knew something was not right. Before they could see me, I ran back to my seat. I never told anyone.’ A tear escapes. Hurt, bewilderment. ‘Why is it no one is who they seem?’
Patricia shrugs. ‘God knows.’
An anger rushes to my cheeks. ‘God does not know. If he did know, if he did exist even, he wouldn’t allow it all to happen.’
I hold the letter and rub the paper. My mother kissed Father Reznik. A priest. A Catholic priest. I saw it, I am so sure. And now I can’t find him, don’t even know who he is, who he really works for or why—if he even existed at all. Just a made-up persona, a name, a being, plucked out of the air like an apple from a tree. Forbidden. Wrong. And now the convent priest who helped me is dead. Dead. And I am incarcerated, a man who pretended for years to be my friend, to be a man of God emerging before
me instead as a snake. Because that’s what happened, didn’t it? That’s what we discovered, what the priest found out? That Father Reznik was a liar? I drag my nails over my scalp and look at the letter, at the creeping ink, and without thinking any more, without wondering what I am doing or why, I rip.
I rip it, the letter, straight down the middle. Rip, rip, rip. Patricia steps back. I tear the letter again. And again. And again. My teeth are clenched, tears tumble down my cheeks, but I do not wipe them, do not let myself calm down. Because I can’t, not now, not on hearing from my mother, from someone I should trust unconditionally and who says she is disappointed in me. I choke at the thought, hear my throat sound a yell, a cry, my chest crumbling under the weight of the reality that is ahead of me. That I am here. And I can’t get out…
Rip, rip, rip.
When the paper is torn into confetti-sized pieces, I stop. My chest heaves. My eyes sting.
‘Doc, you need to breathe.’
I stare at the pieces in my palm. Ink lies smeared on creamy paper, words bleeding, torn apart, dying.
‘Why don’t you sit? Maybe write it all down?’
I feel raw, ravaged, as if everything that has happened since my arrest has come out now, in one earthquake of emotion. My eyes blink, batting back the tears. I coerce my concentration towards Patricia, to her mouth, her words and what she is advising me to do. And I think: I should confess. I should admit what I discovered, what really happened, what the priest knew—and why he couldn’t go on with knowing it. Maybe that way I can truly start to decipher who is doing this to me—and why. Yes, that is it. It has to be.
I turn, flop to the bed, the letter confetti still in my fist, sinking into the mattress as I sit. And it occurs to me that more than anything I would like to keep sinking—to plummet so far that no one could possibly find me, hidden, as I would be, in the bowels of the bed, digested, absorbed. Gone.
‘I helped that priest,’ I say after a while. Patricia sits, listens. ‘I helped out there, at his convent. I did the fixing, carpentry, small electrics. My father taught me a lot of it…before he died. Papa said women are not the maids of men. He said I was equal. No different to anyone else.’