by Martina Cole
Matty’s eyes were full of tears as she said sadly, ‘Unlike you, Susan, I regret what I did. But I had no option.’
Susan sighed and put one meaty arm around the other woman’s slender shoulders.
‘I know, love. We’re in the same boat so if anyone understands what you did it’s me.’
She felt bad about constantly taking the piss out of Matty though the woman asked for it really. She had the nous for nick, but that was about it. Everything else about her was screamingly middle-class. Although there were plenty of well-spoken cons, it was usually because they were fraudsters or thieves. Very rarely were they in on anything requiring a big lump, as a life sentence was termed.
Though by all intents and purposes, Matty would soon be out on appeal as she was now classed as a woman who was defending herself as opposed to a woman who had killed. She had killed, but it was self defence.
The same thing her brief wanted her to use.
But Susan, being Susan, did not want anyone looking too closely at her case. She had her kids to protect. Especially Wendy. It was bad enough her own father had raped her but to have that out in public was something Susan Dalston would never allow. The girl would have to live with that stigma all her life and her mother would rather do time than have anything like that out in the open.
Some things in life were best left.
‘Will you do me up today, Matty, make me a bit presentable for me kids?’
‘Of course I will, Susan. I know you laugh at me but, be honest - don’t you feel better when you know you look better?’
Susan ran her hands through her scruffy hair and grinned.
‘Only if you make me look as gorgeous as you usually do. My little Barry told me I looked really pretty last time I saw him. Said I looked like a Queen - and judging by his social worker, he probably meant Queen as in a bit Stoke on Trent, if you see me point?’
Matty laughed.
‘You’re incorrigible.’
‘Well, if you say so. It sounds nice, whatever it is.’
‘Go and have a shower and I’ll sort you out, though why I bother I don’t know. You’ll pull apart all my hard work once the visit’s over.’
Susan batted her eyelashes. ‘That’s because that big lezzie screw keeps talking to me, no other reason.’
She walked from the cell, happily saying ‘Good morning’ and ‘Hi’ to everyone on her way down to the showers. Nothing and no one could bring her down from the cloud where she was floating. Her kids were coming and Susan Dalston was the happiest woman in England.
Little Barry ran straight into her arms. He had brought a picture of her, dressed in dungarees, the prison uniform, and with a big smiling face. All his sisters were around her and the sun was a big yellow ball in the sky. His dad was floating up to heaven as usual, and for once this didn’t hurt Susan inside. Her son was nine and was obviously sorting it out in his mind as best he could.
She’d been a year on remand and a year away. It was a long time for a mother, and even longer for her children. But kids were resilient and Barry had adjusted better than any of them.
Rosie sat on the social worker’s lap and watched her mother warily. The controlled environment made it difficult for any of them to act naturally. Wendy picked her up and, sitting beside her mother, chatted away to the little girl to put her at her ease.
Susan looked at Wendy’s profile, so like her father’s and yet like her own too, and wondered how in heaven they had produced four such beautiful children. Though Barry had been handsome on the outside, inside he had been rotten to the core. She just prayed that none of her children had inherited that from him.
‘Granny Kate sends her love but she can’t take the journey, Mum.’
Susan nodded and laughed as Alana chased little Barry around. It broke the ice somehow.
‘Is she any better?’
Wendy shook her head. Her thick auburn hair waved across her face with the action.
‘Her heart’s not good, Mum. She can barely get about now, bless her.’
After Barry’s death Kate had had a massive heart attack. Susan felt responsible for it, even though her mother-in-law had still tried for custody of the children and harboured no grudge.
She was the only one who had openly taken Susan’s side, for all the good that did.
Susan worried about Kate, as she worried about Ivy.
For all her faults, Ivy had tried to stand by her granddaughter, but June and Joey had made any real contact impossible. It was as if Ivy, taking her part, would make them look bad in the eyes of the world. Make it seem that they’d been in the wrong.
Though people were disgusted with Joey and June, they knew better than to say so. Consequently, Ivy never discussed Susan, a very hard thing for her to do. She depended on Doreen instead, for information and message giving.
Doreen had lied to the police the night of the murder, telling them that Wendy had not been home. It was the story they had all told to keep the girl’s experiences from the police. Susan was eternally grateful to her and to Kate for the lies they had told to protect her daughter.
Even the smaller children swore she was not there and now they actually believed it.
Doreen wrote weekly and always tried to keep Susan in a good frame of mind, though she never visited. She went to see Kate though, to make sure the older woman was well and being cared for. Kate was too ill even to go to court but they’d kept in contact by letter and this was a comfort to Susan. She’d often wondered how much her mother-in-law had sussed out for herself about the night in question but it was something they’d never discussed and she had a feeling they never would.
She stroked Rosie’s fat little leg and the child gazed at her and smiled, making Susan’s heart lift.
‘Roselle sends her best, says she’s written to you. That bloke Colin seems nice, Mum. I wish you’d listen to him. Get yourself out of here.’
Susan waved her hand in dismissal.
‘We’ve been through all this, love, and there’s no way I am going to do anything now. It’s over, okay? Leave it like that. I’m all right and what happened that night is better forgotten. Are you listening to me?’
Wendy nodded sadly.
‘I feel responsible for you being here, Mum. The kids need you . . .’
Susan cut her off.
‘The kids are all right and they can’t keep me here for ever. Now stop all this worrying. I’m the one who should be doing that and I look okay to you, don’t I?’
Wendy didn’t answer her. Instead she put Rosie on the floor and got up and looked around the room. Susan watched her. She worried about her more than any of them. Wendy looked very thin, even with her well-developed breasts. She also looked haunted at times.
Her face would go blank and Susan knew she must be thinking about what had happened, beating herself up over it all over again. No matter how many times she told her daughter that nothing mattered, it was over, she knew Wendy would never believe it.
Not until it was really over and Susan was back home in the bosom of her family again.
Then Rosie put her arms up to Susan. Her rosy-cheeked face had a grin on it like the Cheshire Cat’s. Picking her up and holding her tight against her chest, Susan convinced herself once more that everything was going to be okay. As she listened to Alana and little Barry telling them about the home they were living in in Essex, she felt some of the tightness around her heart relax.
They were good kids, they would cope.
She had to believe that.
But Wendy’s face haunted her even after she had kissed them all goodbye. And even the fact that Rosie had cried when she’d had to go, which showed what a good time she had had, couldn’t lift the feeling in Susan’s breast that she was sacrificing all her kids for the sake of one.
But what else could she do?
‘I hate the nights here more than anything, don’t you, Sue?’
Susan lay on her bunk in the twilight and sighed her agreement.
‘It can’t last for ever, that’s what I tell myself. That’s what you have to tell yourself, too, Matty. Otherwise we’d all go mad. I mean, look at that Agnes, she’s staring at a twelve stretch. Now that is a lump and a half by anyone’s standards. She’ll end up in Durham like I did and that’ll be a culture shock for her, I can tell you.’
Her cell mate was quiet, which was unusual for her.
‘Come on, Matty. Spill the beans, girl. What’s rattled your cage then?’
‘I just hate it in here, night after night. What a waste of a life! When you look around you at the Caroline’s, the child killers and abusers, and you think of yourself it makes you angry, doesn’t it? I mean, we did something bad, I know, but it was a last resort.
‘My husband enjoyed hurting me. He laughed as he hit or humiliated me. He pushed me as far as human endurance could go, and even though I got a good result in some respects, I still feel I got too long.’
Susan sat up and reached for her tobacco tin.
‘You got four years, girl. That ain’t bad for murder or manslaughter.’
Matty slipped from her top bunk and sat on the floor beside her.
‘It was still too long for him. He wasn’t worth four years, you see. He deserved what he got.’
Her voice was hard now.
‘Christ, but I hated him!’
Susan rolled a match-thin cigarette and lit it in seconds.
‘That’s the funny thing, see, I never hated Barry. Not permanently like. I hated him at times if you can understand that.’
Matty opened up a small box stowed beneath the bottom bunk.
‘Fancy a drink, Sue?’ She held up an unopened bottle of vodka. ‘I’ve got some lemonade as well. It always amazes me that everyone’s so shocked by us getting drink in here. After all there’s only one way it can come in and that’s via a PO. Lucky they’re so amenable really. Some of them, I mean.’
Susan was excited.
‘I’ll have some, mate. Thanks.’
They both had a large vodka in their mug with a touch of lemonade. Susan drank a draught of hers and smacked her lips appreciatively.
‘Just what the doctor ordered, I’d say.’
Matty laughed.
‘You’re a nut, do you know that?’
‘So I’ve been told on many occasions, especially by me dear dead husband.’
She held up her mug and laughed. ‘To dead husbands - the only time they ever give you a bit of peace.’
Even Matty laughed at that.
‘Do you know what I’d like now? I’d like me and you to be in my little house, with my kids and my records. Then we could have a few drinks, a few laughs, and afterwards you could go home to your place and in the morning my kids would all be waiting for me to cook them a bit of breakfast. Then I’d take them to school and have a laugh with me neighbours and come home and clear up. That’s all I would want from life. I don’t want to win the pools or marry a film star. Just that would do me.’
Matty heard the catch in her voice, felt the loneliness of this woman, and was sorry for her.
‘It will happen one day.’
‘But by then my kids will be a lot older and they won’t need me as much, will they? By then they’ll all be more or less self-sufficient. Even Rosie because she’ll have been in care and in care means looking after yourself from an early age. You only have to listen to the girls in here. Most of them have been dragged through the system at some time.’
Matty refilled their mugs and they drank in silence for a while, both deep in their own thoughts.
‘What exactly is happening with your appeal, Sue? You never discuss it like everyone else.’
She rolled herself another cigarette and snorted.
‘Nothing to discuss really. I won’t get it, but at least I’m nearer me kids for a while anyway.’
‘But surely, if he was a wife beater and everything else, you can use that? This is 1985, Sue. Not the Dark Ages. Women are protected from violence now.’
‘Are they really?’ Susan’s voice was sarcastic. ‘Lot of help me and you got. Lot of protection there, eh? I had Old Bill round so many times I was on their Christmas party list. But they never actually did anything. Oh, they’d take him for the night, do me a favour like. Let him out the next day, good and sober, but then Barry didn’t need a drink to be a bastard. He needed nothing but his own sick mind. I mean, if everything is so different, what are we doing in here? A man was let off last week for killing his nagging wife, right? The judge said her complaining must have driven him mad. Where’s the difference? He got nagged and off on time served. We got the shit kicked out of us and still have to pay the price for the life we took. No matter how scummy that life was. My Barry was a piece of shit, but that didn’t matter to the judge.’
Matty was quiet for a few moments.
‘But you hardly helped yourself, did you? I mean, be fair. Your statement was like a confession by a serial killer. “I would do it again,” you said. That’s not what the court wants to hear. The laws of this country are made by men, for men. You have to play the system, be the little woman. Be the person needing protection. You came across as a Ma Baker figure who was up for a fight.’
Susan could hear the annoyance in Matty’s voice and said seriously, ‘Like you did, you mean?’
Matty, half drunk now, laughed.
‘Exactly. You’ve hit the nail right on the head. That’s why I appealed my sentence immediately. My brief Geraldine has all the women’s groups behind her - everyone. I’ll be out soon and then I’ll be a feminist heroine.’ She poked a finger in Susan’s face. ‘I’m writing a book about it, and I’m going to cash in on it. You see, I’m middle-class. I’m pretty, I’m educated. The courts hate to put educated people away. Because it’s all class, really.
‘But in my world, I committed a cardinal sin. I not only killed a man, I killed a man who was a barrister. Who was part of the system no matter what he did. But I’ll fight them all and I’ll win eventually.’
Susan was impressed by her acumen but unsure about the other woman’s attitude.
‘You’re pissed.’
Matty laughed again, a loud raucous laugh that reverberated around the wing and caused a PO to bang on the door.
‘Keep it down in there, you two.’
Susan was giggling along with her now, like two schoolgirls. Matty poured them more large drinks.
‘I killed him, all right. But the funny thing was, you see, he wasn’t expecting it.’ She laughed again. ‘You should have seen his face! Talk about shocked. He wasn’t expecting it at all.’
‘Well, I shouldn’t think he was. In fairness no one expects to be stabbed through the heart, do they? I mean, it’s just not done in polite society.’
They both started to laugh again. This time the banging on the cell door was louder as the night PO shrieked: ‘Keep it down in there, I said.’
‘I bet the lesbians get that shouted at them all the time, don’t you, girl?’
Matty had to push the corner of Susan’s blanket into her mouth to stop her laughter from bursting out again.
‘Come on, pour the drink and let’s get really sloshed.’ Susan was having trouble talking already but the prospect of getting slaughtered looked good to her and she was determined to enjoy it.
‘Well, no getting maudlin then, like Rhianna does.’
Susan shook her head. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’
Matty moved her head nearer to explain what she was feeling.
‘I tried it, you know. The lesbian thing. When I was on remand. But it wasn’t for me. I like men. Well, actually, what I mean is, I prefer men if I’m going to do it at all.’
Susan grinned.
‘I can fucking take it or leave it, girl. Barry never did it for me in all those years. Even when I really loved him, at first like, he still never did it for me. Now that bloke from Mad Max, the Australian . . . What’s his name?’
‘Mel Gibson.’
‘That’s it
, Mel Gibson. Now him I could give a right seeing to. And I mean a seeing to and all. The full bifta. Whatever he wanted, he could have.’ She looked down at herself and smiled wryly. ‘Mind you, there ain’t much here anyone would want, is there?’
‘Have you never, ever enjoyed sex? Not even with yourself?’
Susan was shocked at the thought and told her so.
‘Steady on, girl! I’m all for plain talking but that’s taking it a bit far, to my mind.’
Matty was really enjoying herself now. She loved shocking other people and knew that talk of masturbation was as shocking as it could get for Susan Dalston.
‘You mean, you’ve never had a wank? A frig?’ She frowned then. ‘And what’s the other expression the girls in here use?’
Susan pulled herself upright against the bunk.
‘I don’t know, but one thing I do know is you’re drunk. Drunk and disgusting at the same time.’
Matty laughed again.
‘You make me die! Like all the others in here, all swearing and hard talk and yet something as normal as masturbation and you go all shy and retiring. One of the most natural things in the world. The best natural sedative there is. Yet you lot, who talk freely about periods and shagging, as you call it, find it embarrassing.’
Susan could hear the edge creeping into the other woman’s voice and was quiet. She knew how people were after a drink. She should do after what she grew up with.
‘All right, Matty, calm down. Keep your bleeding hair on. I don’t talk about that or periods, I never have. It’s how I was brought up, I suppose.’
She tried to make a joke of it. Matty wasn’t having any of it.
‘People like you aren’t brought up or reared, you’re dragged up. Dragged up to be just like your parents and theirs before them. It’s how things are. It’s called socialisation.’
Susan sipped at her drink and sighed.
‘Well, whatever it’s called, it’s crap.’
Matty nodded in agreement.
‘It’s all crap, don’t you see, Sue? That’s what’s so terribly funny.’
Susan laughed with her though she didn’t really think it was funny. Indeed she had no idea what the joke was supposed to be. But she didn’t let on. She believed everyone was entitled to let off steam now and again, and obviously Matty had a bit more steam than everyone else.