The English Prisoner

by Tig Hague

  I enjoyed the sensation of optimism spreading through me like a charge of electricity, but at the same time I tried to play down the possibility that she was truly there, just a few hundred yards away beyond the barbed wire fence. There was no crueller feeling in Zone 22 than that of high hopes being dashed. I’d tried only to believe good news when it happened, and until then I nailed my bursting hope down as best I could. Within minutes of Alan’s arrival the entire atrad was alive with chatter that I had a visitor and it was difficult not to feel buoyed up by the rising tide of expectation. When I had a visitor or a food parcel, everyone knew that there was going to be a lot more goodies in circulation, boosting the divzhenya economy, and that was a cause for celebration; but a visitor was also an event in its own right because it somehow acted as a link between the Zone and the free world beyond, reconnecting us to the lives we had once had and to which we would one day return.

  The rumour mill was in full swing by the time we filed through Sniper Alley into the factory, and a lot of the guys were winking and smiling at me. Molloi was behind me, whispering excitedly: ‘Mrs Tig’s here! Mrs Tig’s here!’ I knew the bastards were going to make me stew in uncertainty for as long as possible, but when nine o’clock passed, then ten, then eleven, the doubts started to swarm in my head. It was just another fucking pathetic rumour. I was standing in the office with Ergin, sifting through the latest delivery of old cloth, but my mind was elsewhere and I wasn’t working well. Ergin could see how restless I was, and said: ‘Go ask Maximovich if she’s here.’ I found him in his office, feet up on the desk, smoking and staring vacantly out of the frosted window. I nodded respectfully and slipped three Marlboro on to his desk. ‘Visit for me today?’ I asked, but the hungover fat bastard just shrugged and exhaled loudly as he slid the cigarettes into his breast pocket. Back in the office next door, I was slouched in my chair ignoring the pile of cloth heaped up on the table in front of me and drumming my fingers in time to the rat-a-tat-tat of Molloi’s sewing machine when a guard entered the office and pointed at me. He was one of the older ones, with a bit of a paunch and a hang-dog expression frozen on to his face, and I managed to suppress my smile as I sprang to my feet and followed him out of the building, being perfectly programmed not to behave in any way that would give the sour old bastard the slightest cause to penalize me.

  I had to stop myself running all the way back to the atrads to collect my wash gear and civvy clothes before hurrying down through the lightly falling snow to the boiler room to get cleaned up. Julian and Boodoo John had their shirts off, their upper bodies covered in sweat as they shovelled coal into the furnace, as I burst into the room. ‘Lucy’s here!’ I shouted above the roar of the boilers, and they both broke out in smiles and high-fived me as I swept past them and started quickly peeling off my clothes. As I pulled my T-shirt, the final layer, over my head, I became conscious of how badly I reeked. The accumulated grime, particularly in the sweaty months of summer, made us smell like stray dogs, or old-style tramps. The water from the single shower – where I’d been taken on my first night in the Zone – was boiling hot, and for a few minutes I savoured the rare moment to myself. Even when I crouched over the toilet there were people watching, but there, behind the shower curtain, I was alone. No matter how hard I scrubbed, the musty, acrid stench ingrained in my skin remained, and I towelled myself furiously, then smothered my body in some old Gillette body cream that had been sitting in my locker since I arrived.

  The only civilian clothes I had were a pair of black jeans and a blue roll-neck jersey which my parents had brought over to Moscow, and the loafers I was wearing when I got arrested, but I felt like James Bond himself when I slipped them on and smoothed down my wet hair. I may have smelt like a bar of British Rail soap and my clothes may have been hanging off my skeletal frame like washing on a clothes-horse, but Christ, I felt cool. I’d been slowly losing weight ever since my arrest fifteen months earlier and by now my body weight was down about 15 to 20 per cent, leaving me with little more than my skin, my bones and my vital organs. My black jeans kept sliding off my hips and I had to use some old yarn I found on a shelf as a makeshift belt.

  I returned to the atrad and waited, my heart thumping. Hour after hour went by and still nobody came to summon me. I went out into the cold to pace up and down in full view of the observation window, hoping they’d put me out of my misery, but the two guards on duty just stood there, staring blankly. They were just playing with my head again. I smoked one cigarette after another until my mouth felt like a cat litter tray.

  It had gone three o’clock, and I was almost insane with impatience and frustration when a guard finally motioned me towards the gate and buzzed me out of the exercise yard, where two others were waiting to escort me out of the Zone. As I started to make the long walk down towards Sniper Alley, at the Zone’s perimeter, a handful of guys heading up to the factory began to cheer and shout crude jokes through the mesh. One of them went into a kind of skiing motion with arms and bended knee, jeering: ‘English boy, go get willy wet!’

  My heart was racing by the time the guard unlocked the big metal gate to the visitors’ apartment and walked me down the dark corridor to the dim light of the small living room at the end, where the ceremony was to take place. I was so nervous and excited I couldn’t stand still, and I wasn’t allowed to sit, so I rocked back and forth on my feet while the young guard on the door – the evil little git who hadn’t let us touch each other the last time – stared at me with his dead eyes, chewing his gum. I heard the gate being unlocked and down the corridor I saw Lucy’s silhouette rushing through the gloom. Tears were running down her cheeks and she brushed past the guard and into my outstretched arms. She was smiling. Really smiling. ‘We’re getting married!’ she kept saying over and over, squeezing me so tight I felt my pathetic frame was going to snap.

  She was looking beautiful in her tight jeans, pointy boots and a beige top. Alexi had warned her on her first visit not to go looking too sexy or wear anything too revealing because that would only draw unwanted attention and envy from the guards and the locals. She may have dressed down, but to me she looked better than a Bond girl.

  I wanted to say something perfect to acknowledge my happiness, but the words ‘Do I smell?’ came out of my mouth instead.

  ‘You smell beautiful, you smell great,’ she said, which I knew was a lie because I honked of cheap soap and kennels and tramps.

  I was crying hard now, but trying to control my happiness. I held her tight but I said nothing, trying to let my body do all the talking. The fuckers would punish me later if I made my happiness too obvious.

  I heard the sound of footsteps heading down the corridor. Alla, the girl from the Embassy, was the first to enter. She was much younger and better-looking than I had imagined from our conversations on the phone, but I was surprised, for some reason, that she had black hair, not mousy blonde as I had pictured her in my mind. She gave me a hug and a shy smile, as if she was ashamed or embarrassed that we were to be getting married in such a horrible little room. There was a grey woman there too. You should lose that hairstyle, love, I thought as she strode in. Her hair was pulled back so tightly it looked as if it was going to wrench her hard-set little face off. She must be the registrar, I figured.

  There was also one of the junior prison officials, the seventeenth in command or something. I didn’t know his name, only that I hated him. The last to enter the room was Regime, the prison number two and world-class wanker to boot. ‘What the fuck’s he doing here?’ I whispered to Lucy.

  ‘Prince Charmless is going to be the witness to our wedding, my love,’ she replied, with a plastic grin stuck on her face.

  There was an awkward silence as everyone shuffled around the room to find some space. The seventeenth in command turned to me and motioned me into the kitchen. Lucy and Alla had brought down several bags of shopping, and the official couldn’t even wait until the ceremony was over before snatching his share of the spoils. I looked on wit
h contempt as he rifled through the bags, taking out cold meats, cheese and chocolate and putting them into another plastic bag. When he’d finished, he looked at me with his mouth open as if to say, ‘Yeah? And what the fuck are you going to do about it, English boy?’ Then he walked out of the kitchen, down the corridor and out of the building.

  The living room was still awkwardly silent when I went back in. I took Lucy’s hand and noticed that she was wearing her mum’s wedding ring. I smiled at the gesture. Sandra had already given us thousands of pounds towards the bribes and legal fees, and now she’d given Lucy her ring.

  ‘Wow, what an amazing gesture from your mum,’ I said quietly, but Lucy didn’t return my smile. Instead she looked at her feet, struggling for words.

  ‘Mum’s died,’ she whispered. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you. Cancer. Six weeks ago. Spread from her ovaries into her bladder. She fell ill not long after you were arrested.’ My face melted as if it was made of wax. I sat down on the sofa with my head in my hands. I’d only written to her a few months earlier to ask for Lucy’s hand in marriage. ‘I’m going to look after your girl when all this is over,’ I’d written. ‘I’ll look after her for the rest of my days. I promise. I know the wedding isn’t perfect and not what you would have wanted, but trust me when I tell you I’ll make sure your little girl will always be safe and happy with me.’ She’d never got the letter. It struck me like a blow to the stomach to know that Lucy had been dealing with her mother’s illness and death as well as all the crap and stress I’d dumped on her. With a shudder I remembered my first call to her from the Zone, when I’d got upset that Lucy cut me off to go and see to her mum.

  As I rose to my feet, wiping my eyes, the registrar clicked open her briefcase and took out a pile of documents. Lucy and I stood, hand-in-hand, facing the others. Regime was standing to the registrar’s left, next to the tatty brown sofa, with his peaked cap pulled down to his eyes. Alla, who was to translate, was to the right of them while the armed guard stood at the door, clutching his sub-machine gun aggressively, like I was going to choose now as the moment to jump through the fucking window. The registrar gave us a weak smile as the ceremony began. Regime just stared into the middle distance, as if on military parade, his mouth turned down and his jaw set solid.

  Lucy didn’t stop squeezing my bony hand as Alla stumbled awkwardly through the translation. I could tell that she was making up half the words as she went along, trying to make them sweeter and more romantic than they really were. When she said, ‘Your love will see you through these hard times,’ she started crying and she didn’t stop for the rest of the ceremony, choking back her tears through every broken sentence. Lucy was crying too but I was desperately trying to rein myself in. I managed to hold back the tears but my body shook uncontrollably, almost noisily, like a bag of bones.

  I was getting married to the girl I loved, but I couldn’t wait for the ceremony to end. It was relief as much as joy that I felt when the formalities were over and we signed the Russian document confirming us as husband and wife. The registrar invited us to kiss each other and the other three applauded as our lips touched. Alla was clapping away madly, her face wet with tears, but Regime was giving it the slow-hand treatment, as if Lucy and I were some kind of terrible comedy act he was trying to shoo off stage in a provincial music hall.

  We stood around in silence while the registrar packed away her documents and books and then, one by one, we shuffled towards the corridor as Regime led the way to the kitchen for the ‘reception’. The kitchen was even smaller than the living room, and even bleaker. There was no ‘decor’ to speak of, just a two-plate stove, a small fridge, a wooden bench, a table and two chairs, and it was incredibly claustrophobic as all six of us, including the armed guard, tried to find some space in which to stand without having to touch each other. Alla reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of Russian sparkling wine that she’d smuggled in to prevent the guards or governors taking it. She went to the one cupboard in the room and took out an assortment of plastic beakers and chipped, stained coffee mugs.

  No one was saying a word, and I felt nervous because Alla was taking liberties by not getting permission from Regime as she popped open the cork and started pouring the wine into the cups and mugs. Without having to move from where she was standing, she passed around the mugs, handing me mine last of all. Before Regime had a chance to butt in, she raised her beaker and said: ‘Cheers! Here’s to the happy couple!’ But as we all went to take a sip, Regime jumped towards me like a redneck’s dog let off his leash, shouting in Russian: ‘Nyet! Nyet! Nyet! Nyet anglichanin!’ He snatched the mug from my hand and put it down on the table, then bent down to the shopping bag at his feet, took out a can of Diet 7 Up and thrust it towards me.

  ‘Well, sod this!’ snapped Lucy. ‘If Tig’s not having any, nor am I!’ And she reached into the bag, took out a can of her own and scowled back at him. Her boldness gave me a thrill.

  A terrible tension charged the room for a couple of minutes as we sipped our drinks and looked at the floor. Alla tried to say something to Lucy and me, but we weren’t really listening. I was too busy dreaming about kicking the shit out of Regime.

  Revelling in the awkwardness, Regime downed his mug of sparkling wine and immediately threw back what should have been mine. He picked up the half-empty bottle from the table and said in English: ‘Cheers!’ Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the room. The wedding reception was at an end.

  Alla, bless her, didn’t need telling that Lucy and I wanted to spend as much time together as possible, and after quickly updating me on the progress of my case, she disappeared down the long, dark corridor. When we heard the heavy metal gate at the entrance being locked and bolted, Lucy and I returned to the living room and gazed out through the bars at the grey sky and the snow-covered compound.

  ‘So, my darling wife, where would you like to go for our honeymoon?’ I asked, putting on a posh voice.

  ‘Well, my love, I’ve always fancied the Seychelles myself.’

  ‘I was thinking more along the lines of Barbados or Mustique. I have heard the weather is perfect at this time of year.’

  ‘I’m not sure we could afford that, what with saving up for the house and everything.’

  ‘Well, what about this for a plan? I know this charming little place, just along the corridor from where we’re standing. It’s got two lovely squeaky metal beds, and a little wooden table to die for.’ I held out my hand before leading my wife down the corridor.

  We took out the table separating the two single beds and pushed them together. Lucy’s girlfriends back home had given her a pair of pyjamas as a wedding present, and they’d sewn ‘Mrs Hague’ in sequins on to the bottom. We tore off our clothes and jumped quickly under the old sheets to escape the cold. Like everything else in the apartment, the beds stank, even though Lucy had brought clean sheets with her. I didn’t want to guess how many murderers and rapists had sweated into the mattresses over the years. We lay facing each other and chatted about our weird little wedding for a while, then drifted off to sleep.

  I have no idea what the time was when I begin to stir and found Lucy’s warm body wrapped around mine. Lucy was still more asleep than awake, but she was clearly feeling as amorous as I was. For the first time in God only knows how many months I was feeling all dreamy and happy, when suddenly there was an almighty crash as the door was thrown open, smashing against the wall. An armed guard, wearing mirrored sunglasses, strode in and stood at the foot of the bed, glaring down at Lucy. He’d barely taken one step into the room before I’d sprung out of bed like a jack-in-the-box, stark-bollock naked, and was standing to attention in every sense. ‘Anglichanin, kitchen for shopping!’ he barked, and walked out through the door, expecting me to follow. Lucy pulled the sheets over her head as, trying to catch my breath, I danced around on one leg attempting to pull my trousers on.

  I spent forty-eight glorious hours with my beautiful wife, lying in bed or sitting wrapped in e
ach other’s arms on the sofa, trying to milk every last minute of the experience and commit it to the memory bank for the harsh winter months ahead. Not until the snow outside the window had started to thaw in five or six months’ time was she going to be able to come back and visit. I barely let go of her for two full days. When our time was up and the Embassy car arrived to collect her, we hugged for five minutes without saying anything, and our silence was far more eloquent and emotional than any words of consolation and encouragement we might have offered one another at that moment.

  ‘Farewell for now, Mrs Hague!’

  ‘Farewell, Mr Hague!’

  She disappeared down the dark, windowless corridor and the heavy metal gate clattered behind her, leaving me alone in the living room, where the smell of her perfume lingered in the air and on my clothes. I lifted my shirt to my nose and breathed in deeply. The young guard who had ruined Lucy’s first visit to the Zone came and led me out of the building. As we turned towards the Zone gates I saw the black Embassy car pulling away slowly across the road, the exhaust pipe billowing a cloud of fumes and steam into the cold afternoon air. Lucy caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye and started blowing me kisses. I waved back and blew her one big kiss, but as I did so the guard shoved me in the small of the back, making me stumble forward. Instinctively I spun round and snapped in English: ‘Go screw yourself! I’m saying goodbye to my wife, you little prick!’ I was as shocked as he was, and for a few seconds we stared at each other, unsure what to do next. I’d never spoken to a guard like that before, and for a moment I feared he was going to explode and march me in to see one of the governors, but his reaction was quite different. He looked embarrassed, almost cowed, by my outburst and simply motioned to me to continue walking.

  As we crossed Sniper Alley and began to head up the side of the atrads to the main concourse, I became aware of a change in my manner. I held my head high and swung my arms with all the confidence of a guardsman on parade – not, it struck me, because I had told the spotty young guard where to get off, but because I was now married to the woman I loved and no fucking guard could ever take that away from me. Nor, when I lay awake at night at my wits’ end, could the guards come and take away the thoughts of her that I conjured in order to comfort myself, and the dreams of our future life together. That was beyond the reach of even the most vindictive bastards. That’s why I’d told the guard to go fuck himself!