by Nicole Trope
‘Portia, why don’t you concentrate on your lunch?’ said Rosalind.
‘Now, girls,’ I said, without meaning to. I sometimes forget they are grown women. They still argue like children. Eric looked uncomfortable, but Robert was happily making his way through a steak sandwich. He ate neatly and carefully, only pausing to look at Portia or say something reassuring to me. Portia had tied up her hair, but it’s curly and has a habit of escaping. One blonde lock had curled itself under her chin and I wanted to lean forward and brush it away from her face. I think Robert wanted to do the same thing, raising his hand a couple of times only to run it through his own hair.
Portia is bewitchingly beautiful. She is the type of woman men fight over. Rosalind and I look alike, but Portia looks like Simon. Lips that were just a little too full on a man are perfect on Portia.
The cafe was opposite the courthouse so it was very busy with people coming in and out, and just about everyone looked over at us. I can’t stand being recognised. As I salted my quiche I daydreamed a little about taking a long trip once my case was over; although I knew that I probably wouldn’t get the chance. I didn’t know then that you get to go home after the verdict and return a few weeks later for sentencing. Neither Robert nor Eric had discussed this part of the trial process. The assumption was that I would return home, vindicated and free to get on with my life.
I knew I would be found guilty and I didn’t know. I thought that if I prepared for the worst it wouldn’t eventuate. That is, I now see, entirely the wrong way to think. Just because you prepare for the worst doesn’t mean you won’t be completely blindsided when it occurs.
‘We’ve made the case that you didn’t mean for it to happen. It was more his choice than yours, and we’ve explained about your state of mind and his state of mind. They have to take your state of mind at the time into consideration,’ said Robert to me as he sipped his Diet Coke and stared at my daughter.
I really didn’t mean for it to happen, or maybe I did. I have no idea anymore. Robert’s summation made a great deal of sense, and once he was done I knew that he had explained the situation perfectly, but then the longer we waited and waited for the jury to come back, the less sure I was of what had really happened. It seemed to me that the twelve people on the jury had not only seen into my very soul but had also seen past any lies I may have been telling myself. I knew it was silly to accord them such omniscience, but they were, after all, holding my life in their hands.
I had been in a state of uncertainty ever since that dreadful night. I would wake up from a fitful sleep convinced that I had been a victim of circumstance, and then a couple of hours later I would be berating myself and declaring that I was a murderer. Murderess? Back and forth I went and round and round. I was exhausted.
Finally we gave up on lunch and walked back to Robert’s offices. ‘They’re going to convict me,’ I said to Eric.
‘Rose, you’re fifty-five years old. No one is going to convict you of this crime. Robert has explained the extenuating circumstances to the jury. I’m confident they will vote the way they should.’
Well, that wasn’t how it turned out.
Unless Eric and Robert manage to get their appeal through I have to stay here for a non-parole period of three years. A journalist from some tabloid paper wrote a long article on the unfairness of my short sentence. Portia told me about it when I was allowed to call her. The journalist blamed the ‘cult of celebrity’. I would like to invite her to live here for even one day and then we could discuss how short three years is.
I thought it would be vile, but as Portia predicted, it is only minimum security. Apparently, many strings have been pulled to get me in here.
Sentencing took place one month after my conviction. It was too soon and not soon enough at the same time. I just wanted it over with, but I was also terrified of the sentencing decision as I tormented myself with all the possibilities of prison life. Portia simply moved into the house to be with me while I waited.
Robert had the girls speak on my behalf at the sentencing hearing. Patricia came as well and some other old friends, although I hadn’t heard from many of them for months and months. I was grateful for their appearance, but I couldn’t help feeling that what they were really doing was collecting fodder for dinner conversation. I tried to appear composed. I even smiled at Joan whom I had not heard from for twelve months.
The judge was not swayed by the glowing testimonies on my behalf. He still sent me to prison. It emerged that Robert and Eric had already thought through this eventuality. ‘We’ll lodge the appeal as soon as we can,’ Eric said.
Once the trial was over the press backed off a little, but only a little. Portia and I spent a lot of time drinking wine and watching old movies. We didn’t discuss Simon. At night, alone in my bed, I fretted and worried. I did not sleep very much at all.
‘I feel I’ve let you down,’ said Eric just before I was led away to wait for transport to my ‘home’ for the next three years.
‘Robert was in charge, and he did his best,’ I said. ‘Neither of you could have predicted this outcome.’ Even to my own ears my voice was flat and devoid of emotion. I seemed to have run out of energy.
‘We’ll get you out of prison as soon as possible, Rose. I will not sleep until you are free.’
‘You have to sleep,’ I said. ‘Patricia will be angry with me if you don’t.’
‘It will be bearable. The place where you’re going will be bearable.’
‘How do you know?’
Eric gave me a small smile and patted my hand reassuringly and then I felt the hand of the policeman on my back as he pushed me forward towards a door at the back of the courtroom—away from Robert and Eric, away from my daughters.
And now I am here. I think that Eric and Robert had this place in mind for me even before the trial began. I suppose they are paid to think about every eventuality.
It looks like a very basic health retreat, but it is definitely a prison. It’s a collection of small buildings dotted across a large property. There is a fence but it’s only made of wire and the gate stands wide open day and night, as if to indicate that no one would ever want to escape from here. Perhaps that’s because the surrounding bush stretches all the way to the mountains without another building in sight. ‘Where would you go?’ the open gate seems to be asking. The air feels cleaner and colder as though it comes straight down from the ring of mountains. It only took a couple of hours to get here from the city, so Portia and Rosalind will be able to come and see me whenever they can.
When I arrived they took away all my clothes and I had to select something to wear from a room filled with cast-offs. The choice was limited to tracksuit pants and flannel shirts. Once I was dressed I resembled a bag lady. Everything was far too big on me. In my weeks waiting to learn my eventual fate I had found it difficult to eat.
‘We don’t like clothes to be anything except functional,’ Sergeant Rossini told me.
‘These are certainly functional,’ I said, and then I had to bite down on my lip. I didn’t want to burst into tears in front of her. I had been appalled at the thought of getting undressed in front of hundreds of women, but undressing in front of one was strangely even more humiliating. I had to be searched. I don’t think I will be able to forget that experience for a long time.
‘You can call me Natalie,’ said Sergeant Rossini. ‘We like to keep things a little casual here.’ Natalie was dressed in a uniform but her dark hair hung halfway down her back. While she was talking to me she twisted it into a knot, exposing her long neck. She is rather pretty with olive skin and dark eyes. She took away my clothes and my jewellery and carefully logged everything in a book and stored it away. ‘It will be given back to you when you leave.’
‘Can’t I keep my wedding ring? It’s just a gold band.’
‘I’m afraid not. We like to make sure that all the women here have more or less the same things. We don’t want anyone bullied because they have nice things, or
shamed because they don’t. We don’t like to worry about things getting stolen either. If you all look the same and you all have the same, it makes things less complicated.’
It was becoming harder and harder not to cry. I have worn my wedding ring for nearly forty years. I have never taken it off. Even when my fingers swelled during my pregnancies I kept it on.
‘Now,’ said Natalie, ‘I’ll take you over to your unit. You’re in unit four. You’ll share with three other women. People come and go quite quickly here, so the makeup of units changes all the time. If you don’t get along with someone it’s not worth making a fuss.’
‘I won’t be gone soon,’ I said.
‘Mmm,’ said Natalie—not allowing me to draw her into conversation. ‘You’ll have to cook and clean for yourself. Everyone gets ten dollars a day and from that you need to buy food and anything else you may need. Once you’ve been here for a few months and earned some trust you’ll also be able to work at the aged care facility we have an agreement with, or at some of the other outside jobs that are available, and you can earn money from that.’
I must have looked utterly shocked, because she smiled at me and patted my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Winslow. You’ll get used to it soon enough, and it’s really not such a terrible place.’ For a fleeting moment I thought about giving into my despair. Despite where I was I felt that I would be in safe hands with Natalie if I just sank onto the floor and gave up trying to appear strong. Instead I took a deep breath and swallowed.
Natalie turned and I followed her out of the main building into the prison grounds. ‘This doesn’t really look like a prison,’ I said.
‘No, it doesn’t. We don’t want it to, but it is and there are rules and ways of doing things. It will make your time easier here if you learn them quickly.’
‘Yes,’ I said because I had no idea what else to say.
I stumbled along behind her with my thin prison-issue towel, sheets and blanket, forcing myself not to try to work out how many hours in this place three years equated to.
‘We count everyone about five times a day,’ Natalie explained. ‘An announcement will come over the speaker system or a siren will sound, and whatever you’re doing you need to stop and move to a meeting point until you’re checked off.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, and I knew I sounded ridiculous. I hadn’t run out of milk for my tea.
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Winslow, you’ll get used to it. I promise,’ said Natalie again. I suppose I should have told her to call me Rose, but right now I’m happier with Mrs Winslow. I don’t have my wedding ring on. How else will they know I am . . . I was . . . I’m still married? ‘Now, I’ll give you some time to settle in, and then I’ll come and get you so you can meet Allison. She’s the governor of the prison.’
Small fibro cottages are dotted all over the place. These are the units. Each one can house up to five women, but mostly there are only four. The bathroom is shared, but I have my own bedroom. It’s very small, as though one regular-sized bedroom has been divided into two, but there is a desk that I have decorated with a few precious reminders of home which Natalie allowed me to keep. I brought all the wrong things with me.
Most of the things I brought are now locked away. They should give you a list of things you can and cannot bring, but I suppose this is not a school camp.
I have been allowed to hold onto pictures of Portia and Rosalind, of Lottie and Sam and Jack, and of course there is a picture of Simon. I have a collection of my favourite books and my face cream, although I wasn’t allowed to bring in my perfume. ‘Too expensive,’ said Sergeant Rossini—Natalie.
The three women I am sharing with were out at work when I first arrived. I was pleased to be able to unpack and cry in privacy. I can see that I will have precious little of that. I thought I was through with tears after the last months, but apparently not.
After half an hour Natalie came to get me. I waited in the office for Allison and tried to get myself under control. It wasn’t as though I had never had to live in a poky little flat or had to make do with virtually no money. I had done it before and I told myself that I would be able to do it again.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember the first flat Simon and I ever rented. I was so young I didn’t feel at all like a married woman. I felt like I was playing house. The landlord lived downstairs in his own two-bedroom unit. ‘A rose for a Rose,’ he would say to me every Friday when I walked past his door to go out and do my shopping. Then he would hand me a single red rose. He waited for me, I’m sure of it. I thought he was very sweet.
‘I don’t like him leering at you,’ Simon said when I told him about it.
‘Simon, he’s about a hundred years old. He’s only being nice.’ Looking back I realise the poor man couldn’t have been much more than sixty.
I was trying to remember the colour of the carpet in our old living room—it was either yellow or green—when a woman walked in, holding a phone to her ear. ‘That’s fine, yes, yes,’ she said impatiently. She put the phone on the desk in front of me and I felt compelled to stand up. ‘I’m Allison,’ she said stretching out her hand and I shook it, feeling absurdly like we were both at a business meeting.
‘Sit, sit,’ she said dropping into a chair on the other side of the desk. I sat.
‘So, Mrs Winslow,’ she said, ‘settled in?’
‘As much as I can be, I suppose.’
‘It will be difficult for the first few weeks, but I know you’ll be fine.’
‘I wish I could say the same thing,’ I said.
Allison, sensibly, ignored my petulance. ‘Where would you like to spend your days? You might have realised this already, but we are a working farm with gardens and animals.’
I had realised it. The smell of manure choked the air. I could hear the cows off in the distance even as I sat in Allison’s office. Lowing, I think it’s called. Simon and I once took the girls to a farm stay for the weekend where they delighted in being able to milk cows and collect eggs. Rosalind tried to get us to bring home a newborn lamb for a pet. Simon hated the place. ‘The smell is just too much for me, my dear.’ He spent most of the weekend in our cottage, reading. The cottages had been described as luxury farm accommodation, but ‘luxury’ turned out to be code for ‘clean’. They did not look unlike the units here.
‘Well, I think I might be most useful in the garden,’ I said, surprised. ‘I never really imagined that I’d be given a choice.’
‘This particular prison is one of very few of its kind in Australia. The aim here is to help to prepare women who are unlikely to reoffend to go back out into the world. To that end, we offer a number of classes to help them work on things like computer skills or getting their HSC, but we also have a large vegetable garden and run a cooking school. You’re welcome to take a class of your choice in the afternoons.’ Allison slid a thin brochure across her desk to me. It contained a list of classes I could choose from.
‘I’m a bit old to be taking classes,’ I said.
‘No one’s too old to take a class.’
‘How do you know if someone is unlikely to reoffend?’ I said.
‘Most of the women here have come from other prisons. This is sort of a halfway house between that and the real world. Everyone has a measure of independence and has to take care of themselves. We hope that once you leave here you have some skills to take with you so that you won’t go back to old ways.’
‘Old ways?’ I said.
‘Drugs, alcohol, dangerous friends . . . anything that could cause a former prisoner to be put back in the system.’
‘I’ve never . . . I mean I haven’t ever done anything like that.’
‘No, and that might be why you’ve landed up here. Or some strings were pulled because of your . . . well, your relative level of fame.’
I’m sure my face gave me away. I had no idea how Eric and Robert had managed to get me into the place. I was silently grateful to them.
‘I wasn’t famous, my
husband was,’ I said. I wanted to make sure that she knew I would be free of any airs and graces. There are two kinds of people I’ve run into as the wife of someone famous. One kind adores you without even knowing you, believing that you have somehow found the secret to everything. They want to be your friend, so they fawn over and compliment you. The other kind hates you because they think you feel yourself to be above them. Allison, I saw, existed somewhere in the middle. She was more irritated with my fame than anything else, perhaps fearing that it would be a disruption to the smooth running of her domain.
‘I know, and I know that an appeal has been lodged already, so you might not be with us for very long. Hopefully while you’re here you can make the best of it.’
‘I will do my best,’ I said, and Allison smiled at me. She is a sturdy-looking woman in her forties or maybe late thirties. Her hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail and she was dressed in jeans and brown work boots. She does not look like anyone’s idea of a warden, and yet it was clear to me that she would not tolerate any misbehaviour from her inmates. When she stood up to show me out I caught sight of the gun on her hip. However nice this place may seem, the doors are still locked at night and it is still a prison.
‘Oh, and Mrs Winslow . . .’
‘Yes,’ I said, turning back to her.
‘It’s best not to ask anyone what they’ve done to get in here—prison etiquette, you know.’
‘Oh, I understand about that,’ I said. ‘Believe me, I do.’
After all the months of talking and explaining and defending myself, I’m only too happy to be able to shut my mouth and get on with something else. I would prefer to get on with a trip to Greece, but I’m sure that the need to be away from this place is probably a feeling shared by all the inmates. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to summon up a memory of the afternoon Simon and I had spent at a restaurant in Santorini overlooking the Mediterranean, but it was difficult to conjure up the salty sweet smell of the sea over the tang of manure. We were there to celebrate my fiftieth birthday. How long ago that seems.