Living with Shadows

by Annette Heys

Kate was eager to return to prison the following Monday. Michael had been in her thoughts much of the weekend. She wondered if he would be embarrassed at having revealed so much to her. It made her feel a little uneasy, the way he had opened up to her. Why was that? For some reason he’d put his trust in her. Perhaps he saw her as a sort of mother figure. It was ironic that he’d decided to go back to his mother a week before the murder, back to Belfast where his nightmare had begun all those years ago.

  She arrived at prison early and sat in the waiting room hoping it wouldn’t be too long before someone came to take her through to education. Since she was not a permanent member of staff, she didn’t have her own keys.

  The door slid back and John was there looking quite the country gent in his tweed jacket and green corduroy trousers. He took long strides towards her, greeting her with a hearty ‘Good morning’. As they walked along the corridors, she decided to ask him what he knew about Michael.

  ‘Mac? He’s a quiet type, doesn’t mix with anyone really, which doesn’t go down too well for him. They’re not keen on loners in this place, not a healthy attitude to have.’

  ‘He does seem shy, even nervous, until you get chatting to him.’

  ‘That sounds like Mac. Doesn’t make friends easily, but in here you have to make an effort. The lads have to conform to what’s expected of them, and socialising with other inmates is seen as part of their rehabilitation.’

  ‘It seems a bit unreasonable to expect someone to mix with people they may not like. I’m not sure I’d want to.’

  ‘Well, no, you wouldn’t. But that’s on the outside. No one takes too much notice of anyone’s behaviour unless it’s grossly exceptional or until they commit some terrible crime. You must have heard the expression ‘he was a bit of a loner’. You often hear it quoted after the event. In here, there’s no room for loners.’

  She thought for a while and could see there was something in what John said. Not socialising might be seen as unhealthy. ‘It’s hard to believe Michael’s killed someone. He seems so polite, timid even.’

  John laughed. ‘Well, you can’t tell a person’s true nature by his demeanour. Just because someone isn’t loud and aggressive, doesn’t mean he’s less capable of committing murder. Take Crippen, for instance, he was known as the mild mannered murderer—apparently a very unassuming bloke.’

  Kate didn’t really see the connection between Michael and Crippen. Crippen’s was a crime of passion and was premeditated, nothing like Michael’s spontaneous knifing of a stranger, but she didn’t voice her thoughts. She imagined they could have talked all day about the varying degrees of murder; those with mitigating circumstances right through to the downright evil that defy all the laws of humanity. She wanted to say that Michael had suffered a life of physical and mental abuse to make the point that anyone with that kind of background must surely be more likely to commit murder, but she had promised him she would tell no one. Not wanting to feel totally put down, she tried a different line of reasoning.

  ‘I don’t think it’s right the way that people are thrown together in prisons and expected to get on with each other—robbers, arsonists, drug dealers, murderers—some of them new to prison, or mentally inadequate mixing with hardened criminals. No wonder so many of them re-offend. The only segregation is for rapists and that’s for their own protection. When anyone measures his own crime against that of a rapist, he always considers himself far less guilty. It seems the rapist is the ultimate fiend.’

  ‘I agree, there’s no differentiation in prison, but you have to remember the very nature of an institution stems individuality. We’re dealing with wrongdoers and we can’t differentiate; we just don’t have the resources to set up the amount of places needed to separate all the many and varied crimes and their perpetrators. And, yes, according to most prisoners in here, the rapist is the ultimate fiend, which is pretty hypocritical, I’d say, coming from some of the pond life I’ve come across who hold that view sacred.

  ‘Here we are,’ said John, unlocking the last door. At the top of the stairs they parted. John’s hearty ‘Good morning’ boomed out once more as he entered the office. Kate went into the staff room and filled the kettle. Soon the others drifted in but she was in no mood for chit-chat and just wanted to get into the classroom.

  At last the call went up. The prisoners were on their way. Kate grabbed her briefcase and headed off to her room. At the top of the stairs, men stood with arms outstretched for their daily frisking by a couple of stony faced officers. She hurried past. Having been in their midst on the corridor before, she disliked the sensation of being towered over.

  She was halfway through calling the register when Michael walked in. It was no surprise that he went straight to his seat without so much as a glance. Crow Man had already grabbed everyone’s attention with another intriguing story and Kate asked him to keep it short as people needed to get on with their studies. He promised not to ‘hog’ any more of the lesson once he’d told his tale.

  She used the opportunity to have a quiet word with Michael and pulled up a chair next to him. ‘How are you this morning?’

  ‘So so,’ he answered without looking at her.

  ‘Well, I read your letter. I thought it very well written, and I wasn’t bored at all.’

  ‘No?’ He turned his head, a pleased look on his face.

  ‘I made a note of a few things, punctuation mainly.’ Kate looked around the room before continuing. ‘I’ve also written something in reply. Anyway, here it is. You can read it later.’ She pushed the letter towards him.

  His features softened and he began to relax. ‘Thanks. It’ll give me something to look forward to.’

  She quickly turned the conversation back to work. ‘Right, here’s an exercise I’d like you to do on full stops.’ There was a ripple of laughter as Crow Man finished his story. ‘I’d better get over to him before he starts on another. Give me a shout if you need me.’

  At the end of the lesson Kate went round the class collecting all the work she hadn’t had time to mark.

  Michael handed his over. ‘It’s probably rubbish,’ he told her.

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t.’ As she took it from him the buzzer sounded and the men slid back their chairs and sauntered out of the room away to lunch. There was no sense of hurry at the prospect.

  ‘You know, I think you’re a really attractive woman. Your husband’s a lucky man.’

  Kate was struggling to unlock her briefcase. She glanced up to find Michael standing next to her. ‘Oh . . . thank you,’ she mumbled absently, still turning the wheel.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘It just won’t open. I know I’ve put the right numbers in.’

  ‘I expect someone’s changed them.’

  ‘Did you see anything?’

  ‘No, but that’s what they do. It’s their way of having fun.’

  ‘Idiots! I’ll have to sort it at home.’ She picked up her papers and pencil case and was about to excuse herself when a prison officer popped his head around the door and asked Michael to hurry along. ‘See you in the morning,’ she called as he strode towards the door. But he made no reply and went quickly out into the corridor without a backward glance.

  Kate shook her head and then remembered what he’d said. She had been too preoccupied with her lock to take much notice just then but now that she thought about it . . . well, it was rather bold of him to say something like that to her. She thought of the letter she’d passed him, and Jim’s warning. ‘Oh stuff it, I’ve done nothing wrong,’ she told herself, at the same time wondering where she’d put the instructions for changing the combination on her briefcase.

  Saturday was visiting day. Her mother wasn’t coping well since James had died a few months earlier. It had come as a shock to her, to all of them. It was only recently he’d been found to have an immune deficie
ncy problem, which explained at last why he was constantly fighting off infections. And later, as his health deteriorated, he was advised to have regular infusions of antibodies.

  Kate remembered not being very happy about him volunteering her as his nurse. Her time was precious then. She’d had to visit the hospital, learn how to inject a needle into a vein, and know what to do in an emergency.

  The treatment was administered at home every three weeks—the family home where James still lived with their mother. It usually took around a couple of hours, longer if he didn’t get a vein in the first few tries. Then he would get angry and frustrated; that’s when Kate took over. If she didn’t get it right the first couple of tries, they’d both end up angry and frustrated and yell at each other. Once the infusion was under way, they could relax. Between them they made the best of it. He even bought a microscope and checked samples of his own blood against hers to see how they compared for red corpuscles. Then there was the internet. He’d put in ‘immune system’ and trawl through the results, desperately hoping to come across some new drug that would cure him. He never talked about his fears and only now did she realise how much they must have weighed on his mind. She sometimes felt selfish at her initial resentment when told he’d nominated her as nurse. But how could she have known then that he was going to die? She would have done anything to prevent it.

  She arrived at midday. There used to be hotpot followed by custard pie, her father’s favourite, but now her mother had given up baking and they would sit down to a meat and potato pie each from the local bakery. Winter and summer, it was always the same meal. Her mother’s life was routine.

  She’d taken the death of her eldest son badly. She kept his gardening shoes by the back door and his bedroom exactly as it was, as if she expected him to walk back into the house at any moment. James’s death had been the second tragedy in their lives. Her younger brother had died from cancer when he was just three years old. She was ten. Although it was over thirty years ago, her mother’s face still bore the pain whenever she talked about him. She also kept a pair of his shoes, hidden away in a cupboard in her mother’s handbag; his teddy bear sat on a chair in her bedroom with no fur because Peter used to pluck it out and stick it up his nose.

  Their father’s death, five years before, had not had the same impact. Or so it seemed. For as long as she could remember her mother had threatened to leave him when they all grew up, but in the end she never did. Instead she nursed him through his illness until he died. A clairvoyant once told her Dad was sorry for the way he’d treated her. She was convinced this was true and finally made her peace with him in spite of the fact he was no longer here.

  Kate still recalled the dark days of her childhood, the arguments between her parents, her mother’s short temper, the threat of the strap that hung over the clothes maiden. Since leaving home, things had changed. Her mother had changed. She would do anything to help any one of her children and the love that was never expressed was apparent. Now, as she stood at the front door waiting for her mother to answer it, she felt a sense of nostalgia, a longing to be back as a child when they were all together as a family, playing, laughing, yes, even fighting together.

  When the door opened, the familiar smell of warm pies drifted down the hall and the anticipation of sitting down to one negated her earlier thoughts about her mother’s weekly ritual.

  Her mother dressed for comfort and wore the same couple of outfits week in and week out. Only the colour changed but the trousers and cardigans were regimented in their constancy. ‘It’s all ready. I’ll just put it out.’

  She’d heard these words a hundred times. This was her treat and she would not let Kate lift a finger to help. She followed her mother down the hall and into the dining room. Before sitting down, she looked out of the window onto an expansive garden. On the left was a huge willow tree. It had been a sapling when, as a young girl, she’d plucked it from the woods and brought it home. A line of rhododendron bushes hid two sheds—a source of mirth since the Monty Python sketch. One used to house a hundred battery hens until her mother made her father get rid of them because she believed it would bring bad luck to keep them shut up that way. The bad luck had already struck with Peter’s cancer, but her mother was driven by nerves and emotion rather than reason, which is why the goldfish went down the lavatory and Kate was forced to give away her beloved pet tortoise. That shed then became her father’s workshop where he spent many hours making or mending things. She remembered watching him working at his bench with every tool imaginable, their iron shapes strong and sharp, dull or shiny as they lay cluttering the wooden surface amongst rusting screws, washers, springs and sawdust, and always the smell of oil. It was a place where he used to paint; people would bring photographs of pets, children, landscapes and seascapes. He would let them have their framed oil paintings for a pittance because he painted them for pleasure, not profit, and it paid for his beer.

  The other shed housed all the gardening equipment. There were two plots for vegetables as well as a greenhouse where he grew tomatoes, cucumbers and chrysanthemums. Those flowers always reminded her of their weekly visits to hospital to see Peter, the car heavy with their scent.

  As she stared across the lawn she could see her father digging. He wore an old pair of trousers that had belonged to a suit and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, the neck wide open. His dark hair fell onto his brow where beads of sweat glistened in the sunlight and muscles in his thickset arms rippled with every plunge of the spade. Further down the garden her brothers James and Ken played cricket while Peter rode up and down in his pedal car. Then her mother came out with a huge basket of washing and hung it on the line, her fingers nimbly jabbing pegs onto each item until the basket was empty and she returned inside to carry out her next chore. She rarely stopped from morning till night. And she saw herself, a skinny nine year old, playing two balls against the side of the house with an imaginary friend.

  These visions seemed so real, as though she were really there, living it all over again. There was always activity and laughter in the garden, except in later years and as soon as that thought crossed her mind, the picture changed; her father sitting in a garden chair looking old and feeble; James perched on a stool in the greenhouse, his grey features staring out onto a partly dug patch of garden, abandoned for now until he recovers from the latest virus; and a small red pedal car, motionless, its tiny occupant too weak to pedal, waiting for someone to come and push him around the garden.

  ‘The squirrel was back yesterday. I hadn’t seen it for weeks,’ her mother said as she put the plates on the table.

  Her thoughts broken, Kate sat down. She wondered if her mother relived their lives in the garden when she looked out for the squirrel. ‘Don’t you ever think you’d like another dog for company?’ Her mother never went anywhere nowadays except when taken shopping or the weekly visit to one of her children for Sunday dinner.

  She thought for a moment before replying. ‘The best dog I ever had was Brownie. She always walked by my side . . .’

  Kate grimaced as her mother went off into one of her stories. How the dog killed a rat in a neighbour’s garden, and how he couldn’t thank her and Brownie enough as he’d been after that rat for weeks and couldn’t catch it. Every week she would tell the same stories, word for word—stories about her family, the blitz, Land Army, her two jobs in factories, bicycle accidents, schooldays. Which ones she told would depend on what Kate said to stimulate a particular memory. She only had memories of certain bits of her past. Kate never interrupted, said she’d heard them all before, knew them off by heart. Instead she listened as though she were hearing them for the first time. Besides, what was the alternative? Talk about her job, Jim’s job, or tell her Ben had split up with Marianne and she’d had to lend him a load of money but daren’t tell Jim? She would have forgotten all of it before the next visit. And anyway, these things were just part of everyda
y life. Her mother had experienced it all, and more.

  ‘Will you have some apple pie?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ The dirty plates were taken away. Kate watched her mother shuffle back into the kitchen with them. Sickness, now that was something she never forgot about. If Kate happened to mention one of them was ill, her mother would be on the phone every day with a list of tried and tested remedies,—‘rub Vic on his chest’, ‘get some good cough medicine’, ‘see she keeps warm’. She hadn’t always got it right. When James was fifteen he complained of bad stomach ache. She told him it was wind and gave him a mint. A few hours later he was rushed to hospital with a burst appendix.

  Kate remembered a time she did get it right—a time she would never forget. Ben was almost three years old. He’d always been chesty. On this occasion he wasn’t getting any better in spite of antibiotics. Also, she’d had a dream, a very vivid dream. She had gone upstairs into Ben’s bedroom. At the side of his cot sat a giant spotted dog. Instinctively, she knew he was in danger and must get the dog out of his room, but as she approached it the steel bars on the sides of the cot broke apart and began dropping to the floor. She made a dash towards the cot, snatched Ben up into her arms and ran out of the room.

  The day after that dream, Kate rang her mother. As children they’d had everything from whooping cough to measles and so she was sure her mother would know what to do. It was obvious he was quite poorly although Ben’s father insisted it was just a cold and he’d be fine. The fact that he was propped up on the sofa staring up at the light, showing no interest in anything or anyone, didn’t seem to be the symptoms of a cold. On her way out her mother quietly asked Kate to take him to the doctor if he was no better in the morning. He wasn’t. He’d been feverish all night and when Kate picked him up he screamed in pain.

  The doctor wasted no time in sending for an ambulance. Ben had meningitis and was slipping into a coma. At the hospital they found her a room and she stayed overnight. She hadn’t been in bed long when a nurse came in and suggested she should sit with Ben. Too scared to ask questions, Kate reached for her dressing gown and followed her down the corridor. Ben was lying in his cot, naked. The room was dimly lit, the only sound the whirring of a fan as it twisted from side to side sending cool air over his body. She sat by the side of the cot and held his tiny hand. It felt so hot. It was Halloween, the night of witches and demons and she willed Time to speed up and send them hurtling beyond the witching hour into All Saints Day where somehow she knew he’d be safe. Fanciful, maybe, but it’s what she believed. So she prayed like mad until she must have fallen asleep because the next thing, a nurse was gently waking her. Her prayers had been answered.