She would cause trouble in the hostel every chance she got, she had serious mood swings and bouts of depression. She had been married for two years before she was arrested. After spending five years in Holloway, she came out a lesbian.
Elizabeth could be heard coughing in the dining room as she laid the tables for the evening meal, a strong smell of cabbage drifted into the television room.
Wayne Russell entered the room, whistling and tapping the evening paper on his leg as he walked in. ‘Evening everybody,’ he shouted, disturbing the tranquil atmosphere and waking John from his snooze. ‘That smells good, what are we having then?’ he said as he looked around the room at the few residents sitting around.
He was a loud, always joyful fellow, who like many of the others appeared normal to anyone on the street, yet Wayne covered his psychologically disturbed mind with laughter and humour. He had spent ten years in a psychiatric prison hospital in Newcastle for trying to cut off his fathers tongue with a pair of scissors in revenge for the kicking he received from his father when he returned home from school. He had also been made to walk around the house in only a short vest along with his two brothers and sister, being constantly slapped on the buttocks by his father’s slippers. After spending time in a young offenders’ institute, he settled down with a nice Lancashire lass in a small flat in Preston. She admitted to having an affair with a garage mechanic, when he became angry, he punched her and throttled her with a towrope. She suffered multiple bruises and lacerations, including black eyes and a split lip; he then rolled her body in a carpet and dumped her face down in a field. Thinking she was dead, he walked away but on looking back, he saw her move and raise her head slightly. He went to his van and returned with a can of petrol, threw the petrol over her and set her alight. The smoke alerted workers at a nearby factory who called the police. Wayne was arrested as he tried to hang himself on a tree close to the scene. His wife died three days later in hospital.
Under interrogation he admitted to the murder of four other girls over a period of twelve months. He told the police the location of where the bodies were buried.
They recovered the four badly decomposed bodies in an abandoned mill a few miles outside Preston. The girls had been strangled with the same towrope and their bodies half-burnt.
Wayne Russell was now 65-years-old; fifteen years had been spent in a high security prison and twenty-five years in a psychiatric hospital.
John followed the smell of cabbage, which got stronger as he approached the dining room. It was half full and his plate of Lancashire hot pot and cabbage was waiting on his table. Dorothy was rapidly tucking into hers with her face virtually in the dish.
‘Hi, John,’ she spluttered as bits of food sprayed out of her mouth. Harold was in the kitchen on washing-up duties, with Elizabeth doing her normal sloppy serving.
An argument broke out at the far end of the dining room when someone had thrown a plate of hot pot at Elizabeth, The warden came rushing in with two male colleagues and marched a young guy out of the dining room. The way in which they escorted the lad out of the dining room was reminiscent of the way the screws approached violence on the wing, the difference being the lack of chanting from the others.
Dorothy had been an attractive girl in her younger years. She had worked the streets of Sheffield as a prostitute for a number of years while she cared for her invalid mother on a council estate. Her father was imprisoned for armed robbery and had hung himself in his cell shortly after being convicted.
A kerb crawler who regularly visited the prostitute area offered Dorothy £20 for sex. They drove to a remote area on the outskirts of Sheffield frequented by other couples and voyeurs, where he parked a good distance from the other cars.
He became violent as he forced her head between his legs, slapping her as he held her down. She reached for her handbag and secretly produced a small knife, which she and the other girls always carried. He lay back as she performed oral sex, and then castrated him with a swift slice of the blade.
She ran from the car, fearing a further attack and waited for a passing car to drive her back to the city. Nothing ever came of the incident as it probably went unreported. It only came to light when she admitted the offence under questioning for a similar offence with two accomplices.
Not being able to take a punter back to her house, she had rented a small room near the area she worked. The Pakistani landlord visited once a week for the rent, which was payable by a full sex session.
She had taken a punter to her room; a middle-aged married man with a family who lived in an affluent suburb of the city.
After protesting, he agreed to bondage and submitted to her request of being tied to the bed while she performed sex on top of him. She fastened his wrists and ankles to the bed legs and got him aroused by smearing his body with sandalwood oil.
During the session, she blindfolded him, giving assurance throughout and to lay back and enjoy the experience.
At an appropriate time, two of her gay friends entered the room and endured him to a full homosexual ordeal. Although he fiercely objected, his restraints rendered him helpless to fight off his assailants as they continued to satisfy their sexual pleasure.
As Dorothy sat in a chair in the corner of the room counting her fee from the punter and the cash bribe from the two guys, they released his ankle restraints and while one guy held his legs above his head, his accomplice violently buggered him, changing roles for a second ordeal.
They placed a pillow over his face to drown his screams and shouts which had alerted the neighbours who had called the police. On their arrival they found the victim suffocated and arrested the three assailants.
They were all charged with murder and sentenced to twenty years each.
Dorothy had been hospitalised in a psychiatric institution for the majority of her sentence as she had been diagnosed mentally insane after stabbing a prison officer in the back of her neck with a kitchen knife.
Providing she took her drugs regularly she caused no harm, which could be said for the majority of the residents.
She had become a lesbian while doing her time in Holloway prison, where she had her first experience from her cellmate who had murdered her husband after four years of enduring rape and battering from him.
Dorothy was totally repulsed by anything male and would violently react should anyone refer to her as ‘a lesbian’ she preferred the word ‘gay’. She felt that the word ‘lesbian’ carried too many derogatory connotations from old Victorian prejudices and she would lash out at anyone who called her a lesbian.
Dorothy was well-educated and freely, if not proudly, spoke of her preference of sexuality and had turned her love towards women as a matter of an acquired repulsion for men, she had found kindness and genuine love with Elizabeth who had also been married in her younger years. She had suffocated her young daughter and her two other children were taken away from her. They’re now living with her husband.
Elizabeth was a schizophrenic, but John had thought she hadn’t a mean streak in her body when he first met her, she may have been weak and constantly tormented by the cruelty of her husband but she needed constant love and attention, which Dorothy was only too pleased to oblige.
Old Tommy found ‘lesbianism’ repulsive and despicable and did not hesitate in expressing his opinion to the girls, which always turned to violence, and always in the dining room. Food and fists would fly at Tommy when he referred to the girls as ‘muff eaters’ resulting in the warden and his two male nurses dragging him away from the disturbance and popped pills into his mouth to calm him down.
John sat in his favourite chair watching television but his thoughts were firmly on a weekend with his sister than on the football match on television. Young Peter Scott was in the chair opposite, scratching his genitals through his grey tracksuit trousers he always wore, with his stinking feet resting on a footstool.
Old Tommy was also dressed in his usual attire, his open dressing gown heavily stained on t
he lapels with the remnants of his evening meal and his previous breakfast where strands of yellow egg-yolk had congealed against the dark blue frayed material.
The annoyance of Tommy loudly munching a packet of crisps, the smell of Scott’s feet drifting across the room and the television on full volume for the benefit of some deaf residents proved too much for John. He left and went to his bedroom.
He undressed slowly, first removing his shoes and putting the shoehorns inside them, removed his jacket and hanging it on a hanger behind the door, then his shirt and trousers, carefully folding them and placing them in the chair, doing everything by feel and habit, unhurriedly tending to the creases in his trousers. He finally removed his long white underpants and lay on his bed wearing only his socks. He reached over to the small dressing table by the sink, opened the bottom drawer and shuffled around the few clothes; picked out a pair of panties he had stolen from the staff locker-room at work and sniffed them while he masturbated.
It was Wednesday, John’s only day off from work. He woke at six as he always did. His body being programmed to twelve years of prison routine he found impossible to alter.
He ate breakfast undisturbed as he watched the rain cascade down the window, unsure about braving the weather or staying indoors with some of the others.
The heavy rain turned to drizzle so he decided to spend the morning in the town. He needed some clothes and was now in a financial position to buy them.
He called into the small shop halfway down the hill, a Pakistani grocers which smelt of herbs and incense as you approached it from the street.
Mahul was the owner along with his wife; they were a quiet couple that always appeared happy and satisfied with their modest living and un-judging attitude, even with the constant abuse they received from the young gangs that hung around.
He walked down the aisle looking for toothpaste when a man followed him into the shop and pushed his way through to look at the same shelf. As he reached for the tube, the man did also and his hand fell on Johns and stayed there. John looked at him, his eyes holding him steadily, His hand moved on Johns, like an embrace. He found it unseemly, while at the same time it stirred something inside him. He cleared his throat and walked to the till counter.
He was much younger than John, by about twenty years. He was dressed in blue jeans and a short white raincoat. John was a little flustered but the man seemed controlled as if this open flirtation was natural to him.
There was nothing untoward and no one noticed and as John paid Mahul for his purchase, the man came behind him and calmly suggested they meet in the alley behind the shop.
John did not answer but loitered outside the shop for the man to appear.
The man came out opening a bag of sweets and walked behind the shop into the back alley. John kept a safe distance behind him and followed him into the back yard of a disused boarded-up house.
As John walked through the tall open gate, it closed behind him by the man who was leaning against the corner of the wall. He slowly walked over to John and gently placed his hand on his crotch. John looked down as he slowly un-zipped his fastener and placed his hand inside his pants.
He watched the man as he slowly bent down while revealing John’s penis to perform oral sex. He pushed John against the wall, loosening his trousers, which fell to his ankles. John knew it wasn’t the guy’s first experience by the way he was frantically feasting on his now erect penis as John lay against the wall in delightful enjoyment.
He looked down at the man who was stroking his own body as if they were John’s hands being guided by his mind as the man closed his eyes appearing to be enjoying the experience.
The man stood up and hurriedly left the yard, leaving John to quickly dress himself.
As he came out into the alley John nervously looked around in case he had been seen, the man had gone and John continued his walk into town.
He went into a men’s clothes shop and tried on a pair of black trousers he needed for his work. On the way to the till counter, he collected a grey anorak and a casual short-sleeved shirt. He placed them on the counter and reached for his wallet as the assistant removed the security tags off the garments. His wallet had gone. Frantically searching his other pockets he soon realised that his previous sexual encounter in the back yard had been a profitable gain for the stranger. He had no other means of payment and the garments were taken back to the shelves.
John soon realised how the thief had been able to obtain his wallet as it was in the back pocket of his trousers which the man had dropped to his ankles giving him the time and opportunity to riffle through his pockets while he was on his knees and John laying with his head back in enjoyment.
Apart from small change in his raincoat, he was penniless and his last week’s work had been in vain.
He walked back to the hostel depressed and humiliated and soon realised that his mistrust of people on the inside extended to the outside and although he had enjoyed the experience, £120 was a high price to pay.
Once at the hostel, he went to the television room wishing he had stayed there for the day. Elizabeth and Dorothy were embracing on the settee, laughing and talking incessantly, Harold playing solitaire and Peter Scott standing by the window, running his finger down the condensation.
Sat at the far end was an unfamiliar man. He was a middle-aged, tall guy with a dusty complexion; his hair was thick and wavy, greying at the temples. He was hunched over his chair clipping his well-manicured fingernails, where the bits dropped on the bag tightly gripped by his feet. He occasionally looked up with a disapproving expression as he continued clipping and brushing his grey trousers.
John noticed the man looking at him out of the corner of his eye as he worked his gum between his front teeth, stretching it out with his tongue, his smoothly shaven jaw muscles rippling in front of his ears.
Graham Banks walked into the room wearing a bright pink floral dress and high-heeled shoes. We were all used to seeing him gracefully walk around the hostel flamboyantly although he looked awkward in women’s clothing being a hairy twenty-two stone body builder who had murdered two elderly women on the Isle of Man while on holiday with his family. He strangled his victims after stripping them of their clothes to add to his wardrobe collection, which he wore when he went out in Manchester as a transvestite. He was only caught by the off chance when a victim’s sister recognised the dress, shoes and handbag he wore while shopping in Marks & Spencer’s. When police searched his house they found a wardrobe in his workshop full of women’s clothes and accessories and through forensic investigation he was charged with their murders. His wife had been unaware of his crimes and also of his transvestism. He got fifteen years for his crimes and had been in the hostel for the last four.
THE TRAVELLING FAIR
The guy stopped clipping his nails, his mouth dropped and his wide eyes followed Banks as he pushed by, stepping over his bag and lifting his long skirt to reveal his high-heeled shoes. He sat with Elizabeth and Dorothy, rooting through his handbag.
John was quick to check the guy’s expression of shock, still with mouth dropped, as he looked around the room for reassurance from the others, yet we were used to this apparition, which was accepted by us all.
A male nurse entered the room; he looked dumfounded at Banks, shaking his head in disbelief as he went over and sat on a tapestry armchair to enrol the new guy.
A strong smell of cheap perfume drifted across the room as Graham Banks was generously spraying Dorothy and Elizabeth with his new purchase. John felt nauseous and went over to open the door, which led to the garden.
John spent many evenings sitting with them all after the evening meal, where he found the conversations gave him an education and what it was like to be ‘different’ in this society. He would listen and watch for hours and realise he had been walking around most of his life with his eyes shut and he felt alienated from the rest of them in the system.
The silence was broken by a rain of coins bouncing and
wheeling in all directions on the wooden floor, Graham Banks had dropped his handbag from his knee. Dorothy and Elizabeth crawled around the room to retrieve the money.
The noise had disturbed old Tommy who had been sleeping. ‘Shut the fuck up, you fucking muff eaters,’ he shouted. The male nurse went over to Tommy to escort him out of the room. John immediately left; he had seen many similar unpleasant episodes between that group, which usually turned violent.
Being relieved of his hard earned wages earlier in the day, John was penniless and stayed in his room until 5pm, when the evening meal was served.
He switched his small television on and reached into the bottom drawer of his dressing table to retrieve the panties, which were well buried under his socks and vests. He lay on his bed with the panties over his face listening to Richard and Judy on the television. At 5pm he went down for his evening meal. The dining room was full with the exception of old Tommy who had been taken to his room and sedated.
At John’s table were Dorothy, Harold and the new resident who had arrived that afternoon. ‘Hello,’ said John, ‘have you settled in all right? I’m John Bell,’ as he pulled out his chair.
‘I’m Gary,’ he replied, as he continued eating his soup. Harold or Dorothy did not speak to him; they gave the occasional disapproving look as Gary nervously looked around the dining room as his chin was virtually resting in his soup.
Norman Ledbury shuffled over to the table and reached for the bottle of brown sauce. Dorothy kept a firm hold of the bottle, which resulted in a scuffle knocking over the sugar bowl in the process. He returned to his table defeated, mumbling as he shuffled back. Gary seemed unperturbed at the intrusion and continued eating throughout.
Inseparable Bond Page 8