George looked around at her and smiled. She looked smart but severe in her dark blue suit with a stiff white collar, which looked stylish and impeccable. Her face was red and flushed, her eyes looked weary and tired as she gave George a slight kiss on his cheek and seemed just about to smile, but then she appeared to check herself and think better of it. She grabbed her black handbag from the top of the work unit and left the house through the front door.
George went to the front bay window and watched her briskly walk down to the hotel as he shook his head in dismay, holding back his anger at the disruption her brother had unknowingly brought into their lives, yet how volatile the situation could become unless he remained firm and unrepentant in the eventuality of him being released.
In view of his previous position in the legal field, he had considered writing to the Home Office and the prison authorities in the hope of their reconsideration into the release of the more violent offenders, but had decided against this to spare Jennifer’s feelings.
John Bell sat on the end of his low bunk, picking his teeth with a playing card, twitching nervously as news of a possible early release of inmates who had served half of their sentence soon reached the wing.
If it were to be passed, it would happen instantaneously and such a release could be imminent within twenty-four hours.
John Bell was considered a model prisoner and had played by the prison rules for the past eleven years, as he had throughout his first prison term.
Not only were the prisons overcrowded, the hostels and half-way houses were also full to capacity, so an early release would be straight into the main stream of the community without rehabilitation or assistance from the Home Office.
The extra workload would be heavily placed on social workers and probation officers who would need to closely monitor the movements of the criminal fraternity.
Newspapers containing the proposals were being circulated around the prison wings, causing mayhem, and at times a frenzy of excitement and apprehension along with depression and disappointment from others.
The prison officers were nervous and edgy, desperately trying to contain the volatile situation amongst the inmates.
Bell had good reason to be apprehensive. An endless stream of doctors, psychologists, education officers and social workers had recently interviewed him. He recalled the similarity of these visits and interviews shortly before his release from the hostel in Wakefield fourteen years earlier.
They all were also assessing many of the hardiest and most violent inmates and they appeared to have accelerated their examinations by drafting in more social workers from other parts of the country.
Many inmates were known to Bell, most of them had come into prison sane and gone out completely mad.
Bell was now 64. A third of his life had been spent in penal institutions around the country. He had been treated no better or worse than anyone else but had been careful not to step over the line. Bell even kept his cell walls clear of photographs and posters of naked women and young boys, unlike many of the other inmates who got their sexual pleasure through covering every inch of their walls with any pornographic illustrations they could get their hands on.
For the past three years, he had been segregated from the others; the only time he had contact with the others was at the occasional dance, gym or brief exercise periods, but they were strictly supervised and there is no sexual contact, but plenty of prison romances occurred and was usually accepted and, at times, encouraged.
Bell was known throughout the wing for helping other inmates, particularly to the new intakes. He gained a good reputation from other inmates and staff due to his caring and helpful attitude, an attitude that could favour in his pending release.
George had driven to the library to change their library books. It was normally his first task on a Friday morning, leaving Jennifer to strip the bed and spend the morning washing as Molly cleaned the rest of the house.
It was just after 10.30 when the telephone rang.
Jennifer ran downstairs to answer it, as George had been strongly apposed to having a telephone at the side of the bed, for reasons he had never disclosed.
She lifted the receiver in excitement knowing who the caller would be.
Jennifer had arranged with John that he could call the house at set times of the day when George was out of the house. That hadn’t been difficult as George was a very punctual and disciplined person, leaving the house at exactly the same time each week.
John was virtually incoherent with the background sounds of chanting and crashing from the wings activities, but she was used to this.
‘Hello, is that you, John?’ she asked.
‘Hello, Jennifer, can you hear me?’ John shouted back through the receiver.
‘How are you, are they looking after you?’ she enquired.
‘Yes, I’m fine, I have some good news to tell you, I’m being released early,’ he said.
‘Oh that’s wonderful news, have they told you when, dear?’ she anxiously asked.
‘I think in two days, but I’m not sure. If you phone me tomorrow at the usual time, I’ll be able to tell you more,’ he replied.
‘All right dear, I’ll do that, wait by the phone as normal,’ she replied.
‘I’d better go now, they are queuing up for the phone here,’ he said as the line went dead.
Jennifer walked into the lounge and gazed at the sea out of the window. A broad smile lit up her face, her eyes came alive and her tiny stomach churned with excitement.
‘Good news, Jennifer?’ Molly asked, as she frantically polished the brass fender around the fire.
‘Oh, yes, wonderful news,’ Jennifer replied, leaving the room and briskly striding up the stairs. She sat on her bed, resting her head in the palms of her hands, her mind awash with exciting plans and ideas in preparation for his homecoming.
Her excitement soon turned to apprehension and concern when she quickly realised that John would not be allowed to enter the house on the instructions of George. She had only three days of preparation to accommodate John on his release and wanted to be as close to him as possible.
Jennifer looked out of the window to see George pulling up in the drive. He walked into the house with a smart carrier bag, which said ‘House of Fraser’ printed on one side in gold letters.
She ran downstairs as George entered the front door, passing the carrier bag to her. She reached into the bag and revealed a beautiful grey cashmere shawl, which she immediately placed around her shoulders as she walked over to the mirror over the fireplace. She sighed with delighted appreciation. Molly looked up from the brass fender, watching Jennifer as she stroked the fine smooth material with her tiny hands.
‘It’s so beautiful, George, thank you so much,’ she said, looking at her reflection in the mirror as she wrapped the shawl around the thin neck.
After lunch, Jennifer grabbed her coat and buttoned it to the top, wrapping her plastic rain hood over her head.
‘Where are you going?’ George inquired, as he tucked into a portion of treacle sponge, smothered in thick custard.
‘I’ve just got a bit of shopping to do, I won’t be long,’ she replied.
‘Well, the car’s still out, I’ll drive you to town and wait for you, it’s starting to rain and the wind is very cold,’ he kindly suggested.
‘No, you stay there, dear, I need the exercise and the rain doesn’t bother me,’ she replied, leaving the house by the kitchen door.
She walked briskly into town and peered through the rain-covered window of McDonalds estate agents, frantically searching the photographs and locations of rental properties being advertised. The cold rain was dripping down her back, which had accumulated in her raincoat collar. She went inside to avoid the rain, noticing a large array of rental properties covering the entire wall of the agent’s office.
‘Can I help you?’ the smartly dressed assistant asked her.
‘Well, I’m looking for a flat,’ Jennifer replied
, shaking the rain from her plastic rain hat.
‘Will he require furnished or unfurnished?’ the assistant asked.
‘Oh, it must be furnished. He has just had a messy divorce and his wife has taken all his furniture,’ Jennifer said plausibly, looking away from the assistant.
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ she replied as she reached into a large filing cabinet. ‘We have a one bedroom flat which only came on the market yesterday. It has its own kitchen and bathroom, storage heaters and a parking space,’ she said, pulling out the details from the filing cabinet.
‘Oh, that sounds ideal,’ Jennifer replied, as she sat at the chair of the girl’s desk. ‘Is that on the Esplanade road?’ Jennifer anxiously enquired.
‘Oh, no, all the accommodation on the Esplanade is private housing. It’s the town’s most salubrious area. We don’t have any flats in that part of town,’ she replied.
‘I live on the Esplanade and I’m looking for a small self-contained flat in or near to the town centre as a private studio away from home,’ she replied.
‘You’re very lucky to live in such an area,’ the assistant said, ‘but we don’t have anything in that part of town.’
As the assistant looked through various details, Jennifer peered over and reached for the details of the one bedroom flat she had previously mentioned.
‘Oh, this flat is in town,’ Jennifer said, studying the details.
‘Yes, it’s not far from here. It’s directly behind Marks & Spencer’s on the top floor,’ the assistant replied. ‘Its £500 per calendar month with two months rent as deposit. We can arrange a viewing straightaway if you like,’ the assistant said.
‘Yes, thank you, I would like to see it and I have the time this afternoon,’ Jennifer replied excitedly.
The assistant looked up at her with a curious expression and said, ‘I have to point out that the flat cannot be used for any business activity.’
‘Oh, yes, I won’t be conducting business, the flat is for my private use,’ Jennifer said.’
‘It’s just with you saying you needed the flat as an alternative to your home,’ the assistant replied.
The assistant made a brief telephone call and a viewing was arranged for 3 o’clock.
Jennifer walked into town towards Marks & Spencer on the high street. She followed the directions the sales assistant had given her and entered Castle Lane, a side street behind the store. She approached the front door of a tall building, which was certainly in need of attention. The paint on the windows were flaking, the front door was scratched and battered and dirty net curtains hung unevenly at the windows. She waited at the front door for the arrival of the estate agent. Bin liners overflowed in the tall grass. The front garden was unkempt, littered with newspapers and rubbish which had blown in from the street.
A broken pram and an old bicycle lay discarded at the side of the house. At the side of the door was a set of four doorbells.
She peered through a gap in the dirty net curtains of the ground floor room and quickly stepped back as she had noticed a young man lying on a settee in only a pair of boxer shorts, watching a video.
The estate agent arrived on time and fumbled through a large set of keys before finding the one that fitted the front door. She followed him up the stairs. The hall was full of rubbish alongside two baby buggies and a bicycle. The walls were painted dark green, the old-fashioned banister rail chipped and marked through decades of neglect.
Jennifer was exhausted by the time they reached the top floor. She stood for a while to catcher her breath before entering the flat. It smelt damp and dirty. A threadbare carpet covered the floor of the narrow hall, leading off into a small kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen was dirty, as though the previous tenant had been given five minutes eviction notice. The old bath was stained and chipped, the toilet bowl dirty, as was the small washbasin. The brown bathroom floor tiles were lifting at the edges, fungi grew along the side of the bath and the walls were stained and uneven.
An old three-piece suit and Formica table with three high back chairs were placed on an old dirty carpet. There was no sign of any luxury or entertainment items. It was assumed that the next tenant would be in possession of these.
The bedroom was painted in a flame orange, covered with small pieces of blue tack after the posters had been ripped of the walls. The bed looked in reasonably good condition, but the mattress was stained with a large patch of urine in the centre. The bedroom window looked out onto a workshop where beyond was a slight view of the sea and harbour between banks of similar style houses.
Although there were many flats available for rental, time was of the essence as John could be released within the next two days and she didn’t have the time to view other properties.
She went through the rooms for a second time while the estate agent spoke on his mobile phone by the front lounge window.
She walked out to the hall, looking down to the ground floor over the dirty banister. She agreed to take the flat. The estate agent drove Jennifer back to the office to look through the terms and conditions of the lease and pay the necessary deposit.
She wrote a cheque for £1,500, which were for the deposit and a month’s rental in advance. She signed the lease documentation for the minimum twelve month period and could collect the keys after four the next day.
George was standing by the front bay window, frantically looking up and down the esplanade. It was past six and Jennifer had been gone for two and a half hours. The shops had closed half an hour ago and he was becoming increasingly concerned.
He walked down the front steps to get a clearer view of the route she would take, relieved to see her tiny frame turning the corner as she made he way up the slope. He waited by the gate until she reached the house. She looked up at him as he held the gate open for her.
Once inside, he poured her a cup of tea, then took her coat off her and draped it over the kitchen chair.
‘You were a long time dear, I was getting worried,’ George said, massaging her thin shoulders as she sipped her tea.
‘Well, the shops were so busy and I forgot the time,’ she said.
‘You seem to have forgotten your shopping also,’ he replied sarcastically.
‘Oh, I didn’t buy anything, I met Cissie Sharp in town and we went for a cup of coffee and a cream bun,’ she nervously answered.
‘Well, that explains it then,’ George answered, sitting down opposite her, reaching over the table to squeeze her tiny hands.
After supper, George watched the clock until the pointers reached 7.30 exactly. He grabbed his car keys and kissed Jennifer on the forehead as he left for his Rotary meeting.
Jennifer waited until he drove out of sight before briskly going into his study. She sat at his desk, writing out a list of necessary items she would need to purchase to make the flat more habitable and presentable.
The list was endless. Bedding, kitchen equipment, crockery, cutlery, disinfectant, towels, cleaning materials, curtains, a television and radio, lounge furniture and an endless list of food items.
Hopefully John would be in a position to give her more detailed information on his pending release, particularly in view of time and dates as he was due to call anytime now that George had left the house.
George was sitting in the bar of the St Nicholas Hotel with a few of the other members of the Rotary club, who were assembling for their weekly meeting. He was in a silent mood, his thoughts not on the Rotary business but on Jennifer. He felt ashamed as he tried to eliminate his thoughts and inner feelings of Jennifer’s dishonesty and betrayal and why she would need to lie to him about having coffee with Cissie Sharp, particularly seeing Cissie had telephoned the house earlier that afternoon when Jennifer was in town, informing her that Mavis Thompson had been taken to hospital.
George sat in the meeting room of the St Nicholas Hotel, looking up at the elaborate ceiling and fine chandeliers as the president spoke about the latest charity event they had sponsored. George tried desperately
to displace his suspicious thoughts by looking around the grandeur of this fine building.
He thought to himself, despite everything staying reassuringly the same, the old regular visitors of the fine hotel were now dying off and the new generation were not interested in old-fashioned seaside hotels like the St Nicholas.
The thick white linen table cloths in the dining room, and thick white linen sheets in the best suites, and staff who would not dream of presenting a newspaper on a breakfast tray without it first being ironed, were now of little interest to the public.
No real fires were being burned in the hotel grates anymore, yet they were built-in to the original magnificent marble surrounds, and no one cared to be offered three types of vegetables in their own sauces with several tablespoons of real butter added to the creamed potatoes, and pancakes were no longer flambé cooked at the table in highly polished pans in front of admiring guests who watched and sighed with delighted appreciation.
George was very much a Conservative supporter and had blamed the Labour government for encouraging cheap foreign holidays at the expense of the British tourist trade.
He recalled the old days when lots of visitors would pack the hotel, many staying for a month’s vacation year after year, accompanied by their chauffeurs and their pathetic pretences that their personal maids were ‘unfortunately unwell’ rather than long dead after being worked to death.
Now the hotels guests consisted of cheap budget weekend coach trips staying a maximum of two nights only, and many on just a bed and breakfast basis.
He looked over at the bar with its flickering game machines positioned in an ornate alcove surrounded by the best quality velvet drapes and gold edging, old and well worn after years of use, now going unnoticed after previous years of admiration from the many old gentlemen and their ladies who would flock to the hotel for the healthy and invigorating sea air in this once busy Victorian seaside town.
The meeting ended around 10 o’clock, when he drove slowly home.
Jennifer was watching television as George walked through to the lounge.
‘How was your meeting, dear?’ she asked.
Inseparable Bond Page 37