My Policeman

by Bethan Roberts

  ‘Julia,’ I said, stepping close to her. ‘I don’t know what to do about Tom.’

  We looked at each other. Julia shook her head and gave a small laugh. ‘He doesn’t know you, either, does he?’ she said, quietly.

  ‘What you said,’ I began, ‘about Patrick …’ But I could get no further, and a small silence grew.

  ‘We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, Marion.’

  ‘What you said,’ I tried again, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. ‘It’s true, and I think it’s true about Tom, too.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she said.

  ‘They’re in Venice. Together.’

  ‘You said.’ Julia sighed. ‘Men have such freedom. Even married ones.’

  I stared at the ground.

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ she said, and she led me towards a patch of black lawn, beneath a willow tree. I wasn’t crying, Patrick. I felt curiously light. The fact that I’d spoken had lightened me. And now I’d started, now I’d begun to let the words go, I couldn’t stop. We sat on the grass and I told her everything – how I’d met Tom, how he’d taught me to swim, the proposal in your flat, the way I’d seen the pair of you look at one another on the Isle of Wight. Sylvie’s warnings. It all came out. Halfway through my story, Julia lay back and stretched her arms above her head, and I did the same, but still I didn’t stop. My words spilled into the darkness. It was so good to speak, to let it all float upwards into the tree’s branches. I didn’t look at Julia once as I spoke, knowing that to do so would cause me to falter, or to lie. Instead I looked at the flickers of moonlight between the leaves. And I kept on talking until it was all said.

  When I’d finished, Julia was quiet for a long time. I could feel her shoulder against mine, and I turned to look at her, hoping for a response. Without returning my gaze, she placed a hand on mine and said, ‘Poor Marion.’

  I thought of how strongly she’d held me on the beach, and wished she’d do it again. But she only repeated, ‘Poor Marion.’

  Then she sat up, looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘He won’t change, you know.’

  I stared at her, open-mouthed.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you that, but it’s really the kindest thing I can do.’ Her voice was hard and clear.

  Propping myself up on my elbows, I began to protest, but Julia interrupted me. ‘Listen to me, Marion. I know he’s deceived you and it’s painful, but he won’t change.’

  I couldn’t believe she was being so matter-of-fact about it. I’d told her things I’d hardly dared admit to myself, let alone anyone else, and instead of offering comfort, it seemed she was turning against me.

  ‘I know it’s difficult. But it will be better for both of you if you can accept that.’ She looked off into the darkness.

  ‘But it’s his fault!’ I said, close to tears now.

  Julia gave a soft laugh. ‘Perhaps he shouldn’t have married you …’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course he should. I’m glad he married me. It’s what he wanted. What we both wanted. And he could change,’ I spluttered, ‘couldn’t he? With me by his side. He could get – help, couldn’t he? And I can help him …’

  Julia stood up, and I noticed for the first time that her hands were trembling. In a very quiet voice, she said, ‘Please don’t say those things, Marion. They’re just not true.’

  I stood to face her. ‘What do you know about it?’

  She looked to the ground. But my temper had flared, and I raised my voice. ‘He’s my husband! I’m his wife. I know what’s true and what isn’t.’

  ‘Maybe you do, but—’

  ‘All this … lying. It’s not right, what he’s doing. He’s the one in the wrong.’

  Julia took a deep breath. ‘If that’s the case,’ she said, ‘then I’m wrong, too.’

  ‘You?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Julia?’

  She sighed heavily. ‘Good grief. Didn’t you know?’

  I couldn’t speak. I had no idea, at that moment, what I was feeling.

  ‘Really, Marion. You have to open your eyes. You’re too bright not to. It’s such a waste.’

  And she walked away from me, her arms held tightly at her sides, her head bowed.

  JULIA. I’VE WRITTEN to her many times over the years, in the hope that she will forgive me. I’ve kept her up to date with all my activities – at least the ones of which I knew she would approve. Becoming deputy head at St Luke’s. Starting the school CND group. I’ve shared my thoughts on the women’s movement (whilst I never went on a march or burned my bra, I did take an evening course at Sussex University in feminism and literature, and found it fascinating). I have never mentioned, in these letters, Tom or you. But I think she knows what happened. I think she knows what I did. Why else would her replies be so perfunctory, even now? With each letter I hope for personal revelations, or a flash of the humour I so loved in her. But all I get are updates on her latest walks, her house and garden renovations, and sympathetic but formal declarations of how much she also misses teaching.

  Sometimes I think that if I’d been braver, Julia would still be a close friend, and she would be here to help me manage your care properly. As it is, it’s impossible for me to lift you on and off the commode, even though you must weigh less than I do now. Your arms are thin as a young girl’s, your legs all bone. And so I take no chances. Every morning I rise at five thirty to change your waterproof pants and incontinence pad, which you wear at all hours. Nurse Pamela says we should restrict these awful garments to night-time wear, but she doesn’t realise how little Tom is prepared to help, and I have no intention of mentioning this to her, knowing it will mean she’ll question the suitability of our home as a base for your care. Although I’m not strong enough to lift you, I do feel, Patrick, capable in other ways. I know I am up to this task. My own body, whilst potentially on the verge of decrepitude, actually works fairly well, considering I have never done a scrap of deliberate exercise in my life. The classroom kept me fairly active, I suppose. Lately I’ve noticed aches and stiffness in odd places – my knuckles, my groin, the backs of my ankles. But this is most likely through looking after you. The changing of sheets every day, the turning of your body to wash you, the reaching to pull on your clean sets of pyjamas or to bring food to your mouth. All these things have taken their toll.

  At the table by the window, on Tom’s mother’s terrible cloth, at four thirty on a Sunday morning, the seagulls protesting outside my window, smelling the dried sweat and alcohol on my own skin, my throat dry and aching, the house silent with Tom’s absence, Julia’s words in my head, I wrote a letter, sealed it in a plain envelope, scribbled the address on the front, affixed a stamp, and, before I could change my mind, walked to the postbox at the corner of the street and let it fall into the slot. There was a cleanness to that fall; I heard the letter find its place on top of the other post with a soft slap. I did not think about the consequences of what I had written. Over the years I’ve told myself that all I meant to do was give you a fright. I imagined you perhaps receiving a warning from your boss; being banned from seeing the children; losing your job at the very worst. But I knew, of course, about the sex cases in the papers. And I knew that the local police were doing all they could to restore their tarnished reputation after the corruption scandal earlier in the year.

  But I felt very, very tired, and could think of nothing except the hot tea I would drink upon arriving home, and the soft bed I would curl myself into until Tom came back.

  This, Patrick, is what I wrote.

  Mr Houghton

  Head Keeper of Western Art

  Brighton Museum and Art Gallery

  Church Street

  Brighton

  Dear Mr Houghton,

  I am writing to draw your attention to a matter of some urgency.

  As I understand that Mr Patrick Hazlewood, Keeper of Western Art in your museum, is currently holding
art-appreciation afternoons for schoolchildren on your premises, I believe it is in your best interests to know that Mr Hazlewood is a sexual invert who is guilty of acts of gross indecency with other men.

  I’m sure you’ll share my concern at this news, and do your utmost to preserve both the safety of the children and the museum’s good reputation.

  Yours faithfully,

  A Friend

  IV

  HMP Wormwood Scrubs, February 1959

  MY FINGERS SO frozen, I can hold this pen for only seconds at a time. A word, another word, then another and another. And then I must sit on my hands to coax the blood back. The ink itself may soon freeze. If it froze, would the nib burst? Would even my pen be disfigured by this place?

  But I am setting down words on a page. Which is something. In here, it is close to being everything.

  Where to begin? With the policeman’s knock on my door at one in the morning? The night in the cells at Brighton police station? Mrs Marion Burgess in court, describing me as a ‘very imaginative’ man? The slamming of the van door after being led from the dock? The slamming of every door since?

  Begin with Bert. Bert, who has given me this gift of writing.

  Anything you want hidden, Bert says, I can hide. Screws won’t have a clue.

  How does he know what I want? And yet he does. Bert knows everything. His petrol-blue eyes may well have the ability to see through walls. He is the most feared and powerful prisoner in D Hall, and he is, he’s announced, my friend.

  This is because Bert likes to listen to an ‘educated fucker’ like me talk.

  As soon as I was allowed out on association, Bert made himself known to me. I was collecting the pitiful scraps they call lunch (cabbage boiled until translucent, globs of unrecognisable meat) when someone in the queue felt the need to urge me forward with the words, ‘Get a move on, queer.’ Not the most original of insults, and I was ready to keep my head down and do exactly as asked. This strategy had got me through the last three months without too much aggravation. Then Bert appeared by my side.

  ‘Listen, fucker. This man’s a friend of mine. And friends of mine ain’t queer. Got it?’

  His voice low. His cheek pale.

  For the first time, I looked straight ahead as I walked to a table. I followed Bert, who somehow communicated that this was his wish without uttering a word or even making a gesture. Once we were seated with our trays, he nodded in my direction. ‘Heard about your case,’ he said. ‘Diabolical liberty. They done you, just like they done me.’

  I didn’t contradict him. It’s possible that because I don’t flounce about wearing ‘powder’ (flour from the kitchen) and ‘nail varnish’ (paint lifted from the art class), Bert believes I am a normal. Many of the minorities in here are very, very blatant. I suppose they think they might as well pass the time as well as possible. The grey woollen capes we’ve been issued for the winter months – which fasten at the neck and fall full to the waist – do make a quite theatrical effect when swept over one shoulder in the yard. So why not make the most of them? I’m a little tempted myself. God knows they’re quite the best item in the prison wardrobe. But old habits, as they say, die hard. And so Bert, if no one else, has been fooled. And no man contradicts Bert.

  I’d known about him before he introduced himself. He’s a tobacco baron. Every Friday he collects his profits from the men for the ‘snout’ that he’s let out to them at a huge rate of interest. He’s nothing to look at. Short, ginger-haired, stout about the middle. Tattoos up both forearms, but he’s told me these were a youthful mistake, one he now regrets. ‘Got them up Piccadilly,’ he said, ‘after me first proper tickle. Got a grand that time. Thought I was the king or summat.’

  But Bert has natural leadership. It’s in his soft, low voice. His all-seeing face. The way he stands as if he’s grown out of the ground. As confident in his right to exist as any tree. And it’s in the way he befriends people who need him, like me, and then makes the most of them. So. Bert has agreed to hide this exercise book. He’s told me himself that he can’t read. And why would he lie about a thing like that?

  All I need do in return, he says, is talk. Like an educated fucker should.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about razor blades. And fingerless gloves. I find these two items can occupy my mind quite fully.

  Fingerless gloves because my hands are cracked and red around the joints due to the extreme cold. I daydream of the pair I had whilst at Oxford. Dark green, boiled wool. At the time I believed they gave my hands a rather workmanlike appearance. Now I know what a luxury those gloves were.

  And razor blades. The ones they issue here each morning are too blunt to cut a decent shave. At first this nearly drove me to distraction. The itchiness of stubble was intolerable to me, and I spent much of the day scratching, or wanting to scratch, my face. I yearned for my own razor. Kept picturing how I’d simply walked into Selfridges and purchased it without thinking twice.

  It’s easy to become very focused, I’ve found, on such small things. Especially when every day is the same, bar a few differences in the food offered (on Friday we have stale fish in thick batter, on Saturdays a dab of jam with our teatime bread) or the routines adhered to (church on Sunday, bath on Thursday). To think of larger things is madness. A bar of reconstituted soap. A clean chamber pot. A sharper razor blade than yesterday. These things come to mean a lot. They keep one just about sane. They are something to think about that is not Tom. Because to think about my policeman would be hell. I do everything I can to avoid such thoughts.

  Razor blades. Chamber pots. Dabs of jam. Soap.

  And for fantasy: fingerless gloves.

  I’ve never been so aware of the dimensions of any room before this cell. Twelve foot long, nine foot wide, ten foot high. I’ve paced it out. Walls painted dull cream halfway up, then whitewashed. Floor of scrubbed bare planks. No radiator. Canvas bed with two scratchy grey blankets. And in the corner, a small table, at which I write this. The table is covered in characters carved into its poor surface. Many are statements of time: ‘Max. 9 months. 02.03.48’. Some are pathetic jibes at the screws: ‘Hillsman sucks cock’. The one I’m most interested in, and sometimes spend many minutes just rubbing my thumb over, is the word ‘JOY’. A longed-for woman’s name, I suppose. But it’s such an unlikely word to find on a table in here that occasionally it’s tempting to read it as a small message of hope.

  There’s one window, high up and made of thirty-two (I’ve counted them) dirty panes of glass. Every morning I wake long before the bolts on the door are unlocked, and I stare at the dim outlines of these squares of glass, trying to convince myself that today the sun might make it through and cast a jewel of light on to the floor of the cell. But this has yet to happen. And perhaps it’s better like this.

  No way to tell exactly what time it is, but soon the lights will go out. And then the shouting will begin. My God. My God. Every night the man shouts, over and over. My God. My God. My GOD! As if he believes he really can summon God to this place, if only he can shout loud enough. At first I expected another prisoner to shout back, order him to shut his mouth. That was before I understood that once lights are out, no other prisoner will ask you to deny your pain. Instead we listen in silence, or call back our own grief. It’s left to the screws to bang on his door and threaten him with solitary.

  The knock at the door. A quarter past one in the morning. A loud knock. The sort of knock that won’t stop until answered. That may not stop, even then. A knock designed to let all your neighbours know that someone has come for you in the dead of night and will not leave until they have you.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  I must have slept through the downstairs buzzer, because someone was right outside the door to my flat. I knew it couldn’t be Tom. He had his own key. But I had no idea it would be another policeman.

  His hand still in the air when I opened up. His face comically small and red beneath his helmet. I looked behind him for Tom, thinking – in my
sleep-drugged state – perhaps this was some kind of joke. And there were three more of them. Two in uniform, like the one doing the knocking. One plain clothes, hanging back, peering down the stairs. I looked again. But Tom’s face was nowhere.

  ‘Patrick Francis Hazlewood?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I have a warrant here for your arrest on suspicion of committing acts of gross indecency with Laurence Cedric Coleman.’

  ‘Who?’

  The red-faced one sneered. ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘Is this some kind of joke?’

  ‘They all say that, too.’

  ‘How did you get up here?’

  He laughed. ‘You have very obliging neighbours, Mr Hazlewood.’

  As he was reciting the usual lines – anything you say may be taken down and used as evidence, etc. etc. – I could think nothing. I stared at the deep dimple in his chin and tried to understand what could possibly be happening. Then his hand was on my shoulder, and the feel of that policeman’s glove made the reality of what was going on begin to seep into my brain. My first thought was: it’s actually Tom. They know about me and Tom. Something – some police code – is stopping them from saying his name, but they know. Why else would they be here?

  They didn’t handcuff me. I went quietly, thinking that the less fuss I made, the less awful it might be for him. The red-faced man, whose name I later learned was Slater, said something about a search warrant; I saw no such document, but as Slater led me away, the two other uniformed men swooped into my flat. No. Swooped is too dramatic. They slipped in, grinning. My journal was open, I knew, on the desk in my bedroom. It wouldn’t take them long to find it.

  Slater seemed rather bored by the whole business. As we rode through town in the Black Maria, he started chatting to his plain-clothed colleague about another case in which he’d had to ‘cosh’ the criminal. His victim had cried, ‘just like my mum when I told her I was becoming a copper’. The two of them sniggered like schoolboys.