The Face

by Ivan B

  She sat staring at the blank TV screen until Brian asked, “Was it bad.”

  She shrugged, “Prisoners don’t like baby killers. I was severely roughed up on my first day, the other prisoners continually spat in my food, peed on my clothes in the laundry and generally made my life an absolute total and utter misery.”

  She was by now almost totally hunched over. Brian said gently, “So how did you cope?”

  He thought she wasn’t going to reply, finally she whispered, “Nanette saved me. The screws put me in a cell with her because she’s a known psycho and they expected me to get my just desserts. They don’t like child-killers either. However, Nanette – she’s a real murderer by the way, fed her husband a weed-killer soup before pouring battery acid down his trousers – Nanette was the prisoner/librarian and wanted to talk about books. She’d intimidated me into reading a book and then we’d talk about it for hours. We were usually banged up for sixteen hours a day. After a while I quite enjoyed it, it was certainly better than her exercising her wrestling skills on me.”

  Brian interrupted, “She bullied you, couldn’t you complain?”

  “Who to? Intimidation was rife and as I’ve said baby killers are fair game.”

  “What did she do?”

  Bau cupped her hands and banged them together; “Nanette used to simultaneously clap her hands on both my ears when I least expected it. She was twice my size so I couldn’t just beat her off or try doing the same to her, that would have been suicide. Believe me after two of three blows you’d do anything to get her to stop and, once I’d learnt to be compliant, she wasn’t too bad.”

  She paused for a second. “Actually she did give me the worst beating I ever had in prison. Wasn’t her fault really. The governor wouldn’t let her go to her daughter’s funeral and I was a convenient punch-bag. Once she’d calmed down she cuddled me all night and got a guard to take me to hospital in the morning.”

  She noted the expression of incredulity of Brian’s face. “Living with her wasn’t too bad, it’s a one to one situation,” she shuddered, “the open sessions were the real fear, without Nanette I’d have never come out with both eyes and all my fingers. She gave me real good protection outside of the cell. The one poor prisoner who did manage to knock out my front teeth with the end of a pool cue,” she pulled back her top lip to reveal a pair of missing incisors, “got her arms broken, after that there was no trouble.”

  She fell into recollective silence. “So how did you get out on licence?” Prompted Brian.

  She sighed as if weary of the tale. “The expert witness, Georgette Harris, became discredited and there were two high-profile appeals that overturned cases that had hinged on her testimony. After that the Crown Prosecution Service said that they’d review all cases in which her evidence was key, but they didn’t put mine on the list. The other cases all involved babies; mine involved an infant. One of the screws delighted in telling me that I had no hope and might as well top myself before a friendly prisoner did the job for me. She was a nasty piece of work that one, used to enjoy our incarceration. Anyway, Harriet said that if I couldn’t get on the list by legal means I ought to try emotional means. A month later Nanette gave me the severe thrashing and I decided that anything was worth a chance, so I decided to go on hunger strike. I went way below seven stone in a matter of weeks, but the prison governor told me that he wouldn’t give me the gratification of publicity and enforced a news ban. By the time a formal prison visitor came across me in the prison hospital I was almost past the point of no return. She was so concerned she phoned the Home Secretary’s office. The guards started force feeding me after that - they don’t bother until you can’t really resist. Three days later my name was added to the list and I was suddenly released on licence.”

  Brian was astonished. “That must have taken some will-power.”

  She shook her head, “Not really, I’d lost Lucy and I’d lost my life so I gave up on eating. After a while you don’t want to eat, you just want to die. At least them I’d have been with Lucy.”

  She was speaking so softly Brian could only just hear. “So why didn’t you commit suicide?”

  “Prison chaplain. She treated me as a human being, not a prisoner to be punished and taunted, nor a fellow inmate to be bullied and exploited. She helped me peel away all the trappings of the ‘don’ts’ of my childhood and get down to my core faith. I was confirmed the day before I started my hunger strike and the chaplain visited me every day for my last month on hunger strike. She told me afterwards that I looked so bad she’d carried oil in with her the last few days or so just in case I needed the last rites.”

  Brian tried to imagine what sort of state she’d been in. “So they let you out?”

  “Not directly. The Governor said that he wouldn’t let me out till I was near six stone. It was actually a good decision though it put the fear of god into me at the time. The hospital was open plan and any of the other patients could have had a go at me. Fortunately the policy was that you’d have to be really ill to be in the hospital wing so in fact I was reasonably safe. It took me six weeks to gain enough weight to get out; the metabolism starts slowing right down when your weight gets really low and I needed to eat special foods and snack rather than go for meals. I also needed some physio on my legs, and help to start walking again, as the muscles were rather wasted.”

  “So when did you get out?”

  “Just under two months ago.”

  She brushed some crumbs from her skirt, “So now you know the whole sordid tale. The judicial review will be some time in the near future and my only remaining lawyer reckons that if a large number of other cases get overturned I might be lucky; otherwise it will be back to Nanette, or someone like her. Then it will be a matter of pinning all my hopes on a second appeal, but as that’s on an obscure legal technicality I’m not counting my chickens. At least the time out on licence counts towards my sentence.”

  She stood up, “Still want to take me home?”

  “Undoubtedly.” He paused, “Still don’t understand about the church.”

  Bau shrugged, “Amy is Verity’s grand-daughter. To believe I’m innocent means Verity believing that her Grand-daughter didn’t tell the truth; let’s just leave it at that.”

  She followed him downstairs and into the kitchen. As she crossed the floor her small stiletto heels made a click-clack noise on the quarry tiles, that is until she passed the table. There the sound turned into more of a clop-clop before returning to the click-clack. Brian frowned, “Would you mind walking back to the door?”

  She obligingly did her small step walk back to the door, this time rounding the table and only making one type of noise. Brian moved slightly, “Now walk to me?”

  She raised an eyebrow, “Some kind of pervert are we?”

  “No, definitely not, it’s just the sound of your heels.”

  She walked and they both listened, once again the noise changed from click to clop. “Floor’s hollow he announced.”

  “Big deal,” she replied, “mind if I go home now, or would you like me to walk round the entire kitchen.”

  That was exactly what he would have liked, but he led her to the front door and out to his car. She climbed in and looked around, “Grief, who on earth designed this? I’ve never seen a car so ugly?”

  Brian settled into the driver’s seat. “It’s a Fiat. Fiat Multipla to be exact. It may not be the prettiest car on the market, but it’s a real six seater. It’s very good for carting kids about, if somewhat wide to drive.”

  He drove her to Burston Tye, while they listened to the gentle strains of Mark Knoffler’s Golden Heart album. The destination was a tiny farm-labourer’s cottage, where she wouldn’t let him escort het to the door. On the way back he mused over both Verity’s warning and what he had learnt from her. Questions filled his mind. Were prisons really that violent and allowed to be that violent? She certainly had no front teeth, but she could have lost them at school, plenty of children did. How come
he’d not read a bean about the case in the press, or about the hunger strike? She certainly was thin, but could just be an anorexic looking for sympathy? Indeed, had she told him true at all or was it some vast pack of lies? With a face like that she could have told him that she was a member of the Russian Royal Family and he might have believed her. He decided to try and verify her story while in his heart he hoped it was true. Because if it was true then he could trust her and then she might be worth seeing again, if only to look at her face.

  Chapter 4

  Is It Worth The Risk?

  Brian woke early; his camp bed took some getting used to. Following a swift breakfast, he attacked the Internet again. This time he did a search on Bau’s real name. He turned up an endless stream of news reports. The reason why he’d not read anything soon became apparent. She’d been charged on the day after an horrendous train accident, so what could have been on any front page was relegated to a small paragraph in the general news section of most newspapers. Her case had come to trial in the middle of the dirtiest and most closely fought general election in years, so once again details of the court case were on late pages. She fared no better with her first appeal; the hearing started the day after an earthquake in Southern Italy. However, the articles confirmed what Bau had told him. It was all there in black and white. The testimony of the nanny that spoke of Bau’s angst at finding out that her child was terminally ill. The testimony of the expert witnesses, including verbatim prints of Dr Georgette Harris’ opinion regarding downright deliberate and callous murder. The ruling of the appeal judge that, given the medical condition of the child, the sentence should be reduced. Brian read about seventeen articles and then one or two post-case articles. A couple of the articles warned about ‘there but for the grace of god go you, so don’t go throwing stones’, and a few were downright hysteric. One article stood out, it asked the ‘where does Margaret Chasle go to now’ and gave the answer of the most violent woman’s prison in the country. It contained a dreadfully indicting list of prisoners who had sustained injuries, some horrific, while inside and finished up by urging the Home Office to take action. Not one single article seemed to have made the connection between Bau Didly and Margaret Chasle; either that or they were for some reason forbidden from publishing it. Brian turned off the computer and leaned back in the leather office chair. So what Bau had told him, as unbelievable as it sounded, was true. He resolved to be more trusting and made for the kitchen.

  The kitchen, temporarily, became the centre of interest. Brian, like most physicists, had an insatiable curiosity and he was curious about the kitchen floor. He used a toffee-hammer to tap on the floor and listen to the sound. He couldn’t repeat the decisiveness of Bau’s shoes, but after half an hour he was certain that the floor under the table was hollow, whereas the rest of the floor was solid. He sat on a chair and stared at the floor. This was not his house, had it been he would have lifted a floor tile or two. He made himself a cup of coffee and sat down to think. Before the first sip he idly started to use a screwdriver to clear away the sand mixture between the floor tiles. Within twenty minutes, despite his earlier decision, he prised the first two-foot square quarry tile up from its resting-place. Under it was solid floor, but just along one edge there seemed to be a piece of wood; he attacked a second tile. This one revealed wooden planks. After he’d removed four tiles he had the picture. Lying under them was a smooth wooden hatch with a notch in the centre of one edge. Again using the screwdriver, and a large amount of brute strength, he lifted out the wooden hatch. About four inches underneath was a sunken metal grill that was locked into place by an ancient looking padlock. Below that was a brick-lined lime-washed shaft, about a yard square, with metal rungs studded into one of the sides and disappearing down into hidden depths. Brian found a small torch and tried to peer down the shaft, all he could really see was the key to the padlock lodged in a small cavity about two feet down the shaft. The grill was such that he could not, even with the help of washing-up liquid, get his hands through. Once again he sat back and thought. The house was undoubtedly Victorian, but this shaft wasn’t. He considered, briefly, trying to contact George by e-mail, but to say what? In the end he decided to widen his investigations.

  The record office at Bury St Edmunds was first on his list. There he sought out information on the old rectory; it was a waste of time. The house had been built by some squire or other and then used by his daughter and her layabout husband. It was mentioned as a recruiting centre in the first-world war and as a convalescent home for airman suffering moderate burns in the second. After that it became a rectory until the late 1980s after which it had been sold to a succession of private owners, ending up with George. He gave up and returned the papers he had been reading to the information desk, which was staffed by an old lady wearing half-cut glasses on a gold chain. “Tell me,” he said, “has there ever been mining in Suffolk?”

  She took her glasses off. “Why yes dear, still is. Mostly for gravel, but sometimes for sand.”

  Brian smiled, wanting to humour her. “I don’t mean open mining, I mean tunnel mining.”

  She blinked as if he were mad, “No that I know of, soil’s too sandy and there’s no coal or minerals to speak of.”

  He tried a different tack; “Do you keep records of wartime underground buildings?”

  She pointed to a row of books; he turned to leave and paused. He pointed to a poster; “If you’ve got a poster do you sell tickets for that?”

  She sniffed as if posters were blots on her orderly landscape. “Downstairs,” She snapped.

  The books were useful and useless. They listed all the known, or admitted to, underground installations by village and area. There was absolutely nothing under Burston, although Burston Green was listed as having a small underground circular ammunition storage area. Brian gave up and headed for a hardware shop where he purchased a number of small items including a couple of large torches and a packet of candles. Finally he visited a florist; he had a house call to make.

  He pulled up at the Bau’s tiny cottage and marvelled at how dismal it looked in broad daylight. The front garden was a tangle of weeds and contained parts of at least one old bicycle and a couple of wheelless wheelbarrows. The wooden window frames were showing signs of severe rot and the slate roof had at least two slates missing besides showing signs of roof sag in several areas. Brian walked up to the front door and used the rusty knocker to summon attention. For some reason he couldn’t fathom he felt nervous and excited as well as a little foolish. She opened the door wearing a threadbare off-white towelling dressing gown and a pair of scuffed trainers. She blinked like an owl looking at sunlight. Close up in the morning light, and without make-up, her face clearly showed the ravages of her recent life and her hair showed every sign of unskilled barbering. He proffered the bunch of mixed flowers, “An apology.”

  Her face split into a smile and she took the flowers and sniffed them appreciatively. “What’s there to apologise for?”

  “I didn’t believe you and checked you out on the Internet. I’m sorry I doubted your story.”

  She seemed unwilling to invite him in. He moved to his second motive. “And I need your help.”

  She looked at him, totally bewildered. He held up his huge hands, “I need to reach something through a metal grill and I can’t get my hands through.”

  She lifted up one of her thin hands and placed it against his. It looked frail, tiny and emaciated; it was just what he needed. “You’d better come in,” she said reluctantly. She thrust the flowers back into his hands, “Kitchens through there, I’ll go and get changed.”

  “Might be messy,” he said.

  She went up the steep uncarpeted staircase without replying and Brian walked down the tiny hall. The cottage only had one downstairs room and he noted as he passed the doorway that it contained a deck chair and a small folding table, both standing forlornly in the middle of a bare uneven stone floor. The kitchen was little better; two doors were missing fro
m the lower kitchen units and the only cooking power came from a small two-burner propane portable cooking stove that sat beside a minuscule transistor radio. It all smelt of mildew and mould. He hunted for a vase and eventually found an old tin bucket. He placed it in the well-stained sink and added some water and placed the flowers inside. On a whim he glanced into the two tiny wall-cupboards, still searching for a vase. One contained two carrots, one small potato, four cans of very cheap soup, one can of thin rice pudding and a half-eaten children’s size bar of white chocolate. The other cupboard was empty apart from the odd mouse dropping. He glanced around; there was no refrigerator, no washing machine and just one pair of battered saucepans. It suddenly occurred to him that she had no money.

  Bau sat on the edge of the bed and gazed into the ancient peeling mirror that was propped up on the equally ancient dressing table. She hadn’t expected Brian to come calling and come calling with flowers. He seemed a decent guy, but she was wary, just suppose he was a reporter? She was absolutely forbidden to talk to the press, to do so would mean her automatically losing her licence. On the other hand she was going stir-crazy. The cottage was in the middle of nowhere and it was a two-mile walk to anywhere, and the walks tired her out so she didn’t go anywhere unless she had to. Her only outings had been to the supermarket, the church and the mobile library, where they had refused her membership as she’d had no proof of address. Otherwise it had been listening endlessly to her tiny radio and intermittently trying to tidy up the place, it was a fruitless task. If this was freedom, she was missing the point. She looked at herself in the mirror and almost recoiled; did she really look like that now? Where had her youth gone? She was 35, felt 95 and looked 75. Of course she knew the answer. She sought to get the very last fragments of mascara out of the bottle; she’d at least have to try to look presentable, even if it was now becoming an impossible task.