Faith

by Lesley Pearse

  Laura blew out the candles and removed them to cut the cake. In the past a Swiss roll was all they got for a birthday tea, and she was touched that Vincent had bought this pretty one for her. She knew it must have cost a lot, and as she’d had a transistor radio too, her thoughts of him, for now, were all good ones.

  Laura was in her bedroom later that evening, when Vincent put his head round the door. ‘How was the cake, birthday girl?’ he asked.

  ‘It was gorgeous,’ she said. She had come up to do her homework after tea, and as Vincent was working late, she hadn’t seen him until now. ‘And thank you for the radio too. That was just what I wanted; now I can listen to Radio Luxembourg in the evenings.’

  ‘I like to give my ladies what they want,’ he said, coming right into the room. As always, he looked very smart in a charcoal-grey suit, white shirt and blue striped tie. He might be tubby and balding, but he had a distinguished appearance. ‘Now, how about a kiss for an old man?’ he asked, pulling a comic face.

  She laughed and went over to him to kiss his cheek, but he put his arms around her and his mouth came down on hers, all wet and sloppy. Laura wriggled away, unsure if that was what he intended to do, or if it was an accident.

  ‘I always wanted a daughter,’ he said, sitting down on the bed. ‘Now I’ve got three. What a lucky man I am.’

  At that she felt ashamed she was so suspicious of him. ‘We are lucky, too, that Mum found you,’ she said a little awkwardly. ‘You’ve been very good to us.’

  ‘The pleasure is all mine,’ he said, reaching out and taking her hand. ‘And you are growing into a very pretty girl. I expect before long boys will be calling round wanting to take you out.’

  ‘I never meet any boys,’ she said, giggling with embarrassment.

  ‘Well, maybe we have to think of a club you could join to meet some,’ he said, drawing her closer to the bed. ‘I think there’s a youth club just along the road; I’ve seen young people gathering outside the church hall on a Thursday night. I could go along there and inquire for you.’

  ‘I’d be too scared to go to a club where I didn’t know anyone,’ she said and sat down beside him.

  ‘Everyone feels that way at first,’ he said. ‘I keep telling your mum we need to find some way of introducing you to people so you can make friends. What about joining the Girl Guides?’

  ‘I’m too old for that now,’ Laura said with a sigh. ‘I really wanted to join them back in Shepherds Bush but we couldn’t afford the uniform.’

  ‘You aren’t too old,’ he said, releasing her hand and putting his arm around her shoulder. ‘I’ve seen girls of sixteen and seventeen at the parades on Sundays. They go camping in the summer and on all kinds of other trips. I’m sure the women who run it appreciate having slightly older girls to help with the younger ones.’

  Laura liked the idea of that. ‘I suppose I could go once and see how it is. But won’t the girls all be very posh?’

  ‘No posher than you,’ he said with a little chuckle. ‘You go to a good school, you live in a nice house. You are on the same level, or even higher, than all of them.’

  ‘Am I?’ she asked in some surprise.

  ‘Of course you are,’ he said firmly. ‘You must stop thinking you are somehow inferior. You’re bright and pretty, as good as anyone else.’

  He hugged her then and for once she didn’t move away because it felt good to be praised by him. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Everyone needs a cuddle now and then.’

  Suddenly his hand moved on to her breast. Like the kiss earlier it could have been a mistake, because he withdrew his hand immediately and said it was time he went as her mother would be wondering where he was.

  After he’d gone Laura felt confused. Everything Vincent had said suggested he was just being kind and fatherly – her own dad wouldn’t have cared tuppence whether she had any friends or not, and he certainly had never praised her. Maybe it was because of that she was so suspicious of Vincent, and perhaps she just had a dirty mind.

  In the weeks that followed her birthday her feelings about Vincent see-sawed between being sure he just wanted to be a real father and feeling he had other motives in being nice to her. He did take her along to the Girl Guides where she received a warm welcome, and the following day he took her off to buy her a complete uniform. He was really pleased that she made a new friend the very first night, a girl called Patsy who lived just further down the road, and he said she could have Patsy round any time she liked.

  But he would keep touching and hugging her. She didn’t like the way he patted her bottom, or the way he came into her room to kiss her goodnight. She would argue with herself that he patted Ivy and Meggie’s bottoms too, and kissed them goodnight, and if he left her out she might have felt hurt. But they were only little girls, and why were his hugs and kisses so lingering, and usually when they were alone? And why did the presents he bought her seem like some kind of bribe?

  He came home from work one evening with a beautiful red coat with a hood for her. She was thrilled with it, and threw her arms around him impulsively to thank him. But late that same evening he came into her room when she was reading in bed and said something about wanting to give her lovely things because she deserved them. He kissed her on the lips again, and this time it was definitely intentional.

  She couldn’t tell her mother, she knew she wouldn’t be believed, and she’d almost certainly be accused of making trouble. But by her doing and saying nothing he became bolder. There were several occasions when he came up behind her and cupped her breasts in his hands, and though she did push him off and tell him not to touch her, he just laughed as if he believed she didn’t mean it.

  One very cold afternoon in early March Laura came out of school to find Vincent waiting for her in his car. He said he’d had a business appointment close by and thought he’d pick her up afterwards and drive her home. His business was office equipment and along with supplying desks, chairs and typewriters to offices, he also had a printing firm where he made business cards and headed notepaper. Laura was rather impressed that he supplied big companies; she sometimes saw invoices he’d made out for hundreds of pounds.

  As she had often boasted of this at school, it was good to see the surprised expressions on the other girls’ faces as she drove off in Vincent’s gleaming Jaguar. She hoped it would stop them calling her a liar. It got better still when they stopped off in Chelsea for coffee and a cream cake as she felt very sophisticated.

  When they got home the house was in darkness, and there was a note from her mother on the kitchen table to say she’d taken the little ones to Oxford Street to buy them new shoes and she wouldn’t be back until about seven.

  ‘That’s nice, we’ll have a little more time on our own,’ Vincent said cheerfully. ‘I’ll go and stir up the fire and we can curl up in front of it.’

  Laura made a cup of tea and when she took it into the sitting room Vincent had got the fire blazing, put the table lamps on, taken his shoes and jacket off and was sitting on the settee.

  ‘I like cold, dark afternoons,’ he said. ‘At least I do once I’m in by the fire. Come and sit by me.’

  Laura sat beside him, holding her cold feet up to the fire as she drank her tea. She had homework to do, and she knew she ought to go and make a start on the tea, but it was so cosy there that she was reluctant to move. They chatted for a while, mostly about the Girl Guides, for she was due to be enrolled the following week. Her mother never seemed to be interested in such things, in fact she had said she couldn’t see the point in being a Guide, so it was nice to be able to talk about it to Vincent.

  ‘Patsy said camping is really great, she’s been on several trips, and this summer they are going to Cudham in Kent. Mum will let me go, won’t she?’

  ‘She will if I tell her she must,’ Vincent said, and slung his arm around her. ‘I know she thinks Guiding is a little pointless, but that’s because she never had the chance to do such things when she was young.’

/>   After a long day at school, feeling comfortable with Vincent and in the warmth of the fire, Laura must have dozed off. But she woke with a start to find him trying to put his hand up her knickers.

  It was a terrible shock. Her school skirt was right up above her waist, and to her horror he had his penis in his other hand. For a moment she froze. She had never seen a fully grown man’s penis before and it was huge, with a purple glistening tip.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed, suddenly aware her blouse was unbuttoned too.

  ‘Just loving you,’ he said. ‘Don’t move, let me just touch you there.’

  She leapt to her feet, brushing his hands away from her, shuddering with revulsion. ‘You dirty bastard,’ she screamed at him. ‘How could you!’

  Running from the room, she took the stairs two at a time and locked herself in the bathroom. She felt sick and very afraid, and a few minutes later when she heard him coming up the stairs she yeiled out for him to go away.

  ‘I couldn’t help it,’ he said outside the door, his voice soft and caressing. ‘You looked so beautiful and I just got carried away. I’m sorry if I frightened you, but I thought you felt that way about me too.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t, you’re an old man,’ she shouted back. ‘Mum will go mad with you when I tell her.’

  He asked her to come out of the bathroom, but she refused. He was silent for a little while, but she knew he was still there.

  ‘Okay, so I made a mistake,’ he said eventually. ‘But you did bring it on yourself, snuggling up to me. How was I to know you didn’t want it?’

  Laura was crying now, and she couldn’t put into words how defiled she felt. All she kept saying was that she was going to tell her mother.

  ‘You must think hard before you do that,’ he said. ‘For one thing, I’ll just tell her that you started it and that you’ve been flaunting yourself at me since you moved in here.’

  ‘She’ll know that’s not true,’ Laura sobbed. ‘You’ve been creepy with me from the start.’

  ‘Is giving you and the others a good home creepy?’ he asked, a chilly note in his voice. ‘Is giving you good food, warm clothes and anything else you need creepy? I think not, and if your mother does believe your version of what happened, then it will all end. You’ll all have to go. Back to another slum, until your mother takes up with another sucker willing to keep her.’

  He went on and on insistently and Laura realized then that he was cruel enough to put her family out on the street. ‘I thought you loved Mum,’ she sobbed. ‘But YOU don’t, you’ve just used her.’

  ‘Used her! That’s rich,’ he exclaimed. ‘She made a play for me the moment she knew I was a widower. Listen to me, Laura, and listen good. Your mother is just a whore. She’d have dropped her knickers for any man with money, I knew that from the start, but she was good company and she gave me what I wanted. It’s up to you now, tell her if you must, but you’ll be the one to blame if she takes your part and I have to throw her out.’

  ‘You’re horrible,’ Laura shouted back at him. ‘Mum will want to go when she knows what you said.’

  ‘You’d better think about your sisters and Freddy,’ he said threateningly. ‘The girls won’t thank you for it, not when they have to leave that school where they are doing so well, or their pretty bedroom. And what about Freddy when he has to leave his tricycle and other toys behind? But June won’t take your part anyway, a good whore knows when she’s on to a good thing. She’ll just hate you for upsetting the apple cart.’

  Laura protested, but feebly, for the thought of Meggie and Ivy’s faces when they had to leave here was too awful to contemplate.

  ‘I’m going downstairs now,’ he said. ‘Go to your room and stay there. I hope that by morning you’ll have decided on the smartest move, which is to keep this to yourself.’

  Laura heard her mother come in later, and Meggie calling out to Vincent to show him her new shoes. Every sound that wafted up the stairs was one of a happy family, and Laura sobbed into her pillow knowing that Vincent was right, everyone would suffer if she told the truth.

  Her mother didn’t come up to see why she was in bed, which in itself suggested she didn’t care too much about her eldest daughter. Meggie brought a glass of milk and a sandwich up later, but even she was too excited about her new shoes and a jumper Mum had bought her to show any concern as to why her sister was in bed.

  It came to Laura during that long night when she couldn’t sleep that there was no alternative for her but to leave the house for good. She knew it would be too much of a strain living here after what had happened, and besides, Vincent might do it again.

  But that meant she would have to leave school and get a job. That would be the end of her plans for university and a career.

  Hate was an emotion she’d never felt for anyone until that night. She had never hated her father, even though he wasn’t much of a one. She didn’t hate the girls at school who had bullied her either. But she learned to hate Vincent in the early hours of the morning as she lay there seeing her plans and dreams shattered.

  She couldn’t even get her revenge on him, not without putting her family at risk. If it had just been her mother she wouldn’t have cared, for it struck her that Vincent had spoken the truth about her, at least in part. But Meggie, Ivy and Freddy were little innocents; she couldn’t do anything that would backfire on them.

  ‘But I can wait to get my revenge later,’ she murmured to herself. ‘I’ll go, disappear where you’ll never find me. But I’ll keep tabs on you and pay you back one way or another.’

  A scream further down the block brought Laura sharply back to the present. Someone was fighting again and before long others would join in. She had no intention of going out there to see what was going on, but she got off her bed and washed her swollen eyes with cold water.

  ‘The question is, do you want Stuart to visit you or not?’ she asked her reflection in the small mirror.

  Her head was telling her that the only reason he wanted to come was to gloat at her misery.

  But her heart told her to send him the visiting slip anyway. If nothing else, it would be good to talk to someone who had cared deeply for Jackie. And maybe she could take the opportunity to apologize for the hurt she had caused him in the past.

  3

  ‘Visitor for Brannigan!’

  Laura started in surprise as the prison officer’s voice boomed out along the block. She had been longing for her name to be called, but from the moment she opened her eyes this morning, she’d felt sure Stuart wouldn’t come.

  She didn’t stop to check herself in the mirror, for she was already disappointed that the prison hairdressing salon hadn’t been able to achieve the rich, deep brown colour she’d hoped for. It had come out far too red, but at least they had cut it well, and it was now a neat bob to her shoulders.

  In the absence of anything smart or pretty to wear, she’d opted for jeans and a pale blue tee-shirt. The other women had said she looked great, but then they’d never seen her without pale blotchy skin, or in the kind of elegant clothes she used to wear. Most of them had friends or relatives who could bring in new clothes from time to time, but she was stuck with the things her lawyer, Mr Goldsmith, had collected from her flat after her trial. With his wife’s help he’d picked practical, comfortable clothes that would wash well, though with only four sets, they all looked shabby and frumpy now. But then Laura hadn’t imagined she would ever care what she looked like again.

  As she made her way in the warm sunshine from Bravo Block across the prison grounds to the visiting room, it occurred to her that if she had to be in prison, it was probably better here in Scotland than in England.

  She recalled seeing pictures of Holloway Prison in London, a grim Victorian place built like a fortress, and other women here spoke of prisons where they had been locked in their cells almost all day. At Cornton Vale there were no high walls, only metal fences, and the grounds were quite attractive, with grass, trees and
even a pond with ducks. Each block had its own exercise yard, and there was a view from almost every cell, either of the hills or of the grounds. It wasn’t anywhere near as crowded as Holloway either: about 250 women, Laura thought, and there was variety of work and many courses like hairdressing or art to enrol in.

  Yet Cornton Vale still had a high suicide rate: there had been two since she’d been here, both young girls who were not even serving long sentences. But then she supposed that two or three years seemed an eternity at their age and perhaps they had nothing on the outside to look forward to anyway.

  The visiting room had not changed since the last time she had a visitor, and that was over a year ago. The walls were still drab, the same large tables prevented close contact between visitor and inmate, and the usual display of chocolate, cake and biscuits stood by the tea urn.

  What was new to her though was her ability to feel the tension in the air, to notice the anxious expressions on both prisoners’ and visitors’ faces as they clutched at one another’s hands over the tables. A years ago she was aware of nothing but her own misery.

  It was good to see a few children, some playing with toys in the corner, others haring around the room, for she understood now how important these visits were to their mothers. Yet those prisoners who were cuddling babies and toddlers brought a lump to her throat. She thought it must be devastating for a new mother to be parted from her baby, and only be able to see it once a month for a brief half-hour. Yet even harder to bear would be the fear that the baby would bond with whoever was taking care of it now and might never feel that way about its real mother when she was released.

  But such thoughts vanished as she saw Stuart come into the room. Her pulse began to race and the palms of her hands were suddenly sweaty.