by M. R. Carey
The governor had come by his nickname because of his evangelical zeal. And being a religious man as well as a company-owned one, he was deeply divided about this whole Moulson situation. He was also frankly unimpressed with the legal expert, who dressed like a fashion plate and looked as though she was barely out of law school.
“Just let her die?” he echoed. “Really? Surely in today’s world there are interventions. Regimes…”
“There are the same interventions there always were,” the expert told him. “The nutritional mix and the delivery systems may have been refined in various ways, but forced feeding is still basically putting a tube into a person’s stomach – either through the nostril or directly through the torso – so you can pour something down it. And it’s still illegal.”
“But if it’s to save a life, it’s got to be justified, hasn’t it? I believe I read in connection with Guantanamo Bay that they have a policy of—”
“Yes, they do, but it’s illegal there too. There’s broad agreement that it’s a form of torture. International agreement. Since 1975, if someone tries to starve themselves, and they’re of sound mind, you’ve got to let them do it. The only way you’d get away with force-feeding them is if you could prove their judgement was impaired.”
Scratchwell thought that through until he found the unexcluded middle.
“Which very definitely is not going to happen,” the expert said as he opened his mouth to speak. “If you were to get a psychiatric evaluation done on Jess Moulson now, and if it gave even the smallest indication that she was in an abnormal state of mind, it would cast doubt on the guilty verdict. Her solicitor would call a mistrial and the Crown Prosecution Service would get very seriously upset. Frankly, governor, it would be an embarrassment for us. And the timing would be extremely awkward. We’re currently negotiating a new raft of government contracts, all of which depend on our being seen to do a good job here.”
Scratchwell was starting to feel really unhappy about all this. It had the look of a no-win situation. “But if Moulson dies here at Fellside – on my watch, so to speak – surely I’m in breach of my duty of care. Especially if I didn’t take any steps to make absolutely sure she’s in her right mind. What if we’re sued? What if I’m charged with manslaughter?”
“That’s vanishingly unlikely. And you’d win the case.”
“If a burglar can sue a householder when he falls through a skylight…”
“Bodine versus Enterprise High School. The burglar didn’t win; the school settled. And that was in America.”
“You said there was international agreement…” Scratchwell began.
“On force-feeding, governor, not on every possible wrinkle of the law of tort. Believe me when I tell you that you can’t be sued for your failure to do something you’d have been legally barred from doing in the first place.”
The expert raised both hands, miming the scales of a balance. “On the other hand, if you respect Moulson’s wishes and allow her to die, you can devote yourself to making her comfortable over that time, and you can talk openly to reporters about exactly what steps you’re taking to lessen her suffering. That may sound cynical, but I suggest you think of it as the lesser evil. You can fight Moulson or you can work with her, and if you work with her you can do some visible good.
“Of course, the moment when she dies is still going to be a critical time for you, and there could be control issues.”
“You mean riots.”
“We can’t rule them out. Everyone knows a death is the perfect inciting incident. But we’ve quantified the risk as low on the basis of three factors. One: Moulson killed a child. So the emotions stirred up by her death probably won’t include outrage or a sense of injustice. Particularly since – factor two – it’s suicide. She wants this.”
“And what’s factor three?”
The expert shrugged. “Nobody ever gets to meet her,” she told Scratchwell. “You don’t release her into gen pop at all. She’ll most likely be dead in two months anyway.”
The governor boggled a little at this sting in the tail. Isolating a prisoner pre-emptively could usually only be done when there was an immediate security risk which outweighed the prisoner’s rights to humane treatment. It was a breach of a great many different statutory regulations and guidelines. “Solitary?” he exclaimed.
“I thought you didn’t use that word here. But no. I’m talking about medical withdrawal, not punitive. Your infirmary has a quarantine unit, doesn’t it? You put Moulson in there. If she’s serious about dying, she’ll soon be needing continuous medical supervision. You’ll just be starting that process early. It’s all about keeping a low profile, governor. The main aim is not to excite commentary or prurient attention any more than is necessary.”
Scratchwell’s uncertainty still showed on his face. “You shouldn’t overthink this,” the expert advised him. “Moulson’s needs are best met by accepting the choice she’s made and facilitating it.”
“Facilitating her death?”
“Absolutely.”
10
Jess was transferred from Winstanley to Fellside by private ambulance. The accommodations on board were so luxurious, she almost expected an in-flight movie.
She didn’t eat, of course, although food was available. But there was a bottle of water by the side of her gurney and another set up in some kind of cradle over her head. The second bottle had a rubber nipple attached to the business end which Jess could reach just by turning her head in case she was too weak to stretch out her hand. She wasn’t – not yet. Two weeks into the hunger strike, she could still sit up and even walk a few steps unaided.
There were about a hundred diagnostic devices to measure her vital signs, a remote for the gurney which let her sit up just by pushing a button and three nurses whose whole purpose for being there was to make sure that Jess didn’t experience a single moment of discomfort. Two of the nurses had been hired from the same private hospital that provided the ambulance; the third, Patience DiMarta, was a Fellside staffer.
Patience was one half Portuguese, the other half West African, but her accent was broad Yorkshire. She stood a head taller than the agency nurses and ordered them around with an easy authority. She was brisk and cheerful, not fazed by the weirdness of the assignment. She told Jess that her preferred way of working was no nonsense on either side. That deal would hold as long as Jess behaved herself, and would lapse if she made any trouble.
“I haven’t eaten any solid food in fourteen days,” Jess pointed out, her voice weak and a little slurred. “I won’t make trouble. I don’t even remember the recipe for trouble.”
Patience nodded approval. “Then we should be fine,” she said genially. “You’ve probably noticed we’ve got a guard right here too. That’s Ms Andrea Corcoran, and even though you’re weak and sick, she’ll beat you like a carpet if you misbehave.”
The guard was sitting on a fold-down seat at the rear of the ambulance. Stocky and red-headed, she looked like a bouncer at the door of a nightclub. Except that she had a Jilly Cooper novel in her lap and only looked up from it long enough to acknowledge her name. “Whatever DiMarsBar just said is bollocks,” she commented tersely, and went back to the book.
Patience made sure Jess was strapped in, then gave the all-clear to the driver. “D’you want anything to help you sleep?” she asked Jess as the ambulance eased into motion. “It’s a long way, and some of the roads once you get up on to the moors are what they call unadopted. That means they’re mostly rocks and holes.”
“No thanks,” Jess said quickly. She didn’t relish the prospect of bumps and jolts, but she was already spending half of every day asleep and that was more than enough. Bad dreams weren’t a novelty any more, they were her constant companions. Every time she closed her eyes, she’d find herself back in her burning flat looking for Alex, knowing that if she didn’t find him in time, he was going to die. Knowing that if she turned her back, those silent women would be waiting there with their
closed eyes and their slack, expressionless faces. No. No more sleep, thank you very much.
Apart from the dreams, she felt as though she was getting better rather than worse. The first few days had been terrible. Her stomach had screamed out for what it was being denied, not letting up for a moment. And that physical discomfort had somehow translated into a sense of panic. The walls of the cell had closed in on her. Her heart had raced and stuttered like a stalling car.
But instead of intensifying, those symptoms had faded. Jess didn’t even feel hungry now, except in a very abstract sense. She remembered food in the way that you might remember a wonderful holiday from a few years ago. She had bad headaches, it was true. She was as weak as a two-year-old, her breath stank like a dead goat and her muscles ached. All of that was bearable.
It was only the nightmares that really got to her. If she could kick those, dying wouldn’t trouble her too much.
Most of the trip was a lot smoother than Patience had suggested. Then once the road did start to get rough and bouncy, the agency nurses released a couple of bolts on the gurney which lifted it up onto shock-absorbers. There was almost no pain.
“It’s a pity you can’t sit up and look out of the windows,” Patience said at one point. “Fellside is quite impressive when you see it from a distance, across the moor. Almost beautiful.”
The guard, Corcoran, who’d been reading Jilly Cooper without a break all the way from London, glanced up a second time at this point. Judging by the look on her face, she might be prepared to take issue with that word.
“What’s it like close up?” Jess asked.
It was meant as a joke, feeble as it was, but Patience took the question seriously. She thought about it, one eyebrow crooked up a little.
“Different,” was all she said.
11
Different was a good word, carefully chosen. Certainly there wasn’t much beauty on display when the ambulance doors opened and Jess saw Fellside for the first time from the inside.
The first thing that registered as the gurney was lowered to the ground was the inside of the prison’s perimeter wall, rearing high above her. Tangles of razor wire stood on the top of it. They looked a lot like birds’ nests, or like birds’ nests might look if birds were made of steel and fed their chicks with rivets.
She was in a vehicle bay of some kind. It was a warm day, but the high wall cut off the sun and plunged the whole place into premature evening. She remembered Pritchard telling her that thousands of women lived here, but at least in this corner of Fellside there was total silence. For all Jess could tell, it might be just the five of them left after some inexplicable holocaust had swallowed up the rest of the human race.
“We’ll take it from here,” Corcoran told the agency nurses. “You swing around by the visitors’ gate, drive up to the barrier and show your passes there. There’s no going out through this one.”
As the ambulance pulled away, the guard turned her attention back to Jess. “Well, since we’re back in the Land of Bad Things…” she said. She unhooked the handcuffs from her belt and used them to fasten Jess’s right wrist to the steel rail of the gurney. It was the first time Jess had been cuffed since her trial. Bile and claustrophobia rose in her throat, but she kept her face expressionless.
“Sorry,” Corcoran said – not to Jess but to DiMarta, whose nostrils had flared a little when the cuffs went on.
“Are we good now?” Patience asked with icy politeness.
“We’re good,” Corcoran said.
The big nurse wheeled the gurney across the bay, out into an open space that allowed Jess to see the prisoner wings for the first time. She could see now that Nurse DiMarta might have a point. The prison’s main buildings were tall and graceful, each painted in a different colour of the rainbow. Knowing what those blocks of concrete and glass really represented, Jess felt a weird sense of dislocation. Their prettiness felt like a calculating lie. The smile on the face of the tiger.
DiMarta steered the gurney through a set of double doors into a corridor painted like the main blocks in joyous primaries and pastels. Corcoran walked alongside, her trashy novel now stowed out of sight in one of the many pockets of her uniform. “Do you want me to take a turn with that thing?” she asked – possibly to make up for the handcuffs, which seemed to have rubbed the nurse up the wrong way.
“Oh, and here she comes again,” Patience said. “Let me push the trolley. Let me bandage that wound. Let me perform the operation. Demarcation, petal. You’ll get me in trouble with the union.” Her face was still a little set, but her tone was bantering. If the handcuffs hadn’t been forgiven, they weren’t going to be an issue between the two women.
They moved Jess through a whole lot of different places, most of which she didn’t get much of a look at because she was on her back and staring at the ceiling.
Processing seemed to go on for ever. Jess’s civilian clothes and effects, taken from her when she was first signed in at Winstanley, now had to be handed over into the care of the Fellside authorities. The clothes, Jess knew, were the ones she’d been wearing on the night of the fire, so if they were ever given back to her, all she was going to do was to throw them in a bin or finish the job and burn what was left of them. What else was in the bag? Her mobile phone, which she now associated with her bad dreams and never wanted to see again. Keys to the ruined shell of her flat. A wallet full of maxed-out credit cards. A Fossil watch, the glass cracked across from the heat or from some unremembered impact.
All my worldly goods, she thought. Pity I never made a will.
Fellside’s induction process didn’t bend to accommodate the new inmate’s special circumstances. Despite the fact that she was wearing nothing but a hospital gown, Jess was thoroughly frisked. Then she was wheeled into a smaller room, where a female guard put on a pair of latex gloves and gave her a cavity search with the aid of a plastic speculum. They hadn’t felt the need to search her bodily orifices at Winstanley: perhaps they’d already done it back at the Whittington Hospital while she was still unconscious. The guard did her best to be gentle, but the humiliation was more or less total. Her right arm pinned in place by the handcuffs, Jess had to lie on her side on the gurney with her pelvis raised and her legs awkwardly spread like a baby having its nappy changed. Except that a nappy change was non-invasive. DiMarta stood by through this process with her muscular arms tightly folded, radiating disapproval.
“You do know she’s come in from another prison?” she asked the guard.
“It’s standard procedure, Patience.”
“It’s stupid, that’s what it is.”
They kept Jess parked in the little room for a while longer. After a few minutes, they wheeled in a TV on a big portable stand and plugged it in. Apparently there was a video all newcomers were meant to watch, and Jess had to watch it, the head end of the gurney ratcheted up to a comfortable forty-five degrees. It showed the view she’d failed to see as she was driven here – the prison from the other side of the moor, perched on the dizzying edge of Sharne Fell with the rock escarpments falling away from the base of its walls like the folds of a dress. The brightly coloured towers of the prisoner blocks rose over the sparse moorland like some lost suburb of Disneyland.
A gravelly, avuncular voice extolled the virtues of the N-fold corporation and its extensive contributions to human happiness. “The Fellside Correctional Facility for Women stands on the edge of the North York Moors National Park, in the valley of the River Leven – a place of great scenic beauty. Against this idyllic backdrop, three thousand women form a community committed to a practical ideal of rehabilitation.”
“I hate the voiceover so much,” Corcoran said gloomily. “If I ever meet that smarmy bastard, I swear I’ll do time for him. Probably right here.”
Jess mostly let the words wash over her, but she marvelled at the perfect dislocation of form and content. This was like videos she’d seen for timeshare apartments, full of staged shots that oozed insincerity. Smiling inma
tes reading books, working in kitchen gardens, turning pots. A craft village behind a fortress wall. Where do I sign up?
“Our prisoner wings commemorate women’s achievements in a range of fields, from science to politics. Designed by award-winning architect Roger Lawley, they foster a sense of space and freedom rather than confinement. The centrepiece of each building is the commons, an open space of four thousand cubic metres which serves as both a recreation room and an assembly point.”
“It’s not called that,” Corcoran muttered, clearly still resentful about having to sit through the video.
“What?” Jess asked.
“It’s not called the commons. Ever. They’ve all got their own names for it. In Franklin they call it the farmyard. In Elion it’s the bucket. In Goodall, where you’re going, it’s the ballroom.”
“Why the ballroom?” Jess queried. She could see that Corcoran wanted to be asked.
“First day the place was open, someone tore a pair of pink pompoms off a hat and threw them down from the fourth-floor walkway. They got stuck in the anti-suicide nets, and someone said they looked like a pair of testicles dangling there. Hence, the ballroom.”
The video was showing each of the blocks in turn now in a free-flowing montage of serious but deeply content faces.
“Blackwell wing…”
“Butlins,” Corcoran translated.
“Curie…”
“Cunt House.”
“Dietrich…”
“Daffy Duck. That’s the psychiatric wing.”
“Elion…”
“Hellhole.”
“Franklin…”
“Wanklin.”
“… and our maximum-security wing, Goodall.”
“The State of Grace.”
“That one sounds okay,” Jess murmured.