Quite Honestly

Time passed. I’d stopped visiting Holloway, quite honestly because Lucy didn’t want to see me again. Talk about attitude! Hers seemed to have changed from love, real proper love, to what you might call irritation. Just because I wanted to be what she once wanted me to be. Now she was angry because I wanted the odd GCSE or A level or to go straight.

Of course I’d had girlfriends before, plenty of them, and I had no trouble at all understanding what they wanted. A good time, of course, plenty of drinks and the occasional illegal substance, and if you’re suddenly flush with money a couple of weeks on the Costa del Crime. I’d been happy to oblige and the truth is that I’d never been given the push before. It may be a bit arrogant of me to say this but it always either fizzled out or I was the one who decided we weren’t best suited.

It was different with Lucy. Come to think of it, everything was different with Lucy. If I was to be honest about it I’d have to admit that it was because I cared for her more than I’d ever cared for any of the others. So I suppose that’s why I felt so badly about it. If she didn’t fancy me any more, for whatever reason, I wasn’t going to turn up in the Holloway visitors’ room just for the pleasure of discovering that my girlfriend had got bored with me and couldn’t wait for the visit to be over.

As she’d ended our relationship I thought it wasn’t fair to stay on in her flat in the Notting Hill area, so I locked it up and moved away. I’ll admit I borrowed some of her books I needed for studying. I found myself a room above a Japanese restaurant down the Goldhawk Road. Never mind I had to share a bathroom with the head sushi cook. He was spotlessly clean and would send me up a few bits of sushi when he thought I looked hungry. It was a long way from cooking up a rack of lamb for Lucy in her flat, but let’s say I survived on it and it was a lot better than being locked up inside like she was.

I went over to the Brummell Club in the days when I still had a bit of money stored up against my retirement and one night there, drinking at the bar as large as life and twice as natural, was Screwtop. I sat down beside him, allowed him to order me a large vodka on the rocks and then I accused him of leading the scam which was so stupidly organized that it had landed my ex-girlfriend inside.

‘No.’ I did my best to reassure him, although to be honest he wasn’t wanting reassuring. ‘She hasn’t told anyone. When I found out she was with a couple of pros who left her in her hour of need, I thought one of them must have been you.’

Screwtop wouldn’t have told me so much if he’d been entirely sober. As it was he leaned forward and, with his vodka breath, whispered one word in my ear: ‘Iraq.’

Like I say, time passed. Thanks to Mr Markby I got lessons through the post. It wasn’t the Milton book I had to read but one about animals talking about politics and one from America about a halfwitted man. I wrote down my thoughts about these books and posted them off, and got quite encouraging letters back. When it came to Christmas, Mr Markby invited me to lunch at his home in Enfield.

So I sat round a table with Mr and Mrs Markby and her sister and her sister’s husband and one or two more friends and someone who worked in the Prison Inspectors Office and we all put on paper crowns out of the crackers and Mr Markby read out the jokes, which as far as I was concerned didn’t raise a laugh at all. I was mainly worried about Mr Markby’s little dog, who seemed dead set on eating the ends of my trousers. Mr Markby told them all that we’d first met when I was in prison and they looked at me, particularly the young Markby, Simon, with a sort of respect as though he’d told them that I’d swum the Channel or crossed the Arctic with dogs.

‘I thought he gave me all the right answers but he didn’t mean them. Now I know he’s changed. He’s particularly anxious to stop a friend getting into more trouble. Terry’s a fine example of the way that prison works.’

Mr Markby, whose paper crown was now a bit askew, raised his glass to that, and I didn’t argue. The fact that I’d come a long way from my sort of home with my Aunt Dot and Uncle Arthur, who was continually away, to the Markbys’ Christmas dinner was, I thought, a bit of an achievement. So I told them that I was grateful for what Mr Markby had done for me, and I suppose I meant it. All the same, I went and got a bit drunk in a pub down the Goldhawk Road the next night. All I’d done to keep my friend out of trouble had got me no further than Christmas dinner with the Markby family.

More time passed and I found myself in another public gallery, this time in Number 2 Court down at the Old Bailey. Mr Bethell had told me the date of Lucy’s trial, and that it was going to be a pretty short story as my ex-girlfriend had made up her mind to plead guilty and ‘Counsel and I couldn’t persuade her to make a fight of it.’ Lucky for Lucy it wasn’t Judge Bullingham, who had seen me off for four years the last time I visited the Old Bailey. It was a small, neat, pocket-sized judge called Springer. From the way he handed out prison sentences in the guilty cases before Lucy he seemed a polite sort of person who always said, ‘The least sentence I could possibly pass in this case is . . .’ unlike fucking Bullingham, who not only gave out what seemed to be the maximum but was bloody rude with it.

When the turn came to ‘Bring up Purefoy’ I craned forward in my seat, to see Lucy looking round the court as though she was already bored with the whole proceedings. Whether that was what she really felt or she was just putting on an act I didn’t honestly know, because I’d got so far out of touch with Lucy’s feelings. She had a sort of uninterested look on her face, and didn’t even give a glance up to the public gallery although I was staring at her so hard that I thought she must have felt it, however far away she was.

The prosecution told the story you’ve heard often enough of the stolen picture and then the brief Mr Bethell had landed Lucy with got up to make his speech. He was a tall, lanky sort of person who didn’t seem able to control his giggles.

‘I find it difficult, Mr Frobisher,’ the judge told Lucy’s brief, ‘to see a comic side to burglary.’ This ought to have given the lanky brief a fair warning, but he went on doing his stand-up stuff.

‘The whole business was such a disaster that I must say I find the facts as they have been outlined by my learned friend who appears for the prosecution most amusing.’

‘Do you indeed?’ Mr Justice Springer looked determined to be serious. ‘May I remind you that the purpose of the Central Criminal Court in England is not to amuse you, Mr Frobisher.’

Even this didn’t wipe the grin off Mr Frobisher’s face. ‘She undertook this picture-stealing operation having first alerted Detective Sergeant Macdonald, who was able to guess that she had some such ridiculous enterprise in mind.’

‘Let me put it this way, My Lord,’ Mr Frobisher invited the judge to enjoy what he clearly thought was an excellent joke, ‘Lucy Purefoy was helping the police with their enquiries.’

The judge didn’t join in the fun. He didn’t even crack a smile as he said, ‘It seems clear that she arrived at the scene with some more professional accomplices and she has refused to name them. That was hardly helping the police with their enquiries, was it, Mr Frobisher?’

Lucy, who had been sitting unsmiling through all Mr Frobisher’s jokes, was told to stand. She did, and I can still hear what the judge said to her now. There wasn’t a single laugh in it.

‘Lucinda Purefoy, you entered a house by night and were caught in the act of stealing a very valuable picture from a friend to whom you stood, to some extent, in a position of trust. I utterly reject Mr Frobisher’s speech in mitigation. Although ill-conceived, it has done nothing actually to increase the sentence I am about to pass. You will go to prison for three years. Take her down.’

I thought that Lucy would at least glance up at the public gallery to see if I was there before she went, but she did nothing of the sort. She went towards the steps down from the dock to the cells as though she couldn’t wait to get away from the whole courtroom, including me if I happened to be there. I didn’t see her again for some considerable time.