There’s a small smear on the ceiling I’ve never marked before. I gawp at it a time, studying what it is. Damp-rot, shite, blood–sod knows how it got there, or if it’s mine. What’s queer is, I feel something frammled, thinking about it. Spent all this time never noticing it and now I’m off out and there’s sudden a new piece of muck on the ceiling, and I don’t feel ready, somehow, I need everything settled familiar before I leave it.
He’s got the television on next door. I’m not much capped at that, mind, he’s always got the bleeding television on, he watches it right through the night sometimes–if that is what he’s doing, watching it–so I can go forty, fifty hours straight with that noise piercing through the wall. Sometimes I wonder how it is the whole wing can’t hear it, but he’s a big bugger and I don’t say anything any more.
I keep my stare on the smear. He’s not going to bother me now. I’ve spent four years waiting for today and I’ve gradlier things to think on now I’m about free. He can have his television as loud as he sodding likes–he’s as cloth-headed as the rest of them if he thinks I’m twined about that any more.
I didn’t rightly know where I was at first, it took a time for my brain to stop jenny-wheeling–the last I remembered before the police cell I was fetching fish and chips back to the cavern. All I had aside from that was snags of memory. Norman showing off his new vehicle; bruises on my wrist like the one I’d gave her; dinner on a plastic tray under the door and it was the best thing I’d ever ate; the driver taking me to the prison. They love beasts where you’re going, lad.
If they’d put me straight in a maximum security, it wouldn’t have been worse. Even a Category A would’ve been snug compared with where I went first off, down the valley. They all knew there, course, what I’d done. They read about it in the recreation room in The Blatherskites’ News, them that knew how to read, and for them that didn’t, there were plenty fain glad to tell the story. Brutal abduction ordeal over. Girl recovering at home with parents. Abductor on remand in local prison. Motivation may have been sexual.
They knew about Katie Carmichael and all. There was a nimrod I’d been at school with, Ricky Morlock, was in for selling drugs in the toilets of the After Dark in Thorpe Head. He’d a gob on him like a muck-spreader, scuttering my history about the wings until the whole place was teeming hate for me. No matter they weren’t better than a pitful of robbers and muggers and drug dealers themselves, I was the foulest of the lot, was their opinion. The first week, a mob of them came in my cell and dragged my kecks and my pants down and pushed me against the wall, then this grinning fucker called Swiss punched me in the knackers, enough times I pissed blood the next two weeks.
I learnt quick enough after that where to hide myself after breakfast was finished. Recreation room until midday, while the officers were in watching the television, and then the library, where no one else ever went save for an old boy who was always there falling asleep over Maps of the British Empire. Every day, he was in his spot reading that same book, he must’ve known it arse-uppards. The choice wasn’t too gradely, mind. The months I was there, I read The Scorpion Man, Angels and Demons, Strange Fishing Tales, and plenty others besides–they were better than pissing blood, for all they were bad. One day I was reading a book about haunted castles in Scotland, and on one of the pages somebody had wrote along the side: Barnes is a dickhead bully and a coward and if he touches me again I’ll stab the bastards eye out with this pencil. I didn’t know who Barnes was, and the writing was faded from age, but it seemed I wasn’t the first who’d hid out in the library.
I get up off the bed, marking the position of the smear, and go over to the window. It’s an open prison, so there are no bars blocking the view, but that just makes me laugh–I’ve never seen what’s so open about it, myself. It’s not like I’ve been able to come and go as I please, pop to the shops, go on a wander, unless it’s been approved and planned out by the warden, and even then I’ve always had to heel to my soppy sod of a parole officer. Well, it is a prison, after all, isn’t it, we do have to respect that–you can’t swing a cat in an alleyway, can you? No, you can’t, very true.
It’s a bastard of a day, shuttering rain, but I can still shape up the hills off in the distance. First thing I’ll do, tomorrow, is go to them hills. The time I’ve spent, staring at them, thinking that must be why they put the prison here in the first place, so they’re just in eyeframe, teasing. Come for a walk over here, the hills are saying, but the moment you walk toward them you realise all the land’s level for miles around like a mighty tablecloth pulled flat, pulling you away, so the further you walk, the further away they seem. All you’re allowed to walk in is three acres of landscaped grounds full of ponds and fountains, you’d think it was a prison for second-home owners. I took a walk around the grounds this morning, said goodbye to the ducks and Fat Lip the gnome, then I came indoors and that’s when I noticed the smear.
I turn away from the window and go to the shelf, where my few books are propped up and, lodged between, the booklet they’ve given me–Adapting to Freedom. I pull it out and take it over to the bed. Some gradely advice in here. You may find these first few months a frustrating time. There will be moments when you might feel lonely, and bored, before you regain employment and a social network. Don’t let yourself become inactive during this time. Develop a hobby: a sport, a volunteer group, a cookery class–not only will you learn new skills, but you will also meet new people…a perfect opportunity to start new friendships.
Cookery class, they’d love that one, wouldn’t they? I flick through until I get to the picture, tucked in the middle the booklet, and I take her out, waiting a moment listening that no one’s in the corridor. Then I unfold it, laying it on the bedsheet and spreading it smooth so it’s perfect straight and neat, except for the fuzzed edge one side where it’d been careful torn out a magazine by one of the perverts.
Once I’d learnt I was safe in the recreation room and the library, I mostly avoided many more clobberings. I rare saw any other prisoners the whole day through, except for Maps of the British Empire–it was like twenty-four-hour bang-up, apart from at meals. Even then, though, they mainly ignored me. They were concentrating too hard slotching up their dollops of food, and anyhow, they couldn’t do much on me with all them wardens about. There was piss in my mug a couple of times, when Morlock was serving the line, but I learnt fair sharpish to check for the slummery layer on the surface before I took a sup. He’d always gleg over at me from his bench, Morlock, nudging the rough-arsed skinhead next him, their faces creasing with halfways smiles. It was like being at school again. The food was shite there and all.
Any bother like that didn’t last long, though. Morlock, Swiss and the rest moved on before I did, to higher security prisons across the country, or back out, to mind to their drug rings.
And I had the court case to go to and all. A great wood-lined hall full of folk I’d never seen before, all of them ready with their tuppence-worth. Mr Marsdyke, you understand the seriousness of the charge brought against you? Oh, no doubting it, Your Honour, but the problem is you’ve got the wrong person–that’s him, Mr Marsdyke, up on the balcony there in his funeral best, he understands the seriousness of it, certain enough, for who’s looking after the farm while he’s stuck here, eh? Sal? Not likely, Your Honour, you see she’s nothing but a withered sack of an animal now he’s worked her half to death. It’s true, it’s true. True? What the fuck do you know about it, bald sod? She was just the distraction, we planned it together, you never worked that one out, did you? But there’s no stopping him once he gets going, she was clearly under duress, I could see that from the moment they came in. Then he’s off with the story of the beans again, we’ve heard that one before, but the lawyer wants to examine it some more, he even asks him what kind of beans it was, like that’s the key to it all, and the bald sod goes all serious-faced a moment–they were Heinz beans, Your Honour. I didn’t see her. They’d set the room so as we couldn’t look on each other, or, more rightly, so she didn’t have to look on me, it was too distressful for her, was what the lawyer said–I didn’t even know where she was, they’d hid her someplace. The times she had to go up on the stand I was took out by a pair of lugger-buggers and we sat in a small room with a list of Right Honourables carved into a board on the wall. The lugger-buggers were itching to give me a clobbering, I could tell, waiting for me to try something, but I didn’t give them chance. One of them had a piece of snot rattling in his nose the whole time, but he didn’t even realise, the great plank.
You’ve to promise me, Sam, it’ll never happen again. You’ve to promise me, you hear? But it was too late for all that now. I’d broke the promise and she’d never be able to leave the house again, Delton and the town and The Blatherskites’ News, there was no escaping from them now, she couldn’t even look at me, sat stone-still next to Father, she had her eyes in the roof-beams the whole time.
You ran away together, but it was your premeditated aim to abduct her, and when she tried to escape from you, you took your opportunity. It was your intention to rape her, wasn’t it? Objection! Objection? I didn’t see what he had to object about. What he really objected about was he had to defend me in the first place, that he was the unlucky sod got pulled out the hat by the court. We were like them twins that get born fastened together, so there’s no choice but going round with the other, no matter he hated me and wished the whole time I wasn’t joined on to him. Hello, ladies, you’re looking elegant tonight, I must say, can I buy you a drink? You can, yes, but what’s that thing stuck on your back? Oh, that’s Lankenstein, just pretend he’s not there. Did you know there were caves in the cliff? How did you know where to find a rope? Was it the first time you’d visited the caves, or had you been there before? Yes, I admit it–sheepdogs are more intelligent than other dogs. There, I said it. Lock me up, Your Honour. Lock me up and throw away the key. And by the way, tell me, why’ve you got a Wensleydale on your head? That’s what they’re kept for, is it? I should’ve known, such a meadow-munching breed as that. Coats? Hats? Not good enough for us, I’m afraid, we’re going to be turned into judges’ wigs. It all fit in place now, you had to laugh. Unless you were Chickenhead, course. She’s not laughing. She never is, Your Honour, she’s the grummest creature you’ll ever meet. She’s sitting there, quiet, with the dad holding on her arm, but she’s ignoring him–she’s only interested looking this way, her eyes boring holes through me until I have to gleg away. The dad’s proper befuddled, stood in the crowd outside as the lugger-buggers barge me through, all these cameras clicking away, you have acted in a cruel and pitiless manner and your sentence must reflect the particularly frightening nature of your crime. I catch the dad’s eye a second through the crowd, he doesn’t know where to look, his face all sorrowful. Thank you ever so for the mushrooms–it wasn’t your fault they were mawky, I knew that all along, but then Chickenhead’s pulling him away and I lose them in the throng and I try to sight the girl but they’ve smuggled her off already.
Old people are the most difficult, it says. Least likely to accept it’s a Fresh Start and change their mind about you. She’s not interested in that, though. She just looks out at me, same as ever, them big eyes piercing right into me. It’s all right, there isn’t anyone to bother us, it’s just us here. I meet her eyes, touching round the outline of her, mighty finger-worn now. It’s all right, she is smiling, there isn’t anyone to bother us here.
After the court I got shifted down south, further from home than I’d ever been before. Carted five hours in a cage like a two-shear off to market, stopping to pick up other mawngy sods on the way, all this orchestra music drufting about the van the whole journey, the drivers whistling away in the front. I was fain pleased, mind, they took me so far away. For one thing, I knew Mum and Father wouldn’t visit me. I hadn’t liked it when they’d come to see me in the first prison. We’d never had a mighty amount to talk about before, so we certain didn’t now. Hello, Mum, Father, anyhow you’ll never guess what I’ve been up to. Getting belted in the knackers, that’s what, oh, and I’m a pitiless abductor. The couple times they’d come, Mum just twittered away, filling up the time slot, and I knew she felt it was her fault at root, no matter what Janet told her, if she’d brought me up different I wouldn’t have turned out half-baked. I couldn’t say anything to her, not with him sat there. She was thinking it was the same as budgerigars and she could’ve cared for me better, changed how I was kept, given me a mirror and a bell I could balance on my head, then I would’ve been different. I didn’t want to see her. Both times she just sat there blathering about the weather and Janet’s new hair but all the while I knew that was what she was thinking; and I didn’t want to see Father because he was a grum bastard wouldn’t once look at me, I didn’t know why he even came anyhow.
The other reason I was glad to move so far away was I didn’t think I’d be known. It wouldn’t be like down the valley, where they’d read about me in the newspaper and I had to stay in the library the whole time, I’d be able to go about unnoticed now. I was green as cabbage-looking, though, if I thought that. Prisons are worse than any town or school you can think of–all any prisoner is fussed about is fags and gossip. They knew who I was before I even stepped on the wing. Fashioned up a name for me and all. Ripper. Sometimes it was Pete, or Yorkshire, but most times it was Ripper. I should’ve been chuffed, rightly, for most the perverts were just Beast, or Nonce, but I was pissing blood again soon enough. There were others got it worse, as this was a Category B and some of them were in for fouler than I’d done. Near all the perverts ended up on the Rule, sided off out of harm’s way in the Vulnerable Prisoner Unit, and I could’ve asked to join them, said I was in danger out on the wing, but I didn’t fancy getting cosy with them lot. I just wanted to be left on my tod. I could frame myself for the clobberings–it was the noise of the place that undid me. The shouting, clanking echoes that never stopped. They rang in my ears, addling my brain, everyplace I went I felt penned in by them until I could hardly move. I riddled the answer soon enough, mind–if I wanted to be left peaceable, I’d have to stir up some bother first. That was when I started my attacks. They were small at first, throwing pens or cups, and always at band-end weaklings I knew wouldn’t do me over. That would get me a couple of days of quiet in segregation. Then I upped it. I clouted an officer on the shoulder. Belted another weakling until he was senseless with the battery out the video projector, wrapped in a sock. They were never interested why I’d done it–they couldn’t shut me away quick enough, twenty-eight days a stretch. And that was gradely by me. Peace. Nothing but the white wall glaring back at me, and my thoughts to turn over, and every now and then, hello, a dollop of feed on a tray sliding under the door. There was a cost for it, course. Another year inside, at least.
He’s on his way, not long now. He’ll sit on the bed next me, blathering on, now, let’s have another practice shall we? Can you tell me a time when you’ve succeeded in a challenging situation? They’re bound to ask you that, any job you go for. Well, let’s think, there’s the time the ewe was stuck in the cattle-grid and Chickenhead was stood over me with her pipes steaming until I got it out. That count, does it? Does it! It’s perfect, Sam, you’ll knock their socks off. She just smiles. There you go, then, it’s as easy as that. Obviously that’s the first thing your father will ask if you go back to the farm–when have you succeeded in a challenging situation?–but she’s smiling still, because she knows I’m not ever going back there again.
I flatten out the picture, and feel down the length of her back, over the smooth white skin and the fragile curve of her spine, and I remember for a moment the mole’s skull, perfect delicate and unharmed. She just smiles, her head turned round to look at me, them big eyes and the little tweak of the mouth. Here’s one for you, a challenging situation–Wetherill coming back into the classroom, picking up the blackboard eraser, What’s this? Marsdyke! You forced me against my will, you can’t really deny it now, can you? Can you? There were bruises all up my arm, after all, what more proof do I need?
I wasn’t mighty popular after I started the attacks. The times between segregation I got beaten regular, and all over the shop now–in my cell, in the showers, in association. The officers let them at it mostly. They were just biding for their next chance to send me to segregation, and course I gave them plenty. They started treading careful around me, like I was a bullock might charge them any moment. It couldn’t go on like that for always, though. The warden got wind before long. He said I was a danger to myself and to others and I had to go on the Rule, which meant I was off to the Vulnerable Prisoner Unit with the perverts.
Life was fair different in there. I was still Ripper and Pete, but when these lot said my name they didn’t spit or snarl it, they spoke it high and mighty, like a title. They liked me in there, because I was one of them. It was mostly perverts, together with crammocky old fellers who’d been inside half their lives, and a few barmpots who’d missed the bus to the mental hospital and ended up left in the VPU, the prison sump-pit. These were the ones most likely for a battering, or a breeding, by the other prisoners out on the wing.
No matter they liked me, I was never thick with any of them. Most were either quiet and skulking, or they were flibbery-gibbets yammering in your ear about what they’d done, what the others had done, what they were going to do–they never gave you any peace. They were better than the other lot, mind. And I got to understand there wasn’t nothing too different about me, most of these had done worse–raped a female, or a sprog. One had bred his own sister. What I’d done wasn’t much compared to that, owing as my luck had run out at the last moment.
I didn’t tell them that at my treatment, though. I just sat, pretending to listen while they put ticks on my parole card. I should’ve been grateful, the perverts told me, getting the treatment, for you didn’t always get it if you were in less than six or seven years, and once you’d bided out the treatment your parole card would be blistering red ticks. It was proper calf-headed. There were classes on Victim Empathy and umpteen short films of lads and lasses copping together in supermarkets and pubs and going on dates in fancy restaurants, feeding each other prawns out their fingers. Bugger knows what they wanted us to learn. Did they want all us perverts lining up in supermarket aisles waiting to meet a female? Then there were classes with Richard and Luke, all these diagrams of Relapse Prevention Strategies and Offence Cycles, and how high-risk situations can be avoided. The teachers had to be men, course, else we’d have paid no attention–if it’d been females we’d have been too busy dripping gozzle on us desks and thinking what we’d do to her to listen what she was saying. Not that there was a champion amount of listening going on anyhow. Most the lesson, the perverts at the back the class were studying each other’s picture stores, doing swaps.
That was when I got the picture. Stole it when one of them was looking otherways and hid it under my writing pad. It was a fair piece of luck, because most the time the perverts hoarded their pictures sharp-eyed as a Scotsman burying brass. She was likely the prize of his collection and all, the little smile on her like she’d just been sent out the classroom, all she did was she drew a cat in her textbook, that’s hardly a crime is it? Bugger knows where he got hold of a picture like that, but it was his own fault, not being careful enough.
I stayed in the VPU the rest my sentence in the Category B, until I got enough red ticks and the transfer order came to move me to the open prison. That was when they fixed me with my parole officer. Mawkish sod, he was like the dad some ways, wouldn’t say boo to a goose. I could imagine it, the pair of them trying to shoo the goose in the coop, fussing, the goose parked up, not moving. Round your side a little, that’s it, that’s it, not too fast, don’t want to frighten her. Now m’lady, bedtime I think, come on now, let’s not have a scene. This way, this way–well, can you believe it? It would seem the lady’s not for moving.
He’s got me a place in a hostel, some town nearby, he’ll keep calling in on me, he says. He’s been coming to the prison most days now that I’m near the end my stretch, I’ve hardly had any peace from him, though there’s been other things to make up for it. I’ve been on two outside visits a week since I got here. Never mind I’ve had to spend them with him, sat in tea shops listening to him talk on about bank accounts, I’ve still been able to view out the window behind him at all the females walking past outside.
She’s staring at me, looking right into me. I suppose you won’t be needing me any more, will you? A whole world of other girls out there. I smile–she’s just teasing with me, I know, and I tell her she’s wrong, she’s got it arse-uppards. She’s a mentalist if she thinks I’m letting go of her now. I’m sat on the bed smiling, when there’s a knock on the door. My parole officer. He’s the only one knocks like that.
Yes, I say, folding her back inside Adapting to Freedom.
He steps in and stands in the doorway, a great daft smile on his chops and his hands on his hips.
Fit and ready?
I just fucking know he’s a rambler.
Near as. I haven’t packed yet. Won’t take long, mind.
Good, good. He’s looking round the room, taking it in, as if he’s leaving it himself and wants a good last sight and he doesn’t have to be here next week, coddling some other pervert. He picks up a bag by the doorway and comes to sit on the bed next me, without asking. Then he goes quiet a moment, and I know we’re going to have one of our chats.
How do you feel, Sam? Ready?
Course.
It won’t be easy, you know. Adjusting. Getting back in the swing of things.
I know. We’ve talked about it.
I’m not glibbing–we’ve certain talked about it enough. How it won’t be easy meeting people. How some people might be unwilling at first to accept I’ve changed, they might give me the cold shoulder. I had to laugh when he told me that. Adjust? What does he think it was like before I was locked up? Who does he think I was–Postman Pat?
So, he says, have you thought about your plan of action for tomorrow?
Some.
Well, go on then, tell me your thoughts.
I want to have a walk. I want to see them hills, I say, nodding toward the window.
He lips up a moment, looking out. He’s likely thinking, hmm, a walk, let’s make a checklist–packed lunch, Thermos, Ordnance Survey map, woollies. But all he says is, okay, that’s fine. Should probably wait a few days first, though, get settled in, feet on the ground.
Right.
Now, Sam, I’ve got some things for you here, your own possesions, that you gave in at first reception. He sets the bag by my feet. Okay, he taps the bed, I’ll be back in half an hour, drive you to the hostel. He stands up and smiles down at me. See you in a bit.
When he’s gone I walk over to the window for a last look of the hills, and I picture him up going home after work, greeting his wife, and I wonder if he’s as chirrupy as this the whole time. Can he shut away thinking on the scutter portion of his day when he kisses her hello on the cheek, or is there a griming he can’t ever wash off, like a miner, or a fisherman always reeking cod?
The bag’s got my boots in it, and my jacket, soap-smelling and faded now, all the layerings of muck washed away. I put the boots on first, then the jacket, still comfortable after all this time, and I start to pack up my trunklements. There’s not much–toothbrush, a few books, and the picture. I take her out for a moment, then I fold her back inside the booklet and put her in my jacket pocket. And who’s there? Old Dracula, that’s who, dapper as ever, seems he’s escaped the washer. Who’d have thought it? The old team back together. The keyhole blinks as people walk past outside, and I slip him back in the pocket to guard over her. It’s a fair important job, I tell him, she’s all I’ve got, for the moment. Then I sit down on the bed and I wait, Dracula’s head poking out the top the pocket, the sly grin on him, watching, on the lookout.