3

The Hood, The Mother Hood

AS THE POLICE car drove through the dark arched gates of Holloway Prison, the sense of certainty that Maddy had taken for granted all her life was obliterated for ever. The magistrate had not granted bail, which was why she and Jack were being herded, with the other incarceratees (Maddy had seen their shrunken abstracted look before – on sheep) into what was laughingly called the ‘reception area’. Her nose, mouth and ears were inspected by a jailer with a black, Beatle-wig haircut, blue eye-shadow, beige support knee-highs and a chest which started at the neck and ended at her naval.

‘Get yer gear off and give us a twirl.’

‘Hey,’ Maddy said, with strained joviality, as she stepped out of her underpants, ‘aren’t you even going to buy me dinner first?’ She rotated obediently, a knot of anxiety mangling her innards. ‘What’s the Mother and Baby Unit like? I mean, it’s not as bad as the real gaol . . . is it?’ She was about to learn that Her Majesty’s prisons are home to the world’s record number of Mensa-rejection slip holders. They’re called prison officers.

‘Put it this way,’ the Mensa flunkee chortled, ‘last night the inmates played soccer with a wet nappy . . . still attached to the baby.’ Maddy slipped her finger into Jack’s half-clenched fist. He gripped it, hard. Oh, thank you, Alex. How would she thank him? A huge amplifier outside his bedroom window playing a Wings album at top volume would be nice.

Maddy was hosed down in a tepid shower and her possessions bagged and tagged. Jack was also strip-searched. ‘Heroin. In the nappy. Major drug route.’

Make that a Linda McCartney back-up vocal on an isolated track.

She was then assessed by a doctor to see whether or not she was suicidal (In these circumstances it would surely save time to see who wasn’t. By now Maddy’s mood was so black you could view an eclipse of the sun through it.) She was ordered to exchange her own dirty clothes for a stylish little piece of prison haberdashery: charity-donated crimplene slacks and a psychedelic tank-top three sizes too big – a fashion statement which could only be described as Albanian.

Swathed in this fluorescent tarpaulin, she billowed behind her captor, whose hush-puppies echoed squelchily as she marched the length of ‘B’ wing. Jack slept throughout the journey, occasionally jumping in his dreams, as though zapped by invisible electric currents.

‘Wonder what yews are havin’ thrown into your cage for dinner then?’ pondered Maddy’s jaunty companion as they approached the Mother and Baby Unit.

All that seemed to be on offer was an aperitif of drugs from the medication trolley. It was ‘cocktail hour’. The equivalent to social drinking in prison is a quick gargle with washing-up liquid, a clandestine sniff of bleach lifted from the laundry or a chill-pill. Women, cradling irritable babies, buzzed around the nurse, downing plastic cups of iridescent tranquillizers. Dinner itself consisted of a bread roll, still frozen in the middle, and a bowl of stew which looked to Maddy like the sort of liquid in which frogs would spawn. Pastel animal mobiles rotated half-heartedly beneath the strip-lighting. She took her place at one of a cluster of plastic tables next to a young brunette, cradling a baby about Jack’s age.

‘What beautiful red hair!’ Maddy broke the quizzical silence. ‘Does her dad have red hair?’

‘Dunno. He neva took off his balaclava.’ The other mothers hooted with derision.

‘Oh!’ Maddy retreated. She suddenly had that haemophiliac-in-a-room-full-of-switch-blades feeling. Jack stirred, looking for tucker.

‘I neva wanted anuvver kid,’ chirped a teenager opposite, banging on the bottom of an HP sauce bottle. ‘Tammy’s farver promised he’d only put it in a little way. What’s yer sprog’s name?’

‘Jack.’

‘A male,’ the young woman lamented, cheerily. ‘Still, I don’t think we should hold that against him.’

It didn’t take long to suss out that most of the women in Holloway’s Mother and Baby Unit had been involved with blokes who made Claus Von Bulow look like the perfect husband . . . They were even worse than her heart’s resident ratbag: supersonic sleazebucket, Alexander Drake.

‘Got any putt, gear, blow?’ whispered another mum. ‘Any of yer visitors gunna keep yer sweet?’

At the appearance of a patrolling male prison officer, all ten mums were suddenly gazing at their babies the way people look at aquariums, tuned into Baby Channel. The screw rapped his knuckles on the table top in front of Maddy. ‘Don’t breastfeed at the table. It’s unhygienic.’

A rat the size of a football sauntered casually over the bread basket. ‘Sorry.’ Maddy gestured towards her fellow mothers, confident of their support. ‘I thought this was a B.Y.O. establishment.’

‘You’re only breastfeedin’ to turn on the male screws,’ accused Tammy’s mum, emerging from her trance to wrap herself around a stale slice of bread and to cadge a fag.

‘Nobody breastfeeds,’snarled the brunette. She stood over Maddy with the thrust-out pelvis of a store mannequin. ‘Ruins yer titties.’

The officer smiled disparagingly, then flicked Maddy’s tray to the floor. The clank and rattle set all the babies crying simultaneously. ‘Oh, what a shame.’

The nasal twang of the Tannoy announced the collection of the dinner trays.

‘Hey,’ complained Maddy. ‘Lactating mothers aren’t supposed to skip a meal. We’ve got to eat something . . . even if it’s only five or six courses per bloody second . . .’

Maddy was issued with a brown paper bag, containing toothpaste, comb and a cake of soap thoughtfully monogrammed with the Queen’s initials, then escorted to the door of her new home – a cell so small she could hardly turn round without having sex with herself. There was a cot for the baby and a narrow iron bed for her. The slatted Perspex windows – Maddy had to climb on the bed and crick her neck sideways to look through it – offered a charming view of the prison wall, bristling with a crew-cut of barbed wire. Interior décor consisted of a bucket, scrubbing brush, grey scuffed linoleum and thin, white-washed walls. The Mother and Baby Unit gave mums the perfect opportunity to share some quiet moments together . . . listening to each other plotting the penile dismemberment of their respective twenty-four carat cads.

In an effort to avoid a Jules Verne trawl through the depths of despair, Maddy decided to cling to her routine. It was bathtime. She was undressing Jack with philatelic care, painstakingly folding his clothes, when the door detonated open.

‘And whose little population explosion are you?’ The voice emerged from a glowing face which played host to the kind of button-features pastry chefs tend to pipe on to kiddies’ cakes. It oozed goochi-goos before its owner planted a polka-dotted posterior on the narrow bed. The nose tissue permanently wedged into one fist and the armour-plated shoulder pads signalled to Maddy two tiresome words – social worker.

Maddy’s single mum status in hospital had brought her into close contact with this species. There were two breeds. The big dangly earring-wearing kind, Doc Martened, it’s-all-a-capitalist-plot ones, or the Advanced Scarf Drapers. The woman whose namepass read ‘Edwina Phelps’ was draped in a scarf and a pussy bow, alerting Maddy to the fact that she was Crafty; the sort who collect poignant porcelains, mail-ordered from magazine adverts. Her spare time would be spent drying flowers and spraying tiny pinecones silver for the home-made pot-pourri she handed around the office at Christmas. The sun would never set on an empty slow-cooker in Edwina Phelps’s house. Her petrol gauge would invariably read ‘F’. The date of her next period would be circled on her desk calendar; a rain bonnet in a plastic travel pack at the ready in the drawer. She was what the English call Head Girl material. The type who carries an emergency tube of Canesten in her bag for the thrush she never got but read about in womens’ magazines. The type who would go to the Chippendale male strip show and look at the audience.

‘My friends call me Dwina. And as your psychologist we will be friends, Madeline.’ She looked at Maddy the way an alcoholic looks at an unopened bottle of Smirnoff. ‘You mustn’t feel alone. All my girls in the Mother and Baby Unit are scarred, emotionally.’

‘I really don’t need any psychological plastic surgery, okay? What I need is a court hearing.’

‘All of us long to connect with our inner child.’

Maddy winced. ‘Um . . . it’s called pregnancy. And I’m in touch with him already.’ Indicating the wriggling worm of her son. Maddy made an artless fumble at the press studs of his baby gro.

Dwina waggled her forefinger. ‘Beneath your bravado, Madeline, there’s a little girl inside who’s hurting.’

‘Does she get child allowance?’

‘You’re only being glib because you’re in denial.’

‘Of course I’m in bloody denial.’ Peeling off Jack’s nappy, Maddy’s fingers stuck to the adhesive tapes. ‘I’m in jail,’ She flapped her hand back and forth through the air, trying to shed its soggy consignment. ‘I’m denied fresh fruit, late nights, good coffee, nice clothes, sleep-ins, newspapers, crème brulée and hot jungle sex with the horndog Himbo of my choice . . .’

Edwina cocked her head to one side and smiled patronizingly. ‘I’m not as straight as I appear. I’ve undergone Transactional Analysis.’ She uttered these words as though they were a magic talisman. ‘I believe you must Own Your Anger. How else can one understand transference and rejection? I’m currently part of a rebirthing workshop.’

‘As long as I can rebirth myself as a millionaire’s love goddess with no stretch marks.’

‘Primal therapy is not beyond my grasp,’ she confided, unperturbed.

‘Oh, great. Just the ticket.’ Maddy, balancing Jack’s naked body in the crook of her arm, filled the sink with warm water. ‘Cheer yourself up whilst in prison by reliving your unhappy childhood . . . Um . . . I don’t think so. Besides, I had an unfashionably happy childhood. Sandy beaches, blue skies, nothing more dangerous than a bad prawn for miles around in any direction . . .’

Dwina seized on this with glee. ‘Hidden Memory Syndrome, dear. We therapists find that the more a patient denies being abused as a child the more assiduous the search for evidence should be!’

Maddy was only half listening. ‘Ah-uh . . .’ as the sink’s water-level peaked, she twiddled at the taps with one hand. Testing the temperature with her elbow sent a tidal wave over her feet. Adding a squirt of prison-issue baby oil, she slowly submerged Jack. He promptly spurted out of her hands and went under. ‘Shit!’

‘Just look at the facts, Madeline. Lack of career success, low self-esteem’ – the ‘L’-plated analyst itemized Maddy’s short-comings on her disinfected fingers – ‘a jail sentence, single motherhood . . . Is this the product of a happy childhood?’

Each time Maddy grabbed hold of Jack’s slimy body, he’d squirm free of her trembling grasp. She was dunking him up and down like a teabag. Shoving Maddy aside, Dwina, with dextrous panache, extracted Jack and swaddled him snugly in a towel. Maddy, overcome with her own inadequacy, felt a sob rising in her throat.

‘I know how you feel, Madeline, I really do. You’re not a criminal, dear. You were driven to crime for his sake.’ With nimble-fingered deftness, Dwina sluiced water on to Jack’s delicate head, towelled his hair-fluff and placed him on the bed in a shower of powder. ‘A victim of circumstances. But what I want you to take on board, is that you can change those circumstances. There are many, many loving couples out there who would give this sweet little baby a fulfilled and normal life.’ A cold tentacle of dread suddenly coiled around Maddy’s abdomen. ‘Such a gesture on your part would make any judge sympathetic. You could start over, unfettered. I think you feel these things, but don’t dare express them.’

Maddy dive-bombed her baby and clenched him to her. ‘You know nothing about me!’

‘I’m training as a psychotherapist. It’s my business to know.’

‘Who are you training under? Doctor Seuss? I am not giving up my baby.’

‘The point is, Madeline, if you’re going to get a sentence over eighteen months—’

‘Eighteen months!’

‘Oh yes. These days, the quality of mercy is severely strained. I’ve never known a government with such an enthusiasm for punishment!’ A chain dangled from her waist, holding a large key and a whistle. She tucked them into a leather Girl Guide-type pouch on her hip. ‘It’s cruel keeping the baby with you now, only to have to give him up further down the track to a foster parent. Imagine it. He’ll come out into the world terrified of traffic noise, of dogs barking! Why not place him with a happy, loving family now? I can arrange it . . . Or would you rather he be taken into care?’ Dwina extracted a compact from her pouch and examined her reflection. ‘As far as Detective Sergeant Slynne is concerned, you have no fixed address, no money, no paternal or familial support. It will be easy for him to paint you as an unfit mother.’

Her words twisted in Maddy’s guts.

Frowning into the mirror, Dwina tweezed an impudent hair which had dared to sprout on her chin. ‘You’ve seen the women in the Mother and Baby Unit? Only kids themselves. Now their kids will be in care, perpetuating the cycle.’

It was true. Maddy had been able to tell the women who’d been brought up in children’s home. They ate quickly, hunched over their plates, having learned to protect their food from an early age. Maddy felt rain seeping into her veins. ‘Would you please go now?’

Edwina Phelps snapped shut her compact, offended. ‘Why?’ she asked, sarcastically. ‘Busy?’

Maddy refused to let this headshrinker get the better of her. ‘Well, there’s my Please Note Change of Address Cards . . .’

After Dwina’s departure, Maddy fed and burped Jack before tucking him into the paint-chipped crib by her own cramped cot. Beside him, she placed the only toy she’d been able to scavenge – a legless plastic Pocahontas. Someone had put out their cigarette in the leg socket, which had melted grotesquely.

Jack coiled his little arm up to the doll’s face. Great, he’d be a pervert when he grew up. An amputee-philiac. She had to get him out of here.

The eerie silence was punctuated by coughing, by copulating pigeons, by a morse-code tapping on pipes, bronchial plumbing, shrieks, rattles, slamming doors, the sound of muffled sobbing. From all over the prison, women called out to each other through the windows, a desolate chorus of ‘I’m gonna punch your poxy head in’ and ‘I fuckin’ love you’s.

A screw flashed a torch through the hatch in her cell door, the beam briefly illuminating the dismal graffiti on her wall: ‘Here today and here tomorrow.’ There was only one person who could save her.

Maddy knew she was on the edge of an emotional precipice. What she didn’t know was that she was about to take a giant leap forward . . .