Alphabet (10 page)

‘How old is she?' Grange asks. It seems a strange question and it takes a while to remember.

‘Seventeen.' Grange studies Simon for a while, then reaches into his in-tray.

‘I've had a letter too,' he says. He sends it skidding across the expanse of desk between them. It falls on the floor; Simon ducks down to pick it up.

One of the inmates from your institution, Simon Austen, has been corresponding with my daughter, who is fourteen years old and in a vulnerable, distressed and possibly manic depressive condition. She is under care of the doctor at this moment.

I am not prepared for these letters to continue and am writing to demand that Mr Austen terminate this correspondence immediately. Under the particular circumstances I think this would come better from him, rather than as a prohibition from us, her parents. Any further letters from Tasmin should be returned unopened. Should Mr Austen act otherwise, I will have no option but to lay the matter, via my solicitor, before the police. I trust this is clear.

Fourteen? Simon thinks. She did a good job! Or was he just being thick? The letter she was supposed to have by now stabs him in the leg as he reaches over to hand Mr Hamilton's ultimatum back. His hands have started to shake.

‘You see?' Grange says. ‘What do you think?' He thinks: no wonder she was so understanding, seeing as she's a sort of prisoner herself. Has her own censor too, plus also she's pretended to be someone else, just as he did to begin with . . .
As if a switch had been flicked, Simon starts to be able to imagine her properly, whereas before the things she said and asked of him got in the way of that. She's got a plump face, skinny body, maybe she's got that starving disease, dark shadows under her eyes . . . he finds himself interested, in a way, more than he ever was before. A screwed-up kid. Rich parents, but otherwise, she's not so different to Danni and Suzette and the other girls in Burnside who cut themselves, nicked stuff, got knocked up, ran away.

‘I didn't know,' he says. Grange lifts his hands briefly in a way that suggests it not being worth his while, absolutely beside the point, to decide whether Simon is lying or not.
You smug
bastard
.

‘Do you think a young, vulnerable girl should be corresponding with you?' What's the point, really, in answering?

‘This bloke is asking me to lie for him,' Simon points out.
‘And if she's already so screwed up, has he thought what will be the effect, now, of me pulling out of it?'

Grange flips the file on his desk shut, pushes it to one side.

‘I'd avoid the moral high ground if I were you, Austen.
Come to a decision as to whether you are going to co-operate or else make life difficult for everyone including yourself.
Discuss it with probation, if you need the situation spelling out.'

‘He's retired and the new one is already off sick,' Simon points out, as a matter of information, not because he actually wants to talk to anyone. But Grange is already on the phone.

‘There's a man here needs to talk to you,' he says, and then, after a while: ‘Nine tomorrow. Thanks, Bernie.'

Hours later his hands are still not steady as he prises off the back of the radio, slots in the last of the batteries and finds the ten o'clock news, a long item about a country he's never heard of called Latvia, then a medical phone-in: people describe their symptoms to a doctor – Doctor, Doctor, I've got blood in my piss, I've had a headache for three weeks, there's a lump in my gut – and then are told in a roundabout way to go and see their GP. It's quite good, almost makes him laugh and he's sorry when it gives way to some jazz, not the kind he likes, so he finds the World Service news and then an OU programme about statistics. Finally, he strikes gold with an hour or so of some Indian-sounding music, very fast, round and round the same thing over and over again but getting higher, a voice wailing away in gibberish. It almost sends him to sleep but then voice and drum come to an abrupt, simultaneous halt and catapult him into silence. He flicks round for a bit, the sound getting fuzzier all the time. He's got the thing pressed into his ear. By the time the farming news comes on he's more or less imagining what the words are and he abandons the radio, strips off and washes, tries a few sit-ups and stretches, then puts his old clothes back on. The letter to Tasmin is still in the pocket, softened up by a day's walking.

He gets the typewriter out, makes the best job he can of writing to her: he says that he has really appreciated and enjoyed their correspondence so far, but at the same time feels that he made a mistake starting it and it would be wrong of him to continue. She is a lovely person and he wishes her all the best. Would she like the typewriter back? It has been hard to write this but he knows she will understand it is too early for him to have a relationship again . . .

He types out a copy to Mr Grange. Only takes a minute or two despite his fingers feeling so cold.

Anyone touches me in that breakfast queue, he thinks, I'll explode. And I'm not seeing fucking probation.

15

Three steps up to the Portakabin door. Jackson knocks:

‘Man for you, Bernie.'

‘Send him in, please.' It's a woman.

‘Bernadette Nightingale,' she says, as she gets out from behind the desk and comes over, holding out her hand to shake. She's about his own height, well-rounded with a plump face, pale, smooth-looking skin, dark eyes and thick, shiny hair, chestnut, fixed up in some kind of a knot at the back of her head.

‘I don't really need this. I've only come –' he tells her, letting go of the offered hand. ‘– because I need to get out and work's cancelled. Staffing.'

‘Uh-huh. Well, pleased to meet you, Simon. I just started here last month. We haven't met before, have we?' There's Irish in her voice, overlaid with a posh school, and Lord knows what else. ‘Sorry it's so cold in here!' she says, rubbing her hands together. Her fingernails are neatly filed and polished, covered with rings, both hands, all fingers, plain, complex, old-fashioned, modern, ethnic – all different. How old is she? More than him. Getting on for forty, perhaps? ‘The heating will come through soon,' she tells him. ‘Then we'll bake!' Her skirt rustles as she moves back to her chair.

‘So,' she says from behind her side of the desk, ‘what is all this about letters and a teenage girl?'

‘A mistake,' he tells her, flatly, so as to conceal his irritation. ‘I didn't know she was so young. I've written and told her that I don't want to go on. I handed it in this morning.'
He's too tired to be aware of expecting any particular response.

‘Have you had a pen friend before? Are you going to look for someone else?' she asks.

‘What's that to do with you?' he snaps.

‘I just wondered,' she says, lifting the ringed fingers of her right hand slightly from the desk. ‘What's the problem?' Her eyes seem to be looking right into his, but because of their darkness, he can't be sure.

‘Listen, it's just a hobby,' he tells her, ‘like painting eggs or binding books. Except it makes less clutter!'

She waits a little, then says, very softly. ‘I expect it is more than that.' And it seems to take him for ever to decide what to do, whether to tear her off a strip (except that he has a ghost of a feeling it won't work) or to stop talking, to change the subject completely, or to leave.

‘I haven't slept for five days,' he finally says and then everything seems to shift a gear.

‘Are you going to tell me why?' she enquires. The small pause she leaves beforehand has a calming effect. It says, somehow: I know this will rile you, but all the same, I do have to ask.

‘I don't know a blind thing about you,' he points out.

‘No?' Her lips pull into a smile. ‘But I expect you've made a few guesses,' she says, ‘and they're probably right. And if there's something specific you want to know, you are perfectly free to ask.' She sits there waiting, her head tipped slightly to one side, a bit of a smile, her eyes glittering, bird-woman. But he can't think of anything at all to ask. Even if he could think of something, it strikes him that she would somehow end up learning more about him as a result of his asking it than he would learn about her.

‘That won't last,' he tells her, pointing suddenly at the big spider plant in a blue pot that she must have brought in from home, ‘there's no enough light in here.' She considers it a minute, shrugs, returns her eyes to his face and likewise his attention to the question she asked. Then she leans back in her chair, sighs, looks away. It's like a light being turned off. The place goes back to its dull and cold usual self. So as much as
anything else, it's wanting her attention back that makes him do it.

‘The fact is,' he says, ‘I wrote to Tasmin about Amanda. I've opened the whole can of worms. That's why I can't sleep.
OK?' He's staring at her like she must know what all this means, but of course she can't have read the file yet.

‘Amanda?' she asks and her ignorance seems like an advantage, an invitation. There is just him and her, here and now . . . he can get rid of the damn thing at last, he can at least do that. Simon stands, pulls the letter out of his pocket and does what he can to flatten it. He can see how she's watching him carefully; he noticed when he came in the panic button fixed onto the right-hand side of the desk. She's well placed to reach it if she wants to. So he slows down his movements as he removes the letter from the envelope, keeps to his half of the room when he holds it out to her.

‘You can have it,' he says, adding, ‘the fact is it was only by sheer luck that it wasn't sent.' She stands up, also quite slowly, reaches over. He feels the most extraordinary sensation of relief as she takes the letter from him, sits down again, removes the pages from the envelope and puts them on her desk. She reads a little, glances at the clock on the wall, then looks back to him.

‘It looks important,' she says. ‘I'll need clear time for this.'
You can't do this to me
, he thinks,
just read it, will you?

‘Took all night to write but you could read it in about half an hour, I reckon,' he tells her, jauntily, though it's hard to keep the edge out of his voice.

‘Well,' she says. ‘I'll need to look up the background, make notes and so on; I want to take it on properly . . . So you see, I'd really much rather set clear time aside. Meanwhile –' Glaring at her doesn't work. When she looks back at him, bright and curious, his eyes stop glaring and slide away . . . he can see: a brown sheepskin jacket thrown over the chair, a set of Ford car keys and a pair of leather gloves on the table.
Things from outside. Part of a life. This, his life, is just her job.
What a job. Why do it? Why do people work here? ‘Meanwhile, we can try and sort out your sleep problem. And then
we can talk about this on Wednesday,' she tells him, tapping the letter with the fingers of her right hand. ‘Do you understand?' she says. ‘Depending on the exact content, I may have to take copies of what you've given me and show it to my manager. It's possible that certain things might follow on from this.' Might they? What things exactly? he should be asking, but his anger has suddenly twisted away from him, run off and left him there, stranded, with everything, even his own reaction, suddenly out of his hands. Why? It must be her voice:
low, strong, blurred here and there, elsewhere oddly precise – the hidden spaces and sudden slopes in it, the way it can be so clear even when she lets it drop right down, the way it seems to add extra meaning to what she says, to widen and soften and explain it . . . At any rate, the fight has gone out of him and all he can do there is sit, watching Bernadette Nightingale talk. Then he lets his eyes close and for a moment all there is is darkness and a kind of woody scent, which could be her perfume, or just the smells of wherever she's come from, clinging to her clothes.

‘Now then,' she is saying. ‘You seem in a bad way, Simon. I could ring the medical centre and ask the Medical Officer to give you something that'll get you to sleep . . . Simon?' she asks. ‘Shall I ring the doctor?' He opens his eyes again, nods, then watches her press out the numbers, push back her hair, pick up a pen, check him out periodically while she waits for a reply.

‘He looks like he could pass out. Very anxious,' she says.

‘Let's get you straight there,' she tells him when she hangs up. She hooks the sheepskin coat over her shoulders, making coins rattle in the pockets, and comes over to him. ‘He is a bit of a stickler but I'm sure he'll say yes when he's seen the state of you. Just a day's worth at a time, you know.' She opens the door and lets in a rush of cold, damp air. ‘Now, you'll be OK, won't you? Wednesday, first thing. Hang in there . . .' She chatters a bit about the weather as she walks him back to where Jackson is smoking in a patch of thin wintery sun, a little pile of butts on the ground beside him.

‘OK?' she asks, beaming at him. Then she's gone and he is following Jackson towards a smell of antiseptic and the prospect of oblivion.

16

A two-hour wait. Then a three-minute examination: pulse, tongue, chest, torch in the eyes, piss test thrown in. Result: two red and white capsules to be taken with water after food. Lunch missed. Three hours, supper, pills, then thirty-nine more hours, the first eighteen lost, like falling into some kind of black hole; the rest spent climbing out of it. But now Simon is fully alert, showered, shaved, dressed in cleanish clothes. He wants to know what Bernadette is going to say and also he wants to know if he remembers her right. He walks out into the chill of the yard, past the well-raked, empty flower beds to the mud-coloured Portakabins. The sky is bright, cold blue with a curved slash of fresh jet stream running right across.

The room is completely different. Her desk has been pushed back and the two grey chairs are in the rest of the space, not quite facing each other, not quite next to each other either.
Wearing a brown knitted dress and leather boots, she's there, sitting in the chair furthest away from the door.