Alphabet (27 page)

Tasmin enters the room carrying a bunch of red tulips and a canvas bag full of books. She looks at least eighteen, maybe twenty, is tall and pale like her aunt, who leaves the room once the introductions are done, so as to give at least the illusion of privacy. Alan takes in Tasmin's flawless skin, her generous lips, shiny with gloss. Her breasts and the bump are showing under a loosely knitted sweater, worn over old black leggings and a T-shirt. She leans back in one of the old armchairs and waits for him to explain his business. Her eyes don't leave his face; she's quite something, he thinks.

‘Simon's life is complicated enough,' he tells her. ‘He is doing intensive therapy. He has to go over and over the past, consider his motives all the time in great detail and try to set up new patterns of behaviour.'

‘I always knew he had to do that,' she tells him. Alan notices some old scars across her wrists, but she strikes him as remarkably self-possessed, intrigued by his presence, rather than defensive.

‘Also, Tasmin, you should know that the crime he committed is a very serious one.'

‘He told me that,' she says. ‘How do I know he wanted you to come?' she asks.

‘I guess you'll just have to take my word for it,' he says.
‘I believe he did say, when he telephoned, that he wanted it to end?' He's relieved that she doesn't deny this. ‘It doesn't help him to have this going on. As regards your last letter, he definitely does not want a visit. Of course, it's pretty much impossible for us to
stop
you writing . . . we're just
asking
. If the letters keep coming, I suppose I will just have to advise him to send them straight back. But why would you write to him if he doesn't want you to?' She looks quickly down into her tea.

‘I really like him,' she says, when she's recovered herself. ‘I think he's a very special person.'

‘You'll be very busy with your baby soon,' he points out.
‘He's in there, locked up. Can we agree to let this drop?'

‘Will you tell him he can always come and see me, when he gets out,' she says. ‘Will you do that?' It's not the perfect thing to do, he knows, but because he wants a result, Alan doesn't actually say
no
. Instead, he smiles at Tasmin, reaches forwards over the untouched tea things and holds out his hand – recognising, just before Tasmin decides to slip her hand into his, that the gesture he is performing, the manner and timing of it, is something he has learned from Simon himself.

Jay, who must have been listening at the door, chooses this moment to come back in the room. She bends over the back of her niece's chair and whispers something in the girl's ear.
Tasmin gives a small smile.

‘We're going out now,' she announces. ‘What was your name again?' she asks, as she gets to her feet. ‘Alan Wishart,' she repeats. ‘Thank you, Alan,' she says, as if he were the cleaner being paid off at the end of the day.

‘What was she like?' Simon asks Alan. He finds himself suddenly wanting Tasmin, now that she's gone. ‘Did she decide what to do?' But of course, it's impossible.

‘We agreed to let this rest,' Alan points out.

‘Was she OK?' Simon asks.

Alan finds himself offering a quick smile and an infinitesimal nod of his head as he continues, smoothly: ‘Now that's over with, how do you feel about summing up progress and setting
some goals for the next year? There are some areas which Dr Mackenzie, in particular, feels we have to address . . .'

The fact is, it's not just the end of a year but also the end of a decade – and, out there in the world beyond the wire, of an era. On his in-cell TV Simon watches crowds surge through the gates of the Berlin Wall, hack at the concrete with hammers, stones, whatever they've got. Out there, collective liberation is in the air. Here in Wentham they have to set goals and wait their turns, but it is possible at least to feel the beginnings of a connection to the outside world and not just because of having the TV sets. The staff, who move daily between the two worlds, bring the smell of outside in the fibres of their clothes and the feel of it in their jokes and stories, their complaints about the poll tax, mortgage payments and the state of the roads.

He's looking at at least another six years. It could be eight, ten; the thing is to keep busy. He gets the December issue of the magazine done. It's not bad at all and includes yoga tip no. 3 and the first three letters of Austen's Alphabet: A for artists, B for busted, C for Christmas, all with a humorous touch. The Christmas Revue is to take place on the 22nd; Simon is in charge of the microphones and sound system and teaching people to use them correctly. The group's party: juice, sausage rolls, celery sticks, vol-au-vents, grapes, cheese, juice, lemonade is on the 23rd. Meanwhile, he has purchased a pack of cards – robins and snow – and sent them, with personalised messages, jokes, thanks and new year's wishes to all the staff, even Max Mackenzie. In that case, though, he merely signed the card and included a word-processed note explaining his feeling that they are on a hiding to nothing. He pointed out that he didn't like Annie at first, but now has an enormous amount of respect for her; that he thinks Martin Clarke is a decent, good-hearted bloke despite it all, but as for himself and Mackenzie, they just haven't budged. It's stalemate, oil and water, they don't get on and never will. Maybe they could give themselves a break this year? Isn't there someone else he could be assigned to?

It's worth a try, because number one: he's not ever going to trust the man any further than he could throw him, and number two: he's not going back into the media room to be wired up and monitored.

As for the group, everyone gets a card but he takes particular trouble over the message for Ray, because they are friends of a sort, and for Andy, because maybe no one else will bother with him. Also, he pays Andy a week's money in tobacco to make him up a one-off greetings card. The design was Simon's own idea: two champagne flutes, full to the brim; a tiny, pudgy hand clutching each stem. It's turned out well enough, though the border of holly leaves and berries is heavy, almost funerary, and would look much better with some variety of colour, but Andy only does monochrome; he uses the finest possible fine liner to suggest the outlines, then fills in the shadows with meticulous cross hatchings, tiny dots or parallel lines. He works in a kind of trance while he does it, bent over the page, listening to spacey music, his cigarettes burning to nothing in the ash tray.

The writing inside Simon does for himself with a felt-tipped calligraphy pen from the canteen, £2.50. What with the outsize envelope and the cartridge paper at ninety pence a sheet the whole thing is pricey, but hasn't that always been my way?
he jokes to himself. No expense spared in the mail department.
He rules faint pencil lines, finds the centre, measures out letters and spaces to either side, outlines the writing in pencil first.
Only when it's absolutely even does he ink it in:

Double Congratulations
&
Merry Christmas!

Underneath, he writes with a normal fine-liner: To Berna-dette Nightingale and her family, with warmest regards, from Simon Austen. After some thought, he decides against a P.S.
to the effect that he is doing all right, that he nearly left, but will stick it out now. There is plenty he could say: he would like to try and describe to Bernadette the feeling he has had, not all the
time, but often since he took Amanda's part, of his life being somehow returned to him – a mixed blessing, certainly, because it is an unlovely, struggling, kicking, biting thing, but all the same, his to take on, guide, provide for. He'd like to say something of the feeling of that, of the way it changes things, of the way in which Amanda has returned to his dreams, not terrifying as she used to be, not striding along the wing calling out his name, but sitting quietly in the chair at his desk, sad and bewildered, wearing the turquoise tracksuit he first saw her in.
He'd like to write to her about this, and about the odd warmth he was able to feel for a teenage girl he'd never met. But it might not come out right and once he started, it would be hard to know where to stop.

There are no groups over the holiday. In the visits room a variety of tattooed Santas hand out lollipops and promises to the kids; inter-wing football matches take place in the mornings. On Christmas Day it goes 4-3 to B wing. No one's drunk or hungover and it's a cold, piercingly bright day.

Ray is out of sorts. Christmas is a gigantic con, he says. The snowy stuff and the baby in Jerusalem, how's it supposed to link up? The God-squad just took advantage, is all. And what are people with no fucking family supposed to do? Sit there singing carols and wait to be given a packet of crisps? Stop belly-aching, for a start, Simon says. The fact is he's on some kind of high. He feels excited and it's not just by the game and the goal he scored. It's more than that: another year is almost gone and he has a real sense of the passing of time, progress, possibilities, however remote.

After lunch some of them go to sleep, others read or watch TV in their rooms, or else stand hopefully in the phone queue.
The rest drift into the recreation room. Susanna is on daytime duty, with a plate of mince pies she has bought in. But hasn't she got a home to go to? they ask, Who's going to cook that goose and boil that pudding? One of the others, someone without a family, should have taken the shift, opines Pete.
Soon he's pretty steamed up about it, but given the season, no
one bothers to point out that his own wife is having to run the show on her own for the sixth year in a row.

‘Thanks, but I signed up for it,' Susanna tells them, then chooses a pie for herself and bites delicately into it. Roots are showing in the blonde of her hair, but she has done her nails in a Christmassy red.

‘She just can't leave us alone,' someone says.

‘We need the money,' she explains. ‘Mark was made redundant last month. Five mouths to feed, all that.'

‘Well, then, thank God us bastards are here, for you to earn a living off,' the joker comes back at her.

‘Bless you,' she says, dusting crumbs from her finger-tips.
They offer to be good, if she'd like to sneak off home? Simon's laughing with the rest, and at the same time, remembering what she did for him, months ago. This, he thinks, and the thought itself has an amusing edge, this is the best place I've been.

36

The meeting is in the new Lifer Governor's office. The room is hot and cramped, but coffee in cups with saucers and a plate of Walker's shortcake biscuits have been laid on. There's a big No Smoking sign on the wall. Beverly has only been in the new post for six weeks, and says she wants to take a very hands-on approach. Her desk is against the wall to make more space; she has the file out on her lap. Mackenzie comes in last. He removes his jacket and hooks it over the back of his chair, loosens his tie before he takes his place. He looks pale.

‘Well, then.
Simon
. . .' he says, looking around at the rest of them. ‘This has been on my mind for some time.'

‘What did you get in your card?' Greg asks. He is supposed to be off sick with flu but he came in especially for the afternoon's special case conference. He has a day's stubble on his chin, circles under his eyes. ‘We were just comparing notes.
He told Annie that –'

‘Actually,' Mackenzie says, ‘we'd better get down to business.'

‘He put in a good effort doing the sounds for the Christmas play, didn't he?' Beverly says brightly. She's boney-thin, her hair cut short. A frail gold crucifix glints in the modest v of her blouse. ‘Apparently he's never done anything like that before. And the magazine, of course, he is doing a fantastic job there . . .'

Mackenzie picks a piece of a paper out of the file on his lap.

‘Simon says he has no intention of completing the behavioural modification programme, is that correct, Alan?'

‘Well, yes, that's what he said,' Alan confirms, ‘but aside from that, I've got to say I feel he's made such
huge
progress,
and if we keep the pressure up, well, he might come round.
This meeting came as a complete shock to me because I've actually been hoping we'd plan a progressive move from here in a few months' time. I'd say we should start to look forwards to a successful review and open conditions within five years.'
Mackenzie's eyebrows shoot up.

‘In therapy, he always resists, massively resists,' Annie comments. She looks tinier than ever in an oversized cable-knit sweater. ‘But then, suddenly, he really goes for it. He comes round in the end. It's as if those are two sides of the same coin . . . you really have to give space to the resistance, that's what I've found. Working with him can be very satisfying – and moving too . . . though yes, of course, Max, he experiences a lot of anxiety, and has some compulsive behaviours, and, as you've pointed out before, there are still some issues which –'

‘Indeed!' says Mackenzie. ‘To my knowledge, the sexual element of the offence hasn't been addressed
at all
. Martin?'

‘Well, not significantly,' Dr Clarke admits. He's taken off his lab coat but still looks somehow out of place in this small, crowded room. ‘We negotiated a break and it went on longer than I expected. But we have had some very interesting discussions. On the purely cognitive level there's certainly been progress.'

Mackenzie closes the folder again, tosses it on to the low table in front of him.

‘Am I really the only one to think something is seriously wrong here?' he asks. ‘We flag up a major contributing factor to a very serious offence, we put it down explicitly as something to be addressed. The client completely avoids addressing it, just bows out of that bit of the programme for almost a year, and we, or most of us, let him? I think we should be asking ourselves some very serious questions here. I'd say the work of the unit and the role we hope to have in the wider system is on the line. I think we have a problem.' In the silence that follows this, he looks carefully at everyone in the room. Beverly, sitting serene and upright to his left, gives one of her occasional nods.