Alphabet (17 page)

The lights fade up again.

‘Well done. That's great, Simon,' Dr Julian Bentley's voice informs him. ‘Please remove and disconnect the gauge then place it in the jar on the table to your left . . . When you're dressed, please just dispose of the chair covering in the orange rubbish sack under the basin. Then wash and dry your hands . . . Thank you.'

The sack, Simon notices, is labelled hazardous waste.

22

In Wentham the officers lean in doorways, make eye contact, crack jokes, share pots of tea. You see the same ones on a regular basis and are encouraged to call them by their first names: Dave, Carl, Jimmy, Bryan, etc. The ‘us and them mentality', is avoided. As for the rules, all infringements of them are punishable by expulsion and they are clear enough: no drugs, no alcohol, no violence, no self-harm; stay in your chair during group sessions unless directed otherwise, attend all sessions unless a doctor says you are sick, disclose everything relevant, tell the truth at all times.

Cell doors are unlocked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., and these cells on A wing are big, a good ten by nine. Simon's is freshly painted, cream, with a blue and green striped bedcover. There is a 16-inch TV, a desk for his typewriter to sit on and a chair, as well as the bed, on top of which he now lies, reading the leaflet entitled
What to Expect
. There is a built-in cupboard and, as you might expect in somewhere newly built, a sanitary unit . . . Simon has never actually stayed in a hotel, but he's fitted carpet in quite a few and this place almost puts him in mind of one. Not luxury, but commercial. It just needs some tiny soaps in a basket, an electric kettle, telephone and some sachets of coffee and tea by the bed, though the dark shapes of the concrete lattice on the other side of the window do break the atmosphere a bit. Beyond the screen, there's a glimpse of the courtyard garden: smallish shrubs, some large boulders, gravel, a stone-rimmed pond, bristling on one side with yellowing reeds and, in the centre, a fountain made from piled rocks – the slow, over-flowing rather than the spouting kind. There's a wooden bench beside the pond. Does anyone
ever get to sit there? Access to the roof is barred with razor wire and there's a security gate to the right, by the wing entrance, so it should be possible, though so far Simon's seen only the gardener go in and remove some prunings . . . And the birds, of course, sparrows that drink the water and putter about in the reeds. Well, here he is. For better or for worse, they appear to have taken him on.

‘You would appear to be heterosexually oriented,' Dr Clarke informs him at the end of the week, two cups of coffee steaming on the desk, ‘neither heterosexual nor homosexual paedophilias are evident nor any attraction to violence during sex or as an arousing factor prior to sex. That's good, very good . . .' He leans back in the chair, continues: ‘On the other hand – very interesting – you are erotophobic, seven on a scale up to ten. That is to say you are ambivalent about, or disliking of, sex and women, despite experiencing a normal-strength drive towards it and them. Also, you have strong voyeuristic tendencies, that is, you prefer to watch as opposed to engage directly in mutual activities. So I am recommending that you explore the reasons for this with your therapist and use a variety of reconditioning and other appropriate behaviour-modification techniques to make a more normal adjustment . . .' He signs the paper in front of him, smiles. ‘Any questions?'

Is that, Simon thinks but does not ask, a
ph
and a single
t
in ‘erotophobic'? Given that someone yesterday called him an introvert, he's collecting quite a few longish words. So, where's he going to fit them all in, let alone find the time to have them done? On his cock?

‘What techniques?' he asks.

‘Well,' Doctor Clarke explains, ‘an orgasm is the reward that reinforces a particular action or fantasy in a self-perpetuating cycle, which must be broken.'
Broken?
What the hell are they going to do to him?

‘It's quite simple,' Dr Clarke says. Once aroused, Simon might, for instance try to substitute an appropriate fantasy, such as a woman fondling him, or intercourse, and bring himself to
orgasm. Over weeks, time spent with the new stimulus would increase and eventually this would –

‘Turn me into a wanker?'

‘– completely replace the original. We can work on this.'
Now, Clarke says, they must move on to consider the results of the tests for aggression and impulse control . . . I suppose that means, Simon thinks, that it would be a bad moment for me to tip that metal bin full of coffee grounds and orange peel on top of your head? Who do you think I am? Or is it
what
?

On the wall opposite the door of the group room is a fake mirror, so that the wing psychiatrist can observe everything that takes place. There are seven of them in the group and they have to shake their hands and feet, then run, hop and crawl around the room without bumping into each other until told to freeze suddenly on the spot. They have to shout as loud as they can, trying to make the walls fall down, then whisper an important message, using only the word dustpan. They have to show, using no words at all, that they are happy, sad, furious, in love, dying for a pee; also they have to become dogs, swans, bees, ants, snakes . . . after which they take turns to fall backwards into the linked arms of the rest of the group. Well, it makes a change.

Now they're in the middle of the room, seated on a circle of ten chairs: the seven cons, plus Annie, who runs the drama bit, Greg from probation and David, who is an officer just completing his training to co-facilitate groups.

They have to say who they are.

David says he is a beginner. He's only twenty-four. He's as terrified as they are, or more, but glad to be out of the main system.

Annie tells them she has just returned from a holiday on a Greek island so she's not quite up to speed. She started her career in social work but left to do a Ph.D. in Drama Therapy . . . She's small, wiry, fit-looking, with a faint tan and bright, almost turquoise, blue eyes, very intense.

Greg, on the other hand, is half bald, worn-out-looking, which fits with the wife and three children, rare-breed sheep and an old farmhouse he renovates in his spare time. He has a beer gut, he sits in his chair with his legs straight out, his feet, ankles crossed, in battered old trainers. The rest of him leans back in the chair as far as he can go, slouching as if the group were all on TV and here he is watching it, a beer in his right hand and a cigarette in the left. But when he starts speaking his eyes brighten, his face wakes up.

‘You've gotta do something that makes a difference, otherwise what's the point?' he says, lifting his hands briefly from the arms of the chair, then dropping again. ‘Now you. Who are you? What're you here for?'

‘Pass,' says a sallow man sitting obliquely opposite Greg, who spends most of the time staring at his own thin knees:
Andy. Andy's shoulder-length hair is limp; two of his top front teeth are missing. He looks out of his depth, defeated. Next to him, Simon sits straight-backed and clean-shaven, neat in a fresh button-up shirt that he ironed this morning. He's telling himself he can do this, can't he? He knew it was coming. It said so in the handouts, which the rest of them probably haven't bothered to read:
The first stage is to acknowledge, without minimising
it, the offence
. . . Well, that's a piece of piss after what he's been through in Assessment. Might as well get it over with, then.

‘Simon Austen, serving life,' he announces and all of them, not just the staff but blanked-out Ian with his frizz of curls, Pete with the crew-cut and broken nose, Ray with the grey-streaked ponytail, cool, hard-faced Nick in his brand new clothes, chubby-cheeked Steve, even Andy, all of them are looking at him.

‘I killed my girlfriend,' he adds. ‘She wouldn't take out her contact lenses.' Words can't hurt you, not if you take charge of them.

‘Man, that's no reason!' says Ray.

‘I know that,' Simon says. ‘That's why I'm here. What about you? Self-defence, was it?'

‘Hold on,' Annie says. ‘Can we stay with you? What was your victim's name?'

‘Amanda,' he announces, coldly, thinking how Annie is absolutely nothing like Bernadette: she's sharp and hard, her voice is not sexy at all, plus the colour of her eyes can't be real.
He adds, to prevent her asking him: ‘I strangled her, but it didn't quite work, she choked to death . . . Well,' he looks round at them all, ‘have I started the ball rolling here or not?'

No one replies. The silence stretches around them and the room they are sitting in – charcoal office carpet, the same blue armchairs as in the Assessment unit, nothing much else until you get to the abstract prints screwed to the wall and a stack of tables and spare chair cushions in the corner beside the coffee stuff – seems suddenly far too big.

‘Aren't you going to do something, then?' Simon asks Greg.

‘I can't make people open up,' Greg says. ‘It's a choice.'

‘Seems like we're going nowhere fast!' Simon tells him. He feels very alert, noticing everything he can, such as the slow, careful way the staff talk, and trying to get a grip on what's going on.

‘Well, no,' Greg says. ‘You've taken the first step, haven't you? This isn't something to rush. We are moving very slowly towards a clear, detailed account of the offence and then –'

‘Actually, you're wearing contacts, aren't you?' Simon interrupts, cutting across to Annie.

‘Yes,' she tells him. ‘Is there a problem with that?' The air is thick with projections, transference, hostility, denial. They sit there, silent, breathing it in: two murderers, an armed robber, a rapist, a kidnapper who left his ex-wife locked in the trunk of a Vauxhall Cavalier, a paedophile, a man who says he is innocent of the fatal stabbing he's been sent down for. David, observing.
Greg, beady-eyed. Annie, back here after two weeks gazing at the join between sea and sky.

Greg suggests that they begin with something relatively small, like where the offence took place. A car, Ray says, parked outside his ex's house . . . plus he had a good reason too, she wouldn't let him see his kid, what man could stand for
that? The gents' toilet in Spangles, but it's not what you think, Nick tells them: he's straight as a die . . . St Mark's playing fields. A canal towpath . . .

‘Nowhere,' the tall, thin man called Ian says. ‘I didn't do it.'

‘Party games?' Nick of the gents' toilet asks, when they have to stand up and take the ends of some bits of string that Annie holds bundled in her hand. ‘Are we going to pin the tail on the donkey next? Got any sausage rolls and jellies?' They find their partner at the other end of the string and have to ask each other what happened in the place they've mentioned. Ian gets Annie.

‘There's no point, anyway,' he says.

‘The bloke had a gag on him,' Pete tells Simon, ‘but he kept making noises in his throat.' Pete couldn't concentrate on breaking the safe lock so he hit him till he shut up. Then he set the place on fire behind him, but someone called the fire brigade.

‘That it?'

‘They said he had a heart attack, but like I say, he was OK in the end. He got good compensation.'

They report the other person's account back to the group without changing anything or leaving anything out. Simon reckons he's done a good job but Pete complains that the wrong impression is coming over.

‘This is a waste of fucking time,' he says.

‘Well, what else do you think we should be talking about here at the tax-payers' considerable expense?' Greg asks. ‘Football? Fishing? Let's get on with it, please.'

David, the trainee, twists a tiny gold and diamond stud in his ear, anomalous with the uniform, but all the same, not actually forbidden. This, Simon thinks, is the blind leading the even blinder God knows where. At the end of the session he feels as if someone has drilled a hole in the top of his head and vacuumed his brains right out.

Dr Clarke explains how he will supply a brand new personal stereo for Simon to listen to some reconditioning tapes on.
Batteries will be supplied too. Are there any particular details Simon can give, to help make the tapes more effective? What kind of woman does Simon find attractive, for example?
Skinny? Athletic? Plump? Statuesque? Petite?

Bernadette, Simon thinks. More than anything right now, he'd like to write to Bernadette. The fact is, she never did say anything about keeping in touch, though that could be an oversight and, of course, he could always just write c/o the prison:
Hey, did you know what you were getting me into here?
Seriously
. Just saying that to her would surely make everything feel that bit easier.
Well, I'll just have to believe there's a method in
this madness and take your word for it that it works!
And suppose she might even come and visit him, or promise to, when it's over?
I wonder, would you consider
. . . No. She told him no. She said she was happy with her partner. So no letters. This is the real world. Really? He asks himself. Shut up and stick it out, he replies.

‘Not skinny,' he tells Dr Clarke. Blonde, brunette, redhead, Afro-Caribbean, Asian? the doctor wants to know, and are there any particular ways he likes to see a woman dressed?

‘It depends on the person,' Simon tells Dr Clarke, after some thought, ‘how the clothes look.' A good point, Clarke concedes. What about the scenario itself? Does Simon have any feeling as to where they might begin? Can they toss a few ideas around?'

‘I don't think so,' Simon says.

‘I'll just go through my files, then,' Dr Clarke decides.
‘We'll fine tune it once there's something to go on. Well, well, good, then. We'll have it ready for you in a week or so.
Anything else I can do for you? Another coffee? Orange? I'm going to have one.'