Living with Shadows (18 page)

The journey home had taken hours. An accident on the motorway meant they’d had to find an alternative route and they arrived home late, too late to ring Ben.

She was still tired from the long drive and the fraught weekend and had to push herself to hurry. Only once had she missed every member of staff going through to education and had had to drag someone all the way back to collect her from the waiting room. The look of frustration on his face made her determined to get there in plenty of time in future.

Gordon’s loud ‘Good morning,’ distracted her from her notes.

‘Morning,’ she replied, returning her papers to her bag and following him to the first steel door.

‘Good weekend?’

‘Don’t ask.’ She had no desire to relive the events of the past few days.

‘Oh, it’s like that, eh? Never mind; things can only get better now we’re here.’ He stooped to lock the first door.

This morning the corridors seemed to go on forever. She was hardly aware of Gordon’s voice as she contemplated the contrast between Angela and Tim’s bright, airy, colourful rooms and the dull grey walls on either side of her. This morning the jangling of the keys at each double set of doors, the first barred, the second solid steel, jarred on her nerves while the clang of each door echoed around her head for the duration of this labyrinthine walk. She asked herself what she was doing working in a place like this.

They entered the staff room to a sea of grave faces and a staggered cessation to their conversation. John looked at them. ‘There’s been an attempted suicide; one of yours I’m afraid,’ he said, looking at Kate.

A sickening feeling came over her and she felt the colour drain from her face. ‘Who is it?’

‘Mac.’

‘How is he?’

‘He’s in hospital. Fortunately, one of the officers checked on him just after midnight and realised something was wrong.’ Kate read the look of concern in his eyes. ‘You don’t have to take your class this morning if you’re not feeling up to it. I can see it’s come as a shock,’ he said, gently.

‘No, I’ll be fine.’ Though he was right; she was in shock. Awful thoughts attacked her mind. Why did he do it? Was it because she asked him to write about himself? It must have stirred things up in him, awakened all those terrible memories. She shuddered at the idea she might have been instrumental in his attempt to kill himself.

‘Come on, sit down,’ said Jean, ‘I’ll make you some tea. These things happen and you never get any warning. It’s nobody’s fault.’

It was as if she’d read her mind. She supposed it was normal to question why she hadn’t seen it coming, but then she did not expect many tutors ask their students to relive the bad they’d done and write it all down. She racked her brain for some sort of clue as to why he might try something like this. ‘He seemed fine when I saw him last week.’

‘Well, there you are,’ said Carol, ‘Sometimes they just wake up and feel they’ve had enough and brood on it. Weekends can be a bad time because there’s nothing to occupy them.’

‘Sometimes it’s just a cry for help,—you know, wanting someone to take notice,’ said Bill.

Everyone was trying to make her feel better. Obviously, they’d had experience of this, but she couldn’t help feeling the way she did. She felt sure this wasn’t just a cry for help. Michael was desperately unhappy most of the time. Prison was a living hell for him.

She was handed her tea and sipped it as the conversation was steered to something less emotional. No one wanted to dwell on the fact that someone had tried to commit suicide. It was the only way to work in a place like this; to distance oneself from this kind of thing. It had to be, because they were all so helpless. Nothing they said or did would make the slightest bit of difference. No one prisoner inside these prison walls could be thought about or treated any differently from another. The system would take care of it. Only the system was allowed to take care of it. They had their procedures for things like this; procedures that must be followed, paperwork to fill in with t’s crossed and i’s dotted. Then they could all go home having done what is required of them, no more and no less.

But what of the inmates; what did they make of it? She tried to imagine, but could only see it from Mac’s point of view; fenced in with a load of people, people you don’t know, but that’s not the worst of it. You despise them because you’re not like them,—robbers, drug dealers, rough necks. You made a mistake, one terrible mistake. But you also despise yourself; you’ve done a wicked thing, but you aren’t like these people. You believe in some sort of moral code, you’re honest, you’re . . . oh, God,
what
are you? Why try to take your life? Life, so precious, so wonderful. How could anyone want to end a life that hasn’t even begun to be lived? How can anyone know what their life has in store for them? Kate thought of her brother. He always said he would end his life with brandy and a load of tablets if things got too bad. He didn’t have to. Some infection, disease, whatever, got there first, and he died putting up a fight because no matter how ill he became, he really didn’t want to die. She knew this from the last few words he said to her before going into a coma. He talked about what he would do when he came home. But he never did come home.

‘They’re on their way up,’ said Bill.

‘That reminds me.’ John broke off his conversation. ‘You’ve got a new student starting today. I think Mac’s going to be in hospital for a while, psychiatrist reports and that sort of thing, so they’ve filled his place. You sure you’re okay?’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine.’ It wasn’t really true. She could not stop thinking about Michael. The class wouldn’t be the same without him. Not that he was much of a presence in the classroom, but he’d begun to be a little more confident in front of the others; would chip in with his opinion now and then.’ In fact, she had chosen the topic for this morning’s lesson with Mac in mind. They were to have a discussion about bullying; something Mac had first-hand experience of and would surely have found something to say on the subject.

Kate followed everyone out into the corridor and headed for her classroom. She sat and waited as one by one they filed into the room and sat in their usual places. She looked at Michael’s empty seat by the window and wondered if he was thinking about education this morning. He always seemed to enjoy it so much, especially their little chats at the end of the lesson when everyone else had left the room.

‘There’s a new lad startin’ today, miss; he’s off our wing,’ one of the students informed her.

‘Yes, I know,’ she replied.

‘They call him Action Man. Bet you can’t guess why.’

He seemed determined to tell her something she didn’t know and she was tempted to ask if it was because he’d got no balls, but restrained herself. ‘Haven’t a clue, but no doubt I’ll find out.’

Just then, a lanky youth, probably late twenties, walked into the room. ‘All right, miss? Me name’s Gerry. Can I sit ’ere?’ He pointed to an empty seat. Thankfully, it wasn’t Michael’s. She really didn’t want anyone to sit there, not today.

‘Yes, that’s fine,’ she replied, without lifting her eyes from the register.

‘Did ya hear about Mac? Tried to do ‘imself in the other night.’

Kate kept her eyes on the register but her ears open.

‘Good job he ain’t ’ere this mornin’. I’d finish t’job for ‘im. Bloody coward. He should do ‘is bird like rest of us ‘ave to; never mind lookin’ for an easy way out.

Kate looked up. ‘I wouldn’t say trying to kill yourself is an easy way out of serving a life sentence.’

‘Course it is. There’s a lot more than ‘im in ’ere serving life but they’re getting’ on wiv it. An’ they don’t want to ‘ear about little shits like ‘im tryin’ to do themselves in cos they can’t hack it.’

‘All right, Tommy, I really don’t need this conversation today so if you don’t mind we’ll get on with the lesson, shall we?’ She quickly introduced the topic for discussion and straight away Gerry leapt in with an incident that happened to a ‘mate’ of his at school.

‘This mate of mine, Russell, great big fella. Well, ‘e was always gettin’ bullied at school by this little chap, Stinker they called ‘im. Right little tyke ‘e was . . .’

He rattled on non-stop for about ten minutes in his loud scouse accent. Kate soon realised why he was called Action Man. He never stopped waving his arms around and jumping up and down all the while he was speaking. She had never seen anyone as animated as Gerry. At one point he lay flat out on the floor to show how Russell had landed after being punched in the stomach by Stinker; and that was after at least two minutes staggering around the room, bent double, clutching his stomach.

Each time one of the lads had something to say, he would emulate Gerry’s gestures but with even greater emphasis, sometimes by standing on his chair or using objects in the room to demonstrate more dramatically his point. Gerry was blissfully unaware of the piss take and his movements became wilder until Kate felt quite breathless just watching him and was glad when the discussion came to an end. During the last hour, the students worked quietly on their written tasks and Kate’s thoughts turned back to Michael. She wondered how he was and whether she would be allowed to see him in hospital. She decided to find out as soon as the lesson was over.

The bell interrupted her thoughts. Kate lifted her head and looked around the room. She realised she had not left her desk once to check on their work and wondered if they had noticed her lack of engagement with them today. She cleared her throat. ‘If you’ve finished what you were doing, can you bring it to me and I’ll let you have it back next time.’ Once they had given in their work, the lads trooped out of the room. She was about to leave when John appeared at the door.

‘Mind if I have a word?’

‘No, I’ve just finished.’

‘It’s just that you looked so shocked when I told you about Mac. It wasn’t the best way for you to find out just before your class.’

‘At least I knew before I went in. Some of them were quite angry about what he’d done.’

John cocked his head to one side and grimaced. ‘They see it as a weakness. And of course it reminds them of their own sentence and the difficulty they have enduring it.’

‘I suppose so.’ She suddenly felt the urge to unburden herself. ‘You know, I feel a bit responsible.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, I knew he wasn’t very good at expressing himself verbally so I asked him to write about his life . . . only if he wanted to . . . which he didn’t seem to mind doing, although he didn’t want me to discuss it with anyone.’

John thought for a few moments. ‘Look, it had nothing to do with you. The doctor’s spoken to Mac and he says he just couldn’t face the Lifers’ Board; “all those boring questions” was how he put it.’

‘He told me he wasn’t looking forward to it, but I never realised he was that scared. Will he still have to go in front of the Board?’

‘Not for a while, but eventually, yes. They can’t make allowances for anyone.’

‘And it doesn’t matter that he might end up killing himself rather than go through the ordeal.’

‘Well, they try to avoid it. Suicides don’t look good on the records. No, he’ll be supervised night and day until they think he’s not at risk.’

Bloody records, she thought to herself. And who decides when he isn’t at risk? She could not imagine that Michael would suddenly get over his terror of people in authority. She didn’t voice these concerns as she’d noticed an edge in John’s voice on his last remark. She liked John and was sure he’d thought about all these things himself at some time but realised that you can’t beat the system. ‘Do you think I’ll be allowed to visit him?’

‘That might not be a bad idea. It’ll probably do him good to see a familiar face.’

‘I could set him some work which would give him something to do while he’s in there.’ Kate began to feel more hopeful.

‘Good idea. You’ll need to ring through to the hospital and get them to okay it, but I shouldn’t think it will be a problem.’ John got to his feet. ‘Right, I’m off for some lunch so I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘I’ll let you know what happens,’ she promised. She felt much happier. It just might make a difference to Michael if he thought someone actually cared about whether he lived or died. It also felt good to have told someone about what she’d asked Michael to do. Unlike Jim, he hadn’t made a fuss about it, made out she’d done something wrong; nor had he asked her to break her confidence. She now felt justified in trying to help him and would do her utmost to make him see that his life had meaning.

She went straight to the office and rang the hospital, explained that she was Michael’s tutor and asked if she could visit him. They told her if Michael agreed to see her, then it was fine by them, but in any case she couldn’t see him before Friday.

When she got home she could not stop thinking about him, wondering what had made him decide to try and kill himself. She thought about some of the things that had caused her pain over the last few months, the death of her brother and how she wished she had spent more time with him instead of thinking about herself. She decided to write Michael a letter. She wanted to let him know that everyone gets depressed at some point in their life but things change, things get better; we just have to try and get through it. She thought that just knowing someone cared might help him overcome this dark period in his life.