Mad Cows (5 page)

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 . . .

4

Baby, It's Cold Inside

‘I SUPPOSE IT
wouldn't be entirely sympathetic to ask if you've been up to anything new lately?'

‘Ask me
that
, Gillian, and I'll be in here for manslaughter.'

Maddy had used up her entire ration of phonecards to track down her best friend. Her first dialling destination was the real-estate offices of Belgravia. Gillian had confided that the way to find a rich husband was to pretend you were house-hunting in a posh neighbourhood. A house on the market often indicated a divorce settlement, and men were so easy to catch on the rebound. Maddy's next attempt was the Concorde guest lounge at Heathrow. Gillian's trick was to book herself a seat, loiter seductively in the lounge, setting up dates with every powerful
man
present and then refunding her ticket at the last minute.

Maddy struck lucky at Sotheby's. Gillian maintained that a
collector
of expensive antiques often turned out to
be
one. All a girl needed to do was pepper her conversation with ‘Jacobean' this and ‘Georgian' that and . . . she'd soon be sending him ‘baroque', furnishing her for life.

‘You called me away from the most
divine
man.'

‘Yes,' Maddy ribbed, ‘I'm sure you have just
so
much in common.'

‘We most definitely do.' She paused. ‘He has a Caribbean island, and I want one . . . So, how's the food?'

‘OK . . . if you like rat's sperm.'

Gillian, looking noticeably louche in the grim surroundings, leant back in her chair to allow the males in the visiting room a generous view of her sheerly stockinged legs. Her designer-suited entrance and finishing-school deportment had created quite a sensation amongst the prisoners' raggle-taggle collection of unshaven boyfriends. Looking under-dressed without their ski masks, they slumped over full ashtrays, eyeing Gillian with the hungry look of half-starved greyhounds.

‘Have you ever seen so many shell suits?' Gillian enquired, agreeably caustic. ‘Think I'll pick one up, put him to my ear and listen for the Atlantic,' she snorted with self-satisfaction.

Observing Gillian in the poisonous green light of the remand wing visiting room made Maddy ponder afresh how they had ever become friends. She reminded herself that, despite appearances, Gillian's siliconed décolletage was
not
the only deep thing about her.

She seized her friend's hand. ‘Listen!' Maddy spluttered, with earnest desperation. ‘They're going to try to take Jack! You've got to hide him!'

Gillian's response was not exactly what Maddy had anticipated. She laughed until her mascara ran, inking two big racoon rings beneath each eye. Semi-composed, she blotted at her face with a lace handkerchief and replied, ‘Dah-ling, did they take your brain out at the same time as your baby?'

‘I come up for bail again in a week's time. Then I can clear up this godawful mess . . .'

‘The thing is, dah-ling, I only know how to look after
dogs
. The child will be cocking its leg on trees within
days
.'

Maddy was leaning so hard against the table between them that her ribs were bruising. ‘Gill, I'm shitting razor blades.'

‘You're serious!' Gillian's tone was one of doleful dismay. ‘Dah-ling, I don't know how to operate a baby.'

‘Fun tips for beginners,' whispered Maddy, facetiously. ‘Kissing, cuddling, tickling, toe-nibbling, tummy-raspberry-blowing . . . That's about all he requires.'

‘So did my chihuahua . . . and
he
ended up down the waste-disposal unit.'

‘Feeding times are about every four hours . . .'

‘Just like at the zoo . . .' replied Gillian, displaying the compassion for which she was internationally renowned.

‘The two most popular brands come in Boy and Girl and—'

‘Be sensible. How on earth do you propose I get him out of here? In my
hand
bag?'

Gillian was thirty-six, but didn't look a day over forty. Her make-up requirements had recently reached the special-effects stage. She needed a handbag the size of an aircraft hangar to accommodate the chemist shop of lotions and potions. ‘Precisely.' Maddy tipped the carry cot in Gillian's direction. ‘He's a completely portable lap-size model. He'll go to sleep after his feed and then we'll transfer him.'

Gillian tried to push back her chair. ‘I went to Roedean.' It was bolted to the floor. ‘I wear Issey Miyake.' She struggled to standing. ‘I am
not
the type to be seen drinking from a Postman Pat flask.'

‘He sleeps between one and six hours between meals. He'll cry between one and four hours in every twenty-four hours so don't panic and—'

‘Has it crossed what's left of your mind,' Gillian interrupted sternly, ‘that this is a
prison
? Where they have a tendency to
search visitors
?'

‘Gillian, generally people in jail want things smuggled
in
.'

To illustrate her point, a woman near the windows was unceremoniously dragged away from her boyfriend. Dope cling-filmed and kept in his mouth, had been transferred during a tongue-kiss, to be lodged half-way down her throat and sicked up later, with shampoo.

‘Now sit down for Christ's sake!' Maddy tugged Gillian back into the chair from which she had just escaped.

‘It's im
poss
ible,' Gillian announced to the wilting carnations she'd brought with her.

‘Gill, we're talking about a little baby. A little baby in
prison
. The tooth fairy will have to commit a crime to leave the twenty pence under his pillow. His knowledge of primary colours will stop at grey . . .'

‘Speaking of which . . .' Gillian glanced furtively around, then spoke funereally. ‘I found my first grey pubic hair this morning.'

‘He'll be teething on steel bars. He won't be learning to read from
Spot Goes to the Circus
but graffiti along the lines of “Die, Police Scum” . . .'

‘Of course I plucked it out. But, let's face it,
there's more where that came from!
'

‘I want him to be able to count, sure, but not in lieu of knowing people's names. Will number two-three-six please pass me my bottle . . .'

‘The point is, I'm past the marrying age. Which
means
it's time to confront the job market, which is impossible to do with an infant in tow.'

‘Hah! The only job you've ever had was on your nose.'

Gillian's hand leapt protectively to her pert proboscis. ‘This is my
real
nose!'

‘Gill, if you don't look after him they're going to take him into' – Maddy could hardly say the word – ‘
care
.'

‘Care?' Gillian calmed the material across her thighs. She uttered a heavy, half-relenting sigh. ‘A
week
. No longer.'

Relief flooded into Maddy's body. Jack, who'd been waving his pygmaean arms, got more agitated. Maddy picked him up. He attached himself to her nipple with sea-anenome suction. His teeny hand stroked Maddy's breast; feathery, soft little movements which soothed her beyond belief. A drowsiness seeped over her. The throb of the central heating, the drone of voices, she was soon slipping under the meringue of Gillian's words; all sugar and air. A kick in the shins promptly roused her.

‘On the whole,' Gillian's curt voice karate-chopped, ‘I prefer not to wake a friend who falls asleep while I'm talking to her, but it's ciao time . . .'

‘Sorry.' Maddy yawned. ‘For some reason Jack is the only living creature in prison who thinks they don't wake us up early enough. Three a.m. and Hey! It's Party Time!'

‘Oh, tickety-boo,' said Gillian, with not altogether fraudulent alarm. ‘You kept
that
information quiet.' Leaning forward, she inspected her new accessory with an irritable disdain. ‘Ugh! What on earth is that
hole
in the top of its head? My God! He's not going to
spout
?'

Maddy was going to explain about the anterior fontanelle, but her voice was muzzled with emotion. Although the bells were signalling the end of visiting time, she wanted to top him up with milk, camel-like, to last the whole week. They were sitting in a shadowy corner. Gillian positioned her back to the rest of the room. She extracted her massive make-up kit and pushed it across the table. Maddy tucked it into her carry cot. She then took a last look at Jack – her eyes lens shutters, photographing him in her head.

‘Hurry up,' hissed Gillian.

Maddy traced his delicate eyebrows, the colour of caramel toffee. She kissed his ivory eyelids; the lashes so long you could positively hike through them. She buried her nose in his crest of blond hair and inhaled. To a mother, that baby smell was as moreish as opium. Steeling herself, she broke Jack's liplock and handed the precious, swaddled parcel to Gillian. ‘Try to pretend not to be impressed at receiving
the
Most Beautiful Baby Ever Born On This Planet, okay?' she said bravely. He looked so vulnerable, she had to bite her fingers to stop herself from snatching him back. She bit them till they bled.

‘Dah-ling,' said Gillian, in a rare spasm of concern, ‘look on the bright side. A women's prison – at least the toilet seat will never be up.'

‘Take good care of him,' Maddy implored, as they got to their feet.

The handles of Gillian's voluminous valise closed over their unusual cargo. ‘Next time you see him, he'll heel when called.'

Staff shortages meant that Maddy got back to her cell undetected. She lay on the narrow bed. A mournful clock tolled the hours since Jack's departure. The humidi-crib atmosphere of the prison pressed in on her. She had kept back one small item of his clothing. It was all she had to remind her of her cherished angel. Aching body and soul, she buried her face in his miniscule cotton cardigan, breathed in his soft, sweet smell and wept, helpless as a newborn.

5

The Standing Offer

THE SKY LIGHTENED
to a bitter, jaundiced yellow, to find Maddy bent over the tiny sink in her cell, applying hot flannels to her breasts. Until now, Maddy thought that only performance artists ‘expressed' themselves. But no. Not just streams, but
Niles
of milk gurgled down the plughole. Every noise triggered her milk flow – distant car horns, clock radios, kettles, other babies crying. She could have opened a god-damned dairy in there.

This was how the prison officer found her, baby AWOL, missing, presumed dead. Slynne was called; the harmonic wheeze of the cell-door hinge heralding his arrival.

‘Apparently you've' – he cleared his throat with mock theatricality – ‘
lost
your baby.'

‘Have I?' Maddy hammed. ‘Oh, well, he's probably with my car keys then.'

‘Have you killed it?' His alert, rodent eyes scurried over her face scavenging for a confessional crumb.

‘There's nothing in the cell, sir,' vouched the prison officer.

‘Dismembered it? Cannibalized it, perhaps?'

Maddy, feigning nonchalance, studied her interrogator. Brutal and brusque, he was also vain. That hungry hyena smile suggested an intimate knowledge of periodontal work practices. And there was something too solid about the hairline. A closer inspection revealed a Grecian 2000 stain behind his right ear.

Slynne banged his fist on the wall. ‘What kind of mother are you?' His grip on her arm was that of a jack-hammer operator. ‘You're not even worried about your own baby!'

‘Oh, I
was
worried,' Maddy contended, wrenching free, ‘but then I thought, hey, why torture myself when you can do it for me?'

‘Infanticide is a very serious crime.'

Maddy felt her stomach fall through to the floor. This copper was a magnifying glass who would not go away.

‘What rot!' the voice was Dwina's. She stood panting in the doorway. Having completed stages one and two of Basic Scarf Draping, she had now graduated to the reverse neckerchief foulard model. She shed her
coat
and fell on to the kettle. ‘It's a recognized psychological post-birth trauma. I've run a workshop on this just recently. This woman is a Recovering Hormonal Addict.'

Prison, Maddy was discovering, was full of recovering people. Recovering from smack, barbiturates, solvents, bad marriages. Inmates boasted membership of Nymphomaniacs Anonymous, Cake-aholics Anonymous, Men Anonymous,
Anonymous
Anonymous.

Dwina placed a possessive arm on the back of Maddy's chair. ‘If you'd attended my workshop, Detective Sergeant, you wouldn't be so ignorant of female endorphins.' She gave Maddy's head a condescending pat, as though she were a child. Maddy flinched. Edwina Phelps was a candidate for ‘
Nice
-aholics Anonymous.'

‘No baby' – Slynne bounced on the balls of his feet – ‘no Mother and Baby Unit. Let's see how her “endorphins” go down with the nonces.'

Edwina Phelps' hand halted in mid-air, post-pat. ‘The Nonces?'

‘Paedophiles and perverts,' stipulated a voice located somewhere behind a cigarette. ‘Most loathed people in prison. Segregated so the other inmates don't waste them.'

Dwina angrily workshopped a cup of coffee, rattling a spoon into a chipped enamel cup. ‘Over my dead body.'

Maddy thought that maybe she wouldn't enrol Dwina in Nice-aholics
just
yet.