Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1 (32 page)

‘You're looking at the clock. Have I run out of time?'

‘I'm afraid so. Can we come back to this? Is there anything you need to help give some closure on this story?'

‘Just that… just that… During those visits, and bringing the information out, I was aware of danger but I protected myself. I did it right and I got home safely.

‘But, you know, you can learn things and then forget them. Good things can get lost just like progressive civilizations can bite the dust and disappear into history: we're not always getting better all the time. There are no promises. Somehow I forgot the lesson from that experience. I've taken a step backwards. This time I haven't protected myself. I feel I've made a mistake, done something wrong that I'll have to pay for. I'm not sure what it was. Maybe an accident. But I keep imagining that I'm in danger again, and this time I'm like that young woman. I am raw and I have no protection.'

Thursday 20th December 2 am

The room's been quiet for several hours when Mandy starts screaming. A series of short, intense bursts of sound. At first nobody stirs. On the third shout I hear Debs sitting up, and her voice: ‘Cool it, babe.' I groan and I turn over in bed, and my pillow falls on the floor. Beverly's voice comes from the corner, ‘Turn the sound down, woman, some of us is sleeping.'

Mandy stops screaming abruptly. Debs reaches the door and switches the light on. On the next door bed I see Mandy lift her head off the pillow and look around her, wide-eyed. Then she drops her head again. ‘Sorry, folks, just a dream.'

‘For fuck's sake,' says Debs, ‘I'd only just got off.'

‘You all right now?' Beverley asks.

‘No worse than usual,' says Mandy.

Debs switches the light off again and I can make out her shape as she feels her way back to bed by the courtyard light outside the window, muttering ‘You didn't half give me a fright. I thought it was a raid.'

Thursday 20th December 7.45 am

‘Was it the cramps?' Debs asks in the morning. She's choosing a clean T-shirt from a package her sister has sent. The cell door rattles and there's a slurping sound outside – someone must be mopping the floor in the corridor.

‘No,' says Mandy, who's still sitting in bed, staring straight ahead of her. ‘Just a dream.'

‘Was it to do with that poem?' I ask.

‘No. Forget that. This was just a dream. About Dave. It was stupid. About the car. He was telling me there was a problem with the car. Said it was too hot. Then a woman came running down the street yelling. The next thing I know is, I'm yelling too, and then you lot are awake and the light's on and you're all making a song and dance about nothing.'

Beverly yawns. ‘I'm gonna aks the nurse for some ear plugs tonight. I got enough problems sleeping without other folks turning on the heat.'

‘Ear plugs? They'll tell you to get lost.' Mandy snaps. ‘Why don't you all just get off my back?' She gets up, walks round my bed and picks up the blue felt-tip pen off the floor. She looks at it then tosses it at me. ‘You wanna be a writer. Write it yourself: Day Five. Four shopping days to bloody Christmas.' She looks with disgust at my webs all over the wall. ‘Caught anything yet?'

The hatch slides across and I hear the voice of one of the older screws: ‘Breakfast! Come and get it!'

Thursday 20th December 9.25 am

In the Ballspond Road the owner of the second hand furniture shop shivered as he opened up. He wheeled a faded sofa out onto the pavement and looked at the heavy sky to see if it was likely to rain soon. The snow underfoot had mostly melted. A red 38 bus had just crossed the High Street from Dalston Junction, and he watched it go past.

On the top floor of the bus, travelling from Hackney towards the Angel, Freddie was singing ‘Halfway to Paradise.' He was sitting in the front seat with his legs turned into the gangway so there was room to play along on his guitar. He struck up as the bus pulled away from the traffic lights and sang louder as the bus gained speed.

A large elderly white man sitting in the seat behind him let out a deep raucous cough and mumbled ‘Didn't pay my fare for that caterwauling.' He stubbed his cigarette out on the floor.

As they passed the Duke of Wellington, Freddie lifted his head, tossed his locks off his face and looked up the bus to see if others agreed.

‘Let him play, man,' came from the middle of the bus, a young black man wearing a red, green and yellow Rasta hat.

Freddie carried on singing and put a foot down to steady himself as the bus braked at a bus stop. A man in a butcher's apron crossed the road carrying two white plastic bags full to bulging. On top of the bus shelter, there was a small pink-skinned plastic doll with no head and red paint over the stump of the neck so that it looked like an atrocity. In one of the back seats a middle-aged woman pointed it out to her neighbour and tutted.

Freddie carried on singing as the bus pulled away. The woman turned to her neighbour: ‘Billy Fury, isn't it? My husband used to sing that to me before we were married. Sweet voice.'

‘Tickets please,' the bus conductress came up the stairs at the back of the bus, her long earrings swinging. When she saw Freddie playing she added, ‘Cut it out, love. This is a bus, no busking allowed.'

Freddie stopped his song as the bus lurched left on a green light into the Essex Road. ‘I'm not busking,' he said, ‘Music should be free. It feeds the soul.'

‘It's half past nine,' said the conductress, ‘I've had my breakfast already,' and she went back downstairs.

Freddie picked up where he had left off: ‘So near, yet so far away…'

A young man with grey hair listening to a walkman looked up from his book, checked if he was missing anything, and went back to his page.

A light drizzle started to fall and on the Ballspond Road the man came out of his shop to wheel the sofa back inside again.

Thursday 20th December 10 am

The snow has melted into puddles in the exercise yard, and the air is wet as if it's full of rain that can't get out.

‘So what happened to you?' I ask Mandy as we walk around.

‘What'ya mean, what happened?'

‘Your brother. That poem.'

‘So what?'

‘I've been droning on about my dramas. You've been through a lot worse.'

‘It ain't entertainment, what happened to me.'

‘I didn't say it was. But like you say, it sometimes helps. If you tell the story.'

Mandy stops and faces me. ‘Don't tell me you didn't ask for it. You better not be squeamish.'

She sits down on a low brick wall around an empty flowerbed. A few drops of rain are starting to fall. ‘Now I'm clucking, it's going round and round in my head. Stuff from years ago. My parents used to row a lot, right? I only have to go to that flat, my Mum still lives there, and it all comes back. Them screaming at each other. Dad was a fanatic with motor bikes. He'd be down by the garages with his bike, little bits spread out all over the ground, fixing it. He'd stay there 'till it was dark, then he'd go down the pub. When he got in, it'd be her going, “It's about bloody time, I've been stuck here with the kids, all you care about is that bike,” and the rest. Then his voice would get louder. I used to get scared. We'd be asleep and we'd get woken up. It'd be, “What kind of time do you call this?” Then him: “Shut ya face,” and then “Shut ya face or I'll shut it for ya.” Me and my brother, we shared a bedroom. We was only little. Sometimes in the evening we could hear yelling and whacking, right, then my mother screaming, and I used to climb into my brother's bed to get a cuddle. He used to stroke my head and put his arms round me and I felt safe. It was a comfort thing. Sometimes he used to stroke my back.'

‘How old were you?' I ask. I put my hand up to my head, I can feel my hair getting wet and sticking to my scalp. The drizzle has started to fall steadily on both of us as we sit on the low wall. Some of the other women have started to go back inside.

Mandy pauses. ‘I can remember a pair of new red shoes. My mum bought them for me when I started school. So I must have been five or so. Shiny, with a strap across. I remember one evening I left them in the living room and then when I heard crashing and yells I thought they might get squashed. Daft, or what? I crept out of the bedroom and dashed in to get my shoes. I saw my mum on the floor. Lucky my dad never saw me, he was standing over her. When I shut my eyes I can still see it. I ran and jumped back into my brother's bed. He was three years older than me, but he was scared as well. I could tell. He liked cuddling up too.

‘Another time we were hiding in our room to keep out the way because my dad had come in wrecked, and he'd smashed a teapot. It was my mum's favourite, it had a cottage painted on the side and trees round, the kind of place I think she wanted to live someday. Some chance. And gilt round the lid. She'd been going at him. “You like that bloody bike more than what you like me!” and he's going, “No fucking wonder, it doesn't talk back. You just switch her on and she goes,” and my mum's “If you could ever get it going! You're bloody useless at that, like everything.”

‘I needed to go toilet so after a while I crept out, but on the way back my dad heard me. He came out to the passage and pulled me into the living room. “What you doing, you little bitch? Spying on us? You're as bad as her!” I was so scared I was like frozen. Just staring at him. The telly was on behind him. That woman with a posh voice who used to do cookery, she was pouring some gunge onto some chicken, with red fingernails. Made me feel sick – put me off chicken for life. She still does that programme. Her hair never moves, have you noticed?'

I'm shivering.

Yes, I have noticed. Nothing moves. Nothing ever moved. I'm not saying a word.

Mandy carries on, ‘She was pouring this stuff and going “This is truly divine!” and that, like she was on another planet. My dad was staring at me and panting.

‘“Take that look off off your face” he's going, then my mum said, “Leave her out of it,” and he turned and I broke away and raced back to our room. Slammed the door behind me, jumped into my brother's bed. My heart was going like a drum. He put his arms round and smoothed my hair. He stroked my back. I was still crying. Then he started stroking my fanny. That stopped me crying. I must have been around seven, but even then it felt nice – like warm, then hot, it took my mind off things so I wasn't scared any more. We fell asleep all cuddled up like that.

‘Next time my dad went mental and I was crying, we did it again. It wasn't like nothing I'd done before. It wasn't like showing my fanny to the boy next door for sixpence. It was my brother, right, so I knew it was OK. He was the only one who cared about me. I remember the bedspread, Winnie the Pooh, all them Disney characters. The lights were out but there was that orange glow you get in the city at night, even on the fifth floor. You could see things in the room with a weird colour on them and I used to look at Piglet while he stroked me.

‘He must have been about ten by then, right, and he had the hormones kicking in. I can't remember it all exactly. But I remember once after he'd had his bath he came in the bedroom and took his towel off with a big flourish, like “Look what I've got!” and he had a hard-on. I'd never seen one before, and he wanted me to touch it.

‘Soon after that, the next time I was cuddled in with him, he asked me to touch it again. Then he told me to take my pyjamas off and he rubbed it against me. I thought we didn't ought to be doing what we were doing but it felt nice and it made him happy. Not hard to guess what came next. One night down the line he starts pushing at me with it, knocking on every door but the right one, I knew he didn't mean to hurt me. In the end we was doing the real thing. I remember him saying “This is what grown-ups do.”

‘Afterwards there was blood on the sheets and my Mum saw it and asked what it was. I was too young for the curse so she couldn't understand it and somehow my Dad got in on it and I remember him shaking me, “Are you up to something? Are you a little whore?” Then he turned and whacked my brother round the head, “If you don't tell me I'm going to beat it out of you!” He whacked him again, and my brother fell over and cut his head open on the hi-fi. Fucking blood everywhere. He was only a shrimp of a thing, not much bigger than me. But he never said a word.

‘They'd been on the housing list for years for a three bedroom flat. They couldn't get one. They put my brother to sleep on the sofa. But one night not long after, my Dad pranged his precious bike and he came in and started doing his nut, and my brother crept out without them noticing and we cuddled up and it happened again. That was the first time it felt dirty, after what my Dad said. But I wanted to make it up to my brother for the beating he got. After that we used to do it every so often, when we got the chance. When they was busy arguing or sometimes they went out to the pub together and left us in the flat. We both liked it. It was the only time at home we felt safe.

‘Sometimes he wanted to do it other places, like when we were out in the park. In the bushes. I was scared we'd get caught. '

I look at Mandy. Her hair is wet like rats tails and she's shivering too. ‘How old were you?' I ask.

‘I dunno. Eight or nine I suppose. Yeah, 'cos then, he must've been about twelve when he started going round with a gang of boys on the estate and he changed. Started acting tough. On the way home from school one day, I came across some of them beating up a boy. My brother was kicking the shit out of him, with a look on his face I'd never seen. One night after his bath when Mum and Dad were out, he flashed his hard-on again and asked me to kiss it and then guess what? Blow me if it wasn't my first blow-job, oh for Chrissake I don't wanna fucking joke about it. I thought I was going to throw up, but he didn't seem to notice.