The Damnation Game (5 page)

Indifference was the best remedy. Once you conceded defeat, life was a feather bed. In the light of that wisdom, the fifth year was a breeze. He had access to dope; he had the clout that came with being an experienced con; he had every damned thing but his freedom, and that he could wait for.

And then Toy had come along, and try as hard as he could to forget he’d ever heard the man’s name, he found himself turning the half-hour of the interview over and over in his head, examining every exchange in the minutest detail as though he might turn up a nugget of prophecy. It was a fruitless exercise, of course, but it didn’t stop the rehearsals going on, and the process became almost comforting in its way. He told nobody; not even Feaver. It was his secret: the room; Toy; Somervale’s defeat.

On the second Sunday after the meeting with Toy Charmaine came to visit. The interview was the usual mess; like a transatlantic telephone call—all the timing spoiled by the second delay between question and response. It wasn’t the babble of other conversations in the room that soured things, things were simply sour. No avoiding that fact now. His early attempts at salvage had long since been abandoned. After the cool inquiries about the health of relatives and friends it was down to the nitty-gritty of dissolution.

He’d written to her in the early letters:
You’re beautiful, Charmaine. I think of you at night, I dream about you all the time.
But then her looks had seemed to lose their edge-and anyway his dreams of her face and body under him had stopped-and though he kept up the pretense in the letters for a while his loving sentences had begun to sound patently fake, and he’d stopped writing about such intimacies. It felt adolescent, to tell her he thought of her face; what would she imagine him doing but sweating in the dark and playing with himself like a twelve-year-old?

He didn’t want her thinking that.

Maybe, on reflection, that had been a mistake. Perhaps the deterioration of their marriage had begun there, with him feeling ridiculous, and giving up writing love letters. But hadn’t she changed too?

Her eyes looked at him even now with such naked suspicion.

“Flynn sends his regards.”

“Oh. Good. You see him, do you?”

“Once in a while.”

“How’s he doing?”

She’d taken to looking at the clock, rather than at him, which he was glad of. It gave him a chance to study her without feeling intrusive. When she allowed her features to relax, he still found her attractive. But he had, he believed, perfect control over his response to her now. He could look at her—at the translucent lobes of her ears, at the sweep of her neck—and view her quite dispassionately. That, at least, prison had taught him: not to want what he could not have.

“Oh, he’s fine—” she replied.

It took him a moment to reorientate himself; who was she talking about? Oh, yes: Flynn. There was a man who’d never got his fingers dirty.

Flynn the wise; Flynn the flash.

“He sends his best,” she said.

“You told me,” he reminded her.

Another pause; the conversation was more crucifying every time she came. Not for him so much as for her. She seemed to go through a trauma every time she spat a single word out.

“I went to see the solicitors again.”

“Oh, yes.”

“It’s all going ahead, apparently. They said the papers would be through next month.”

“What do I do, just sign them?”

“Well … he said we needed to talk about the house, and all the stuff we’ve got together.”

“You have it.”

“But it’s ours, isn’t it? I mean, it belongs to both of us. And when you come out you’re going to need somewhere to live, and furniture and everything.“

“Do you want to sell the house?”

Another wretched pause, as though she was trembling on the edge of saying something far more important than the banalities that would surely surface.

“I’m sorry, Marty,” she said.

“What for?”

She shook her head, a tiny shake. Her hair shimmered.

“Don’t know,” she said.

“This isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault.”

“I can’t help—”

She stopped and looked up at him, suddenly more alive in the urgency of her fright—was that what it was, fright? —than she’d been in a dozen other wooden exchanges they’d endured in one chilling room or another. Her eyes were liquefying, swelling up with tears.

“What’s wrong?”

She stared at him: the tears brimmed.

“Char … what’s wrong?”

“It’s all over, Marty,” she said, as though this fact had hit her for the first time; over, finished, fare thee well.

He nodded; “Yes.”

“I don’t want you …” She stopped, paused, then tried again.

“You mustn’t blame me.”

“I don’t blame you. I’ve never blamed you. Christ, you’ve been here, haven’t you? All this time. I hate seeing you in this place, you know. But you came; when I needed you, you were there.”

“I thought it would be all right,” she said, talking on as though he’d not even spoken, “I really did. I thought you’d be coming out soon-and maybe we’d make it work, you know. We still had the house and all. But these last couple of years, everything just started falling apart.”

He watched her suffering, thinking:
I’ll never be able to forget this, because I caused it, and I’m the most miserable shit on God’s earth because look what I did
. There’d been tears at the beginning, of course, and letters from her full of hurt and half-buried accusations, but this wracking distress she was showing now went so much deeper. It wasn’t from a twenty-two-year-old, for one thing, it was coming from a grown woman; and it shamed him deeply to think he’d caused it, shamed him in a way he thought he’d put behind him.

She blew her nose on a tissue teased from a packet.

“Everything’s a mess,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I just want to sort it out.”

She gave a cursory glance at her watch, too fast to register the time, and stood up.

“I’d better go, Marty.”

“Appointment?”

“No …” she replied, a transparent lie which she made no real effort to carry off, “might do some shopping later on. Always makes me feel better. You know me.”

No,
he thought.
No I don’t know you. If I once did, and I’m not even sure of that, it was a different you, and God I miss her
. He stopped himself. This was not the way to part with her; he knew that from past encounters. The trick was to be cold, to finish on a note of formality, so that he could go back to his cell and forget her until the next time.

“I wanted you to understand,” she said. “But I don’t think I explained it very well. It’s just such a bloody mess.”

She didn’t say goodbye: tears were beginning again, and he was certain that she was frightened, under the talk of solicitors, that she would recant at the last moment—out of weakness, or love, or both—and by walking out without turning around she was keeping the possibility at bay.

Defeated, he went back to the cell. Feaver was asleep. He’d stuck a vulva torn from one of his magazines onto his forehead with spit, a favorite routine of his. It gaped-a third eye-above his closed lids, staring and staring without hope of sleep.

Chapter 7

“S
trauss?”

Priestley was at the open door, staring into the cell. Beside him, on the wall some wit had scrawled: “If you feel horny, kick the door. A cunt will appear.” It was a familiar joke—he’d seen the same gag or similar on a number of cell walls—but now, looking at Priestley’s thick face, the association of ideas—the enemy and a woman’s sex—struck him as obscene.

“Strauss?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Mr. Somervale wants to see you. About three-fifteen. I’ll come and collect you. Be ready at ten past.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Priestley turned to go.

“Can you tell me what it’s about, Sir?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

S
omervale was waiting in the Interview Room at three-fifteen. Marty’s file was on the table in front of him, its drawstrings still knotted. Beside it, a buff envelope, unmarked. Somervale himself was standing by the reinforced glass window, smoking.

“Come in,” he said. There was no invitation to sit down; nor did he turn from the window.

Marty closed the door behind him, and waited. Somervale exhaled smoke through his nostrils noisily.

“What do you suppose, Strauss?” he said.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“I said: what do you suppose, eh? Imagine.”

Marty followed none of this so far, and wondered if the confusion was his or Somervale’s. After an age, Somervale said: “My wife died.”

Marty wondered what he was expected to say. As it was, Somervale didn’t give him time to formulate a response. He followed the first three words with five more:

“They’re letting you out, Strauss!”

He placed the bald facts side by side as if they belonged together; as if the entire world was in collusion against him.

“Am I going with Mr. Toy?” Marty asked.

“He and the board believe you are a suitable candidate for the job at Whitehead’s estate,” Somervale said. “Imagine.” He made a low sound in his throat, which could have been laughter. “You’ll be under close scrutiny, of course. Not by me, but by whoever follows me. And if you once step out of line …”

“I understand.”

“I wonder if you do.” Somervale drew on his cigarette, still not turning around. “I wonder if you understand just what kind of freedom you’ve chosen—”

Marty wasn’t about to let this kind of talk spoil his escalating euphoria. Somervale was defeated; let him talk.

“Joseph Whitehead may be one of the richest men in Europe but he’s also one of the most eccentric, I hear. God knows what you’re letting yourself in for, but I tell you, I think you may find life in here a good deal more palatable.”

Somervale’s words evaporated; his sour grapes fell on deaf ears. Either through exhaustion, or because he sensed that he’d lost his audience, he gave up his disparaging monologue almost as soon as it began, and turned from the window to finish this distasteful business as expeditiously as he could. Marty was shocked to see the change in the man.

In the weeks since they’d last met, Somervale had aged years; he looked as though he’d survived the intervening time on cigarettes and grief. His skin was like stale bread.

“Mr. Toy will pick you up from the gates next Friday afternoon.

That’s February thirteenth. Are you superstitious?”

“No.”

Somervale handed the envelope across to Marty.

“All the details are in there. In the next couple of days you’ll have a medical, and somebody will be here to go through your position vis-a- vis the parole board. Rules are being bent on your behalf, Strauss. God knows why. There’s a dozen more worthy candidates in your wing alone.”

Marty opened the envelope, quickly scanned the tightly typed pages, and pocketed them.

“You won’t be seeing me again,” Somervale was saying, “for which I’m sure you’re suitably grateful.”

Marty let not a flicker of response cross his face. His feigned indifference seemed to ignite a pocket of unused loathing in Somervale’s fatigued frame His bad teeth showed as he said: “If I were you, I’d thank God, Strauss. I’d thank God from the bottom of my heart.”

“What for … Sir?”

“But then I don’t suppose you’ve got much room for God, have you?”

The words contained pain and contempt in equal measure. Marty couldn’t help thinking of Somervale alone in a double bed; a husband without a wife, and without the faith to believe in seeing her again; incapable of tears. And another thought came fast upon the first: that Somervale’s stone heart, which had been broken at one terrible stroke, was not so dissimilar from his own. Both hard men, both keeping the world at bay while they waged private wars in their guts. Both ending up with the very weapons they’d forged to defeat their enemies turned on themselves. It was a vile realization, and had Marty not been buoyant with the news of his release he might not have dared think it. But there it was. He and Somervale, like two lizards lying in the same stinking mud, suddenly seemed very like twins.

“What are you thinking, Strauss?” Somervale asked.

Marty shrugged.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Liar,” said the other. Picking up the file, he walked out of the Interview Room, leaving the door open behind him.

M
arty telephoned Charmaine the following day, and told her what had happened. She seemed pleased, which was gratifying. When he came off the phone he was shaking, but he felt good.

He lived the last few days at Wandsworth with stolen eyes, or that’s how it seemed. Everything about prison life that he had become so used to—the casual cruelty, the endless jeering, the power games, the sex games—all seemed new to him again, as they had been six years before.

They were wasted years, of course. Nothing could bring them back; nothing could fill them up with useful experience. The thought depressed him. He had so little to go out into the world with. Two tattoos, a body that had seen better days, memories of anger and despair. In the journey ahead he was going to be traveling light.

Chapter 8

T
he night before he left Wandsworth he had a dream. His nightlife had not been much to shout about during the years of his sentence. Wet dreams about Charmaine had soon stopped, as had his more exotic flights of fancy, as though his subconscious, sympathetic to confinement, wanted to avoid taunting him with dreams of freedom. Once in a while he’d wake in the middle of the night with his head swimming in glories, but most of his dreams were as pointless and as repetitive as his waking life. But this was a different experience altogether.

He dreamed a cathedral of sorts, an unfinished, perhaps unfinishable, masterpiece of towers and spires and soaring buttresses, too vast to exist in the physical world—gravity denied it—but here, in his head, an awesome reality. It was night as he walked toward it, the gravel crunching underfoot, the air smelling of honeysuckle, and from inside he could hear singing. Ecstatic voices, a boys’ choir he thought, rising and falling wordlessly. There were no people visible in the silken darkness around him: no fellow tourists to gape at this wonder. Just him, and the voices.