Alphabet (14 page)

‘Want locking up do you?' he asks. ‘I'm your man. If I had my way,' he says, ‘there'd be none of this neighbours stuff that goes on here. Recipe for disaster. In or out, either way, the door locked, better all round . . . that's how it used to be and ten to one it'll be that way again in a few years' time –'

The door shuts, not slammed, but metal on metal all the same. Simon's hands are shaking; he has to keep on the move.
He straightens the bed, wipes off the gravy as best he can, washes, feels his heart gradually give up the battle to jump out of his chest. Around him, other doors are banging closed now.
Then it's suddenly, achingly quiet, as if no one lived here at all.

What next? Really, there's only one thing. He pulls the little table out, squats by it, starts all over again, by hand, in the shadowy afternoon-dark of his cell:

You are turning me inside out.

When I am with you I feel as if I could become the best of me that
has been hidden so long, and I burn with wanting to. I feel I could
pass through the eye of a needle
. In a low voice, he sounds out the words as he writes them, listening carefully. They seem true, but at the same time, utterly impossible. The room is six foot by eight foot by twelve foot high. She is with her family in a rambling mansion in West Cork . . . She did once say she admired him, but also he is a murderer, a man who killed a woman, a weirdo, albeit bright; callous, twat, cunt, et cetera.

All the same, Simon Austen can remember the feeling of Bernadette Nightingale next to him, when he sat with his head in his hands not daring to look up. Just a warmth, and then that slightest touch, her hand to his shoulder: how long did it last? Then, it was only part of what was happening, but now, in memory, it has somehow flooded and overwhelmed the whole scene . . . What is this? he's asked himself. ‘Crap,' he has replied and of course he has also told himself the facts:
‘She's a do-gooder. Barry with tits. Fucking paid for it, isn't she?' But, but, but – he answers, not with words but somehow with the whole of him: flesh, blood, ghost. It was perfect.

Love
is the word he was following through in the Encyclopedia when Jolly Roger saw him in the library. Romantic love, it seems, thrives in hostile or inappropriate circumstances; to prefer them even. Its nature is to rise to the challenge of any
interdiction. It seeks out someone who has promised themselves to someone else, or who is in a family at war with one's own, or who is cast by evil magic into the body of a hairy beast, or is a mortal, or a god, or locked in a tower and guarded by a witch. And also it seeks out opposites, the lost other half that makes a person whole – so there's hope: her water to his fire; her caring, his rage, his messed-up life, her proper one:
chemistry.

It wasn't there before. He didn't love Amanda, he just liked her and envied her; he was scared of her too. He didn't know about love, didn't believe in it, just didn't understand that this thing existed, this transforming force presided over by a god called Eros, who disobeyed orders, shot himself in the foot by mistake, then said: Just believe me, don't look, and don't try to test it out . . .

If he had loved Amanda, perhaps everything would have come out different?

But now, with Bernadette:

I feel I could become the best of me that has been hidden so long, and
I burn with wanting to. I feel I could pass through the eye of a
needle. And I want to drive, to walk, to travel to the other side of
the world with you. See glaciers, deserts, rainforest. I want to work
for you. With you. I can learn whatever is necessary. Also, I want
to hold you. I want you to touch my skin despite what is written
there.

In B222, somewhere behind Simon's eyes, Bernadette Nightingale opens a box and takes out the neck ornament, half celtic, half modern, asymmetrical, the blue stone on one side, blood red on the other . . . He fastens the small chain and hook at the back of her neck. It's an act of sheer will, to overcome so many objections and obstacles, all the practicalities, the unknowns (in particular, does she have someone already?) but in imagination at least, he can do it.

I want to give you gifts.

I am terrified.

And this, he realises, is no longer a letter. It is something that he has to be able to actually say.

I want to be able to say all this to you, face to face.

On the first working day after the holiday, a letter comes from Tasmin. It can only be her, from the writing, but the postmark is different, somewhere in Oxfordshire. Maybe, he thinks, she's run away.

‘I don't want this,' he tells Owens. ‘It's a girl I wrote to by mistake.' But apparently they are legally obliged to give it to him. In his cell he turns the envelope, a cheap, thin envelope, different to those she used before, over and over in his hands, uncertain what exactly to do. Inside is probably a postcard, though he can't quite make out the image on the front, nor, however much he shifts the angle of it against the light, can he quite decipher the writing on the back.

They may be checking to see what he does, they may not; you can't tell. The point being, if he sends it back to the usual place, it might not get to her, someone else might open it or even if she
is
there her father could well find it first – so, she could be dropped right in it; he's not sure why it matters but he doesn't want that.

It's just a piece of paper, but he's sitting there with it in his hand like it was some kind of life or death thing and that, he suddenly finds himself thinking, is the trouble with letters: the way they have their own existence, independent of both writer and reader, the way they can continue to have an effect, even after you might have changed your mind, the way they follow you around like this. When you say something aloud, it's just the here and now, then it's gone, it's just a memory. Letters are evidence, lying there in the shoe box.

What happened to Vivienne Anne Whilden? he finds himself wondering. She probably kept on drinking, that's the truth of it.

He drops Tasmin's card, unopened, into the box: a kind of limbo. This way, he thinks, she gets to send it; I'm doing more or less what I said so they can't really go for me. Poor kid, he
thinks, she ought to find something better to do. Then he puts the lid on the box and forgets both of them. He's way beyond all that.

20

Bernie is still getting out of her coat and this gives him a chance to look at her, which is more than usually good, since part of why he feels light-headed and almost sick is that he has been worried that he has somehow got her wrong, exaggerated her or even made her up completely . . . The rest of it is that he's determined to make his speech, to say it face to face. Not right away, but as soon as he can, once they have broken the ice. At some point she will ask if he's done any writing and perhaps he can say it then:
Bernie, I have to tell you that I think about you a
lot. When I am with you I
– It's madness, like one of those crazy sports people take up: jumping off cliffs on elastic bands, scaling office blocks without a rope. But he will do it, out loud.

He watches her hang the coat on the chair, slip the keys in its pocket. Still standing, she opens the square-edged briefcase that's on her desk, pulls out various envelopes and papers.

‘Sorry about all this,' she says, smiling at him. Her lips are darker: new lipstick. She's wearing a brown sweater he's seen before, a knitwear skirt and brand new ankle boots, several earrings at once, though for some reason, the rings on her fingers are gone. She sits down in the nearest of the two obliquely together chairs, gestures for him to do the same.

‘Happy New Year. Best wishes for 1989,' he tells her.

‘You too,' she says, taking the outstretched hand and clasping it briefly in both of hers. ‘And I hope –'

‘How did it go?' he interrupts, apologises for doing so, continues. ‘How did it go, then, in Cork?'

‘Oh, you know, family . . .' she says. ‘But yes, overall very good. Well –' She glances down, shuffles through the papers in her lap. Her face seems somehow younger, a little fuller than
before. There's a blush on her normally pale cheeks. She's had a break, he thinks, that's what it is.

‘How was the weather there?' he asks.

‘Quite fine on the day,' she tells him, still concentrating on the papers. She doesn't ask how it was here. She doesn't ask if he's done any more writing. ‘Simon,' she says when she eventually looks up. ‘There's good news. In fact, there seems to be quite a lot of it about, but let me tell you yours first –'

‘Bernie –' he begins just as she hands him a couple of pages from the pile on her lap, the first headed in bold: Transfer of inmate AS2356768, Austen, Simon. ‘– Bernie, I –'

‘It's an incredible opportunity,' she says, spreading her hands, as a child does to catch raindrops or snowflakes falling from the sky. ‘You'll be in a group of up to eight, in a completely constructive, therapeutic regime, two years max, then back into the main system is the only downside. Groupwork, psychiatrist, work or education in the afternoon. Multidisciplinary. A modern building, good relationship with the local community, opportunities for charity work and so on.
It'll be tough, but very constructive . . . They've worked for years to get this off the ground and it has just started last year.
Lord knows how long it'll last in the current climate . . .
Sorry,' she says. ‘It must be an awful lot to take in. There's a whole pile of stuff here for you to read . . . But it's really so fortunate that this has happened. You could have waited a year, or for ever –' The silence that follows this is like glass between them, has to be almost literally broken.

‘Where is Wentham?' he asks.

‘On the east coast,' she says. ‘I think it's north of –'

‘I don't want to go,' he interrupts, glaring.

Her face softens, falls still as she says, ‘It is what we have been talking about all along.'

‘I don't want to go,' he repeats. ‘Don't you
see
, Bernie?' he asks her, his voice suddenly hoarse, so that he has to stop and work his throat to clear it.

‘I see you're getting very agitated,' she says, slowly, moving the remainder of the papers from her lap to the floor, but all the
time looking at his face. ‘Will you try to stay calm and tell me why?'

‘Why do you think?' he barks back at her. ‘I like it here, don't I? Just so fucking lovely, isn't it?' he says. Why did he think she was special? What the hell has happened? How has he ended up like this, tied in a mass of knots by some do-gooding social worker type, older than him anyhow? Why can't he find the switch to turn down the heat even though he really wants to? It's absolute shite – ‘I like having these meetings –' he says and the effort of getting to the words stuck inside him makes him rise abruptly to his feet, so that she does too, bending as she does so to push the chair further back: she's making sure she can reach the panic button, red, mounted in a metal housing and screwed to the desk, which itself is bolted to the floor. One press on that button and twenty screws will be running across the yard; in ten seconds they'd be through the door and have him face down on the rough grey carpet tiles marked with Barry's and others' dropped cigarettes, his arm pulled up his back and probably out of its socket too.

‘Don't!' he tells her, his eyes flicking between her right hand and her face, trying to judge: Will she? What will I do if she does?
Please
, he thinks, though he can't say it . . . She's frowning and there's a sliver of something new in her eyes, not fear so much as a different kind of alertness.

‘If I think you're going to assault me, Simon, I will have no choice,' she tells him, her voice just a little slower and quieter than usual. ‘Please step back.' It's true – somehow he's already leaned forward as if to catch her arm, to stop her from stopping him from telling her what he needs to say. Now that she's made him see himself he's frozen like a statue: it is only with a deliberate effort that he gets the muscles in his legs and torso to relax, to allow him to stand straight again. There's about four feet between the two of them.

‘That's better,' she says, and breathes deeply. ‘Now –' Now, he'll have to do it, or he never will.

‘Bernie, listen. I think about you a lot –' he begins and for a moment, the words seem to carry him up and along. ‘I've got
to say this: when I'm with you – I feel as if you're turning me inside out. I feel as if I could become the best of me, all that has been hidden so long. Most of my life. And I want –' He pauses and lets his eyes take her in, standing there in front of him, the same person he always thought she was: utterly extraordinary, full of promise – but not, he can see from the warm but as ever curious look on her face, the sympathy there, the
distance
, not
in love
with him. She does not feel the same way. And she is Bernie: you absolutely can't make her do anything she doesn't want to do.

‘I want all sorts of things,' he says, suddenly exhausted, ‘but – you get the drift and I can tell it's a one-way street . . .' She doesn't deny it. His legs feel leaden and he sits down, exhausted, watches her gather up the papers that were scattered all over the office floor when he jumped up. I knew this all along, he tells himself, reaching to pick up a couple of pages that are close to his chair. One is labelled
Research at Wentham
Special Unit for Violent Offenders
, another
Principles of Drama
Therapy
. Drama therapy? Will they have him in a wig and tutu, then, or wrapped in a sheet with leaves on his head like those idiots that did the pantomime two years ago? What the hell.
It'll be a relief, he thinks, as she hands the rest of the papers to him. Just to get away from this. Not to have to think about you any more.