Wasted Years

Forty-Two

“The hostel we spoke about,” Pam Van Allen said, “it’s all fixed up.”

She waited for Prior to respond but, of course, that wasn’t necessarily what he did. Most people, ordinary people, the kind you bump into at parties, supermarkets, dentists’ waiting rooms, make a remark like that and they react. “Oh, really?” Or “That’s good.” A grunt even. Something that helps the conversation along.

Whereas Prior …

It was enough for him today to continue to stare at her, not threatening exactly, nothing sexual the way it would be with a lot of men, locked away without the benefits of conjugal visits. Prior simply stared. And waited. Okay, you’re here, doing what you’re paid to do, now say what you have to say.

Pam crossed one leg over the other automatically smoothing her skirt past her knee. “Big, old Victorian house over by Alexandra Park. Really nice.” She paused. “I don’t know whether you know it round there?”

This time there was a grunt of kinds, not expressive enough for Pam to tell if it meant yes or no. Perhaps he’d simply been clearing his throat.

“Anyway, like I say, it is very nice. Kept up better than a number of hostels we use, I’d have to say that.” She saw his eyes shift focus towards her hands and realized that she’d been fidgeting with the silver ring she wore on the little finger of her right hand. “You will be sharing, a room I mean. Did I mention that before?”

Prior shook his head.

“Sorry, thought I had. Two of you most likely. It’s the only thing about the rooms being so big. All the usual regulations, pretty much what you’d expect. No alcohol, no drugs. Restrictions about visitors, too. Up into the bedrooms, that is.” What was the matter with her? Why was she chattering on? She uncrossed her legs and eased back in the chair; held, for several seconds, her breath and returned his stare.

“As soon as you’re released, we’ll help you to look for work and accommodation, like I’ve said. Things like making sure you’re on the housing list. Those flats above the Victoria Centre, they fall vacant pretty often. And then there are always the housing associations. They’ll look sympathetically on your application as a matter of principle.”

The air inside the room seemed to be getting thinner and thinner. Pam wanted to dart a glance towards her watch, but didn’t like to try. She seemed to have been talking for ages now, a barely assisted monologue. Prior listening, not caring; as if none of this had anything to do with him. As if she were making plans for somebody else.

“Your wife …” the words were out before she could stop them.

“Ruth,” Prior said.

“Yes.”

“What about her?”

“I was just, I suppose, wondering, well, if you’d thought any more about maybe trying to get in touch with her.”

“Should I?”

Pam gestured vaguely with both hands “I don’t know. I mean, no. I don’t think there’s any should about it. It’s not a case, I mean, of obligation.”

Now he was staring again, feeling the pressure she had put herself under, enjoying it.

“Sometimes,” Pam said carefully, finding her way, “especially when couples haven’t seen one another for a long time, there’s a sense of-what shall I say? — unfinished business. Things that have gone unsaid for too long. A lot of stuff that has to be cleared away before people can get on with their lives?

“People?”

“Yes.”

“Ruthie and me.”

“Yes, I mean, I suppose … I just thought …”

“No,” Prior said. “I don’t think so. Like I said, that was all a long time ago.”

Pam got to her feet; she was feeling shaky but she would have found it hard to have said exactly why.

“Besides,” Prior said, “I don’t even know where she is.”

“I’ll see you again,” Pam said, “on the day of your release. After that, it will need to be weekly. You can make an appointment to come to the office, regular, that will be best.”

Prior nodded agreement and got to his feet, once again offering her his hand, cool and calloused and dry.

Resnick was at home when the call came. One thing and another he’d earned himself an hour or two off. For some time he’d employed a woman from up the road to come in one afternoon a week and keep the place clean, hoover and dust. Until Dizzy had nipped her ankle for the third week in succession it had worked out fine. Now there he was, lugging the old-fashioned Hoover up and down stairs, half-heartedly rubbing lavender furniture polish into the table in the dining room, working a balding squeezy mop over the kitchen floor.

Cat hairs everywhere.

He made it more palatable by playing music loud enough to be heard throughout the house. Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis was rabble-rousing in front of the Basie Band when the phone started ringing; he didn’t hear it until the first solo was over and the sound had diminished down to the sparse notes of the Count’s piano.

He almost tripped over a distressed Bud, who’d been cat-napping on the landing, one paw folded over his eyes. Still mumbling apologies, Resnick lifted the receiver just in time.

“Said at the station you were there,” Rylands said. “Thought they must’ve got it wrong.”

“Hang on a minute,” Resnick said. “Let me turn this record down.”

“Atomic Mister Basie,” Rylands said when Resnick arrived back at the phone. “Great record. I remember the first time …”

“What do you want?” Resnick asked.

“That arrangement we spoke of …” Rylands’s voice was lower now, as though there were someone in the house he didn’t want to overhear.

“What about it?”

“I think he’d be willing to talk, to that young woman, like we said.”

“Good. And the other matter?”

A slight pause and then, “I’m not sure now, can’t be positive, but, yet, I reckon I know where she might be.”

Lynn had picked Keith up several blocks away, close to the Portland Leisure Centre where she sometimes went for a morning swim, days it opened at seven thirty, do your lengths in freedom before the first of the school parties arrived. She’d driven round onto the embankment and parked, Keith’s response when she suggested walking little more than an inclination of the head. In the end, she had got out of the car and he had followed, the same as he had when she’d set off towards Wilford Bridge.

Now and again teams of rowers went past them, water splashing up in their wake, voices of the coxes clear and sharp as they urged them on. Asian families sat on the sloping grass, women together in brightly colored saris, children playing in their midst; the men sat off to the side, dealing cards onto a rug.

She was surprised how small he was, how young his face: it was like walking with a shame-faced younger brother, a recalcitrant nephew. A son. A child, certainly. And yet she had seen his record, knew the time he had spent in YOIs. She had read the report of his attempted suicide. “A feeble and misguided cry for help.”

“What’s it like,” Lynn asked, “living with your dad?”

“S’all right.”

“Better than living with your mum?”

“S’pose so.”

“When I was still living at home,” Lynn said, “my mum, she always meant well, but she was forever fussing at me, why don’t you do this, why don’t you do that?” Lynn laughed, taking Keith by surprise. “There I was, twenty years old, standing in her kitchen, taller than her by half a head, and she’s still wetting the corner of her handkerchief with her tongue and aiming to wipe this bit of dirt I’ve got on my face. Got so I couldn’t stand it at all.”

“Yes,” Keith said. “I know what you mean.”

“Listen,” Lynn said, stopping to look back the way they’d come, “why don’t we walk back there to the Memorial Gardens and sit down. Not too many people as a rule. Might be easier to talk.”

Except that the whole place was under the thrall of a monolithic tribute to Queen Victoria, it was a public garden like many another: beds of flowers carefully tended by council workmen, assorted trees and banks of shrubs, patches of lawn interrupted by gravel paths.

“You realize,” Lynn said, “nothing that I’ve said’s an absolute promise?”

“I’ll not go back inside,” Keith said. “I’ll kill myself first.”

She laid her hand on the bare skin of his forearm and he flinched.

“Like I said, we’ll do what we can. I’ll do everything I can. I promise you that.” She waited until, for a second, his eyes flickered towards her face. “As long as you keep your side of the bargain.”

“I’ve told you …”

“I know. But I have to be sure.”

Without difficulty, Keith conjured up Darren’s face. That look in his eyes, that blue-gray brightness becoming brighter still as he toyed with the pistol in his hand. Next time, Keith knew, it was going to be real.

“It’s okay,” Keith said quietly, staring at the ground. “Long as you play straight with me, you’ll get what you want. No mistake.”