And it was the last thing he’d been expecting, so he’d stepped back in surprise, and Winter had taken that as an invitation to come in.
“Perhaps I could make us both some tea,” he’d said. And Michael had been so affronted by the cheek of the man that he couldn’t speak. And again Winter had taken the shocked silence as an invitation. He’d walked into the kitchen as if it were his own and filled the kettle right to the top with no thought for the extra electricity that might use.
They’d sat in the little front room. It was filled with the few bits of furniture Michael had brought with him from the house on the Point and they’d had to sit almost knee to knee in the big armchairs.
“What’s Jeanie to you?” Michael had demanded. He still remembered that. He’d thrust his face towards Winter’s hoping to cause the same panic he’d felt on the doorstep. “What’s Jeanie to you?”
“I’m her probation officer,” Winter had said. “I have to prepare a report.”
“She didn’t get probation. She got life. And there were reports enough done at the time.”
Too many reports. All of them prying. All of them wanting to find someone else to blame for what Jeanie had done. Him and Peg had never been given copies of the reports of course. They’d been excluded in that process too. But he guessed that they’d featured. It was always the parents’ fault, wasn’t it? The reports would have said that they’d never understood Jeanie, never given her what she’d needed. He could figure out that much from what had been said in court.
“This is different,” Winter had said. He’d had one of those voices stuck-up teachers use with daft children. Patient, but as if it’s a real strain being patient. As if he was a saint to be able to manage it. “Jeanie will soon be eligible for parole. If she’s released back into the community, it’ll be my job to supervise her on licence.”
“They’re not thinking of letting her out?”
“Don’t you think she should be?”
“It just seems like she’s been in no time. And after what she did to that lass…”
“She still says she’s innocent, you know…” He’d paused as if he expected a response from Michael. Michael had been staring at the little window which was shrouded in net so he couldn’t see out, unable to take in the notion that his daughter might soon be released. “It won’t help her case for parole, I’m afraid, insisting she didn’t commit the murder. Prisoners are supposed to confront their offending behaviour and show remorse for their actions. I’ve tried to persuade her.”
“I wouldn’t think she’d be much good at remorse.”
“I’m new to the case, Mr. Long.” Winter had leaned forward, so Michael had been able to smell his breath, peppermint masking something spicy from the night before. Not booze, of course. Winter wouldn’t be a drinker. There wasn’t the life in him for that. “But there’s no record of you having visited your daughter’
“Peg went, before she got too poorly.” The words had come out before Michael could stop them, though he’d sworn to himself that he’d tell Winter nothing. He’d driven his wife on visiting days, dropped her right outside the prison gate, because there always seemed to be a wind when they went and rain blown almost horizontal. Then he’d taken the car to the visitors’ car park and sat with his paper lying unread on the steering wheel until all the people streamed out. He’d been surprised by how ordinary they’d looked, the parents and the husbands of the women locked up. From a distance he’d not been able to pick Peg out from the rest.
“But not you?” Winter had kept the patient voice but his eyes had been full of judgement and distaste.
“Nor Mantel,” Michael had said. “He never visited her either.”
“Hardly the same thing, Mr. Long. He believed she’d killed his only daughter.”
And Michael had turned away at that, acknowledging the justice of the words, but hating the contempt in them.
“And he told Jeanie that he loved her,” he’d said quietly. A futile attempt at defiance. Then, on firmer ground, “Have you got a daughter, Winter?”
“That’s hardly relevant.”
“Aye, you do have a daughter.” He’d been able to tell by something in Winter’s face. “Imagine how you’d feel if your lass did something like that. Strangling a child just because she’d come between her and her lover. You’d feel able to support her, would you? You’d not mind visiting her in that place?”
Winter had hesitated for a moment and Michael had felt a stab of triumph. Then the probation officer had resumed in the saintly voice which made Michael want to slap him, “I might hate the crime, Mr. Long, but I’d not hate the girl who’d committed it.” He’d set down his cup and continued briskly, “Now about the parole.”
“What about it?”
“The parole board would need to know she had somewhere to come back to. Support.”
“You’re asking if she can move in with me?”
“I know you’ve found it difficult, but it need only be for a short time until she sorted out somewhere more suitable.”
“Have you been listening to a word I’ve said, man?” Michael had discovered that he was screaming. “She killed that lass and that killed my wife. How can I have her under the same roof as me?”
Only now it seemed she hadn’t killed Abigail Mantel. Sitting here on a wet Sunday after church, with nothing to cling on to but the remains of the whisky, he kept coming up against the fact and sliding away from it. It was too much for him to accept all at once. If Jeanie hadn’t been a murderer, what sort of monster was he? He’d turned her away. Outside the sky darkened but he still didn’t move. Only when the taped bells in the church tower started up again, scratchy and raucous, for the evening service, so that he knew people would be walking past, did he get up and draw the curtains and switch on the light.
Chapter Seven
The next morning Michael was awake before six as usual. It was a habit he’d never get out of now. Activity was an addiction. He’d worked twelve-hour shifts as coxswain of the pilot launch, and even after being on call all night, he’d not been able to sleep during the day. The enforced idleness of retirement made him panic. Jeanie had been lazy. Some days she’d spent hours in her room, and when he’d asked her what she was doing, she’d say she was working. It hadn’t seemed much like work to him. Occasionally she’d left her door open a crack and he’d peered in. She’d be lying on her bed, not always even dressed, and there’dbe music playing and she’d have her eyes closed. He liked some music a brass band or a march, a tune with a beat, the songs from the old musicals but she never played anything like that. This would be strings usually, or a piano, something high-pitched which made him want to piss. “Wee-wee music’ he’d called it to her, sneering, when she was being stony and blank. He didn’t know why her stillness had irritated him so much, but it had. He’d felt like screaming and lashing out at her. He never had but the anger and resentment had bubbled away. Only Peg knew it was there.
Maybe they should never have had a child. They’d been happy enough as they were. He had been, at least. He’d never really known what Peg had thought about it. Or perhaps by the time Jeanie arrived he’d been too old, too set in his ways. But he thought he’d done right by his daughter. He couldn’t see what he could have done differently. He’d paid up for the music lessons, hadn’t he? He’d driven her every week into the town, listened to the scratchy violin, the repeated scales on the upright piano which had belonged to Peg’s mum. Peg had played the piano too. After a couple of brandies when they’d had a few friends round, she’d played for them. It had always been songs which belonged to their parents’ generation, old music hall turns, but they’d all joined in, making up the words as they went, collapsing in laughter before they’d finished. He couldn’t remember ever having seen Jeanie laugh like that, even as a kid.