Before leaving the gatehouse Hannah clipped the keys on to her belt and tucked them into the leather pouch which was designed to keep them hidden from view. The pouch was hardly an attractive garment but she always wore it. It was a rule and she’d never had any problems with rules. Perhaps that was why she’d settled without too much difficulty into the routine of the prison. There was a comforting hierarchy: governors of different grades, prisoners with different privileges, a system and a structure. Rosie’s life seemed to have no order and that was why Hannah was alarmed for her. She had personal knowledge of how unsettling disorder could be.
The prison was category C, medium security, taking men who had been dispersed from local jails and lifers nearing the end of their sentences. It had once been an RAF base. There was still an enormous hangar which housed the workshops. The lads slept in billets where once conscripts spat on boots and folded blankets. Hannah had slipped into the way of calling them lads, though some of them were older than her. That showed, she thought, that she had become institutionalized into prison life.
The library was in a hut of its own, attached at the back by a brick corridor to the education department. The site of the prison was vast. Now, at the beginning of July, it was a pleasant if sticky walk from the gate. There were flowers everywhere. Huge circular beds had been planted in formation as in a municipal park. The grass was closely cropped. The prison regularly won prizes for its gardens. In the winter it was a different matter. Then she came to work dressed for an expedition to the Arctic. The wind blew straight from Scandinavia. Horizontal rain and sleet seemed to last for days. Men who’d grown up in cities further south spoke of their sentence as if they’d been sent to a Siberian work camp. They called it the Gulag. The nearest railway was twenty miles away.
Hannah’s orderly, Marty, was waiting outside for her, leaning against the door where the week before she had stuck a poster saying: NO SHORTS PLEASE. Since the beginning of the heatwave the men had started to dress as if for the beach. The exposed flesh and muscular thighs had seemed inappropriate for a library and, with the Governor’s authority, she’d put a stop to it. As Hannah approached she realized the phone was ringing inside. Marty must have heard it, but he hadn’t called or waved to hurry her along. By the time she’d unlocked the door it had stopped. Automatically she wondered if it had been her daughter. Anxiety about Rosie stayed with her constantly, eating away at her. She knew it was a silly habit, like checking the gas was switched off before leaving the house and always being early, but she couldn’t help it. Knowing the history of the habit didn’t help at all.
‘You can’t be on her back all the time,’ Jonathan would say. ‘Relax. What’s wrong with you? Hormones, I suppose.’ And if Rosie was there too they would snigger together. After all, what was more amusing than a middle-aged, menopausal woman scared to death that her reckless daughter would get into trouble? Because Rosie was reckless in an overreachingly confident way that left Hannah breathless.
Of course, she hadn’t come in that morning before Hannah left for work and Hannah didn’t know which friend she’d imposed on for a bed for the night. When she’d heard the phone it had occurred to her briefly that Rosie had called to apologize, but she dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Some chance. She picked up her bag, let Marty through ahead of her and locked the door behind them.
Marty was new to the job, different from any other orderlies she’d been given. It was a cushy number and the other men she’d worked with were eager to please, desperate to make themselves indispensable so she wouldn’t find it easy to sack them before the end of their stint. They were only allowed six months in the job. It was a security concern. Supervisors and prisoners shouldn’t have the chance to get too close. Marty was self-contained, efficient. He didn’t tell her about his family or try to impress by talking about the books he’d read. He didn’t say anything much unless it was about the library. Hannah thought he was probably in his thirties but he had one of those pale-skinned, freckled faces which always look boyish. She watched him lift a pile of newspapers on to a table and begin to sort them.
‘Why don’t you put the kettle on, Marty?’
He looked up, surprised, then nodded. Usually they had a cup of tea just before opening for the first session and today business didn’t start until the period of lunchtime association at eleven thirty. But it wouldn’t have occurred to him to comment.
For the first time she wondered what crime he had committed. Her friends – because she did have friends, despite Rosie’s jibe – always asked about that.
‘But what are they in for, Hannah?’ they’d say with the disapproving curiosity of a Telegraph reader sneaking a look at the Sun. ‘Who do you have to mix with in there? Rapists? Muggers of little old ladies?’
They were surprised when Hannah said she didn’t know. She was never sure that they quite believed her. It was etiquette, this lack of interest. She wouldn’t have enquired of the borrowers in the community library where she’d previously worked if they’d ever been prosecuted for speeding or tax evasion. Besides, it was irrelevant. It didn’t matter. The prison was separate from the outside world. So long as the men fitted into the system and caused no bother, nobody much cared what had happened to bring them there. Except perhaps Arthur, her colleague. It seemed to matter to him very much.
Looking at Marty filling the kettle at the small sink in her office, she thought suddenly: it must have been an offence of violence. It was a revelation and she wondered why she hadn’t realized it before. He was angry. Continually angry. He controlled it well and kept it hidden but now that it was obvious to Hannah she thought it explained a lot about him. That was why he kept himself to himself. It was the only way he could keep his anger in check.
She phoned home. There was no reply. Of course. Rosie would still be in a bed in a strange house, sleeping off the excesses of the night before. Not that she’d wake with a hangover. The young never seemed to have hangovers. Then, with the same sense of startling revelation she’d had when looking at Marty, it occurred to her that Rosie might not be on her own in bed. They never discussed her relationships with men. If ever Hannah broached the subject, talking elliptically perhaps about safe sex, she’d roll her eyes towards the ceiling and say, ‘Oh Mum. Please!’
Hannah thought there was a boy. Joseph. He phoned and when Rosie was out she took messages. If she was in they talked for hours and she’d hear Rosie laughing. But when he came to the house it was always as part of a crowd and often he had his arm round another girl. If Rosie was hurt by that she didn’t show it. Hannah hoped Rosie did have a love. She wanted something magic and gut-wrenching for her daughter. Don’t wait, she wanted to tell her. Do it now. Soon you’ll have responsibilities. You’ll be too old. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.
While Marty squatted by the tray on the floor, squeezing tea bags in the tasteful National Trust mugs she’d brought from home, Hannah started opening her mail. There wasn’t much. A memo from her boss in the Central Library about budgets. An agenda for the prison librarians’ summer school. A plain white envelope with a handwritten address which she recognized immediately. Something similar came every year. Before she could open it the phone rang again. It was Rosie, bristling with righteous indignation.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope you’re ready to apologize.’
It caught Hannah on the hop. She didn’t know whether to snap back a sarcastic answer or make an attempt to be conciliatory. She knew why that was. She was afraid Rosie would up sticks and move in with Jonathan and Eve if she upset her too much. Rosie had never mentioned it, hadn’t used it as a threat, but Hannah was always aware of the possibility. In the end she wasn’t given a chance to respond.