The thing that no one ever told you about life on the inside, Jake Keane often thought, was that it was the little things that got you through each and every day. Small victories were what made all the difference between surviving, versus a day where you’d gladly hang yourself off a light fitting just to escape the place, just to experience some sort of freedom, before you completely forgot what it ever tasted like in the first place.
Yet just the tiniest little thing could help you sidetrack the black dog of depression that haunted everyone here and survive another interminable day, each one so long that sometimes even a single hour dragged by like a month. Jake had been reading a lot of Virginia Woolf lately, an author who really seemed to understand what incarceration felt like, and could fully understand what she meant when she wrote that lasting through a day was relatively easy: it was the hours in between that nearly killed you.
There were times when he’d look at the clock at eight in the evening, then congratulate himself on having survived a whole entire hour since seven. And the next challenge to himself would then be to last all the way up until nine. That was how you got by, he now knew, lasting like that, from minute to minute, then from hour to hour. Till dark, till lockdown, till blessed silence and the deep joy of being able to say to yourself, that’s that then. Another day survived. Another one ticked off.
But no doubt about it, little things helped. Like landing a window seat in the canteen at mealtimes. Like a meal that you could actually eat, one that didn’t look and taste like cat food and come swimming in congealed grease and fat. Getting a bit of sunshine during exercise breaks in the yard outside, the only time in the long, long day you ever got to breathe anything other then the foul, stale air inside that stank worse than twenty minging gym bags. Even on days when the heavens opened and it bucketed down, Jake still went out there for the single hour they were permitted, never caring that he was getting drenched through to the bone. Anything, just to taste proper clean air. Amazing himself at just how much he missed it, at how little he’d appreciated it back in the days when he was a free man.
A good day could be one where he’d successfully cadge a fag, then trade it in for a decent book that might keep him going for days. Not one from the library, they were worse than useless. Some of the lads ripped pages out of them, sometimes to use for rolling joints, sometimes just out of pure badness, so you’d come to a critical plot point and ten pages would be missing. Books the screws smuggled in from outside were miles better. Cost you in the long run, but it was worth it. Jake had learned that one early on.
And reading was getting him through this. Keeping his nose stuck in a book and well out of everyone else’s way. Because if there was a survival manual in here, it was this; head down, mouth shut, make neither friends nor enemies, be as neutral as Switzerland, blend in to the background like wallpaper. Strive to be someone people neither like nor dislike, then just forget about the minute you’re out of their sight. And the golden rule; above all, never get involved.
His long-term survival mechanism was to keep quiet, keep to himself and at all costs, steer clear of all trouble. He got on reasonably well with the screws too, who from time to time would do him the odd favour. One even enrolled him on an Open University course, English and Psychology, which he loved and worked hard at. In his first year here, he’d done a TEFL course too and had surprised himself not only by thoroughly enjoying learning all the endless intricacies of the English language, but by getting a first class honour in it too, graduating top of his class.
Studying was a wonderful and a welcome distraction, gave him that extra bit of privacy too. When the others were on at him to play soccer in the yard during exercise break, he’d roll his eyes and indicate the pile of books on his knee that he had to wade through. And they’d jokingly slag him off and call him the Professor and leave him alone, in peace. Which suited.
You lived for visiting day, everyone did. Got you out of your routine, shook things up a bit. Every Wednesday, between two and four; trouble was though, you only got to see your family for about half an hour of that. The rest of the time, they’d be on the outside queuing to get in, doing security checks that would put the one at the airport to shame. Jake always felt sorriest for the wives and girlfriends traipsing in through all weathers, wheeling buggies and strollers, waiting outside in the freezing cold for hours just to get thirty lousy minutes with a loved one. And not even alone time; you were stuck in the visitors’ room with half the prison looking at you. But Christ, what that half hour meant to you, if you were on the inside.
His main visitor these days was his mam, Imelda. Sixty-five years old and yet she’d still battle her way on two buses, plus the mile-long uphill road from bus stop to prison gates, not to mention the hour-long wait she’d then have to get through security. And all so she could just to get to see her youngest son for half an hour, one day a week. But she never once missed coming, not even when her arthritis was at her, not even last winter when she had the flu. It was heartbreaking. Always there with a weak smile for him, always putting on a brave face, never letting on how deeply ashamed she must be. Wearing her good coat and the special perfume she only ever wore either to weddings or funerals. She knew he had no one else to visit him, so she never once let him down.
Tough love was his mam’s thing, though from where Jake was sitting on the far side of the grille from her, it often felt more like soft hate. Bloody holiday camp in here, she’d gripe at him, though Jake knew her well enough to know this was her reverse psychology way of trying to cheer him up. Sure, what have you to do only lie around reading all your books all day, she’d tease him, though they both knew that was about as far from the truth as you could get. And would you just look at this place, she’d gesture around her, it’s like a three-star hotel. You sleep in a room with its own telly, where the quilt covers match the curtains and you get three hot meals served up to you a day and what’s more, you even get paid an allowance by the gobshite government for doing the time in here.
None of this was strictly true, but if it helped his mam get by imagining that he was living like a guest in the Holiday Inn, then it suited Jake to let her continue on in the fantasy.
Then just as she was leaving at the end of each visit, she’d reluctantly pull her good coat and woolly hat back on, the ones she always saved for Sunday Mass. It was a small, insignificant thing, but one that always seemed to stab right at the bottom of Jake’s heart. That his mother alone, out of everyone he knew and had ever known, had put herself out so much, that she’d even got herself all dressed up just to spend thirty short minutes with him.
Aside from her though, only solicitors had special visitors’ privileges. If you’d a trial or an appeal coming up, your solicitor could arrange to see you at any time and the wardens had no choice but to let them. Not that this had ever once happened to Jake. His trial was nearly two years ago and even then he’d been on the free legal aid, which meant he got a well-intentioned but utterly inexperienced law graduate who looked about fifteen and who almost gave himself an anxiety stroke at the very sight of a judge and jury, then got red-eyed and trembly the minute the verdict was announced. To the extent that Jake felt so sorry for the poor kid, he ended up consoling him while in handcuffs waiting to be taken off to the Cloverhill Detention Centre, the first place they sent you before a bed could be found for you in prison proper.
Would have been comical, if it hadn’t been so tragic.
So that sunny spring day not long after Easter, when Jake got a message to say there was someone to see him and that he was to head to the visitors’ room immediately, he was completely at a loss. He was certain no lawyer would be coming out all this way to see him.
Jake knew the screw that lead him down to security well, name of Cagney, a likeable fella once you stayed on his right side. Had four small kids and worked all the overtime he could get, so he was well known in here.
‘Any idea who this is?’ Jake asked him, as he was searched and patted down, then put through a security X-ray device on his way out of Block C.
Cagney shrugged.
‘Could be your parole officer?’
But Jake knew that was unlikely; for starters, his parole hearing wasn’t coming up till the end of the month, way too early for someone to be talking to him about it now. Guys from parole didn’t operate like that; they kept you sweating right up till the very last minute. Made you think you hadn’t a snowball’s chance of getting out, keep you on your toes, extract the very last drop of good behaviour out of you.
‘Because you know,’ Cagney went on in that chatty, likeable way he had, ‘and on the QT, of course, you’ve every chance of getting out of here early. If every prisoner behaved as well as you have, I can tell you, it would make my job a helluva lot easier. Between ourselves, I’ll certainly be giving you a glowing report when the time comes and that’s a promise.’
The prospect of early parole hadn’t occurred to Jake, good news rarely did. It was far safer to assume the worst in here, spared you the dull agony of disappointment when things didn’t go your way. Which in his life, was most of the time.
But when he finally cleared security and got to the visitors’ room, he saw no one he recognised and certainly no one that looked like they were from the parole board either.
He walked up and down the narrow passageway on the inmates’ side and checked the far side of each metal grille a couple of times … Not a soul that could possibly be there to see him.
And just as he was about to give up and head back, a voice suddenly stopped him in his tracks.
A woman’s voice, clipped, clear and direct.
‘Excuse me, are you by any chance Jake Keane?’
It certainly wasn’t anyone from the parole board. Instead he found a youngish woman, early thirties at a guess, whippet thin and pale as a ghost, which only made her coal-black eyes stand out even more. Fine, dark brown hair neatly tied back, wearing a smart black suit, black briefcase, black everything. Attractive, even if she did look like she hadn’t slept in about the last three years. But if she put on half a stone and got a bit of sunshine, Jake thought, she’d be something to look at: pretty, even. A solicitor, Jake guessed. She definitely had that official, formal, tense look about her that lawyers visiting here always had. Like she’d just come to say her piece, get the hell out of here then quickly head back to the comforting warmth of the law library as soon as possible.
Jake sighed deeply, knowing the type all too well. Knowing right well that this would make an interesting anecdote for her to tell her other lawyer cronies in Doheny and Nesbitts or whatever trendy watering hole the legal set hung out in these days. ‘Girlies, you won’t beeeeelieeeeeeeve where I had to go to see a client today!’ he could imagine this one shrieking to her other well-heeled professional pals. As if dispatching guys to rot out here was just a distasteful part of their job description, best treated as a joke in a pub. Unaware of the reality, what life in here was really like for her more unfortunate ‘clients’. Made his blood boil to even think about it, and not for the first time, he wished he could force every lawyer he’d ever had the misfortune to come across to spend just one single night in here. See how they liked it then.
But if there was one thing that doing time taught you, it was the value of silence. So Jake said nothing, just sat down opposite the grille from her and waited for this woman to talk, to explain the extraordinary reason for her being here.
‘Good morning,’ she began, clearing her throat. ‘Emm … Apologies for disturbing you, but I just wondered if I might have a moment of your time?’
‘Well, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ Jake smiled wryly through the grille at her, ‘I’ve got all the time in the world. I’m kind of what you might call a captive audience.’
Then he shoved his fair hair out of his face, folded his arms and sat back prepared to listen, taking her in from head to toe. A real hard nut, was his first outside guess about her. He could tell by the way she sat ramrod straight in front of him, like she was about to chair a meeting any second. Jake tended to classify people as either being tough or soft, and they certainly didn’t look any tougher than this one.
Then he noticed her thin, bony fingers drumming off the narrow ledge in front of her and thought no, hard is the wrong word, she just has something on her mind, that’s all: she’s here on a clear mission. So he decided to make it easy for her.
‘Look,’ he told her, more gently, ‘I’ve no idea who you are, but if you’re from Legal Aid, then you’ve had a wasted journey. I’m up for parole in a few weeks …’
‘I’m not a lawyer. My name’s Eloise Elliot,’ she explained crisply and for some reason the name rang a bell with Jake.
‘Eloise Elliot,’ he repeated, racking his brains to remember where he had heard it before.
‘Senior Editor at the Daily Post.’
And then it all slotted together in his head. Of course, he read the online edition every day in the prison library; he must have seen that name a thousand times on the editorial page. Okay, so now it was suddenly easier for him to get a proper handle on her. Someone married to her job, he guessed, one of those workaholics who was chained to her desk, a woman who didn’t just live for work, but who ate, drank and slept it too.
‘Anyway, here’s the thing,’ Eloise Elliot went on, in the brisk, business like way she had. ‘I’m about to commission a series of stories on former inmates and how they readjust to life on the outside, as soon as they’re released. And what I’m here to ask you, is whether you might have any interest in taking part? It would of course mean monitoring how you readjust to life outside over the next few months, how you coped, how things work out for you, that kind of thing. All done anonymously, of course, your name wouldn’t appear in the paper or anything like that. You’d just be there for deep background info to the, emm … series, nothing more than that. So, what do you think?’
Jake said nothing at first, just sat back, taking her in. Had to give the girl this much, he thought, most people on their first visit here seemed shaken to hell at the conditions around them. Particularly the women, who’d barely be able to make eye contact with you, just wanted to say their piece and get the hell out of there.
But not Miss Eloise Elliot. Instead she sat opposite him waiting on his answer, cool and composed, not seeming in the least bit fazed by where she was, or the fact that she was talking to a convict. Clearly this woman wasn’t just made of strong stuff, but had nerve endings lined with lead titanium.
For some reason, that impressed Jake.
But her coming to see him was still a mystery. What in the name of God could the editor of a huge paper like the Post possibly want with him? That was what he couldn’t figure; made no sense to him on any level.
‘Okay if I call you Eloise?’ Jake eventually said, looking keenly at her.
‘Of course.’
‘You mean you don’t insist on ‘Madame Editor,’ like on your letters page?’ he threw in, grinning.
‘Eloise is fine,’ she said, looking impressed that not only did he read the national paper of record, but the letters page to boot.
‘In that case Eloise, I have to tell you that what you just said sounds like the single greatest load of horse manure this side of the Grand National.’
‘Excuse me?’
Right then, he thought. Here’s a woman unused to being spoken to like that. But on the other hand, she’d got him all the way out here, and it sure as hell was an improvement on hanging around in his overcrowded cell. Might as well have a bit of fun while he was here, he figured.
‘Well, for starters,’ he said, lazily stretching his long legs out in front of him, like a man with all the time in the world.
‘Why in the name of God would the Post have the slightest interest in writing about someone like me? I read your paper day in and day out and even I’m able to tell you this much. Your readers are predominantly ABC1, am I right?’
She nodded.
‘Now if you were the editor of say, the Chronicle or the Evening Tatler, I might at least be able to understand where you were coming from, but your lot are about as far removed from tabloid readers as you could possibly get.’
‘Well, yes … but, I don’t understand what you’re driving at.’
‘Eloise, it makes damn-all sense to me why you think your average Post reader would possibly be interested in the likes of me. Never mind what’ll become of me on the outside. With the exception of my mother, my own family barely even care. So who do you possibly think would ever give a shite about an ex-con, back on the outside?’
‘Well for starters, I would,’ she told him firmly, returning his gaze full on. Almost, the thought hit him from out of nowhere, like she’d rehearsed her speech on the way over.
‘And you can be sure that if I would, then plenty of other people would too. Jake, it’s precisely because this is not the kind of series that’s ever been commissioned before that I want to do it. And you’re absolutely perfect for us. I called the governor to ask if he could recommend someone who I might be able to talk to and he said you were far and away the best candidate. A model prisoner, in fact, is how he described you.’
Next thing, she was whipping a notepad out of her bag and referring to some neat notes she’d made earlier.
‘Ah Jesus,’ Jake groaned. ‘Don’t tell me you’re starting now?’
‘Just look at this,’ she went on, ignoring him, and sounding far more animated. ‘The governor also mentioned that you came top of your class when you took your TEFL qualification. Jake, that’s amazing! And not only that, but apparently you’re studying for your Open University exams too. He says your chances of making parole are excellent and that you’re unlikely to re-offend …’
He sighed deeply while she talked on. Okay, so she knew all there was to know about him, presumably including what he was in for; she’d obviously done all her homework, and had somehow decided that he wasn’t a threat. But that wasn’t what bothered him – in here, the first thing you surrendered at the door was any right to privacy – he’d long since taken that for granted. But there was something else about Ms. Eloise Elliot, something a bit disconcerting. (Definitely a Ms., he decided the second he locked eyes on her. No way would this one going by the prefix Miss; he’d stake his parole on it.) Not so much what she was saying, but the utterly focused, intent way she was studying him while she said it. Like she was reading each and every one of his features, scanning his face, almost as though she recognised someone else in it.
And she wasn’t aware of it, but she had a slight tell whenever she spoke about this so-called series she was commissioning, like she wasn’t being entirely truthful. Every time she mentioned it, she’d colour a bit and glance shiftily to her left. It was tiny, she probably wasn’t even aware she was doing it and it wouldn’t have taken that much blinking to miss it, but Jake caught it alright. Two long years in here had left him expert when it came to reading ‘tells’; he played a lot of poker with his cellmates and it got so you could read people as easily as one of his books.
But why would she come out all this way just to lie to him? Made no sense on any level, no matter what way he looked at it.
‘So Jake, what do you think?’
I’ll tell you exactly what I think, Ms. Eloise Elliot, he thought to himself. I think that there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye. And that you’re possibly the worst person at covering up a lie that I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a few.
But then he caught the desperate, almost pleading look in her black eyes and softened. She’d come all this way. She’d gone to so much bother to find out about him. Go easy, he thought.
‘Tell you what, can I sleep on it?’ he said and she smiled, looking relieved that at least he hadn’t turned her down flat.
‘Of course, Jake. But before I go, would it be OK if I ask you just one or two more things? Just for, emm … deep background?’
‘Fire away,’ he said easily, thinking, ‘deep background’ my arse.
‘Do you have family?’
‘Are you kidding me? Yeah, too many.’
‘How many of you are there?’
‘Do you mean who are still speaking to me? That’d be just the one.’
‘Are your parents alive?’
‘Yeah, but my dad left when I was a baby so now there’s just my mother. Who, just in case you want to write it down in your notebook, is the one person in my family still talking to me.’
‘Oh, right,’ she said, looking as if she was trying her level best not to ask why the others now had nothing to do with him.
‘And where do you live?’
‘When I get out? As they’d say in your paper, I’m currently of ‘no fixed abode’. My mam’s sofa, if I’m lucky.’
‘What about grandparents? Any still living?’
He saw her suddenly bite her tongue, as if she knew she’d gone too far and was beginning to sound nosey.
‘You really need to go into that much detail for your series?’ Jake grinned cheekily across at her.
‘Sorry, no of course not. But if you didn’t mind, would you be able to tell me a little bit about yourself? You know, like how you pass the time in here? I know you study, so you must read a lot, but I wondered if you’d any other interest or hobbies, like sports? Maybe even … playing a musical instrument?’
And so he went along with it and humoured her, even though she kept using the word ‘why’ so much that it gave him a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, not unlike when he was being interrogated by police. A memory he’d actively been trying to tune out for a long time.
‘Oh and another thing, why do you keep changing your name?’ she threw in suddenly. Like this was a particular niggle that really tried her patience.
‘You know about that?’
‘Well, yeah … From the governor.’
He nodded, not really believing her. That slight tell she had of looking to the left, again giving her away.
‘Okay, then let me put it to you this way. If you ever had the kind of characters coming after you that I’ve had to put up with over the past few years, believe me, you’d start calling yourself Mary Smith and you’d emigrate to New Zealand on a one-way ticket, leaving a cloud of dust behind you.’
She gave a broad grin at that, which softened her whole face and knocked years off her, he thought distractedly.
‘And I’m sorry, but I have to ask you this. Why William Goldsmith?’
‘Easy. She Stoops to Conquer is one of my favourite plays,’ he shrugged back at her. ‘And when I saw the statue of Oliver Goldsmith outside Trinity College, I though it’d be a good idea to take Goldsmith as my surname and William after William Blake, another writer I love.’
She nodded, again looking impressed by the fact that he’d actually read the classics.
‘But then what about Bill O’Casey? Where did that one come from?’
‘Kind of people I used to hang round with would never call me William, it was always either Bill or Billy and O’ Casey was after Sean O’Casey. I’d been reading Shadow of a Gunman at the time and loved it.’
Another half-smile.
‘But then … James Archer?’
‘Ah, now you mightn’t like this one, but I was reading a fair bit of Jeffrey Archer at the time. A writer who gets slagged off mercilessly, but you can’t deny he writes a great page-turner.’
‘Okay, but what about Oscar Butler then? Hang on, let me hazard a wild guess; you’d been reading Oscar Wilde at the time,’ she said dryly, but he noticed her mouth twisted down into a smile again.
He shrugged and nodded.
‘So basically, every false identity you’ve ever had has been in homage to a writer, either living or dead?’
‘Something like that,’ he told her, armed folded, sitting well back, ostensibly taking her in, but his mind was miles away. What was it to her? Why did she even care? And what was really going on here?
On and on she went with all her questions, almost as though she was carrying some kind of image in her head of what he should be like, how he should behave, and was trying to make him fit that same identikit picture. And it certainly sounded like she’d already done her homework. Because this one was thorough. Seemed to know as much about him as his own mother did.
He was wrong there though, because just as she was wrapping up to leave, it looked like there was still one question she was burning up to ask him.
‘So, emm,’ she began, picking her words carefully. ‘One last thing, if that’s okay?
‘Fire ahead.’
‘Well … Can I ask you what your plans are once you get back outside? Do you plan to finish the degree course you started, maybe even get a decent job out of it?’
The implication was there, hanging in the air between them. Jake had got very good at reading the unspoken.
Did he intend going straight after he got out?
But he couldn’t give her a straight answer to that one.
Because at this particular point in time, it was a question there was just no answer to.