DISCLAIMERS: Bad Girls and all its characters are property of Shed Productions. The author implies no ownership of these characters, and they are used in the stories without permission solely for entertainment and not for profit. Similarly this applies to any fictional characters either from literature or another TV show or film.
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This fic borrows from a series 7 storyline only I've reshaped it and brought it back in time. I'm enormously grateful for Hopeless Romantic's very valuable help in betaing this fic. This isn't an easy challenge to do, especially the 'Arts Room' scene and Shed's original immortal dialogue but I've enjoyed it.
A PORTRAIT OF LOVE
Scene One
Margaret Winters sat at her carved round mahogany dining table in her Hampstead mansion. She was a sprightly seventy-eight old woman dressed in flowing robes who steadfastly refused to conform to society's expectation that she should be the respectable granny type. True, her hair was white and piled up, high on her head and her eyes were twinkling blue but she had strong views on the label that society tried to attach on her. She didn't conform to the expectation that, as you got older, then some mysterious natural conservatism would finally make you a fitting member of society and that youthful rebellion would become part of the past, disconnected from the present. She had no intention of living down her youth, only to continue the lifestyle that she had evolved all those years ago in her youth. She sighed at the thought of that dreary idea of family life, something that she had tried to escape from all her life. This was the reason why she had traveled all round the world and brought back mementos of her travels. She could see those faraway distant horizons in her mind's eye. She had always been contrary, as both her mother and sister had called her. In time, her sister had been duly married off to pass down to the next generation, a morass of dreary life restricting proverbs. She had taken herself off to the sinful big city to her circle of women of bohemian disposition and unconventional dress. Well, that was one way of describing it, she chuckled knowingly to herself.
Her hall was alive with ornaments and flowers set against the richly painted red walls. It cheered her up and the sparkle in her blue eyes still showed her mischievous nature that was adored by those close to her. On the wall of her living room was a treasured possession of hers. It was a portrait of three naked women. The woman in the center was facing away from the painter, her weight being poised elegantly on one leg and her left arm around the waist of the beauty facing the painter, whose feet were decorously crossed in front of each other. Her right arm enfolded the shoulders of the woman facing half towards her. The romantic portraiture was in the style of, and paid homage to, the Italian Renaissance except that English prudery, in which she had grown up, would never have allowed its display in the Tate Gallery.
She knew that she was stuck with the tag of 'Aunt Margaret.' Somehow, the word was repellently heterosexual just as was her only niece. She could picture the objectionable child many years ago on the one occasion that she came round to her house, escorted by her nervous conformist sister. She could see the square little face, upturned nose, suspicious eyes and the mind that registered the essential fact that there was no Uncle Whoever. She had tried to engage the child in conversation about her travels. After all, they taught geography and art in school and who better than her to talk about the Montmartre artistic colony in Paris, the romance of history and of foreign cultures, which she had avidly embraced from when she first traveled. It all fell on deaf ears, the wretched had child clung to her equally narrow minded mother, and that was the end of that. She had even temporarily moved her precious triptych portrait of three women to spare their sensibilities but to no avail.
The silver figurines of the female form on the dining room table also epitomized her life. It symbolized a woman proudly standing alone with no companion male figurine to keep it company. That symbolized her life for wasn't she a lifelong lesbian after all?
She had drawn up her will and had asked for her solicitor, a dear male friend of hers to value her mansion. She was alarmed to discover that at the rate house prices were going, it would be worth £2.2 million in three years time. She knew that only her loathsome niece was the obvious beneficiary unless she left her estate to the charities of her choice. The thought disturbed her as if she had one foot in the grave. Her rebellious mind shrank from such a thought. The problem with her life was that she was getting older. Being on her own at her time of life meant that her dearest companion of so many years had recently passed away. It left a huge hole in her heart that couldn't be filled. Her lifelong lover's presence pervaded the house and especially the slightly overgrown garden, which had been her pride and joy. She had accumulated an extensive library in a tall, carved mahogany bookcase and she foresaw with disgust that another part of her life's work would be scattered to the four winds in due course.
It meant that a lot of her life was now lived in a semi dreamlike state where her past was more real than the present, especially as she could still hear her lover's voice talk to her and see the places where she was accustomed to be. Suddenly, a smile crinkled up her face and her eyes sparkled, as her lover seemed to comfort her. She made her way to her bureau drawer where she kept several photographic reprints of the portrait. She had vaguely thought that it would make a really excellent postcard and now was her ideal chance. After all, she had given way to impulses all her life and her humour was irresistible. She reached for an old fashioned fountain pen and in regular inclined old-fashioned script wrote the following message. On the right hand side, she wrote out her niece's full name and address and on the left hand side, wrote the following.
"Dearest Sylvia,
Just a quick card to let you know that I've been thinking of you quite as much as you have been thinking of me all these years.
Guess who's the woman in the middle?
Aunt Margaret"She slipped it inside a white envelope, addressed it, made her way out to the postbox round the corner, and gleefully delivered her bombshell.
*******Bodybag was rush, rush rushing to get off to work with the doubtful assistance of her Bobby whose help of being dropped off to work in the hearse meant ministering to his last minute demands on her time. The man had no sense of time, she thought resentfully as she struggled to perform her wifely devotions. Consequently, the postman slipped the morning post through the letterbox of bills, junk mail and an innocent white envelope, whose handwriting she couldn't place off hand. With a sigh, she quickly discarded the junk mail, threw the expected bills on the side and ripped open the white envelope. She stuffed it in her overfull handbag to read on her tea break. That insistent voice cut in on her and grated on her nerves, as Bobby was now ready to set off in the hearse.
"Are you ready, Sylv?"
"I'm coming, I'm coming?" she said all in a fluster for the millionth time in her life.
Sure enough, she was deposited outside the gates of Larkhall prison, a couple of minutes late and bustled her way to the PO room a few minutes ahead of the meeting. She took out the letter and was just about to start to read it when a rustle of movement indicated that Madam had arrived annoyingly early so that the meeting was about to start. She dabbed down the letter on the side and pretended to be devoting her full attention to Betts. As Betts had asked everyone to consider volunteering for some new damn-fool task, she shot off out of the room in case she might be detained for it. Anyway, she felt unsafe being on her own with that bossy woman. Consequently, the letter remained on the side, undisturbed, half opened, the neat old-fashioned script just waiting for the curious mind.
Sure enough, just such a mind appeared in the form of the virtuous Barbara Mills. She was a small, middle aged, respectable Christian woman whose old fashioned appearance was belied by a powerful sense of justice perversely enhanced by the petty tyrannies at Larkhall prison. Her traditional deference to authority had been rapidly whittled away by her increasing contempt for authority without morality. Worse still, Fenner and Bodybag had recently turned over the cell she shared with Nikki for no particular reason. Barbara was shrewd enough to understand a kindred spirit in Nikki, helped by her instinctive sympathy for the underdog. Cheap jeers at Nikki's sexuality contributed to that sense of solidarity. She was the embodiment of the Church Militant.
It was in this frame of mind that Barbara came to clean up the PO room and get ready for the first morning cup of tea of the day. Most POs were reasonable but Bodybag just had to have her tea medium strong and never more than one sugar. In the past, she had demanded loudly and offensively that Barbara remake her mug of tea. As Barbara's quick eye spotted the letter, she knew that she had to have a quick peek. As she eased open the card, her sense of hypocrisy kicked in and illuminated her face in a mischievous smile. It gave her a backstage glimpse behind that solid brick wall of prejudice and salved her conscience, as God would surely understand. She slipped the letter into her overall pocket and had just brewed up when the first of the PO's poured into the room
The prisoners trudged their way to the servery as normal, looked round and a perfect hush lasted for five seconds while Denny's eyes lit up in astonishment at this wondrous vision. What the frigging hell was it? She finally ran over, took it off the wall and inspected it.
"It's Bodybag," she yelled out misleadingly.
"You what?" echoes the Julies.
"We didn't know you had it in you, Miss," Yvonne called out loudly, a big grin on her face.
"All right, all right. What's all this fuss and palaver all about?" Bodybag called out unwisely, not cottoning on to the developing playful cheeriness.
"Yeah, you're a dark horse all right. Whatever would Bobby think of you," retorted Yvonne.
"Actually, the card looks quite artistic," Nikki finally called out in a cool, considered tone of voice. "You've got some style at last, Bodybag. Mind you, the original ought to hang in the National Portrait Gallery."
Nikki's low-key intervention caused Bodybag to splutter incoherently with rage. The very thought filled her with outrage and a lurking fear that some 'politically correct, do gooder' might just do that. That would be just what her aunt might be scheming at and disgrace the family name. Sometimes, she thought there was a secret conspiracy to make every woman a lesbian.
"It's all right, Sylvia. If no one wants to claim the card, I'll confiscate it," Helen called out sternly as a red-faced furious Bodybag stood, rooted to the floor. Inadvertently and totally incorrectly, she looked as guilty as sin to everyone's vast amusement while Helen did a splendid job of controlling her facial emotions. Inwardly, her emotions were churning around.
"You can take it and throw it away. I won't have such filth on the wing. Order, order. The next woman who's out of line, I'll bang up till Christmas," she shouted with impotent rage.
Gradually, the laughter died down and finally the prisoners resumed their place in the breakfast queue though they smirked with pleasure at this fantastic practical joke. This was real style. Whoever was responsible for this? The finger of suspicion was on Nikki even though she innocently ate up her breakfast with relish.