Of everything to happen on this of all mornings, this had to be the worst.
The prick at the front was taking way too long on the telephone, and Don knew that was a bad idea. Well, he knew what had happened to the last person to try it anyway.
Don didn't look up when he heard the scream. He just kept repeating over and over in his head what to say when the wardens came round – no, I didn't see anything, I didn't see anything - and kept his eyes fixed on the shoulders of the man in front of him.
Which were…. shaking? The shoulders in front of him were quaking up and down like the scrawny man in front of him was about to cry.
Don looked down to where he could see a rivulet of blood slowly gliding its way across the floor. Heavy footsteps arrived in his ears from behind; under the warden's blunt voice he heard a quiet but unmistakable sniffle.
Don gently tapped one trembling shoulder; immediately, the scrawny back tensed up.
"Psst, stop sniffling and when they ask you what you saw, you saw nothing, ok?"
The man nodded without turning around and drew in a deep breath.
When the wardens reached them, neither of them had seen anything.
'Fuck,' Scripps thought, as they were dismissed back to their cells. 'Mum'll be proper sad that I missed her birthday.'
When Donald Scripps woke up the next morning, he was pretty happy for someone waking up in cell. He'd managed to persuade one of the kinder wardens to let him use a phone for a couple of minutes just to wish his Mum happy birthday, so that was alright.
When he arrived at work (sewing was a bit boring but it beat cleaning the wings) he saw the scrawny guy again. He had a young looking face to match his slight build. Don sat down next to him after collecting his t-shirt pieces to sew together.
"Like sewing, then?" he asked.
The other man paused, then answered without looking up from his stitching. "I don't need the qualifications and this sounded better than kitchen duty."
"So what you in for?"
The man paused again, for much longer this time. Don took the hint.
"Lawyer tell you not to say, huh? Fair enough. But to be honest, as long as you're not in for child molesting then you should be pretty safe."
The other man shuddered visibly at the mention of child molesting, and Scripps thought he could see more fear than disgust in the involuntary movement.
"So not a child molester then."
"No."
Both men turned back to their sewing and a heavy silence settled between them.
"Drugs."
Don pricked himself with the needle as the other man broke the silence and he cursed under his breath before replying.
"Could be worse. Do you know how long you're here for?"
"I got given three months."
"Again, could be worse. I've got four left out of six now. Assault. Got into a bar fight with some creep."
With a quiet affirmative 'mm' from the smaller man, they once again fell into working silence until lunchtime.
"I'm Don, Donald Scripps, by the way." Don offered as they lined up to hand the warden their t-shirts.
"David," the other man replied with the beginnings of a smile. "And thanks for yesterday."
Months on the inside were slow to pass, but the minutes flew by when Posner had good company. Don Scripps was friendly and compassionate, two things he had certainly not expected to find in prison. Over t-shirt sewing they talked about the lives they had lived outside the bars and high walls like they were a film on pause, ready to resume exactly as before. Scripps, he had been surprised to find out, kept a diary and actually attended church every Sunday. On the other hand, Scripps had not seemed surprised to find that what Posner missed most was a decent cup of tea in the evening.
"I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye, upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky-"
"And at every drifting cloud that went with sails of silver by. Hello, David. Nice to see you out in the fresh air for once."
"Oi!" Posner said, responding to Scripps' remark with a bony elbow to the ribs.
"Well, I always just assume you'll be reading in the library or in your cell. Although I reckon you've probably run out of books to read in the library now – if you've been going through the books at a rate of one or more each day for two months now."
"Well I found a battered anthology of Hilaire Belloc yesterday."
Scripps shuddered. "My parents used to frighten me into being good with his poems about string and lion and all that shit. Didn't work though, did it? Might not have got eaten by a lion, but just look at me now."
"Belloc wrote some really nice poems when he wasn't terrorising fictional children." Scripps raised an eyebrow, so Posner continued. "He wrote a really nice series of sonnets for each month of the year, for example, and some really quotable short poems. February's goes something like this:
"The winter moon has such a quiet car
That all the winter nights are dumb with rest.
She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest,
And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star.
Because the nights are silent, do not wake:
But there shall tremble through the general earth,
And over you, a quickening and a birth.
The sun is near the hill-tops for your sake.
The latest born of all the days shall creep
To kiss the tender eyelids of the year;
And you shall wake – oh damn, I've forgotten the rest."
Don gaped, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at Posner.
"I liked learning poetry at school. I really liked Hardy, Housman, the war poets. Oh, and bits of Larkin. I got quite good at memorising it quickly."
Don stood still dumbfounded, but managed to shut his mouth.
"Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;" Posner recited quietly. "More Belloc."
"Don't suppose he wrote one about a Dave then?" Scripps countered, finally regaining his composure.
"No, but he did call his Don middle-class."
And at the look on Scripps' face, Posner laughed for the first time since he left university, light filling his eyes and his face brightening like an arctic sunrise.
"Last day stuck in here then, Pos?"
"Yep, and my family are just going to be so happy to have their now criminally-convicted dropout of a son back…"
"I'm sorry. Haven't you got any friends you could stay with?"
"Dropped out of uni, had no friends before then anyway."
"Got me now though, haven't you." Scripps said, elbowing Posner playfully. "Remember to keep in touch when you get back out there, alright?"
"I promise," Posner replied, and Scripps received the warmest, most genuine smile.
Three days before he was due to leave, Donald Scripps received a brown paper parcel so innocuous it had passed through the wardens and actually reached him. Inside it was an A5 exercise book, an A6 reporter's notebook and a diary for the year. In the front of the diary, in unmistakeable shallow slant was written 'David Posner' and a landline number.
On Donald Scripps' penultimate day in prison, he got a phone call, as he did once a week, from Posner. When he said goodbye to Pos this time, he didn't know when he'd actually speak to him again.
When Donald Scripps walked out of the prison gates, he breathed in the fresh air of freedom as he hadn't in so many months.
When he reached his new flat three hours later, he phoned Posner. He left a mournful silence and his new address on the answering machine.
That Sunday morning, Donald Scripps spied a familiar silhouette ringing the bell for his apartment as he returned from Pentecost Communion. There was no Larkin-esque Whitsun Wedding, not even a calling of Banns.
"Hello," the man said as he turned around to the sound of Scripps' footsteps.
"Come up for a cuppa?" Scripps replied.
"Of course," Posner replied, and when Scripps entwined their fingers together and led him up the stairs, he didn't protest. And from the sermon, one sentence lodged in Scripps' brain: 'Thou who art fire of love evermore enkindle us.'
Of everything to happen on this of all mornings, this had to be the best.
Quotations:
"I never saw..." - The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde
"The winter moon..." - February, Hilaire Belloc
"Don pinched..." - Lines To A Don, Hilaire Belloc
"Thou art fire..." - Prayer for Pentecost, Christina Rossetti