Part One Hundred and Twenty
"So how was Yvonne bearing up when you saw her?" Helen's question was accompanied by a sudden squall of wind and rain beating on the window, making them glad they were inside. Summer had long past and it was the time of the year when people started to huddle inside their houses.
"Not good," Nikki reflected out loud. "She was obviously glad to see me but I got the feeling that part of the reason that she opened up was that she hasn't got anyone else to talk too."
"Go on," Helen murmured, knowing that Nikki was at her best verbally groping towards the truth in her intuitive way.
"Yvonne is, or was, one of the proudest, close mouthed women that I've ever known. For instance, you remember Renee Williams."
"I've heard about her, Nikki, but I had hardly anything to do with her. I had only just started to spend more time at Larkhall with the 'lifers group.'" Helen's memory spoke aloud in reply.
"I was in the toilets chatting to Yvonne and next I knew was this headcase comes at her from behind with a razor blade. She managed to cut Yvonne before I put a full nelson hold on her and dragged her away from Yvonne. In my well-meaning way, I advised her to watch out for her and she got very defensive saying that she could look after herself. That's Yvonne all over. That was what convinced me that she's got real problems."
"You sound as if you really want to help her, Nikki," Helen remarked as they lay back on the settee letting the aches and pains of a day's hard work ease out of their bodies.
"I'd just like them to have the same chances that we've had since we got out of Larkhall but I'm not sure if it is possible. Not after what I know about you as Wing Governor and Karen Betts won't be much different."
"What do you mean, Nikki?" Came Helen's slightly defensive retort.
"You're a private citizen now, same as I am," Smiled Nikki. "But I know now looking back at everything that your job made you ultra careful not to be in any way shape or form compromised. You had a position to uphold, not only to prisoners but the others lower down in the shit heap. Add Stubberfield breathing over your shoulder and your Minister father," and here Nikki pulled a face, "and you were one very unrelaxed woman. And in a way rightly so or you couldn't have done your job. I'm a bit the same now with the responsibility of a club to run with Trisha. It's a smaller scale thing, no women behind bars resenting your very existence but not so different. I've thought about it a lot."
Helen ruffled Nikki's hair in a gesture of pure affection for the woman who she was profoundly glad she saw behind the total hard case of years ago who spurned all authority, hers included, with words as barbed and jagged edged as the broken bottle with which she had killed the policeman.
"You know, even though that bastard is dead and six feet under, he still has that ability to ruin people's lives," Helen's slow paced Scottish accent crystallised the dread suspicion that neither of them wanted to acknowledge. The shadow should have lifted but it hadn't. And Nikki shook her head incredulously in denial of that thought.
"Once that bastard has gone and is unable to twist, abuse and fuck up the lives of anyone around him, surely everyone should be able to sort their own lives out and live happily ever after or am I being hopelessly romantic?" Nikki paused a second letting the question or statement hang in the air before plunging on in the blind passionate assertion of all the hopes and fears that balanced in her soul.
"Take Yvonne, for instance, put her gangland associations to one side and she is one of the good ones if ever there was one. OK I never had that much to do with Karen but surely not having him around can't make her go and tare up their relationship like this. Lauren only went out and killed Fenner like I did the same to Gossard except that I did it on the spur of the moment and she must have planned it. Surely Karen can see that?" It frightened her that the one happy thought that was worth throwing the parties to end all parties was starting to go sour. Good should triumph over evil, surely.
"It's not as easy as that, Nikki. Karen can't lay Yvonne's past on one side as easily as that," Helen answered softly. "Besides, disasters can happen despite the best of intentions. It happened to us. Remember that time we were in Larkhall and that riot caused us to break up just at the point when the one thing we were working for, your appeal, was starting to go our way?"
Helen poured a drink while Nikki fell silent, afraid of what Pandora's Box Helen was rashly opening. Nikki felt that she was shrinking into the settee while Helen paced round the flat to aid her place her thoughts in order.
"We've never talked about it before as it was painful to both of us," Started Helen, then stopped.
Nikki shivered at the evil memory.
"That's the understatement of the century, Hel," She muttered quietly.
"Will you trust me just one more time to lay this out before us as if I were delivering a history lecture and Helen Wade and Nikki Wade are historical characters?" Helen cut in, feeling bolder and more certain of her ground, a trick of her daytime trade aiding her.
Nikki could relate to this approach, she hoped.
"It all started when you got talking to Femi, and you wanted to get her help as she was a convicted drugs courier. She was jailed and stuck in a foreign country unable to speak a word of English, with children at home with no one to look after them. You came to me and asked me to help her out, right."
Nikki nodded her initial panic calming down as she looked into Helen's eyes.
"We both blew it as I had started to get too smug for my own good, thinking that I could fix everything on my own because I had had a run of successes. You got a bit too impatient challenging me on that point and I never told you what I had in mind as I could have done to talk to her through a translator and earphones. You got pretty pissed off with me as I can well understand."
"Yes, and we were all grumbling about it in the evening, me, Crystal, Babs, the Julies…….."
"All the old lags…." Grinned Helen.
"It was the others who suggested doing something about it and I tried to persuade them against it. When the feeling went against me, I had to be the leader as that was my position and I stood on my soapbox, sorry, the chair, and started spouting off…."Smiled Nikki almost nostalgically before her face darkened at the memory of what happened next. "Anyway, Bodybag came along with her big boots, sent in the heavy mob and pushed us into a sit down strike. We only wanted information as to what was happening to her……."
"Which, if I was around in the right place at the right time and I was thinking straight, I could have explained and cooled everything down. She later kept banging on to me to send in the riot squad and I held her off," Helen exploded with anger as it was only now that she had heard the truth as Sylvia, typically, had covered up her side in the affair.
"I'd changed over the months, thanks to you, Helen. I remember mouthing off once that everyone should be sacked over Carol Byatt's miscarriage. The second time around I called out for those responsible to be disciplined…."
"It was you speaking my lines that got me angry as I couldn't say out in the open that you were right. I'd had enough stick for being prisoner's friend and I overcompensated…."
"…….and I had the whole bloody thing stolen out of my hands by the bloody Peckham Boot Gang. I felt sick at heart and couldn't look you in the eye……."
"…..and I blamed you for kicking off the riot which you didn't want or I. We had good intentions……."
"But good intentions aren't necessarily enough."
"If we had talked over what had gone wrong that day, could we have put things right between us, Helen?"
"We might, Nikki, but you know well that there wasn't ever the chance of that space and time in Larkhall. There never was that chance and we had to have some space from each other. There was no alternative until we could work it out on the outside of Larkhall."
"But Karen and Yvonne are free," Nikki insisted.
"Karen's a wing Governor at Larkhall and Yvonne might not be able to escape from her past as easily as she thinks she might, especially where Lauren is concerned. We're in a different situation. You've got to admit that Yvonne's had a criminal background for years and has children who could easily pull her back if only for covering up for her. Remember that I've seen her file. I like her and I trusted her as much as I trusted you as to what went on at Larkhall, far more than Sylvia and Jim Fenner."
Helen uttered the last names as if she had eaten something distasteful and had to be spat out as soon as possible.
"I'm sorry, Nikki, but I can see where Karen is coming from. I'm utterly detached from Larkhall and it is much easier for you to pick up the threads of where you left off. Think carefully."
Nikki's face betrayed her discomfort as Helen had held forth but at the end of the day, she pieced her way along the links in the logical chain that Helen had cast and she couldn't find a fault.
"You talked to Karen on the phone recently and you got on with her. I know you didn't want to get mixed up with Larkhall any more but………."
"I'll go and talk to Karen and do what I can for her. Things are different now. No court case now against Fenner, no trials, and no witnesses. The ball game has changed. The one person who blighted my life at Larkhall can't hurt or threaten me now. Whatever happened at Larkhall may come to haunt many people's lives but not us, Nikki. I'm not afraid to talk to those whom we liked once and still like. That's a bit of you rubbing off on me."
"That's not the only way I've influenced you," Nikki's seductive voice and wide smile reflected on the woman who swore blind that 'she was not into women.'
Helen playfully through a cushion at Nikki and missed by a mile.
"I'd like to get back to where I used to be with Karen with someone whose heart was in the right place even if she had a lousy taste in men. That's the one debt to the past I would like to repay."
"So how was Yvonne bearing up when you saw her?" Helen's question was accompanied by a sudden squall of wind and rain beating on the window, making them glad they were inside. Summer had long past and it was the time of the year when people started to huddle inside their houses.
"Not good," Nikki reflected out loud. "She was obviously glad to see me but I got the feeling that part of the reason that she opened up was that she hasn't got anyone else to talk too."
"Go on," Helen murmured, knowing that Nikki was at her best verbally groping towards the truth in her intuitive way.
"Yvonne is, or was, one of the proudest, close mouthed women that I've ever known. For instance, you remember Renee Williams."
"I've heard about her, Nikki, but I had hardly anything to do with her. I had only just started to spend more time at Larkhall with the 'lifers group.'" Helen's memory spoke aloud in reply.
"I was in the toilets chatting to Yvonne and next I knew was this headcase comes at her from behind with a razor blade. She managed to cut Yvonne before I put a full nelson hold on her and dragged her away from Yvonne. In my well-meaning way, I advised her to watch out for her and she got very defensive saying that she could look after herself. That's Yvonne all over. That was what convinced me that she's got real problems."
"You sound as if you really want to help her, Nikki," Helen remarked as they lay back on the settee letting the aches and pains of a day's hard work ease out of their bodies.
"I'd just like them to have the same chances that we've had since we got out of Larkhall but I'm not sure if it is possible. Not after what I know about you as Wing Governor and Karen Betts won't be much different."
"What do you mean, Nikki?" Came Helen's slightly defensive retort.
"You're a private citizen now, same as I am," Smiled Nikki. "But I know now looking back at everything that your job made you ultra careful not to be in any way shape or form compromised. You had a position to uphold, not only to prisoners but the others lower down in the shit heap. Add Stubberfield breathing over your shoulder and your Minister father," and here Nikki pulled a face, "and you were one very unrelaxed woman. And in a way rightly so or you couldn't have done your job. I'm a bit the same now with the responsibility of a club to run with Trisha. It's a smaller scale thing, no women behind bars resenting your very existence but not so different. I've thought about it a lot."
Helen ruffled Nikki's hair in a gesture of pure affection for the woman who she was profoundly glad she saw behind the total hard case of years ago who spurned all authority, hers included, with words as barbed and jagged edged as the broken bottle with which she had killed the policeman.
"You know, even though that bastard is dead and six feet under, he still has that ability to ruin people's lives," Helen's slow paced Scottish accent crystallised the dread suspicion that neither of them wanted to acknowledge. The shadow should have lifted but it hadn't. And Nikki shook her head incredulously in denial of that thought.
"Once that bastard has gone and is unable to twist, abuse and fuck up the lives of anyone around him, surely everyone should be able to sort their own lives out and live happily ever after or am I being hopelessly romantic?" Nikki paused a second letting the question or statement hang in the air before plunging on in the blind passionate assertion of all the hopes and fears that balanced in her soul.
"Take Yvonne, for instance, put her gangland associations to one side and she is one of the good ones if ever there was one. OK I never had that much to do with Karen but surely not having him around can't make her go and tare up their relationship like this. Lauren only went out and killed Fenner like I did the same to Gossard except that I did it on the spur of the moment and she must have planned it. Surely Karen can see that?" It frightened her that the one happy thought that was worth throwing the parties to end all parties was starting to go sour. Good should triumph over evil, surely.
"It's not as easy as that, Nikki. Karen can't lay Yvonne's past on one side as easily as that," Helen answered softly. "Besides, disasters can happen despite the best of intentions. It happened to us. Remember that time we were in Larkhall and that riot caused us to break up just at the point when the one thing we were working for, your appeal, was starting to go our way?"
Helen poured a drink while Nikki fell silent, afraid of what Pandora's Box Helen was rashly opening. Nikki felt that she was shrinking into the settee while Helen paced round the flat to aid her place her thoughts in order.
"We've never talked about it before as it was painful to both of us," Started Helen, then stopped.
Nikki shivered at the evil memory.
"That's the understatement of the century, Hel," She muttered quietly.
"Will you trust me just one more time to lay this out before us as if I were delivering a history lecture and Helen Wade and Nikki Wade are historical characters?" Helen cut in, feeling bolder and more certain of her ground, a trick of her daytime trade aiding her.
Nikki could relate to this approach, she hoped.
"It all started when you got talking to Femi, and you wanted to get her help as she was a convicted drugs courier. She was jailed and stuck in a foreign country unable to speak a word of English, with children at home with no one to look after them. You came to me and asked me to help her out, right."
Nikki nodded her initial panic calming down as she looked into Helen's eyes.
"We both blew it as I had started to get too smug for my own good, thinking that I could fix everything on my own because I had had a run of successes. You got a bit too impatient challenging me on that point and I never told you what I had in mind as I could have done to talk to her through a translator and earphones. You got pretty pissed off with me as I can well understand."
"Yes, and we were all grumbling about it in the evening, me, Crystal, Babs, the Julies…….."
"All the old lags…." Grinned Helen.
"It was the others who suggested doing something about it and I tried to persuade them against it. When the feeling went against me, I had to be the leader as that was my position and I stood on my soapbox, sorry, the chair, and started spouting off…."Smiled Nikki almost nostalgically before her face darkened at the memory of what happened next. "Anyway, Bodybag came along with her big boots, sent in the heavy mob and pushed us into a sit down strike. We only wanted information as to what was happening to her……."
"Which, if I was around in the right place at the right time and I was thinking straight, I could have explained and cooled everything down. She later kept banging on to me to send in the riot squad and I held her off," Helen exploded with anger as it was only now that she had heard the truth as Sylvia, typically, had covered up her side in the affair.
"I'd changed over the months, thanks to you, Helen. I remember mouthing off once that everyone should be sacked over Carol Byatt's miscarriage. The second time around I called out for those responsible to be disciplined…."
"It was you speaking my lines that got me angry as I couldn't say out in the open that you were right. I'd had enough stick for being prisoner's friend and I overcompensated…."
"…….and I had the whole bloody thing stolen out of my hands by the bloody Peckham Boot Gang. I felt sick at heart and couldn't look you in the eye……."
"…..and I blamed you for kicking off the riot which you didn't want or I. We had good intentions……."
"But good intentions aren't necessarily enough."
"If we had talked over what had gone wrong that day, could we have put things right between us, Helen?"
"We might, Nikki, but you know well that there wasn't ever the chance of that space and time in Larkhall. There never was that chance and we had to have some space from each other. There was no alternative until we could work it out on the outside of Larkhall."
"But Karen and Yvonne are free," Nikki insisted.
"Karen's a wing Governor at Larkhall and Yvonne might not be able to escape from her past as easily as she thinks she might, especially where Lauren is concerned. We're in a different situation. You've got to admit that Yvonne's had a criminal background for years and has children who could easily pull her back if only for covering up for her. Remember that I've seen her file. I like her and I trusted her as much as I trusted you as to what went on at Larkhall, far more than Sylvia and Jim Fenner."
Helen uttered the last names as if she had eaten something distasteful and had to be spat out as soon as possible.
"I'm sorry, Nikki, but I can see where Karen is coming from. I'm utterly detached from Larkhall and it is much easier for you to pick up the threads of where you left off. Think carefully."
Nikki's face betrayed her discomfort as Helen had held forth but at the end of the day, she pieced her way along the links in the logical chain that Helen had cast and she couldn't find a fault.
"You talked to Karen on the phone recently and you got on with her. I know you didn't want to get mixed up with Larkhall any more but………."
"I'll go and talk to Karen and do what I can for her. Things are different now. No court case now against Fenner, no trials, and no witnesses. The ball game has changed. The one person who blighted my life at Larkhall can't hurt or threaten me now. Whatever happened at Larkhall may come to haunt many people's lives but not us, Nikki. I'm not afraid to talk to those whom we liked once and still like. That's a bit of you rubbing off on me."
"That's not the only way I've influenced you," Nikki's seductive voice and wide smile reflected on the woman who swore blind that 'she was not into women.'
Helen playfully through a cushion at Nikki and missed by a mile.
"I'd like to get back to where I used to be with Karen with someone whose heart was in the right place even if she had a lousy taste in men. That's the one debt to the past I would like to repay."